Franklin D. Roosevelt was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and, after his fifth cousin became president, his famous last name opened the door to a political career. FDR's life became difficult when he was stricken with polio at age 39, and he developed a fierce determination to succeed in the face of any obstacle. As the Great Depression deepened, he rose from New York's governor to president of the United States. During his historic presidency, FDR enacted an aggressive series of reforms that transformed and expanded the role of government. When the Second World War erupted, he bucked the two-term tradition and guided America and its Allies on the path to victory.       

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Live from the field at Bull Run, Virginia, the Presidential Wrestling Federation's long-running feud with Confederate Championship Wrestling reaches an epic climax! Featuring:

Four-man elimination tag team match: Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison & William McKinley vs. John Tyler, Nathan Bedford Forrest, J.E.B. Stuart & John Mosby

Handicap match: Zachary Taylor & Winfield Scott vs. Gideon Pillow

Main event: Abraham Lincoln & Ulysses Grant vs. Jefferson Davis & Robert E. Lee

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On this installment of Presidential War, we discuss whether there's any president we'd rather have defending us against murder charges than renowned prairie lawyer Abraham Lincoln. Also: we decide which of the two Bushes gets picked first in flag football, we consider one category in which the lowly James Buchanan trounces Theodore Roosevelt, and we face the horrifying prospect of either Billy Carter or Malik Obama becoming president of the United States. 

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Many presidents have been musically-inclined and some even considered it a possible career path. On this episode we rock out to the Top 5 Presidential Musicians!

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Herbert Hoover was orphaned as a child, but his tireless work ethic and masterful administrative talents brought him success as a mining engineer, a career in which he crisscrossed the globe and became a millionaire in the process. During the First World War, he led a massive effort to relieve the suffering population of occupied Belgium, earning international acclaim and putting his name under consideration for the presidency. During eight years as Commerce Secretary in the Harding and Coolidge administrations, he worked to modernize the American economy and made himself the obvious choice to succeed Coolidge in 1928. After a crushing landslide victory, Hoover brought his technocratic expertise to the highest office in the land, but when a frightening stock market crash brought the unprecedented prosperity of the Roaring 20's to an abrupt halt, he finally met a crisis he couldn't fix—the Great Depression.   

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Live from a privately-owned farm in South Carolina, PWF's At Your Home pay-per-view has all the belts on the line!

• PWF Women's Championship: Eleanor Roosevelt vs. Bess Truman
• Tag Team Championship: TR & Taft vs. Gerald Ford & Ronald Reagan
• Transcontinental Championship: Franklin Pierce vs. Ulysses S. Grant ("Brawl in the Stall" match in a pigpen)
• PWF Championship: FDR vs. Dwight Eisenhower (strap match) 

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Special guest (and returning champion) Elliott Burns joins us for another exciting installment of Presidential War and attempts to extend the undefeated streak of guests prevailing over the podcast co-hosts. Discussion topics include: who would win in a fistfight between Andrew Jackson and Ulysses Grant, would we rather have TR or Jimmy Carter dating our daughter, and whether FDR could ever be considered a better president than Lincoln.

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We count down the Top 5 First Ladies in American history!

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Calvin Coolidge's hardscrabble Vermont farm upbringing imbued him with the old-school New England values of hard work and thriftiness, which served him well as he embarked on a career as a lawyer in Massachusetts and began a steady climb of local and state political offices. As governor, his firm and unflinching response to the 1919 Boston police strike garnered him national headlines and inspired some enthusiastic delegates at the 1920 Republican National Convention to buck the party bosses and nominate him for vice president under Warren G. Harding. A consummate Washington outsider, "Silent Cal" kept a low profile as vice president and the bosses planned to replace him on the 1924 ticket, but in August 1923, Harding's sudden death thrust Coolidge into the White House. With the Harding administration's sordid corruption scandals still bubbling to the surface, Coolidge's quiet integrity restored the American people's confidence in the presidency, while his innate thriftiness enabled him to cut taxes, balance the budget, and reduce the national debt as the nation enjoyed unprecedented economic prosperity. In the wake of a heartbreaking family tragedy, he was resoundingly elected to a term in his own right, but four years later--as only Coolidge could do--he walked away from a surefire chance at reelection and retired to a rented duplex. Learn the full story on Episode 30!  

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The Presidential Wrestling Federation is live from the basement of a bar in an undisclosed location with another electrifying slate of matches:

• Ronald Reagan & Gerald Ford vs. Rutherford B. Hayes & Benjamin Harrison (winners get a shot at the Tag Team Championship)
• Millard Fillmore vs. Chester Arthur (bareknuckle boxing grudge match--must win by knockout)
• 8-Man Battle Royal for the vacant Transcontinental Championship: Thomas Jefferson vs. Andrew Jackson vs. Franklin Pierce vs. Ulysses S. Grant vs. James A. Garfield vs. Grover Cleveland vs. Calvin Coolidge vs. Harry Truman
• Theodore Roosevelt vs. two vicious fighting dogs

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This Presidential War episode settles the burning question that is on everyone's mind—who would have made a better president: George Washington's brother Lawrence Washington or James A. Garfield's son James R. Garfield? We also discuss Dolley Madison's accomplishments, Frances Cleveland's good looks, and how Abraham Lincoln might have fared if he had served as Attorney General.

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Golf is the unofficial presidential pastime and some presidential practitioners have been particularly passionate about hitting the links. Some have even been good at it, and we count down the best on this Top 5. (Fore!)

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From publisher of the Marion Star newspaper to U.S. Senator from Ohio, Warren G. Harding's meteoric rise culminated in 1920 when he became the compromise candidate of a deadlocked Republican convention and trounced his Democratic opponent with a campaign promising a "Return to Normalcy." He inherited a terrible economy, high taxes, exploding debt, and a nation still wracked with tension from the First World War and subsequent Red Scare. When Harding's health gave out and he died after just two-and-a-half years in office, he left behind a humming economy and had turned a new page from the war years. But in the wake of his death, a parade of emerging corruption scandals involving some of his closest friends forever tarnished his legacy--not to mention the tell-all book published by a young woman who claimed he was the father of her child!

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The PWF has fallen on hard times and its latest event is being held in a high school gymnasium, but the quality of the presidential wrestling action on display is as high as ever in this slate of electrifying matches:

• Fathers vs. Sons Match: John Adams & George H.W. Bush vs. John Quincy Adams & George W. Bush
• Tag Team Championship Match: James Madison & James Monroe vs. Theodore Roosevelt & William Howard Taft
• Transcontinental Championship Match: Barack Obama vs. Richard Nixon
• PWF Championship Match: FDR vs. Dwight D. Eisenhower

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This game of Presidential War comes down to the wire! The scintillating discussion topics include: Would we rather have William McKinley or George H.W. Bush dating our daughter? Would we rather have John Adams or Andrew Jackson defending us against murder charges? And an epic clash of titans: Would George Washington or Abraham Lincoln make the better Secretary of State?

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While some presidents' sons have achieved great things (two even becoming president themselves), others have lived tragic lives characterized by depression, scandal, substance abuse, and early death.

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Born to Scots-Irish immigrants and raised in the Confederate South, Woodrow Wilson came into his own as a student at Princeton University. Armed with a Ph.D, he launched his career a historian and professor of political science and soon returned to Princeton, where he quickly became its most popular lecturer and was eventually named its president. His ambitious tenure garnered him national attention, and some Democratic party kingmakers saw him as an attractive candidate for national political office. Wilson had long harbored dreams of becoming a statesman, and in 1910 he allowed New Jersey's Democratic political machine to make him New Jersey's governor. Promptly repudiating the machine, he signed into law many progressive reforms and positioned himself to run for president in 1912. Up against a bitterly divided Republican party, Wilson coasted to an electoral college landslide victory. As president, he aggressively lobbied Congress to enact his New Freedom agenda (and turned a blind eye as his cabinet introduced widespread segregation into the federal bureaucracy), but his presidency reached a turning point in the summer of 1914 when the death of his wife coincided with the outbreak of the First World War in Europe. He resisted calls for the U.S. to enter the conflict and was re-elected in 1916 on the slogan "He Kept Us Out Of War," but in 1917 he felt forced to join the war in order to make the world "safe for democracy" (though his war effort was tinged by a sweeping suppression of civil liberties on the home front). Upon the Allied victory, Wilson hoped to shape a new world order with his idealistic Fourteen Points peace plan, but settled for a punitive peace propped up by a League of Nations. He failed to persuade a reluctant America to join the League and--after he suffered a debilitating stroke--his second wife led a conspiracy to hide his condition from the American people for the final year-and-a-half of his presidency. Clinging to fantasies of a third term, Wilson descended into bitterness and died soon after leaving office.   

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War at the Shore features a card full of electrifying matches, including a main event in which the PWF is challenged by an unholy alliance between the CCW and the TWO:

• John Adams vs. John Quincy Adams
• Theodore Roosevelt & William McKinley vs. William Howard Taft & Warren Harding
• Woodrow Wilson vs. Barack Obama (Transcontinental Title Match)
• George Washington, Thomas Jefferson & Abraham Lincoln vs. Donald Trump, Jefferson Davis & a mystery Third Man 

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On this episode, we discuss whether we'd rather have Jimmy Carter or Andrew Jackson dating our daughter, whether Woodrow Wilson or Millard Fillmore would make the better Supreme Court Justice, whether George Washington stands a snowball's chance in hell against George W. Bush in the category of Biggest Partier, and much more!

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The U.S. has never been forced to call upon presidential line of succession beyond the vice president, but it has been close many times. This episode delves into some of the craziest near-miss scenarios and considers some the wildest What Ifs in American history.   

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William Howard Taft is perhaps best known as the fattest president who allegedly got stuck in a bathtub, but this episode will show that he was much, much more than that. Taft followed in his eminent father's footsteps to become a Yale graduate, lawyer, and judge. His highest ambition was to join the U.S. Supreme Court, and President McKinley promised to appoint him--if he first agreed to serve as civil governor of the Philippines. After his friend Theodore Roosevelt became president upon McKinley's assassination, Taft would turn down multiple offers to join the Supreme Court so he could finish his work in the Philippines. As Secretary of War, his masterful administrative skills and lovable personality made him Roosevelt's closest advisor and chosen successor for the presidency in 1908. Though Taft still yearned for the Supreme Court, he found himself as our nation's 27th President. He quietly built an impressive record of tariff reform, fiscal responsibility, conservation, antitrust enforcement, and international economic expansion via "Dollar Diplomacy." But his judicial temperament lacked finely-tuned political instincts, and he lost the confidence of the growing progressive wing of the Republican party--which turned to the increasingly radical Roosevelt to challenge Taft in the 1912 election, splitting the party and handing the presidency to the Democrats. Taft went on to serve as a law professor at Yale until 1921, when President Harding floored him with an offer to become Chief Justice of the United States. Finally ensconced in his dream job, Taft would transform the federal judiciary like no Chief Justice since the great John Marshall.     

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Anything can happen in the Presidential Wrestling Federation--especially when all of the belts are on the line! The Reconstruction pay-per-view has an electrifying card of intense title matches:

• Tag Team Championships: James Madison & James Monroe v. John Adams & John Quincy Adams
• Women's Championship: Eleanor Roosevelt v. Michelle Obama
• Transcontinental Championship: Woodrow Wilson v. Barack Obama
• PWF Championship: George Washington v. FDR 

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Presidential War enters Season 3 with the addition of exciting new categories! When it comes to the nation's premier presidential educational card game, no one ever needs to ask: "is our children learning?" They certainly is. On this episode, we leave no child behind.

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2023 is the bicentennial of the Monroe Doctrine, announced by President James Monroe in his 1823 State of the Union address. To celebrate, we've put together a Top 5 that functions as a comprehensive history of this cornerstone of American foreign policy.  

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In one of American history’s most epic life stories, Theodore Roosevelt began as a sickly child debilitated by asthma and went on to become a Harvard graduate, author, historian, NY state legislator, cattle rancher, big game hunter, conservationist, Civil Service Commissioner, NYC Police Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Spanish-American War hero, NY Governor, and Vice President. When McKinley’s assassination unexpectedly made him the youngest president in American history, his unbounded energy, unmatched press relations, and finely-tuned political instincts helped turn Theodore Roosevelt into one of our most successful, popular, and powerful chief executives. He became known as the Trustbuster for taking on the nation’s biggest corporations while crusading to secure a Square Deal for average Americans and make conservation of natural resources a national priority. On the world stage, he flexed the U.S.’s newfound imperial muscles by securing the rights to build the Panama Canal, aggressively enforcing an expanded Monroe Doctrine, and winning the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War. Declining a third term, he went on to have perhaps the most eventful post-presidency, which featured: hunting African big game for the Smithsonian, running for president yet again as a third-party candidate, surviving an assassination attempt, nearly dying on an expedition that put an uncharted Brazilian river on the map, and trying to volunteer to fight in two more wars. The Dead Presidents Podcast is thrilled to begin Season 3 with this chronicle of one of our most interesting presidents.

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