This is Thinking in Public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about frontline theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moller, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Christopher Cox is now senior scholar in residence at the University of California, Irvine.

He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California,

and then both his MBA and law degree from Harvard University,

where he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

He worked as a clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals, a lecturer at the Harvard Business School.

He's

been a partner in law practice and was senior associate counsel to President Ronald Reagan.

From 1989 to 2005, he served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for the

state of California, where he chaired many committees committed to national security.

In 2005, he was appointed by

President George W. Bush as chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission. He held that role

until 2009. It is his newly published book, Woodrow Wilson, The Light Withdrawn, that is the topic

of our conversation today. Christopher Cox, welcome to thinking in public. Well, I'm

happy to join you. I have to tell you that I have anticipated your book for a long time and read it

with great pleasure. One of the questions that comes to my mind is why this book wasn't written

a long time ago. The materials were all there, and yet they

waited for you to pick this up. And I think that's a story into itself. It really is. It, of course,

revolves around how women ultimately got the vote in the United States of America across the country,

not just in a few states,

and why it took so long.

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