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Mourning the Presidents (Lindsay Chervinsky & Matthew Costello)
Framing Reconstruction (Joan Waugh & Gary Gallagher)
Charlie Brown’s America (Blake Ball)
Petroleum and Progress (Gregory Brew)
Japanese American Incarceration (Stephanie Hinnershitz)
The Third Reconstruction (Peniel Joseph)
Joseph Smith for President (Spencer McBride)
This is the eighth and final episode of Season Three: The Bully Pulpit. This season, we explored many domestic policy issues, such as healthcare, women's suffrage, and land rights. But here in the 21st century, we all know that the president's voice reaches far beyond the borders of the United States. Has it always been this way? And how does the bully pulpit reach audiences abroad?
We invited three scholars to help us understand the many ways presidents have utilized the bully pulpit to speak to the world. We'll begin our conversation with Dr. Jay Sexton, Professor of History at the University of Missouri. Dr. Sexton explains how presidents thought about foreign policy and the bully pulpit in the 19th century, and how that all changed when Teddy Roosevelt took office.
We then move to the presidents of the World War II era with Dr. Kaete O'Connell. A former fellow with us at the SMU Center for Presidential History, Dr. O’Connell is now a fellow at Yale university. She explains how WWII ushered in a new era in presidential communications abroad.
Finally, we invited Dr. Sam Lebovic of George Mason University to share his fascinating insights on how the US Government expanded the use of the bully pulpit to include a much more complex, bureaucratic, and powerful web of communication that spanned the globe. We promise you'll never think of passports the same way again.
In March of 2021, Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico's Laguna Pueblo, became the first Native American Cabinet Secretary in US history. It was was a truly historic first, as Deb Haaland is part of a long history of Indigenous peoples that predates the United States as a nation. And today, we are going to explore the relationship between Indigenous peoples of America and the United States Government.
When the United States became an independent nation in 1776, a new era began, one of constant conflict. Native peoples claimed sovereignty over land and resources across the continent, while the US Government often called for the removal of Native peoples from those lands.
To help us understand this history, we turned to two expert guests. First, we spoke to Dr. Christina Snyder, a professor of history at Penn State University. Dr. Snyder sets the scenes for us by exploring Native sovereignty in the earliest years of the United States. Dr. Snyder also takes us through the most infamous period of Native removal in US History, the era of Andrew Jackson.
To understand how the relationship between Native peoples and the US Government changed in the 20th century, we turned to Dr. William Bauer. Dr. Bauer is a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a citizen of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in Northern California.
Dr. Bauer explains the major changes that took place in US and Indigenous relations at the turn of the 20th Century, and he shares some remarkable stories and insight on struggles for Native sovereignty during the presidencies of Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon, and Barack Obama.
This week, we are going to be exploring the relationship between presidents, the bully pulpit, and environmental protection. When did presidents start thinking about federal use of land? When did that consideration change from an economic one based on maximizing profit and agricultural production for white settlers to something else?
We are going to tackle these questions and more on today's episode. First, we spoke with Dr. Mark David Spence, the author of Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of National Parks, about the early history of presidents and land as a national resource. We talked about the role of national parks in the late 19th century and the complicated relationship between national parks and native peoples.
Next, we spoke with Dr. Megan Kate Nelson, the author of Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America. Nelson gave us a history of the first national park in the world, told us about the outsized impact of Theodore Roosevelt in the national park system, and discussed executive action on national parks today.
Finally, we spoke with Dr. Brooks Flippen, author of Nixon and the Environment, about Richard Nixon, environmental protection, and the creation of Earth Day. Brooks shares the really interesting political motivations behind Nixon's climate actions. You might be surprised to learn that climate change was once a bipartisan issue!
In this episode of the Bully Pulpit, we explore presidential power as it relates to Prohibition and the War on Drugs. If you go looking through American history, it's not difficult to find conflict over alcohol and drugs, and the president's role in addressing them. The president of the United States has plenty to say, not just about what goes into our bodies, but about the industries, ecosystems, and societal consequences of those substances.
For some keen historical insight, we talked to two guests. First, we spoke to Dr. Mark Schrad, author of Smashing the Liquor Machine. Dr. Schrad set the scene for us at the turn of the 20th century, and provided some fascinating insight into the global history of prohibition. Then, we talked with Dr. Aileen Teague, an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University. Dr. Teague explained how the War on Drugs became an animating part of presidential politics, especially during the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Together, these two authors reveal how drug and alcohol policies are about more than just the substances. Rather, alcohol and drug policies reflect American's greatest fears in each historical moment.
This week, we are exploring women's suffrage, the Equal Rights Amendment, and how presidents have stymied or supported women's rights.
In 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband and urged him to remember the ladies as he worked to craft a government for the new nation. But it wasn't until 1919 that Congress actually passed a constitutional amendment that prohibited denying voting rights on the basis of sex. And not until the 1960s did Congress pass legislation that applied civil rights to all people, regardless of race.
Even with this legislation, women regularly earned less than their male counterparts, were disadvantaged in divorce and property disputes, and were generally not treated equally under the law. Congress finally passed an Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, but not until 2020 did the requisite number of states ratify the amendment, and its legal status remains questionable.
This week, we have two fantastic guests to discuss the presidential politics of women’s rights. First, we spoke with Dr. Kimberly Hamlin about the women behind the women’s suffrage movement. We then spoke with Lisa McCubbin about the Equal Rights Amendment and First Lady Betty Ford's groundbreaking support for the amendment.
Today, we are covering two topics almost guaranteed to make that Thanksgiving dinner more awkward than it already was: religion and politics, or more specifically for this episode: Church and State.
If we're going to talk about a bully pulpit, then we've got to talk about the pulpit part of this equation. But we're also going there because the question of the relationship between church and state is as old as the country.
Thus, we begin this episode by examining George Washington and Thomas Jefferson’s major speeches, public proclamations, and even reading some of the president's mail. From these founding presidents, we get a strong sense of where this church and state conversation started. We then fast forward to the Cold War and the War on Terror, to consider how these conflicts caused Americans to ask familiar questions:
What is the relationship supposed to be between church and state? What is the difference between religious toleration and religious freedom? What role, if any, does the president play in shaping these ideas?
We are pleased to welcome Dr. John Fea to discuss the founding era with us. Dr. Fea is professor of American history at Messiah University. To learn about more recent religious history, we turned to Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University.
This week, we are exploring the history of healthcare policy. Many presidents have tried to pass healthcare reform in America, but time and time again healthcare has tested the limitations and the strengths of the bully pulpit.
In today’s episode, we explored the history of the federal government’s interest in healthcare from the New Deal to Obamacare. We consider, why has healthcare reform been so tricky to implement? What role does the president play in passing healthcare reform? And, how has the pandemic shaped our ideas about healthcare, public health, and the presidency?
We spoke with two special guests. Professor Merlin Chowkwanyun is an assistant professor at the Columbia University School of Public Health. His new book, All Health Politics is Local: Battles for Community Health in the Mid-Century United States is available for preorder from UNC Press. Dr. Guian McKee is an Associate Professor in Presidential Studies at the Miller Center, where he works on the Presidential Recordings Project. He is also currently working on a book project that examines the rise of the health care economy in American cities after World War II.
To kick off season three, The Bully Pulpit, we are starting with an episode on what we are affectionally calling The Big Speeches™. Moments when the president has used his unparalleled microphone and those words have left a major imprint on history.
We start where it all began, with George Washington. In September 1796, Washington printed an address to the American people and announced he would not seek a third term. Not only did Washington buck almost all political precedent, he also gave warnings and guidance to future generations.
Seventy years later, Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office for his second term and delivered a remarkable inaugural address. As the Civil War drew to a close, Lincoln mapped out his vision for the post-war United States and how to win the fight for peace.
Finally, the summer of 1979 was, as Jimmy Carter’s domestic policy advisor described it, the worst of times. There was an energy shortage, rampant inflation, and widespread unrest. But President Jimmy Carter took to the podium to address something much bigger than a gas shortage — a moral crisis in American life.
We have two excellent guests joining us today. John Avlon is a senior political analyst and fill-in anchor at CNN, appearing on New Day every morning. Dr. Meg Jacobs is a Research Scholar in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
With political gridlock in Washington DC at an all time high, government shutdowns–or the threat of them–have become a routine occurrence. National parks close. Federal paychecks stop going out. The National Institute of Health stops admitting new patients. How did we get to the point where it has become normal for the US Government to halt in its tracks? The history, in this case, is quite recent.
In the live finale of season 2 of our podcast The Past, the Promise, the Presidency: Presidential Crises we invited three special guests to discuss the first government shutdowns of the 1990s, the political showdowns between Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton, and what the political environment of the 1990s can tell us about gridlock in Washington today.
Dr. Julian Zelizer, a Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, CNN Political Analyst, and author of Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party.
Dr. Leah Wright Rigueur, the SNF Agora Institute Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and the author of the award-winning study, The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power.
Dr. Sharron Wilkins Conrad, one of your favorite voices from season one, The Past, The Promise, The Presidency: Race and the American Legacy. Now, she is joining us from Tarrant County College, where she is an Associate Professor of History.
This week on The Past, The Promise, The Presidency, we are exploring a tragic national crisis that hits very close to home in 2021. The crisis of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Having lived through two years of a new coronavirus pandemic, we all intimately understand just how confusing and terrifying it can be for patients, doctors, and yes, presidents to confront a new and deadly disease. One of unknown origin, transmission, and incubation. Indeed, the only thing doctors could say with real confidence in the early 1980s about the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is that those who got it died.
We have gathered three guests to help us understand the Reagan Administration’s lethargic response during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. We also explore the key roles of patients, activists, and healthcare workers who pushed the US Government to do more to combat the AIDS epidemic.
First we spoke to Dr. David Oshinsky, Pulitzer Prize winner, and director of Division of Medical Humanities at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and a professor in the NYU Department of History.
We then spoke to Dr. John Graybill an infectious disease specialist who was quite literally on the front lines of the first battles against this new virus in the early 1980s.
And finally, we spoke to Dr. Jennifer Brier, Professor of History and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. An award-winning public historian and activist, she is the author, among other works, of Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis.
Together they helped us understand a moment when public health ran headlong into presidential politics.
Maybe that sounds familiar. All right, let's get to it.
This week's crisis could have ended with the world in a giant blaze of nuclear flame, but it didn't. In fact, it's an example of how a crisis can be handled so effectively, that most people don't even remember it as a crisis. This week, we are talking about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.
It's November, 1989. Reagan famously delivered his "tear down this wall" speech in 1987, but West and East Berlin are as divided as ever. In the summer of 1989, Chinese military forces had mowed down peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square. Horrified by the images of violence, American leaders, and George H.W. Bush in particular, were eager to avoid provoking a similar crackdown in Eastern Europe.
The stakes couldn't have been higher. Both sides were armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over, and they had itchy trigger fingers.
Then, unexpectedly, at a press conference, a mid-level bureaucrat ordered an enormous change in policy. He accidentally announced that residents would be allowed to leave East Germany. Word spread like wildfire. Within hours, thousands of residents were lined up at the gates to cross into West Berlin.
Why didn't this moment turn into one of violence and bloodshed? What were the repercussions of the collapse of a global superpower and its economic system? How might things have gone differently?
To answer these questions, we have two dynamite guests. First, we have a voice that you will probably recognize. Our podcast host, Jeffrey Engel. We then spoke to Dr. Mary Sarotte, who is the Kravis Professor of Historical Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Welcome to The Past, The Promise, The Presidency Season II, Episode VI: The Bonus Army & The 1932 March on Washington.
This Veteran’s Day, we are examining the time that World War I veterans organized their own March on Washington.
Most Americans associate the Great Depression with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But it was Herbert Hoover who was in office in 1932 when a group of World War I veterans decided to organize a March on Washington to demand an early payment of their bonus checks for serving in the military during WWI.
In 1932, the Great Depression was at its worst. Approximately one in four American workers unemployed. After three plus years of record-setting unemployment, poverty, hunger, and homelessness, many Americans were at a breaking point. WWI veterans, in particular, were furious that Herbert Hoover had bailed out the banks but he refused to sign a bill that would deliver their WWI bonus payment’s early. But Hoover did not respond with empathy. Instead, he sent federal troops to clear the protesters. Under the leadership of Douglas MacArthur, American soldiers used tanks, tear gas and yes, bullets to remove a gathering of American wartime veterans from the National Mall.
We first spoke to Eric Rauchway of the University of California Davis. He is one of the leading scholars of the New Deal, the Depression and the political history between the world wars. Our second historian also ranks at the top of any list of depression era experts, David Kennedy, the Donald J McLachlan professor of history emeritus of Stanford University. Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his history, Freedom from Fear: the American People in Depression and War.
Welcome to The Past, The Promise, The Presidency Season II, Episode V: Teddy Roosevelt & The Great Coal Strike of 1902.
In 1902, miners under the leadership of John Mitchell and the United Mine Workers went on strike to protest long hours, low pay, and unsafe working conditions. Mine operators and owners were determined not to concede to the miners' demands or to recognize their right to organize as workers. With winter approaching, millions of Americans faced freezing conditions and would be unable to heat their homes without the anthracite coal that their work provided.
Enter Theodore Roosevelt, the young, active president eager to put an end to the conflict and to make his mark on the presidency. T.R. invited both Mitchell and the mine operators to a private conference in the oval office. The meeting itself was a sign of Mitchell and the mine workers’ legitimacy, and he could afford to be accommodating and pleasant. The coal operators, on the other hand, resented T.R.'s interference, refuse to compromise and swore they'd produce enough coal for the nation's needs that winter without the help of Roosevelt or the unionizing coal workers.
When the operators failed to follow through on that promise, and with Americans increasingly cold and anxious as a consequence, T.R. sprung into action once more. He proposed an independent commission to resolve the dispute and turned to his sometimes friend, sometimes foe, banker JP Morgan, to pressure the mine operators into agreeing to the commission.
What did the commission decide and did both sides agree to the terms?
What can the Great Coal Strike of 1902 teach us about the power of the president to intervene in disputes between unions and big business?
First we chatted with Susan Berfield, an award winning writer and reporter for Bloomberg. She's also the author of The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism. We then spoke with Michael Cullinane, a professor at the University of Roehampton and the author of Theodore Roosevelt's Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon.
Welcome to The Past, The Promise, The Presidency: Ulysses S. Grant and the Ku Klux Klan Act. In our previous episode on Bleeding Kansas and the Utah War, we discussed the intense violence and bloodshed that led up to the cataclysmic wrenching of the Union in half during the Civil War.
But what happened after the Union shattered? It's not easy to put the pieces of national unity back together after a civil war, nor was it a simple task to change the hearts and minds of people who were willing to die to defend slavery and white supremacy.
After the passage of the 15th amendment in 1870, African-American men in the South eagerly made the most of their new right to vote and elected many Black representatives to state and local governments.
In response, white supremacists organized into local chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, which waged vicious campaigns of violence, murder, and destruction to intimidate Black Americans and other Republicans that supported their right to vote. After investigators discovered the extent of the KKK’s reign of terror, President Grant asked Congress to pass legislation that gave him additional powers to address the threat on the ground.
Congress complied in 1871 and passed the Ku Klux Klan Act. Grant then issued a warning to Southern states, but especially to specific counties in South Carolina, that if they didn't stop their campaign of terror, he would declare martial law. Five days later, he fulfilled that promise and suspended Habeas Corpus in nine South Carolina counties. Grant sent in troops to arrest KKK members and deployed US Attorneys to try cases against the Klan.
These efforts were remarkably effective, but just a year later, Grant backed away from his efforts to protect civil liberties.
Why did Grant take such decisive action? And then why did he stop?
What were the motivations behind his handling of this crisis?
How did the public respond to the Ku Klux Klan Act?
How does this crisis inform our current moment?
We spoke with two fantastic guests. First, we spoke with Dr. Yohuru Williams, who is the Distinguished University Chair and Professor of History and Founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas.
We then talked to Dr. Megan Kate Nelson, a writer, historian, and expert on the Civil War and the United States West. Her most recent book, The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize.
This week on The Past, The Promise, The Presidency: Presidential Crises, we took a look at two crises from the 1850s: the violent struggle between pro and anti-slavery factions over the political fortunes of future states, known as "Bleeding Kansas," and the less well-known fight between federal authorities, president James Buchanan in particular, and Mormon leaders out of Utah.
To put the coming Civil War into context and better understand these intertwined crises of federal expansion in the 1850s, we spoke with professor Sarah Barringer-Gordon--Sally, to her friends--the Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Barringer-Gordon is one of the nation's experts on questions of constitutional religious freedoms. We then turned to professor Kellie Carter Jackson, who teaches in the department of Africana studies at Wellesley college. Dr. Carter Jackson’s work focuses on Black abolitionists and the role of violence in the ongoing battle for slavery’s abolition.
This week on The Past, The Promise, The Presidency: Presidential Crises we examine how James and Dolley Madison responded to The War of 1812, often referred to by both contemporaries and historians as the "Second War of Independence."
Arriving at the White House, British troops thoroughly enjoyed the feast and fine wine before systematically setting fire to the building. They then turned their attention to the Capitol building, the Library of Congress, and every other public building in the city. Before long, most of the city was ablaze. It was only saved by the fateful intervention of a hurricane level storm that doused the flames.
By any definition, having your capital burned by foreign troops ranks as a crisis. So, how did the United States get into another war with Britain so soon after establishing its independence? How did President Madison, the third president and the first to lead the country during a full-fledged war, respond to this crisis? How did the country and the world respond to the outcome of the crisis and the war? And finally, what was First Lady Dolley Madison's role in the crisis?
Our first topic this season is our first president, George Washington, father of the country, general, surveyor, statesman, slave owner, whiskey distiller, debtor, and a man whose dental history every poor kid with braces hears about.
Washington was the first man to hold the office, of course, and some still argue that he was the best. Everyone agrees that he set the standard by which all other presidents would be judged. Today, we will explore the presidency of George Washington and his biggest challenge: the creation of the presidency itself.
After 28 episodes covering the presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Donald Trump, as well as two emergency response episodes, we’ve learned so, so much and we hope you have too. We decided to close out the season with a live season finale so that you, our fantastic listeners, could participate and shape the conversation. On Thursday, April 15, we gathered for this live event and recorded it to share here with you. Our sound is going to be a little different because it was a live event, but hopefully you will enjoy the unique format. Thank you all for participating in the season and the conversation, be sure to stay tuned to the end for a sneak peek of season 2!
Today’s episode is all about Donald John Trump, the 45th president of the United States. So, so much to say. And yet, Trump’s presidency is also so fresh, what could we say in an introduction that you’d not already know? The only president ever impeached twice by the House of Representatives; he was also the first in more than a century to voluntarily refuse to attend his successor’s inauguration. He was also one of only five presidents to have won the Electoral College vote without also winning the popular vote. Trump’s time in office was…unusual.
That was its point: to break away from the tired and worn in order to “make America great again.” The word “great” in that slogan naturally draws the eye. America must have been great before, and Trump’s policies sought a return. Great again. When precisely? And for whom? These were the central questions of his time in office, and also seem likely the central questions for historians still to come. As we’ve seen over the course of this inaugural podcast season, the promise of America was never fully available to all, and indeed, there were some moments in American history when the long arc of progress on issues of citizenship and racial equality seemed to take a step or two back, rather than forward.
Today’s episode is all about Barack Hussein Obama, the 44th president of the United States. Also, the first in more than two centuries who didn’t identify as white. Obama’s tenure remains fresh, yet hard to fully evaluate given the tumult that followed in his wake—and to some minds, the tumult that arose in direct response to his presidency. If we were taping this podcast a decade ago, in 2010 or 2011 during Obama’s first term, we might well have talked about his presidency as a culmination, a victory in the long march of progress towards a more equitable and free American society that has with every generation expanded the bounds of liberty and citizenship. Imagine what Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, or even Ronald Reagan would say to know that a black man had become president. The Whig interpretation of American history is right, we’d have said. Ours is a story of progress.
Well, it isn’t 2011. It’s 2021, and as we’ve been discussing all season, that feel-good narrative of struggle leading to inevitable progress doesn’t quite jive with America’s actual history. Or, its present.
Obama came to office in 2009, frankly, at an awful moment in American history. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on, and the economy had tanked. It became known as the Great Recession, with foreclosures on housing and unemployment on the rise, and the roster of huge banks dwindle. Things didn’t feel as desperate as in 1933 when FDR took office. But the problems appeared so huge and arguably insolvable that it was worth asking, was it 1930? The satirical magazine, the Onion, perhaps captured the mood of his election, and its historic nature, with the following headline: “America gives worst job in country to black man.”
Today’s episode is all about George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States. Full disclosure for those who don’t know, the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum resides on SMU’s campus, about a mile as the crow flies from our offices here at the CPH. Here’s your brief primer on George W. Bush. Perhaps unnecessary to say given that you’ve already met his father, but yes, W was born to wealth and privilege, and spent his first years in Connecticut while his father finished up at Yale after World War II. He grew up in a tight family, and one that knew tragedy, too. His younger sister, Robyn, passed away when she was only three from childhood leukemia, and young George remembers having to comfort his own mother from her grief. His father, in truth, was on the road a lot, building a business and then political career. “I got my daddy’s eyes, and my mother’s mouth,” he still jokes to this day, and his mother’s words typically had a bit more bite.
The partying didn’t stop there, and indeed Bush has been open about the reckless drinking and carousing that characterized his first decades. He gave up drinking at age forty, and subsequently found god. It influenced his daily life, and his policies, best epitomized by his call for a “compassionate conservatism.” It wasn’t a smooth path to the presidency. Twice elected Governor of Texas, he came to office in 2000 by the narrowest of margins. Bush took office in 2001 planning to focus on education, tax-reform (he was a Republican after all), and immigration. Then, the world changed.
Today’s episode is all about William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, the first baby boomer to hold the office, and indeed, the second youngest man ever elected president. Clinton’s legacy is ongoing and a work in progress even now nearly thirty years since he took office. Changing political winds, changes within the democratic party in particular, a changing sensibility over welfare and the war on crime, and let’s face it, a different sensibility of what constituted sexual harassment than was the case during the early 1990s have all changed how we view not only this period, but this man. And we’re going to get into all of it today, as we rush forward through the 1990s across the bridge to the 21st century, with Bill Clinton, a complicated, fascinating, conundrum of a man, whose political enemies and allies alike nearly universally agree was the greatest natural politician of his generation—with perhaps the greatest unfulfilled promise.
Today’s episode is all about George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States, and the man who came to the Oval Office arguably with the greatest pre-presidential resume of all. Ok, Eisenhower makes a good bid in this fight, but consider Bush’s credentials: he was a war hero, successful businessman, a congressman, Ambassador to the United Nations, chief envoy to China, head of the Republican National Committee, head of the CIA, and then for eight years Ronald Reagan’s vice president.
That’s a pretty darn impressive list, and Bush was a pretty darn impressive guy: tall, smart, confident, and friendly. But a long resume of loyal and competent service is not ultimately the same as long resume of leadership. Bush was a good soldier and loyal, but also modest—well, as modest as a politician could be—and wanted to be friends with everyone. A loyal subordinate throughout his career, voters were right to wonder what precisely Bush stood for in 1988 when he ran for president. A cover story in Newsweek perhaps put it best. Was Bush…a wimp? He’d followed orders and changed political positions so easily when prudence or politics required, did he actually have convictions of his own?
Today’s episode is all about Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th President of the United States. It’s not too much a stretch to say we are living in the America Ronald Reagan envisioned, one in which market forces matter as much as morality in the formation of policy decisions, the American military is strong and taxes quite low by historical standards, and a Supreme Court with a noticeable conservative bent. The man who brought the conservative movement from its 1964 nadir until Barry Goldwater to triumph and the White House in 1980, remains to this day a hero to many in the Republican Party especially.
Here in 2021 the meaning and legacy of the Reagan era is frankly up for grabs as at no time since the man they called the “gipper” left office in 1989. No single person left a greater impact on American politics during the last quarter of the 20th century. Will that impact last through the first quarter of the 21st? Time will tell. Which makes it a pretty good time for us to explore Reagan anew, his presidency, and the politics of race during his era.
Today’s episode is all about the 1970s. Which means we’re talking about two presidents today: Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. As you’ll soon hear, the 70s are hard. They were a time of transition, and historians often treat it as such, as a bridge between the raucous sixties of Vietnam and Nixon to the era of self-gratification and glitz that was the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. Now, that might not be fair to this decade, which historians are increasingly unpacking and exploring, seeing it as more than a bridge, but a destination itself. Albeit, let’s all agree from the start, a destination with some seriously mockable hair and fashion choices.
We’re talking about two presidents this week, well in part because while every President deserves their due, the truth is Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter had the unfortunate fate of being positioned between two presidents of tremendous consequence. That’s a shame really because while both Ford and Carter are recalled for their less than stellar handling of truly intractable problems, they were also perhaps two of the most upstanding and admirable men to ever reside in the White House.
Today’s episode is all about Richard Milhouse Nixon, the 37th President of the United States. But the real question is…which Nixon?? Among the most mercurial of our presidents, some might say Machiavellian while others would reach for malevolent, Richard Nixon was a man who changed over the course of the more than quarter century he spent at the beating heart of American politics. Or, did he? He came of political age fighting communists, and left the White House with legal fights that would dog him the rest of his days. In one of our first episodes, Eric Foner told us that every president, and perhaps more importantly every historian, needs to ‘get right with Lincoln,’ in order to understand his era and our own. I’d argue that if you want to understand the America of 2021, you don’t have to get right with Nixon, but you do have to get your mind around him.
Together our conversations brought out two themes: First, that Nixon’s positions on race always reflect the political realities of the moment and what was most likely to help him get ahead. Second, how Nixon helped reshape political parties, including catalyzing a new generation of African-American women political leaders.
Today’s episode is all about Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th President of the United States, and arguably its most consequential. Note we did not say best or greatest or anything overexuberant like that. But if you are talking about presidents who left their mark on American society, presidents from the past whose impact we still feel today in our daily lives, for good and for ill, you could do worse than to put Johnson at the top of your list. That was true for civil rights and race relations, especially.
Johnson was at the center of it all. So who was this influential, some might say, accidental president? Here’s your primer. Born in Texas to a family that resided just on the razor edge between poor and middle class, you wouldn’t have expected much from Johnson if you saw him in his youth. A poor student, he was initially denied admission to college, ultimately winning a spot at Southwest State Teachers College in 1927. Ambitious despite outward appearances, he became a congressional aide in 1931, moving to Washington, where he’d represent Texas in some form or fashion over the next forty years.
Today’s episode is all about John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States—a vigorous president forever young in our memory because tragedy snatched him too early from our view. Kennedy stands near the top of public rankings of presidential greatness, though professional historians tend to rank him slightly lower, a distinction that captures the way the Kennedy mystique, the Camelot White House, the fashionable president with an even more glamorous wife, retains a hold on our national psyche far beyond what his 1000 days in office produced.
That dichotomy—what the public recalls, and what historians know—underlies today’s discussion of JFK and race. Several of the most momentous, and monstrous, events in modern Civil Rights history occurred on his watch. James Meredith tried to desegregate the University of Mississippi, whose governor unleashed what can only be described as a race riot in response. Freedom Riders promoting voting rights swarmed the South during his presidency, kicking up violent reactions throughout the old Confederacy, and it was while Kennedy was in office that the famed March of Washington led a quarter million Americans to the national mall in a call for equal justice. This was the moment Martin Luther King famously declared, “I have a dream,” reinforcing to Kennedy’s decision, his too slow a decision some might argue, to submit a new Civil Rights bill to Congress during the summer of 1963. The grandchildren of slaves freed by Lincoln, Kennedy told the nation, “are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice.”
Today’s episode is all about Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States, a two term president with arguably the greatest pre-presidential resume of them all. It’s not everyone who could fill out a job application, and under experience, write: “saved Western civilization.” That might be a stretch, but only a small one. It was Ike, after all, who oversaw the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, and then did as much as anyone to build the structures of long-term American prosperity and power that ultimately proved triumphant in the Cold War that followed.
He was not without fault, however, nor one for whom questions of race intertwined easily with the awesome power of the presidency. Dwight Eisenhower sat in the Oval Office during critical years of the modern Civil Rights movement, sitting too long and refusing to stand up for equal justice under the law a bit too long for many Americans of his own time, and for American’s looking back in hindsight from today.
Today’s episode is all about Harry S Truman, the 37th president of the United States, a man with the unenviable task of following Franklin Roosevelt, AND of overseeing the end of the largest war in human history. “Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked when consoling the newly-widowed Eleanor Roosevelt. Harry, she said, “is there anything WE can do for YOU, for YOU are the one in trouble now.”
That date was April 12, 1945. The war still raged in Europe and the Pacific, and amazingly, it would be another two weeks before Truman was first formally briefed on a new and terrible type of bomb, an atomic bomb, with hope it might bring the fighting to a speedy end.
Unlike so many other presidents we’ve studied thus far this season, Truman never planned or even really dreamed he’d one day sit in the Oval Office. He was not, like a Roosevelt, a Kennedy, or a Bush, to the manor born. He was instead our last President without a college degree, raised in America’s heartland, which is where he returned when finally done with Washington.
Today’s episode is all about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Actually, we have two episodes for you on FDR. He’s that important, and being the only person ever elected to the White House four times, he was also in office long enough to have created several legacies when issues of race arise. Just how important was he? Well, here’s one way to look at it: there have been three true existential crises in American history, moments not just of stress or strife, but perilous times when the very existence of the republic seemed threatened.
This week, we talked with Dr. Jill Watts, a professor of history at California State University San Marcos, and an expert on African-American history in the 20th century. She is the author of The Black Cabinet and talked to us about that work and how FDR’s black cabinet pushed him to include Black Americans in New Deal programs. Second, we talked to Dr. Natalie Mendoza, a professor of Mexican American history at the University of Colorado Boulder. We learned about the Good Neighbor program, labor demands and conflict in the southwest, and racial tensions along the US-Mexico border. Finally, we spoke to Jamie Ford, a novelist and author of Hotel at the Corner on Bitter and Sweet, a story about Japanese internment and the complicated history of Chinese and Japanese communities in the Pacific Northwest.
Today’s episode is all about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Actually, we have two episodes for you on FDR. He’s that important, and being the only person ever elected to the White House four times, he was also in office long enough to have created several legacies when issues of race arise. Just how important was he? Well, here’s one way to look at it: there have been three true existential crises in American history, moments not just of stress or strife, but perilous times when the very existence of the republic seemed threatened.
The first was when the nation formed; and when it was led by George Washington. The Second was when it nearly perished in the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln was the man in charge then. The third was the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt’s time. The Depression lasted throughout the thirties, and World War II followed soon after. FDR led the nation to victory in World War II—a global war to defend democracy and defeat fascism. And yet, while fighting the war abroad against fascism and the war against poverty and suffering at home, he often failed communities at home. His New Deal programs sometimes didn’t extend to people of color, he often failed to take a stand against Jim Crow laws in order to keep southern Democrats in his corner, and he ordered thousands of Japanese Americans (many of whom were born in the US) interned in concentration camps.
Today’s episode is all about the roaring twenties. It’s a decade often recalled with wistful longing, and more than touch of trepidation. Longing, because that is what Americans largely felt in this era: a longing to move past the pain of the Great War and the great pandemic. Trepidation, for us if not for them, because we know the traumas that 1930s and ‘40s would bring. Sometimes it’s no fun to know what comes next, and if you don’t know what we are referring to…well, then you better stick around for future episodes!
The Presidents of the 1920s are largely not recalled well, if recalled at all. Indeed, we’ve chosen to discuss them en masse to leave a bit more time for more consequential presidents still to come. Our three today, in the order they served, were Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. If you needed a catchphrase to remember each as we go forward today, you could do worse than to say: one of the most scandal-ridden presidencies in American history; one of the intentionally least impactful; and one of the most callous.
There is so much to discuss about this fascinating man. So much indeed, that we’ve decided to break our discussion into two episodes. In Part I, we released an episode following our regular format, which offered a pretty critical view of Wilson’s history on race. In this episode, we are talking to Professor Thomas Knock, perhaps the preeminent Wilson scholar about Wilson’s life, legacy, and presidency. To be sure, it’s a more complimentary portrayal, but given that Knock has spent so much time thinking about Wilson and how to commemorate this complicated man, we wanted to share the conversation in its entirety.
Today’s episode is all about Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States and arguably the most consequential. Note, I did not say one of the greats. They aren’t holding a spot on Mt. Rushmore for him. Certainly not lately, as the national reckoning over race during 2020 has landed hard on Wilson, whose reputation has been sullied by the widespread realization that he might just vie for the unenviable title of most racist president of all. That’s a hard list to evaluate, especially given that numerous antebellum presidents owned people of other races, but as our friend Jon Meacham said in an earlier episode when discussing Andrew Johnson, if you are in the discussion for most racist president ever, well that’s a list you’d rather not be on. Wilson has not fared particularly well as our country rethinks its racial past, and has featured prominently in our national discussion about how to live with the harsh truths of the past in our own present day.
But back to Wilson himself. In large measure the racial reckoning and reconsideration of his presidency derives from his importance. A progressive, he expanded the federal government’s role in managing the economy and protecting individual citizens, especially in the workplace and in the marketplace. Woodrow Wilson also proved as influential as a president as any, especially in the realm of foreign affairs and the president’s ability to wage war. We don’t ask of subsequent presidents if they are Wilsonian or not in their approach to the world. We ask how Wilsonian are they.
Today’s episode is all about William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States. The only person on our nation’s history to serve both as Commander-In-Chief and as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Taft is one of those people in history with the sad fate of having his name forever recalled…alongside someone else’s. But really, what did you expect would happen to the man Theodore Roosevelt picked to be his successor. As we’ll soon see, with friends like these…..
Today’s episode is all about Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States. Theodore Roosevelt, TR, or Teddy, was one of the all-time great personalities in American history. Larger-than-life, captured in stone on Mount Rushmore, inspiration for the Teddy Bear and featured in countless movies, he was at once is intriguing, frustrating, thoughtful and blustery, a man ahead of his times, yet also stuck in the rut of arcane thinking. TR left a legacy of economic reform, social reform, environmental reform, and a new standing for the country in the world. But…was he such a reformer on race? We’ll answer that question, and so much more, when we talk with Dr. Michael Cullinane and Dr. Leroy Dorsey on Roosevelt’s life and times. Together, these conversations highlighted two critical themes: First, the importance of the concept of the frontier to American nationalism, and American racial thinking. Second, why the president has an unparalleled bully pulpit—a term Roosevelt coined by the way—for shaping conceptions of race, citizenship, and ultimately, who could rightly claim to be an American.
Today’s episode is all about William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States, the president who brought the country into the twentieth century and whose death left the nation in the hands of one of the all-time-great leaders, and characters, in American history, Theodore Roosevelt. Historians typically view McKinley’s time in office as a moment of, well less transition, than visible transformation, as the country entered the new century more industrialized, urban, and globally powerful than ever before. And even more so by the time he left office. One example: as we’ve discussed in depth so far this season, American historians typically divide our past, and more important our survey courses, with reconstruction at 1877. Foreign policy historians typically use 1898 instead. On this episode, we’ll learn why, and also why the politics and economics of the McKinley age in many ways starkly resemble our own.
Today’s episode is all about Presidents Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison, the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th presidents of the United States—one of the most unusual transitions in US history. Cleveland served one term from 1885 to 1889, lost the election to Benjamin Harrison, who was in turn replaced by Cleveland in 1892. Whew. And you thought our times were complicated!
Together our guests highlighted two key stories from this period. First, the ongoing battle, and ultimately the ongoing erosion, of African-American civil rights in the South now a full generation after the Civil War’s end. Second, immigration’s increasingly key role in the fight over who could, in fact, be a citizen, or if you will, a real American.
Today’s episode is all about Presidents James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, was only in office six and a half months before he died from medical complications following a botched assassination. Just sixteen years after Lincoln’s death, Garfield was the second president assassinated. His vice president, Chester Arthur, served the remainder of his term.
We will learn from two experts about why Arthur’s presidency was dominated by civil service reform, debates over immigration, and conflict over Native American policy—and how the administration might have gone differently if Garfield had survived.
Today’s episode is all about Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th president of the United States, a man whose name is synonymous with the end of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow in the south. But perhaps his legacy isn’t quite that simple.
Born in Ohio in 1822, he was trained as a lawyer, prior to enlisting in the Union Army during the Civil War. After serving bravely in the war, he was elected to Congress and then as Governor of Ohio. Although Hayes had been a staunch abolitionist, had defended enslaved individuals in runaway court proceedings before the war, and supported Radical Republican Reconstruction programs, he made a deal with the devil to win the presidency. In the 1877 election, Hayes lost the popular vote, but won the Electoral College through a congressional deal that gave him the victory, in return for withdrawing federal troops from the south.
We will learn from two Hayes experts today about why Hayes’ election is often seen as a dividing line in our nation’s history—defining the end of federal government intervention on behalf of formerly enslaved people in the South, and the beginning of a prolonged era of state-sanctioned terror for black Americans. This era also ushered in increased encroachment upon Native American lands and sovereignty—and raised new questions about land ownership and citizenship rights—as the nation moved westward.
Today’s episode is all about Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, a man whose story is inextricably intertwined with the history of race in America. He was, after all the, the commanding General of the Union Forces that ultimately won the Civil War, and he was present at every step of the way as the country faced perhaps an even larger task: reconstructing a workable union in the wake of the war.
Last week, President Donald Trump revealed he has tested positive for COVID-19. While receiving treatment at Walter Reed Medical Center, President Trump's staff and doctors released conflicting and confusing information about his health. But 2020 isn't the first time a president and his doctors have kept information about health a secret. In fact, more often than not, presidents keep their health condition private. This emergency episode gives some more information about George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. We also discuss what information presidents owe to the American people and whether they are entitled to privacy about their health like every other average citizen.
Today’s episode is all about Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United States, a man whose presidency is synonymous with the missed opportunities of the post-Civil War era. Never elected, Johnson instead became president after Abraham Lincoln’s tragic assassination. Rather than continuing Lincoln’s agenda, Johnson instead undermined black citizenship, and attempted at every turn to thwart the Republican Party’s Reconstruction efforts in the South. He is today remembered as a bitter, angry, and failed president, and the first ever to be impeached by the House of Representatives. But he wasn’t always remembered so harshly. We will learn why today.
Today’s episode is all about Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, a man whose story is at the center of the defining moment in American history. President during the Civil War, Lincoln saved the union and freed enslaved Americans, and thus casts a mighty long shadow over anyone who held office since. Every President since, historians say, has had to “get right with Lincoln.” But perhaps his story is more complex, as we will learn today.
In this introductory episode we're unpacking and unraveling the myriad of issues at play in understanding Americas racial history and in the history of the presidency. We start this season out by discussing why we felt compelled to create this podcast, why 2020 feels different, and what we hope to learn and race and the American presidency.
After the events of January 6, 2020, we invited a few friends and historians to offer their interpretations of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building. While our understanding of this historic moment will continue to evolve, we invite you to think of this conversation as a first draft of history.