Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk

Plain English with Derek Thompson

The Ringer

News Commentary, News

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Who is the most successful president in American history? George Washington secured American independence. Abraham Lincoln preserved the union and ended slavery. Franklin D. Roosevelt ended the Depression, remade government, and won World War II. But if we define "success" as the ability to articulate your goals and achieve every single one of them, perhaps only one president in American history was ever perfectly successful. In 1845, James K. Polk, newly elected by a whisker-thin margin, confided to his friend George Bancroft the four goals of his four years in the White House. Acquire Oregon from Great Britain. Acquire California from Mexico. Reduce the tariff. Establish an independent treasury. Four years later, he'd done all this and more. As the historian Daniel Patrick Howe wrote, "Judged by these objectives, Polk is probably the most successful president the United States has ever had.” And that’s why Polk is the subject of today’s show. I don’t think another president in American history has so large a gap between his modern reputation and his actual achievement. There are two great biographies about Polk that I’ve read that have been published in the last 20 years. I’m very pleased that today, we have both authors on the show. Walter Borneman is the author of 'Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America.' And Robert Merry is the author of 'A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent_._' If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Walter Borneman and Robert Merry Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, it's Bill Simmons letting you know that we are covering the White Lotus on the Prestige TV podcast and the Ringer TV YouTube channel every Sunday night this season with Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson.
0:11.2	Also, on Wednesdays, Rob Honey and I will be sort of diving deep into theories and listener questions.
0:17.1	So you can watch that on the Ringer YouTube channel and also on the Spotify app.
0:21.2	Subscribe to the Prestige podcast feed.
0:23.7	Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel.
0:26.1	And don't forget, you can also watch these podcasts on Spotify.
0:30.8	White Lotus, let's go.
0:34.7	Ready to launch your business?
0:36.6	Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand. Marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time. From startups to scale-ups, online, in-person,
0:56.0	and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at
1:01.7	Shopify.com slash setup. Here's the truth about AI. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built
1:09.8	into. Service Now puts AI to work for people across your business, removing friction and frustration for your employees, supercharging productivity for your developers, providing intelligent tools for your service agents to make customers happier. All built into a single platform you can use right now. That's why the world
1:29.5	works with ServiceNow. Visit ServiceNow.com slash UK slash AI for people. Today, our second episode of
1:37.7	Plain History kicks off with a fun, if impossible question. Who was the most successful president in American history? I'd say we start
1:48.6	with the obvious nominees here. George Washington defeated the British Army and then led the country
1:54.9	born through his military accomplishment. Abraham Lincoln saved the Union and did slavery.
2:02.5	Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office when the U.S. was facing one of its worst economic crises ever, and more than a decade
2:08.4	later, he'd remade the federal government and the U.S. economy, with the U.S. bestriding the planet
2:13.7	on the verge of total victory in World War II at the pinnacle of our geopolitical
2:18.2	power.
2:19.5	Those are three excellent, excellent choices.
2:23.3	But according to the Pulitzer Prize winning historian, Daniel Walker Howe, the answer to the
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -37 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Ringer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Ringer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.