The Past, the Promise, the Presidency

This week's crisis could have ended with the world in a giant blaze of nuclear flame, but it didn't. In fact, it's an example of how a crisis can be handled so effectively, that most people don't even remember it as a crisis. This week, we are talking about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. It's November, 1989. Reagan famously delivered his "tear down this wall" speech in 1987, but West and East Berlin are as divided as ever. In the summer of 1989, Chinese military forces had mowed down peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square. Horrified by the images of violence, American leaders, and George H. W. Bush in particular, were eager to avoid provoking a similar crackdown in Eastern Europe. The stakes couldn't have been higher. Both sides were armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over, and they had itchy trigger fingers.Then, unexpectedly, at a press conference, a mid-level bureaucrat ordered an enormous change in policy. He accidentally announced that residents would be allowed to leave East Germany. Word spread like wildfire. Within hours, thousands of residents were lined up at the gates to cross into West Berlin.Why didn't this moment turn into one of violence and bloodshed? What were the repercussions of the collapse of a global superpower and its economic system? How might things have gone differently? To answer these questions, we have two dynamite guests. First, we have a voice that you will probably recognize. Our podcast host, Dr. Jeffrey Engle. When he’s not hosting The Past, The Promise, The Presidency, Jeff works as the founding director of the Center for Presidential History. He has also written or edited twelve books on US foreign policy, including The China Diary of George H.W. Bush: The Making of a Global President and The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Revolutionary Legacy of 1989.We then spoke to Dr. Mary E. Sarotte, who is the Kravis Professor of Historical Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is also the expert on the expansion of NATO in Germany at the end of the Cold War and the author of Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall, and 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe.

Welcome to The Past, The Promise, The Presidency Season II, Episode VI: The Bonus Army & The 1932 March on Washington.This Veteran’s Day, we are examining the time that World War I veterans organized their own March on Washington.Most Americans associate the Great Depression with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But it was Herbert Hoover who was in office in 1932 when a group of World War I veterans decided to organize a March on Washington to demand an early payment of their bonus checks for serving in the military during WWI.  In 1932, the Great Depression was at its worst. Approximately one in four American workers unemployed. After three plus years of record-setting unemployment, poverty, hunger, and homelessness, many Americans were at a breaking point. WWI veterans, in particular, were furious that Herbert Hoover had bailed out the banks but he refused to sign a bill that would deliver their WWI bonus payment’s early. But Hoover did not respond with empathy. Instead, he sent federal troops to clear the protesters. Under the leadership of Douglas MacArthur, American soldiers used tanks, tear gas and yes, bullets to remove a gathering of American wartime veterans from the National Mall.We first spoke to Eric Rauchway of the University of California Davis. He is one of the leading scholars of the New Deal, the Depression and the political history between the world wars. Our second historian also ranks at the top of any list of depression era experts, David Kennedy, the Donald J McLachlan professor of history emeritus of Stanford University. Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his history, Freedom from Fear: the American People in Depression and War.

Welcome to The Past, The Promise, The Presidency Season II, Episode V: Teddy Roosevelt & The Great Coal Strike of 1902. In 1902, miners under the leadership of John Mitchell and the United Mine Workers went on strike to protest long hours, low pay, and unsafe working conditions. Mine operators and owners were determined not to concede to the miners' demands or recognize their right to organize as workers. With winter approaching, millions of Americans faced freezing conditions and would be unable to heat their homes without the anthracite coal that their work provided. Enter Theodore Roosevelt, the young, active president eager to put an end to the conflict and to make his mark on the presidency.  T.R. invited both Mitchell and the mine operators to a private conference in the oval office. The meeting itself was a sign of Mitchell and the mine workers’ legitimacy, and he could afford to be accommodating and pleasant. The coal operators, on the other hand, resented T.R.'s interference, refuse to compromise and swore they'd produce enough coal for the nation's needs that winter without the help of Roosevelt or the unionizing coal workers.When the operators failed to follow through on that promise, and with Americans increasingly cold and anxious as a consequence, T.R. sprung into action once more. He proposed an independent commission to resolve the dispute and turned to his sometimes friend, sometimes foe, banker JP Morgan, to pressure the mine operators into agreeing to the commission. What did the commission decide, and did both sides agree to the terms?What can the Great Coal Strike of 1902 teach us about the power of the president to intervene in disputes between unions and big business?First we chatted with Susan Berfield, an award winning writer and reporter for Bloomberg. She's also the author of The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism. We then spoke with Michael Cullinane, a professor at the University of Roehampton, London and the author of Theodore Roosevelt's Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon.

Welcome to The Past, The Promise, The Presidency Season II, Episode IV: Ulysses S. Grant and the Ku Klux Klan Act. In our previous episode on Bleeding Kansas and the Utah War, we discussed the intense violence and bloodshed that led up to the cataclysmic wrenching of the Union in half during the Civil War. But what happened after the Union shattered? It's not easy to put the pieces of national unity back together after a civil war, nor was it a simple task to change the hearts and minds of people who were willing to die to defend slavery and white supremacy. After the passage of the 15th amendment in 1870, African-American men in the South eagerly made the most of their new right to vote and elected many Black representatives to state and local governments.In response, white supremacists organized into local chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, which waged vicious campaigns of violence, murder, and destruction to intimidate Black Americans and other Republicans that supported their right to vote. After investigators discovered the extent of the KKK’s reign of terror, President Grant asked Congress to pass legislation that gave him additional powers to address the threat on the ground.Congress complied in 1871 and passed the Ku Klux Klan Act. Grant then issued a warning to Southern states, but especially to specific counties in South Carolina, that if they didn't stop their campaign of terror, he would declare martial law. Five days later, he fulfilled that promise and suspended Habeas Corpus in nine South Carolina counties. Grant sent in troops to arrest KKK members and deployed US Attorneys to try cases against the Klan. These efforts were remarkably effective, but just a year later, Grant backed away from his efforts to protect civil liberties. Why did Grant take such decisive action? And then why did he stop? What were the motivations behind his handling of this crisis?How did the public respond to the Ku Klux Klan Act?How does this crisis inform our current moment? To learn the answers to these questions, we spoke with two fantastic guests. First, we spoke with Dr. Yohuru Williams who is the Distinguished University Chair and Professor of History and Founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas and the author of numerous books about African American history.We then talked to Dr. Megan Kate Nelson, a writer, historian, and expert on the Civil War and the United States west. Her most recent book, The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize.

This week on The Past, The Promise, The Presidency: Presidential Crises we examine two presidential crises from the 1850s: Bleeding Kansas and the Utah War.So far this season, we've seen the nation solidify under George Washington's leadership. Then, we saw the city named for our first president nearly burned to the ground by British forces little more than a generation later. The United States survived each of those crises, but by the 1850s, the new nation was starting to come apart.    This week, we took a look at two crises from the 1850s: the violent struggle between pro and anti-slavery factions over the political fortunes of future states, known as "Bleeding Kansas," and the less well-known fight between federal authorities, president James Buchanan in particular, and Mormon leaders over governance of Utah. To put the coming Civil War into context and better understand these intertwined crises of federal expansion in the 1850s, we spoke with professor Sarah Barringer Gordon--Sally, to her friends--the Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Barringer Gordon is one of the nation's experts on questions of constitutional religious freedoms. We then turned to professor Kellie Carter Jackson, who teaches in the department of Africana studies at Wellesley college. Dr. Carter Jackson’s work focuses on Black abolitionists and the role of violence in the ongoing battle for slavery’s abolition. Explore all this and more in Season II, Episode III: Bleeding Kansas and the Utah War. To learn more, visit pastpromisepresidency.com.

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.