History As It Happens

It's a small group no one wants to be a member of. Since the dawn of the republic only 10 elected presidents have been rejected by voters in their bids for a second term. Only one of those, Grover Cleveland, was able to win a non-consecutive term after losing his first re-election campaign. This is another way of saying that history doesn't offer many guides to help us understand our turbulent politics today, as Donald Trump seeks another shot at the White House after his bitter 2020 defeat. And the man who unseated him, Joe Biden, has left open the door to stepping aside come 2024 -- another rarity in presidential politics. In this episode, historian Jeffrey Engel focuses our attention on the election of 1912 when a popular former president tried to win another term after four years away from the White House.

This conversation with George Washington University historian David Silverman was featured on C-SPAN's 'American History TV.' Silverman talks about the history of Thanksgiving and the importance of mythic origin stories in American society and culture.

After some of the coldest years of the Cold War came a thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations that witnessed historic summits and the signing of groundbreaking disarmament pacts. In this episode, historian William Inboden discusses the pillars of Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy and why, in his view, his strategy of “peace through strength” brought about a peaceful end to the Cold War and a world without Soviet Communism. By bolstering U.S. alliances and supporting anti-Communist insurgencies throughout the Third World, Inboden contends the Reagan administration’s statecraft pressured the USSR to produce a reform-minded leader willing to negotiate. In 1985, that was Mikhail Gorbachev. In Inboden's work is an argument that Republicans today would be wise to reclaim Reagan's approach of engaging with the world and embracing multilateral agreements and collective security alliances.

Donald Trump's announcement that he will seek the presidency once more has brought a renewed focus on his worldview, his vision for the U.S. role in a complicated world. 'America First' has a long lineage in our politics, reaching back to a time when isolationism was the dominant foreign policy constituency in the country. In this episode, historian Christopher McKnight Nichols explores the continuities and major differences between the America First attitudes of the interwar period and today's Trumpist populism of the post-Cold War era.

Is it possible for an individual leader to change the course of history? This question is as important today as it was in the past century, when “charismatic” rulers made an enormous impact, often with catastrophic consequences. In this episode, historian Ian Kershaw talks about how certain political leaders obtained and exercised power in 20th century Europe, in an effort to solve the question of the role of individual decision-makers in determining historical change. As Kershaw writes in his new book, “Personality and Power: Builders and Destroyers of Modern Europe,” “the character traits of twentieth century authoritarian leaders and the structures that underpinned their rule… can perhaps at times be glimpsed in the rule of their twenty-first-century counterparts.” This is not "Great Man Theory." Rather it is a timely conversation about the interplay between human agency and impersonal forces, the conditions and contexts that allow certain individuals -- democrats and dictators -- to play a decisive role, and the constraints holding them back.

Voters largely rejected Donald Trump's slate of favored candidates in the midterm elections, and Democrats avoided the "red wave" many pollsters and pundits expected. The surprise outcome has led to recriminations on the right, with some conservatives calling on the GOP to move on from Trump's toxic brand of populism. In this episode, political journalist Damon Linker, the author of the "Eyes on the Right" substack, says it's too early to know if Trumpism is receding from the political mainstream. Regardless what many voters may think, Trump is not going away quietly anyway.

In the late 1970s, the national mood was dark. In the words of President Carter, Americans faced a "crisis of confidence." Inflation reached double digits. Stagflation entered the lexicon. An OPEC price increase led to an energy crisis. And there was the Iran hostage fiasco of 1979. As his presidency strained to regain its footing, Carter made an appointment that would leave a lasting mark on history. He picked Paul Volcker to lead the Federal Reserve. Volcker took up his new post by taking a sledgehammer to inflation, sending interest rates soaring above 20 percent and tipping the economy into recession in the election year of 1980. Volcker’s policies loom large today as Federal Reserve chairman Jay Powell struggles to curb the worst inflation since the early 1980s. In this episode, economist and Volcker biographer William Silber talks about the towering legacy of the Federal Reserve chairman, as well as the historical lessons Powell might heed.

In Vladimir Putin’s warped view of the past, Ukraine was only able to seek independence in 1991 because of a mistake made by another Vladimir nearly 70 years before. In his zeal to obscure Ukrainian national identity, Russia's dictator blames the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin for “creating” an independent Ukraine in 1922 “by separating, severing what is historically Russian land.” These two events – the Bolshevik revolution and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – are not connected only in Putin’s imagination. They are linked through a history of appalling violence and destruction. The place names of battles of the Russian civil war a century ago are familiar to anyone following today’s news of Russia’s military fiasco in Ukraine. In this episode, the esteemed military historian Antony Beevor discusses the parallels between the civil war that birthed the Soviet Union and Putin’s drive to turn Ukraine into a client state – a plan that has, thus far, failed. Moreover, the Bolshevik coup d’etat of October, 1917, far from an obscure bit of history, shaped the course of the twentieth century as few other events did. Antony Beevor is the author of "Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921."

On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked a joint session of Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson declared, "The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty." In the century since, most U.S. presidents have echoed Wilson to one degree or another. And, especially in the years after the Cold War, Americans took it for granted that their nation must promote or defend democracy across the globe because, with Soviet Communism relegated to the dustbin of history, people everywhere would naturally gravitate to freedom and capitalism. Today, it has become an axiom among many public intellectuals and political figures that fundamental freedoms are on the line at home and abroad, from Ukraine to Taiwan. President Joseph R. Biden frequently frames U.S. foreign policy in terms of a global confrontation between democracy and autocracy. In this episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David M. Kennedy explores the origins of the Wilsonian idea that now permeates our basic political thinking. We may be getting Wilson wrong in one important respect. Declaring that the “world must be made safe for democracy” is not the same as saying “we must make the world democratic.”

As China escalates its intimidation of Taiwan, provoking speculation that President Xi Jinping wants the People’s Liberation Army to invade the island sometime in the next few years, Taiwan’s government is preparing the population of nearly 24 million for the possibility of war while calling on the world’s democracies for assistance. In this cauldron of international tension, The Washington Times' national security reporter Guy Taylor visited Taiwan to interview government officials and business leaders about the future of the island’s de facto independence. In this episode, Taylor discusses how the outcome of the Chinese civil war in 1949, followed by the normalization of U.S.-China relations in the 1970s, laid the groundwork for today’s dispute. Beyond the historic or ideological reasons behind Xi’s vow to absorb Taiwan, the presence of advanced semiconductor manufacturers makes Taiwan an enticing geopolitical target which President Biden has vowed to defend in the case of attack.