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And we continue with our American stories.

Thomas Jefferson has become today's every man due to his paradoxical nature, and like

us, he is neither purely heroic nor a villainous figure. You to tell the story as Pulitzer Prize

winning historian Joseph Ellis, author of American Sphinx, the character of Thomas Jefferson,

and we gathered this audio thanks to the Library of

Congress. Let's take a listen. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Abraham Lincoln, Stephen

Douglas, both Lincoln and Douglas believe Jefferson agrees with them.

When Herbert Hoover runs against Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the presidency of the United

States in 1932, both of them think they are Jeffersonians.

When Ronald Reagan is elected president, he in his inaugural address, he says,

we must pluck a rose from Jefferson's garden and wear it in our lapels forever.

And William Jefferson Clinton starts his inaugural parade in Monticella.

He is America's every man. He's all things to all people.

And it's not just any man who can be every man. How do you do that? Well, I was asking that question in a context in which the dominant point of view was established

by Franklin Roosevelt in 1943.

Franklin Roosevelt rode out at the White House,

the limo went to the National Archives,

and he picked up the portable desk

that Jefferson allegedly used to write the first draft of the Declaration.

It was a desk,

...