History As It Happens

This is the first conversation of a two-part series recorded at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. Hundreds of thousands of Americans visit Mount Vernon annually. Relatively few people see the inside of the George Washington Library. Its new executive director is historian Lindsay Chervinsky, and she wants to make the library a meeting place for elevated, historically-informed conversations on current events, while continuing to achieve its core mission of providing space and resources for professional scholars and researchers. Chervinsky's new surroundings are inspiring, as she reveals in this episode of History As It Happens.

This month marked 50 years since Richard Nixon resigned the presidency for the crimes of Watergate. The endless fascination with the break-in and the cover-up has obscured what may be more important in Nixon's legacy as Americans demand a more restrained foreign policy today: his contribution to the imperial presidency and the crimes he got away with. In the summer of 1974, Congress had a chance to hold the chief executive accountable for concealing the bombing of a neutral Cambodia during the Vietnam War. But this article of impeachment was voted down. In this episode, historian Carolyn Eisenberg takes us into the Nixon White House and the jungles of Southeast Asia to show how an American president and his national security advisor prolonged the war, misled the public, and caused appalling carnage in faraway places – but got away with it, with terrible consequences for our own time. Recommended reading: 'Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia' by Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, winner of a 2024 Bancroft Prize

The selections of Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz as vice presidential running mates received non-stop media attention this summer, but will either choice really matter come November? Does anyone vote for vice president? John Adams once called the vice presidency "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." Yet many vice presidents have played consequential roles in U.S. history because eight presidents have died in office, suddenly vaulting the No. 2 office holders into the Oval Office. In this episode, historians Jeffrey Engel and Jeremi Suri delve into the relevance (or irrelevance) of the veeps.

This is the sixth episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The most recent episode, Election of 2000, was published on July 11. If you believe American society has never been as politically polarized as it is now, you may not be familiar with the late 1790s. Federalists and Republicans viciously attacked each other, trading accusations of frittering away the Constitution and imperiling the legacy of the American Revolution. The incumbent president John Adams was beset by a crisis with France verging on war. His vice president, Thomas Jefferson, was the leader of the political opposition. In this episode, historian Alan Taylor takes us back to a crazy time: the XYZ Affair, the Alien and Sedition Acts, and Aaron Burr! The election of 1800 had to be decided in the House of Representatives amid scheming to deny Jefferson the presidency. Jefferson's victory brought on the first peaceful transfer of power in the new republic, an important tradition that lasted until the election of 2020.

With democracy in global decline amid the rise of autocrats and ongoing armed conflict, many politicians and pundits invoke the emergency of fascism a century ago in an attempt to make sense of our current dilemmas. Such comparisons are fraught with problems, not least the unique nature of Nazism's ambitions for global conquest and genocide. In this episode, historian Richard J. Evans discusses the new urgency surrounding what "made and sustained" the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler's dictatorship as they relate to today's threats to democratic institutions. Mr. Evans is the author of "Hitler's People," which aims to explain what motivated the Nazi leaders and bureaucrats to carry out their crimes. The book was reviewed in The Washington Times on Aug. 1.

What is Hezbollah, a name that translates to Army of God? These militant Shia led by the cleric Hassan Nasrallah are expected to retaliate for Israel's assassination of one of their military commanders in Beirut. Hezbollah, considered a terrorist organization by Western governments, is the strongest military force in Lebanon and holds seats in the country's dysfunctional parliament. It has been at odds with Israel for more than 40 years. But where did they come from? In this episode, the Middle East Institute's Randa Slim, a native of Lebanon who witnessed the Israeli invasion of 1982, explores the group's origins.

Annelle Sheline resigned her position at the U.S. Department of State in protest of President Biden's unconditional support of Israel as it waged a war of immense destruction in Gaza. An expert on the Middle East at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Sheline says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is attempting to pull the United States into a regional war after Israel assassinated Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Tehran and Beirut. The attacks virtually guaranteed Iranian retaliation at some point, and the Biden administration has vowed to protect Israel from attacks. For all the wars and terrorism in the Middle East since 1948, the region has yet to witness a full-scale, regional conflict directly involving outside powers.

By granting former President Donald Trump absolute immunity from criminal prosecution "for official acts" as Trump fights charges stemming from his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election results, the Supreme Court "descended to a level of shame reserved until now for the Roger B. Taney Court that decided the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857," says Princeton historian Sean Wilentz in an essay for The New York Review. In this episode, Wilentz discusses the problems with the Court's 6-3 ruling that declared a president above the law -- a first in U.S. history.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and running mate J.D. Vance say they will lead America into the future with an economic platform that resembles something from the past. High tariffs were once the mainstay of U.S. economic policy, accounting for the large part of government revenues in the era before the personal income tax. The tariffs, trade barriers, expulsion of migrants, and domestic manufacturing espoused by the Republican ticket might be called an economic nationalism of the populist right. In this episode, historian Phil Magness delves into the fascinating history of American tariffs from the founding through the end of the Second World War. Recommended reading: The Problem of the Tariff in American Economic History by Phil Magness

Both Donald Trump and Joseph Biden claimed they were indispensable to their party's electoral prospects, which both men attached to the very fate of our republic. "I alone can fix it," Trump once thundered. Up until Biden finally bowed out of the race on July 21, he insisted he was the best candidate to defeat Trump, despite his poor approval ratings and age-related mental disintegration. It may be cliché to consult the wisdom of the founding generation, but pieces of their wisdom can still help us come to terms with the bewildering events of our own time. For starters, George Washington set an example that seems to have been lost on both Trump and Biden. Giving up power -- knowing when to walk away -- is a sign of virtue. In this episode, eminent historian Joseph Ellis discusses Washington's warning about the threats to stable republican government. Recommended reading: His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph Ellis