The Thomas Jefferson Hour; #0340; American History

Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, a weekly conversation with the third president of the United States. The topic today is the most Jeffersonian presidents in American history. Please join us as our host Bill Crystal speaks with Thomas Jefferson portrayed by the Kennedy scholar Clay Jenkinson. The Thomas Jefferson Hour is produced by High Plains Public Radio and new enlightenment radio network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the search riches in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson. Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, your weekly conversation with the third president of the United States. Good day to you, Mr. Jefferson. Good day to you, citizen. Mr. Jefferson, a listener in Reno, Nevada has asked a question about the most Jeffersonian president in the last 20 years and I think we could make an entire program around this theme of Jeffersonian presidents. But first let's answer our listeners question. Tell us who you think has been the most Jeffersonian president in the last 30 years in your time in my time in your time. Well, it's hard to say because you live in a

Hamiltonian world and you have an urban industrial society that's highly complex and you have a system of legislation that is infinitely larger than anything that I could have envisioned and I think that frankly that any of the founding fathers could have envisioned. So it's hard to believe that any of them could be Jeffersonians in the true sense and I don't really like the idea of the Jeffersonian anyway because it's not about my own role as a leader or as the de facto founder of the early Republican Party. It's really about the emerging democratic spirit of the American people. So I would have said in my time that a Jeffersonian as you're calling it is somebody who believes in limited government who is an advocate of states rights who is antagonistic to taxation who believes that education is the most important thing that any society can do and who believes that it's our business as a nation to look

inward and to create justice and maybe even a kind of paradise here and not to look abroad and have a role in the world's arena. So I'm guessing that you would be hard pressed to nominate anyone of your time who would in any way coordinate with what I consider to be those simple natural law principles of American leadership. So we'd have to define what a Jeffersonian is. It would be very difficult to find that constellation of characteristics in any one president in the 20th century in the beginnings of the 21st. I think once your civil war had occurred in the 1860s and it was followed by the post civil war constitutional amendments and chiefly the 14th which extended the the protection for rights of the national government into states and communities. I think that amounts to a constitutional revolution and that the United States needs to see itself before and after the 14th Amendment and before the 14th

Amendment you were in some limited regards at least to confederation of sovereign states. I might even say sovereign nation states. And if the states may have believed themselves to be involved in a confederation. Certainly the southern states did and the western states but after your civil war there was a very quick rush to national consolidation. So I would not have wanted to live in the post civil war American settlement. Most of you would not want to have lived on the other side on the agrarian decentralized side of the civil war. From that point of view from the point of view of political theory the most Jeffersonian president of your time would be Ronald Reagan because Ronald Reagan believed in at least in theory and in fiscal restraint and that the duty of lovers of liberty was to pair down the size of the national government and to restore as much authority as possible to the states. And yet Ronald Reagan increased the size of the military dramatically. This was the

time of the 600 ship Navy something that had never been before at least since the Second World War and certainly will never be again and couldn't be sustained it. Apparently that's a very expensive Navy. I regard Navy's as ruinous to the liberties of a people because they're floating fortresses and they rot. You know that a Navy automatically is constantly in deterioration. It's extremely expensive to maintain a Navy whereas an army can be dispersed back to the farms of a community during periods of peace or during the growing season but a Navy is a perennial expense and so I would not have made that a goal of the United States. The great Navy in the world in my time was the British Navy and we were happy to stay within some harmony with the Great Britain so that it's Navy would in a sense protect American shipping. So you know as I think you're rightly pointing out every president is going to have a mixed record on this question. But I would say of the presidents of your time Ronald Reagan is the

one who is most clearly Jeffersonian from a fiscal and constitutional theory point of view. And I think that will come as a great surprise to most of your listeners. Perhaps but I must speak as a philosopher and a person who believes that the Jeffersonian impulse is going to play itself out in different leaders at different times and for different purposes. Let me give you a second example. From a stylistic point of view the president most like myself would have been Jimmy Carter because Carter tried to play down the imperial presidency and tried to remind the American people that the president is not a king or a dictator or an exalted figure but really the first citizen. If you recall a president Carter used to carry his own baggage to and from his systems of transport. He he stayed with average citizens when he traveled around the country. He dressed in casual clothing and and constantly adopted a folksy manner. I would not have done that but a manner that that shrank the

distinction between the president and average citizens. And in that regard that populist stylistic approach he comes very close to my style. I wrote my horse freely through Washington DC. I did the grocery shopping for the White House. I walked to my inauguration. I astute the kind of ceremonial sword that John Adams wore. I was openly derisive of Adam's belief that our national leaders should have titles of nobility and so on. I was trying to convince the American people that in a republic the president whatever he is is not a monarch. It's not a king. So there's a connection between one of your presidents Jimmy Carter and my own style as a president. He was also an internationalist who believed in peace. And I think in foreign policy the Jeffersonians are those who are idealists who believe that our duty in the foreign arena is to show the same level of virtue that we would show internally. There's really two camps on this on this argument. There are the

Hamiltonians who believe in real politics that in the international arena self-interest and opportunism are the right values for our nation to pursue. You just do what is in the best interests of your nation from a very selfish point of view. And if you have signed a treaty of commerce and friendship with the French and it proves to be inconvenient you break that treaty. You do whatever it takes to advance the vital interests of the nation. That's one extreme I disagree with it profoundly. I think that it's in our interest to behave with enlightened long-term self-interest and that we should be faithful to our friendships and our alliances. We should have as few as possible but those we have we should treat as sacred acts of international covenant. Now wait Mr. Jefferson you speak as one who had made an agreement with the Barbary pirates with the rulers of Morocco in order to pay them a certain amount so that our ships can pass freely and yet you are the one who waged war against them who broke that treaty. Well I would quibble with you there you know at

Secretary of State I bristled under this regimen of paying bribes to these barbarians because I thought that a show of force early on would be likely to get their respect but I was overruled constantly by either the President or the government of the United States the legislative branch or the cabinet. When I became president as I as I think you remember the Pasha of Tripoli actually took out his axe and hacked down the American flag in front of the American consul building in Tripoli and that was their way of waging war so they declared war against us and we had to respond in one way or the other and I felt at that point since they had provoked this this was an unprovoked attack on American shipping that it was finally time for us to get serious about standing up to these barbarians. It's interesting you have on this program indicated that you would not like a pledge of allegiance and that the flag is is a symbol that is not one that went on to go to war for and yet here you did it. This is well this is not because of the flag and the flag is neither here

nor there in this regard but when a foreign nation it has a rhetoric of war and peace and when it's way of declaring war is to chop down the flagpole of another nation that's a provocation that must be attended to and it wasn't just about the flagpole they were kidnapping our sailors and they were bombarding our neutral ships in the Mediterranean waters because we quit paying as we said that we would do right Mr. Jefferson. Yes I we have never signed a treaty of bribery the bribery that you are extoling was a part of a program that in your century would have been called appeasement and I was against it from the beginning because I do not think you ran some innocent sailors in the long run I think that creates conditions of degradation and disrespect but the point that I'm making is is not about that incident I'd be happy to continue talking about it if you want I have no doubts that we did the right thing on on that score but the argument that I'm making is that Jeffersonian presidents are international idealists and Hamiltonian presidents are international

opportunists and I belong to the idealistic school on the whole and so did your Jimmy Carter. Have you been able to come up with any other idealists of the same sort Woodrow Wilson who also wound up fighting a major war, a major war indeed Franklin Roosevelt there are there are numbers of them in American history Mr. Madison was one of them he was the I think without any question the most Jeffersonian president including myself was Madison he in other words it's paradox but Madison was even more Jeffersonian than I was because I was a pragmatist I'm flexible I sometimes did things which were strictly speaking violations of my own principles because I am a very flexible man who who hasn't a strong streak of the utopian but who wants to get things done in the real world and we're grateful because you wouldn't have purchased Louisiana if you had been that is flexible and Madison was more of an ideologue and Madison was a was a pure exponent of Republican theory domestically and internationally

than I was for example my record on freedom of the press isn't gets very high marks from historians but not the highest marks the highest marks for freedom of the press in American history go to James Madison and this is true on a range of issues that Madison was more pure in his application of what you're calling Jeffersonian political values than I was and he too was forced to be a war president as it turns out and the historians and especially the diplomatic historians always say the same thing that Jeffersonians are disastrous presidents from an international point of view because they allow idealism to cloud the the common-sense solutions that foreign entanglements require in our time a number of people attempted to draw parallels between you and a president who bore as a middle name your name William Jefferson Clinton you have not mentioned him as a Jeffersonian president I do think there are some Jeffersonian elements to the Clinton presidency he was an intellectual who

who tended to see the world through books that's not as much as I did but he certainly shared a characteristic that was my central characteristic which was that I I apprehended the world made sense of it clarified it and examined possibilities through books and I think that there are presidents who are not bookish your Ronald Reagan is a perfect example of that your current president I'm told is not much of a reader either and in your time the presidents tend not to be readers in my time until Andrew Jackson they were all readers even Washington although he was the least of them but Madison a great reader John Adams possibly the greatest reader in American history of the presidents John Quincy Adams one of the most intellectually gifted men who ever served in public office in the United States although a New England Calvinist and Pragg well he was a pupil of yours as it were for a time here was a time when I helped a tutor young Quincy and James Monroe was no

intellectual but he was a reader of books and and he was strongly imbued with republican ideological convictions so bookishness is one quality of a Jeffersonian and I certainly had that and William Jefferson Clinton was a professor a great great league bookish Jimmy Carter was a bookish man John Kennedy was a bookish man Ronald Reagan was not a bookish man Richard Nixon is somewhere in the middle Lyndon Johnson not so much Gerald Ford not at all at any rate William Jefferson Clinton has that has that capacity he also was a populist who believed that the purpose of government is to ameliorate the lives of average human beings and I think one of the the the basic divides in American culture is those who who attempt to improve the lives of the many and particularly the people who are not naturally prospering on the one hand and the people who protect what mr. Hamilton liked to call the wise the rich

and the well-born on the other and the Hamiltonians give their enormous energies to protecting privilege and reinforcing the class system and in some cases lining the pockets of their cronies and themselves and the Jeffersonians tend to be those who reach out to the mass of citizens and try to make their lives a little bit less burdensome and a little bit happier and I think that you can certainly look at all the presidents of the second half of the 20th century and say that for example that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was profoundly Jeffersonian if that's what we mean by a Jeffersonian wonder looks after the little people and yet he was an activist when it came to government which would I find a great depression he created a multitude of programs that involve government in all aspects of people's lives pack the courts and was for term president and many many violations of what I would call Jeffersonian principle but if the argument is those who advocate the few or rather protect the few and those who champion the many Franklin Roosevelt was a

populist Dwight Eisenhower not Truman was well that brings to mind Teddy Roosevelt I mean he fought battles with the giants of industry and busted the trusts in this country wouldn't that make him Jeffersonian yes in some regards he was a petition like myself he was a I suppose you would say that he and I had the same no bless oblige that is we were gentry we were born privileged but we gave our lives largely to the furtherance of democratic principles and so when that happens the Hamiltonians frequently see men like Roosevelt and myself as having betrayed their class having sometimes they accused us of being demagogues for giving our energies to the common people when we are anything but common by way of birth and I think both Roosevelt and myself were what I would call pseudo aristocrats who worked all of their lives to become natural aristocrats Roosevelt is probably the rightingist president he's

one of the towering intellectuals of your presidents he was a vigorous man who liked myself loved horse culture and the out of doors he was enamored of trees as I was he he virtually had a love affair with trees and became the greatest champion of the public forests and American his national park system and I was a tree lover and I was a and one of the advocates of a national park system although in a very early phase but when I bought the natural bridge in Virginia I was doing so to protect it from what you would call development to preserve it as a piece of the sublime and so that's seen by some historians as the seed of the national park preservation movement in American history I love trees so much that Margaret Bayard Smith who was a woman who was my friend and who was who flirted with me while I was president she was the wife of my dear friend who was the editor of the national intelligence her and Margaret Bayard Smith recorded in her table talk of my presidency that I once said that cutting down a tree on necessarily should be considered a felony and that as few trees should be cut down in American history it was as

was absolutely necessary and that in a sense cutting down a tree is murder and so I shared with theater Roosevelt that deep I mean almost of an enamorment with the tree and which I think is probably a relatively rare quality in American president I believe president Reagan actually said once that trees are polluters because they release carbon dioxide and use up oxygen so he was wrong scientifically and he was right in terms of photosynthesis they restored oxygen that would be my reading too but I'm told that he was not a scientist whatever else he was but at any rate theater Roosevelt was an intellectual he differed from me in many important ways however he was a very strong president the most recent biography of theater Roosevelt is called Theodore Rex which is of course a term for king Rex is Latin for king and he was a high-toned strong man virtually a dictator in some regards he was also fond of war and I find that appalling frankly in an American statesman he also disliked me intensely and I but I hope that my sensitivity to the ad

hominem insults that he leveled at me at every turn does not color my analysis of him but he didn't say that I was the most effeminate of all presidents I think to some degree Roosevelt may have been the most Jeffersonian presidents in the 20th century extracting this strong virility and military inclination I think certainly you would have admired his aphorism speak softly and carry a big stick I think you you deem that the United States should be a nation that didn't involve itself in foreign tanglements but when it was forced to do so would react decisively I'm not sure I would agree with his aphorism but I certainly think speak softly and try to find the mild path before you are forced upon the more aggressive one Mr. Jefferson we've got to take a short break but let's mind some of the insights that you have brought forward in the second part of our program regarding Jeffersonian presidents you have been listening to the Thomas Jefferson hour please visit our website www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org on our website you will

find a place to ask Mr. Jefferson your question many of our programs including today's program came from listener questions thank you and stay tuned we will be back in just a moment welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson hour your weekly conversation with the

third president in our first segment we have been talking about Jeffersonian presidents concentrating mainly on the 20th century but Mr. Jefferson in the 19th century you suggested that Madison would be the most Jeffersonian presidents are there any others that might win that accolade Monroe I mean I have to say these were my handpicked successors produce I would talk that way I'm sure but I I've already praised Madison I I considered Madison one of the great men in world history and I had the deepest respect for him and he was frankly a deeper thinker than I was and he was a more systematic thinker than I was and he was a more politically astute man than I was and he had more political stamina than I did you know I get lots of praise in the course of American history for my achievements and there were many of course but you know my achievements would have been decidedly diminished had it not been for Madison Madison had political stamina and I didn't I was what I suppose you

call an amateur or a Renaissance man or perhaps even a dilatant and I was willing to flip from library classification to my edition of the New Testament to working with peach trees at Monticello to tearing down a portion of the walls to to build it in a new way to studying ancient Greek to buying horses and trying to to decide what the best possible horse flesh was for a climate like Virginia or experimenting with a hemp machine I mean my my range was so great and my curiosity was so deep and my interest in politics so little really that I was not a tenacious political figure like some others of my time and I get much more credit than I really deserve and you know Madison was the was the founder of the Republican Party not not your Republican Party but the first Republican Party and I was really just the figure head I know this is going to

strike you as anathema but it would seem that when it comes to populism Andrew Jackson struck a very Jeffersonian note now I know you didn't like him you thought him a ruffian but a good reason for that but the yes you're right Jackson was a was was Jackson's actual political positions and principles and decisions were as close to mine as that of those of any other president you know if you took if you only took our actual decisions and the principles which were the foundation of them we are closer I think than any two American presidents and he believed in the West he was an agrarian he believed in limited government he advocated states rights he was suspicious of banks he was an isolationist informed policy I mean he pursued my Indian policies although I think he vulgarized them to a certain extent but I would have a

hard time making a serious distinction between myself and Andrew Jackson in terms of policy or philosophy he was more truly democratic than I was I'm I'm a I'm a petition so my my my political life was characterized by no bless oblige he was much more of a true commoner he was a dualist he was barely literate and the things that bother me about him were his propensity for battle both personal battle and national battle and and and the way he went after the seminal Indians in Florida I thought was barbaric but I'm sure you know the story of his inauguration when his pals from the rough frontier of Kentucky and Tennessee came to Washington to see the great man installed and they virtually rioted in the White House they stood on the sofas with their muddy boots and manure all over and they broke windows and and pulled down the draperies and and stole things and shattered priceless objects there this was

the triumph of populism in a way that I don't find attractive at all the ugly side of democracy mr. Jefferson why don't call that democracy I call that barbarism I don't think democracy requires the breaking of anything but I take your point it was it was a commoners triumph and the commoners and I have and I'm fond of the common people because I believe that they have an inherent legitimacy as the sovereign and I believe that their natural exuberance is a corrective against corruption and abuse and privilege and I like a little rebellion now and then I just wish they wouldn't trash the White House it's interesting though I think mr. Jackson really was comfortable among the common people you yourself would never have been you had great respect for them in theory in theory but an actual fact you would have withdrawn from well I certainly would have been more graceful and I would have policed the White House a little bit more carefully and I would have suggested some protocol during my inauguration I think Jackson let that go I mean the

same people loved me who loved Jackson I mean I was the first people's president and some of the banners that circulated in my contests with John Adams were Jefferson man of the people and when I was elected in 1800 there was a paroxysm of joy that this man who loved the people had been elected now I was about as a loof as it is possible to be but if I had and I and I had open houses where the people were allowed of course welcome to come into the White House but there was a sense of decorum that that I radiated about me that Jackson did not I mean here was a man who had killed people in duels and he had a fiery temper I was angry only two or three times in the whole course of my life and he swore like a sailor and you know he had qualities that I find admirable enough in the people but wholly out of keeping with a leader me that is it may Mr. Jefferson it seems to me the Jeffersonian revolution which you suggest reached its apex with Mr. Madison may have been only going to the next logical step with Mr. Jackson yes I I certainly take your point but I do

want to stress because I feel that this is a critical issue that in a republic there needs to be a high level of civility that decorum gracefulness politeness civility forbearance tolerance these are all extremely important qualities and we cannot be a republic if we're a collection of vulgarians so I do have a just a fundamental difference with Jackson I think that one nurtures the best qualities in the people but when you indulge it and when you cheer it from the sidelines the people will frequently misbehaving whenever you add alcohol I don't want to sound like John Adams or some New Englander but alcohol is a terrible poison that that has ruined fortunes and I saw dinner parties all over Virginia amongst the gentry that would end in the worst sort of barbarism and drunkenness and depravity alcohol in large quantities I think

all grain alcohol all distilled spirits are a poor thing for a republic I hope that wine would be the drink of a republic I'm doubting that Andrew Jackson drank much wine and I'm sure his wine tastes were deplorable well thank you Mr. Jefferson I know you don't particularly want to be compared he came to Poplar Force with blood on his hands in 1815 after the Battle of New Orleans and he passed through I was there on one of my visits to my second property down in Bedford and some runner came up and said that that General Jackson was in the vicinity and I felt I had no choice but to entertain him at dinner and he came and he was just a bloody mess you know I it was not a pleasant event for me I just didn't tear the draperies down at Poplar Force we really don't want to go into this room I I understand that Jackson as a young man was was being whipped by British soldiers during the revolution when you were being accused of having a flood into the woods perhaps you'd like to move on

interesting subject Jeffersonian presidents Madison Monroe even John Quincy Adams oh now this surprises me John Quincy Adams was Jeffersonian you know I'll tell you why John Quincy Adams was an enormously gifted intellectual who was a cosmopolitan you know he had men in St. Petersburg he had been in Prussia he had been in France he had been in the low countries he knew many European languages he was a man of letters he was a very deep student of political theory he was a man who you know he really came over to my political party and many respects John Adams did first but John Adams was always skeptical but during the embargo of 187 John Quincy Adams was one of my staunchest supporters when the Louisiana Treaty was being decried in 183 by the the partisan Federalist John Quincy Adams said no this is in the the interests of the United States when I was willing to cut Naran on the treaty and and allow the

Northern border to be from the punitive source of the Mississippi River West Adams held up that provision in the Senate of the United States and said no we need to think more clearly about that before we settle the Northern boundary of the United States and when he became the Secretary of State of my protégé James Monroe he negotiated the final treaty settlement that gave the United States a much more significant piece of what's now Canada than we would have had under the provisions of the original Louisiana Treaty he got us the Florida's in 1818 John Quincy Adams was an ardent believer in geopolitical necessities as we develop the borders of the country at a time when virtually everybody else I mean virtually everybody of both parties just saw the West as infinite land John Quincy Adams thought of it in terms of rivers watersheds borders defensible borders buffer zones between us in the Spanish buffer zones between us and and the British this was a genius I did not like John Quincy Adams and I wish he hadn't written those squibs about Sally Hemings and

other he wrote a nasty assault on Maryweather Lewis and he was a satirist and he had a you know he was he was not even as graceful as his father but he was a great intellectual and I admire his capacity for for political flexibility and I think one of the things that strikes me is a modest student of history about John Quincy Adams is the realization that after having been president he went into the Congress and served for more than 30 years as a congressman what an extraordinary thing that he would see service to this country in such a light that he continued to do it for the rest of his life I don't think there are many presidents who would take that stepping down from the pinnacles of glory into some lesser seat and the House of Representatives was seen as a fairly low club of political functionaries but he was an abolitionist and he was an abolitionist that I respect because he had a deep conviction and he acted upon his conviction and he wasn't righteous about it

he really just wanted to repair the terrible stain of slavery in this country so I have I have regard for him the problem is I just don't like him and like all Adams he couldn't stand to be liked by the people and so he was a one-term president well I think the Adams may have had this sense that in doing what is necessary one need not worry about popularity well yes but to court unpopular popularity as a sign of personal virtue as I think merely perverse you know that John Adams had this quality and his son did to a certain degree but I congratulated John Adams when his son was elected president even though I had been pushing for Crawford who was the other guy with all that you've had to say about John Quincy now you tell us that you were in favor of his opponent well because the opponent was a was a southern there and and you know the opponent had written poetry about Sally Hemings well you must remember I think Mr. Jefferson that the only slave who ever spent time in the Adams household

this being the household of John and Abigail was Sally Hemings I too say you absolutely right that may not be true absolutely but it is certainly true that in Europe the slave that the Adams had the primary relationship with was young Sally Hemings who to everybody's surprise including may I say my own came as the shaperone to my daughter Polly when I fetched her you know I wanted Polly to come to Europe to be with me after my daughter Lucy died of whooping cough and I and I said I wanted Polly to be shaperone by an elderly black woman who had had the smallpox and instead they sent this 14-year-old girl Sally Hemings as the shaperone to Maria to Polly and when and they stopped at London first and I couldn't get there I was busy with diplomatic affairs in Paris and so I sent my matrady to Fetcher and so Maria stayed with the Adams family for a couple of weeks and Abigail in a sense fell in love with her and thought she

was the most charming young girl that she had ever met I think they're affinity for one another lasted for lifetime it did until the of course the death of my daughter in April of 184 when Abigail broke a long and bitter political silence to send me a letter of condolence but Sally was with Polly when they arrived in London and Abigail with her New England sharpness said it's not clear who's the shaperone here and said you'd better just send Miss Hemings back to the United States as quickly as possible for the good of everybody and so she may have anticipated this was the wrong sort of temptation to put in front of a grieving widow or on foreign soil indeed Mr. Jefferson we're talking about Jeffersonian presidents though and we've looked at the early part of the 19th century let's look at the latter part of the 19th century indeed this was a difficult time after the American Civil War which you indeed among others predicted but could you find among any of those

presidents he is anyone who was Jeffersonian like Rutherford B. Hayes would you see him as Jeffersonian in any respect no I would say that after the death of Abraham Lincoln and until the rise of Theodore Roosevelt or possibly McKinley that it was a sea of mediocrity and you know I would challenge any of your listeners to even name the presidents of that period they're so pathetic they were corrupt like Ulysses S. Grant they were they were men of conflict of interest they were political hacks for the most part they had they weren't well educated although I I believe the Chester Arthur new Greek as well as I did or as well as John Adams did and I also believe that it's the case that Chester Arthur could write simultaneously with both hands you have to like that I admire that I would have liked to have learned that trick I was ambidextrous but not simultaneously so but for the most part and let me just

say in many regards Abraham Lincoln is the least Jeffersonian president in American history holding the Union together with an army what sort of a constitutional theory is that bleeding bleeding the the common people of the land to keep this Union together 600 some thousand of them died for a civil war that should have been avoided I think the correct response of any president would be to say to South Carolina fair thee well you are a common well align yourself in any way you please and when you are within your natural rights to secede and we wish you well we will help you if we can but if you choose to come back and we know you will there will be conditions and one of them will be that you cannot come back as a slave holding state but let me just say for the record I do not accept national intrusion into state sovereignty on questions of slavery I believe in states rights I believe in nullification under certain conditions I don't think that it's the business of

Washington whether South Carolina has slaves I think it can be a condition for reentry but I do not believe that it was that it was constitutionally just for the 16th president Abraham Lincoln to behave as he did I think he fully misunderstood the constitution which is a voluntary compact of sovereign constituent states and if any one of those states wants to leave the Union for any purpose whatsoever it has a natural right to do so just as we had the right to leave the British Empire in 1776 so I find it perplexing to think that this man could be so thin skinned about Union that he would send armies to protect it well all of this is I like his homestead act I think that's a very good idea all of this is of no consequence following the civil war and the the addition of certain other amendments I mean the federal government is indeed it is indeed the last word is 14th Amendment was in my opinion the death blow to the Constitution of the United States

Jeffersonian presidents let's look at this list we have Monroe we have Madison we can even include perhaps John Quincy Adams no one virtually until the the 20th century in time and some of those early presidents before the civil war would I would I would give them but but mediocrity the sort of mediocrity you were talking about after the civil war the 20th century you will allow Teddy Roosevelt yes although I think his testosterone was way out of keeping with human dignity well he was a leader in battle mr. Jefferson and you're not really able to relate to people I think anyone who says bully is unfitting for high office mr. Jefferson we're gonna have to take another break and when we return Clay Jenkinson will be here to discuss in further detail Jeffersonian presidency's but we thank you for this attempt to get out of your own time and delight sir and to let us know who's who's who good day you have been listening to the Thomas Jefferson hour please visit our website www.th

hyphen Jefferson dot org www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org welcome back from that break I'm Clay Jenkinson the Thomas Jefferson scholar

seated across from me is my dear friend Bill crystal the Emanuances so the Thomas Jefferson hour Bill welcome you know one one of the other things you're working on John Adams and I travel around the country and people are saying when when when can we expect Adams to emerge in full dress so what give us a sense of when you think that with with sword with sword you've ceremonial sword entitled his rotundity when when will Adams be ready for public consumption I don't know he'll be ready when he has his first gig first gig Bill you know we've been this has been a very intriguing discussion who are the Jeffersonians and I think you know we started right off by saying it's it depends on how you ask the question because there are Jeffersonians in foreign policy there are Jeffersonians in their basic democratic outlook there are Jeffersonians who believe in limited government their fiscal Jeffersonians Jefferson is in many respects a libertarian are there any candidates except the libertarians that we would put into that camp in our own time so it's really a hard question because the country has changed so much that it's not clear that if somebody tried to be a Jeffersonian there could be the slightest

chance of that person advancing very far in our system but I think we get the point and I've tried to link us to the ones I consider as a Jefferson scholar as likely to have pleased Thomas Jefferson in one respect or another well let's turn to John Adams for a moment I mean there aren't John Adams is Sui generous he's his own he's his own entity I doubt that there are many adamsian presidents in American history I think here again it would come down to certain characteristics being more adamsian than others at one point he thought that if he had an epitaph it ought to read that he avoided war during his presence who's done that was so in the extra step I thought Jimmy Carter but one point was noble in that he avoided war with Iran although one morning and I woke to see all these burning the elec hurting military but that was a rescue mission that was not war but I think that those presidents who've attempted to avoid war John Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis although Kennedy in a sense avoided war by taking

this to the brink of war but it is an amazing story I've just been reading a new biography of him by Robert Dalek I think it's JFK the unfinished presidency and it is one of the most exciting moments in American history how close we came to a nuclear exchange and how the warlords the defense department people were pushing for a more stern response and Kennedy said no or of the options we're going to try the one that's this side of exchange sometimes I think it's good that presidents have been in the military because I think they may know how to relate to the generals sometimes I fear that those who are the least effective are those who don't have that experience I grew in our own day that there are fewer and fewer well thank goodness George W. Bush was in the Texas Air National Guard and so he's had his time in in the armed services of the United States I think we can all sleep a little more happily over that oh Clay please don't take us down this

road Dwight the Eisenhower you know one of the great military leaders in American history has annoyed many with his farewell address warned the words of military industrial kind of my goodness do we have it now I mean if ever there was a military industrial complex we have found it in large measure but Adams avoiding war so Kennedy did Carter did I think Woodrow Wilson tried for a long time and his best he could to keep us out of the year of the FDR or FDR maintained neutrality but at the same time was arming the brits I think FDR understood that we would be involved sooner or later who would Adams like in terms of style oh goodness I'll probably Calvin Coolidge and his fellow New England that's a sad commentary no I don't know he might admire Polk because I don't know much about Polk I'm out of presidential historian but Polk said I'm going to come to power and we're gonna take Mexico he came to power he took Mexico and he quit one term he did what he said he was gonna do he made no bones about it he did it really well

and then he retired I honestly think Adams was in Higaly and historical analysis what do you mean by Higaly well Hagle the great historian I got you so far talks about the synthesis and then the antithesis or the thesis the antithesis and then the synthesis I think it was John Adams fate as a president to be the antithesis we have George Washington the synthesis we have John Adams the antithesis and then I think afterwards I think the presidency begins to synthesize so I think it was John Adams fate really unfortunately and to some degree to define in negative terms what the presidency would be you know what of the meanest things that Jefferson ever said was about John Adams he saved a bunch of them of his more illiberal moments for Adams and when Jefferson lost the election of 1796 he said good because Adams has to follow Washington and many of Washington's policies are now coming back to haunt us and Adams will be left holding the bag who wants to follow Washington what could be a worse fate for any president than to have to

follow the most respected most popular most revered president in American history well I think an ideal choice is someone who doesn't ever believe that he can be popular George Herbert Walker Bush had to follow one of the most popular presidents in American history Harry Truman had to follow one of the most popular presidents in American history this can't be easy for these gentlemen no I do think in Adams case he was a great communicator but he never really succeeded in communicating he wrote too much and perhaps at times he was his own worst enemy and I think during the presidency there's a lot to suggest that that might have been the case but I honestly believe the Higalian view of history was happening that the Washington represented the beginning that Adams may have represented something at another place and that you know as you suggest Jefferson may have been the synthesis the beginning of synthesis but Adams disliked Jefferson's popularity because he assumed that it must be demagogic that that Jefferson couldn't really mean it when he said all those nice things about the people well I

think Adams knew Jefferson and knew that Jefferson never spent much time around the people that he was personally a withdrawn human being Adams was much more a man of the people and when Jefferson would talk about being from the people and from the soil Adams knew that Jefferson had his soil was killed by slaves whereas in the case of Adams the family was running the farm there in brain tree so I think Adams probably saw that that Jefferson was being accorded a lot of things that probably fit better John Adams who was never given credit for any of those virtues another way to look at this program today is which presidents thought of themselves as Jeffersonians rather than which would Jefferson approve of I think Bill Clinton would be really disappointed he's right up there he put you know when you can tell by the artwork because every president changes the oval office artwork and when Clinton became president he took down the portrait I can't remember whether it was TR or Herbert Hoover and put up Jefferson's portrait in the oval office and William Jefferson Clinton clearly saw himself as the heir of Thomas Jefferson

and I I think rightly in that intellectuals believers in reform there was nothing patrician about Bill Clinton now he was sort of a trailer sort of a guy he's with Jackson he's tearing down the curtains but but I do think that he had he had Jeffersonian impulses as president especially his bookishness and Carter thought of himself as a Jeffersonian I suppose Democrats are much more likely to do this than Republican actually I think Carter was more Jeffersonian than any I can think of in the minds of many he was something of a bottleneck because he needed to be there to make all of the decisions that's very Jeffersonian Thomas Jefferson didn't like to delegate he liked to be at the center of things that's true but in a way you could say that Jimmy Carter was an Adam'site because he he told the truth even when he knew that it would be unpopular and he was willing to sort of preach at us about what was wrong with us and he he sort of prided himself on being alone that that somehow he was he was going to earn our trust but then he was going to ask us to trust him on the

great questions of the day on the malaise of America and on his anti-Soviet work and so on first when you have a brother like Billy you know that there's a certain counterbalance that goes on no such featured John Adams life well it's an interesting it's a very interesting subject you know Herbert Crowley I've quoted before but he wrote a book in nineteen nine called the Promise of American Life in which he said you can only now be a Jeffersonian if you adopt Hamiltonian means so the crisis of the 20th century is that all Jeffersonians have to be Hamiltonians too so who does Clay Jenkins and think is the most Jeffersonian of the president most Jeffersonian of the presidents well I I started by as Jefferson saying what I think true is that Madison is more Jeffersonian than Jefferson but if we're talking about the presidents of my lifetime and I was born in 1955 you know certainly not Eisenhower Kennedy yes in many regards although we've become so disillusioned about John Kennedy for many different reasons that really the only reason that he's a Jeffersonian is

that he was a man of great elegance and and mental capacity now you were hard on Lyndon Johnson but the great society was such a Jeffersonian program at least in you know in theory I don't think Jefferson would have pulled his dogs ears and shown his scars on that but I do think I'd have pretended to be a war hero if there'd been anything to I touch itself you know he actually did he there's a very interesting chapter in Robert K. Rose book about Lyndon Johnson's World War two that's what I mean he pretended to do pretended to fly swordies when he was just flying as a congressman but Johnson yes to a certain degree I think Nixon absolutely not of course Gerald Ford not Carter yes I think Carter may be the most Jeffersonian president of our time Reagan I think Reagan has actually I know I'm I'm sure some of our listeners were appalled to hear me say as Jefferson that he would nominate Reagan but I think it's true Reagan really did believe in devolution that the states should

become more important that we should have fiscal conservatism that that government should be paired down the government was an evil he and I do believe it when I believe that that Reagan trusted the people and believed in the people and had a I think Reagan is a very mixed president and I would not rank him very high as president in my own scale as a amateur historian but I do believe he was a Jeffersonian in some really important regards George Bush senior an internationalist like Jefferson I wouldn't go much farther than that with him but a man of gracefulness and a petition I think there's some of that connects him to Jefferson Bill Clinton he's a very strange mix isn't they I have the deepest admiration for Clinton's mind you know when they when George W Bush was running and couldn't answer simple questions like who's the prime minister of this or that the New Yorker ran an article about this and they went they picked it like 10 or 15 questions Sri Lanka and Indonesia and African nations and gross domestic products and so on and they

put them to internationalists including some very important ones like Kissinger and others and they all scored you know moderately well and then at the end of this article in the New Yorker they said who is the only person in America who would have gotten a hundred percent and it was Bill Clinton I mean Bill Clinton was by all accounts one of the most masterfully informed and intelligent analytically gifted presidents in American history one of the deepest readers somebody who really thought about things somebody who had a vision but but after that after you get to that all that praise and it breaks down pretty quickly and that's I think a tragedy his midnight pardon certainly wouldn't have pleased Thomas Jefferson that's for sure the pardons the lack of political will the compromising the desperation and Clinton's need thirst for popularity not to mention you know his finances and his his sexual activities I have the question of the hour for you to play where Thomas Jefferson alive today

would he play golf every president of the United States does and there's a new book on the subject which I think shows the your kid here by times no it's it's about it's about presidential golf would Jefferson play golf absolutely not I mean I think Jefferson would regard golf well Samuel Johnson said of hunting it is a monument to the poverty of the human imagination that it can include hunting as one of its diversions I think Jefferson would say golf is one of the most banal human constructs because it's endlessly time-consuming and pointless and to think that many of our most important decisions are made on the golf links I think would frighten Jefferson I you know he's a scribble he'd be home writing letters we have a question from a listener in Norfolk do we know what Thomas Jefferson's voice sounded like well not like mine and not like yours you know I I make no attempt to sound like Jefferson because

we I can't I'm not an I was a poor public speaker he had a stammer of some sort I I sometimes when I talk try to have a little catch in my voice a little hesitancy to try to to I'm doing it now to try to show that difference you were thinking on your feet well that's that's the theory isn't it he had a high pitched voice it was certainly not a Midwestern voice like mine I have a kind of a colorless an odorless Midwestern you speak general American I don't speak like a North Dakota and I can tell you that although I know my mother and sister do though and I and they're thrilling whenever I call up I feel like I've just been time warped into the film Fargo you bet you but Jefferson had a high pitched voice a weak and greedy voice it would undoubtedly have had some southern accent in it maybe some Scottish all of his tutors were Scottish probably British I had a college professor at the University of Minnesota named Robert Moore from North Carolina and he had the most beautiful gentlemen's North Carolina accent with a very light southern accent but it was clearly

touched by the British accent and it was sort of beautifully graceful and gentle and slightly effeminate but but not in any way that was off-putting and I've always I may be wrong about this but I've always assumed that's how Jefferson sounded it was a if you think of an upper class upper south very gentle petitions voice not as southern as Shelby foot and Ken Burns no none of that drawing I don't I can't imagine Jefferson talking that way but I can't imagine Jefferson having a sort of southern lilt a little southern lilt to his voice but who knows you know we don't know there's I think I've been studying theater Roosevelt lately and and I'm really enamored of Roosevelt and Roosevelt I think was the first president to be audio recorded by Thomas Edison but we don't have US grant and we don't have Abraham Lincoln and we don't have Andrew

Jackson and we don't have Thomas Jefferson so we have to rely on very tiny pieces of evidence and they're not very useful it's interesting I think people would not get into the presidency nowadays because of their voices but we'll save this for another program Bill it's been a pleasure we're so glad you're doing John Adams we'll see everybody next week for another exciting edition of the Thomas Jefferson Hour two good day music for the Thomas Jefferson Hour was provided by Stephen Swinford Reno Nevada you can visit mr. Jefferson's home page on the worldwide web at www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org to ask mr. Jefferson a question or to donate nine dollars and receive a copy of today's program on CD or cassette please call one eight eight eight four five eight eighteen oh three one eight eight four five eight eighteen oh three thank you for listening and we hope you join us

again next week for another entertaining historically accurate and thought provoking commentary through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson the Thomas Jefferson Hour is produced by high plains public radio and new enlightenment radio network a nonprofit organization dedicated to the search for truth in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson