Ep. 9 – “The Impossible Presidency”: A Conversation with Dr. Jeremi Suri

[0:00:07 Peniel] Welcome to Race in Democracy, a podcast on the intersection between race, democracy, public policy, social justice and citizenship.

[0:00:21 Peniel] Welcome to race and democracy. And today I have the pleasure of being with Jeremy Suri, my friend and colleague who’s the Mack Brown professor of leadership at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and also distinguished professor of history here at the University of Texas. And we’re gonna be talking about his brand new book, one of many that he’s written the Impossible Presidency. The Rise and Fall of America’s highest office. Jeremy, Welcome.

[0:00:46 Jeremi] Thanks for having me on Peniel.

[0:00:48 Peniel] And you know, this book is, I think, a truly exceptional book that really makes an argument about why, when we think about the chief executive in the age of not just this current president, when we think about Obama, we think about, um, Clinton, Bush, both Bushes, Reagan. Why the office has grown exponentially. You know, you take us all the way back to the founders to the president, and it’s become too big of an office for for one person. Yes, and I want us to talk about that, and I want us to talk about the way in which historically, that office has really shaped American race relations in a big, big way, both through sins of omission and really positive acts of commission. Yes, um, we think about somebody like LBJ when we think about Barack Obama when we think about John F. Kennedy. Uh, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So first, when you think about this notion of the impossible presidency, what makes it so impossible?

[0:01:50 Jeremi] Well, I think one of the things that makes it so impossible is implied in your excellent question. Presidents have an obligation. It’s it’s there from the founding toe, actually unite the country. If there’s one expectation, it’s that this individual is not simply going to speak to the people who happen to vote for him or the people who happen to agree with him but actually serve the role that monarchs were supposed to roll with. Serve, which is actually bring different parties together and make them feel a common America. And that becomes particularly difficult as we become a more diverse society. The office is contemplated for a society of largely white planters with diversity but diversity that’s held in non citizenship roles at the time as the franchise broadens, and that’s that’s a progressive element of our history as mortgage oops, become part of the American story and forced their way into the American story. Presidents have a larger community that they have to try to unite, and someone like an Abraham Lincoln invents a new language. For that, Franklin Roosevelt invents a whole new set of institutions to do that. The way to think about the new Deal, I think, is the president really trying to bring in African Americans to bring in labor to bring in Jewish citizens and others as part as part of his purview as president. Ah, But as we become more diverse and as the claims made by different groups become more significant and important, it’s harder and harder takes more skills to do that. And too often, ah, the act of getting into office. What you have to do to get elected makes it very hard to then go back and build those bridges that you had to burn to get elected in the first place.

[0:03:25 Peniel] I want you to talk about Andrew Jackson because you have a great discussion in this book about Andrew Jackson and in a lot of ways. Andrew Jackson talked about race, but he’s really talking about, um, white men. Yes, and excluded White minutes away. Before, after the 2016 election, we had Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders say, Hey, the Democratic Party doesn’t know how to talkto white men, especially the white working class. But Andrew Jackson didn’t know how to talk to them. And what’s so significant about Andrew Jackson? Well,

[0:03:53 Jeremi] Andrew Jackson Ah, really saw his role is giving voice to those white men who were not given voice by the elite Virginia Planters and the elite Boston Brahmans and others. And so it was an anti elitism, and it was very much tied to the land He himself came from a poor farming family. He had moved west from the Carolinas to Tennessee seeking land. It’s very much the Frederick Jackson Turner story, and he’s giving voice to those not like Jefferson, who have large plantations that they’re comfortable on. But those who are seeking new land and seeking opportunity, and that’s why Indians really become the other. They become the enemy because they’re the ones on the land that have to be pushed off. Jackson is a proponent of slavery But slavery is a means to an end for him. It’s really getting access to the land that’s most significant and preserving what he sees as an American space. I do think it’s a strange thing for people to say that the Democratic Party and any time doesn’t speak to white men. American politics When we spoke in tow, white men, they’re the ones who, and I try to make this point. The book throughout our history have populated the presidency and with one exception, right and have chosen our presidents. It’s more which white men have they spoken to in the most effective leaders. And this becomes harder and harder over time, able to bring together different groups of white men and other non white men to form a more united governing coalition.

[0:05:15 Peniel] And that leads me to Abraham Lincoln because, ah, Abraham Lincoln is such a important president, and probably the president has been written about the most in American history and Celje, Um, and you talk about Lincoln and what Lincoln did, and he did so many different things, um, and expanded the powers of the presidency in the context of the Civil War, and obviously I would argue the two most important things air the end of racial slavery and the fact that a new American republic is born a civil war. So I want you to talk about Lincoln and race and democracy.

[0:05:50 Jeremi] Absolutely. So I I think Lincoln, in addition to brilliant things, you’ve said, I think Lincoln also is one of the most innovative thinkers about race and democracy in his time. He’s not free of racial prejudice by any means, but he’s trying to find a way not simply of thinking about a post slave society but thinking about a society where African American, particular African American men are contributors to a larger republic. Because for Lincoln at the core of democracy is opportunity, an opportunity for economic advancement. Lincoln if if, If Jackson is the poor, landed our farmer looking for more land from which to get value. Lincoln is the poor border state boy who has no land, nothing right. He grows up in a state with sources of wealth or owning slaves part of Kentucky or owning land. He has neither of those things. He’s a true capitalist. He believes a democracy and opportunity are tied to creating economic means for earning a living. And so his vision of America Ah, is a vision where all working bodied men in particular have the opportunity to labor and to be paid for their labor. And I was like to remind people that that’s actually what the Republican Party was about. He’s the first Republican president. The Republican Party is Eric Phoner and others have written about brilliantly is about free labor, free soil and free men.

[0:07:11 Peniel] And that’s that’s really, really important. And we think about this idea of free labour and free soil and free men. Um, how does the end of slavery make that both something that, um, can come true in the context of Reconstruction? But certain groups are gonna be fearful of that as well.

[0:07:26 Jeremi] Right? Well, I think they’re a couple of elements of this. I think first of all, Lincoln is more aspirational that anything it’s not simply, if he had lived that he might have figured this out. These air really big problems and the problems that it takes another 100 years till we get to Lyndon Johnson for them to be at least worked out to a level that gets us beyond some of the grave limitations of reconstruction, I think. But there’s also another element to it, which is that the presumption Lincoln has is that there will always be enough. Resource is enough of a market for everyone to have an opportunity, and we know well. Even those of us who think capitalism sometimes can work, that there are limitations. Capitalism is a problematic system. It might be the best system we have, But it’s a very problematic system and wants always exceed. Resource is, And there is a tendency, even when you get out of slave conditions, for people to want to exploit labor, to maximize profit. And I think that’s a flaw in Lincoln’s thinking. I mean, when one of the points here is those who have advanced our society from the office of the presidency or any other office have done it, not with perfection. They’ve done it with their own flaws. And I think what’s fascinating about the history is that we layer the experiences on each other. And so the accomplishments of one generation create a new set of challenges for the next generation.

[0:08:41 Peniel] And when you think about next generation, your your portrait of Theodore Roosevelt is very interesting because we think about somebody like Teddy Roosevelt. He inherits certain aspects of the progressive, traditional Republican Party. When you think about the environment, when I think about anti trust, when you think about tiaras, this progressive. But then it seems that even as early as 1901 when Theodore Roosevelt becomes president after McKinley’s assassination, the anti slavery, anti racist basis of the Republican Party has really been diminished.

[0:09:14 Jeremi] Yeah, I think that’s right, I think is right. And I think, actually, the Theodore Roosevelt’s credit. He sees that, and he’s not always on board with that. He sometimes, um, accommodates himself to it for a variety of political reasons. But if you compare him to Woodrow Wilson, for example, theater Roosevelt or to Robert William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt is much more progressive and much more aggressive on these issues. But there’s also no doubt that there is a conservative side to Theodore Roosevelt as well. He’s a believer and progressive change, but he’s a believer that progressive change has to be led by the right people, so he wants to bring along black folk and Jews and women. But he does envision men like himself on the front. He has what many historians have written about with regard to progressivism. He has a reformist agenda, but it’s an elite driven reformist agenda. And that creates a lot of tensions, even within his community of people like Train, Adams and others who are not always on board with that.

[0:10:14 Peniel] And what about the progressive era in sort of social Darwinism and race and eugenics? There’s

[0:10:18 Jeremi] a lot of that, I think, Ah, for Theodore Roosevelt, he thought. And I try to write about this in the book In terms of civilizations, eso there’s a racial component to it. But he thought, in terms of a broader cultural milieu and for him, and this may be echoes Jefferson. Actually, there’s the sense that race is not destiny but race create certain biases. And he sees a certain uplifting role for education for the environment. One of the reasons he was committed to creating national parks was he thought that poor inner city kids had to have the opportunity to get out of the city.

[0:10:49 Peniel] So the Fresh Air fund, exactly 20

[0:10:52 Jeremi] experience fresh air experience, the wonders of nature, the freedom again, there’s a Frederick Jackson Turner element to this. Get out on the frontier, become free, Get away from all these institutions that are making you dependent. So he saw, as Jefferson did for the Indians. He saw the opportunity for uplift in a Booker T. Washington sort of way. But he saw that very much is structured and led by people like himself.

[0:11:15 Peniel] Now Roosevelt meets Booker T. Washington twice. Yes, in the White House. When we think about somebody like Woodrow Wilson and I’d like you to talk about this briefly, it seems to me like Wilson, um starts doing something very, very new and forceful as a president, you know, especially post Lincoln and post emancipation. What is Woodrow Wilson do in terms of in terms of race, politics and the federal government and work of a nation in

[0:11:41 Jeremi] absolutely Absolute and Spike Lee’s recent movie, I think wonderfully captures this. Yeah, black. I’m he he appropriately brings us right back to this. To this moment. Um, uh, it always remind people about Woodrow Wilson. Is He’s the first Southern presidents in sack retailer. There had not been a Southerner in in the office since the 18 forties and Ah, Woodrow Wilson. Ah really sees the office of the Presidency as empowering local communities. He’s a states rights guy, and he believes in things like the Federal Reserve, which will provide a regulatory mechanism for allowing the states than to operate. But he is very much against external forces coming into local communities, and that reflects his own experience. This is also how you have to understand is foreign policy. When I talk about Wilson’s foreign policy leader, I think people often get him wrong because they read his words and don’t understand the context. You see, the reason we study history is to know what the words meant in their time when he talks about self determination, he’s not saying all people have a right to their own nation, and they should be. If he doesn’t believe in that at all. He believes that there should not be external actors coming in tow, organized civilized communities and telling them what to do. But that excludes people who were not quote unquote civilized in his terms. So he is very much about what he calls the new freedom, which is about allowing local communities birth of a nation. Ah, lot of the racial ization and the resegregation of the civil service that on her under Woodrow Wilson are his efforts to say We’re going to stop trying to impose an external ideology on parts of the country that think differently. And it’s of course, not surprising, Peniel, that during this very moment of Wilson’s presidency, that’s when we start to see Confederate monuments built all over the place. It’s It’s a reaffirmation of the right of local communities to get help from the national government to avoid having to follow policies they don’t agree with.

[0:13:40 Peniel] So it’s this restoration of white supremacy. And I’d say Wilson is really the grand marshal, much more so than even on theater. Roosevelt. You know how

[0:13:48 Jeremi] much? I don’t think it was not comfortable with this at all. He will, sometimes for his own ambitious reasons, play to the prejudices of certain groups, and he has his own prejudices. But But Theodore Roosevelt isn’t progressive in the sense that he believes that if you give all groups the right opportunity they can, they can move their way up. Wilson. He’s a much more hierarchical world.

[0:14:10 Peniel] And so by the time we get to the New Deal and you talk about FDR. What is FDR’s role? And he’s president for 12 years? World War two. The New Deal. Social Security. You know all these things. What’s his role in terms of race? Especially considering that civil rights activists wanted an anti lynching bill. That’s right, That’s never passed. That’s what I think. One of the ironies of the new deal for historians is the fact that this new deal comes about under the banner of this Democratic president. Yes, who, when we think about the Democratic Party historically, like you were just reminding us. Wilson’s the first Southerner who was president since, um, Zachary Taylor. Or I guess Andrew Johnson was from Tennessee at the border state, put a border state. So how did this occur? Both hope you know what is FDR’s role? But then, how does this occur in the Democratic Party,

[0:15:01 Jeremi] Right? And, ah, FDR, a Democrat, is actually able to do things that tiaras a Republican couldn’t do. And Ira Katznelson is work is really helpful on this, too, right? What FDR is able to do is try to pull Southern Democrats along the rial impediment Thio. More progress on race issues and the real support for Wilson’s white supremacy. As you put it, eyes actually coming from Southern Democrats, the Democrats who control states like Texas and Georgia and FDR is not fully on board with them there, not his choice for president. But he’s able as Lyndon Johnson will, a generation a later. He’s able because he’s within the same party to do things for them, right? Ah, both FDR in Lyndon Johnson, I think. Subscribe to the Louis, the 14th principal, right? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right, And FDR uses the new deal precisely for that. It’s a brilliant way of giving everyone something. So he literally buys off the Southern Democrats and puts together a coalition of African Americans and others bringing them over to the Democratic Party by offering them institutional spaces to operate in that they didn’t have before. I think of Jacob Lawrence’s artwork right through the public works programs through the arts programs of the New Deal sponsors. So many writers, so many artists, exactly project, get, get involved to get an opportunity as a consequence through ah, the Works Progress Administration. The much more is done in white communities. But there’s construction and black communities as well. In minority communities around the country, they get, Ah, hold, they get an anchoring in society. And Roosevelt’s vision is that to get out of the Depression, all groups, I need to feel reconnected to the American dream, and the president is going to help make that possible. So if Washington is the uniter and Lincoln is the opportunity provider, really, what? What the Roosevelt is doing is creating a web of connections on. And that’s why social scientists like Bob Putnam and others will point out that this there’s this moment, mid 20th century, when Americans are more connected than they’ve ever been before. They’re segregated. So it’s not that African Americans and whites are going to the same Rotary Club meetings. No way. But it’s that African Americans are now more connected to other African Americans, and whites are more connected to other whites and Italians, and we’re connected other times. And those connections are exactly what the new deal is about making people feel anchored to their communities, and it’s interesting to me penal, that community is a word that presidents and major politicians used throughout the mid 20th century, and then in our free market obsessions. By the 19 seventies, it sort of falls out.

[0:17:38 Peniel] And when you think about Roosevelt and even Truman, what about the relationship between these presidents and the civil rights movement? Because basically, what the federal government does set up is two tiered liberalism. Basically one where blacks have access to lesser resource is another. Where whites have access to more resource is the creation of the white middle class. Yes, wealth through homeownership, all these different things. But what’s the relationship between these presidents and the civil rights movement, especially since Eisenhower doesn’t have much of a relationship yet? We think about Truman in the 1948 Democratic Platform. So Civil rights? Yep. Yep, we think about Hubert Humphrey and the mayor. Minnesota just absolutely no, you know we’re gonna be civil rights champions. So what is that relationship?

[0:18:25 Jeremi] I think we have to think of Roosevelt and Truman in different ways. On this, I think for Roosevelt it is very much about, I think, self consciously a two tiered system on for him both tears. This is the way Roosevelt thought about it. Both tears are going to feel like they’re doing better. They’re going to get help, right? So under the prodding of a Philip Randolph right, he actually requires a anti discrimination measures in federal production facilities in federal factories. And that’s almost everything during World War Two, right? Um, he will push for more. Resource is for African American communities, but always less than white communities. And if you look at the political map again, those Southern Democrats are always going to get a disproportionate share. And so it’s a way of getting by in. It also plays, of course, to his own prejudices, But his view is that everyone is going to feel more connected and be better off as a consequence. And statistically, that is what happens, right? So it’s an unequal system. But it’s a system of rising opportunities and for those in various different groups. Harry Truman, I think, has a different approach. Firstly, doesn’t understand it. Roosevelt’s doing This is an important point, right? Roosevelt and Truman do not have a close relationship. It’s nothing like president and vice president today. Um, Truman was there on the ticket when Roosevelt ran for his fourth term because it made sense politically and he

[0:19:41 Peniel] wanted to take Wallace off the ticket.

[0:19:43 Jeremi] Wanted Wallace also. And does it really wanted Jimmy Burns? And it’s interesting that Jimmy Burns from South Carolina was not acceptable because he was an art segregationist and that was not acceptable to the African American parts of Roosevelt’s coalition. Truman had his own racial prejudices. You see this in his letters and various things, but it was not publicly known for that. He was from Missouri, where it was at least less of a public issue that it was in South Carolina. And so, for Truman, the civil rights issue is a different one because after the war, in part because of what Roosevelt’s done, but largely because of what African Americans have done serving in the war, they come back and are much more powerful voice within American society. And Truman is a much more precarious Democrat than FDR Armas. So Truman’s got to do a lot of work in the lead up to the 48 election, which most people think he’s gonna lose to actually win people back to his coalition. It is similar, I think, actually, to Democratic nominees today. They’ve got to think they’re not worried Democratic nominees in 2019 2020 that African Americans are gonna go vote for Trump. They’re worried that they’re not going to show up for them as they didn’t show up for Hillary in the same numbers. It’s the same problem Truman has. Can he get those communities that voted for the first time they ever voted for a Democrat to vote for Roosevelt on? Many people think they just voted for Franklyn Rose, but not for Democratic Party. Can you get them to vote for him? And so his campaign advisers and various others say them. No, you need to really make this more of a prominent issue. And for Truman, the more politically he has to do it, the more he actually starts to come to believe in himself. He starts to see the value

[0:21:13 Peniel] in it. Now I want to talk about LBJ. Yeah, but I want a contrast, um, LBJ with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, because I think one of the things that the American public, um especially retrospectively, still hasn’t grappled with is how does Lyndon Baines Johnson win 44 states in 1964 and less than four years later decides not to run for president, and Richard Nixon wins by less than 2%. But then Nixon’s wind, starting in 1968 really ushers in in five of the next six elections. Republican ascendancy, um, in the White House, and really very much retrograde views on race and racial justice and civil rights in the aftermath of that civil rights revolution. So one LBJ and his sort of outsized role in the movement, civil rights, racial justice and just about five years as president, then to, um, the response to that in terms of the Nixon Reagan access that really also shapes the Clinton administration and shapes the Obama administration to

[0:22:19 Jeremi] write. So in some ways, for my book on my my thinking about this Lyndon Johnson’s aerial fulcrum, so was Franklin Roosevelt. Because Lyndon Johnson is a manifestation of the possible presidency, right? The imperial presidency is Arthur Schlessinger referred to. In many ways, my book is in dialogue with this older generation of scholarship, Arthur Schlessinger and others who are writing in the shadow of Nixon, right? We’re writing in the shadow of Obama and Trump. This earlier generation was writing in the shadow of Nixon right after the period you described, and Lyndon Johnson uses the presidency personally to push through things that would not have been possible without a very forceful, sometimes even constitutionally questionable presidency. Ah, and that’s even to the point of browbeating people like George Wallace and others not to convince them to do different things, but to threaten and bully them, to not do the things he doesn’t want them to do. But he also tries that, of course, with civil rights leaders, and his relationship with Martin Luther King is, of course, a very complex relation. You know that better than anyone else, Lyndon Johnson is committed to being the second Franklin Roosevelt. That’s every day on his mind. Roosevelt is his hero. He wants to be even bigger and better than Roosevelt, and he uses the office with regard to civil rights to push forth what he sees as a permanent set of markers that will make African Americans still not equal. I don’t think he believes in equality either, but much mawr and active part of American society, with more of a stake in American society with better living conditions. I think he cares about poverty Johnson does, as probably no president since Roosevelt had on. He cares about racial justice. But that’s different from saying that he actually views us moving to a society of equality. I think that still takes another another generation. But he’s also Lyndon Johnson, therefore, the moment when the office becomes impossible, because he takes this on personally, as he also takes on Vietnam, right, as he also takes on what he sees as as a role of dealing with poverty for white folks as well. Education. He takes on everything of his office healthcare, right? He takes on all raises issues. And I think that’s part of the answer. Part of the tragedy in what makes Nixon and Reagan and all this retrograde work on race issues thereafter. Because taking on all these issues hey, makes a lot of enemies, of course. But also he encounters a lot of failures, especially in Vietnam, that are then used to discredit his other advances. And this is part of your side. Exactly. Ah, and so much of the rhetoric about the Great Society in the 19 seventies is a rhetoric about crime and a rhetoric about communists. Neither rich the great society really has anything to do with, and if anything, the great society reduces crime. If anything, the great society is about getting us beyond this. McCarthy. I’d view of the world, but because he’s taking on too much, he discredits the things he does so well. And that’s the tragedy of Lyndon Johnson. I think it’s fair to say that if in 1965 or 1966 Lyndon Johnson and had the gumption, which is only obvious now to say, you should have done that to say, You know, this Vietnam is not working out. I want to declare victory and leaf That’s that’s the strategy Senator Achon suggests him. Just just declare victory. Lyndon and Leaf. If he had done that, it would have been much harder for us to see the kind of backlash we saw afterwards. There’s always a tendency, once you move forward to, then have a backlash occur. But Johnson’s impossibilities taking on so much empowers it empowers those who wish to ah, pull things in the other direction

[0:25:54 Peniel] and how to Nixon and Reagan, especially their use of racial code words. They’re their notion of citizenship, their notion of racial justice

[0:26:04 Jeremi] they exploit this Nixon most explicitly and ah many Ric Perle style and others have written about this. I’ve tried to write about You’ve written about it. Ah, Nixon is very self conscious of the fact that he can use racial code words to explain not simply what that people feel uncomfortable now with having African Americans in the dining room with them, but also to explain why we lost in Vietnam, right? I mean, the the African American, the African American male who’s depicted in 1971 is a criminal as a drug addict, doing all these horrible things becomes an explanation for all of our problems. Ah, and as we see problems of low morale in the military, well, that must be because we have minorities there, right? The notion that we as a society have grown weak, that we, as a society of allowed the wrong people to control our communities and come into our communities. That’s broader than just in argument about race at home. That’s an argument for an explanation from many challenges we face around the world, and this is always the case. We’re in that same moment today when we’re talking about immigration. Well, not just talk about immigration. Trump is trying to make it harder, make America great. Well, all these problems we have in the world, all this foreign competition, somehow it’s because they’re all these dark people now who are in our society. Nixon is playing to that, and I often will, for students, place some of the political advertisements for the time, and it’s it’s evident it’s evident in those. It’s evident in what Hollywood is doing, which is where Reagan comes out of, right? I mean there the James Bond film from the early 19 seventies, right? It said in the Caribbean. And the problem is a terrorist group of black power activists who have gone to the Caribbean and working with Specter toe under not undermine the United States. This is not just fantasy, right? This is This is a discourse about race and power in American society. Ronald Reagan very self consciously avoids the shall we say, the more brutal and harsh elements of Nixon’s rhetoric. But he plays to a lot of that as well. One of his first campaign speeches in 19 eighties in Neshoba, Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Mississippi, he goes to the to a spot of one of the worst crimes against civil rights activists, never mentions them and talks about states rights to an audience of white supremacists

[0:28:20 Peniel] who understand what the message

[0:28:22 Jeremi] is absolutely, and his and his Joe Crispino is written. It’s not just what Reagan says, it’s what he doesn’t say. He’s on the site of one of the worst civil rights crimes in our history and doesn’t even mention.

[0:28:38 Peniel] And so when we think about Reagan, how does that lead to especially, um, this idea of racial justice within the context of the Democratic Party, which is now by the nineties, when you think about Clinton and then I want to talk about Obama. But how does Reagan impact and frame how we talk about racial justice moving forward? Because Reagan is such a important presidencia.

[0:28:59 Jeremi] So I think if Nixon plays to the worst racial impulses, racist impulses, Reagan’s approach and lasting legacies a slightly different one there is a sort of racialized element to his let rhetoric, obviously. But it’s more his delegitimizing the role of the federal government, and that’s the legacy we’re really dealing with now, with the backtracking on voter access and federal oversight over that, for example, right one of the big outcomes of the 19 sixties building on FDR’s legacy but really pushed forth by Lyndon Johnson? Is the federal government coming in and taking strong measures? Not just the Supreme Court? The president, the executive branch of government through the Justice Department coming in and assuring the kinds of access for African Americans and other minorities that was not there during Reconstruction? In a sense, the union armies back. But there guys from the Justice Department in gals wearing suits

[0:29:53 Peniel] you is federal marshals. Precisely. It’s

[0:29:56 Jeremi] right Nicholas to catch him back. And people of that sort ready. Robert Kennedy on DSO They are playing this very important role. Reagan delegitimize is that and again, it’s part of a broader international argument, right? We’ve gone wrong in Vietnam. We’ve gone wrong and Iran and all these places because we’re letting this big bureaucracy make decisions rather than the right people. Let’s get the bureaucracy out of the way, and let’s empower the right people to make decisions. Let’s make our society more free market focused on, And that means, as Reagan says from the very start, that government is the problem, not the solution. Well, the historical record is just the opposite. Right deal. The solution to these problems. If there’s been a solution, it’s actually creative and effective use of government resources. So as you pull that back

[0:30:40 Peniel] and we go back to reconstruction in Civil War and your analysis of Abraham Lincoln and what Lincoln did, the federal government is the solution.

[0:30:48 Jeremi] Absolutely, absolutely, and and and so this this delegitimizing of the role of the federal government is really important. It shows up, by the way, with Reagan, and I try to talk about this in detail not just with regard to race but with regard to the AIDS crisis. On this is often what gets for gotten in discussions of the Reagan years, Reagan intentionally prohibits the federal government from helping prohibits the surgeon general from doing Mauritz, not simply the aid that isn’t provided. It’s his unwillingness to talk about his unwillingness to provide encouragement and support for institutions that air helping people. It’s sort of like today when we have federal officials attacking groups like Planned Parenthood and others, and I’m not talking abortion. Planned Parenthood provides basic women’s health care for people in poor rural communities where they don’t have hospitals. You start attacking that as Reagan attacks those who are actually providing, ah age treatment for various various ways on your attacking, the basic support networks that disproportionally help those from disadvantaged communities. And that is one of the biggest and enduring legacies of an attack on government. And it’s exactly what I mean by the impossible presidency. Because the office now has started to disempower because the office feels overloaded because presidents want to actually focus on a few programs, they feel overloaded in their responsibilities. So what happens? They pull back. Resource is from those who need those. Resource is most

[0:32:12 Peniel] when you think about the Obama presidency because we’re in the midst of the of POTUS 45 now, But, um, how does the Obama presidency, you know, really stack up these v your thesis both in terms of racial justice, but also just the entire presidency, cause he’s a war presidency. So in a lot of ways I think about Obama, I think about Lincoln. Yeah, you think about LBJ because of the affordable care act. I think about Roosevelt. Yeah, because of the great recession, So I think about all these different iconic presidents, which you covering, and

[0:32:45 Jeremi] it’s interesting because again, as you know better than anyone, Obama self conscious of this hey, spends the a couple of months after the election before he’s inaugurated. Reading all about Franklin Roosevelt, right? Talking to historians, write asking us, You know, what did he do in his in his famous 100 days? What can I do? But it’s different for Obama because the office now has inherited all of these responsibilities as well as all of these limitations. I conceived of the book really during the Obama presidency. Here we have a man of enormous talent, a man who’s progressive but also a true pragmatist, right, if there’s someone who should have figured out how to get people to work together, was Obama, but he’s always been. You’ve written about this. He’s always been the one who got people to work to get absolutely right. He becomes editor of the Harvard Law Review because he’s the only one who could get the different factions to work together. He is not a rabble rouser. He’s not a brick thrower right now. I mean, this is a guy who gets things done right, and, ah, he’s inherited in office. So that is truly impossible. I mean, he goes and gives a speech in Egypt talking about Reagan racial reconciliation and religious reconciliation, and all of a sudden he’s got the entire Israeli lobby, and much of the Jewish lobby states against him, saying all kinds of racist stuff about him. That then undermines his active. His efforts to get members of Congress on board with the Affordable Care Act right? And all of a sudden when he has to push forth the affordable characters, made all these enemies now, Ah, pharmaceutical companies and others who are gonna work against him in other areas. Obama suffered, I think, from having the challenges of the president’s had, but having so many of them at one time and so many organized interests working against him when he came into office. That’s not to say he didn’t make some missteps, but it is to say he had a big agenda, but a much, much bigger set of impediments to what he wanted to do. And of course, one of the impediments comes from also being an African American. Ah, in office, I think, where he succeeded, Obama did is in finding a few signature initiatives that he could push through. Just barely get them over the finish line like the Affordable Care Act, which now more than two years into the Trump presidency, is still there. And now more and more governors after the 2018 election are getting their states more involved with the Affordable Care act. It’s wonderful that John Kasich, Republican of Ohio, right? It’s now an advocate of the Affordable care act. In part, I believe I was just lecturing in South Carolina last week and people told me, Yeah, we like the affordable care act. We don’t like Obamacare. That’s okay. Three Affordable Care act he got that through. That’s an enduring achievement. So his his success was recognizing at certain moments he had to push particular things. You couldn’t get everything. His failure, I think, was when he did make progress, sometimes still holding himself back and trying to bring people on board when he wasn’t gonna get them on board. The Affordable Care Act is a major demon, but he could have gotten even more on. He would have had no more opposition. He felt that actually trying to find this compromise even though we didn’t get a single Republican vote. Ah, that he would still ah, get more support from Republicans down the line. He should have gone for even more, which is the Democratic votes. At a certain level. He underrated the degree of the opposition and underrated the need to really choose your priorities. That’s the take away from my book. The office is impossible cause you’re trying to too many things. Pick a few things and do them well.

[0:36:00 Peniel] My last question is about the current president. Um, the journalist on acid coats has called him America’s first white president in a really searing essay, Atlantic and really looking at the way in which Trump won with the rhetoric that was anti immigrant. That’s anti black. That’s the means women. But certainly that talks about sort of white privilege and white advantage is a good thing. Make America great as a slogan that says, Let’s go back to the anti not even 19 fifties Eisenhower segregation but really almost antebellum America. Andrew Jackson’s America, Um, but I think it’s also shown us the last two years what you talk about in your book about the presidency and the impossibility of this thing’s title. Um, so what do we think? What do you think? Two years into this presidency, about your thesis And what is the future of of this office? Because it does seem to be this impossible. Office.

[0:37:03 Jeremi] Yeah. I mean, Trump, I think, Ah, as to he, she Coats and others have written, as you’ve written in many pieces to he finds a visceral way to appeal to the worst, the worst instincts of many, many citizens who we have to empathize with. Two who feel they’re losing their status. I mean, I really do think the work of Richard Hofstetter that we’ve criticized for so long really comes back your status. Anxiety. These are not people who are necessarily doing well, but the people who think they have certain status in their communities. And now they feel threatened by all these people who don’t look like them, who are out competing them for spots in universities, out competing them for jobs, just cause they’re working harder. And they have other skills. And he appeals to that. That sense of resentment. He’s not gonna make your life better, but he’s gonna bring the other people down to your level, right. And unfortunately, this is This is appealing. That is not unique. Nixon plays that game. To some extent as well. Certainly is. You said Andrew Jackson played, played that game Many, many presidents have, Um, but right now that doesn’t move the ball forward at all. He has been remarkably unsuccessful in getting almost anything done as a legislative leader. Ah, he got through a change in the tax code that is one of the most unpopular changes in the tax code ever. Ah, he got almost no legislation through. He’s angry now. He’s not getting his wallet for two years. He had a Republican controlled Congress and he couldn’t get his wall. Then, um, the office is impossible for someone who spends their time simply appealing to the worst instincts of an organized group of Americans and doesn’t actually figure out a way to get this complex machinery toe work together. The future of the office is not going to be fixed by finding the savior, the anti trump savior. It’s actually gonna be fixed by what I think we’re starting to see right now, which is members of Congress and other branches stepping in and saying, No, this office has grown too large. There’s too much the president is trying to do and not getting it achieved. And we have to go back to a true divided government which will actually work better when Congress Place plays its role. Ah, the president should not the founders never expected. And it is not in the interests of a functioning presidency for the president ever shut down the government. All appropriation should lie with Congress. That should not be, ah, presidential prerogative in any way. War making should not only be owned by by the president. Congress should play a role in that. So the fix is actually what I think we’re beginning to see. Not because we have great democratic candidates as alternatives we might, but because other branches of government, other parts of our society, a waking up and seeing that democracy functions when no one part of it takes on a dictatorial role. I had functions in a pluralistic way, and our best presidents I try to show this the Lincolns and the Roosevelts. They figure out a way to use the office to encourage pluralism, right? FDR is not telling local communities what to dio, but he’s providing them. The resource is to engage African Americans and immigrants and others. Lyndon Johnson. Same thing. And that’s That’s the direction in which the office has to go to empower communities, not to not to dictate to communities.

[0:40:09 Peniel] Okay, that will be the last word. Jeremy Suri Thank you for joining us. His latest book is The Impossible Presidency. The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office, and it’s been a pleasure.

[0:40:21 Jeremi] Thanks for having me on Peniel.

[0:40:22 Peniel] Thanks for listening to this episode and you can check out related content on Twitter at Peniel Joseph. That’s P-e-n-i-e-l  J-o-s-e-p-h and our Web site, CSRD.LBJ.utexas.edu and the Center for Study of Race and Democracy is on Facebook as well. This podcast was recorded at the Liberal Arts Development Studio at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Thank you.