US Institutions Are Collapsing | Glenn Loury & David Kaiser | The Glenn Show

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0:00 The many, many books of David Kaiser
3:01 David: Claudine Gay is a symptom, not a cause, of what’s wrong at Harvard
9:16 Western Civilization and elitism at Harvard
13:10 Meritorious elitism and luxury elitism
15:42 Intellectuals in the wild
17:35 How James Bryant Conant built the modern Harvard …
10:40 … and how it was broken
21:59 Glenn’s previous conversation with Omer Bartov
27:19 Why David thinks the Gaza War falls short of genocide but maybe not ethnic cleansing
28:58 What Claudine Gay could (and maybe should) have said at her congressional hearing
30:58 Why David thinks originalists will have a problem rejecting attempts to remove Trump from electoral ballots
35:45 David: Mitch McConnell should have impeached Trump when he had the chance
39:14 David’s new book, States of the Union
44:10 Have state of the union addresses always been as boring as they are now?
49:02 Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Reagan, and their legacies
1:00:44 Why Obama didn’t propose a New New Deal after the 2008 financial crisis
1:04:08 Biden’s silence

Glenn Loury and David Kaiser (US Naval War College, States of the Union). Recorded January 10, 2024.

Disqualification from Office isn’t a criminal punishment so what I said in the blog is the originalists on the Supreme Court are going to have a problem with this case because what the Colorado Court did and what the official in main did is totally within the precedent of what was done after the Civil

War now here’s the Problem hello everybody this is Glenn Lowry you’ve tuned into to the Glenn show uh I teach uh at Brown University where I’m the mer stoes professor of the social sciences and I’m also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute uh which sponsors The Glenn show I’m with David Kaiser who’s an

Historian uh and uh retired from the naval war College do I get that correct cor David that is correct yes Professor ameritus theor work yeah uh and uh prolific writer uh let me mention a few of his books uh books about the history of warfare and diplomacy economic diplomacy and the

Origin of the second World War uh politics and War European conflict from Philip II to Hitler uh American Tragedy Kennedy Johnson and the origins of the Vietnam War uh he’s written about the assassination of AFK he’s written about the sacko vanetti uh case uh he has a couple of

Books on uh professional sports uh baseball greatness uh the best players and teams according to wins above average I’m interested in that is that a money ball kind of uh in a way it’s a particular statistical analysis uh that does have implications for Moneyball kinds of issues yeah I’d be interested knowing

About that NFL 1965 the most exciting in season I was there I was in Chicago a 17-year-old pup in 1965 I I I remember that season um and he also has a memoir of life and history uh which he and I have discussed here at the Glen

Show some time ago so uh we become friends uh David and I’m proud to be able to say that uh welcome back to the Glenn show thank you Glenn I am also proud to be your friend and uh it’s great to be here for the third time I

Believe yep I think I neglected to mention the most recent book states of the Union uh and uh there it is a history of the United States through presidential addresses from 1789 right on up until 2023 uh that’s just off the presses so to speak and David is anxious for you to

Take a look if you’re so inclined I endorse that sentiment entirely uh so thanks David we we overlap man we’re we’re of a similar age y we came along roughly the same time the late and the early 80s with our phds and our positions in uh Cambridge as

Young oh yes oh yes professors associated with that Eminence much in the news institution Harvard University that would be Harvard University yes right so mooved to ask you uh are you worried about the reputation of of our uh I’m a moer I am uh a honorary degree

Recipient from Harvard I was educated at Northwestern University in MIT I didn’t actually get a degree from Harvard but when I became a faculty member at Harvard they uh endowed me with an honor honorary degree so I’m on the mailing list okay but uh everybody knows that

The president has uh claing gay uh been in effect forced out over an uh allegations about plagiarism and over dissatisfaction with her dealing with the problem of anti-Semitism in the wake of the conflict in the Middle East that has broken out yeah uh what do you make of what’s going on over

There well flooding gay is a symptom not a cause of what’s going wrong in Harvard and um the situation in Harvard wouldn’t be different if she had had a different career if she’d never been in Harvard whatever Glenn the whole situation in Harvard and in Academia in general

For me is very painful to contemplate this episode is sponsored by ground news a website and app on a mission to give readers an easy datadriven and objective way to read the news it’s a kind of dashboard for engaging with the media landscape in a more Mindful and informed

Way it’s best explained with an example today’s episode is with David Kaiser who wrote a book on US president so let’s take a look at the coverage of the 2024 presidential campaign here’s a story on Ron Dan santis dropping out of the race this is big news 550 sources reported on

It and we see that the coverage is quite even 28% of the sources lean left and 27% lean right 64% of these sources are rated as high factuality according to Independent News monitoring organizations but let’s see if the left and the right report on it differently I can easily switch between seeing

Headlines from the left leaning Center and right leaning sources by clicking on a specific tab here’s the first one on the left who what why writes doomed from the start the santis mercifully ends campaign and another one from West Hawaii Today Ronda santis ends his struggling presidential bid before New

Hampshire and endorses Donald Trump on the right I see fewer evaluations like doomed from the start or struggling bid the language is most headlines is as dry as in this one from the Daily Telegraph the santis in election campaign backs Trump my favorite ground news feature is the blind spot feed which highlights

Stories that are underreported by either the left or the right here’s one house January 6 committee deleted files days before GOP majority inh housee there are two sources from the center and the rest leaning right only one of them the Centrist political wire is raped High factuality I’d like to see more coverage

From reputable and ideologically diverse sources on this one as you see ground news is a unique service I’m finding it very helpful and helpful in giving me a wide range of news from across the political Spectrum vitally important in this election year they’re giving a 30% discount to the Glen show listeners

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Sure that they see it now I arrived at Harvard as an undergraduate in 1965 and uh got my history degree spent a couple of years fulfilling my obligation to the US Army among other things returned as a grad student for five years WR my dissertation and I was

A faculty member for four years and all of that is described in great detail in my autobiography of life and history and I love the place very much it made me what I am to be a faculty member even for only four years was a great privilege now in the subsequent 40 plus

Years uh Harvard and Academia in general have moved away from their Traditions that’s particularly true in the humanity such as history and literature and uh they have declined Harvard and all the waiting institutions and and declined very badly from an intellectual point of view I think they’ve gone fundamentally off the track

And this is part of the reason they’re in trouble now you can see in many things Claudine gay said as president and in many things people constantly say at Harbor that their view of their mission has changed completely in my opinion the traditional mission of a University is

To pass on acquired knowledge and develop new knowledge and equip students with that knowledge now students may want to use that knowledge to change the world in their subsequent careers and that’s great and more power to them but now we have a whole higher educational establishment that’s convinced itself

That its mission is change the world both within the institution and in other ways and to teach a certain set of values that are going to help change the world and when you adopt that position you are inevitably corrupting your intellectual Mission you are ruling certain kinds of

Conclusions out of order and you have had many guests here of many different kinds who have talked about that uh what the results of that are uh and uh you are also speaking as historian and this is part of when I’m trying to fix with this book you’re robbing your students of their

Birthright which is a genuine knowledge of their extraordinary past because instead I I mean the main historical perspective that dominates today really holds that Western Civilization before 1968 or so was distinguished mainly by its hopeless racism and sexism and that therefore it doesn’t need to be taken seriously

Except as an example of what we shouldn’t do male 1 and and that’s why we’re so busy you know appointing committees to make lists of the arv faculty members in the 17th and 18th centuries who own slaves you know a few slaves each etc etc yes they

Did okay that was part of the culture but that was not what made Harvard important then or at any time later yes Harvard didn’t have full equality for female students until the last few decades although they they had bradcliff and and actually right CL students were listening to Harford faculty by the

1900s um no they didn’t treat women equally but they were maintaining and expanding the intellectual history of the West which is what universities are supposed to do and and again they they have lost track of that mission and what has come out in the current crisis which isn’t the surprise really

To people have been watching is that Harvard is really defined I think Now by its relationship to our economic and political and social Elite and it it it depends on the economic Elite Financial Elite for money that it has to have every year it its main social function I’m sorry to say is

To supply the elite members of the financial community of all the professions Etc and it has adopted for itself the mission of deciding who among young people are going to be in that Elite and that’s very far from the original educational Mission or the um Mission which I discovered and was lucky

Enough to participate in for close to 15 years uh in the late 60s and 70s uh and it’s very sad and I think because Harvard has so much money and all the elite institutions have so much money and and they can live on their reputations it’s going to be very hard

For the necessary reforms to take place there they’re much more likely to occur at smaller lesser known institutions or maybe even new institutions like like the new University of Boston I mean there’s a good deal more I can say but those are my main thoughts about the

Situation uh and I’m at any rate the current controversy is opening the door to a lot of what’s going on and a lot of people uh are are paying attention for Zakaria for instance did a very fine five minute clip yes he was right everything he said was right and I’m

Glad this audience got to see that yeah well it’s a couple of things one is about elitism you say these are Elite institutions and you indict them and yet you indict them precisely for abandoning the standards of elite intellectual Endeavor it seems to me that they ought

To be adhering to they ought to be willing to declare greatness of human achievement even if it comes out of the West they ought to they ought to be willing to pass on this Heritage that we are uh that is our bequest of our forbears forefathers I almost said God

Help me um who who you know who scaled Heights and who opened Vistas and and who revolutionized ways of thinking and and who posed profound questions so that is the elitism that they ought to be adhering to and yet there’s a kind of luxur y belief elitism a kind of fattish

Clickish uh I don’t mean to put words in your mouth but I I sense a kind of social elitism which the signature indicator of which is adherence to uh a kind of I’m going to use the word woke progressivism uh about uh about social issues and it they so they’ve lost their

Way do do you disagree with that I would not use the words that you use okay I don’t regard the great achievements of Western Civilization the great historical achievements the the great literary achievements or let’s say the great architectural achievements okay to to feel awe in the presence of the Capitol

Building in Washington or you know notredam and Paris and whatever that to me is not elitism that is something that any body can feel and that all kinds of people have felt and do feel and and actually Glen and I’m curious as to your reaction to this I mean I’ve had some

Vari experiences in my life I spent a little time in the US Army only four months of AC duty but six months in reserves and I was a cab driver for a while um in Cambridge and I am firmly convinced that the genuine intellectuals Among Us are scattered just about a

Random within our society honestly and and the great thing is they recognize each other right away no matter who they are but these are just naturally scarious people I have to tell you a I’m sorry go sure go for no go for yeah no I was gonna tell you a

Story uh about this guy uh who I met when I was working in a factory in Chicago as a young kid who had dropped out of college Ed fauler is his name God I hope he’s still living although he was 10 years older than me

And he may not be but in any case so long and short of it is he walked around the shop floor at a printing plant Factory where I was a clerk yep with a dogeared copy of France Fan’s wretched of the earth tucked into his back pocket

Okay it’s black guy right wor uh the t-shirts with the BPS bulging and the cigarette pack folded up in the in the arm of the T-shirt and he was an aspiring printer at a printing plant he wanted to learn the craft and he did learn it he became a member of the union

And he prospered but he and I used to use our coffee breaks to play chess to to talk about stokeley Carmichael and Company uh and about uh the revolutions all all throughout the colonial collapsing Colonial hegemonies of throughout the uh south of uh of the globe he was an intellectual with

Without without any question he was an intellectual uh but he didn’t have a degree to his name well I I remember vividly another cab driver who at this point was in his early 30s this was in Cambridge he was a Portuguese American there were a lot of those in Cambridge

At that point high school education and he loved Greek mythology he he couldn’t get enough of it and he would talk about it at the drop of a hat but but he was curious about everything and I I don’t know what happened to him later in life

But uh I hope that he was able to use those talents to some extent but yeah um Harvard corporation uh yes chose claudon gay as the candidate to replace Lawrence BAU as president of the University she had been dean of the faculty you remember Henry rovski I’m

Sure sure oh sure an economic historian who was a grizzled hardened white male techno rat kind of guy who uh EXC we might also add Jewish Refugee from Poland oh let’s not forget that and who escaped the Holocaust by the skin of his teeth yes right yeah and and who held

Sway over harv uh faculty of Arts and Sciences for decades uh and had a tremendous impact on the intellectual character of the Enterprise and you know what do I want to say here I want to say gay is no Henry wasowski and in saying that I I

Cringe a little bit because it it feels chish somehow I mean it it feels like a a cheap shot and yet it seems patently also to be the case and I wonder how the corporation could have failed to notice that or are they not looking for Henry rosis anymore they’re not looking for

Henry rowski but I want to go further back than that the Harvard that I entered in 1965 had been created not by its current president but by James briyan conet who was one of the great educators of the 20th century it had a general education program courses in humanity social sciences Natural

Sciences which were simply distinguished by the quality the people who taught them every freshman had to take one in each group um the and and Conant had hired people from other universities for the reason that they would teach one of those courses you mean faculty wasn’t up to it he wanted

The best people he wanted David reesman for instance that was one of those right now nobody makes a hire like that anymore nobody hires anybody because of the teaching they’re going to do as as I found out in my own career that’s for sure and and and not only that Glenn

Harvard like any great institution at that point and for decades later was marketing a distinct educational experience a distinct educational product for instance we had the fall term lasting until mid December but it wasn’t over in mid December we went home we came back we had two or three weeks of reading

Period reading period was when you caught up on all the reading you hadn’t done and take it from me and all my classmates will tell you the same thing you found out what you were made of intellectually and what you were capable of during reading period Ian I did and a

Lot of other people did and then you had exams in a short break and then the spring term was the same and that that was a great system now what happened and this was about 20 this around about 20 years ago the administration starts saying our students don’t like this all their

Friends have their exams done by Christmas they don’t with the implication that if we don’t change this not as many people will apply to Harvard okay to which I would have replied so what right if they don’t want it fine we’re not going to have a shortage of

People applying sports fans let’s be real here let’s get the people who want what we have to offer and I know this from friends of mine the the older faculty who had been Harvard undergraduates argued violently against this for the same reasons I am and not

Only were they over rules but they had it thrown in their faces in faculty means oh you’re just nostalgic you just wanted to be the way you were so reading period was done away with and no longer exists and they’re not are they’re not offering a distinct intellectual product

Anymore and I’m I’m not aware of any IV League college that is really and the colleges that still are like the University of Chicago and a few of the smaller ones actually the most noteworthy ones of the St John’s colleges yeah very few were offering something distinct and and that’s just tragic yeah

Yep now uh former president claudon gay was also accused of not handling well the uh disputes and disputation that broke out after the October 7th terrorist attack by Hamas on Southern Israel and the reactions and support of the Palestinians that erupted uh on college campuses which sometimes bordered or crossed over into anti-Semitic

Uh expression and Jewish students of feeling uh injured and unsafe and unwelcome and so on and that’s a that’s kind of a piece of it isn’t it I mean that those two things go together in a way her the charges about plagiarism uh which are a kind of uh

Feet of Clay on the question of the intellectual heft of the president but also Al her uh willingness to Readiness to uh give voice to certain values in the context of a of a very difficult uh conflict in uh the Middle East what do you make of that well I

Think the big problem is the feeling that University presidents have to take a stand on something like the Israeli Palestinian conflict in my opinion that is not their job now now Glenn I’m going to toss this right in your face although I’m paying you a compliment you in this very week put out

Your talk with Omar bartov very fine historian and a very courageous man in my opinion now I think I know there are clearly people who won’t like that discussion I think that any reasonable disc person who listens to that discussion will have to appreciate that the Rights and Wrongs of

This conflict and particularly of the way the conflict is being fought are not straightforward there is plenty of room for disagreement among reasonable people there is plenty of room for severe criticism of the Israeli government which does not equate to anti-Semitism in my opinion I mean Omar bartov happens

To be one of many Jews who are more than willing to to voice that criticism and and who in fact feel the criticism all the more intensely because they’re Jews and and because this is not their idea of what Judaism is about so uh now there’s another dimension to this

Namely that support for Palestine and opposition to Israel has been one of the knee-jerk reactions of the woke culture which has a lot of adherence on campus and and and that’s just a fact but uh I I don’t think that uh she should have made any state statement about the Rights and

Wrongs of of of any of it I mean obviously we all condemn the cruelties of Hamas of the terrorist acts um and and certainly it I don’t think it would be out V to condemn that but in general well this is the thing Glen in the same way that historians now feel

Their task is to tell us what should have been done in the past not what was done but what should have been uh academics instead of studying the way the world is have sold themselves on the idea that their job is to tell us what it should be and that’s a much more

Dubious proposition in my opinion yeah I want to mention uh Omar bartov my colleague holds a chair the Samuel pizar professorship in right Holocaust and genocide studies in the history department at Brown University he’s an israeli’s a veteran of the Israeli defense forces he’s you

Know um and and he did give voice to the view that you summarize uh which is grave concern about the conduct of this campaign in Gaza that Israel is conducting in reprisal for the horrific attacks on civilians that Hamas orchestrated in uh October and if I may add the grave questions which the

Israeli conduct of the war raises about what the Israeli government’s objective actually is yeah I was going to get to that I mean they’re killing a lot of people they are you know courting off and uh uh you know forcing to flee and bombarding and and whatnot and he says what’s the

Goal here at the end of the day what are you trying to accomplish how much of this is Revenge how much of this feels all too much like the early phases is something that people could use the GW that is genocide to describe he’s willing to go there he’s a scholar of

Yes genocide of genocide studies and and he he he he stopped short of accusing Israel of genocide and Gaza but he says some of the preconditions are troublingly evident and this is something that it’s not too late for us to if we would use our voice as a

Historian he is using his war against U well I personally and actually I’ve just shared this with him I haven’t heard from what he’ll say but I I am disturbed by the uh promiscuous use of the word genocide in all sorts of contexts and anytime a lot of people are

Killed somebody’s going to pull it out uh what and thus and I don’t think there is a goal of the Israeli government to kill two million people in Gaza no however based on the statements of members of the Israeli government and based on the way they’re waging the

Campaign by making most of the population of Gaza homeless there is a very legitimate question as to whether they are trying to bring about the ethnic cleansing and that I think is something that the world should not tolerate yeah and I post this to in response to that set of observations to

Om yeah well is the rightwing uh which he is very alarmed about in the Netanyahu government of settler you know ideology and Jewish supremacist inclinations really representative of the Israeli population they are a kind of critical margin in a coalition government that is needs their support to stay in power but

Uh there’s a lot of uh a lot of thinking contrary to that in the Israeli uh population so so there’s that you know they I but uh president former president claudon gay got caught in that Crossfire no yeah that’s think that’s true again I I prefer not to focus on her she’s just

One individual who’s part of something much much bigger yeah but I I want to say I mean you’re at a congressional hearing at least stefanic uh this uh Arch trumpan uh you know yep attack dog comes at you this is a moment of truth you don’t look at your notes you

Don’t you don’t recite a mantra you spontaneously Engage The Moment it’s it’s it’s it’s a question of in effect the quality of leadership and the and the quality of the person in that moment uh and I don’t think she measured up in that moment obviously she what she did was

Not effective now again I think the problem was that she felt it necessary to make some sort of authoritative comment on what was going on in the first place um now she could have disputed stefanic on on on the the logic stonic was using in other

Words she could have said I do not accept the idea that in is a call for genocide we’re not we’re not going to punish people for advocating a we know that there are many people on our campus who sympathize with the palestini cause that’s their right to the Constitution

Etc at the same time we don’t want Jewish students or any Jew or any students to be harassed or doxed or whatever based on their views she she could have said that kind of thing she could have said when somebody actually calls for the genocide of Jews will deal

With it I haven’t heard that yet and and so on but anyway yeah yeah okay um we should talk about the book but but I I I want to ask you about uh your your you know just written a pres a book of focused around the US Presidency and

The remarks that people make from that lofty position yes and we’re in the midst of a campaign we’re in the campaign year yeah yep uh the Supreme Court is going to hear challenges to the Colorado disqualification of trump from the primary ballot based on the fact that he supported Insurrection

Interpreting the 14th Amendment uh the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution which I’m sure you’re intimately familiar with what do you make of that I have taken the position I’ll just say for the record that I don’t know from the 14th Amendment I’m not going to claim to be a

Historian or constitutional lawyer uh I can see that there’d be arguments but what seems very clear to me is that if you disqualify Donald Trump from participation in the 2024 election based upon that you’re making a grave mistake in terms of the legitimacy of our institutions you’re you’re it’s not

Just that you’re giving ammunition to Trump to trumpet that he’s being a victim you’re basically telling the electorate that the Democrats are going to continue to govern the country and that you know the strongest opponent to their to their program is not going to be allowed to stand and and that strikes

Me as a disaster for the country please tell me where I’m wrong all right um let me say that uh some of what I say may be in the Devil’s Advocate role which you uh enjoy so much yourself but actually okay my blog where I try to post every week is

Called history unfolding. that’s all one word history unfolding. comom I blogged about this and I did so with the help of a short article about the history of that clause which was very very good and explained how that Clause was applied after the Civil War as it

Was and what the Clause said was that anybody who had participated in an Insurrection no I’m sorry anybody who had first taken an oath to support the Constitution yeah and who had then participated in an Insurrection was ineligible to hold any federal or state office end of story and they could only

Be relieved of that um disability by a two-thirds vote in Congress which in fact is what happened in 1872 only a few years later when almost all the former Confederates were hardened in effect by two-thirds majority of Congress it was a big step towards the end of reconstruction but

Meanwhile uh they had all accepted that and they ident identified six or seven cases where people had tried to take some office who had been part of the rebellion and they were disallowed from doing so by state courts or by federal courts or in one case by a state

Official and they did not have to be convicted of insurrection you see because disqualification from Office isn’t a criminal punishment so what I said in the blog is the originalists on the Supreme Court are going to have a problem with this case because what the Colorado Court did

And what the official in main did is totally within the precedent of what was done after the Civil War now here’s the problem circumstances matter there wasn’t any doubt out at the time of the passage of the 14th amendment that we had had a huge Insurrection and there wasn’t any doubt

Who had been part of it I mean anybody who served in the Confederate Army or the confederate government obviously it was a primma faser case things aren’t quite as clear now obviously plus nobody could deny even if you were sad to South lost or whatever that that there had been this war and

That they had lost okay so that was straightforward M now today that’s not so straightforward because we don’t have the same political consensus about what had happened and who won and who turned out to be an insurrectionist because they lost instead of a freedom fighter

If they had won now this is all part of the collapse of our institutions which I talked about in the latter stages of the book in connection with the election Trump uh Trump was a total Outsider and in 2016 neither political party could come up with something you can beat him

That showed that our political order was in the state of collapse and in some ways that’s continued in some ways it’s gotten worse the great tragedy was that Mitch McConnell in January of 2021 lost his nerve was not willing to Rally enough Republican Senators as I’m sure he could

Have to convict Trump in the second impeachment trial which would have ruled him out as a candidate for all time you know think he should have you think he should have been deed of course I I think you should have been convicted and yes guilty you should have been

Convicted and we would have been through with that but they didn’t do that so th this is the problem we face this is a lot of of what states of the Union I’m sorry to interrupt I’m sorry to interrupt I want and I certainly want to

Know what states of the Union is about what was he guilty of that ought to have been ratified by the second impeachment what was he guil he was guilty of illegally trying to overturn the results of the election including the incitement of the Insurrection and if that isn’t the high

Crime or misdem meter I don’t know what is in my opinion okay and and what’s and remember a majority in the Senate agreed with that that’s not a trivial fact even though you need two-thirds of the Senate to convict it clearly was not a trivial accusation again give my naive T and I

Maybe maybe expose myself to certain kind of criticisms but what were the high crimes and misdemeanors of which Trump was guilty in his resistance to ratification of the November 2020 attempt in many ways to overturn the result of the election in about half a dozen states and to get Mike

Pence to take an unconstitutional step to refuse to certify the results of the election and the incitement of the mob to go into the capital and try to intimidate the Congress or whatever into doing his bidding peacefully and patriotically assemble that didn’t look to me to be

Peaceful but that those were his words he didn’t say go down there and make a reference of things uh he used words like fight and whatever I I mean I haven’t prepared to full Bill particulars here but uh I think what he wanted was clear enough so also his

Reaction to it when it happen made that clear his long delay making any mistake okay well all right uh yeah we can leave that I I I don’t want to okay get into a all right let me let me use it to segue the states of the Union

Though as I wanted to yeah please do right it’s a critical part of the job of the president to maintain confidence in our institutions and in our government and this is what now presidents have not been able to do for various reasons and that’s why we’re

In the mess we’re in but but but go ahead we can start off this this discussion of the book any way you want to and I know you have some ideas yourself no well I was going to ask you some kind of meta question so you decide

To tell a history go for you’re gonna you know you remember um who’s the guy people’s History of the United States uh Howard Zen yes Howard Zen yeah well you’ve got a president’s uh I view history of the United States those couldn’t possibly be different where are movement politics and where are the

Masses and and and where’s the percolation of things from the bottom up and uh it it seems exactly the kind of thing that uh the hey hey ho ho Western Civ has got to go people were complaining about you’re going to tell the history of the United States through the words of the

President yes indeed and I think it worked out quite well do you know uh yes all right let me quote the Constitution this is from the first page of the text of the book the president shall from time to time give to the Congress information of

The State of the Union and recommend to their consideration such matters measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient now here’s the point CL we have a government we have an executive branch we have a president we only have one president at any time with all due respect to Howard Zin

Any of our listeners anybody who’s lost faith in the government I’m sorry sometimes this drives me crazy too but there is nobody whose opinion is more important than the president of the United States about our public affairs that is simply a fact because he has not only the power but

The duty to set the agenda for the country and to explain what he wants to do about whatever problems there are and where we want to go I mean he may be right he may be wrong but nobody else can do that now to answer your question about popular

Movements they enter the story when they get big enough to force their attention upon the president and the political system and to force them and react and you see that happen in the book again and again and again uh the Civil Rights Movement being an absolutely classic

Example of that uh and and you know it’s Harry Truman who no longer gets any any credit for this but it’s Truman in early 1948 who puts civil rights as we understand them today on the national agenda and uh who who rails against discrimination against the N of voting

Desegregates the Armed Forces uh calls for various reforms doesn’t take on segregation head on not yet but but that’s coming and it becomes a big part of his campaign can you get a bill through the Congress no not yet but it’s on the agenda and then uh meanwhile the

Civil Rights Movement is pursuing its legal strategy which culminates in Brown versus Board of Education that forces Eisen hour to take some kind of position actually he’s very reserved about it and somewhat Meely mouthed about it he says we have to obey the law now in Little Rock when the

Governor of Arkansas stops integration Central High he does call out the National Guard to integrate but again he just says we have to obey the law and we have testimony from civil rights leaders Roy Wilkins who met with eyes now repeatedly and who were very disappointed in his attitude but then Kennedy comes

In and he says something that e noward never said he says Brown vers board ucation education was right not only legally but morally this was wrong that had to be corrected and he starts talking about it in a completely different way meanwhile you’ve got the new phase of the Civil

Rights Movement the Civil Disobedience and so on and that culminates uh in with uh well then you have the integration University of Mississippi in the University of Alabama and meanwhile the Birmingham campaign by Dr King and all the violence Associated that with that and then suddenly in June

Of 1963 in an incredible week one of the most incredible weeks in American history another reason as well Kennedy goes on television anybody can find this in YouTube I I implore you to do it it’s only about 10 minutes he says we have to end segregation we have to end

Segregation in public accommodations this is not the way we would want to be treated to be kept out of residents to be kept out of hotels this is wrong we have to do something about it and we’re going to do something about it and the big Civil Rights bill is introduced so

So that is how uh that’s one striking case of and you can trace it also way through the book that’s the point of the book how it gets to the top level and how we get something done okay so the utterances at these occasions stated the union addresses and

And other maor presal addresses yeah are occasions for us to get a a glimpse a window onto what the uh thought processes are the chief executive the head of the government and in that way provide us with an um a a weigh in uh to understanding the historical Dynamics

Unfolding but I I mean I have to tell you I have to force myself to listen to president’s deliver states of the Union addresses uh they’re they’re so filled with platitude and you know all these manipulative devices and they’re so obviously transparently uh political

ICal uh that I I I view them with a grain of salt where am I where am I wrong in that I I don’t expect I I expect to find uh cliche uh I I expect uh you know uh rhetoric and and a kind of ideological

Thing I I don’t I I don’t expect to get any real information from them so you know what am I missing well I don’t disagree with you and actually I think it is a theme of the book that the quality of the addresses as political governmental documents has really fallen

Off a lot and a lot of this has to do with things that aren’t even discussed anymore uh for instance one of the basic features of every State of the Union Address probably until Reagan was a brief survey of the state of the federal budget

You know do we have a surplus or we have a deficit what are we going to do with that and this was all taken very seriously now because we have uh now Bill Clinton and and he’s very underrated about this you know he actually did manage to balance the

Budget last president to do it and he talked about that since then hardly any president ever specifically gives you a quick statement of the national accounts it it’s too embarrassing the deficit is too big or whatever so they just don’t talk about it and and that’s real deration of Duty

In my in my opinion in addition there are certain rhetorical or shall I say theatrical tricks that have worked their way in and one of them which I think started with Reagan and I I do trace it in the book is this custom of uh pointing out average Americans in the

Gallery who somehow substantiate a point that the president is going to make and uh that that reached its apotheosis under Trump uh where he had a really extraordinary collection of people who who well I don’t want to go into the details it’s too pathetic but anyway he

Did a lot of it but Biden does it too and does this really mean that American government is getting effective no it doesn’t but I would say Glennon that within all that political verbiage and so on even in the recent addresses are facts about what the government is doing

And what the government wants to do and again I I mean those are very important things for us to know I don’t care how you feel about the guy I don’t care how feel how badly you how bad you think his rhetoric is he’s the one with the power

And we have to know what he’s trying to do and what he wants to do and and that is buried in there to a large extent even even now Okay so we’ve had 46 presidents and County yep uh three of them on my reading of your book stand out for you

And are deserving of chapters all to themselves that’s George Washington Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt uh do I correctly perceive that you see them as head and shoulders historically speaking above others who have served in the office and terms of uh their significance in American history well uh Washington set the

Pattern and he defined some very important issues yes um and it’s very interesting uh Washington begins something which has gone on in one way or another ever since although and it’s still happening which was our government represents something new something different it’s an experiment repblic Republican government the people rule

Can we make it work this is a huge responsibility not only for us but for the whole world and subsequent presidents uh repeated that again and again and Washington raised some questions especially in his farewell addressed but not only there that are with us to this day about how to make it

Work well one way to make it work is not to get carried away by Passion okay to use our heads it’s not to let sexual loyalties take over etc etc and all these have remained important ever since and they’re critical right now Lincoln obviously had to deal with

Secession Lincoln was very blunt about this too this is how he began his rhetoric at the beginning of the Civil War not about slavery but about the survival of free government he said this is a supreme test of our government this attempt to break away from it if we allow this it

Shows that our kind of government is too weak to survive and that will be the end of it not only here but all over the world and that’s why we have to defeat this rebellion and then gradually he builds the abolition of slavery into it as a necessary tactic but also to to

Solve the whole question and there actually that’s one of the places where I was very surprised by what I found as to various proposals that Lincoln made about how slavery could be done with gradually I think that was partly a political move but he was trying to give

The South every chance to come back peacefully which they would not do um so excuse me for interrupting you don’t you think there was some Merit to Nikki Haley’s reticence to invoke slavery in response to a question no I don’t think I don’t think that at all I think the

Point is that Lincoln great politician that he was uh and and while he probably knew from the beginning that victory in the war would mean the end of slavery he knew that was not the Smart Way in early 1861 to pitch the war partly because it was so critical to keep those other

Slaveholding states Delaware Maryland um Kentucky Missouri in the union and and he did um so it was the way to create the broad Coalition um but it was definitely about slavery and at the end and the only presidential address I quoted in full was Lincoln second inaugural because

It’s short and it’s such a magnificent document and there he says we all knew listen up Nikki gayy from the beginning that somehow this was about slavery um and and it was clearly yeah so uh that is the amazing achievement of Lincoln uh and to keep the country together he had

A lot of help from brilliant military leadership now Roosevelt well what he did well actually I’m going to build something else into this that we discussed in one of our earlier meetings my friends uh the late William Strauss and Neil how was still very much alive identified this 80-year cycle in American

History uh beginning with a revolution in the Constitution which created a consensus about what America was about and that consensus lasts as long as the people who were young adults at that point you’re still alive then there are threats to it and by 1860 it’s broken down completely and Lincoln has to

Create the new consensus partly by violence and that’s what he did now Roosevelt is in the parallel situation coming into the midst of the depression when the post Civil War free market you know plutocratic structure is broken down and he’s going to replace it and the now Roosevelt also had

Radio and the way he laid out the problem before the country in 1933 as a combination of an economic problem and a problem of values a moral problem was just amazing and the way he managed to stick to that and keep his momentum going at home for eight

Years based on the idea of creating a different kind of America with less inequality with better opportunities for everybody with Social Security with uh minimum wages and maximum hours etc etc was amazing yes his record fighting the Depression was erratic things went pretty well for four years and there was

Another recession things were beginning to get and then comes along the greatest war in human history which he had seen coming I I have no doubt that comes from another book I wrote but he didn’t talk about it until he had to and then he has to organize the country for this war

Transform the economy to pay for it and he does that and he prepares for the new post world and he wins the war in the alliance with Britain and the Soviet Union that’s why I said those were the most 12 12 most eventful years of American History because of the

Transformation both at home and abroad and the principles Roosevelt laid down remain our principles for uh 35 years more until Reagan and I did very explicitly say that that yes although I personally prefer Roosevelt to Reagan they deserve to be compared based on their impact on the country in opposite directions and

That is proven because in both cases their successors even successors from the other party did not fundamentally change what they had done did not fundamentally challenge what they had done Eisenhower did not challenge the New Deal and uh okay Reagan was succeeded by Bush but then Clinton and OB

Obama both in State of the Union Address well Clinton says the he of bigger government is over Obama makes jokes about the ridiculous duplication of effort in the federal government I I mean all of this now had become conventional wisdom and and that is a a record of how influential Reagan was go

Ahead well I want to saor that point rean was tremendously influential partly in the evidence by the way in which uh William Jefferson Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama handled their brief when they got to office I I was going to ask you about the financial crisis 2008 2009 Obama’s coming into

Office uh John McCain suspends his campaign so that he can you know focus on the ETC and uh Occupy Wall Street uh emerges as a as a protest movement against the bankers and the capitalism and so forth and so on that was a moment fit for a

Kind of FDR leadership but Barack Obama didn’t Supply it uh would you agree with that I would agree with that and I would go much further and this is a great illustration too of of straussen H’s scheme uh in the wake of the depression we had serious Financial

Reforms we had the glass deagle Act we created the SEC also because of the depression of the world wars we had these very high marginal tax rates which really did reduce inequality I mean rates going up to 90% that lasted until 1964 now a new generation grows up led by people like

Larry Summers to qu a non-random person and also Ruben uh who didn’t live through the great crash didn’t live through the depression and all they can see is how those old restrictions are holding back on things that financial institutions do they could get bigger they could be more effective blah blah

Blah so uh it it starts under Regan I think but it continues under Clinton and glass Eagles reped repealed we undo those reforms the FED also goes to sleep because they’ve never lived through a big crash and suddenly we have a situation in 20 8 which is very similar

To 1929 really uh I mean it’s not stocks it’s real estate but it’s hopeless overleveraging which puts the whole situation at risk now as I say Roosevelt in that first inaugural all anybody remembers is we have nothing but fear the fear itself there’s much more says

This is a problem of values and it’s the it’s the bad values of the money changes in the temple he uses that phrase that have led it to this and then we need new values and Obama did didn’t do anything like that and Obama accepted the idea

From Larry Summers and others that the system was still basically sound and that we just had to restore the liquidity and the financial system and everything would be all right and he didn’t take well he took some emergency measures but they they were nowhere near

The level what FDR did also FDR and the New Deal did a lot to save people’s farms and homes when they were threatened with foreclosure Obama as I understand it did very little along those lines and the recovery was was quite slow actually and that helped cost the Democrats U the

Congress it didn’t keep Obama from being reelected but but yes that you see we we’ve had crises we’ve had three at least now in the last 25 years we had 911 and George W bush after 9 91 comes out in full Franklin Roosevelt post Pearl Harbor mode you know this is a

Generational challenge it’s a worldwide struggle this is to secure the beace of the world blah blah blah blah blah yeah and he comes up with two Wars that go very very badly and that don’t solve any real problems now now this instead of restoring confidence in government

Undermines it oh Obama his handling of the financial crisis uh did not manage to um really restore the confidence of a lot of the people who were not helped there’s another thing that’s happened everything takes so long nowadays I mean going over Roosevelt in the newal so

Many things he did like the Civilian Conservation Corps okay that had hundreds of thousands of young men back to work within months now people forget this but the main provisions of Obamacare didn’t go into effect until after his second term had begun and when they did go into effect it was something

Of a screw up you know with the website and everything else uh so a lot of the political gain from that was lost the same thing has happened now to Biden over the infrastructure problem uh program yeah it’s moving along I suppose but there haven’t been a lot of big

Great results you know a couple hundred thousand people back to work or anything like that and the and then we had the pandemic which divided us still further so this is where we really needed another dose of the Lincoln or FDR kind of leadership and we haven’t had

It well there’s a lot there I can hear some of my correspondents disputing this or that or the other and they’re wondering why I didn’t argue with you about uh the financial regulation questions and so on and so but I don’t think I necessarily disagree with you

About it well thank the country was in a pickle uh the accounts weren’t adding up we were in a a danger of of financial collapse and that’s a real thing that affects the real economy employment and incomes and so forth throughout the country so something had to be done uh

But whereas uh if you were uh an uh Suburban uh newly uh financed home buyer in Las Vegas or somewhere and you couldn’t pay your mortgage you just got wiped out but if you were Bank sitting with uh significant exposure you got bailed out and you know that’s that’s kind of hard to

Swallow uh but Obama did nearly lose that 20 I mean he actually won comfortably in 2012 but coming into the election there was a lot of question there popularity went way down they took the shellacking in 2010 yes and whatnot and uh he managed to get the political

Ship wred and sail into a safe haror in 2012 not not at all clear that he would have done that if he had been more muscular more FDR like in uh trying to and and where was the Congress that he needed to FDR had uh uh very strong

Support in the Congress for his program Obama not so much well not only that uh okay the Democrats had nearly taken control of Congress in 1930 under Hoover they did take control by a substantial margin in 32 because of all the emergency measures that have in effect they gained seats in

36 and they in 34 rather they gained seats and and then they pass social security in the Wagner Act of protecting unions and then at 36 they gained even more seats in fact that’s the only time in American history that uh the same party has gained congressional seats in

Four elections in a row and by the way I want to make this clear to readers um election results are the way we keep score in this country and how the president is doing this this lets you know now what he’s has done has gone over with the people but anyway now I

Think the other thing that happened with Obama is that in his first two years he didn’t try to mobilize all the anger in the country against the bankers or against anybody else it’s not in his personality it’s kind of a tragic flaw because in a way it’s a good thing

And in fact Lincoln was that like that to an amazing extent in a very different situation I mean there was all sorts of violent Furious rhetoric flying around during the Civil War but Lincoln did not use that kind of rhetoric ever uh but anyway uh the tea party instead managed

To mobilize the anger and then turned it against Obama and he lost the Congress Just the Way Clinton lost the house in 1994 after two years and the way Biden lost the house last time around after two years and that was the end of any attempt to make any more sweeping

Changes I remember as we get to the end here Nancy Pelosi quite uh ostentatiously ripping the text yes of uh Trump’s uh State of the Union Address yes now the last time I checked the betting markets have him as the uh odds on favorite to be reelected as president

Of the United States he’s way ahead in the Republican primaries and uh he’s outpolling Biden in some critical uh States uh what are we headed towards here uh in in terms of presidential politics and and American political history unprecedented territory it looks like to me it is unprecedented territory

And I’m very frightened that Trump might win I am shocked frankly that Biden is going to run again I don’t think he should I don’t think anybody wants to elect somebody who’s going to be 82 years old by the time he takes the oath I’m not going to

Speculate but but again Biden you see I don’t understand what’s going on in this white house um the effective presidents and this also refers to Nixon actually before Watergate and and one of the things that surprised me writing the book was how well Nixon came off in it

Until W gate but Nixon Reagan FDR Kennedy they keep themselves in the Forefront of the public eye they keep everybody waiting to see what they’re going to say about whatever the issue is and Biden isn’t doing that and part of the problem is the way media

Has changed I mean when we had three networks the president could ask for time on all three networks and go on the air and most of the people would watch it now now the president don’t even bother to ask for that anymore and uh not only that I’m really

Shocked uh by this I don’t know exactly what’s going on here Biden gave this big speech last week about Trump threat to democracy in Valley Forge that was in the New York Times I think on page A7 or A10 didn’t make the front page that that’s incredible in a way but but

That’s where they are now now again I think you see what’s happened to his storian has happened to the media the the media they may have disagreed with the people in power major media but they understood their first obligation was to let us to know what the people in P were

Saying power were saying and doing they don’t feel that anymore they feel their job is to tell us what should be happening the media and not only on the oped page either and and that is another thing that I think has really weakened our democracy

I I mean this book is to some extent a a lament for the Democracy we have lost uh for which I do have great respect okay well I’ll let that be the last word David uh the book is states of the union and History of the United States through presidential addresses

1789 to2 23 uh my guest has been David Kaiser a historian extraordinaire and a prolific writer uh and author of The Blog history unfolding uh which we can find where David a history unfolding. that’s a good place yes it is thank Youk thanks very much D and the book is

Available on Amazon and all other major outlets and Glenn it’s always a very great pleasure to be here my pleasure thank thanks Again