November 4, 2020 • 28 mins
We are likely about to close the chapter of the Trump presidency and begin a new one. The road ahead is complicated, but filled with opportunity. Pete is joined by critically acclaimed author and journalist Jonathan Alter, an expert on presidential politics, to talk about how the next president’s first 100 days could compare to those of Roosevelt, Carter and Obama, what this election means as a moment in our history, and how the past isn’t necessarily a predictor of the future.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, I'm Pete good Jedge, and this is the deciding decade.
It is the day after election Day, and we've been
watching returns and news from across the country closely, maybe
a little too closely for our own good. So I
thought it'd be good to use this time to zoom
out just for a moment and talk about the next
(00:25):
presidency in a broader context, thinking about what this election
means as a moment in our history, what we can
learn from the past, and what all of this will
mean for the road ahead. And my guest today has
a lot of expertise on exactly this. Jonathan Alter is
a critically acclaimed author and journalist whose work you've probably
seen in publications like Newsweek, Bloomberg, or The Daily Beast,
(00:48):
or whose New York Times best selling books on President's
FDR and Barack Obama might have made their way to
your bookshelf. His new book is entitled His Very Best
Jimmy Carter A Life. He has won many awards and
recognitions for his work and is widely viewed as an
expert on presidential politics and leadership. Jonathan, welcome. Let me
begin just by asking, since you've covered many presidential elections.
(01:11):
Do you have a ritual for election day and watching
the returns and has that ritual survived this unusual election year.
First of all, thanks Pete so much for having me on.
I'm honored to be on your podcast today, of all days.
So in the past, what I've done is gone on
flyer rounds on election day. So I did it with
Bill Clinton in two and Al Gore in two thousand
(01:36):
and then with Barack Obama in two eight. And that's
where you get on the press plane and you stay
out all night the night before the election, you know,
you go to all these airport hangars as they candidate
criss crosses the country, and then by the time you
get back to the candidates home state, pretty much what
(01:56):
everybody does is the candidate goes and votes, and reporters
go to the hotel and we try to take a
nap to get ready for election night. You know, with COVID,
I haven't been actively covering either campaign, although I have
covered them from afar. So my routine was to try
(02:19):
to take a nap, like and I failed because I
think mostly because I was so um kind of nervous
about the whole thing, and then I didn't sleep much
last night either, So whatever ritual I had, it was
completely thrown out the window. I think that's most of
us this time around. Your new book is about Jimmy Carter.
(02:39):
I'm looking forward to talking about that, but not yet,
because I have been devouring your first book at the
defining moment about the hundred days of FDR, and it
strikes me that a lot of people looking for something
to compare this moment too, are thinking about the moment
when FDR arrived in office, an economic crisis, democracy being
(03:00):
called into question, a dramatic rift between the outgoing president
and the incoming president, and as we head towards a
likely Biden presidency, and really, no matter what if you
think about the historical circumstances, I'm wondering, as an expert
on those first hundred days. First of all, do you
think observers have been right to point to that as
(03:21):
the closest thing we have to a template for what
one will look like? Or do you think that it's
wide of the mark and and not really the right
comparison if one even exists. Well, I think history is
always useful, but it doesn't repeat itself. It rhymes, that's
not original. To me. So there are elements of what
(03:44):
happened in the dismal winter of n thirty three that
are very relevant to today, and they were also very
relevant to the two thousand eight, two thousand nine winter.
So it's it's understandable for people who might be approaching
this situation to try to get some perspective. And what
(04:06):
is really quite similar is that the country is feels
that it's in some kind of crisis. And I think
we spoke to Biden about the comparison. And in the book,
Walter Lippman, who was the pre eminent columnist of the day,
he had a stature beyond what any single columnist has nowadays.
(04:29):
And he went to Roosevelt, who we had sort of
derided as a lightweight playboy, you know, not really a
very good candidate, was nominated on the fourth ballot in
and he said, Franklin, I think you may have to
assume dictatorial powers. And the word dictator had a positive connotation.
(04:51):
In thirty three, Stude Baker, which I think was in
Indiana Auto Company, right, that's right in my hometown, had
a car called the Dictator. It actually sold pretty well.
And Mussolini had been in power for about a decade,
and he was popular in the United States, and the
New York Daily News, which was the biggest newspaper of
(05:12):
the day, printed this headline, wanted a dictator. So democracy
is fragile, and we learned this under Donald Trump. It's
a fragile flower. And we just saw last night what
Trump did in the East Room. It was outrageous. You know,
(05:33):
he was taking on the essence the core of our system,
which is that the people decide and elections are the
very core of our democracy. So in that sense, in
the same way that democracy was sort of on the table.
It was a real comparison. And then you mentioned the
fact that there was this very tense interregnum between the
(05:55):
outgoing president, Herbert Hoover, who, like Trump, you know, didn't
fail to consider seed and you know, he observed the niceties.
But he and Roosevelt had a very very chilly encounter
shortly before the inauguration where Roosevelt's sun said he felt
like punching Hoover when they rode down Pennsylvania Avenue together,
(06:17):
which by the way, I don't believe Trump will do
with Biden. They rode silently and the only words that
they exchanged were. At one point, Roosevelt looked out the
window and said, nice steal. He was looking at the
construction of the new Department of Commerce. And the two
men never spoke after that, even though they had been
good friends in the early nineteen twenties. So Biden and
(06:40):
Trump were never good friends. And I think that the
bad feeling they're greatly exceeds what happened in ninety three.
But there there are some some similarities. And then the
similarities to the Obama transition is that the economy just
tanked in the fourth quarter of two thousand eight, and
(07:01):
so Obama was facing a crisis that was quite similar
to what Roosevelt faced, and if they hadn't put through
the stimulus, we would have hit the unemployment by the
fall that Roosevelt faced. The Progressives in ninety three wanted
Roosevelt to take over the banks in the same way
the progressives in two thousand nine wanted Obama to take
(07:24):
over at least City Bank, and in both cases Roosevelt
and Obama chose the more moderate course, and the banks
were brought back to health by Roosevelt in Obama and
I think that next year, especially with the Senate likely
not going democratic. I think that Biden will pursue a
more moderate course, and he has a lot of experience
(07:47):
dealing with Mitch McConnell. And progressives are going to be
unhappy about it, but are gonna have to understand that
even Roosevelt, you know, compromised, uh, he wasn't going to
just jam I'm through some fixed idea of what needed
to happen. So I think one of the reasons that
expectations have been so high on the progressive side right
(08:08):
now is this sense that we're not just talking about
switching control of the White House from the Republican Party
to the Democratic Party, but really that we might be
at a moment of transformation in the cycles of history.
I think a lot about what kind of era we
might be entering into. One of the things that struck
me as I was returning to some of what you
wrote about President Obama's this is what a lot of
(08:29):
people found in two thousand eight, right that there was
this kind of Reagan era began in nineteen eighty, ran
its course and came to an end with the dawning
of a new, widely felt, perhaps irreversible, progressive turn. That
President Obama's arrival represented obviously that didn't quite happen, And
I think in some ways now looking at the constraints
(08:51):
that that surrounded President Obama, he was he was still,
in many of us, operating in the sort of realities
that had begun with Ronald Reagan. So then there's this
patients to say, Okay, well, now forty years since, then
surely this is the outset of something new. If those
hopes are disappointed, is there anything in your study of
history that suggests what might happen next? I mean, suppose
(09:13):
that President Biden is confronted with with high expectations about
what's about the change, coupled with just the pressure of
these huge historical crises, economic crisis, public health crisis, something
of a crisis in the way the US has perceived
in the world. What's it going to take to rise
to that And what's the relationship of pragmatism and boldness
(09:33):
in a season like this? Well, um, he has to
be bold. But the question is how people react to
the sausage making the inevitability of compromise and Obama like
to use this expression, don't make the perfect the enemy
of the good. And this is something that unfortunately progressive
(09:54):
sometimes do I remember in late two thousand nine, I
got mostly on MSNBC Keith All Woman's Old Show. If
you remember that, like time after time, Keith would have
me and Howard Dean on and Howard Dean the former
chair of the Democratic Party presidential candidate in two thousand four,
(10:14):
he was saying of the Affordable Care Act, quote unquote,
kill the bill. To me, this was like insane and
almost a insult to the practice of politics, which is
the art of the possible. And here we had a
chance to protect people and end the horrible era where
(10:37):
you had to sell your house or declare personal bankruptcy
if you were someone in your family got sick. And
progressives have been trying for this since nine since the
Bull Moose Party platform of Theodore Roosevelt. And here it
was with insight. But because there wasn't a public option,
a lot of progressives wanted to quote kill the ill.
(11:00):
And of course if they had killed the bill, and
they came very close, uh, then we would have nothing. Now,
we would have no Affordable Care Act, and we would
have a huge number more on ensured. So what I
worry about with two is that because of all this
energy in the progressive movement that did not get a
(11:23):
transforming election. Yet we just have to face that fact.
This is not a transforming election. Uh, they will be
frustrated and they will not, you know, read the realities properly.
But having said that very quickly, Biden should act as
if he does have a mandate. And this is something
that Republicans are. Republican presidents have been better at doing
(11:46):
the Democratic president. So you know, I covered I was
in Florida in the aftermath of two thousand George W.
Bush had lost the popular vote. They really, to my mind,
they stole Florida. That's a whole other story. But he
acted as if he won in a landslide. And this
is something that I think Biden should, assuming that he
(12:07):
takes office, which I think is a reasonable assumption, should
propose a very bold, very progressive agenda, and I think
he will. It's just what happens after that. It's the
willingness of progressives and other Democrats to take half a loaf,
and I think what's happening right now is a little
bit unfortunately. I understand why Democrats are so disappointed, because
(12:29):
we wanted to think Trump was a fluke, that he
was an assault on our constitutional principles and that he
would be repudiated. That did not happen. What Joe Biden accomplished,
if he goes on to win, is very rarely. I mean,
in the twentieth century was only Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt,
Jimmy Carter against the president who hadn't been elected, Gerald Ford,
(12:54):
Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. That's it. Since the beginning
of the twentieth century, it's hard to unseek an incumbent president.
(13:20):
One thing that I was thinking about is you were
describing the narrow path that the Affordable Care Act took
and how close we were to it not making it.
Is also how much dramatically changed in terms of the
political life of the a c A. My first experience
on the ballot, I was a Democrat in Indiana. Not
a fun time to be a Democrat on the ballot
pretty much anywhere, especially in a conservative state like mine.
(13:41):
We were getting killed over Obamacare. There were these town
hall meetings where Democratic congressmen were getting yelled at. We're
hearing about death panels. I mean, it was. It was brutal,
and of course paid a heavy price for them. In
the mid terms. The thing that that amazed me is
a few years later you go to definitely today this
is the winning issue for Democrats. You know, the policy
was implemented, it worked, it hasn't been perfect, hasn't solved
(14:04):
every problem, but it's way better than not having it,
which is why removing it was the central pledge of
domestic Republican policy. Really, they've never been able to do it,
and in many ways gave up trying legislatively. Of course,
the courts are another matter. So I wonder as you
fit that kind of arc to other things we've seen
in history and other things that might be instructive to
(14:25):
abide administration, how should we think about that passway in
the life of a policy. Social Security might be another example,
absolutely untouchable. Do not mess with Social Security. And yet,
of course there was a controversy in getting it up
and running in the first place. And I wonder if
even FDR could have envisioned how enduring of a policy
win it would be. So, how do we think about
something that might be unpopular or even toxic today, but
(14:48):
that's going to be just bedrock that maybe saves us
in the future. And is there any way in advance
to know which of your policies is which, or is
it simply hoping and trusting that the American people are
going to believe in this policy, that you're putting through
as much as they do, and that you will be
rewarded for it eventually. So this is such an important
question that you're raising, I think, especially for progressives to
(15:12):
think about when they consider theories of change. So I
like I have a chapter in the Roosevelt book about
social security. Roosevelt didn't think at the beginning, in his
first hundred days before he had successful mid terms, he
didn't think he could lay that on the American public.
He could didn't think he could make the sale because
it was such a big change of Francis Perkins, the
(15:34):
first woman ever to serve in the cabinet. His Labor
secretary had been urging him to do it, and he said, no,
we can't do it, and now first we have to
lay the groundwork. So then they did it. But the
important thing to understand is that the original Social Security
Act of was not a good piece of legislation. It
was basically racist. In order to get the votes of
(15:55):
Southern Democrats, they carved out any occupation held by an
African American, and you know that was the only way
to get it through. But what Roosevelt understood was that
if you implanted certain things in it, you could make
it permanent and that it could be fixed later. So,
for instance, he had it funded by a payroll tax.
(16:18):
He didn't want it funded out of general revenues. He said,
I want to put in a text. No, so no
damn politician can take it away without going into the
payroll text, which set it up as like a trust
funded which it really isn't. But he set it up
in a complicated way that made it hard to unwind.
(16:39):
And then he waited and expected that it would have
to be fixed. And I think since nineteen thirty social
Security has been fixed and improved on six different occasions
by the Congress. First, all the Republicans were against it
the way they were Obamacare, and a lot of the
nineteen third six campaign was about Social Security, and basically
(17:05):
employers put in the pay envelopes of almost every worker
something that said, if you vote for Franklin Roosevelt, your
paycheck is going to be less under Social Security. Actually
it wouldn't be until ninety that they started to phase
it in, and the American people overwhelmingly rejected that because
by that time they trusted Roosevelt to look after their interests.
(17:29):
Now that's leadership if you can get people to do that.
Same thing happened with Medicare and it was not nearly
as inclusive a program when Lynda Johnson got it through.
Same thing with the Immigration Act of People need to
understand if Biden can put any points on the board
(17:49):
on some of these transformative ideas, you don't have to
get the whole thing, because when you give the American
people something good, they don't want to take it away.
That's why Obamacare is so popular now because they realized
it's giving them protection that they that they need. And
I think there are a whole series of other things,
a lot of which are in Biden's program, that he
can do, and even if he gets them done in
(18:11):
watered down form, he should be celebrated for that getting
anything accomplished. And this is one of the things that
happened to Jimmy Carter is that he got all of
this legislation through, but the Democratic Party was so cynical
about him in the post Witergate period that he'd have
these bill signing ceremonies that they would just yawn. They
(18:33):
wouldn't the press wouldn't even go. And you know, I
asked some reporters, do you remember something called Purpa? And
you know, these were good reporters from the seventies White
House reports. No, what was that again? They all remember,
like lust in my heart, Jimmy Carter saying that, And
I remember he's attacked by a killer rabbit when he's
in a canoe. Not even knew a purpose. I said, well, um,
(18:55):
it was the bill that allowed public utilities to use
a ternative energy for the first time. Like might be
a little bit important for the future of the United States,
you know. And there were like dozens of those bills
in the Carter administration. They got no attention. So one
of the things that worries me is that when Biden
(19:16):
does make compromises with Mitch McConnell and they get something through,
that everybody's gonna be bitching about those compromises rather than
celebrating that they got the nose under the tent from
major change. So in a scenario where it is Mitch
(19:48):
McConnell and there's a Republican Senate majority or at the
very least, there's not a reliable Senate vote for a
lot of Joe Biden's agenda. What effect do you think
that will have on the Republican Party. Do they just
remain a minority organization or even a bad faith organization
committed to in the Senate to stopping anything from getting
done as seems to have been a priority in twenty
(20:08):
ten during the Obama administration, or do they have an
incentive to find some way to cooperate and help deliver something,
If not, what what we would hope to see on
the progressive side. So I don't have a really great
answer to that. You know, in two thousand nine, on
the night of the Obama inauguration of the Republican leadership,
(20:29):
they all met at a restaurant and they said, look,
this guy is really popular. We just have to stop him.
We have to be really disciplined, and we can't let
him get anything through. Now, Obama had at that time
yet fifty nine Democratic senators, so it was a little
bit of a different situation. And McConnell is a famous obstructionist.
But you know, I noticed this Fox exit pole yesterday
(20:51):
and on all of the issues that say you talked about,
you know, whether it was climate change, response to the
whole list of issues. Large numbers of people who voted
for Donald Trump supported the Democrats on these issues. And
I think there might be some Republicans who are smart
enough to get that, and you know, Biden would only
(21:13):
need to pick off one or two of them in
the Senate. They go, well, there are no moderates anymore,
you know, but you know, you might be able to
get a Lisa Makowski on this vote. And so take
something like infrastructure. The people, a lot of the people
who voted for Trump, they were in a you know
what I say, as a cult of personality. They like
(21:34):
Trump himself. He was always talking about infrastructure week right.
McConnell is really against that. He just has a problem
with infrastructure, But I think he could be beaten on
that and a number of other things. Um and there's
certain a number of very important things that Biden can
do unilaterally, like re entering the Paris Climate Agreement and
(21:54):
renewing uh, you know, certain other international agreements, and starting
to repair our relations with our allies. And you could
go right down the list of many things he can
do without Mitch McConnell. But I think what's really important
is that he had a few quick victories, even if
they don't seem to be that big and don't please
(22:16):
progressive because winds build on winds. And then then he
starts to get the reputation of a successful president, and
he can, you know, down the road, do other things
like your ideas on the Supreme Court. He can take
the commission report after hundred and eighty days and say, well,
let's let's craft some bipartisan legislation on this. But it's
(22:38):
really important that he dig in and and act as
if he has a mandate. Otherwise he could get rolled.
Obama would always send him to the Hill because he
knew the Senate much better to do all the negotiating.
Almost all the bills that Obama got through the short
Strokes were negotiated by Joe Biden. One of the things
that Rosalind Carter told me that found really interesting she
(23:01):
is an extraordinarily formidable woman and was a very close
advisor to her husband, is that shortly before the inauguration
they withdrew the nomination of Theodore Sorenson, the great Kennedy
aid and speech trigger, to be Director of the CIA.
Now that was the wrong job for him. He'd been
a conscientious objector in World War Two. There were all
(23:22):
sorts of reasons why it was a mistake we've nominated him,
but they should have stuck with him, and they shouldn't
have like withdrawn the nomination just because a lot of noise.
So Biden really has to ignore the noise that the
Republican echo chamber is great at generating and just say
(23:43):
I'm going to tune all that out. I don't care
what they're saying on Twitter. I don't care what Donald Trump,
private citizen is saying, and which is going to be
a thing, Right, there's gonna be. Just because he's no
longer president doesn't mean he wouldn't be able to create
an enormous amount of noise and someone to following to
to amplify that. Right, Yes, but this is really really important.
(24:04):
Democrats should just basically ignore it. I mean, Jimmy Carter
got into many controversies with his successors, and he would
go after them in ways, but it wasn't on the
front page, you know. I Mean, it wasn't like the
guy's a private citizen. He likes to spout off what
he doesn't like about Borischer. Often democratic presidents, it shouldn't
(24:26):
be big news when Trump does that. Now, obviously Fox
will make it big news, but I think everybody else
should have not put him on radio silence. Recognized that
former presidents don't have any power. This is one of
the things that bugs me about people when they say
Jimmy Carter bad president, great X former president. No. As
a former president, he's done some great stuff on eradicating
(24:48):
and guinea worm disease and supervising elections, but he has
no power. You know, there's a huge difference between being
president and not being president in terms of what you
can actually do. But isn't it true that he transformed
the ex presidency. I mean, up until Jimmy Carter, no
one was active in the way he or perhaps we
haven't heard about it. And it's been inspirational what he's done.
(25:10):
And I could go on all day about that. He first,
he revolutionized the vice presidency. He was the first run
to give the vice president anything significant to do. Then
he revolutionized the role of the first lady, took it
way beyond what Eleanor Roosevelt had done. And then when
he left office, he revolutionized the post presidency. But I'm
just saying that when Trump doesn't have any power, he
(25:33):
should be treated as just another loud mouth TV host.
You know, he certainly doesn't deserve to be treated with
the reverence that some people think a former president should
be accorded. I don't think we owe him that. That's
an important discipline we're gonna have to remember on the
on the road ahead. Well, one of the things I
was curious about as a new president, likely a President
(25:54):
Biden takes office. You've covered politics and and really every
president in different way for decades, but in particular have
learned so much about FDR, about President Obama, and about
Jimmy Carter. I wonder if there's one quality that you
would advise an incoming president to remember or to learn
from from each of those three presidents that you know
(26:17):
so much about. In terms of Obama, I think Joe
Biden certainly doesn't need any of my advice and what
to learn from him. I wrote a piece about him
and Obama and their relationship in two thousand sixteen, and
they had this kind of secret code where Obama didn't
want the people in the room two just try to
(26:39):
curry favor with him by picking up on something that
he said and then just echoing it right. So he
had this unspoken deal with with Biden that when he
leaned forward, that was the signal to Biden to jump
in on one side of the debate so that Obama
didn't have to. Uh. So I think for f DR
(27:01):
it would be a spirit of optimism, lifting people's spirits.
This is just so extraordinarily important, and I think that
from Jimmy Carter it would be very much aligne with
Joe Biden's campaign. His campaign, Carter's and seventy six campaign
had a lot in common. Carters campaign right after Watergate,
(27:24):
So it was about the soul of America in many ways,
and I would strongly encourage Biden to continue that, to
continue to talk about decency in a set of high
moral tone and not give up on that. And there
is an integrity agenda that the country needs now and
I would urge Biden to stay focused on that. Sitting
(27:53):
here today, we know that we are close to closing
the chapter on the Trump presidency and beginning a new one.
Joe Biden presidency will inevitably be one of great consequence.
Yet there's a complicated road even to getting two inauguration days,
we already see the president attack the process itself. Jonathan
was full of insights about how we can learn from
(28:14):
the past, but he also reminded us why the past
can always tell us what to expect in the future.
We know that the path ahead will be unpredictable, but
what has cut across in the story of each of
these presidents is the role of their personal leadership and
how that can offer focus and discipline for us, all
something we're going to need in the months and years
to come. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
(28:39):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Hi, I'm Pete good Jedge, and this is the deciding decade.
It is the day after election Day, and we've been
watching returns and news from across the country closely, maybe
a little too closely for our own good. So I
thought it'd be good to use this time to zoom
out just for a moment and talk about the next
(00:25):
presidency in a broader context, thinking about what this election
means as a moment in our history, what we can
learn from the past, and what all of this will
mean for the road ahead. And my guest today has
a lot of expertise on exactly this. Jonathan Alter is
a critically acclaimed author and journalist whose work you've probably
seen in publications like Newsweek, Bloomberg, or The Daily Beast,
(00:48):
or whose New York Times best selling books on President's
FDR and Barack Obama might have made their way to
your bookshelf. His new book is entitled His Very Best
Jimmy Carter A Life. He has won many awards and
recognitions for his work and is widely viewed as an
expert on presidential politics and leadership. Jonathan, welcome. Let me
begin just by asking, since you've covered many presidential elections.
(01:11):
Do you have a ritual for election day and watching
the returns and has that ritual survived this unusual election year.
First of all, thanks Pete so much for having me on.
I'm honored to be on your podcast today, of all days.
So in the past, what I've done is gone on
flyer rounds on election day. So I did it with
Bill Clinton in two and Al Gore in two thousand
(01:36):
and then with Barack Obama in two eight. And that's
where you get on the press plane and you stay
out all night the night before the election, you know,
you go to all these airport hangars as they candidate
criss crosses the country, and then by the time you
get back to the candidates home state, pretty much what
(01:56):
everybody does is the candidate goes and votes, and reporters
go to the hotel and we try to take a
nap to get ready for election night. You know, with COVID,
I haven't been actively covering either campaign, although I have
covered them from afar. So my routine was to try
(02:19):
to take a nap, like and I failed because I
think mostly because I was so um kind of nervous
about the whole thing, and then I didn't sleep much
last night either, So whatever ritual I had, it was
completely thrown out the window. I think that's most of
us this time around. Your new book is about Jimmy Carter.
(02:39):
I'm looking forward to talking about that, but not yet,
because I have been devouring your first book at the
defining moment about the hundred days of FDR, and it
strikes me that a lot of people looking for something
to compare this moment too, are thinking about the moment
when FDR arrived in office, an economic crisis, democracy being
(03:00):
called into question, a dramatic rift between the outgoing president
and the incoming president, and as we head towards a
likely Biden presidency, and really, no matter what if you
think about the historical circumstances, I'm wondering, as an expert
on those first hundred days. First of all, do you
think observers have been right to point to that as
(03:21):
the closest thing we have to a template for what
one will look like? Or do you think that it's
wide of the mark and and not really the right
comparison if one even exists. Well, I think history is
always useful, but it doesn't repeat itself. It rhymes, that's
not original. To me. So there are elements of what
(03:44):
happened in the dismal winter of n thirty three that
are very relevant to today, and they were also very
relevant to the two thousand eight, two thousand nine winter.
So it's it's understandable for people who might be approaching
this situation to try to get some perspective. And what
(04:06):
is really quite similar is that the country is feels
that it's in some kind of crisis. And I think
we spoke to Biden about the comparison. And in the book,
Walter Lippman, who was the pre eminent columnist of the day,
he had a stature beyond what any single columnist has nowadays.
(04:29):
And he went to Roosevelt, who we had sort of
derided as a lightweight playboy, you know, not really a
very good candidate, was nominated on the fourth ballot in
and he said, Franklin, I think you may have to
assume dictatorial powers. And the word dictator had a positive connotation.
(04:51):
In thirty three, Stude Baker, which I think was in
Indiana Auto Company, right, that's right in my hometown, had
a car called the Dictator. It actually sold pretty well.
And Mussolini had been in power for about a decade,
and he was popular in the United States, and the
New York Daily News, which was the biggest newspaper of
(05:12):
the day, printed this headline, wanted a dictator. So democracy
is fragile, and we learned this under Donald Trump. It's
a fragile flower. And we just saw last night what
Trump did in the East Room. It was outrageous. You know,
(05:33):
he was taking on the essence the core of our system,
which is that the people decide and elections are the
very core of our democracy. So in that sense, in
the same way that democracy was sort of on the table.
It was a real comparison. And then you mentioned the
fact that there was this very tense interregnum between the
(05:55):
outgoing president, Herbert Hoover, who, like Trump, you know, didn't
fail to consider seed and you know, he observed the niceties.
But he and Roosevelt had a very very chilly encounter
shortly before the inauguration where Roosevelt's sun said he felt
like punching Hoover when they rode down Pennsylvania Avenue together,
(06:17):
which by the way, I don't believe Trump will do
with Biden. They rode silently and the only words that
they exchanged were. At one point, Roosevelt looked out the
window and said, nice steal. He was looking at the
construction of the new Department of Commerce. And the two
men never spoke after that, even though they had been
good friends in the early nineteen twenties. So Biden and
(06:40):
Trump were never good friends. And I think that the
bad feeling they're greatly exceeds what happened in ninety three.
But there there are some some similarities. And then the
similarities to the Obama transition is that the economy just
tanked in the fourth quarter of two thousand eight, and
(07:01):
so Obama was facing a crisis that was quite similar
to what Roosevelt faced, and if they hadn't put through
the stimulus, we would have hit the unemployment by the
fall that Roosevelt faced. The Progressives in ninety three wanted
Roosevelt to take over the banks in the same way
the progressives in two thousand nine wanted Obama to take
(07:24):
over at least City Bank, and in both cases Roosevelt
and Obama chose the more moderate course, and the banks
were brought back to health by Roosevelt in Obama and
I think that next year, especially with the Senate likely
not going democratic. I think that Biden will pursue a
more moderate course, and he has a lot of experience
(07:47):
dealing with Mitch McConnell. And progressives are going to be
unhappy about it, but are gonna have to understand that
even Roosevelt, you know, compromised, uh, he wasn't going to
just jam I'm through some fixed idea of what needed
to happen. So I think one of the reasons that
expectations have been so high on the progressive side right
(08:08):
now is this sense that we're not just talking about
switching control of the White House from the Republican Party
to the Democratic Party, but really that we might be
at a moment of transformation in the cycles of history.
I think a lot about what kind of era we
might be entering into. One of the things that struck
me as I was returning to some of what you
wrote about President Obama's this is what a lot of
(08:29):
people found in two thousand eight, right that there was
this kind of Reagan era began in nineteen eighty, ran
its course and came to an end with the dawning
of a new, widely felt, perhaps irreversible, progressive turn. That
President Obama's arrival represented obviously that didn't quite happen, And
I think in some ways now looking at the constraints
(08:51):
that that surrounded President Obama, he was he was still,
in many of us, operating in the sort of realities
that had begun with Ronald Reagan. So then there's this
patients to say, Okay, well, now forty years since, then
surely this is the outset of something new. If those
hopes are disappointed, is there anything in your study of
history that suggests what might happen next? I mean, suppose
(09:13):
that President Biden is confronted with with high expectations about
what's about the change, coupled with just the pressure of
these huge historical crises, economic crisis, public health crisis, something
of a crisis in the way the US has perceived
in the world. What's it going to take to rise
to that And what's the relationship of pragmatism and boldness
(09:33):
in a season like this? Well, um, he has to
be bold. But the question is how people react to
the sausage making the inevitability of compromise and Obama like
to use this expression, don't make the perfect the enemy
of the good. And this is something that unfortunately progressive
(09:54):
sometimes do I remember in late two thousand nine, I
got mostly on MSNBC Keith All Woman's Old Show. If
you remember that, like time after time, Keith would have
me and Howard Dean on and Howard Dean the former
chair of the Democratic Party presidential candidate in two thousand four,
(10:14):
he was saying of the Affordable Care Act, quote unquote,
kill the bill. To me, this was like insane and
almost a insult to the practice of politics, which is
the art of the possible. And here we had a
chance to protect people and end the horrible era where
(10:37):
you had to sell your house or declare personal bankruptcy
if you were someone in your family got sick. And
progressives have been trying for this since nine since the
Bull Moose Party platform of Theodore Roosevelt. And here it
was with insight. But because there wasn't a public option,
a lot of progressives wanted to quote kill the ill.
(11:00):
And of course if they had killed the bill, and
they came very close, uh, then we would have nothing. Now,
we would have no Affordable Care Act, and we would
have a huge number more on ensured. So what I
worry about with two is that because of all this
energy in the progressive movement that did not get a
(11:23):
transforming election. Yet we just have to face that fact.
This is not a transforming election. Uh, they will be
frustrated and they will not, you know, read the realities properly.
But having said that very quickly, Biden should act as
if he does have a mandate. And this is something
that Republicans are. Republican presidents have been better at doing
(11:46):
the Democratic president. So you know, I covered I was
in Florida in the aftermath of two thousand George W.
Bush had lost the popular vote. They really, to my mind,
they stole Florida. That's a whole other story. But he
acted as if he won in a landslide. And this
is something that I think Biden should, assuming that he
(12:07):
takes office, which I think is a reasonable assumption, should
propose a very bold, very progressive agenda, and I think
he will. It's just what happens after that. It's the
willingness of progressives and other Democrats to take half a loaf,
and I think what's happening right now is a little
bit unfortunately. I understand why Democrats are so disappointed, because
(12:29):
we wanted to think Trump was a fluke, that he
was an assault on our constitutional principles and that he
would be repudiated. That did not happen. What Joe Biden accomplished,
if he goes on to win, is very rarely. I mean,
in the twentieth century was only Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt,
Jimmy Carter against the president who hadn't been elected, Gerald Ford,
(12:54):
Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. That's it. Since the beginning
of the twentieth century, it's hard to unseek an incumbent president.
(13:20):
One thing that I was thinking about is you were
describing the narrow path that the Affordable Care Act took
and how close we were to it not making it.
Is also how much dramatically changed in terms of the
political life of the a c A. My first experience
on the ballot, I was a Democrat in Indiana. Not
a fun time to be a Democrat on the ballot
pretty much anywhere, especially in a conservative state like mine.
(13:41):
We were getting killed over Obamacare. There were these town
hall meetings where Democratic congressmen were getting yelled at. We're
hearing about death panels. I mean, it was. It was brutal,
and of course paid a heavy price for them. In
the mid terms. The thing that that amazed me is
a few years later you go to definitely today this
is the winning issue for Democrats. You know, the policy
was implemented, it worked, it hasn't been perfect, hasn't solved
(14:04):
every problem, but it's way better than not having it,
which is why removing it was the central pledge of
domestic Republican policy. Really, they've never been able to do it,
and in many ways gave up trying legislatively. Of course,
the courts are another matter. So I wonder as you
fit that kind of arc to other things we've seen
in history and other things that might be instructive to
(14:25):
abide administration, how should we think about that passway in
the life of a policy. Social Security might be another example,
absolutely untouchable. Do not mess with Social Security. And yet,
of course there was a controversy in getting it up
and running in the first place. And I wonder if
even FDR could have envisioned how enduring of a policy
win it would be. So, how do we think about
something that might be unpopular or even toxic today, but
(14:48):
that's going to be just bedrock that maybe saves us
in the future. And is there any way in advance
to know which of your policies is which, or is
it simply hoping and trusting that the American people are
going to believe in this policy, that you're putting through
as much as they do, and that you will be
rewarded for it eventually. So this is such an important
question that you're raising, I think, especially for progressives to
(15:12):
think about when they consider theories of change. So I
like I have a chapter in the Roosevelt book about
social security. Roosevelt didn't think at the beginning, in his
first hundred days before he had successful mid terms, he
didn't think he could lay that on the American public.
He could didn't think he could make the sale because
it was such a big change of Francis Perkins, the
(15:34):
first woman ever to serve in the cabinet. His Labor
secretary had been urging him to do it, and he said, no,
we can't do it, and now first we have to
lay the groundwork. So then they did it. But the
important thing to understand is that the original Social Security
Act of was not a good piece of legislation. It
was basically racist. In order to get the votes of
(15:55):
Southern Democrats, they carved out any occupation held by an
African American, and you know that was the only way
to get it through. But what Roosevelt understood was that
if you implanted certain things in it, you could make
it permanent and that it could be fixed later. So,
for instance, he had it funded by a payroll tax.
(16:18):
He didn't want it funded out of general revenues. He said,
I want to put in a text. No, so no
damn politician can take it away without going into the
payroll text, which set it up as like a trust
funded which it really isn't. But he set it up
in a complicated way that made it hard to unwind.
(16:39):
And then he waited and expected that it would have
to be fixed. And I think since nineteen thirty social
Security has been fixed and improved on six different occasions
by the Congress. First, all the Republicans were against it
the way they were Obamacare, and a lot of the
nineteen third six campaign was about Social Security, and basically
(17:05):
employers put in the pay envelopes of almost every worker
something that said, if you vote for Franklin Roosevelt, your
paycheck is going to be less under Social Security. Actually
it wouldn't be until ninety that they started to phase
it in, and the American people overwhelmingly rejected that because
by that time they trusted Roosevelt to look after their interests.
(17:29):
Now that's leadership if you can get people to do that.
Same thing happened with Medicare and it was not nearly
as inclusive a program when Lynda Johnson got it through.
Same thing with the Immigration Act of People need to
understand if Biden can put any points on the board
(17:49):
on some of these transformative ideas, you don't have to
get the whole thing, because when you give the American
people something good, they don't want to take it away.
That's why Obamacare is so popular now because they realized
it's giving them protection that they that they need. And
I think there are a whole series of other things,
a lot of which are in Biden's program, that he
can do, and even if he gets them done in
(18:11):
watered down form, he should be celebrated for that getting
anything accomplished. And this is one of the things that
happened to Jimmy Carter is that he got all of
this legislation through, but the Democratic Party was so cynical
about him in the post Witergate period that he'd have
these bill signing ceremonies that they would just yawn. They
(18:33):
wouldn't the press wouldn't even go. And you know, I
asked some reporters, do you remember something called Purpa? And
you know, these were good reporters from the seventies White
House reports. No, what was that again? They all remember,
like lust in my heart, Jimmy Carter saying that, And
I remember he's attacked by a killer rabbit when he's
in a canoe. Not even knew a purpose. I said, well, um,
(18:55):
it was the bill that allowed public utilities to use
a ternative energy for the first time. Like might be
a little bit important for the future of the United States,
you know. And there were like dozens of those bills
in the Carter administration. They got no attention. So one
of the things that worries me is that when Biden
(19:16):
does make compromises with Mitch McConnell and they get something through,
that everybody's gonna be bitching about those compromises rather than
celebrating that they got the nose under the tent from
major change. So in a scenario where it is Mitch
(19:48):
McConnell and there's a Republican Senate majority or at the
very least, there's not a reliable Senate vote for a
lot of Joe Biden's agenda. What effect do you think
that will have on the Republican Party. Do they just
remain a minority organization or even a bad faith organization
committed to in the Senate to stopping anything from getting
done as seems to have been a priority in twenty
(20:08):
ten during the Obama administration, or do they have an
incentive to find some way to cooperate and help deliver something,
If not, what what we would hope to see on
the progressive side. So I don't have a really great
answer to that. You know, in two thousand nine, on
the night of the Obama inauguration of the Republican leadership,
(20:29):
they all met at a restaurant and they said, look,
this guy is really popular. We just have to stop him.
We have to be really disciplined, and we can't let
him get anything through. Now, Obama had at that time
yet fifty nine Democratic senators, so it was a little
bit of a different situation. And McConnell is a famous obstructionist.
But you know, I noticed this Fox exit pole yesterday
(20:51):
and on all of the issues that say you talked about,
you know, whether it was climate change, response to the
whole list of issues. Large numbers of people who voted
for Donald Trump supported the Democrats on these issues. And
I think there might be some Republicans who are smart
enough to get that, and you know, Biden would only
(21:13):
need to pick off one or two of them in
the Senate. They go, well, there are no moderates anymore,
you know, but you know, you might be able to
get a Lisa Makowski on this vote. And so take
something like infrastructure. The people, a lot of the people
who voted for Trump, they were in a you know
what I say, as a cult of personality. They like
(21:34):
Trump himself. He was always talking about infrastructure week right.
McConnell is really against that. He just has a problem
with infrastructure, But I think he could be beaten on
that and a number of other things. Um and there's
certain a number of very important things that Biden can
do unilaterally, like re entering the Paris Climate Agreement and
(21:54):
renewing uh, you know, certain other international agreements, and starting
to repair our relations with our allies. And you could
go right down the list of many things he can
do without Mitch McConnell. But I think what's really important
is that he had a few quick victories, even if
they don't seem to be that big and don't please
(22:16):
progressive because winds build on winds. And then then he
starts to get the reputation of a successful president, and
he can, you know, down the road, do other things
like your ideas on the Supreme Court. He can take
the commission report after hundred and eighty days and say, well,
let's let's craft some bipartisan legislation on this. But it's
(22:38):
really important that he dig in and and act as
if he has a mandate. Otherwise he could get rolled.
Obama would always send him to the Hill because he
knew the Senate much better to do all the negotiating.
Almost all the bills that Obama got through the short
Strokes were negotiated by Joe Biden. One of the things
that Rosalind Carter told me that found really interesting she
(23:01):
is an extraordinarily formidable woman and was a very close
advisor to her husband, is that shortly before the inauguration
they withdrew the nomination of Theodore Sorenson, the great Kennedy
aid and speech trigger, to be Director of the CIA.
Now that was the wrong job for him. He'd been
a conscientious objector in World War Two. There were all
(23:22):
sorts of reasons why it was a mistake we've nominated him,
but they should have stuck with him, and they shouldn't
have like withdrawn the nomination just because a lot of noise.
So Biden really has to ignore the noise that the
Republican echo chamber is great at generating and just say
(23:43):
I'm going to tune all that out. I don't care
what they're saying on Twitter. I don't care what Donald Trump,
private citizen is saying, and which is going to be
a thing, Right, there's gonna be. Just because he's no
longer president doesn't mean he wouldn't be able to create
an enormous amount of noise and someone to following to
to amplify that. Right, Yes, but this is really really important.
(24:04):
Democrats should just basically ignore it. I mean, Jimmy Carter
got into many controversies with his successors, and he would
go after them in ways, but it wasn't on the
front page, you know. I Mean, it wasn't like the
guy's a private citizen. He likes to spout off what
he doesn't like about Borischer. Often democratic presidents, it shouldn't
(24:26):
be big news when Trump does that. Now, obviously Fox
will make it big news, but I think everybody else
should have not put him on radio silence. Recognized that
former presidents don't have any power. This is one of
the things that bugs me about people when they say
Jimmy Carter bad president, great X former president. No. As
a former president, he's done some great stuff on eradicating
(24:48):
and guinea worm disease and supervising elections, but he has
no power. You know, there's a huge difference between being
president and not being president in terms of what you
can actually do. But isn't it true that he transformed
the ex presidency. I mean, up until Jimmy Carter, no
one was active in the way he or perhaps we
haven't heard about it. And it's been inspirational what he's done.
(25:10):
And I could go on all day about that. He first,
he revolutionized the vice presidency. He was the first run
to give the vice president anything significant to do. Then
he revolutionized the role of the first lady, took it
way beyond what Eleanor Roosevelt had done. And then when
he left office, he revolutionized the post presidency. But I'm
just saying that when Trump doesn't have any power, he
(25:33):
should be treated as just another loud mouth TV host.
You know, he certainly doesn't deserve to be treated with
the reverence that some people think a former president should
be accorded. I don't think we owe him that. That's
an important discipline we're gonna have to remember on the
on the road ahead. Well, one of the things I
was curious about as a new president, likely a President
(25:54):
Biden takes office. You've covered politics and and really every
president in different way for decades, but in particular have
learned so much about FDR, about President Obama, and about
Jimmy Carter. I wonder if there's one quality that you
would advise an incoming president to remember or to learn
from from each of those three presidents that you know
(26:17):
so much about. In terms of Obama, I think Joe
Biden certainly doesn't need any of my advice and what
to learn from him. I wrote a piece about him
and Obama and their relationship in two thousand sixteen, and
they had this kind of secret code where Obama didn't
want the people in the room two just try to
(26:39):
curry favor with him by picking up on something that
he said and then just echoing it right. So he
had this unspoken deal with with Biden that when he
leaned forward, that was the signal to Biden to jump
in on one side of the debate so that Obama
didn't have to. Uh. So I think for f DR
(27:01):
it would be a spirit of optimism, lifting people's spirits.
This is just so extraordinarily important, and I think that
from Jimmy Carter it would be very much aligne with
Joe Biden's campaign. His campaign, Carter's and seventy six campaign
had a lot in common. Carters campaign right after Watergate,
(27:24):
So it was about the soul of America in many ways,
and I would strongly encourage Biden to continue that, to
continue to talk about decency in a set of high
moral tone and not give up on that. And there
is an integrity agenda that the country needs now and
I would urge Biden to stay focused on that. Sitting
(27:53):
here today, we know that we are close to closing
the chapter on the Trump presidency and beginning a new one.
Joe Biden presidency will inevitably be one of great consequence.
Yet there's a complicated road even to getting two inauguration days,
we already see the president attack the process itself. Jonathan
was full of insights about how we can learn from
(28:14):
the past, but he also reminded us why the past
can always tell us what to expect in the future.
We know that the path ahead will be unpredictable, but
what has cut across in the story of each of
these presidents is the role of their personal leadership and
how that can offer focus and discipline for us, all
something we're going to need in the months and years
to come. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
(28:39):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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