#115 Ben Franklin: An American Life

**David Senra** (0:00)
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Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us. George Washington was the austere general. Jefferson and Adams were intimidating. But Ben Franklin, that ambitious urban entrepreneur, seems made of flesh rather than of marble. He speaks to us through his letters and autobiography, not with rhetoric, but with a chattiness and clever irony that is very contemporary. We see his reflection in our own time. He was, during his 84 years, America's best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist. He proved by flying a kite that lightning was electricity and he invented a rod to tame it. He devised bifocal glasses and clean-burning stoves, charts of the Gulf Stream, and theories about the contagious nature of the common cold. He launched various civic improvement schemes, such as a lending library, college, volunteer fire corps, insurance association, and a matching grant fundraiser. He helped invent America's unique style of homespun humor and philosophical pragmatism. And in politics, he proposed seminal plans for uniting the colonies and creating a federal model for a national government. But the most interesting thing that Franklin invented and continually reinvented was himself. America's first great publicist, he was, in his life and in his writings, consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity. Partly, it was a matter of image. As a young printer in Philadelphia, he carted rolls of paper through the streets to give the appearance of being industrious. As an old diplomat in France, he wore a fur cap to portray the role of backwood sage. In between, he created an image for himself as a simple yet striving tradesman, assiduously honing the virtues of diligence, frugality, honesty, of a good shopkeeper, and a beneficial member of his community. But the image he created was rooted in reality. Born and bred a member of the Leather and Apron class, Franklin was more comfortable with the artisans and thinkers than with the established elite. And he was allergic to the pumps and perks of a hereditary aristocracy. Throughout his life, he would refer to himself as B. Franklin, printer.
The complex interplay among various facets of Franklin's character, his ingenuity and unreflective wisdom, his Protestant ethic divorced from dogma, the principles he held firm and those he was willing to compromise, means that each new look at him reflects and refracts the nation's changing values.
He has been vilified in romantic periods and lionized in entrepreneurial ones.
Each era appraises him anew and in doing so reveals some assessment of itself.
Whatever view one takes, it is useful to engage anew with Franklin. For in doing so, we are grappling with a fundamental issue. How does one live a life that is useful, virtuous, worthy, and spiritually meaningful?
That is an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Ben Franklin, An American Life by Walter Isaacson.
Okay, so I want to start telling you about Benjamin Franklin's personality. So I pulled out a bunch of quotes that are spread throughout the book. This is the third biography I've read of Isaacson. It's impossible for him to write a short book, so this is going to be very different. Back on Founders No. 62, I covered the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. That's a quick read.
This one is much more detailed. So if you're a long time listener to the podcast, you already know that because back on Founders No. 5, I covered Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs. That's a very long, long book.