Roosevelt understands that there are things that are worth surrendering your career for, like defending the country against [Adolf] Hitler.

Legacy is what a president does that affects later generations.

Roosevelt understands that there are things that are worth surrendering your career for, like defending the country against [Adolf] Hitler.

First of all, there's no mention of political parties in the Constitution, so you begin American history with not only no political conventions but also no parties.

Lincoln was able to say, you know, "It will make me very unhappy if I lose the presidency, but I'm committed to larger things." If you look at candidates and say this is someone who can be happy to go back to their family or they have larger convictions. Franklin Roosevelt jeopardized his presidency by telling Americans in 1940, "We might have to fight Hitler." He loved being president, but he loved defending freedom more.

The founders were very worried that if parties developed in America, you might have something like the modern Italian system, where you have 20 different parties that divide Congress and the country and can't govern.

A lot of it was, you know, you look for moments where, for instance, we were dependent on Abraham Lincoln making sure that the slaves were freed or John Kennedy bringing civil rights, or the first one I wrote about, George Washington trying to stop the British from invading and ending this country before it even began. Those were turning points where, if you had not had a president stepping up to the plate, if there wasn't a story like that, we would not be here.