David Swenson: 00:00 Good day, citizens and welcome to this podcast edition of the Thomas Jefferson Hour.

Clay S. Jenkinson: 00:05 It feels like we're, like, we're some pivotal place now. People keep coming to visit and this time Mr Beau Wright.

DS: 00:14 I don't know how much we really want to encourage that, but uh.

CSJ: 00:19 Well Beau Wright came.

DS: 00:19 Beau can come any time.

CSJ: 00:20 He lives in Lynchburg. He's been an occasional correspondent on the Thomas Jefferson Hour. People that are, are avid listeners will remember him. He's a young idealist who worked in the Obama Administration.

DS: 00:29 Self-described progressive.

CSJ: 00:30 Now he's on the city commission in Lynchburg. We have him on not because he's a progressive, but because he's a fascinating and engaged young man who, who wrote us I think. And that's how the relationship began. He wrote us to say, to ask some question about the difference between the presidency now and the presidency in the time of Jefferson.

DS: 00:48 And that was the beginning of a long and fruitful correspondence and then he just showed up. It was great.

CSJ: 00:55 And I remember when he was first on, we were mostly interested in talking about the size of the White House staff in Jefferson's time. And the size of the White House staff today.

DS: 01:05 But you know, we all have impressions in our head about what it would be like to be there, you know, it goes back to the days of watching the television series, West Wing. And now Madam Secretary, what's it really like in the White House? So here we had a guy who was there and not doing flashy, important, well I'm sure it was important.

CSJ: 01:27 Did lots of the White House budgeting.

DS: 01:28 Towards the end, it all passed through him. But um, but he saw the everyday mundane duties that had to go on at the White House. I guess, can anything be mundane at the White House?

CSJ: 01:41 I don't know, but he said this and I don't think he meant this as a partisan statement, although as you said, he is a young progressive. He's, he's clearly a Democrat and a liberal. But he said that the Obama administration was obsessive about process. That process was everything and that nothing was ever issued to the public without having been vetted many, many times. And that everything was deliberative and that there was a, that Obama was a kind of an administrative genius in that respect and wanted to maintain control of whatever was related to his presidency and to the White House. And then he said, looking from the outside in, that the Trump administration is chaotic by those standards because it doesn't have that kind of clamped down vetting process. And he, I don't know that he was necessarily saying one is great and the other is bad, but he said the contrast could not be more dramatic.

DS: 02:33 It was really fun to see him. Uh, thank him so much for calling and letting us know he was coming in so we could organize time with him.

CSJ: 02:42 Do you ever have, well it's radio, so I'm sure plenty of people listening think, oh, I wonder if I met that person would they look like the person I imagine? So I don't know what you imagined for Beau.

DS: 02:54 I actually, when I, when he first wrote.

CSJ: 02:56 Oh you had looked him up?

DS: 02:57 I did.

CSJ: 02:57 You Googled him?

DS: 02:58 Yeah.

CSJ: 03:00 I didn't know. So he comes in looking like Davy Crockett.

DS: 03:03 Oh, he's a bright young guy.

DS: 03:06 Anyway, let's go to the show and thank you for listening, Clay has one more message.

CSJ: 03:14 Winter tours.

DS: 03:14 I guess I do too.

CSJ: 03:15 Three of them coming, March two through eighth in Monterey. Steinbeck's California.

DS: 03:21 Are you sure they're not full?

CSJ: 03:22 They're not full, I know this.

DS: 03:23 We need to call Nancy.

CSJ: 03:26 And January 13 through 18th, Water and the West. I'm reading, unbelievably fascinating topic. It might sound dull. It's not. It begins with Mark Reisner's great book, Cadillac Desert, and then March 19th through 24th Shakespeare Without Tears, back by popular demand, a second annual seminar. And the number one question people say, is how, is it like really bitterly cold up there? Never. The temperature's like in the thirties and forties.

DS: 03:53 if you go to the website, Jeffersonhour.com, you can find pictures and it's just ideal.

CSJ: 03:57 It's an idyllic winter wonderland. It's not at all.

DS: 04:00 In fact, you can find all the details.

CSJ: 04:01 Anyways. All three of those tours are coming up. There's still a few places in them. I want to fill them right to the, to the max. I get more pleasure out of this than almost anything I do.

DS: 04:12 I know you do. You're really, your excitement is contagious and obvious.

CSJ: 04:16 So do come everyone.

DS: 04:18 And lastly I will just say, I want to thank you so much. Those of you who have decided to support the Thomas Jefferson Hour, also, if you want to join the 1776 Club, you do that and you get access to our vast archives. You could listen for days. Um, and also, uh, Clay's essays, the Jefferson 101 series. So I'll keep it short. Thank you sincerely to those of you who not only listen, but those of you who decide to support the show, we really appreciate it. And with that sir, let's go to the show.

CSJ: 04:49 Thanks Beau.

DS: 04:51 Good day citizens. And welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, your weekly conversation with President Thomas Jefferson and sometimes your weekly conversation with the creator of the Thomas Jefferson Hour, the gentleman seated across from me now, Mr Clay Jenkinson. Good day to you, sir.

CSJ: 05:09 Good day to you. David Swenson, the semi permanent guest host of the Thomas Jefferson Hour. We had a special guest.

DS: 05:15 It's happening with more frequency. I don't know if we should be alarmed or.

CSJ: 05:19 They're coming for us.

DS: 05:21 Listeners are

CSJ: 05:21 Turning up.

DS: 05:23 Yeah.

CSJ: 05:23 North Dakota's the least visited state. So we're,

DS: 05:25 Is it really?

CSJ: 05:26 Yes it is. We're adding a little to the, to the visitation and the Jefferson Hour, you know, people come and say, I'll give you a million dollars to see the barn, but I'm going to publicize it. And we say, no. Just go home. Just go home. That way. You got a blindfold.

DS: 05:40 You know around here nobody,

CSJ: 05:41 No one cares in North Dakota.

DS: 05:44 Right.

CSJ: 05:44 A barn is a barn.

DS: 05:45 But outside of our immediate area that's a.

CSJ: 05:48 Once we hid the antenna in the windmill, people stop kind of wondering what's going on.

DS: 05:55 We should have just got one of those dishes. Everybody would have thought, they're TV.

CSJ: 06:00 Just watching three's company reruns.

DS: 06:01 Back to Beau Wright. We met him two or three years ago.

CSJ: 06:05 He was working in the Obama administration.

DS: 06:07 He wrote us.

CSJ: 06:08 He wrote us, and we called him.

DS: 06:10 And said, you know, it'd be really fun to have a conversation on the air, and it was.

CSJ: 06:14 First of all, he talked about what it was like to work in any presidential administration.

CSJ: 06:18 We contrasted that with Jefferson's where he had one, one man, Meriwether Lewis living in the east room and then when President Obama retired after two terms, Beau helped us think about the transition between the Obama administration and the Trump administration and what he took to be the difference of styles in the way that those White Houses operated, and then from time to time we call them just to kind of get a reality check. He's stationed in Lynchburg, Virginia now.

DS: 06:46 Right, in fact, why don't we, we, we got him to do a, you asked,

CSJ: 06:49 I asked a little background.

DS: 06:50 If you would give us a little biographical background.

CSJ: 06:54 Let's start with that part of our interview with Mr Beau Wright.

CSJ: 06:58 David Swenson, the semi permanent guest host of the Thomas Jefferson Hour is walking to his microphone.

DS: 07:03 Here I am.

CSJ: 07:04 We're in the studio, not the barn, and I point out we have a special guest today.

DS: 07:08 Yes we do.

CSJ: 07:09 And tell us about this because I just walked into the studio. You called me and said, get down here right away.

DS: 07:15 In the past, you know, we've had this great correspondent, our man inside the White House.

CSJ: 07:22 Oh, you're talking about Beau from Virginia.

DS: 07:24 This would be Beau Wright.

CSJ: 07:27 Well welcome to North Dakota sir.

DS: 07:27 Who is, uh, you know, I don't even know the details why you're here.

CSJ: 07:31 Why did you come to North Dakota?

Beau Wright: 07:33 I came to North Dakota because I, initially to visit Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Um, I was down in South Dakota and then I went up to Devil's Tower and after this stop I'll hit the Badlands National Park.

CSJ: 07:46 What possessed you to leave the comfortable environs of Virginia and come out to the West?

BW: 07:52 Uh, it's uh, well I needed a vacation and this seemed as good a place as any.

CSJ: 07:56 But you don't, you don't come from here.

BW: 07:58 No, no, I'm, I'm from southern Virginia.

CSJ: 08:00 So you chose Devil's Tower, Badlands National Park, the National Badlands in South Dakota,

CSJ: 08:07 plus Theodore Roosevelt National Park here. And what have you done so far?

DS: 08:13 and how did you get here?

BW: 08:15 By car.

CSJ: 08:16 You drove the whole way.

BW: 08:17 No, I'm, forgive me. I flew and then I, I've been driving.

CSJ: 08:20 Flew where?

BW: 08:21 I flew to Rapid City.

CSJ: 08:22 Rented a car.

BW: 08:23 I rented a car.

CSJ: 08:23 And not Mount Rushmore.

BW: 08:25 I've done, I did Mount Rushmore. So first I went to Custer State Park.

CSJ: 08:29 One of the best state parks in the country.

BW: 08:33 Incredible.

CSJ: 08:33 You saw Bison?

BW: 08:34 Lots of Bison.

CSJ: 08:34 First time or not?

BW: 08:36 Not my first time.

CSJ: 08:36 Okay. Good.

BW: 08:37 Prairie dogs. A lot of prairie dogs.

CSJ: 08:41 They're not yet hibernating, but close.

BW: 08:42 Yeah. Antelope. Saw a lot of antelope.

CSJ: 08:43 Pronghorn antelope.

BW: 08:44 And then uh, and then I uh, drove up to Mount Rushmore and I did Devil's Tower, followed by Roosevelt National Park. Or You thought about Devil's Tower before in their life.

CSJ: 08:56 How did it hold up to expectation?

BW: 08:58 It was magnificent. I've never seen anything like it. You know, I don't mean to be a cynic, but I was expecting to be underwhelmed, but I, I was massively overwhelmed.

CSJ: 09:10 You expected it not to live up to your idea of what it would be. Why is that? I mean you are a born cynic or you became one in the Obama White House?

DS: 09:19 Easy now.

BW: 09:20 Politics will do that. No, I think. I think I'd seen so many images of it that I was not expecting it to be as dazzling as it is.

CSJ: 09:27 And it's just unbelievable. Massive and vertical and overwhelming.

BW: 09:31 It's breathtaking.

CSJ: 09:33 It really, you didn't climb it of course.

BW: 09:36 Uh, no I didn't.

CSJ: 09:37 But people do. You probably saw them scaling up the side.

DS: 09:39 You can kind of go and climb up the rocks to the edge and even that's pretty fun.

BW: 09:44 Yeah.

CSJ: 09:45 And have you seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

BW: 09:47 It does mean something.

CSJ: 09:50 There is a landing site on. So you go there and you walked around the perimeter and you read the signage and it must've been a magnificent autumn day.

BW: 09:59 It was a lovely day with clear blue skies, crisp, snow on the ground, actually, it was just lovely.

CSJ: 10:04 I don't know if you know this, but you were within a dozen miles of the source of the Little Missouri River.

BW: 10:11 I did not know that.

CSJ: 10:12 Little Missouri begins between Missouri Buttes, which you could have seen in the distance. They're more rounded with the same formation as Devil's Tower and Devil's Tower, and then it winds up through northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana then through part of South Dakota and into North Dakota.

DS: 10:28 I'd like to get more of your impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, the badlands of western North Dakota, which is a place that is really near and dear to both Clay and I. You hadn't been there before?

BW: 10:41 No, I'd never been before.

DS: 10:43 What were, what were your impressions of it?

BW: 10:47 It's stunning. I mean it does seem inhospitable to be clear, but it's.

CSJ: 10:52 What did you do in the North Dakota Badlands?

BW: 10:54 So I went, I went hiking. I did a really wonderful loop yesterday morning, about a five and a half mile loop across the Little Missouri twice, which is very cold, very cold. My feet are still recovering.

CSJ: 11:07 So you had boots that would. You could walk through the river.

BW: 11:10 No I took off, I took off the boots.

CSJ: 11:12 So you're not a local then, yeah.

BW: 11:15 It was very cold.

CSJ: 11:16 So you crossed twice.

BW: 11:17 I crossed twice.

CSJ: 11:18 How deep was it? Was it shin high or knee high?

BW: 11:21 About knee high.

CSJ: 11:23 You weren't scared?

BW: 11:24 No, no, I wasn't. I wasn't terribly scared.

CSJ: 11:26 Some people think, oh, quicksand or I'll drown there.

BW: 11:29 Oh, well I, you know, I suppose it would have been a nice place to go.

BW: 11:31 It's just so beautiful. And then I hiked up to a top of a mesa and walked between prairie dog villages and uh, and then I went to the, um, petrified forest.

DS: 11:42 Oh, that's a great spot.

CSJ: 11:43 That's one of the greatest places.

BW: 11:45 Unbelievable. Just unbelievable to see 55 million year old trees, you know.

CSJ: 11:53 Ancient cypress trees, petrified. Some of them quite large.

BW: 11:58 Huge.

CSJ: 11:58 Twelve, a 12 foot section.

BW: 12:00 And just sitting there on the space of sediment that has been sitting on for, for millions of years.

CSJ: 12:06 I trust you were essentially alone out there.

BW: 12:07 I walked 10 miles yesterday. I didn't see a soul.

CSJ: 12:10 Right.

DS: 12:11 Really?

BW: 12:12 Yeah, it was incredible.

CSJ: 12:13 So you're about to see the other badlands, the big badlands, the national park of South Dakota. You think this was inhospitable. This looks like a five star hotel compared to the Badlands of South Dakota.

DS: 12:25 They're far, far different.

CSJ: 12:26 They're very rugged, very, very little vegetation.

CSJ: 12:28 Very. That's a moonscape down there. It's magnificent, but it's different.

BW: 12:31 Yeah. I'm looking forward to it.

CSJ: 12:32 So you could have gone to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. You could have gone to Yosemite. You could have climbed Mount Whitney and rescued my friend Russ, who I think is up there at this moment while we talk. But you chose this instead.

BW: 12:45 Yeah.

CSJ: 12:46 Why?

BW: 12:46 Well, uh, you know, I've been wanting to, um, to explore the Dakotas. I've been to most states but not the Dakotas. And there is, you know, I think in these especially, and I hate to bring politics into it, but in these partisan times, getting out into nature is one of the most satisfying, I think soul affirming things you can do.

CSJ: 13:07 So give us a potted autobiography. You, you graduated from high school where.

BW: 13:11 Oh, in Lynchburg, Virginia.

CSJ: 13:12 Public School?

BW: 13:14 Public school.

CSJ: 13:15 What university?

BW: 13:18 I went to the College of William and Mary.

CSJ: 13:19 I'm sorry to hear that. You could have gone to so much better of a school. No, I think Jefferson said the Wren building, but for the fact that it had a roof, looks like a brick kiln. So then. And you've worked for the Obama White House and now you're working in this foundation.

BW: 13:38 Correct. Nonprofit.

CSJ: 13:39 Advocacy group.

DS: 13:41 Protect Democracy.

CSJ: 13:41 How much writing do you do?

BW: 13:43 Not, not a lot. I'm the operations director. So my job is to make sure that, uh, that the, uh, the business side of the shop runs well.

CSJ: 13:50 Because that's what you did for Obama too, you were, you were management of the, of the building.

BW: 13:55 I was the finance guy. Yeah.

CSJ: 13:57 Right. So, but I think you should write a book, don't you?

BW: 14:01 Sitting across from probably several published authors. I'm not sure that I.

CSJ: 14:05 You should consider this because you have a point of view, you believe in this country, you're an optimist, but you've seen enough to know that there's no room for fatuous optimism, that there are some real issues that have to get wrestled to the ground here.

BW: 14:18 Huge issues. Yeah. But I'm hopeful. I don't know that the country needs my voice saying, you know, one more voice in the din of all of it. But um, but I am grateful for the Jefferson Hour.

CSJ: 14:32 Now before you go to the Badlands national park, tell us what you think you're going to see and then we'll check it against what you actually see. What's your idea of Badlands National Park?

BW: 14:42 Arid. Lot of buttes. Um, some, you know, interesting hoodoos and other rock formations.

CSJ: 14:50 Good.

BW: 14:52 And uh.

DS: 14:54 That's very accurate. Far less colorful than the North Dakota badlands.

CSJ: 14:57 Gray and slate. Are you camping out or you're staying in motels?

BW: 15:02 I'm staying.

DS: 15:02 It's a little cold.

BW: 15:03 I'm staying at a bed and breakfast.

DS: 15:04 What's your route down there?

BW: 15:05 Uh, I'm not entirely, I think I might be going through, um, through Standing Rock.

DS: 15:14 Yeah, I would definitely, if you, if you're in the area, I would definitely drive through Pine Ridge even though it's a little out of the way. Um, you'll see Wounded Knee if you do that.

BW: 15:26 I do want to see that.

CSJ: 15:26 It's very close, and the stronghold, which is where, where the Lakota were dancing before.

DS: 15:33 Just down the road is Fort Robinson where Crazy Horse.

CSJ: 15:36 This is like a six week vacation now but I think you should go south of Mandan to Fort Yates to Standing Rock through Standing Rock and then you should go through some of the most beautiful country in North America, in northern South Dakota, right on the other, Thunder Butte and the reservation south of the border. And then that will take you to Badlands National Park and then you go from there. I think really, must see for you is Wounded Knee because it's right there and it's one of the most important places in America and it's sort of haunted. It's eerie. It's, it's, it's a really.

DS: 16:13 It's a real bad vibe.

CSJ: 16:14 Yeah, some bad vibes there and then you have to scamper back to Rapid City to fly back to your cushy life.

DS: 16:23 You are listening to the Thomas Jefferson Hour. We're going to take a short break. When we come back, we'll resume our conversation with Mr Beau Wright, and in fact president Jefferson decides to appear.

CSJ: 16:35 I think you asked Jefferson to suit up.

DS: 16:37 I think at the onset Beau was a little overcome by all of that.

CSJ: 16:42 I was too. You know, it's one thing to do this with you, but when you have a distinguished guest and suddenly you make me go into the men's room and get into costume and come, I mean it's like it's a little bit weird because one minute you're talking to me, the next minute you're talking to the third president.

DS: 16