The Past, the Promise, the Presidency

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.

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.

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 contextFor more information, visit pastpromisepresidency.com

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!