The Past, the Promise, the Presidency

S4 E10: Mourning the Presidents Apr 27, 2023

For the conclusion of this season, we examine conclusions: the deaths of presidents. Not just presidents who died while in office, but those who died years after they retired from the presidency and the constant limelight. Our journey through the lives, deaths, and legacies of our presidents from 1799 to today offers surprising revelations about the constancy of mourning and the role of the president beyond the Oval Office.

Beyond exploring the moment of a president’s death, we explore the deeper historical context of that moment, and what we can learn about American society at the time. Presidents are more than just a man. They are figureheads of movements, international celebrities, and representatives (sometimes even unwillingly) of particular political and social values. And their deaths often reveal much not just about how Americans come together, but how they remain divided.

Guiding our final conversation this season are Lindsay Chervinsky and Matthew Costello, presidential historians and co-editors of Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture.
Lindsay Chervinsky is a historian of the presidency, political culture, and the government. Dr. Chervinsky is a frequent contributor to publications like the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CNN, andthe Washington Post. She is also a regular guests on podcasts, such as the Thomas Jefferson Hour, and created the Audible course The Best and Worst Presidential Cabinets in U.S. History. Dr. Chervinsky is currently a fellow at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Presidential History here at SMU.

She is the co-editor of Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture, the author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, and author of the forthcoming An Honest Man: The Inimitable Presidency of John Adams.

Visit her website lindsaychervinsky.com and her Twitter @lmchervinsky.
Matthew Costello is a presidential historian specializing in the American Revolution and the early republic. Dr. Costello serves as Vice President of the David M. Rubenstein National Center for White House History and Senior Historian for the White House Historical Association. He also teaches a class at American University and has received research fellowships from Marquette University, the Virginia Historical Society, the United States Capitol Historical Society, and the Fred W. Smith National Library at Mount Vernon. After completing his Ph.D. in American history at Marquette University, Dr. Costello worked on the George Washington Bibliography Project for the George Washington Papers at the University of Virginia.

He is the author of The Property of the Nation: George Washington’s Tomb, Mount Vernon, and the Memory of the First President, which was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize, and co-editor of Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture.

Visit his website on whitehousehistory.org and his LinkedIn @matthewcostello.

S4 E9: The Peacemaker Apr 13, 2023

The early 1980s was a time of great political uncertainty. With the threat of nuclear destruction seemingly imminent, the emergence of global terrorism, and the rise of proxy conflicts in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, Ronald Reagan entered the White House with many global security problems on his hands, and very few clear solutions. He wasn’t alone, though. Throughout the end of the Cold War, Reagan was supported by a national security team with competing ideals to solve these looming crises. Recently declassified documents and interviews with many of these senior Reagan administration officials have revealed a new storyline toward the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War and the remaking of the world order.

Guiding us through today’s conversation is Dr. William Inboden. William Inboden is a historian of national security and professor at the UT Austin LBJ School of Public Affairs. Prior to joining the UT faculty, he has served as senior director for strategic planning on the National Security Council, worked on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and served as a congressional staff member. He also served as head of the London-based Legatum Institute, and as a Civitas Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Dr. Inboden’s commentary has been featured in op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and more. As a professor, he has been awarded the “Texas 10” Award by the Texas Exes Alumni Association, selected as “Lecturer of the Year” at the LBJ School, and his classes Presidential Decision-making in National Security and Ethics and International Affairs have been voted as "Best Class in the LBJ School" and “Class Most Likely to Challenge Your Assumptions.”

He is the author of The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brinkand Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment.

Visit his pages on the University of Texas at Austin website and on the Clements Center website.

S4 E8: Framing Reconstruction Apr 06, 2023

Many Americans, if they know about Reconstruction at all, likely think of it as a failed venture. What had begun in 1865 as an opportunity to guarantee equal citizenship and rights for African Americans, fizzled out as citizens and elected officials became apathetic, or even hostile to the struggle for equality.

Our guests today survey the four presidencies that touched Reconstruction—Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, and Haynes—and offer a broad-sweeping, and perhaps disappointing framing of the era. The picture they paint is one in which the ultimate fate of Reconstruction was not only understandable given the context, but regrettably predictable.

This episode, we featured Dr. Joan Waugh of UCLA and Dr. Gary Gallagher of UVA, two acclaimed historians with unique insights into the nuances of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.
Joan Waugh is a historian of nineteenth-century America, specializing in the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Gilded Age eras. Dr. Waugh is a frequent contributor to op-eds in publications like the Los Angeles Times and has been interviewed for many documentaries, such as the PBS series, “American Experience.” She has been honored with four teaching prizes, including UCLA’s most prestigious teaching honor, the Distinguished Teaching Award. Currently, Dr. Waugh teaches history at UCLA, where she serves as Professor Emeritus.

She is the author of Unsentimental Reformer: The Life of Josephine Shaw Lowell, The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture, U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth, and The American War: A History of the Civil War Era.

Visit her page on the University of California Los Angeles website.
Gary Gallagher is a historian and specialist on the 19th-Century U.S. who has published widely on the history and memory of the Civil War. Dr. Gallagher has served as President of Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites and currently teaches history as a Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia. Along with his teaching, he has edited many books and won countless awards, which are listed on his biography page linked below.

He is the author of The Confederate War, Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War, The American War : A History of the Civil War Era, and Reflections on the Great American Crisis.

Visit his page on the University of Virginia’s website.

S4 E7: Charlie Brown's America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts Mar 31, 2023

Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang are some of the most recognizable characters in American pop culture. From Snoopy’s doghouse to Linus’s blanket to Lucy’s perpetual football prank, the scenes from this iconic comic strip are imprinted in the memories of many Americans even today, more than 70 years after the strip’s debut. However, behind the lemonade stand, amateur psychiatric help, and baseball shenanigans, Charles Schultz placed underlying social commentary on the state of American politics and society. While many people praised Peanuts for its supposedly apolitical nature, Schulz used Peanuts to guide American households through critical issues, including the Cold War, integration, church-state relations, and more.

Our conversation partner this week Dr. Blake Ball, author of Charlie Brown's America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts. Blake Ball is a historian of American politics, society, and popular culture in the 20th century. After receiving his doctorate in history from the University of Alabama, he taught at Miles College, the University of North Alabama, and the University of Alabama. Currently, Dr. Ball teaches history at Huntingdon College, where he also chairs the History and Political Science departments.
Follow him on Twitter @bsb1945.

S4 E6: Petroleum and Progress in Iran Mar 23, 2023

Oil runs the world. From our cars to our houses, most of us can’t live without it. From the 1940s to the 1960s, though, oil played another specific role as a central part of conflict and diplomacy during the Cold War. It was during this era that Iran developed into the world’s first “petro-state”: a nation whose state revenue, industrializing economy, military, and growing middle class all depended on the growth of the oil industry. This all occurred alongside major Cold War developments, including the regime of the Iranian shah, the coup d’etat of 1953, and more. Centering our analyses of these Cold War moments around the role of petroleum casts the histories of the Iranian and US governments in an entirely new light.

Joining our conversation this week is Dr. Gregory Brew, a leading expert on the relationship between Iran, the US, and oil during the Cold War.
Gregory Brew is a historian and author specializing in U.S. foreign relations, oil, Iran, and the modern Middle East. He has authored two books on the Iranian “petro-state” and contributed to numerous peer reviewed publications. His work explores the connections between the formation of a global oil economy, the geopolitics of the Cold War, and the contemporary energy transition. After receiving his doctorate from Georgetown University in June 2018, he served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Jackson School for Global Affairs at Yale University from 2021-2023. Currently, Dr. Brew is an Analyst at Eurasia Group, covering energy and Iran.

He is the author of The Struggle for Iran: Oil, Autocracy, and the Cold War, 1951–1954and Petroleum and Progress in Iran: Oil, Development, and the Cold War.

Follow him on Twitter @gbrew24 and visit his website gregorybrew.com.

S4 E5: Japanese American Incarceration Mar 16, 2023

Executive Order 9066, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, stands out as a major affront to the promise of American liberty. In 1942, this executive order forced approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans out of their homes on the western coast, and incarcerated them in makeshift prisons all around the nation. Our guest today explains today that this was not only a case of civil rights being stripped from Americans, but labor rights as well.

In these glorified concentration and work camps, agents of the U.S. government coerced Japanese Americans into doing hard and dangerous labor, for little-to-no compensation, sometimes even for the benefit of private, for-profit companies. This coerced labor was justified by the rhetoric of the U.S. government, even as the imprisoned resisted and persevered.

Leading this week’s conversation on coerced labor during WW2 is Dr. Stephanie Hinnershitz, award winning author and historian of Japanese American incarceration, civil-military relations, and race on the American wartime homefront.
Stephanie Hinnershitz is a historian and author specializing in the American home front during World War II. She has written 3 books and became a Senior Historian with the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans in 2021.

Stephanie Hinnershitz is an author and historian with the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. She has previously taught at Valdosta State University and Cleveland State University. In addition to her professorships, her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, the Office of Diversity at the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Library of Congress, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

She is the author of Race, Religion, and Civil Rights: Asian Students on the West Coast, 1900-1968, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South, and Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and Coerced Labor during World War II, which won the 2022 Philip Taft Labor History Award from the Labor and Working Class History Association and Cornell University Industrial Labor Relations School.

Follow her on Twitter @sdhinnershitz and visit her website stephaniehinnershitz.com.

S4 E4: Paper Trails Mar 02, 2023

When we think about the history of westward expansion and the growth of state power in the United States, the postal system probably isn’t the first institution that comes to mind. But this week, that’s exactly what we’ll be exploring: the unsung power and reach of the U.S. Postal Service in the late-19th century America.

It took Anglo-Americans nearly two hundred years to occupy the eastern half of what became the United States, but just one generation in the late-19th century to occupy the rest of the continent. This exponential increase in settlement speed and occupation can be attributed in large part to the sprawling geography and localized operations of the American postal system. During this era of settlement, Americans relied on letters and newspapers, magazines and pamphlets, petitions and money orders to stay connected to the world, and the post office enabled them all. It did this at such a high volume that by 1899, there were five times as many post offices in the U.S. as there are McDonald’s restaurants in the U.S. in 2023.

This week’s conversation on the role of the postal system in developing the American West features Dr. Cameron Blevins of the University of Colorado Denver, author of Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West.

S4 E3: The Third Reconstruction Feb 23, 2023

A conversation with Dr. Peniel Joseph (University of Texas at Austin) about his new book, The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century.

S4 E2: Joseph Smith for President Feb 16, 2023

We welcome Dr. Spencer McBride for a conversation about his book Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, the Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom (Oxford UP, 2021). Dr. McBride tells us about Joseph Smith's story from his days as the founder & leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, to his presidential campaign in 1844. Along the way, he explains what Smith's quixotic campaign reveals about the limits of freedom in 1844, and about our political parties today.

S4 E1: Partisans Feb 10, 2023

It’s finally here: the first episode of Conversations, Season 4 of The Past, The Promise, The Presidency! As you may have learned from previous seasons, when we at the Center for Presidential History talk about “presidential history,” we’re thinking deep and wide. And our conversations this season will be no different. The postal system, Mormons, the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, Charlie Brown: you’ll hear about all of them as presidential history this season!

But this week, we’re diving straight into a topic that obviously intersects with the presidency: partisan politics. Since independence, the U.S. has seen a host of political parties. Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans, Whigs, Democrats, Anti-Masons, Populists, and more. Throughout those same decades, intra-party politics have undergone their own changes, and the Republican Party of the last three decades is no exception.

This episode, we are exploring the rise of the new Republican conservatism beginning in the 1990s and tracing its evolution through the Trump presidency to today. And we’re doing that with one of the premier historians of the era: Dr. Nicole Hemmer. Hemmer is a historian and Director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the Study of the Presidency at Vanderbilt University. She specializes in the history of American media, conservatism, and the presidency, and explores all of these topics and more in her book Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s.

Norway's Balancing Act Jun 09, 2022

In this final episode of "Cross Currents" we explore Norway's challenging balancing act in their relationship with the United States in the years after 9/11. How would Norway maintain a close partnership with the US, on the one hand, while also remaining committed to keeping NATO a strong and relevant worldwide alliance? In addition to this, Norway's leaders had to continue answering to their own domestic constituencies, reassure their European allies, and of course, achieve their own nation's long-term defense and security objectives.

This episode features interviews with multiple of the key players in this balancing act, including Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, and the two leaders pictured above with US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: Norway's Defense Minister Kristin Krohn Devold and Norway's Ambassador to the US, Knut Vollebæk.

Norway's Security Dilemma Jun 06, 2022

After 9/11, the United States—led by President George W. Bush—made it clear to the world they would pursue al-Qaeda and any other threats to the US national security. But rather than working directly through established security alliances like NATO, the US chose to pursue new plans, and new alliances. This shift precipitated a downturn in diplomatic relations with many nations around the world, and a critical point of decision for many others.

This episode explores these diplomatic shifts and struggles through the story of the Norway-US alliance. Through firsthand testimony from Norway's leaders—including Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik—we'll explore how Norway's leaders resisted the US call to provide troops for military action in Iraq, a move that was extremely unpopular with many of their own voters. To make it even more challenging, Norway, like other NATO allies, remained anxious about US actions in the Middle East distracting them from existing European concerns.

9/11 and its Aftermath May 26, 2022

Terrorists attacked the people of the United States on September 11, 2011. But those attacks--and their reverberations--were felt by peoples all around the world, including in places like Norway, for years to come. This episode explores how Norway's leaders experienced September 11, and crucially, how they navigated Norway's alliance with U.S. in the years following as American leaders moved toward war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
For more on our podcast "Firsthand History" and this season "Cross Currents," visit the SMU Center for Presidential History at https://www.smu.edu/Dedman/Research/Institutes-and-Centers/Center-for-Presidential-History/Podcasts/Firsthand-History

0. Why Norway?: An Introduction to U.S-Norway Relations during the George W. Bush Presidency May 26, 2022

Why Norway?! You might be asking yourself this very question as you consider the big questions of diplomacy, war, and alliances during the George W. Bush presidency. Good news - this episode is here to answer that question! This episode sets the stage for us in 2001:

A new president in George W. Bush
An old multilateral alliance with NATO
A longtime alliance with Norway, a founding member of NATO

And then, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, changed everything.

This episode introduces those changes through the story of the solid, yet strained alliance between the United States and Norway, in the aftermath of 9/11.

S3 E8: Bully Pulpits Abroad May 12, 2022

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.

S3 E7: Native Sovereignty and Native Removal May 05, 2022

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.

S3 E6: Environmental Protection Apr 28, 2022

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!

S3 E5: Prohibition and The War on Drugs Apr 21, 2022

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.

S3 E4: Women's Suffrage and the ERA Apr 14, 2022

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.

S3 E3: Church & State Apr 07, 2022

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.

S3 E2: Healthcare Mar 31, 2022

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.

S3 E1: The Big Speeches™ Mar 24, 2022

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 senior political analyst and fill-in anchor at CNN, appearing on New Day every morning. He is also the author of two books about our topic for today, Washington's Farewell: The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations and Lincoln and the Fight for Peace.

Dr. Meg Jacobs is a Research Scholar in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. She is the author of Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and The Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America, and Conservatives in Power: The Reagan Years, 1981-1989.

S2 E9: Government Shutdown, LIVE Season Finale Dec 10, 2021

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.

Finally, we have one of your favorite voices from season one, The Past, The Promise, The Presidency: Race and the American Legacy. Dr. Sharron Wilkins Conrad is joining us from Tarrant County College, where she is now an Associate Professor of History.

S2 E8: The AIDS Epidemic Dec 01, 2021

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.

S2 E7: The Berlin Wall & The Soviet Fall Nov 18, 2021

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, Dr. Jeffrey Engle. When he’s not hosting The Past, The Promise, The Presidency, Jeff works as the founding director of the Center for Presidential History. He has also written or edited twelve books on US foreign policy, including The China Diary of George H.W. Bush: The Making of a Global President and The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Revolutionary Legacy of 1989.

We then spoke to Dr. Mary E. Sarotte, who is the Kravis Professor of Historical Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is also the expert on the expansion of NATO in Germany at the end of the Cold War and the author of Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall, and 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe.

S2 E6: The Bonus Army & The 1932 March on Washington Nov 11, 2021

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.

S2 E5: Teddy Roosevelt & The Great Coal Strike of 1902 Nov 04, 2021

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 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, London and the author of Theodore Roosevelt's Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon.

S2 E4: Ulysses S. Grant and the Ku Klux Klan Act Oct 28, 2021

Welcome to The Past, The Promise, The Presidency Season II, Episode IV: 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?

To learn the answers to these questions, 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 and the author of numerous books about African American history.

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.

S2 E3: Bleeding Kansas and the Utah War Oct 21, 2021

This week on The Past, The Promise, The Presidency: Presidential Crises we examine two presidential crises from the 1850s: Bleeding Kansas and the Utah War.

So far this season, we've seen the nation solidify under George Washington's leadership. Then, we saw the city named for our first president nearly burned to the ground by British forces little more than a generation later. The United States survived each of those crises, but by the 1850s, the new nation was starting to come apart.

This week, 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 over governance 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.

Explore all this and more in Season II, Episode III: Bleeding Kansas and the Utah War. To learn more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com.

S2 E2: James and Dolley Madison and the Burning of Washington Oct 14, 2021

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."

Upon arriving at the White House, British troops thoroughly enjoyed a 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?

These are just some of the questions we tackled in this episode. To learn more about this crisis we spoke to two fantastic guests. First, we spoke with Dr. Troy Bickham, a professor of history at Texas A&M. He is an expert on Britain and its empire in the Atlantic world. We then spoke with Dr. Catherine Allgor, a historian of gender, women, and political culture, as well as the president of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

To learn more, visit www.pastpromisepresidency.com.

S2 E1: George Washington and Executive Power Oct 07, 2021

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. Article II of the Constitution, which lays out the powers of the President, is remarkably short. It was one of the last things that the founders wrote down during the Constitutional Convention, and it does not give many details about the role of the president in American life. Instead, the founders left George Washington, our nation’s first president, in charge of figuring out what kind of day-to-day role the executive would play in leading the nation.
So how did our first president, George Washington, legitimize the new nation, respond to crises like the Whiskey Rebellion, and create key presidential norms? To answer these questions, we turned to two scholars. First, we talked to Dr. Julian Davis Mortenson, the James G. Phillip Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. As a scholar of constitutional law and presidential power, he had a lot to teach us about how George Washington shaped the presidency.
Next, we turned to a familiar voice, the Center for Presidential History’s own Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky. Lindsay revealed how the decisions Washington made in office set the precedent for generations of presidents to come. In the process, George Washington created the scaffolding for a very powerful executive branch and a very powerful president.
Explore all this and more in our first episode of Season II: George Washington and Executive Power. To learn more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com.

S1 E29: LIVE Season Finale Apr 22, 2021

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!
To learn more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com.

S1 E28: Donald Trump Apr 15, 2021

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.
First, we spoke to Professor Carol Anderson of Emory University, one of the nation’s leading experts—ok, THE nation’s leading expert—on the history of voting rights and voting discrimination in the United States. Prolific and influential, she is, among other words, author of One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying our Democracy, and White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide. We then turned to Jamelle Bouie, New York Times Columnist and Political Analyst for CBS News, where he writes on campaigns, culture, and national affairs, having formerly been the chief political correspondent for Slate. No journalist has done more to provide historical context for our current moment than Bouie.

Together our guests revealed to important insights:

Trump’s presidency represents a key moment for voting rights, as well as a continuation of the trends we’ve been discussing this season.
Trump’s presidency can be boiled down to one factor: who has power, and what that reveals about the Republican Party today.

To learn more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com.
Join us tonight for a live season finale of season one!

S1 E27: Barack Obama Apr 08, 2021

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.”
Thankfully we have great guests to help guide us through this maze. We first spoke to Professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, who teaches at Princeton University, writes for The New Yorker, and authored a truly pathbreaking book, a finalist for the Pulitzer prize in fact, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership.

We then spoke with Alison Landsberg, who directs the Center for Humanities Research at George Mason University, where she works on the fascinating, and sometimes confusing, question of not necessary what happened in the past, but how we remember it.

These were compelling discussions indeed, which highlighted two themes in particular:

First, that perhaps no one was fully happy with Barack Obama’s presidency, if for not other reason than the entirely unreasonable hope and dreams it seemed to represent when he first took office.
Second, that race clearly helped Obama politically, but perhaps hindered him even more.

To learn more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com.
Join us LIVE for the season 1 finale of “The Past, the Promise, the Presidency: Race & the American Legacy,” the CPH’s inaugural podcast season. If you’ve been with us from the start, or for any period of time since then, we’re sure you’ve got questions! And comments. Critiques and thoughts.

Join your podcast hosts Lindsay Chervinsky, Sharron Conrad, Jeffrey Engel, and the CPH team for an interactive discussion of what we’ve learned about the intersection of racial and presidential politics. YOUR questions answered. YOUR voice heard.

Register HERE.

S1 E26: George W. Bush Apr 01, 2021

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.
To understand this pivotal moment in history, we spoke with two fantastic guests. We first spoke to Professor Gary Gerstle, the Paul Mellon Professor of American history at Cambridge University, author of numerous works of political and social history including American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century. We then talked to award-winning journalist, Peter Baker, of the New York Times, who has covered the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and now President Biden. He is also the author of Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House.

Together our conversations highlighted two themes:

How unforeseen events regularly have a racial component.
The complicated relationship between religion, race, and “compassionate conservatism” in Bush’s presidency.

To learn more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com.

S1 E25: William J. Clinton Mar 25, 2021

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.
We began with Dr. Sarah Coleman, author of The Walls Within: The Politics of Immigration in Modern America, but more importantly, a much beloved alum of the CPH Post-doc program. We then turned the conversation to Dr. Carly Goodman, one of the nation’s leading experts on the confusing but critical US Visa Lottery, and also a co-editor of the Washington Post’s influential “Made by History” series.

Together our guests illuminated two key themes.

First, changes in immigration policy were changing the face of America
Second, new media, in particular right wing media, responded with anxiety to that changing face

To learn more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com.

S1 E24: George H.W. Bush Mar 18, 2021

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?
We were thrilled for this episode not only to call upon great historians, but participants in history as well. This is something easier done for recent presidents, of course, than for 19th century ones. So today we began our conversation speaking to Professor Tim Naftali of New York University and a regular contributor to CNN. Author of numerous books on diplomacy and politics, Tim’s claim to fame today was the biography of Bush 41 he did for the famed American Presidents Series. We then talked to Fred McClure, a veteran of the Bush Administration, and chief legislative aide to the president from 1989 to 1991. You’ll soon hear why Fred liked to joke that this job meant he was the president’s “chief spear-catcher,” except, it was no joke. Finally, we spoke to SMU’s Neil Foley, The Robert and Nancy Dedman Chair in History and author of, among other works, Mexicans and the Making of America.

Together our conversations highlighted two themes:

That the politics of race don’t have to be central to a president’s agenda to leave their mark.
Actually, actually the more we thought about it, we want to repeat the first theme: that the politics of race don’t have to be central to a president’s agenda to leave their mark on history.

To learn more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com.

S1 E23: Ronald Reagan Mar 11, 2021

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.
Joining us this week were Daniel Lucks, author of Reconsidering Reagan, Racism, Republicans, and the Road to Trump. Next we spoke to Leah Wright-Rigueur, The Harry S. Truman Professor of American History at Brandeis University, and author of The Loneliness of the Black Republican. Finally we learned from Niki Hemmer from the Obama Oral History Project and author of Messenger on the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.

Together our conversations highlighted two themes:

That the politics of race is oftentimes really the politics of language.
How the best way to understand a policy’s design is often by exploring its impact.

To learn more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com.

S1 E22: Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter Mar 04, 2021

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.
We first spoke to Professor Jefferson Cowie of Vanderbilt University, author of what really is THE standard book for political, social, and labor upheaval in the 1970s, the aptly named: Staying Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. We then spoke to one of our own, Dr. Elizabeth Ingleson, a former CPH Post-doc and author of the forthcoming Making Made in China: The Transformation of U.S. China Trade in the 1970s, which Harvard University Press is bringing out later this year.
To learn more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com.

S1 E21: Richard Nixon Feb 25, 2021

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.
We first talked to Professor Kevin Kruse of Princeton University. We the spoke to Martha Jones, Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. Finally, we spoke to journalist Clare Malone, a voice you’ll probably recognize if you’ve followed American politics in the age of Trump, who also knows a thing or two about where Trump came from, and it’s a story with Nixon written all over it.

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.

To learn more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com.

S1 E20: Lyndon B. Johnson Feb 18, 2021

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.
For this episode, we spoke with Drs. Julian Zelizer and Elizabeth Hinton.

Together our conversations highlighted two themes:

First, the extraordinary volume of legislation produced during the Johnson era and the influential legislation at that.
Second, the unexpected consequences of that legislation that no one saw coming—something that could be said for the entire Johnson administration.

S1 E19: John F. Kennedy Feb 11, 2021

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.”
In this episode, we spoke with Dr. Peniel Joseph and Dr. Sharron Wilkins Conrad. Together these two great conversations boiled down to two critical themes.

Kennedy’s reluctant but growing support for civil rights over the course of his presidency and the activists pushed that transformation
How decolonization in Africa shaped civil rights in Kennedy’s America, placing the Movement in a global, human rights context

For more information, visit pastpromisepresidency.com

S1 E18: Dwight D. Eisenhower Feb 04, 2021

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.
This episode features Dr. William Hitchcock and Dr. Brenda Plummer.
For more information, visit www.pastpromisepresidency.com.

S1 E17: Harry S. Truman Jan 28, 2021

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.
We spoke this week with two scholars of the Truman era. First, we learned from the writer A.J. Baime, a New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months that Changed the World, and Dewey Defeats Truman: The 1948 Election and the Battle for America’s Soul. Then, we spoke to Retired U.S. Army Colonel, Dr. Krewasky Salter, executive director of the First Division Museum at Cantigny Park and guest curator of The National Museum of African American History and Culture’s exhibit, “Double Victory: The African American Military Experience.

Together our scholars pointed out three key themes.

First, that the person in charge really does matter. Truman broke with his party to speak out on Civil Rights. Another president, and it might have been a very different story indeed.
Second, the symbolic importance of Truman’s 1948 Executive Order desegregating the military, though African-Americans in particular had already been serving, and fighting, in America’s wars since before the Constitution became law in 1789.
Third, that the verdict of history can change. It certainly did for Truman.

For more information, visit pastpromisepresidency.com

S1 E16: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Part II Jan 21, 2021

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.
To learn more, visit www.pastpromisepresidency.com.

S1 E15: Franklin D. Roosevelt Part I Jan 14, 2021

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. More than an economic crisis, the depth of the depression caused many in the United States to question if this democracy thing was really worth the effort—or even functional in a modern industrialized world. You don’t have to take our word for it, the people at the time let us know that democracy had one more chance to work. A quarter of Americans were out of work in March of 1933 when FDR took office. Millions were homeless; millions more hungry. And it had been this way for years.

Newly sworn in, Roosevelt told Americans they had nothing to fear but fear itself, but while that was the most-remembered line from his inauguration speech, rather it was his pledge to assume full executive authority if needed. And the crowd greeted this promise—to use full power—with a standing ovations and sustained cheers.
The Depression lasted throughout the thirties, and World War II followed soon after. The country eventually triumphing over each under FDR’s leadership. To discuss FDR's unparalleled presidency and legacy, we welcomed Distinguished Professor Eric Rauchway as our guest.
To learn more, visit www.pastpromisepresidency.com.

S1 E14: January 6, 2021 Insurrection Jan 08, 2021

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.
Featuring Dr. Jeffrey Engel, Dr. Sharron Conrad, Dr. Adriane Lentz-Smith, and Dr. Timothy Naftali.
For more information about our guests and the episode, please visit pastpromisepresidency.com.

S1 E13: The 1920s Dec 17, 2020

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.
Today's guests are Dr. Le'Trice Donaldson and Dr. Deborah Kang.
To learn more about our guests and read show notes for today's episode, visit pastpromisepresidency.com!

S1 E12: Woodrow Wilson Part II Dec 10, 2020

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. 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.

Visit pastpromisepresidency.com to read more about Wilson, learn about our guest experts, and more!

S1 E11: Woodrow Wilson Part I Dec 10, 2020

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. There is so much to discuss about this fascinating man.

Today we are learning from two brilliant scholars, Dr. Paul Behringer and Dr. Adriane Lentz-Smith, about this complicated man and presidency. Together our scholars illuminated two points:

First, that one can’t just look at American racial policy, and Wilson in particular, in black-white term—Wilson’s presidency invites us to consider questions of race in India, Africa, China, Japan and beyond;
And second, that yes you can, at least in so far as the U.S. Army’s attitudes and policies were designed to wage and win a war for democracy yes, but precisely, for whom?

Visit pastpromisepresidency.com to read more about Wilson, learn about our guest experts, and more!

S1 E10: William Howard Taft Dec 03, 2020

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 we will hear from two experts, Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols and Dan Okert, on Taft’s life and era, and how he dealt with the racial issues of his day. Together they highlighted two critical themes:

The national conversation about race no longer focused predominately on African Americans and Native Americans, but turned toward Eastern European and Asian immigrants as well.
The role of science in racial thinking

To learn more about our guests, read show notes, and more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com!

S1 E9: Theodore Roosevelt Nov 19, 2020

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.
Visit pastpromisepresidency.com to learn more.

S1 E8: William McKinley Nov 12, 2020

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 you'll learn why this moment is so pivotal, and also why the politics and economics of the McKinley age in many ways starkly resemble our own.
This episode features guests Dr. Daniel Immerwahr and Dr. Richard Maass. Visit pastpromisepresidency.com to learn more.

S1 E7: Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison Nov 05, 2020

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!
Our two experts today will fill in the details of their stories, and how their politics continue to inform our current moment. For this episode, we spoke to two esteemed scholars: Dr. Greg Downs, Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, and Dr. Gordon Chang, Professor of History at Stanford University.

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. And second, immigration’s increasingly key role in the fight over who could, in fact, be a citizen, or if you will, a real American.
Visit pastpromisepresidency.com to learn more.

S1 E6: James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur Oct 29, 2020

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. For this episode, we spoke to two esteemed scholars. Todd Arrington and Dr. Katie Benton-Cohen helped us grapple with three critical themes:

First, the potential for greater civil rights under President Garfield and the opportunity lost with his assassination.
Second, the emergence of the southwest as a site of racial tension.
Third, the increasing role of immigration in racial relations.

Visit pastpromisepresidency.com to learn more.

S1 E5: Rutherford B. Hayes Oct 22, 2020

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.

Here’s a quick refresher on Hayes. 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, Dr. Brooks Simpson and Dr. Alaina Roberts, 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.
Visit pastpromisepresidency.com to learn more.

S1 E4: Ulysses S. Grant Oct 15, 2020

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.
A national hero, he served contentiously under Andrew Johnson following Lincoln’s tragic death, and succeeded both men when elected President in 1868. He served two terms, until 1877, years that were incredibly consequential for the course of the South, the Union, and in particular for the millions of African Americans freed at war’s end, but uncertain for what the future might hold. He’d fought to save the Union during the war. He’d have to fight again to preserve it long after the guns fell silent.

In today's episode, we speak to Dr. Hilary Green, Associate Professor at the University of Alabama, and Nick Sacco, Park Ranger at the Ulysses S. Grant National Park Service site in St. Louis. We learn from our two Grant experts that we can’t understand his life, his legacy, and certainly not his presidency, without grappling with the biggest event of all: the Civil War.

S1 E3: Presidents and Health (Emergency Episode) Oct 08, 2020

Last week, President Donald Trump revealed he has tested positive for COVID-19. After experiencing symptoms and trouble breathing, he was transferred to Walter Reed Medical Center on Friday night, October 2, 2020. While receiving treatment, 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.
Over the last week, lots of media and news reports have mentioned these past incidents of presidential health, but rarely do they provide details. So 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.
Next week, we'll be back to our usual scheduled programming with an episode on President Ulysses S. Grant.

S1 E2: Andrew Johnson Oct 01, 2020

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.

Here’s a quick refresher on Johnson. Born in deep poverty in North Carolina in 1808, he apprenticed as a tailor, settled in Tennessee, and won election to the House of Representatives in 1843. After five terms in the House, he served as Tennessee’s governor and then its senator in Washington, remaining the only Senator from a Confederate State to remain loyal to the Union after secession. Lincoln appointed him military governor of Tennessee as a reward, and then brought Johnson onto the Republican national ticket during the critical election of 1864, hoping inclusion of a Southerner, and a Democrat, might help him win a tough and troubled re-election campaign. No one imagined he’d be President a mere six weeks after Lincoln’s second inauguration.

It fell to Johnson to reunite the nation after the apocalyptic Civil War, but he couldn’t even make peace in Washington DC. Perpetually at odds with Congress, he opposed the 14th amendment made freed black Americans full citizens, supported and even pardoned former Confederate leaders, and undermined the Freedman’s Bureau created to help former enslaved individuals adjust to their new lives of freedom. Years of open political warfare led to his impeachment, which he survived by a single vote in the Senate—a vote historians now believed was bought. Rejected by both major political parties, he left office in 1868 a man reviled in the North he’d supported during the war, and beloved in the former Confederacy he’d fought against.

Why? Because of race, plain and simple.

To help understand his presidency and discuss Johnson’s legacy more broadly, we spoke to two esteemed scholars: Dr. Lesley Gordon and Jon Meacham.
For more information on our guests, show notes, recommended readings and more, please visit www.pastpromisepresidency.com!

S1 E1: Abraham Lincoln Oct 01, 2020

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.

The war dominated Lincoln's presidency, and with it the question of slavery. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862 and eventually promoted the 13th amendment to end slavery nationally. He overwhelming won reelection, thanks in large part to the soldiers’ vote, and his Second Inaugural stands alongside his Gettysburg Address as arguably the two greatest examples of American oratory, ever.

“With malice toward none,” he proclaimed in early March of 1865, “with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

He died mere weeks later, only days after the guns of war fell silent, when felled by an assassin’s bullet. Abraham Lincoln thus became in many ways the Civil War’s last martyr, an American icon of moral strength, and also a global symbol for humanity’s inexhaustible quest for freedom.

But….if that is his legacy….is it accurate? History has a way of rounding out the rough edges of our icons, leaving a useful image for our own times, but at times an inaccurate portrait of the man or woman as they really were. What then, should be Lincoln’s legacy? More accurately, how do historians remember him? To help answer that question and discuss Lincoln’s legacy more broadly, we spoke to two esteemed Lincoln scholars: Dr. Eric Foner and Dr. Edna Medford.
Be sure to check out our show notes for more information on our guests, recommended readings, and more: www.pastpromisepresidency.com.

Introduction to Season 1 Sep 22, 2020

Welcome to The Past, The Promise, The Presidency, Season One: Race and the American Legacy! This season explores one of the most pressing issues in all of American history—the country’s troubled and difficult history of race relations. This podcast focuses on the history of the nation’s most powerful office, the President of the United States, and its complex relationship with race. This episode discusses why we felt compelled to create this podcast, why 2020 feels different, and what we hope to learn about race and the American presidency.
Hosts Dr. Sharron Conrad, Dr. Jeffrey Engel, and Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky interview Dr. Maria Dixon Hall, Chief Diversity Officer at Southern Methodist University. Dr. Dixon Hall talks about her work, her teaching, the country's complex racial past, the role of race in American politics, and what she thinks will be necessary for racial healing and progress.

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