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CNN Saturday Morning News
"Novak Zone"
Aired October 25, 2003 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SEAN CALLEBS CNN ANCHOR: There are many things we all know about Benjamin Franklin, from his foray into politics and publishing, even that little kite thing. But what about the Franklin you may not know?
Robert Novak takes a deeper look into the life of Benjamin Franklin with biographer Walter Isaacson. That's in this week's edition of "The Novak Zone."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERT NOVAK, HOST: Welcome to The Novak Zone.
We're at the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C., Dupont Circle, talking to the institute's president, Walter Isaacson, author of the best-selling "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life."
Mr. Isaacson, there are literally thousands of books about Benjamin Franklin. Why did you think another one was needed?
WALTER ISAACSON, AUTHOR, "BENJAMIN FRANKLIN": You know, I wanted to try to show, from my own perspective, having worked with you at CNN, worked in the media, done some studies of foreign policy and diplomacy, how Franklin relates now. He was our best diplomat. He was our best media person. He created a whole media empire. He was our best writer and our best publisher. And really, our best politician and political thinker.
I really wanted to relate him to the diplomacy of today, to the media world of today, to all the values that we're missing today that Franklin and his fellow founders helped instill in this country.
NOVAK: What did you find that's new about Benjamin Franklin that all of these centuries of historians and scholars didn't find?
ISAACSON: One of the things was that his secretary in -- when he was our envoy in France was a spy, which historians already know. But I went back and looked at all the reports that Edward Bancroft, the spy, did on Franklin. And in some ways, it wasn't just the little scoops you can find by doing that.
But the wonderful diplomacy he conducted in France, where he's projecting America's interests, but also playing a wily balance-of- power game with the France, the Flanders, the Bourbontec (ph) nations like Spain against England. And you can see how he's mixing idealism and realism in American diplomacy.
NOVAK: Walter, you describe Benjamin Franklin as a -- as the quintessential middle-class American, the leather apron guy. But he spent years and years in France, he loved France. He was in high society, a little bit of a ladies' man. How do you balance -- I mean, that didn't seem too middle class, his life in Paris.
ISAACSON: You know, all through his life he was proud to be a printer, a leather apron, a shopkeeper, a member of the middle class. Even in France, he felt that America should not import the aristocracy, the elitism, that he saw in Europe.
And when he goes to the court of France, for example, he wears his fur cap, and he wears a frock coat from the frontier to show he's part of an uncorrupted new nation that believes in middle-class virtues and shopkeepers' virtues and is not trying to be pretentious.
NOVAK: You suggest that he would be a lot more comfortable in our 21st century than Washington or Jefferson, certainly John Adams, would be.
ISAACSON: Sure.
NOVAK: Why do you think that?
ISAACSON: Well, you know, he was inventive, he was ambitious, he was an entrepreneur. He's the type of person that if you showed him your Blackberry or your Palm Pilot, or you had some business plan for some new venture or something, he'd love to sit down with a beer and talk about it.
You know, he was a guy who, I think, you can see a reflected in our time, our information age, maybe our information overload time. And he's a real flesh-and-blood guy too. He had his flaws as well as his virtues.
NOVAK: You're an editor, or a former editor. He was an editor of a fabulous document, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. Tell us a little bit about that.
ISAACSON: Yes, you -- when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, they formed a committee. And maybe the last time they ever formed a good committee in this town. And it was Franklin, Jefferson, and John Adams. When Jefferson writes his first draft, he sends it down the street to Franklin. And Jefferson has written the famous second paragraph, in which he said, "We hold these truths to be sacred."
And Franklin takes his printer's pen and crosses it out and says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident," because he wanted our rights to come from the consent of governed and from rationality and reason.
But then you can look at the other edits, including Adams putting in, "endowed by their Creator," and then Franklin putting in, "Nature and Nature's God."
So this whole debate about church and state, almost in the editing of that first draft of the Declaration, you can see these founders wrestling with this.
NOVAK: As a diplomat, you say he performed one of the great feats in getting the treaty with France that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) winning the Revolution. But his fellow agent in France was John Adams. And in McCullough's book about John Adams, I think reflecting Adams' feeling, Franklin doesn't come off that well. Do you think that that great diplomatic achievement was -- should be shared, or was that pretty much Franklin's doing?
ISAACSON: It was Franklin who negotiates the treaty of friendship with the French. He's probably the last person we had who knew how to deal with the French very well.
And the difference with Adams is that Franklin really wanted to cajole the man, almost seduce the man, where Adams was being very hard-nosed about it.
If you want to understand the difference between Adams and Franklin and how they dealt with the French, Franklin learns French, he says, by lounging on the pillows of his French girlfriends and exchanging love letters. And Adams learns French by memorizing a book of French funeral orations.
NOVAK: Finally they end up in the -- writing the Constitution. He's in his 80s when he's at the Constitutional Convention. What was Franklin's role in this final act of his political life?
ISAACSON: You know, Franklin's role at the Constitutional Convention was as a person who brought everybody together. Franklin was a great sage, not the young philosophers like the Jefferson and Madison, but the sage was twice as old as the other members there.
So he was the one, when everything was falling apart, that -- We're going to have to compromise here.
NOVAK: And now for the big question for Walter Isaacson.
Mr. Isaacson, if Benjamin Franklin were brought back to life today, what do you think he would think of people of California electing Arnold Schwarzenegger as their governor?
ISAACSON: You know what? I think he would like the recall process. He was, at his core, a true believer in democracy. Some of the other founders disparaged democracy as being dangerous, or the tyranny of the majority. But Franklin wanted a recall in the federal Constitution, for the president. He believed that you should do nothing, as he said, to suppress the will of the people.
So I think he would have found it interesting and do-able that you could have a recall like in California. And as for Schwarzenegger, I think he would find that Schwarzenegger's, you know, an interesting, fun guy who actually could capture the center, which is what Ben Franklin would want politicians to do today.
NOVAK: Walter Isaacson, thank you very much.
ISAACSON: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
NOVAK: Congratulations on your book. And you'll also -- or have a new book out, a Benjamin Franklin reader of his writings. Thanks a lot.
And thank you for being in The Novak Zone.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired October 25, 2003 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SEAN CALLEBS CNN ANCHOR: There are many things we all know about Benjamin Franklin, from his foray into politics and publishing, even that little kite thing. But what about the Franklin you may not know?
Robert Novak takes a deeper look into the life of Benjamin Franklin with biographer Walter Isaacson. That's in this week's edition of "The Novak Zone."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERT NOVAK, HOST: Welcome to The Novak Zone.
We're at the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C., Dupont Circle, talking to the institute's president, Walter Isaacson, author of the best-selling "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life."
Mr. Isaacson, there are literally thousands of books about Benjamin Franklin. Why did you think another one was needed?
WALTER ISAACSON, AUTHOR, "BENJAMIN FRANKLIN": You know, I wanted to try to show, from my own perspective, having worked with you at CNN, worked in the media, done some studies of foreign policy and diplomacy, how Franklin relates now. He was our best diplomat. He was our best media person. He created a whole media empire. He was our best writer and our best publisher. And really, our best politician and political thinker.
I really wanted to relate him to the diplomacy of today, to the media world of today, to all the values that we're missing today that Franklin and his fellow founders helped instill in this country.
NOVAK: What did you find that's new about Benjamin Franklin that all of these centuries of historians and scholars didn't find?
ISAACSON: One of the things was that his secretary in -- when he was our envoy in France was a spy, which historians already know. But I went back and looked at all the reports that Edward Bancroft, the spy, did on Franklin. And in some ways, it wasn't just the little scoops you can find by doing that.
But the wonderful diplomacy he conducted in France, where he's projecting America's interests, but also playing a wily balance-of- power game with the France, the Flanders, the Bourbontec (ph) nations like Spain against England. And you can see how he's mixing idealism and realism in American diplomacy.
NOVAK: Walter, you describe Benjamin Franklin as a -- as the quintessential middle-class American, the leather apron guy. But he spent years and years in France, he loved France. He was in high society, a little bit of a ladies' man. How do you balance -- I mean, that didn't seem too middle class, his life in Paris.
ISAACSON: You know, all through his life he was proud to be a printer, a leather apron, a shopkeeper, a member of the middle class. Even in France, he felt that America should not import the aristocracy, the elitism, that he saw in Europe.
And when he goes to the court of France, for example, he wears his fur cap, and he wears a frock coat from the frontier to show he's part of an uncorrupted new nation that believes in middle-class virtues and shopkeepers' virtues and is not trying to be pretentious.
NOVAK: You suggest that he would be a lot more comfortable in our 21st century than Washington or Jefferson, certainly John Adams, would be.
ISAACSON: Sure.
NOVAK: Why do you think that?
ISAACSON: Well, you know, he was inventive, he was ambitious, he was an entrepreneur. He's the type of person that if you showed him your Blackberry or your Palm Pilot, or you had some business plan for some new venture or something, he'd love to sit down with a beer and talk about it.
You know, he was a guy who, I think, you can see a reflected in our time, our information age, maybe our information overload time. And he's a real flesh-and-blood guy too. He had his flaws as well as his virtues.
NOVAK: You're an editor, or a former editor. He was an editor of a fabulous document, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. Tell us a little bit about that.
ISAACSON: Yes, you -- when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, they formed a committee. And maybe the last time they ever formed a good committee in this town. And it was Franklin, Jefferson, and John Adams. When Jefferson writes his first draft, he sends it down the street to Franklin. And Jefferson has written the famous second paragraph, in which he said, "We hold these truths to be sacred."
And Franklin takes his printer's pen and crosses it out and says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident," because he wanted our rights to come from the consent of governed and from rationality and reason.
But then you can look at the other edits, including Adams putting in, "endowed by their Creator," and then Franklin putting in, "Nature and Nature's God."
So this whole debate about church and state, almost in the editing of that first draft of the Declaration, you can see these founders wrestling with this.
NOVAK: As a diplomat, you say he performed one of the great feats in getting the treaty with France that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) winning the Revolution. But his fellow agent in France was John Adams. And in McCullough's book about John Adams, I think reflecting Adams' feeling, Franklin doesn't come off that well. Do you think that that great diplomatic achievement was -- should be shared, or was that pretty much Franklin's doing?
ISAACSON: It was Franklin who negotiates the treaty of friendship with the French. He's probably the last person we had who knew how to deal with the French very well.
And the difference with Adams is that Franklin really wanted to cajole the man, almost seduce the man, where Adams was being very hard-nosed about it.
If you want to understand the difference between Adams and Franklin and how they dealt with the French, Franklin learns French, he says, by lounging on the pillows of his French girlfriends and exchanging love letters. And Adams learns French by memorizing a book of French funeral orations.
NOVAK: Finally they end up in the -- writing the Constitution. He's in his 80s when he's at the Constitutional Convention. What was Franklin's role in this final act of his political life?
ISAACSON: You know, Franklin's role at the Constitutional Convention was as a person who brought everybody together. Franklin was a great sage, not the young philosophers like the Jefferson and Madison, but the sage was twice as old as the other members there.
So he was the one, when everything was falling apart, that -- We're going to have to compromise here.
NOVAK: And now for the big question for Walter Isaacson.
Mr. Isaacson, if Benjamin Franklin were brought back to life today, what do you think he would think of people of California electing Arnold Schwarzenegger as their governor?
ISAACSON: You know what? I think he would like the recall process. He was, at his core, a true believer in democracy. Some of the other founders disparaged democracy as being dangerous, or the tyranny of the majority. But Franklin wanted a recall in the federal Constitution, for the president. He believed that you should do nothing, as he said, to suppress the will of the people.
So I think he would have found it interesting and do-able that you could have a recall like in California. And as for Schwarzenegger, I think he would find that Schwarzenegger's, you know, an interesting, fun guy who actually could capture the center, which is what Ben Franklin would want politicians to do today.
NOVAK: Walter Isaacson, thank you very much.
ISAACSON: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
NOVAK: Congratulations on your book. And you'll also -- or have a new book out, a Benjamin Franklin reader of his writings. Thanks a lot.
And thank you for being in The Novak Zone.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
