The Past, the Promise, the Presidency

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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 AmericaSecond, new media, in particular right wing media, responded with anxiety to that changing faceTo learn more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com.

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.

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.

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.