The Past, the Promise, the Presidency

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.

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