Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life Podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. Hope the sun is shining. Hope the birds are singing. I hope the wind is at your back. I got a great show for you guys today. You're not going to want to miss this one. I have with me today the legendary, the one and only Talmadge Boston. And we're joined by this extraordinary voice in the world of history and leadership with a rich tapestry of insight drawn from his dual careers in law and historical research. Talmadge has the rare gift of distilling wisdom from the past to illuminate the challenges of the present. A distinguished author and presidential historian, he has earned endorsements from Pulitzer Prize winners and fellow historians, including John Meacham and Doris Kearns Goodwin for his new book, How the Best Did It, leadership lessons from our top presidents. In his groundbreaking work, Talmadge delves into the lives and legacies of eight of America's most influential presidents, unearthing timeless lessons on courage, resilience, and vision. Through rigorous research and captivating storytelling, he presents an exploration not only of what it means to lead, but also of how the greatest leaders face adversity with poise and purpose. From Franklin D. Roosevelt's eloquence to Ronald Reagan's bold convictions, each chapter offers profound takeaways for anyone seeking to make a meaningful impact in their own lives. Talmadge, thanks for being here today. How are you? I'm great, George. Glad to be on your program. I'm excited you're here, too. We might as well just start off with, you had a pretty big piece in the local paper over there that was sort of taking down a legend, man. Maybe you could fill us in on that. Well, one of the things I try to do is connect presidential history with today's presidential politics. That's a reason why I'm a contributing columnist for the Dallas Morning News. And so Bob Woodward, who once upon a time was a great hero to many of us for the great work he and Carl Bernstein did in dealing and revealing the Watergate cover-up crisis and who I've actually interviewed twice at programs here in Dallas where I live and historically have had a high regard for. Anyway, his newest book called War that came out on October the fifteenth is about the Biden presidency and I always knew that Bob Woodward was more of a Democrat than a Republican, but he takes that to an extreme in the new book and presents a really distorted perception and presentation of Biden in drawing to his conclusion that Biden has had a steady and purposeful presidency So anyway, I wrote the piece that explained why I was shocked at many of the things that are done in the book. Among others, he talks about Biden's decision to drop out of the race and yet makes no reference to the fact that he was pushed out against his will by Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Akeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. and so forth, and here he is historically a great investigative journalist, and yet he missed the biggest inter-party coup in American presidential history. He also talks about how simultaneously, ever since at least June, twenty-three, Biden has been, as we saw in June, twenty-four, An old, senile person incapable of doing anything, incapable of completing a sentence, rambling, gaffes, losing his train of thought, depending on note cards, depending on teleprompters. And he's been that way since June, twenty, twenty three. And yet in the book, Woodward says, yeah, maybe so. But he's also been successfully guiding our American foreign policy throughout his presidency up until twenty, twenty four. So he presents his image of Biden as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, two totally different people at the same time being president United States. And yet, despite that saying, it's been a steady and resourceful presidency. So lots of things in the book that are troubling, particularly coming from a person of Woodward's stature who's been around for so long. But in any case, the piece caused Brian Kilmeade to have me on his national radio show yesterday morning, which was a lot of fun. I always enjoy being interviewed by Brian. So anyway, that's the newest thing that's arisen in the world of presidential politics and presidential history in the last couple of days. But the book that you mentioned, How the Best Did It, Leadership Lessons from Our Top Presidents, came out in April and it's had a really good run. A couple of weeks ago, I spoke at the Reagan Presidential Library. A little over a month ago, I spoke here at the George W. Bush Presidential Library. I've spoken at Mount Vernon, Monticello, all the leading private clubs all over the country from the Pacific Union Club in San Francisco to the Chilton Club in Boston and almost everything in between. Several World Affairs Councils, chapters all over the country. It's been a great ride. It's something that talking about and writing about presidential history is truly a calling for me. I'm still a practicing lawyer. I'm seventy-one years old, been doing this for forty-six years. But this history, this particular book and all the programs associated with it have caused me to really want to put my foot on the gas pedal and do more and more of it in the years ahead. Well, I'm still able to do it. So yesterday I started on my next presidential history book, which hopefully will be ready to go in twenty twenty eight because from a marketing standpoint, it's great to have a presidential history book that comes out in the presidential election year. So anyway, that's a little bit on what I've been doing lately. It sounds exciting. I'm always curious if we can sort of get a glimpse at the future by looking back at the past. And it seems as a presidential historian, you've been able to really dig down deep into what makes a leader, what ultimate power is, and what some of these individuals were going through as they were leading the country. I guess my first question is, you know, you explore the leadership traits of some of history's most celebrated presidents. What is it, in your view, that separates a truly great leader from a competent one? And do you believe these distinctions are born from inherent character or molded by circumstance? Well, my book covers, in my opinion, our eight greatest presidents, and I'll be happy to explain why I believe they are our eight greatest presidents. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelt's, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan. And I identify an average of three leadership traits per president, such that the book covers a total of twenty-four leadership traits that these men demonstrated during their time in the presidency. I'm often asked, are there any traits that in fact are accurate to describe all eight of them? And I've found three. Number one, They each of them in his own unique way was a great persuader. Some were great at persuading the masses. Some were great at persuading one on one and in small groups. But but they did what it took to cause the appropriate people to go their way and make things fulfill their vision for what they wanted to do in their presidency. The second is they're all self-aware. They knew their strengths. They knew their weaknesses in terms of where they had strengths. They thought of as many ways as possible to use those strengths and where they had what they knew were weaknesses. They brought in people who were strong in the areas where they were weak to minimize the impact of their weaknesses. And then third and finally, they all directed their efforts toward the great American middle. not toward an extreme right or an extreme left, but recognize that for government to work, for people to progress, you always need to be focused on what the people in the middle think, which in twenty twenty four means what the moderates think, not the far right or the far left. But the people who are historically in the middle recognize that from time to time, one party has the better side of arguments than the others and can shift accordingly. And thus you have, for example, a president like Ronald Reagan, who won landslide elections because of the Reagan Democrats who crossed over and supported him. And of course, Franklin Roosevelt was elected president four times, and each time he had over eighty percent of the electoral vote. Eisenhower won two landslides. And for the most part, didn't really care which party you were talking about. He just wondered what was best for America and so on and so forth. Of course, Washington, the same. Jefferson, the same. Lincoln, the same. and Theodore Roosevelt, the progressive policies that soon became democratic policies in Franklin. So anyway, all these presidents realized that they needed to be unifiers and to be unifiers, they had to target on the broadest percentage of the American people, which is always the great middle. And so those are the traits that stood out as I connect the dots about the common traits of our eight greatest presidents. Yeah, those are phenomenal traits, and I could see how each one of those would be contagious and sort of lead to a groundswell or a landslide. You know, I begin thinking about the different times we were in and the way that our country has changed, and you had mentioned that They wanted to do what's best for America. That seems to have, at least when I started thinking about the world today, that's a pretty big question. What is best for America? Is what's best for the corporations best for America? Is our foreign policy the best for America? Or is building back America better for America? Do you think that this is a unique time where we're kind of turning inwards and trying to figure out what we can actually do for the United States of America instead of looking at a foreign policy that benefits NGOs and other corporations and stuff like that? Oh, I don't think this is a unique time. I think this is like American history has always been, particularly when we're talking about the great presidents who are always entirely focused on what's best. for America, whether it be foreign policy and thus put ourselves in the best possible position to preserve national security as well as world stability. Whether it's talking about domestic policy, yes, when you have policies that favor large corporations, that often produces great high unemployment. Excuse me, great high employment and low unemployment. And so the presidents keep their eye on the balls of the American people. The economy is always going to be at the forefront of people's minds. How much am I bringing home? How much am I being taxed? What are my tax dollars being used for? If I'm trying to operate a business, how is government impacting my business for the better or for the worse? These are the focuses that people have and the presidents necessarily need to be mindful of. All of these great presidents were attuned to the American public sentiment, not just the sentiments of one party or the other, but the American public sentiment across the board. and thus were always in a mode of speaking frequently to the American people, either in person or on radio or television broadcasts, were typically fine with the idea of having regular press conferences to answer the media's questions, which they knew were really the questions of the American people. And so that's what great presidents historically have done. And none of that stuff goes out of style. All of that stuff applies right now in twenty twenty four and it's going to apply in the future. Yeah, I was watching some of the Lincoln-Douglas debates not too long ago, and just these incredible back and forth between these two orators that had these awesome discussions. And then I look at where we are today sometimes, and I see these moderated debates that are clearly one-sided on some level, and it's so commercialized. I don't think those debates go out of style. And the longer, the bigger the debates, the better it is for the country. Is that still true? And do you see maybe like a return to that type of kind of formal debates where we can really get some issues on the table? Well, it was really unfortunate that after Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party's nominee, there was only one presidential debate. And of course, there was one vice presidential debate. And I don't think that's enough. I think both of the parties candidates were coached to say what was on their mind, regardless of what the particular question happened to be, such that in the presidential debate, the first question asked of Kamala Harris was, is America, you've been the vice president for the last four years, is America better off today than it was four years ago? And her answer started with, I grew up as a middle class kid. And then after she talked about that for a while, she talked about her economic policies. But not once did she answer the question, is America better off today than it was four years ago? And then Donald Trump, in response, he had perfect rebuttal to say, hey, folks, do you realize what the question was and how she didn't answer it? He missed it. He didn't even zero in on that. So today's candidates just are wired to say certain things no matter what the questions are. And going back to the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and for that matter, the Nixon-Kennedy debates, and the Reagan-Carter debate, the Reagan-Mondale debate, these people answered the questions asked. They answered them intelligently. There was a civil discourse. There was no name calling, there was mutual respect. And so that's what America is hungry for in debates. But unfortunately in recent years, we've not seen that. I mean, obviously the debate, the most important debate of the year was on June, when Donald Trump debated Joe Biden and Biden crashed and burned and soon thereafter was pushed out as the party's presumptive nominee. So debates are incredibly important. It's just a shame that there's not the clash of ideas and the truly responsive answers to the questions asked the way it once was. I encourage anybody watching this podcast, pull up the Nixon-Kennedy debates or the Reagan debates in in nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty four and just see how it used to be compared to how it now is. Yeah, it's a great point. There's that old adage that says iron sharpens iron. And we need to be able to not only have faith in the person that holds the highest office, but to understand that they're more than capable of not only taking a punch, but giving a punch and blocking a punch and understanding how they're representing the people of our country like they should be able to hold a debate stage with with authority and presence and awareness we got our first question coming in talmadge this is from clint from arkansas he says power can be both transformative and corrupting how did you see these presidents grapple with the intoxicating nature of power and were there specific moments where you think they cons consciously chose restraint Well, we can take them one by one. George Washington obviously showed restraint. He easily could have been elected to a third term, but he thought two terms was the right number. He was in that day and age older and tired and ready to finally go home to Mount Vernon. Jefferson followed his lead and stopped after two terms and went back to Monticello. Lincoln was elected to a second term, but unfortunately only one month into it, he was killed. Theodore Roosevelt began the presidency six months into William McKinley's second term when McKinley was shot. So we had three and a half years to fill out McKinley's term. And then he ran for a four-year term. But he said, that's darn close to two terms. And I want to follow the historical precedent. And so I'm not going to run again. And so he didn't. And he regretted that decision the rest of his life. So certainly, there was something of a power grab in that after he regretted that decision for a while, he decided, no, I really do want another term. and so he ended up running on the bull moose ticket against woodrow wilson and william howard taft and and it was damaged roosevelt's legacy so there is an example of a power grab franken roosevelt obviously four terms and and after the second one uh you know heading into uh we were already doing lynn lease World War II was going on. America hadn't yet entered the war. Pearl Harbor hadn't happened. And, of course, the Great Depression was still going on. And so Roosevelt decided that he couldn't leave the country for somebody new to start over in the middle of both of those emerging crises. But, you know, particularly his fourth term, World War II, hopefully the end's in sight. But he was truly a dying man. such that his fourth term he only lived three months before he died so that was something of a power grab but eisenhower two terms and he was done kennedy of course got assassinated before he even finished his first term and reagan had two terms knew that that was plenty that he was in fact an older person ready to retire to his ranch So there are instances of power grabs among these eight, particularly in terms of both Roosevelts. But other than that, the other six recognize that two terms should be the max. Of course, we now, after FDR, we have the Twenty-Second Amendment, which limits a president to two terms. Yeah, it's interesting to go back and look at those power grabs and try to understand. Our next question coming in is coming from Carrie from Kentucky. She says, with the rise of digital communication and social media, the way leaders connect with the public has drastically changed. What might presidents like FDR or Reagan, known for their powerful communication styles, make of our era of instant information? Well, both FDR and Reagan are could accurately be described and have been accurately described as the great communicators. And Reagan, in fact, voted for FDR all four times. I mean, here was Reagan we think of, obviously, a great conservative Republican, and yet he voted for FDR four times, the great liberal Democrat. Reagan would later say, I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me. But Reagan not only heard FDR's famous speeches, his inaugural address and his other speeches, but he also heard his fireside chats. And so Reagan, like FDR, was a great orator, but he was also a great voice, calm voice on the radio. And so both of those, and of course, Reagan was great on television and knew how to present. Of course, he'd been an actor and a television star, but the main thing was he knew how to look the camera and the people in the eye and talk in words that resonated and that inspired just as FDR had. So to the question in terms of social media and so forth, the great presidents are not stuck in the past. The great presidents are living in the present and looking toward the future. and are recognizing the importance of using all means of meaningful communication to communicate their messages. So I don't have any doubt that FDR and Reagan would have surrounded themselves with great advisors on best practices and social media, would have known how to use it in the most effective way, not the knee-jerk, tweet way, but in a way that communicated their messages in a way that people responded to, remembered, and that were very flattering toward the public perception of them as present. So just because technology has changed over time, It doesn't mean that these most of our greatest leaders in prior eras could not have readily adapted to whatever's going on today. The main thing is the message. How to communicate the message is something that you can get some counseling on and know how to do it. But the main thing is what's the content? And the content of FDR and Lincoln and JFK and Reagan was so exceptional and caused people to be so inspired and uplifted that that's going to work in any technology, so long as your content is as good as it gets. That is a great answer. And when I'm listening to that, I can't help but think that so much of the political message that comes out today is sort of like the Shakespeare Act V, Scene V that says, you know, a story completely devoid of any meaning. You know, like so much of the content that comes out is just... Like what you spoke about Kamala Harris's message or different people's message that comes out. It's just rhetoric. It doesn't mean anything. But if you have great content, it's going to resonate with people. It's going to find a home and it's going to inspire people. It's a great. It not only is going to be remembered and uplift people, but it's actually going to inspire them to start thinking and doing the right things. And that's the mark of the great presidents, that they move the needle on the public sentiment toward where they think it needs to be. Lincoln on slavery, FDR on the Great Depression and on what it was going to take to defeat Hitler and win World War II. Kennedy, with the inaugural address in the Peace Corps and with the Rice Stadium speech in the Space Race and the American Moonshot and his televised speech after Birmingham about the importance of the fact that civil rights was no longer a political issue, it was a moral issue, and getting a strong civil rights bill submitted, which he was seeking to push through when he was killed, and Lincoln Johnson brought home with the Civil Rights Act. Of course, Reagan, you know, bringing an end to the Cold War and reviving the American economy. So the key point is not just to be eloquent, but it's to be eloquent and cause the desired results in terms of actually moving the needle on public sentiment toward the public's doing the right thing going forward and distancing themselves from the wrong things in the past. Yeah, it's a great point. Lauren from Long Beach, she says, as society evolves and the challenges we face grow increasingly complex, what do you believe is the most critical leadership quality for today's leaders to develop in light of your research? I don't know that there's just one. I mean, number one, I'll spit out a couple. One, integrity. I mean, you've got to be able to trust and believe in the credibility of what people say. Wouldn't it be nice if we had leaders who, when they speak, the next day you don't have to read the paper and read all the fact checks and read about all the things that were said that, in fact, were not true? That was not the case of any of the great presidents. You could take their words to the bank. And so integrity, obviously. Obviously, the emotional intelligence to be able to build consensus. We live in a divided world. We live in a divided country. And if you're going to be effective, you can't just play to your base. You have to be able to work with the people who are outside your base, grow your base. That's the story of Thomas Jefferson. He entered the presidency. America was totally divided. His predecessor, John Adams, a Federalist, Federalist-controlled Congress that passed the Sedition Act, which made it a crime punishable by incarceration for somebody to criticize President Adams or any Federalist policy. So people were being thrown in jail during Adams' presidency for exercising their First Amendment freedom of speech and freedom of the press rights. Fortunately, the Sedition Act expired by its terms at the end of Adams' presidency, but that was the country that Thomas Jefferson was taking over, and he knew he had to find ways to break down this incredible polarization, and he did by means of building relationships, not only strong relationships with the people on his side of the aisle, but with people on the opposite side of the aisle by having dinners two to three times every week for a period of eight years. And over time, the walls of polarization came down, and people started trusting each other and liking each other. And so here's Jefferson, our first, quote, Republican president, although that era's Republican president has evolved into today's Democratic Party, but at that time it was called the Republican Party. But anyway, here's Jefferson. He's got eight years. He's followed by his best friend Madison, a Republican, for eight years. who's followed by his little brother figure, James Monroe, for eight years. Then we have a John Quincy Adams four-year outlier window, but then another eight years of Republican and Andrew Jackson. So out of the first thirty-six years of the nineteenth century, thirty-two of those thirty-six years, you got Thomas Jefferson and his followers. And that's because he broke down the walls. He got people to work together. He inspired people to want to join his team because it was a team that was working, that was building relationships across the aisle. And if you Google Jefferson dinners, there's a movement today in this country for people all over the country to host dinners where you invite people who you know you're not necessarily political affiliated with. But can we show each other mutual respect? Can we have civil discourse? Can we realize that even though we may have different ideas on politics, we can enjoy each other's company. We can laugh at each other's jokes. We can be interested in each other's stories. This was the secret to the success of Thomas Jefferson's presidency. And Lincoln, of course, with his team of rivals, was always trying to build rapport with people throughout the country. It's back to our original discussion of unifying and how the great presidents target all the people, not just their bases. Yeah, it's a brilliant point. And I think that unity is a, is woven into the fabric of of winning you know you have to be able to see and have the the shared goals and shared sacrifice next question coming in from desiree from palm desert many philosophers have argued that true greatness is leadership stems in the I'm sorry let me start again many philosophers have argued that true greatness in leadership stems from a sense of service rather than personal ambition How do you see this play out in the lives of these presidents? And is there a risk that today's leaders have lost this sense of selflessness? Well, every single one of my eight greatest presidents was a person of high ambition. They didn't over self-promote themselves in a way that was offensive, the way so many people today do. But make no mistake about it, these were highly ambitious people. But they also cared about what was doing what was in the best interest of America. And so that was obviously selfless. They wanted a great final result of whatever their particular policies were. And every single one of them cared a lot about his ultimate legacy. You know, how am I going to be remembered in history? If you have been president of the United States, or if you are president of the United States, rest assured, you're going to have a place in history. How do you want to be remembered? For doing what? You know, the good, and unfortunately, in many cases, the bad. I mean, the truth of the matter is that out of our current forty-six and soon to be forty-seven presidents, we have not had many great presidents. We've had some great ones. We've had some good ones. We've had some mediocre ones. We've had some bad ones. And, you know, that's what historians and people who read history are all about is kind of sorting through it. But these eight presidents, our eight greatest presidents, were driven by ambition, but also a sincere desire to make things better for the American people. Yeah, I like that. Bernie asked the question, are fact checkers the new censors? I think that's well said. I think fact checkers have become essential because if you didn't have fact checkers, then all we'd have is these remarks that are unchecked and that are often false. And don't we all want to make our decisions and go through life on the basis of truth as opposed to falsehoods? So as long as today's politicians are going to play fast and loose with facts in their public remarks, fact checkers are essential. I mean, I've done a number of radio and television and podcast shows since my book came out and many were done at about the time of the debates. And I would get the question, if you were in a position to advise the debaters, what would be your advice? I said, how about tell the truth? How about that for advice? Would that be nice if we knew that a candidate was actually going to tell the truth a hundred percent of the time and not say stuff that wasn't true? I'm hoping that in the future that that important quality is going to be modeled by our future candidates. presidents and presidential wannabes, because how in the world can you go through life if you're overwhelmed by people who, and inundated by people who aren't telling the truth? Yeah, it's hard to move forward in any meaningful manner if you don't have the right direction. It blows my mind to think about how much truth doesn't get out but then but then it begs the question of what truth is on some level like whose truth like how do you how do you define what the truth is well in some instances the truth can can be fluid and and and can be seen differently by different people but in terms of a whole lot of facts that are indisputable there are a whole lot of those out there that in fact are frequently misrepresented by political leaders, particularly in the twenty first century. And what's amazing is here we are in this century where with the Internet and technology, whenever they say something that can be readily verified as being true or not, it is going to be verified. It is going to be pointed out that what they said was false And you would think that that would make people stop and think, okay, okay, I know I can't get away with this. I know this isn't true. I know I hadn't really verified it, but I'm just going to go ahead and say it anyway and kind of hope that it sounds good and it'll play out. I mean, look at what happened to Tim Walz. I mean, when he became the vice presidential candidate, people said, okay, you know, he's kind of a likable, appealing guy and, you know, Midwestern and assistant football coach and Army Reserve, but But then all of a sudden he thinks he can get away with saying he carried weapons in battle. No, he didn't. And claiming that he was at Tiananmen Square when the revolt took place. No, you weren't. And so the guy became just a total joke as if people weren't going to check that stuff out. And, you know, hopefully we've heard the last of Tim Wallace as far as a national figure. I feel certain we have. Uh, and, and, you know, it's just, it's just amazing to me that, that people speak these untruths because they're, they're going to be immediately corrected as being false. And yet they, they continue to do it. Yeah. It sort of brings up the idea of free speech. That's kind of been moving around in the world of politics lately. Do you think that for a while free speech or is it in danger these days? Well, as long as we have the cancel culture at universities and in the media who are aggressively trying to stop free speech and are not allowing people with different opinions to peacefully express those opinions, then yeah, this is an issue. This is a serious issue. And I think it's, in particular, some of America's most elite universities, Ivy League and Stanford and others have many instances of where free speech has been denied, where speakers have been shouted down or disinvited or those types of things. I read an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal that Students at universities are reluctant to raise their hand and express their opinions because there will be retaliation for them expressing their views. And this is serious stuff. And everybody who's involved in the cancel culture and stifling the expression of contrasting opinions needs to be identified and called on the carpet. That is not what America is about. That's not what the First Amendment is about. And we need people in both parties and all walks of life to stop doing it because that's not who we are. Yeah, it's going to be a fascinating time moving forward. I can't help but think about the Citizens United case and how maybe – and I don't know a whole – I'm not very – I'm not an attorney. I didn't go to college. I don't thoroughly understand how big the ramifications for Citizens United was on free speech. But I think that had to have a radical change versus the precedents that you wrote about in your book, right? Like maybe you could speak to that a little bit. Well, the Citizens United – open the door to wild spending sprees in elections as a matter of that's just part of free speech. You get to pay for doing what it takes to express your opinions. And we've just seen that in twenty twenty four with the nonstop political commercials. that ran in the president's race, here in Texas the Senate race, other races. Everybody who has a mailbox, every day you'd have three or four junk mail brochures from different candidates. And so tons and tons and tons of money is being spent in hopes that candidates will get elected. I think it's interesting. that Kamala Harris was so soundly defeated by Trump, and yet she and her supporters spent three times as much money. And thus, you would think that with that much more publicity, that that would have had a positive impact, and yet obviously it didn't. She was soundly defeated, and as were, you know, the Democrats in the Senate and the House and so forth. And so, yes, we live in a world that when election time comes, tons of money is going to be solicited and used for marketing in furtherance of, quote, free speech to support candidates. And yet I wonder how many people will step back and say, does it really work? Is this really the most effective way for people to spend their money in support of the people in the policies they favor? Yeah, it's a powerful question, and you're right. It's sort of a giant win to see one candidate spend so much money and still lose. I think it speaks volumes of poor strategy and poor decision-making. I can't help but think about the legacy media. If you look at Like a lot of the legacy media since twenty sixteen was partisan on one side. At least it seemed to be to me. And like, is that dying? Do you think that that is a symptom of the sickness of this giant spending that doesn't work anymore? Well, we have to remember that the people who own newspapers, the people who own radio stations, television networks, et cetera, et cetera. they're all in business and they are all seeking to earn profits for their shareholders. And the unfortunate truth is that they have made that business decision that if they merely report a neutral perspective on the news, that that is not going to gain them the same number of viewers as if they slant the news. People, who are Republican conservative tune into Fox and thus Fox attracts huge advertising dollars and has high ratings because the people who like Fox like to watch people who they basically agree with politically, and the same is true of MSNBC and historically CNN. And so this is, and the New York Times, I know for a fact, made the decision years ago that they would start even more aggressively slanting their news toward the left in order to raise their revenues. And the Washington Post, the same, that they know that they're going to get the most number of subscribers if they get people of a political persuasion in mass to subscribe to their papers or watch their TV or what have it. So money drives so much in what happens in the real world. And certainly that's true in the media. Now, whether people after the twenty twenty four election, for example, who trusted The New York Times or The Washington Post or MSNBC and felt like they were accurately reporting on America and what Americans wanted and now realize that those media sources were flawed and wrong and disconnected from the American media. Are they going to cancel their subscriptions? Are they going to start watching a different television channel? We'll see. We don't know. But If I was historically a Democrat and had relied on the liberal media in support of my ideas, and obviously those ideas have been soundly rejected, and the people reporting had now been proven to be out of line with where America really is, I think I'd start thinking about who else should I be reading? Who else should I be watching? Who else should I be listening to? if I really want to get a handle on what's going on, as opposed to just getting a handle on a totally slanted perspective. Yeah, it's sort of the padded two by four moment when you wake up and you realize all these things I've been thinking are wrong. What's going on here? I kind of want to talk about some reflectiveness. Basically what I'm saying is people have been misled. Of course. So do you wake up and say, do I want to continue to be misled? about where America is and what America thinks and follow that misleading line of media pitch? Or do I want to try to find a source of news that's in fact going to be intellectually honest and fair and weigh both sides and so forth? You'd like to think that's what intelligent people would like to be able to use for their source of news. We all need news sources in order to be able to keep up with what's going on in the world. And so whether this causes people to rethink who their news sources are going to be remains to be seen. But there's certainly justification for strongly considering making a switch after all the media misinformation and flawed opinions that were circulated in this election year. Yeah, it's a great point. It's a great point. Here comes a question we got from Jennifer. She says, in writing about these presidents, were there moments when you felt personally challenged to reassess your own views on leadership, character, or resilience? What changed within you as a result of your journey? Well, for each of these chapters, eight chapters on eight presidents, toward the end of each chapter, I have a section on their flaws and My good friend Mark Updegrove, former head of the LBJ Library, current head of the LBJ Foundation. He was a wonderful presidential historian in his own right, written a number of wonderful books. When I was first starting this project, I said, hey, you got to have a section on their flaws. You can't put these guys on pedestals. You know, they had issues. Some obviously had more issues than others. and to understand and get into the psychology of Thomas Jefferson and what was going on with the slaves at Monticello and his, on the one hand, saying great things about all men being created equal and yet doing nothing about bringing an end to slavery is obviously very troubling. John F. Kennedy, his serial philandering that's now so well known and documented and his serious drug usage in terms of the painkillers to deal with the pain and the Kennedy family and the Kennedy Library's record of doing what they could to distort the facts in order to enhance JFK's legacy is something that must be addressed. And despite all that, Kennedy, and I believe is true, is one of our great American presidents. But you've got to wade through their flaws. You've got to wade through what was done to try to create a rosier picture than actually existed. You know, in Kennedy's, his widow Jackie and the family that this was Camelot and everything was great and perfect, just like in Camelot. No, it wasn't. There was a lot of bad stuff going on, and let's not pretend that there wasn't. But in spite of that stuff, there was greatness in many aspects of Kennedy's presidency that can provide leadership lessons for anybody who aspires to be a better leader. So that was the process that I went through, and Theodore Roosevelt reading about when he left the presidency at age fifty and died at age sixty, ten years later. And that last decade when, for the most part, he was embarrassing himself and damaging his status in the minds of the American people. Incredibly troubling to see somebody who was so great kind of go into a downward spiral the way he did over the last decade of his life. These are the stories. I mean, Ken Burns calls this stuff emotional archaeology. You got to know the full picture. None of these people were Jesus. None of these people were perfect. They had their flaws. In most cases, they overcame them to the extent that they were able to do absolutely great things for the American people. But nonetheless, if we want to have a full understanding of them, then we need to know the story of their whole lives, not just the best parts. Yeah, it's a great point. The whole story, it's not a fairy tale. And there's pain and... a hero's journey in all of them. The next question is, the process of translating history into valuable life lessons must be both challenging and rewarding. What is the single most powerful insight you've gained from these historical figures, one that has shifted or reinforced your perspective on the human experience? I have said... in basically every interview I've had since the book came out, that mine is a book of applied history. That it's one thing to read history, enjoy history, but it's something else to be able to apply it to daily living. And that's what my book aspires to be. That's what drove me. I've been studying presidential history my whole life since I was seven years old. I love it because I'm inspired by it. I'm inspired in the different leadership positions I've held throughout my life. I've been guided by what the people who are the best in leadership as far as our presidents were, how they conducted themselves. And so that's what drives me to write about the history, not just the fun of the research and learning the details of these terrific stories, but also being an advocate for drawing the lessons from these stories and talking very specifically to groups of people. And I've talked to big companies and big banks and big law firms and universities and World Affairs Council. Here's how we can use this stuff. Here's how you tomorrow can use this information to be a better leader in your company or your organization. Or if you're trying to be a leader, how you can better position yourself to achieve that leadership position if you'll implement these leadership traits that are available to everybody, but they don't just happen on their own. You have to be purposeful. You have to be disciplined. You have to be committed to working them into your emotional intelligence repertoire. And so that's what drives me as a historian, not to go deep on the stories of these historic figures, but to go deep on what can we take away from the stories of their lives that can be useful today. Yeah, it's great advice. It's something we can all work at to be better leaders is trying to become the best version of ourselves. And what better way to do that than to study people that have held power at the ultimate level? Here's a question that comes to us. It says, on the ethics of gentlemen's agreements in leadership, how do you view the role of unspoken agreements among political elites in shaping national and global policies? Sometimes they're necessary. A perfect example was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy succeeded in making a deal with Khrushchev on the basis that America would agree to remove our missiles from Turkey in exchange for Russia removing their missiles from Cuba. The gentleman's agreement was this trade is not going to be announced publicly. And in fact, it was not known for decades. People were under the misinformation perception that Kennedy had stared Khrushchev down and Khrushchev had blinked and he had removed the missiles and didn't realize that while he was removing the missiles from Cuba, we would soon have to remove the missile, our missiles from Turkey. So it was a gentleman's agreement. And because of the way it went down, by golly, They brought an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. We avoided World War III. We avoided nuclear holocaust, which was certainly on the lip of the cup if they had not made a deal. And Eisenhower, who was a master in foreign policy, knew how to secretly maneuver the CIA in an effort to stop the spread of communism. and Reagan in his dealings with Gorbachev and what they as gentlemen would reach agreements on that directed their future summits and were not always documented and signed and reported. This is the way historically foreign policy has worked, that sometimes there are real advantages to having shake hands deal. Again, it's all about credibility. Are you making a shake hands deal with somebody who you can truly trust or not? And obviously, if it turns out that your trust has been betrayed and the gentleman's agreement is violated, then all kinds of bad fallout results therefrom. And so that's why face-to-face summits are always important. And obviously some people who go to these summits, in particular Vladimir Putin, who have looked a steady stream of American presidents in the eye and presidents have thought they understood him and could make deals with him. No, you can't make deals with this guy. He's completely untrustworthy. So that's part of the process is deciding who are you going to make gentleman's agreements with? Kennedy, who had had summits with Khrushchev and believed that this was a person that he could make a deal with and proceed. And he was right. So it's not that gentlemen's agreements are bad. It's just you just really need to be. In fact, in many cases, they're good. But you just have got to be very careful as to whether you're truly dealing with a gentleman or are you dealing with a scoundrel? It's a great point. Talmadge, you've been really gracious with your time. How are you doing on time? I know we had an hour blocked up. We're kind of coming to the edge of that. Yeah, I need to wrap it up. I've got a place where I'll need to go shortly. Fantastic. Before I let you go, maybe you would be so kind as to tell people where they can find you, what you have coming up, and what you're excited about. Well, I have a website, talmadgeboston.com, and you can find my op-ed pieces for the Dallas Morning News there. I have a podcast series of my own called Cross-Examining History, which is made up of my on-stage interviews with leading historians and public figures and all those. It's on Spotify, iTunes, and SoundCloud. It's also on the website of the Washington Independent Review of Books. It's also on my website if you're interested in that. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm You can Google me if I'm at the Shackelford law firm in Dallas and find my email address that way. I think in twenty twenty four, since my book came out, I've given over a hundred speeches and more radio and television interviews, many of which are are up and have been posted in a variety of places on the horizon. In particular, in March, I'm going to be in Charlottesville Virginia as a guest of the Virginia Festival of the Book and a program co-sponsored with the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, which is one of the leading, probably the leading center for residential history in the country. So very excited about that, but I have a number of other speaking engagements and I'm hopeful that the people who've watched and participate in this podcast will have long Christmas lists And we'll think about my book as a potential Christmas gift that you can order off of Amazon readily. In fact, the Amazon price is discounted significantly off the retail price. So it's really a bargain. And I'm here in Dallas and out and about in that respect. I'm continuing to do my onstage interviews. Tomorrow I'm going to interview Malcolm Gladwell here in Dallas at a program on his new book. Revenge of the Tipping Point next week. I'm hosting historian Mark Silverstone from the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, his wonderful book on John F. Kennedy in Vietnam. So just stay in a steady stream of writing and interviewing and speaking as well as practicing law. Fantastic. If you're within the sound of my voice, go down to the show notes. We'll link to all of it down there. Thomas, hang on briefly afterwards, but to everybody in the sound of my voice, everyone who participated, whether you're listening today, listening tomorrow, or a couple of years from now, thank you so much for being here. I hope you have a beautiful day, and I hope you get to learn from some of the greatest leaders that we've had. That's all we've got, ladies and gentlemen. Have a beautiful day.