The Past, the Promise, the Presidency

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.  

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.

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.

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. BushAn old multilateral alliance with NATOA longtime alliance with Norway, a founding member of NATOAnd 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.

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

This is the eighth and final episode of Season Three: The Bully Pulpit. This season, we explored many domestic policy issues, such as healthcare, women's suffrage, and land rights. But here in the 21st century, we all know that the president's voice reaches far beyond the borders of the United States. Has it always been this way?  And how does the bully pulpit reach audiences abroad? We invited three scholars to help us understand the many ways presidents have utilized the bully pulpit to speak to the world. We'll begin our conversation with Dr. Jay Sexton, Professor of History at the University of Missouri. Dr. Sexton explains how presidents thought about foreign policy and the bully pulpit in the 19th century, and how that all changed when Teddy Roosevelt took office.We' then move to the presidents of the World War II era with Dr. Kaete O'Connell. A former fellow with us at the SMU Center for Presidential History, Dr. O’Connell is now a fellow at Yale university. She explains how WWII ushered in a new era in presidential communications abroad.Finally, we invited Dr. Sam Lebovic of George Mason University to share his fascinating insights on how the US government expanded the use of the bully pulpit to include a much more complex, bureaucratic, and powerful web of communication that spanned the globe. We promise you'll never think of passports the same way again. 

In March of 2021, Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico's Laguna Pueblo, became the first Native American Cabinet Secretary in US history. It was was a truly historic first, as Deb Haaland is part of a long history of Indigenous peoples that predates the United States as a nation. And today, we are going to explore the relationship between Indigenous peoples of America and the United States Government. When the United States became an independent nation in 1776, a new era began, one of constant conflict. Native peoples claimed sovereignty over land and resources across the continent, while the US Government often called for the removal of Native peoples from those lands. To help us understand this history, we turned to two expert guests. First, we spoke to Dr. Christina Snyder, a professor of history at Penn State University. Dr. Snyder sets the scenes for us by exploring Native sovereignty in the earliest years of the United States. Dr. Snyder also takes us through the most infamous period of Native removal in US History, the era of Andrew Jackson. To understand how the relationship between Native peoples and the US Government changed in the 20th century, we turned to Dr. William Bauer. Dr. Bauer is a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a citizen of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in Northern California. Dr. Bauer explains the major changes that took place in US and Indigenous relations at the turn of the 20th Century, and he shares some remarkable stories and insight on struggles for Native sovereignty during the presidencies of Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon, and Barack Obama.

This week, we are going to be exploring the relationship between presidents, the bully pulpit, and environmental protection. When did presidents start thinking about federal use of land? When did that consideration change from an economic one based on maximizing profit and agricultural production for white settlers to something else? We are going to tackle these questions and more on today's episode. First, we spoke with Dr. Mark David Spence, the author of Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of National Parks, about the early history of presidents and land as a national resource. We talked about the role of national parks in the late 19th century and the complicated relationship between national parks and native peoples.Next, we spoke with Dr. Megan Kate Nelson, the author of Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America. Nelson gave us a history of the first national park in the world, told us about the outsized impact of Theodore Roosevelt in the national park system, and discussed executive action on national parks today.Finally, we spoke with Dr. Brooks Flippen, author of Nixon and the Environment, about Richard Nixon, environmental protection, and the creation of Earth Day. Brooks shares the really interesting political motivations behind Nixon's climate actions. You might be surprised to learn that climate change was once a bipartisan issue!

In this episode of the Bully Pulpit, we explore presidential power as it relates to prohibition and the War on Drugs.  If you go looking through American history, it's not difficult to find conflict over alcohol and drugs, and the president's role in addressing them. The president of the United States has plenty to say, not just about what goes into our bodies, but about the industries, ecosystems, and societal consequences of those substances. For some keen historical insight, we talked to two guests. First, we spoke to Dr. Mark Schrad, author of Smashing the Liquor Machine. Dr. Schrad set the scene for us at the turn of the 20th century, and provided some fascinating insight into the global history of prohibition. Then, we talked with Dr. Aileen Teague, an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University. Dr. Teague explained how the War on Drugs became an animating part of presidential politics, especially during the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Together, these two authors reveal how drug and alcohol policies are about more than just the substances. Rather, alcohol and drug policies reflect American's greatest fears in each historical moment.

This week, we are exploring women's suffrage, the Equal Rights Amendment, and how presidents have stymied or supported women's rights. In 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband and urged him to remember the ladies as he worked to craft a government for the new nation. But it wasn't until 1919 that Congress actually passed a constitutional amendment that prohibited denying voting rights on the basis of sex. And not until the 1960s did Congress pass legislation that applied civil rights to all people, regardless of race. Even with this legislation, women regularly earned less than their male counterparts, were disadvantaged in divorce and property disputes, and were generally not treated equally under the law. Congress finally passed an Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, but not until 2020 did the requisite number of states ratify the amendment, and its legal status remains questionable. This week, we have two fantastic guests to discuss the presidential politics of women’s rights. First, we spoke with Dr. Kimberly Hamlin about the women behind the women’s suffrage movement. We then spoke with Lisa McCubbin about the Equal Rights Amendment and First Lady Betty Ford's groundbreaking support for the amendment.