On this episode of Niche World, Mental Maps of the Founders explores the geographic orientation the mental maps of six of the Founders, Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and Gallatin. Three were Virginians who vied to expand their new nation toward different points of the compass. One, a refugee from puritan Boston to more tolerant Philadelphia, built a commercial and journalistic empire spanning Seaboard colonies and the West Indies. Two came from buzzing commercial ports of glaringly different character, the sugar and slave island of San Croix in the Caribbean and the stern Swiss Calvinistic city state of Geneva. The Founder's mental maps helped develop the contours and character of a young republic whose geographical features and political boundaries were yet unknown. Were to discuss his new book, I'm really pleased to welcome my guest, my good friend, and someone who I have not only known for a long time, but I have studied for a long time, Michael Burrow. He is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The former Vice President for the polling firm Peter DeHeart Research Associates, a member of the editorial page staff of The Washington Post, a senior writer to US News and World Report, a senior staff editor at Reader's Digest, and has been associated with the Almanac of American Politics, which every two years has provided comprehensive knowledge about every congressional district.

On this episode of Niche World, Mental Maps of the Founders explores the geographic orientation the mental maps of six of the Founders, Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and Gallatin. Three were Virginians who vied to expand their new nation toward different points of the compass. One, a refugee from puritan Boston to more tolerant Philadelphia, built a commercial and journalistic empire spanning Seaboard colonies and the West Indies. Two came from buzzing commercial ports of glaringly different character, the sugar and slave island of San Croix in the Caribbean and the stern Swiss Calvinistic city state of Geneva. The Founder's mental maps helped develop the contours and character of a young republic whose geographical features and political boundaries were yet unknown. Were to discuss his new book, I'm really pleased to welcome my guest, my good friend, and someone who I have not only known for a long time, but I have studied for a long time, Michael Burrow. He is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The former Vice President for the polling firm Peter DeHeart Research Associates, a member of the editorial page staff of The Washington Post, a senior writer to US News and World Report, a senior staff editor at Reader's Digest, and has been associated with the Almanac of American Politics, which every two years has provided comprehensive knowledge about every congressional district.

In the country.

In the country.

Michael, welcome and thank you for joining me on Newsworld.

Michael, welcome and thank you for joining me on Newsworld.

Well, it's very good to be with you, and we've been having conversations from various points of view and institutional venues going back will considerably more than forty years.

Well, it's very good to be with you, and we've been having conversations from various points of view and institutional venues going back will considerably more than forty years.

It's kind of sobering, isn't it to realize how many years we've been doing this.

It's kind of sobering, isn't it to realize how many years we've been doing this.

You were early on to predict something that all the smart people in Washington were assured that could never happen, which is a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. That was achieved in nineteen ninety four, and there have been Republican majorities in the House Representatives in most of the years since. So that's just one of the many things that you've accomplished.

You were early on to predict something that all the smart people in Washington were assured that could never happen, which is a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. That was achieved in nineteen ninety four, and there have been Republican majorities in the House Representatives in most of the years since. So that's just one of the many things that you've accomplished.

You're one of the principal authors of the Almanac of American Politics. Which is a remarkably detailed reference work on Congress and state politics, which has been published every two years by National Journal since nineteen seventy two. First of all, you're encyclopedic knowledge of American politics as extraordinary. But I'm curious, how has politics changed since you first started writing for the Almanac in nineteen seventy two.

You're one of the principal authors of the Almanac of American Politics. Which is a remarkably detailed reference work on Congress and state politics, which has been published every two years by National Journal since nineteen seventy two. First of all, you're encyclopedic knowledge of American politics as extraordinary. But I'm curious, how has politics changed since you first started writing for the Almanac in nineteen seventy two.

Well, politics has changed in a number of ways since nineteen seventy two. I think in nineteen seventy two, a lot of Americans political allegiance was anchored in historical memories, in memories of the Civil War, in memories of you might say, almost the religious wars of the seventeenth century of Catholicism and Protestantism. That was kind of played out with the election of John F. Kennedy in nineteen sixty, But it was a recent memory in nineteen seventy two, memories of my home state of Michigan, of the sit down strikes that compelled the Detroit based auto companies to recognize the United Auto Workers as the bargaining agent for their union, and the unionization of major industries by nineteen seventy two. That was an historic event, more than a third of a century in the past, but one with importantifications. And I think what we're seeing now is more nationalization of politics. You know, the political scientists, starting with a guy named Ee Schatzneider in the nineteen sixties, fifties and sixties, said, you know, wouldn't it be nice if we just instead of having these political parties that contain all sorts of odd duck people, the Democratic Party with the left wing agitators in the north and the conservative segregationists in the south, the Republican Party with the Wall Street people and the farmers in the midwest, if we had one clearly liberal party and one clearly conservative party, wouldn't that be much better? And their prayers were answered in time, and we got something like what we have today, which is somewhat more cohesive parties, with the Democratic Party pretty much taking a liberal stand on most issues and in fact lurching left even within recent years, issues like abortion and immigration. So they're now for abortion in all nine months of a pregnancy, and who knows how many days beyond open borders on immigration, which was an idea that almost nobody claimed to be following a generation ago. The Republican Party has become more of a demotic party, if I could say so new demotic. That's not demonic. It's demotic as part of the people, as part of ordinary people, as part of people that are not white college graduates and Ivy League denizens, and so we have rationalized it this way. It's in some ways it's a little less complex vote than it used to be. You know, in nineteen seventy two, when President Nixon was re elected with sixty one percent of the vote, half the congressional districts that Nixon carried voted for Democratic members of Congress, and I think two districts that George McGovern carried voted for Republican members of Gores. One of those, the Democratic candidate was a man named John Kerry, who went on to a variety of adventures in our public system. But nowadays we get very few split tickets, and so congressional districts that vote for the Republican presidential candidate pretty much vote for Republicans and the same on the Democratic side. So that's been one major change in politics. So in the forty years that I was engaged heavily in writing that almanac, book and others have since taken over most of the work in some ways it got to be a simpler book to write because you had fewer people that were different from other members of fewer elected officials that were different from other segments of their parties. So when you became Speaker of the House in nineteen ninety five, among your Republican members were people from Connie Morella from Montgomery County, Maryland, Nancy Johnson from Connecticut, Olympia Snow from Maine, all from districts which we now identify as pretty much safe Democratic districts. You've had a number of members from coastal California, so we see some natural changes. One of the things that stays the same over time is that there's a certain balance to this. As Mari Tischera, who was one of the co authors of The Emerging Democratic Majority, a two thousand and two book which got many things right, which you could say predicted the two thousand and eight victory of Barack Obama, But as Tishera has acknowledged, the Republican Party adjusted to that. One of the things that he and Judas assumed was that white working class voters would stay Democratic. Turns out, they didn't. They got turned off by things that the white college graduate liberal gentry liberals, as Joe cock Cain calls them, and move toward the Republican Party. You could see that in the nineteen nineties and with George W. Bush in the first part of the century. It's been accelerat with the candidacies of Donald Trump and the nominations of Donald Trump. So there's a certain self regulating mechanism. That long period of forty years when the Democrats held the House of Representatives, political scientists gave us all sorts of reasons why that was going to last forever, and ever turned out it didn't turned out. It's the exception in American history that if one party gets to have a large majority, they're going to turn off some of the people that are constituents of theirs, and they're going to be available to the other party.

Well, politics has changed in a number of ways since nineteen seventy two. I think in nineteen seventy two, a lot of Americans political allegiance was anchored in historical memories, in memories of the Civil War, in memories of you might say, almost the religious wars of the seventeenth century of Catholicism and Protestantism. That was kind of played out with the election of John F. Kennedy in nineteen sixty, But it was a recent memory in nineteen seventy two, memories of my home state of Michigan, of the sit down strikes that compelled the Detroit based auto companies to recognize the United Auto Workers as the bargaining agent for their union, and the unionization of major industries by nineteen seventy two. That was an historic event, more than a third of a century in the past, but one with importantifications. And I think what we're seeing now is more nationalization of politics. You know, the political scientists, starting with a guy named Ee Schatzneider in the nineteen sixties, fifties and sixties, said, you know, wouldn't it be nice if we just instead of having these political parties that contain all sorts of odd duck people, the Democratic Party with the left wing agitators in the north and the conservative segregationists in the south, the Republican Party with the Wall Street people and the farmers in the midwest, if we had one clearly liberal party and one clearly conservative party, wouldn't that be much better? And their prayers were answered in time, and we got something like what we have today, which is somewhat more cohesive parties, with the Democratic Party pretty much taking a liberal stand on most issues and in fact lurching left even within recent years, issues like abortion and immigration. So they're now for abortion in all nine months of a pregnancy, and who knows how many days beyond open borders on immigration, which was an idea that almost nobody claimed to be following a generation ago. The Republican Party has become more of a demotic party, if I could say so new demotic. That's not demonic. It's demotic as part of the people, as part of ordinary people, as part of people that are not white college graduates and Ivy League denizens, and so we have rationalized it this way. It's in some ways it's a little less complex vote than it used to be. You know, in nineteen seventy two, when President Nixon was re elected with sixty one percent of the vote, half the congressional districts that Nixon carried voted for Democratic members of Congress, and I think two districts that George McGovern carried voted for Republican members of Gores. One of those, the Democratic candidate was a man named John Kerry, who went on to a variety of adventures in our public system. But nowadays we get very few split tickets, and so congressional districts that vote for the Republican presidential candidate pretty much vote for Republicans and the same on the Democratic side. So that's been one major change in politics. So in the forty years that I was engaged heavily in writing that almanac, book and others have since taken over most of the work in some ways it got to be a simpler book to write because you had fewer people that were different from other members of fewer elected officials that were different from other segments of their parties. So when you became Speaker of the House in nineteen ninety five, among your Republican members were people from Connie Morella from Montgomery County, Maryland, Nancy Johnson from Connecticut, Olympia Snow from Maine, all from districts which we now identify as pretty much safe Democratic districts. You've had a number of members from coastal California, so we see some natural changes. One of the things that stays the same over time is that there's a certain balance to this. As Mari Tischera, who was one of the co authors of The Emerging Democratic Majority, a two thousand and two book which got many things right, which you could say predicted the two thousand and eight victory of Barack Obama, But as Tishera has acknowledged, the Republican Party adjusted to that. One of the things that he and Judas assumed was that white working class voters would stay Democratic. Turns out, they didn't. They got turned off by things that the white college graduate liberal gentry liberals, as Joe cock Cain calls them, and move toward the Republican Party. You could see that in the nineteen nineties and with George W. Bush in the first part of the century. It's been accelerat with the candidacies of Donald Trump and the nominations of Donald Trump. So there's a certain self regulating mechanism. That long period of forty years when the Democrats held the House of Representatives, political scientists gave us all sorts of reasons why that was going to last forever, and ever turned out it didn't turned out. It's the exception in American history that if one party gets to have a large majority, they're going to turn off some of the people that are constituents of theirs, and they're going to be available to the other party.

In your twenty twenty four edition, you revisit an essay that you rode back in two thousand and two on the forty nine percent Nation, where you worked that Americans no longer give landslide re elections to presidents credit with peace and prosperity. I'm curious. I'm sort of a one trick pony. I was part of the Great Reagan extraordinary events of nineteen eighty and eighty four and then nineteen ninety four and away was notionally a landslide, I guess, so I'm always trying to how to get there. But I get a sense that you think we really now are sort of locked into trench warfare at the forty nine fifty to fifty one level.

In your twenty twenty four edition, you revisit an essay that you rode back in two thousand and two on the forty nine percent Nation, where you worked that Americans no longer give landslide re elections to presidents credit with peace and prosperity. I'm curious. I'm sort of a one trick pony. I was part of the Great Reagan extraordinary events of nineteen eighty and eighty four and then nineteen ninety four and away was notionally a landslide, I guess, so I'm always trying to how to get there. But I get a sense that you think we really now are sort of locked into trench warfare at the forty nine fifty to fifty one level.

Well, I think we are, and I think in some ways many of us are sort of dismayed by the personal character and operating practices of the current president and the one immediately before him, both of whom seemed to be on their way to renomination by their parties. But you know, looking at the longer run of American history, landslides were unusual. If you look at the nineteenth century and go really up to the nineteen twenties, you basically see nobody's getting more than fifty six popular vote for president fifty six percent, as tops Andrew Jackson in eighteen thirty two Ulysses S. Grant in eighteen seventy two. You don't get those supermajorities. I think one of the things you've got supermajorities out of two things in the first half of the twentieth century when one party support collapse because they really seem to be incompetent. We're familiar with the Republican Party seeming to collapse with the Great Depression of producing policies which it seemed to have no solution for. And you get the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in nineteen thirty two, the huge Democratic majorities in Congress and so forth. That was presage, however, only a dozen years before, by a collapse of the Democratic Party with Woodrow Wilson. When you have inflation and huge economic shut down, when you have a world war whose solution turns sour, and indeed there's still wars going on in various parts of the world, when you're having chaos, and Warren G. Harding for the Republican Party says, I'm a candidate for return to normalcy, a return away from these progressive mantras and this disorder in the world. And he wins the election by a popular vote majority of sixty to thirty four percent over James M. Cox, a man who later became a billionaire and one of whose daughters is still alive today, worth multiple billions of dollars. So Cox was not an idiot, but he was defeated very badly, so that was a repudiation. Second half of the twentieth century, you get an electorate that lived through depression, an electorate that lived through war, and they were ready to reward an incumbent president who seemed to produce peace, who seemed to produce prosperity. So you get Dwight Eyesenower fifty seven percent and fifty six, Lyndon Johnson sixty four percent for president in sixty four, Nixon sixty one percent and sixty four Nixon sixty one percent in nineteen seventy two, and the last one Ronald Reagan eighty four fifty nine percent. Down just a little bit. But Reagan also partakes of that era. He's a World War two veteran, though not in a combat post. He was an adult that in his thirties. He is a person who made his living in the universal media of radio, movies, and television, where you had popular culture that appeal to a universal audience, to universal values, which created a sense of americanness. And he partook of this, I think personally as well as part of his professional performances, and so he was able to rally fifty nine percent. No one else has come close. President hw Bush, with a slight decline turnout in eighty eight, gets fifty three point four percent. Barack Obama is the next highest at fifty two point six. They both round off to fifty three, but Obama's actually a little behind Bush in that regard, and we don't see it. You know, we've had these exceedingly close elections in two thousand, close election in two thousand and four. In twenty twelve, incumbent presidents reelected not with landslide majorities, but with fifty one percent of the popular vote. And we have the twenty sixteen election where Donald Trump wins by seventy seven thousand votes three states, and twenty twenty where Joe Biden wins by forty four thousand votes in three states, wider popular vote margins, but the electoral college was very close. And for Democrats who think that's unfair, you guys knew in advance that the electoral college determines the winner. I don't think you can claim that you weren't under that impression.

Well, I think we are, and I think in some ways many of us are sort of dismayed by the personal character and operating practices of the current president and the one immediately before him, both of whom seemed to be on their way to renomination by their parties. But you know, looking at the longer run of American history, landslides were unusual. If you look at the nineteenth century and go really up to the nineteen twenties, you basically see nobody's getting more than fifty six popular vote for president fifty six percent, as tops Andrew Jackson in eighteen thirty two Ulysses S. Grant in eighteen seventy two. You don't get those supermajorities. I think one of the things you've got supermajorities out of two things in the first half of the twentieth century when one party support collapse because they really seem to be incompetent. We're familiar with the Republican Party seeming to collapse with the Great Depression of producing policies which it seemed to have no solution for. And you get the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in nineteen thirty two, the huge Democratic majorities in Congress and so forth. That was presage, however, only a dozen years before, by a collapse of the Democratic Party with Woodrow Wilson. When you have inflation and huge economic shut down, when you have a world war whose solution turns sour, and indeed there's still wars going on in various parts of the world, when you're having chaos, and Warren G. Harding for the Republican Party says, I'm a candidate for return to normalcy, a return away from these progressive mantras and this disorder in the world. And he wins the election by a popular vote majority of sixty to thirty four percent over James M. Cox, a man who later became a billionaire and one of whose daughters is still alive today, worth multiple billions of dollars. So Cox was not an idiot, but he was defeated very badly, so that was a repudiation. Second half of the twentieth century, you get an electorate that lived through depression, an electorate that lived through war, and they were ready to reward an incumbent president who seemed to produce peace, who seemed to produce prosperity. So you get Dwight Eyesenower fifty seven percent and fifty six, Lyndon Johnson sixty four percent for president in sixty four, Nixon sixty one percent and sixty four Nixon sixty one percent in nineteen seventy two, and the last one Ronald Reagan eighty four fifty nine percent. Down just a little bit. But Reagan also partakes of that era. He's a World War two veteran, though not in a combat post. He was an adult that in his thirties. He is a person who made his living in the universal media of radio, movies, and television, where you had popular culture that appeal to a universal audience, to universal values, which created a sense of americanness. And he partook of this, I think personally as well as part of his professional performances, and so he was able to rally fifty nine percent. No one else has come close. President hw Bush, with a slight decline turnout in eighty eight, gets fifty three point four percent. Barack Obama is the next highest at fifty two point six. They both round off to fifty three, but Obama's actually a little behind Bush in that regard, and we don't see it. You know, we've had these exceedingly close elections in two thousand, close election in two thousand and four. In twenty twelve, incumbent presidents reelected not with landslide majorities, but with fifty one percent of the popular vote. And we have the twenty sixteen election where Donald Trump wins by seventy seven thousand votes three states, and twenty twenty where Joe Biden wins by forty four thousand votes in three states, wider popular vote margins, but the electoral college was very close. And for Democrats who think that's unfair, you guys knew in advance that the electoral college determines the winner. I don't think you can claim that you weren't under that impression.

So you really have an expectation that if we end up back with Biden and Trump, which I think is pretty likely this could easily come down to the wire again.

So you really have an expectation that if we end up back with Biden and Trump, which I think is pretty likely this could easily come down to the wire again.

Well, I think it could easily come down to the wire again. But you look at President Biden's job rating and it's pretty dismal. But if you look at their feelings towards President Trump, many of those are pretty dismal as well, and he's unacceptable to a variety of people that might embrace another Republican nominee. President Biden at eighty currently at eighty one years old, seems to be missing more steps than his ideal and a presidential candidate, those personality factors could result in that. I mean, if you want to look at it from an optimistic point of view for a Republican newt and sometimes I know you like to do that, you could say, well, we've seen the bottom fall out on the border, We're seeing the bottom falling out in the Middle East. In this kind of disorder, maybe we'll see something like the collapse of the Democratic Party in not twenty twenty, or the collapse of the Republican Party in nineteen thirty two. If we do see that, I guess I could write an article about it afterwards, explaining why it happened. I think it's unlikely to happen because I think that people have too strong an attachment to or aversion from these two individuals and from their parties. This in many ways, it looks like the nineteenth century. It looks like, to go back to my mental maps of the founders, it looks something like the seventeen nineties. I mean popular vote worked in different ways there. But you see, even with the leadership of George Washington, president elected unanimously in which everybody professed to have confidence, and he has two exceedingly competent, almost preternaturally competent cabinet ministers, the Secretary of Stave Thomas Jefferson, the Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, they have conflicting policies and they create even though they all say that they have horror political parties, they get busy and create political parties that come and go in terms of which party has the majority or the effective majority in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, you have a touch and go situation with people threatening disunion and they're battling severe and important public policy decisions in which you can understand how people can take opposing views the question of the National Bank and of finance and how you set up an economic system. Are you looking forward to an agricultural country, You're looking forward to a commercial country. And in foreign policy, you have from seventeen ninety three on a world war between revolutionary France and royalist and mercantile Britain, America's leading trade partners. So it's natural that some of the Americans are going to favor as Hamilton did the British, and some are going to favor as Jefferson did the French. And that's a pretty serious thing to disagree about.

Well, I think it could easily come down to the wire again. But you look at President Biden's job rating and it's pretty dismal. But if you look at their feelings towards President Trump, many of those are pretty dismal as well, and he's unacceptable to a variety of people that might embrace another Republican nominee. President Biden at eighty currently at eighty one years old, seems to be missing more steps than his ideal and a presidential candidate, those personality factors could result in that. I mean, if you want to look at it from an optimistic point of view for a Republican newt and sometimes I know you like to do that, you could say, well, we've seen the bottom fall out on the border, We're seeing the bottom falling out in the Middle East. In this kind of disorder, maybe we'll see something like the collapse of the Democratic Party in not twenty twenty, or the collapse of the Republican Party in nineteen thirty two. If we do see that, I guess I could write an article about it afterwards, explaining why it happened. I think it's unlikely to happen because I think that people have too strong an attachment to or aversion from these two individuals and from their parties. This in many ways, it looks like the nineteenth century. It looks like, to go back to my mental maps of the founders, it looks something like the seventeen nineties. I mean popular vote worked in different ways there. But you see, even with the leadership of George Washington, president elected unanimously in which everybody professed to have confidence, and he has two exceedingly competent, almost preternaturally competent cabinet ministers, the Secretary of Stave Thomas Jefferson, the Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, they have conflicting policies and they create even though they all say that they have horror political parties, they get busy and create political parties that come and go in terms of which party has the majority or the effective majority in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, you have a touch and go situation with people threatening disunion and they're battling severe and important public policy decisions in which you can understand how people can take opposing views the question of the National Bank and of finance and how you set up an economic system. Are you looking forward to an agricultural country, You're looking forward to a commercial country. And in foreign policy, you have from seventeen ninety three on a world war between revolutionary France and royalist and mercantile Britain, America's leading trade partners. So it's natural that some of the Americans are going to favor as Hamilton did the British, and some are going to favor as Jefferson did the French. And that's a pretty serious thing to disagree about.

When you talk about the mental maps, What do you mean by that?

When you talk about the mental maps, What do you mean by that?

Well, I think we all have certain amount of mental maps. They tell us which exit at the Beltway to take off to get home. They tell us which way is the most convenient way to walk to the corner grocery store, if there is a corner grocery store. We have maps in our minds. You know. I had been reading so much about the Founding Fathers, in wonderful books published by you know, written by academics and non academics over the last twenty five or thirty years. I want to learn more. And as my friend, the great reporter, Reagan biographer Luke Cannon once told me, if you want to really learn about a subject, write a book about it. And I thought, what can I contribute? I haven't done archival research, building on the shoulders of others. And I thought, well, I've always been a map buff In writing that Almanac of American Politics, I have a map in my mind of four hundred and thirty five congressional districts, and I know my way around them pretty well. I've been to all four hundred and thirty five districts. I know the political leadings of them all. So I thought, what were the mental maps of the founders? Let me give you one example that I think illustrates that and how it worked out. In policy. You have one point where Alexander Hamilton is talking about the new Nation, and he says, if you look at the new nation, you look, and you on your left hand, you have New England with the shipbuilders, and they have these forests and they build ships and they travel all over the world. On your right hand, you have South Carolina and Virginia. They're producing continent tobacco and comets and things, and they need the ship building and and so forth and so on. Where is he standing when he says New England is on your left and south Carolinas, and you're right. He's standing looking over the Atlantic Ocean. Alexander's Hamilton's metal maps, where those invisible lines of those voyages across the sea between the Great Commercial Lakes. When he's writing treatises about the national banks, he makes references to Amsterdam, to Hamburg, to the great ports and the continents of Europe, the republic Hanseatic Republics, and the city states of Italy, the Great Treaty. He'd learned this in Saint Croix, that miserable Sugary with ninety percent of the people Enslave, where he grew up in horrifying circumstances, where at age seventeen, he's given the owners of this firm that had hired him to be a clerk, say well, we're going to New York for medical care. You take over. And Alexander Hamilton at seventeen is canceling voyages, ordering captains to go somewhere else, trading in multiple currencies, dealing with people in three or four languages, and so forth. Those are his mental maps. He leaves there and goes to New York, never goes back. To the Caribbean, hate slavery, for abolition of slavery, but he sees his mental map is saying, how is the United States to be set up to take part in this commerce and to enrich ourselves and become a participating and full member of these commercial societies. Thomas Jefferson one book that he published, Notes on Virginia. It contains in the frontis piece and an adapted version of a map made in seventeen fifty one by two surveyors called Joshua Fry and Peter Jeffers. Peter Jefferson was Thomas Jefferson's father. He was eight years old and this map was published. It includes not just Virginia, which included then what is now West Virginia and Kentucky, but also much of Pennsylvania, the Ohio River Valley. It goes west to the Mississippi River, and in Notes on Virginia, Jefferson talks about all these topics about the flora and fauna, and this is that he talks about slavery uncomfortably three different locations in the book. But he goes back. He tells you he crosses the Mississippi River and tells you how wide and big the Missouri River is, which isn't even in the United States in the seventeen eighties. When he's writing, he tells you how many miles it is from Santa Fe to Mexico City. He gets that pretty much close to right. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure any of us wants to take that trip to day on a car. But the fact is that he's thinking westward. The Peter Jefferson Thomas frigbook doesn't contain any of New England. It doesn't contain the seaboard. Jefferson's writing about Virginia, which has ports, but he doesn't say much about it. It's passed right over. Jefferson's vision is west. Jefferson's vision is a vision of republic that's going to be filled with the yeoman farmers who are also going to be deferential to their superior Thomas Jefferson living on his beautiful mansion on the top of the little mountain Monticello, which he built and rebuilt several times over the course of his lifetime. He was a construction guy's dream because he is always changing his house. But those were the differences. So Hamilton wants a national bank. Hamilton wants a currency that's going to work as a commercial enterprise. Hamilton wants to have a manufacturing economy developing in the United States. Hamilton wants a big navy to protect the United States and protect commerce all over the world. Jefferson wants to go west. He claims that the Constitution limits his powers greatly. But when the French foreign minister tally Ran said to his odd voice, Napoleon wants to say, you the whole huge territory of Louisiana, Jefferson says, gee, I'm not sure that's constitutional, but you know what, we're going to do it. And he doesn't have too many doubts about that, And in fact, he also sends the navy that Hamilton the Federalists helped the build to get rid of the Barbary pirates in North Africa, Muslim terrorists of their times. So consequently their visions sometimes blended. Even though they were terrific political opponents, Jefferson and Madison were not at all downcast when they heard that Hamilton had been killed in a duel. They were not friends, even though they'd been colleagues. But the mental maps were different, and those had consequences, and I think the one that I would give to you, that I think in some ways is to me. The sort of discovery I had was George Washington. We know George Washington was from Virginia. He was a planter, He had owned slaves, ultimately married his wife in seventeen fifty nine, owns some two hundred or more slaves. But his vision was toward non slave territory. Remember he's a young man who is not inheriting a whole lot of money. He's the second son of a second marriage and father dies when he's eleven years old. He's living on the land of a man named Lord Fairfax, the only British nobleman in North America. Lord Fairfax owns everything as a result of a lawsuit in London between the Rappahannic and Potomac rivers from Chesapeake Bay to the source of the rivers in the Appalachian Chain. He hires, among others, the seventeen year old George Washington as a surveyor. So George Washington's going over the mountains and surveying. He's making money for Lord Fairfax. He makes one hundred and twenty five pounds one year, buys property in the Shenandoah Valley. When he's eighteen, he's looking north by northwest, he's looking. And then he's hired by the Virginia legislature when they're worried about the French coming against the British, and the French coming to the forks of the Ohio or the Alleghany and the Monongahela rivers formo the site of course of Pittsburgh today. They send George Washington up there at age twenty one or thereabouts to warn the French to get the heck out of there. He's not entirely successful in this regard, but he begins to know the territory. He gets within fifteen miles into the Lake Erie, which is a long way to drive from Washington today. Try it in October when the ice is starting to form on the Alleghany River. He knows this territory to the south, and he always sees the Potomac River as the great avenue inland across the Appalachian Chain to the vast interior of America, where he buys fifty thousand acres. He accumulates this vast amount of land. He sees this. He notes when he's going through towards what becomes Pittsburgh. He says, they have a very good quality of coal here. He's foreseeing something like the Industrial Revolution coming through to what becomes, you know, the arsenal of democracy in World War Two. It's the arsenal of the Union in the Civil War in eighteen sixty one, when Pittsburgh is producing the steel that helps the Union defeat the Confederacy. So Washington's view was this, and it's sealed. I think by what he does in his private as well as his public life and public life, he's Cincinnatus. He resigns his commission as Commander in Chief and goes back to his farm. He declines to run for a third term in the presidency when he easily could have been elected, goes back to private life as a private citizen, relinquishes power, sets an important precedent. The other thing he's doing at Mount Vernon in the seventeen ninety nine he's writing out in his quill pennel will in which, following what Virginia law was at that time, he frees his slave and provides for their sustenance and support for the rest of their lives. I think he's trying to set a precedent there as well what he sees as the proper way for an America to develop. He does not like the high slavery societies and his trips as president. He likes New England a lot. He doesn't like the Carolinas very much. And I think in that way, George Washington's mental map tells us something about him and tells us something about what he thought was the desirable way for our country to grow.

Well, I think we all have certain amount of mental maps. They tell us which exit at the Beltway to take off to get home. They tell us which way is the most convenient way to walk to the corner grocery store, if there is a corner grocery store. We have maps in our minds. You know. I had been reading so much about the Founding Fathers, in wonderful books published by you know, written by academics and non academics over the last twenty five or thirty years. I want to learn more. And as my friend, the great reporter, Reagan biographer Luke Cannon once told me, if you want to really learn about a subject, write a book about it. And I thought, what can I contribute? I haven't done archival research, building on the shoulders of others. And I thought, well, I've always been a map buff In writing that Almanac of American Politics, I have a map in my mind of four hundred and thirty five congressional districts, and I know my way around them pretty well. I've been to all four hundred and thirty five districts. I know the political leadings of them all. So I thought, what were the mental maps of the founders? Let me give you one example that I think illustrates that and how it worked out. In policy. You have one point where Alexander Hamilton is talking about the new Nation, and he says, if you look at the new nation, you look, and you on your left hand, you have New England with the shipbuilders, and they have these forests and they build ships and they travel all over the world. On your right hand, you have South Carolina and Virginia. They're producing continent tobacco and comets and things, and they need the ship building and and so forth and so on. Where is he standing when he says New England is on your left and south Carolinas, and you're right. He's standing looking over the Atlantic Ocean. Alexander's Hamilton's metal maps, where those invisible lines of those voyages across the sea between the Great Commercial Lakes. When he's writing treatises about the national banks, he makes references to Amsterdam, to Hamburg, to the great ports and the continents of Europe, the republic Hanseatic Republics, and the city states of Italy, the Great Treaty. He'd learned this in Saint Croix, that miserable Sugary with ninety percent of the people Enslave, where he grew up in horrifying circumstances, where at age seventeen, he's given the owners of this firm that had hired him to be a clerk, say well, we're going to New York for medical care. You take over. And Alexander Hamilton at seventeen is canceling voyages, ordering captains to go somewhere else, trading in multiple currencies, dealing with people in three or four languages, and so forth. Those are his mental maps. He leaves there and goes to New York, never goes back. To the Caribbean, hate slavery, for abolition of slavery, but he sees his mental map is saying, how is the United States to be set up to take part in this commerce and to enrich ourselves and become a participating and full member of these commercial societies. Thomas Jefferson one book that he published, Notes on Virginia. It contains in the frontis piece and an adapted version of a map made in seventeen fifty one by two surveyors called Joshua Fry and Peter Jeffers. Peter Jefferson was Thomas Jefferson's father. He was eight years old and this map was published. It includes not just Virginia, which included then what is now West Virginia and Kentucky, but also much of Pennsylvania, the Ohio River Valley. It goes west to the Mississippi River, and in Notes on Virginia, Jefferson talks about all these topics about the flora and fauna, and this is that he talks about slavery uncomfortably three different locations in the book. But he goes back. He tells you he crosses the Mississippi River and tells you how wide and big the Missouri River is, which isn't even in the United States in the seventeen eighties. When he's writing, he tells you how many miles it is from Santa Fe to Mexico City. He gets that pretty much close to right. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure any of us wants to take that trip to day on a car. But the fact is that he's thinking westward. The Peter Jefferson Thomas frigbook doesn't contain any of New England. It doesn't contain the seaboard. Jefferson's writing about Virginia, which has ports, but he doesn't say much about it. It's passed right over. Jefferson's vision is west. Jefferson's vision is a vision of republic that's going to be filled with the yeoman farmers who are also going to be deferential to their superior Thomas Jefferson living on his beautiful mansion on the top of the little mountain Monticello, which he built and rebuilt several times over the course of his lifetime. He was a construction guy's dream because he is always changing his house. But those were the differences. So Hamilton wants a national bank. Hamilton wants a currency that's going to work as a commercial enterprise. Hamilton wants to have a manufacturing economy developing in the United States. Hamilton wants a big navy to protect the United States and protect commerce all over the world. Jefferson wants to go west. He claims that the Constitution limits his powers greatly. But when the French foreign minister tally Ran said to his odd voice, Napoleon wants to say, you the whole huge territory of Louisiana, Jefferson says, gee, I'm not sure that's constitutional, but you know what, we're going to do it. And he doesn't have too many doubts about that, And in fact, he also sends the navy that Hamilton the Federalists helped the build to get rid of the Barbary pirates in North Africa, Muslim terrorists of their times. So consequently their visions sometimes blended. Even though they were terrific political opponents, Jefferson and Madison were not at all downcast when they heard that Hamilton had been killed in a duel. They were not friends, even though they'd been colleagues. But the mental maps were different, and those had consequences, and I think the one that I would give to you, that I think in some ways is to me. The sort of discovery I had was George Washington. We know George Washington was from Virginia. He was a planter, He had owned slaves, ultimately married his wife in seventeen fifty nine, owns some two hundred or more slaves. But his vision was toward non slave territory. Remember he's a young man who is not inheriting a whole lot of money. He's the second son of a second marriage and father dies when he's eleven years old. He's living on the land of a man named Lord Fairfax, the only British nobleman in North America. Lord Fairfax owns everything as a result of a lawsuit in London between the Rappahannic and Potomac rivers from Chesapeake Bay to the source of the rivers in the Appalachian Chain. He hires, among others, the seventeen year old George Washington as a surveyor. So George Washington's going over the mountains and surveying. He's making money for Lord Fairfax. He makes one hundred and twenty five pounds one year, buys property in the Shenandoah Valley. When he's eighteen, he's looking north by northwest, he's looking. And then he's hired by the Virginia legislature when they're worried about the French coming against the British, and the French coming to the forks of the Ohio or the Alleghany and the Monongahela rivers formo the site of course of Pittsburgh today. They send George Washington up there at age twenty one or thereabouts to warn the French to get the heck out of there. He's not entirely successful in this regard, but he begins to know the territory. He gets within fifteen miles into the Lake Erie, which is a long way to drive from Washington today. Try it in October when the ice is starting to form on the Alleghany River. He knows this territory to the south, and he always sees the Potomac River as the great avenue inland across the Appalachian Chain to the vast interior of America, where he buys fifty thousand acres. He accumulates this vast amount of land. He sees this. He notes when he's going through towards what becomes Pittsburgh. He says, they have a very good quality of coal here. He's foreseeing something like the Industrial Revolution coming through to what becomes, you know, the arsenal of democracy in World War Two. It's the arsenal of the Union in the Civil War in eighteen sixty one, when Pittsburgh is producing the steel that helps the Union defeat the Confederacy. So Washington's view was this, and it's sealed. I think by what he does in his private as well as his public life and public life, he's Cincinnatus. He resigns his commission as Commander in Chief and goes back to his farm. He declines to run for a third term in the presidency when he easily could have been elected, goes back to private life as a private citizen, relinquishes power, sets an important precedent. The other thing he's doing at Mount Vernon in the seventeen ninety nine he's writing out in his quill pennel will in which, following what Virginia law was at that time, he frees his slave and provides for their sustenance and support for the rest of their lives. I think he's trying to set a precedent there as well what he sees as the proper way for an America to develop. He does not like the high slavery societies and his trips as president. He likes New England a lot. He doesn't like the Carolinas very much. And I think in that way, George Washington's mental map tells us something about him and tells us something about what he thought was the desirable way for our country to grow.

I have to say in passing, when you talk about Jefferson, I've always been impressed the Jefferson, who is clearly in his own mind and an aristocrat, is the leading advocate of small farmer populism. He's one of the greatest politicians in American history.

I have to say in passing, when you talk about Jefferson, I've always been impressed the Jefferson, who is clearly in his own mind and an aristocrat, is the leading advocate of small farmer populism. He's one of the greatest politicians in American history.

Well he is, and he's certainly kind of assuming that the small farmers are going to be deferential to him, which in fact was mostly his experience. When things went badly for him politically, he would retire back to Monticello, tear down the house he had built before and start building a new one, and so forth. There was more beautiful than the old one. And it's very impractical. I mean, you had to carry water up from the river up to the top of the hill, and if you've gone to Monticello lately, it's a zigzag drive. I mean, it can't have been easy for the slaves who had to do this work to bring all the water up there. In any case, Yeah, Jefferson exerted power softly. It was fascinating. He opposes Washington on many things. He writes a few lines about how people who've been Samson's in the field have been shorn and so forth after his retirement as Secretary of State, which Washington takes as a personal comment on Washington and never speaks to him again, after they've been intimates for many years of exchange, farming, comments, and so forth. When he becomes president, he uses the navy that Washington and Hamilton had built to form against the Barbary pirates. He uses the National Bank, which he had opposed, to finance the Louisiana purchase. He suppresses his qualms. He uses Washington's method of requiring written communications constantly from his subordinates. Article two of the Constitutions says all executive power will being a president. Both Washington and Jefferson made sure that their subordinates were doing what he wanted them to do, and keeping track of every step, so he worked hard. In Jefferson's case, he used charm. He hated confrontation personally, he had charm. He could talk about a million subjects, and he cultivated this from the time he was at William and Mary. He spent time with his favorite teacher, William Small, with the governor of Virginia, Francis fock Here, and George with the great constitutional scholar of colonial and then early Republican Virginia. These older men would include Jomas Jefferson at their table. He was charming enough that he got continual dinner invitations and regaling them with his natural history discoveries and things. Even while he was working very hard in studying and so forth. He was charming people. And he does this charm as president. He invites people to dinner. He doesn't go up on Capitol Hill. He doesn't appear publicly. He doesn't make public speeches after his inaugural which oh, nobody can really hear very well. They read the written report, but they invited to dinner. He wears bedroom slippers and old clothes. He's sort of imitating what his predecessor in Paris, Benjamin Franklin, did, which is dressed in informally so put. Everybody kind of be the exotic American, the exotic farmer, frontiersman wearing his slippers to dinner. And he's got fine French wines. He spent a fortune on importing French wine by hundreds of cases. He reveals them with all this talk. He assembles them his own party. He assembles by groups, each one living in their own boarding house. Because the boarding house groups were little cliques of the opposition members whom he also invites. He invites different ones from different boarding houses. He's trying to split them up, and he kind of lets them know offhandedly, without really talking politics much, what he wants and he gets it. In the historian Forrest MacDonald, he says Jefferson was the first six years of his presidency by sort of quiet control. He gets everything he wants from Congress. They do his will without even being asked to do so. Molliant, He says, what Jefferson liked to do was he liked to arrange people's lives. He was helpful, he was a mallient. He would solve their problems. Manicello was designed with these small rooms up above. Many mostly women, were there and so forth. He said he would solve their problems, he would arrange their life in every way. He only asked one thing in return, total adoration, and he got it.

Well he is, and he's certainly kind of assuming that the small farmers are going to be deferential to him, which in fact was mostly his experience. When things went badly for him politically, he would retire back to Monticello, tear down the house he had built before and start building a new one, and so forth. There was more beautiful than the old one. And it's very impractical. I mean, you had to carry water up from the river up to the top of the hill, and if you've gone to Monticello lately, it's a zigzag drive. I mean, it can't have been easy for the slaves who had to do this work to bring all the water up there. In any case, Yeah, Jefferson exerted power softly. It was fascinating. He opposes Washington on many things. He writes a few lines about how people who've been Samson's in the field have been shorn and so forth after his retirement as Secretary of State, which Washington takes as a personal comment on Washington and never speaks to him again, after they've been intimates for many years of exchange, farming, comments, and so forth. When he becomes president, he uses the navy that Washington and Hamilton had built to form against the Barbary pirates. He uses the National Bank, which he had opposed, to finance the Louisiana purchase. He suppresses his qualms. He uses Washington's method of requiring written communications constantly from his subordinates. Article two of the Constitutions says all executive power will being a president. Both Washington and Jefferson made sure that their subordinates were doing what he wanted them to do, and keeping track of every step, so he worked hard. In Jefferson's case, he used charm. He hated confrontation personally, he had charm. He could talk about a million subjects, and he cultivated this from the time he was at William and Mary. He spent time with his favorite teacher, William Small, with the governor of Virginia, Francis fock Here, and George with the great constitutional scholar of colonial and then early Republican Virginia. These older men would include Jomas Jefferson at their table. He was charming enough that he got continual dinner invitations and regaling them with his natural history discoveries and things. Even while he was working very hard in studying and so forth. He was charming people. And he does this charm as president. He invites people to dinner. He doesn't go up on Capitol Hill. He doesn't appear publicly. He doesn't make public speeches after his inaugural which oh, nobody can really hear very well. They read the written report, but they invited to dinner. He wears bedroom slippers and old clothes. He's sort of imitating what his predecessor in Paris, Benjamin Franklin, did, which is dressed in informally so put. Everybody kind of be the exotic American, the exotic farmer, frontiersman wearing his slippers to dinner. And he's got fine French wines. He spent a fortune on importing French wine by hundreds of cases. He reveals them with all this talk. He assembles them his own party. He assembles by groups, each one living in their own boarding house. Because the boarding house groups were little cliques of the opposition members whom he also invites. He invites different ones from different boarding houses. He's trying to split them up, and he kind of lets them know offhandedly, without really talking politics much, what he wants and he gets it. In the historian Forrest MacDonald, he says Jefferson was the first six years of his presidency by sort of quiet control. He gets everything he wants from Congress. They do his will without even being asked to do so. Molliant, He says, what Jefferson liked to do was he liked to arrange people's lives. He was helpful, he was a mallient. He would solve their problems. Manicello was designed with these small rooms up above. Many mostly women, were there and so forth. He said he would solve their problems, he would arrange their life in every way. He only asked one thing in return, total adoration, and he got it.

It's a great line. Let me ask you about one thing which did surprise me. You include Albert Gallaton, who, of course was an extraordinary sect of the Treasury. But why was he one of the six?

It's a great line. Let me ask you about one thing which did surprise me. You include Albert Gallaton, who, of course was an extraordinary sect of the Treasury. But why was he one of the six?

I got interested in Gallaton, and I think in part because of the maps one of the things that Albert Gallatin did for Jefferson. In many ways, Gallaton was sort of figure in Congress. He joins Madison and Jefferson in opposing Hamilton's financial measures. That is, Secretary of the Treasury. He kind of uses them to put through and he sees that they're useful, and he sees that Hamilton was not corrump, but was efficient, and he tells Jefferson that, which is not what Jefferson wants to hear. He's the one that kind of links the two parties programs more than anybody else. But Jefferson says, we've got to do something about tying this country together. And Gallatin they pass a resolution in the Senate. Gallaton issues a report in eighteen oh seven, when the government's going to run out of money because Jefferson's embargo of trade cuts off the tariff money, which is the main financing of the government. But he provides a transportation plan for a series of canals and roads through the Appalachian Mountains, foreseeing something like the Erie Canal, seeing canals avoiding the falls. There's the falls of the Ohio River at Louisville, which he circles around. In other places, navigation on the Mississippi River. He foreshadows twentieth century things, the Inner Coastal Waterway US one and I ninety five. He wants to talk about from Maine to Georgia and so forth. He had a vision of the country that goes westward, but also that ties it together in various specific ways. This is never entirely built. The one part that's most built is the National Road, which follows to some extent Washington's trip over the canal. You can take it if you follow I seventy in US forty these days through western Maryland, in West Virginia and then into Pennsylvania. You can follow that. It's I seventy in US forty. So that's why I included Gallatin He goes on to live till eighteen forty nine. He really is the negotiator who holds together the group of negotiators including John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay in the Treaty of Ghent, after which is the treaty that ends the War of eighteen twelve. But he uses his connection with a man named Alexander Baring, London banker Bearing brothers. He sends letters to Bearing, and Bearing says, well, the British cabinet actually is probably willing to settle for this and that for much less than they're asking for now, because the Duke of Wellington was offered a command in North America and he said he wanted no part of it, and it seemed like a bad enterprise. So we're going to settle. So he used his contact with the British banker. So he's part of international finance. It's kind of an interesting segu He ends up in his seventies. His late seventies, he compiles a dictionary of American Indian languages. I mean, how can you not like a guy does things like that.

I got interested in Gallaton, and I think in part because of the maps one of the things that Albert Gallatin did for Jefferson. In many ways, Gallaton was sort of figure in Congress. He joins Madison and Jefferson in opposing Hamilton's financial measures. That is, Secretary of the Treasury. He kind of uses them to put through and he sees that they're useful, and he sees that Hamilton was not corrump, but was efficient, and he tells Jefferson that, which is not what Jefferson wants to hear. He's the one that kind of links the two parties programs more than anybody else. But Jefferson says, we've got to do something about tying this country together. And Gallatin they pass a resolution in the Senate. Gallaton issues a report in eighteen oh seven, when the government's going to run out of money because Jefferson's embargo of trade cuts off the tariff money, which is the main financing of the government. But he provides a transportation plan for a series of canals and roads through the Appalachian Mountains, foreseeing something like the Erie Canal, seeing canals avoiding the falls. There's the falls of the Ohio River at Louisville, which he circles around. In other places, navigation on the Mississippi River. He foreshadows twentieth century things, the Inner Coastal Waterway US one and I ninety five. He wants to talk about from Maine to Georgia and so forth. He had a vision of the country that goes westward, but also that ties it together in various specific ways. This is never entirely built. The one part that's most built is the National Road, which follows to some extent Washington's trip over the canal. You can take it if you follow I seventy in US forty these days through western Maryland, in West Virginia and then into Pennsylvania. You can follow that. It's I seventy in US forty. So that's why I included Gallatin He goes on to live till eighteen forty nine. He really is the negotiator who holds together the group of negotiators including John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay in the Treaty of Ghent, after which is the treaty that ends the War of eighteen twelve. But he uses his connection with a man named Alexander Baring, London banker Bearing brothers. He sends letters to Bearing, and Bearing says, well, the British cabinet actually is probably willing to settle for this and that for much less than they're asking for now, because the Duke of Wellington was offered a command in North America and he said he wanted no part of it, and it seemed like a bad enterprise. So we're going to settle. So he used his contact with the British banker. So he's part of international finance. It's kind of an interesting segu He ends up in his seventies. His late seventies, he compiles a dictionary of American Indian languages. I mean, how can you not like a guy does things like that.

Michael, want to thank you for joining me. You bring back many fond memories of conversations over four decades. I want to remind our listeners the year new book Mental Maps of the Founders, How Geographic Imagination Guide in America's Revolutionary Leaders is available on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere. As always, having a chance to listen to you and to learn from you is a remarkable experience.

Michael, want to thank you for joining me. You bring back many fond memories of conversations over four decades. I want to remind our listeners the year new book Mental Maps of the Founders, How Geographic Imagination Guide in America's Revolutionary Leaders is available on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere. As always, having a chance to listen to you and to learn from you is a remarkable experience.

Well, thank you very much, Nude. I've been listening to you and learning from you for forty some years and it's a pleasure to do so here on this podcast.

Well, thank you very much, Nude. I've been listening to you and learning from you for forty some years and it's a pleasure to do so here on this podcast.

Thank you to my guest Michael Baron. You can learn more about his new book, Mental Maps of the Founders on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is produced by Gagish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guernsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Ganglish three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of newt World can sign up from my three free weekly columns at Gangwishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich See his newtalkh

Thank you to my guest Michael Baron. You can learn more about his new book, Mental Maps of the Founders on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is produced by Gagish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guernsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Ganglish three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of newt World can sign up from my three free weekly columns at Gangwishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich See his newtalkh