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- [00:01]
Ben Waterhouse
Somewhere between the first drive and settling
- [00:03]
Lee Vincel
in at the clubhouse, golf becomes more
- [00:06]
Nelson Lichtenstein
than just a game. Lululemon Golf Gear is built for the
- [00:09]
Lee Vincel
full range of your day light layers
- [00:12]
Ben Waterhouse
as you head to early tee times.
- [00:14]
Lee Vincel
Flexible fits move naturally with your swing. Our fabrics wick, sweat and block UVs for hours in the sun, and refined cuts carry you well into the 19th hole. Shop golf gear in stores and online at lululemon.com
- [00:31]
Nelson Lichtenstein
welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:57]
Ben Waterhouse
Welcome, listeners, to episode four of the I Heart 90s History podcast, where we explore how historians study the 1990s. I'm Ben Waterhouse from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
- [01:10]
Lee Vincel
And I'm Lee Vincel at Virginia Tech. In this episode, we chatted with Nelson Lichtenstein, research Professor in the Department of History at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he directed the center for the Study of Work, labor, and democracy for almost 20 years.
- [01:29]
Ben Waterhouse
So we were excited to talk to Nelson not only for his vast expertise in American political and labor history, but especially for his take on the presidency of Bill Clinton. Now, listeners may be familiar with Lichtenstein's long bibliography, which includes books on the labor leader Walter Reuther and the American labor movement, as well as a great book on Walmart and the global economy. And we get into a lot of that in our conversation. But Nelson was especially great to talk to because of his most recent book, which is called A Fabulous the Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism, which he co authored with the late Judith Stein and which was published in 2023.
- [02:13]
Lee Vincel
In that book, Nelson paints a picture of Clinton as a deeply conflicted president. He is torn over what paths to take and how to manage the constant infighting among his advisors. In my view, this gives us the richest and fullest historical picture yet of the Clinton White House. It's a book that can really provide a model for future historians to build on.
- [02:37]
Ben Waterhouse
And the conversation also allowed us to go deeper into some of the big themes of this podcast, especially the challenge of putting recent events into their historical context. Nelson, in particular, was able to reflect on his position as someone who was already an established adult and professional historian at the beginning of the Clinton years, and how that position shaped his understanding of the historical phenomenon of neoliberalism, which is at the heart of his book.
- [03:05]
Lee Vincel
Our producer, Joe Fort, was also part of the conversation. Joe, what stood out to you about our conversation with Nelson?
- [03:12]
Joe Fort
Yeah, well, with Nelson it was another great conversation, and it was more about the Clintons, right? Like we've been talking, it seems a lot about the Clintons lately or like through Al Gore and the Clinton administration. But. And I don't know, some listener may be thinking it's enough already with the Clintons, but. And coming next episode where we're gonna be talking with Lily Geismer, we'll probably talk more about the Clintons, but I feel like these guests are bringing distinct perspectives on that are generational and theme specific, that open different and interesting windows, using the Clintons as a sort of a vehicle to get there. And I liked the way Nelson connected the themes he's talking about in terms of neoliberalism and how the Clinton White House operated with broader trends like consumerism, big box consumerism and globalization through NAFTA and complicating these things. And I want to say as a kind of side point that during this interview we're talking. I forget why, but Nelson somehow made me think of the sort of cultural perception of hope that accompanied the Clintons as they entered the White House. And I referenced an LA Law episode that I thought illustrated this for me as a younger person in mainstream culture. And I want to say that since then I've been watching LA Law and I'm on like, season four now.
- [04:57]
Lee Vincel
Oh, nice.
- [04:59]
Joe Fort
It starts in 80. Like, I think we've just passed the 88 election in the world of the show. So it starts in the late 80s and comes in through the 90s. The episode I referenced was 92 or 93 or something like that. After looking it up, I found that out. And I'm also realizing that a lot of my watching right now is 90s. Like, oh, yeah, I've been also re watching Voyager in the Star Trek universe and X Files. And one of the things that's becoming apparent to me in all these shows is just the role that material culture is playing in the sort of, like, shaping my nostalgia, my memory, my conception of what has changed. And there's something about, like, material culture and the sophistication of thought. And there's so many ways in which these shows are. I'm finding it interesting to see how these shows are both dated and just an artifact of ancient history. But also, if I can place myself back in that time, ahead of their time, it's just such a rich landscape. And I hope that this podcast takes us deeply into that landscape at some point as we evolve.
- [06:33]
Ben Waterhouse
Yeah, it's a really good point. It's a really good point about, you know, also for historians to realize just how much we have to work with when it comes to seeing the intersection of Mass media, consumer culture, material culture and things like that as they're kind of filtered through things that we still have ready access to, you know, TV shows and things like that. And so it was kind of in that spirit that we started this podcast or this interview with. With Nelson, by looking at the intersection of national politics and particularly the Clinton experience with. With popular culture. And so we started. We thought it would be fun to start off by watching a little clip of Bill Clinton himself appearing on, famously, the Arsenio hall show during the 1992 presidential campaign and famously playing the saxophone during the introduction of that show. And this led to an introductory conversation with Nelson about what that moment was all about, what it meant for generational, what it meant about the role of pop culture in public life, and in particular, what it meant about Bill Clinton's appeal to American voters broadly and to African American voters in particular.
- [07:44]
Joe Fort
And let me say before we go to that clip and open the show, that as I was contemplating popular culture and its role and placing myself back in the Joe that watched that LA Law episode originally, it was at that time, I've described it a couple of times in this podcast as part. Is like I was in the middle of a political awakening, like, becoming aware of politics and stuff. But when I think about it, it's more than that, because it's also. I'm letting go of at that point, this notion that mainstream culture and mainstream opinion has authority and something to say right at that point, like I was letting go of that and saying. And increasingly thinking of that as some sort of lie that's being like there's some sort of fake sort of narrative that's being spun. But I've since come full circle on that now and seeing the value of what mainstream culture is offering, what people believe, regardless of how true or false it is, what the stories are that we're telling each other in that time are starting to feel to me to be the most significant thing about a period we're studying, especially one. Especially in the way we're attempting to look at the 90s through the lens of nostalgia and memory and a period that we lived through.
- [09:13]
Lee Vincel
Joe, I think you're, like, perfect. You might even be secretly lobbying for us to turn to Gen X after we finish up with the Clintons, because I think that would be the perfect pop cultural moment.
- [09:25]
Ben Waterhouse
So.
- [09:25]
Lee Vincel
So why don't we. Why don't we kick it over to a very Gen X moment of Bill Clinton showing up on the Arsenio hall show and see what happens from there? Yeah, Just go. Yeah. No, just play it.
- [09:42]
Nelson Lichtenstein
He'll.
- [09:42]
Lee Vincel
He'll figure it out.
- [09:57]
Joe Fort
The bill clinton and actress harry gar. And now rolling hill, honolulu goldville and all the rest of y'. All.
- [10:27]
Lee Vincel
Oh, yeah. He's so cool, man.
- [10:41]
Ben Waterhouse
I always thought he'd be better.
- [10:49]
Lee Vincel
The shades are incredible.
- [11:08]
Joe Fort
Oh, man.
- [11:12]
Lee Vincel
Wonderful. So, Nelson, that. That clip of Clinton playing sax on the Arsenio hall show, that was shot in on June 3, or it was released. It was put out on June 3, 1992. So just to start off with, where were you professionally and personally in June of 1992 when that was going on?
- [11:40]
Joe Fort
Ah.
- [11:40]
Lee Vincel
Ah.
- [11:42]
Nelson Lichtenstein
I was at the University of Virginia. Okay. I was. Well, that was the. Yeah, I was there, and I was working on a biography of the labor leader, Walter Reuther. And I was about to go to Finland. Well, that we would actually. Yeah, we would go the next year to Finland, which was interesting, actually. It plays a role in the work I did on Clinton, I'll tell you, later on, for a year as a Fulbright. And I was. Yeah, I was very engaged and viewed Clinton and the campaign, you know, as, you know, we had really three. We had 12 years of Reagan and H.W. bush. You know, Clinton, he's playing the saxophone. He was not an older generation. I mean, he was, you know, and that was impressive. And he also, you know, said. People said of him, he's the very comfortable with African American culture. And he was. He was. It's interesting, despite what. And in fact, he did make moves to criticize and separate himself from some of the more radical voices. The sister soldier kind of incident where he attacks a black activist and then he. Some things on criminal reform. But nevertheless, he was very comfortable with African American, and he had a great deal of support from African Americans. And. And then the, you know, the Sacks, you know, he was. He was making a little break there. It was. It was a generational break. And that can't be. That can't be denied, you know, in terms of this, you know, American politics, vote getting, et cetera, you know.
- [13:33]
Lee Vincel
Yeah, I remember, you know, my parents Republicans, so it wouldn't have been them, but I remember that they were at that time, I should be clear. They. My dad's a frigging like Bernie bro at this time. So they switched later. But at that point, they're true red Republicans, I guess, and so they wouldn't have been talking about it. But I remember other people, like my friend's dad, saying, like, Clinton was cool, and he was about that age, too. He actually thought Joe how about you?
- [13:58]
Joe Fort
Yeah, yeah. The cool, the young, the whole thing. I mean, Personally, I was 92, June. I was somewhere out of college just recently, and I either may have moved to California or was just about to move to California. And that's sort of relevant because living out there in la, people would come to visit and we do touristy things and I would take them to the Jay Leno show taping or the Arsenio hall show taping. And I remember how big it was and I remember being turned away at the Arsenio hall studio because they already had the audience at capacity. And so I remember that show being big. I remember it being a big thing that there was a mainstream talk show with a black host. Right. And folks talking about Clinton being the youngest president after he's become the youngest president in a long time. The first time a president is younger than me, my parents are saying the first time a president is younger than Mick Jagger heard people say. And so that whole thing. And I remember I wasn't a Clinton supporter. There was a few Democrats I favored above him right. In that run. But I was in the midst of a political awakening and I did mark the sort of importance of this generational shift. And that all did seem cool to me at the time. I mean, he's kind of nailing it for what you might expect. Right? So, yeah, those are my impressions and memories sort of mixed up.
- [15:31]
Lee Vincel
Yeah.
- [15:31]
Ben Waterhouse
I think there's a couple of things that we can say to kind of situate this in time. I mean, as you point out, he was. He was young. He was. I just did the math. He was 45.
- [15:42]
Lee Vincel
So younger than me at this point. Dear Lord.
- [15:45]
Ben Waterhouse
Yeah, he's younger than me as well. You know, he's. That's young for a politician. It's certainly young by the standards of the gerontocracy that we've sort of moved into in the last couple of decades. He turned 46 later that summer. So, yeah, when he was, when he was elected, he was. He was one of the youngest.
- [16:02]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Not.
- [16:02]
Ben Waterhouse
Not the youngest.
- [16:04]
Joe Fort
And.
- [16:04]
Ben Waterhouse
And Arsenio's show, as you point out, was also like geared toward younger adults, but not young adults, I would say. Like, it was. It was sort of geared toward, I would guess, like that kind of older Gen X maybe young boomer type thing. It wasn't the kind of thing that 45 year olds necessarily watched a lot. It was the kind of thing that 30 year olds might have watched. And we were doing some research on that clip and realized that this particular clip happened Just a couple of months after Johnny Carson stepped down as the host of the Tonight Show. So there's a sort of feeling, that
- [16:38]
Lee Vincel
generational shift there too.
- [16:40]
Ben Waterhouse
Yeah, a younger African American comedy icon. I mean, you know, Arsenio had done all those movies in the 80s as the host of a late night show, was kind of clawing it away from the kind of staid old white man comic that, you know, Carson represented. Ironically, that didn't last.
- [16:57]
Lee Vincel
Right.
- [16:57]
Ben Waterhouse
And then late night goes back to being the preserve of older white guys talking to boomers as they're falling to sleep.
- [17:05]
Lee Vincel
Yeah. So, Ben, you got this theory about, like, about generational stuff in historiography.
- [17:14]
Ben Waterhouse
Yeah. Well, I wanted to ask Nelson about this in particular because I, I have. I also experienced the Clinton campaign and presidency from the perspective of. Of a kid. I was, I think, in eighth grade, at the end of 19, at the spring of 1992. And my parents had a particular view of Clinton that I think in many ways came out of their generational framing. And I remember this in my mother in particular, who was a couple of years younger than Clinton and, you know, kind of a professional. She thought of herself as a feminist, but very, you know, more of a corporate feminist kind of professional woman with a college education who had not been part of the radical 60s and saw in Clinton, I think, something that she was uneasy with. And I, I do think, honestly, part of it was a lack of a willingness to concede that somebody younger than her could actually be president. And so I, I've sort of extrapolated from this a general theory of baby boomer self loathing that, you know, while he was very popular among people of that generation, a little bit older than him, a little bit younger than him, there was, I think, also a little bit of a pushback, not necessarily from dyed in the wool conservatives, but from people who weren't totally okay with a young person usurping, in this case, the presidency, from somebody who was much more of that sort of World War II generation. So, Nelson, given your studies of the campaign and the Clinton presidency, I wonder what you make of my theory.
- [18:49]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yeah, a couple of things. Let me say we probably can return to this issue, but I just want to get this out and then I'll get specifically to your question that there, I think there has settled and sometimes these sort of historiographic kind of things that sort of settle on the past. It's really hard to be revisionist about it. But I think the dominant theme about Clinton these days is he's a neoliberal. And that's what he was. And he walks in the White House as a neoliberal and that's sort of it. My book doesn't say that it's makes him to the left of that to begin with. He becomes that. But I think part of the interest in the campaign excitement was that he did. He said many different things, often controversial. But he was in fact wasn't just his youth. He actually had ideas and conceptions that were, well, kind of almost industrial policy and some things, some echoes of what are prequels to what some of the sort of moderate left would be doing today. So I just want to get that out. We could come back to that. Yeah. I do think that Clinton is a lightning rod for conservatives, certainly, and many of those who had been kind of more committed, new leftist types. And he had been against the war. He had the whole draft issue, which was really such a lightning rod for the right. It was complicated. Like, you know, he asked for a deferment and then he, you know, and then he. Anyway, it got complicated. I mean, but lots of people, including me, including my generation me, you know, who were complicated on this draft, on the draft, getting out of the draft.
- [20:38]
Ben Waterhouse
But he hadn't served. Right. And that, that was relevant in the way he hadn't served in the military. And that's. That was unique among presidents.
- [20:46]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yeah, no, right, right. That was a new thing. Yes. That. And that at the time was. Was considered. Oh, wow. You know, of course, Reagan had, had not served, but he'd been making film movies.
- [20:55]
Ben Waterhouse
It was fine.
- [20:56]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Anyway, so that was. And I remember this was. I remember it's funny, I was watching actually Robin Kelly, a well known historian, young. We were sitting at watching TV in my house sometime in probably the fall of 1992, and one after another veteran of the Vietnam War, who were very conservative, were getting up there and telling war stories, you know, basically about what they had done in Vietnam. And basically the point was Clinton hadn't been there. You know, it was really, it was tough and there was that. So that was a sense. And I mean, I do think that the sort of atmospherics of the Persona, you know, that does become important in terms of voting voting, even though historians may see this as sort of fluff, but you know, questions of who's going to vote and votes count. So Clinton had a complicated and somewhat attractive and often repulsive kind of pursuit that would always be there with him, you know. Yeah, well.
- [22:01]
Ben Waterhouse
And then years like it was kind of a dress rehearsal for 12 years later with the swift vote. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against John Kerry.
- [22:08]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yeah, you could just sort of conjure up, make it up, and sometimes it sticks and sometimes it doesn't stick and things kind of, you know, I think what Clinton, Clinton had a little Teflon flavor to him. The right never forgot anything, but, you know, the kind of. The general Democrats gave him a lot of forgiveness, you know, and Hillary stuck by his side today. I mean, the infidelities of Clinton seem so. I mean, they're there unquestionably, but given the contemporary world, they seem kind of ordinary. But anyway, that was a big deal, and Hillary stuck by her man, for which the right never forgave her. But.
- [22:56]
Ben Waterhouse
Well, there's a fascinating question there in sort of presidential history of the last, I don't know, 40, 50 years about, like, what, what is considered scandalous, what's considered, like a career ender. You mentioned the infidelities, and that was a big deal. Not that other presidents hadn't cheated, but that it was always sort of kept under, under wraps. And then, of course, that ultimately leads to Clinton's impeachment trial. But the other, the other issue that I remember is, was the issue of drug use and how it's absolutely unthinkable that a president of the United States could talk.
- [23:30]
Lee Vincel
Right.
- [23:30]
Ben Waterhouse
And therefore, you get the whole like, you know, I tried it, I didn't like it, I didn't inhale. And people said, no, that's not how that works, Bill. But today, I mean, and ever since we've, we have pretty much it's openly accepted that, that recent presidents use drugs recreationally. And, you know. Yeah, so there were all these sort of changes that I don't know if they, they intersect directly with this generational change, with this first baby boomer president. First of a long line now. But yeah, all these things that seem to be quite unique in the early 90s seem not to be, anyway. Well, we can maybe get more specific. Nelson, you referenced a few places where we can kind of get into the meat of this history. And I wanted to preface that by referencing your career as a historian and the many fascinating and important books that you've written that range from, as you mentioned, the book on Reuther and labor to intellectual histories, to this great book on Walmart and globalization that came out around 15 years ago to now, the book that you published most recently, a Fabulous the Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism. So maybe to start, could you take us through a little bit of the process of how that book came into being? How does a labor historian end up writing a Clinton book?
- [24:53]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Well, in general. And this, I think all labor historians, I think, sort of move to a degree in this direction. We move into the history of capitalism. I mean, it's just inevitable. You can't not. You can't do one without the other. You just can't. And I did that with writing about Walmart. But even before that, I had to look into what is General Motors, what is, you know, how do you know when I'm writing about auto and auto union. So I found myself doing that. And I just want to make one thing so in 1993, okay, long before I'm in Finland and every other day I'd walk over to the American. What was it called? The reading room of the. What was the American Information Office as it was a function of, I don't know, the Voice of America, anyway. And I would read the New York Times. They weren't online then. And the fall of 93 was when the big debate over healthcare was happening. And as I was reading these long, detailed articles, I read every detail. It struck me I was working then on the 30s, but I thought I was getting an X ray into the political economy of the United States through the debate on healthcare. And I just got fascinated with that and I sort of kept up with that. And in the Clinton book, you'll notice there are two chapters on the healthcare fight and which I took seriously in terms of then, that's really the structure of it is which sectors of capital were in favor of this social Democratic initiative and which ones were against and then how that reflected in party terms. So I was sort of moving in that direction to a degree. Then what did happen? And then what did happen? So Judith Stein, who was a colleague and, you know, we weren't close, but we. We agreed on some things. She had a contract to write a book on Clinton and she died. And I wrote a obituary about her kind of a. About her work. And her. She hadn't. Well, I'll get to it. Her agents got in touch with me, I think, via Eric Foner anyway, and said, do you want to write this book? There's a contract. And I said, oh. And I assembled my grad students who, interestingly, they were all came to out of the. From labor, but they were doing political economy. And I assembled them and we discussed this question, whether I should do this book and et cetera. And I just said I would. She'd done some research and I kind of had a proposal, but she hadn't really done much and actually she. It's interesting. I mean, she was most interested in trade questions. That was clearly a big deal. She wasn't interested in healthcare. She wasn't interested in. Anyway, I won't go into it, but was she.
- [27:51]
Ben Waterhouse
Nelson, if I can interrupt. Was she sort of envisioning this as a follow on to her Pivotal Decade
- [27:55]
Nelson Lichtenstein
book, which did have a lot of trade? Yes, she was. She was. Yeah. She wrote a. Rudenstein wrote a very important and pioneering book called the Pivotal Deck Decade. And before that, a book on steel, which was. Which was quite good, too.
- [28:08]
Lee Vincel
Amazing book.
- [28:08]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yeah. So anyway, but she hadn't gotten really far, so I said, yes, I'll do it. And it's complicated. It didn't end up with the press. Okay, here I have to tell you the story, the word. So I write a new proposal and goes to various presses and the word came back, we don't want this book because American public has Clinton fatigue. That was. I love that. Okay, that's pretty devastating.
- [28:37]
Ben Waterhouse
This was after 2016, right after Clinton lost the election.
- [28:40]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Get published by Princeton. But I think that was. This was. This was. I was sending out the proposal in 2017. I think it was. Okay, that's just after Hillary, you know. Okay. So anyway, the point is, as a labor historian, that was my impulse, and, you know, I was a big radical at Berkeley, et cetera, when I was in grad school. Labor historians have to be students of political economy, period, and intellectual history. And so that's sort of where I've sort of gravitated. I mean, I still write about labor. My latest book, which is coming out in the fall, is on kind of the new moment of labor. But one has to do this. One has to. To be cognizant of what's going on in the circulation of capital. And certainly that's. I do think that there was a transformation in the nature of American capitalism during the. I mean, you know, not just Clinton, but, you know, in this moment, you know, Priceline negotiator.
- [29:39]
Joe Fort
It's me, the Priceline negotiator.
- [29:42]
Nelson Lichtenstein
We don't need the jingle twice.
- [29:44]
Joe Fort
What about a third time?
- [29:45]
Lee Vincel
Stop it.
- [29:46]
Nelson Lichtenstein
This is about vacation inflation and how
- [29:48]
Joe Fort
Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights and rental cars. Seems like they decided.
- [29:54]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yeah, but I didn't mention that you
- [29:55]
Joe Fort
can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app. Time to read the timeline.
- [30:00]
Ben Waterhouse
Fine.
- [30:00]
Joe Fort
No one deals more deals than.
- [30:03]
Ben Waterhouse
Please stop.
- [30:05]
Joe Fort
Touche.
- [30:05]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Priceline.
- [30:06]
Ben Waterhouse
Priceline, King of the Hill is coming in hot.
- [30:09]
Lee Vincel
Bobby and Connie are official.
- [30:12]
Nelson Lichtenstein
We were just warming each other Up.
- [30:14]
Lee Vincel
Shut up. Oh, good God.
- [30:15]
Ben Waterhouse
Hulu's hit animated series is back for a brand new season of big changes.
- [30:19]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Our communication skills could be a little better. Thank you. It's against golf etiquette. What does golf etiquette say about jamming this club into your marriage? Frowned upon.
- [30:29]
Ben Waterhouse
The new season of the Hulu original
- [30:31]
Joe Fort
King of The Hill, premiering July 20
- [30:33]
Ben Waterhouse
on Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers.
- [30:36]
Lee Vincel
Terms apply. Can you say so? I was, you know, I love, I love the title the Fabulous Failure because it tells us right away what you think about the presidency. But, but the failure part, we were, you know, Ben, Joe and I were talking about it yesterday. It's like, failure from whose perspective? And I assumed that it would not be your perspective, but it sounds like you were a little bit more optimistic and hopeful about him initially than I would have expected.
- [31:01]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yes, and I think rightly so, because as I said earlier, I think a sort of historiographical blanket has descended over the early Clinton. You know, people like Lily Geismer and others, and they're good historians, but I think a sense of inevitability and a kind of implicit neoliberalism that they just walked into the White House with, and I think an overemphasis on the role of the Democratic Leadership Council, which, I mean, it does become important, but I think not initially. So. Yes, And I do remember, for example, in the fall of 92, a panel that we had at Virginia, which had Richard Rorty on it and others, and it was a great deal of excitement that Clinton was coming to the fore. And one of the things I emphasize in the book is a big meeting they had at Little Rock, an economic summit which brought together all sorts of kind of, not the left extreme, but the left wing of the Democratic Party is there, and they're talking about industrial policy. That's what they're talking about. And the market's not going to solve it. Now, as I say, that will change. And part of the book is why that fails. The failure, when it says failure, meaning they tried to do something else and it failed. And the book is really explaining some of that failure and why Clinton ends up, I do think would be proper to call a sort of neoliberal in terms of trade and economic regulation, et cetera.
- [32:40]
Lee Vincel
Yeah. When I'm trying, when I, I talk about your book a lot, Nelson, because I think it's the best treatment of Clinton we have yet. And. And the reason is, is because exactly what we're talking about, because you see him for all his complications and, and, and, you know, and, and tensions and contradictions. Right. He's kind of a mess. He's all over the place. He's got advisors who are all over the place politically. But one of the things when I'm trying to like, you know, tell people why they should read it and get at your, what you're, what you're saying is that he goes in and he's got people on the left like, you know, soft left, right, like Reich and these kind of characters who are like, want to use state power to do things in the economy, but debt and these kinds of things and worries about budgets and all this kind of stuff like consistently pushes them to what looks like neoliberal policymaking. Is that a fair start?
- [33:30]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yeah, I mean, maybe the listeners know about Reich and people like that, but one person they probably don't know about is Laura Tyson, who came out of the Berkeley Roundtable in Economic International Economics. She was very much a kind of social planning, industrial policy, a kind of a critic of markets. And she flies down to Little Rock to be interviewed as head of the first Council of Economic Advisors. Who were her competitors? Who were the competitors to Laura Tyson? One was Paul Krugman, who at that time was very much a big free trader and she was not. And the other was Larry Summers. And it wasn't just because she was beautiful, although that was part of it.
- [34:17]
Lee Vincel
Yeah, it was him.
- [34:18]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Right. But it was because she had a perspective and she was writing op EDS in the LA Times and the New York Times, which was saying with. And Japan at that time was kind of. We were hysterical about trade with Japan at that moment. And she was saying, look, we have to have managed trade with Japan and that we can't. The market isn't going to do it. And Clinton picks her now, the Council of Economic Advisors will not be as important as it had once been. But nevertheless, I think that was a symbolic. Well, more than symbolic indication of where Clinton was moving in that early period.
- [34:53]
Lee Vincel
Yeah. So we're going to have, we hope to have Lilian and some other folks who kind of write about the so called New Democrats, Atari Democrats, these kind of characters in the, the 1980s who look kind of neoliberal from very early on. Right. In various ways. I mean, whether that's fair characterization or not is whatever. We'll leave that to the side. But how do you see, how do you see Clinton as a. Trying to transition from the 80s to 90s? Like, to what degree is he like some carrying on what was already happening in the party in the 80s or.
- [35:25]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yeah, yeah, right. I mean, he was. Right. He was. I always say he spent 50% more time as governor of Arkansas than in the White House. And Arkansas was, you know, a poor state, and he was trying to basically industrialize it and get better into. He was going all over the world looking for models of what would work in Arkansas. I mean, it takes more than just, you know, importing a model of a factory from northern Italy. It didn't always.
- [35:55]
Ben Waterhouse
Right.
- [35:56]
Nelson Lichtenstein
But he's trying. Trying to do that. But at the same time, as the Democratic part, as labor becomes weaker, and that had always been a pillar of the, you know, of a kind of stolid but nevertheless liberal left kind of aspect of the Democratic Party. It was not. The labor movement as a. As a. As an idea is at its nadir, absolute nadir in the 1980s and 90s. You know, I mean, just the people. Just the people who represented it just were not attractive and not excited.
- [36:27]
Ben Waterhouse
Right.
- [36:28]
Nelson Lichtenstein
In any way. And from. Right. And Clinton. Clinton. Clinton understood that. I mean, and so Clinton goes to war, for example, with the. The local. The National Education association in. In Arkansas, and so does Hillary, I thought, in a. In a very opportunistic way. But they thought, okay, we want to get more money for teachers, which they did, and they actually succeeded. But we're gonna make the NEA a whipping boy, a whipping girl. So that was, you know, there were all sorts of things there that are pretty nasty cuts to the White House. He does have a more national constituency. Labor is actually stronger, and the left is stronger in terms of the nature of the parties and everything. A figure like Gephardt, who he has to deal with, he's not the. He's not the speaker of the House. He's the majority leader. And, you know, Clinton has to deal with them. And so he actually shifts to the left slightly in the first part. Until the 1994 elections, he shifts to the left. The Democratic Leadership Council. I found these memos, which are just fascinating, and basically these memos from Al Fromm, he was head of it, you know, are basically complaining. They're complaining.
- [37:45]
Ben Waterhouse
Beautiful.
- [37:46]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Where are we? Thought you were our guys. What are you ignoring us? You know, you aren't dealing with the. You know, you brought us to the party, but then you ignored us. I mean, it's really. It's very interesting. I mean, what was her name? One of the dlc. Anyway, you know, the fact that Clinton was very good friends with Marilyn Wright Edelman, who the DLC hated as she was the symbol of the welfare state. But Hillary and Bill were very good friends anyway. So in that early period, it's just not the case that he has a worked out ideology. And I think that's important and that social forces, elections, decisions that are made sometimes incorrectly, just blunders. I call NAFTA a blunder as much as it was a kind of well worked out ideology. These things, you know, have a huge impact.
- [38:47]
Ben Waterhouse
So I'm fascinated by the way you frame Clinton's, you know, the tensions and the things pulling him, because it seems to me that there's a, there's a parallel in the story you just described between the DLC and what was happening on the other side of the aisle, on the right as well. The way it's often told, particularly by the early 2000s, is that, you know, the religious right, right, feeling sold out by the sort of economic right or the, the Wall street view. And that plays out in the 90s. It plays out under the George W. Bush administration. But it's a good reminder for all of us that the, the way we talk about left and right in American politics is way too oversimplified. Whether we're talking about the present day or whether we're talking about sort of historical sweeps and a shift from a sort of New Deal order to a neoliberal order as a shift from left to right. Both of them, both sides have the sort of fragmentation, tension, and much greater variety than a simple version would suggest.
- [39:48]
Nelson Lichtenstein
And I got some of this from your book on business, that the business community itself is not monolithic at all in this period and when the healthcare, I thought was the best X ray of this, that you could see different fractions of the business community coming. And Walmart, I mean, like a lot of American sort of liberals, the image of business in the mind of Democrats, oh, it's some big factory, some big industrial corporation. No, it's Walmart, it's Pizza Hut, it's these low wage, low benefit retailers. And that's where the division comes down in many ways on the health reform. Because the, the old line industrial companies were more or less comfortable. They were for it. And even the Chamber of Commerce for a moment was willing to cut a deal with Clinton. But it's the low wage service sector,
- [40:47]
Ben Waterhouse
fast food and the National Federation of Independent Business.
- [40:51]
Lee Vincel
Yeah, small businesses.
- [40:53]
Ben Waterhouse
Small businesses.
- [40:53]
Lee Vincel
Joe, you wanted to get in.
- [40:55]
Joe Fort
Yeah. As you're talking, Nelson, I'm thinking about the sort of cultural manifestation of this. And this is sort of to the side, but it really speaks to the Leftist. Hope you're connecting to. And the early Clinton. And I'm thinking about this. I don't remember very specifically the characters of this show or what was going on, but LA Law. Right, the show LA Law. And just quick Google brought me to what my memory is digging up is season seven, episode 15, 1993. Right,
- [41:34]
Lee Vincel
of course, that one.
- [41:35]
Joe Fort
Yeah, I got it in which a kind of con man, I guess is how I'm remembering. It brings a case to the firm and it has connections to the Clinton administration. They just taken office and started. And Hillary's working on healthcare and he's spinning these tales of being in these rooms late at night. And all of a sudden Hillary says, well, why don't we sue him? Talking about either the drug companies or the insurance companies or somebody. And he's bringing this case to these leftist lawyers at this LA firm. And they're so starstruck. And that's why they're taken in. And it really illustrated for me and lives in my memory now as like, yeah, there was this like, energy for folks who, when the Clintons took. And they were gonna take on healthcare and what people were saying about Hillary Clinton at the time and how she was gonna be a partner in this and she was being handed healthcare. And yeah, like, I can really, like, sort of connect to that hope you're talking about and how distinct it was from the blanket of like, they came in as neoliberals.
- [42:50]
Nelson Lichtenstein
But I mean, the reputation of Hillary Clinton is interesting. She, on the one hand, yes, she's clearly a feminist and the first. First lady, she breaks with that for sure, in the kind of tradition of first ladies, which is returned actually subsequently. So she's very popular, you know, more popular. And she was to the left of Bill Clinton back in the 70s and 80s. She was clearly to the left. But of course there's this enormous reaction against her because she is a feminist, you know, but nevertheless, she stays pretty popular through much of his. Through his term. Toward the end of it, she sort of pulls back because she was burned by the failure of healthcare. But even then, later on, she has a new lease on life as a popular figure when she's a senator and when she's a secretary of state, she's very popular. But the instant she declares for the presidency in like, I guess, 2015, I mean, her popularity declines radically. And, you know, women, women in power, it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable in America. Yeah, but. Yeah, yeah, but by the way, the other Hollywood production is the West Wing. That's all about The Clintons. And that's sort of, you know, I mean, I watch. It's kind of power. They're trying to do good things, but then, but then often, you know, real, you know, kind of real politic comes in. That's really the tension in, in the West Wing. I think it does capture a bit of that, of the Clinton croissant. The Clinton, the Clinton moment, you know.
- [44:30]
Joe Fort
Absolutely. I'm rewatching that right now. Yeah, I'm in the middle.
- [44:33]
Ben Waterhouse
Well, before there was, before there was the West Wing, there was the American President, which was sort of the movie that. Annette Bening.
- [44:40]
Joe Fort
The rom com.
- [44:42]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yeah.
- [44:42]
Ben Waterhouse
And, and that. And, and then, and Martin Sheen.
- [44:45]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Right.
- [44:45]
Ben Waterhouse
Who was the president, who then goes on to play the.
- [44:48]
Joe Fort
Yeah, the, the American president was Michael Douglas. Right.
- [44:54]
Ben Waterhouse
Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm back. Yeah, Martin Sheen played the, the chief of staff in the movie. And then the president didn't remember that.
- [45:01]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yeah.
- [45:02]
Ben Waterhouse
But in, you know, they weren't identical, but they were very much related and it's the same thing. So if, if a viewer wants a, you know, 90 minute version of it, rather than watching all the full run of the West Wing, an American President or the American President captures exactly this. It's like the hopes and dreams of the kind of liberal elite American political world and what Clinton could have been, might have been, but instead we ended up with Primary Colors.
- [45:34]
Lee Vincel
So, Nelson, we wanted to be sure to hit a couple themes about 90s history and how to think about the 90s, including Clinton, but separate from it too. And one place we wanted to start was thinking about the connection between your Clinton book and your Walmart book.
- [45:52]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Well, yeah, I mean, no, I mean, I just think, oh, the 90s. The 90s. In 1995, two revelations took place. One, the editors of Fortune decided, hey, there are these retailers out there. I think we should put them on the Fortune list of 500 most important companies. And it turned out Walmart popped up number four and Sears number eight or something. And then within two or three years, Walmart is the biggest corporation in America as the, as the Fortune, as the Fortune editors would define it. I mean, these companies were considered, you know, marginal, even though they were big. But it was, you know, there was this ideological sense that the industrial, you know, corporations were at the heart, I mean, that idea. And I, by the way, I've always wanted to study the commanding heights of capitalism. That's why I studied General Motors at Reuther to begin with it. And then later on, okay, what's the commanding heights? Walmart you know, the other second was me. I mean that I'm, I'm writing, actually I'm writing the textbook who Built America? Which Herbert Gutman had originally founded. And you know, a bunch of, and I'm, you know, I'm writing in the later chapters and I'm, of course I spend a lot of time talking about auto and steel. But then it dawns on me in this edition where we're putting out toward the end of the 90s, hey, I better start talking about Walmart and Kmart and these millions of people, they have sales, et cetera. And of course also they aren't New Deal creations. I mean, Walmart's from northwest Arkansas, the New Deal bypassed it. The feminist movement bypassed it, the civil rights movement bypassed it. I mean, it's a different world. And you know, it's, you know, I mean, at various moments it was, by the way, it was, it began, had a kind of evangelical flavor to it as it expanded across the country and then went into other countries. It dropped that actually. But nevertheless it was a model of a low wage, low benefit kind of company. And then that plays into many of the regulatory issues, especially health care in terms of they would have to pay, these companies like Walmart would have to pay, that would have to be taxed, relatively speaking, more heavily than the General Motors or the Chryslers when it came to certain kinds of benefits. So anyway, and they begin to play their weight, their weight in American politics is there and increases. Now today, to a degree, Walmart has been not displaced. Amazon obviously occupies some of the same territory that Walmart did. But really, Amazon has the business. Once you get beyond the click when you're ordering it, the business model, supply chains, distribution centers, low wages, low bed, it's sort of the same, it's hardly the same once you get past the initial way that you buy it. But I know, I think American historians have had taken decades to come to terms with the fact that we have that kind of, that industry is very important. Now, of course, also today we have Silicon Valley, which is a bit different story. And that's another. But I think, but the whole retail service is still employing far more people than Silicon Valley. And the fact that it's unorganized and of course they're viciously anti union and it's not an accident, comrade. It's not.
- [49:40]
Lee Vincel
Yeah, nice.
- [49:42]
Joe Fort
So is that where the identity shifts, like the American identity from like a worker in a factory to a consumer?
- [49:50]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Well, no, I know, I know the thing on consumption. No, I've never going way Back in my entire career, I've never thought that the identity of, well, working class Americans, oh, we're consuming, so we don't care what's happening, happening in the factory or at the work. We don't care as long as our wages are enough. I'll buy this TV and I'll buy this, this and that. I've never thought there was that sort of substitution. And I think studies of Detroit auto workers have shown that they were pissed off on the job. They also wanted the color tv. You could do both, you could have both. And I think that's true. And the same is true with, I mean, Walmart does have low prices. It is true that the amount of money that the average family spends, say on kitchen appliances and T shirts and clothing, has declined relative to total income over the last 40, 50 years. But the amount of money they have to spend for healthcare, education, cars, that hasn't declined and only higher wages can buy that stuff. So I mean, Walmart advertises this all the time, that we're saving you money. By the way, the other thing, in the heyday of Walmart supremacy, which is about 15 years ago, and I wrote a book about it and I had conferences on it, et cetera. The advertisements you saw by Walmart on TV were not about the product, they were about, you could make good money at Walmart, you can get good benefits, you can become a manager. It was all about the, the, the, the work because they were being attacked for that. And today if you, the, the advertisements that Amazon puts on TV are the same, you know, work for Amazon, you'll make money, maybe you become a manager, et cetera, you know.
- [51:39]
Ben Waterhouse
Yeah, that's fascinating.
- [51:41]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yeah.
- [51:42]
Lee Vincel
The other thing I wanted to connect it to, and it's just, you know, when I think of Walmart or Target or any of these big box stores, I think of, or Amazon. Right. I think of kind of imported, cheap, cheap stuff. Right. And, and so in the 90s seems like a really important transition moment in terms, I mean, obviously globalization and imports had already been a thing for a long time, you know, especially since the 70s, but it seems like the 90s it took off even more. And so how do you, how do you connect that Walmart story to like NAFTA and trade stories?
- [52:12]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Well, I mean, the, Walmart wasn't that important with nafta, by the way, which was a, I, I consider it a blunder because, because it was a H.W. bush project, it had been negotiated mainly by him. It was not something that Clinton had to do. He did it because he was looking for some bipartisan. Something bipartisan. And this seemed right there. But anyway. But while NAFTA in terms of economic terms was not nearly as important as China in the 90s at least, and actually subsequently, it had a huge political toxic impact. And a number of historians and sociologists have studied both in terms of voting, in terms of the moment that the south turns from where the majority of the representatives in the south become Republican is in the 94 election. And NAFTA has a huge amount to do with that. The sort of so called conservative Democrats, the Blue Dog Democrats, are wiped out by nafta. Again, it would not have a huge impact right away, but actually its biggest impact, I think, was less the cheap Mexican goods flooding, but it was the fact that cheap American agricultural products flooded Mexico, destroying the livelihoods of 5 or 10 million Mexican peasants and small farmers who then either fled to Mexico City or to the border. I mean, that's what was happening. When California can send cheap corn and rice and beans to Mexico and wipe out the, you know, that's part of the story of NAFTA as well. But when it comes to industrial production, China is much more important. And there's, I mean, Lee and I have talked about this in the past. I mean, there was a kind of sense globalization's inevitable, globalization of trade is going to lead everyone to become a kind of a free market, free speech, free press, sort of technologically advanced kind of society that China and the US if they had free trade, would sort of become this, you know, increasingly look the same. And the Clinton people had that ideology very strongly. And they, they put, they, you know, many struggles actually to put into effect the opening to China. It would have its biggest impact after Clinton left office. But it was, it was, it was there, it was unquestionably there.
- [54:58]
Ben Waterhouse
There's another parallel there in, in the, the sort of optimism about the power of democracy and free societies to spread and naturally propagate themselves. You know, you think you can sort of draw a line between the sort of Clinton version of this on trade and economics in the 90s and 10 years later, the neocon version of foreign policy, rooted in the same principle, like if only you can take out the impediments and plant the seeds, the flowers of freedom and democracy will spread easily throughout the world.
- [55:30]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yeah.
- [55:31]
Ben Waterhouse
And so, you know, in some ways, the kind of, of distinction between the Clinton years and the Bush years and the sort of hard stop that we see at the millennium or 9, 11, or whatever it is, get blurred away if you see this as a sort of broad optimism.
- [55:47]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yeah. Gene Sperling. Gene Sperling, who's a smart guy, and I'm sure he thinks of himself as a liberal. He wrote a book called the Pro Growth Progressive, which came out after 2003 or 4, and later on. Sperling was in the Biden administration as well. But, I mean, he was completely. I mean, he was going on in his book, memoir, and he would talk about all the welfare state things that he was in favor of. But when it came to trade, which he was really a tough, you know, pushing through, getting China in the WTO and opening it up. And also, Sperling also played a big role in the deregulation of derivatives. I mean. I mean, those were the predicates for the destruction of the welfare state in America. But he doesn't talk about that. He doesn't talk about that at all in his memoir. And the same is true of Robert Rubin, who I do think is the consummate neoliberal. Rubin is a welfare state liberal. His mother, Robert Rubin's mother, voted for Henry Wallace in 1948. She was a civil rights activist. Robert Rubin voted for and gave money for George McGovern in 1972. He is the one reason that he was influential was he's on our side. He was against Clinton's welfare reform because he thought capitalism is chaotic and some people don't always benefit from it. But for Robert Rubin, the most important thing was the unfettered mobility of capital that, you know, he wanted. You know, and I think that whether it's. Whether the mobility is abroad to South Korea or wherever, or its kind of transmutation into various kinds of derivatives and other financial products, those things completely undercut and subvert any kind of welfare state that he was also in favor of. I mean, there's a contradiction there. But it also explains why Reuben was popular, why he remained popular all, you know, for all throughout an entire period.
- [57:55]
Lee Vincel
Yeah. Well, Ben, what do you want to talk about next? I mean, we got a couple things, but we're also. We don't have.
- [58:00]
Ben Waterhouse
Well, I mean. Yeah, I have a couple things to get to. I also am just struck by the, you know, in the category of people named Reuben, who shifted from the hard left to the corporate neoliberal side. You know, you put Jerry Rubin in that category as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, we touched on this a little bit, Nelson. But I wondered if you could say more about Clinton and welfare in particular. You talked a lot about healthcare, but Bill Clinton famously promised on the campaign trail to end welfare as we know it. And then by the time he was running for reelection, he supported the Welfare Reform Act. What do you make of that decision, that political decision? And, and where does it fit within Clinton's ideology? How does it relate to the kind of arguments you make about his neoliberalism and the tensions around it?
- [58:53]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yeah, well, when Clinton and Robert Reich and Magaziner and others wrote Clinton's sort of putting people first, his sort of, sort of manifesto, and there they. And the phrase ending welfare as we know it, it appears there. It also, it did come out of the DLC to a degree, but it was purposely ambiguous. What does that mean? And sort of the moderate left, the Marilyn Wright Edelman and her husband, I think, Peter Edelman, who they thought, well, what that means is we're going to have universal childcare, we're going to have a kind of food to retraining, et cetera. And it would cost money. And Wilson, Julius.
- [59:40]
Lee Vincel
William Julius. William Wilson.
- [59:42]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Julius William Wilson, who is the African American sociologist from Chicago who wrote books about the fact that the black family is falling apart because black, young, black men don't have jobs. Clinton loved the work of William Julius Wilson, and Wilson reciprocated. And he, he, in the, in the 92 campaign and afterwards, he's always, he's citing Wilson, so that. That was part of Clinton's view. Now, on the other hand, you know, ending weight, ending welfare as we know it could also mean just cutting off, you know, cutting people off and appeal to the right, you know, So I mean, you know, when the, when Clinton loses in 94, the election, the midterm election, you know, he's, he's convinced by various types of the dlc, becomes more important, becomes more influential after the election of 94, said, okay, you know, you got to go, you got to have a welfare reform. You got to do it if you want to win in 96. And he's willing to favor and push for a much harsher welfare bill than he would have had. And that's the only bill that people resign on. People resign from the Clinton administration. Some of them do the Edelman, Peter Edelman does, and others, a few others, when Clinton goes through with that. But he's an opportunist. He is an opportunist. By the way, the phrase opportunist came out of the French history after the Commune. And one of the ex socialists said, je suis un opportuniste, meaning sort of, I look around and I see what can be done. And I go for it. I mean, it's not really a bad word. But Clinton was an opportunist and he said, I want to win in 96. And who is that horrible. I forgot his name. The horrible advisory had. Who later got. He's now a Republican. And what was his name anyway?
- [61:43]
Ben Waterhouse
Dick Morris.
- [61:44]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yeah, Dick Morris. Thank you very much. Dick Morris. Morris tells, you know, you gotta do this. So he does that. And. But it was. But. And but his reputation is, you know, on the left is. Is heavily, heavily tarnished by this welfare reform. No doubt about it.
- [62:00]
Lee Vincel
One thing I've noticed, Nelson, and this will probably be in the book I'm writing about. I mean, I'm still working through it and looking at the data, but I think so much of our history, all of that welfare reform moment in the 90s, is kind of colored by the initial left reaction to it by journalists and academic left people who are rightly. I mean, I'm not saying they shouldn't have been critical of it. It was very bad in a lot of ways. But actually, like, you know, you see these New York Times. There was a New York Times did a series on like how childhood poverty has reduced from like by 60% since the 1990s. And it has to do with tax transfers and all these other things. So I think there is an interesting way in which, like the initial highly negative reaction to his move there kind of blinded people to the actual, like, material changes that were happening around these issues.
- [62:52]
Nelson Lichtenstein
That's right. I mean, one thing was there was a kind of boom in the late 90s. And so in fact there were jobs available. That's one thing. Secondly, EITC Earned Income Tax Credit. The Clintons were very big on that and they increased that a tremendous amount. And that was quite helpful. The minimum wage did go up, not very much, but it went up a bit. And then the other thing, which actually was Paul Starr, his work showed me this. After the failure of the health care bill, the Medicaid, which had always been viewed as kind of a welfare side thing, let's get rid of it. That is enhanced first for children, called chips for. Every state has a. And then it just got improved. And then it gets improved again under Obama with his health care plan. And then under Biden, it's improved. The Republicans are cutting it back now, but it was improved. So that is a huge kind of subsidy to low wage people. It's universal. It's not targeted, you know, to be people unemployed or anyway, and I would say more recently, the whole welfare, even that phrase has sort of gone out of use, but we're thinking in much more in universal terms, not just in terms of African American mothers who were unemployed, which frankly was the imagery of that time. I do have to tell you one story. Can I tell you story about Lewinsky. Lewinsky and social policy? Can I tell you that story? So Bill Clinton, I mean he is, he is, he's by the, by the 1997. He is dickering around and negotiating with Newt Gingrich on a variety of things. Newt, Newt is the, you know, the speaker of the House by that point. And one of the issues is, is Social Security. And there are secret meetings being held between Larry Summers and I think Dick Army Armory, he's a big Republican. And they're, you know, they weren't going to like, you know, completely privatize it, but they were going to begin to begin it, begin various little things that would begin the privatization of Social Security. And Clinton thought, you know, Clinton again thinking, oh, you know, well, I got to do this. I can cut some deals, you know, but let's, that's sort of begin that. Well, the Lewinsky scandal begins in the winter of 98. And, and it, and, and it's, it by the end of the summer of 98, Clinton has to admit that, you know, he had some relationship. And then, anyway, and then in the, in the House, you know, he's on the, he is, in fact, he's impeached. He is, he will be impeached. But you know. Okay, okay, so who are Clinton's defenders by the fall of 1998? Who are his defenders? Joe Lieberman, people like that? No, no. The centrist Democrats. No, not at all. His defenders are Barney Frank, who knows something about sex and knows something about finance, you know, and Maxine Walters, who is on the finance. It's the left wing of the Democratic Party. Who are his defenders during the, during the Lewinsky thing? And at one point Clinton knows that and he says at one point, I guess I've stiffed labor enough, you know, and so he has to drop his negotiating with the right wing Republicans on Social Security because he needs the support of the, you know, that's part of the quid pro quo. And you know, he is impeached. But then he's, then of course, he's not convicted in the Senate. It, and, and it was, you know, the word. Monica Lewinsky saved Social Security. That, that, that, that, that's, that's part of, that's. I have a, I have a section there. It's not quite you know, entirely true. But. But that was the politics of it. He had.
- [66:44]
Lee Vincel
That's a good punchline.
- [66:45]
Nelson Lichtenstein
He had, you know, he had to, you know, Barney. If he had to deal with Barney Frank, who, who, you know, and, you know,
- [66:52]
Lee Vincel
we usually like to end on some kind of, like, meta questions about the craft of history. And we got a couple, you know, we need to wrap up here. But, but Ben, we have a couple. What do you want to end with?
- [67:03]
Ben Waterhouse
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the, the questions that we're,
- [67:08]
Lee Vincel
that we're
- [67:09]
Ben Waterhouse
really interested in on this podcast have
- [67:11]
Nelson Lichtenstein
to do with how to, how to
- [67:11]
Ben Waterhouse
frame a period of time. And we talked about, you know, how to, how to approach something, how to approach the period of the 1990s as it recedes further into history and how that might actually depend on one's own position in your own age, generation and experiences. But I wondered, Nelson, if you could kind of reflect on an angle of that, which is putting a president himself sort of central in the period or in defining. It's a very natural thing to do. American history textbooks invariably fall into this trap. They kind of do the 19th century one way, and then as soon as more or less progressivism happens, it just becomes a presidential history. And there's criticisms to be made of that, but there's also advantages to it. And early in the conversation, I was thinking about one of the most defining historiographical works that you were in fact involved with before all of this. This was the, the edited volume called the Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order came out in 1989. And, and I, from my money, that's like, still the best edited volume in American political history. But what's, what's always intriguing to me about it is that it's got the COVID famously had like FDR in the upper left corner and Ronald Reagan in the lower right corner. And it's. That's the decline of the New Deal order. But of course, the book comes out at the end of the Reagan period in 1989. Would that book look different if you would. If you put Bill Clinton in the bottom right hand corner and more broadly, you know, what do we, what do we gain from using somebody like Bill Clinton as a sort of anchor point to, to a period of time like the 1990s?
- [68:52]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Yeah, no, you're right. We, by the way, we had 10 years ago at a big confere Santa Barbara, really revisiting the reisenvald of the nudie awarder, and we put out two volumes on it. And, but that wasn't the moment. Clearly we didn't quite capture the moment. And so you're right, that early volume was very influential and our later volumes were not. But you're right, you're right that it's both convenient it and easy to stick a name of a president, call it a presidential era, the Reagan era, whatever you want to call it. That's easy, convenient. People sort of know what you're talking about. But maybe it's totally, you know, wrong and puts forward a misinterpretation or a misapplication of your energies or whatever. You're totally right about that. And I do feel, I felt a little. I don't know what. Yeah, a little. I felt some twinges about having, you know, putting centering Clinton. Because you're right. And I think, you know, I don't know what, you know, I don't know. My solution to that is sometimes, occasionally we get some concept which transcends obviously presidential administrations transcends, you know, all sorts of things including wars and such. Neoliberalism is one of them. The welfare states, another one. The African American freedom struggle clearly transcends the feminist movement. But you're right and I don't have a solution to that. I'd welcome yours. But I think that's an issue. I think it's an issue and of course we fall into it. And by the way, of course it's just a fact which a president cannot in fact be responsible for the, the ups and downs of the economy during any. It just, you know, it just doesn't happen.
- [70:49]
Lee Vincel
Well, I mean, I think that really comes out in your bio in, in the book. Well, Nelson, because it's just, I mean the way I talk about it is so often, and I think there are literatures in this in political science and other, you know, and admitted, you know, in kind of like public administration and stuff, that so much of what leaders do in these positions is react to shit they could not foresee that just pops up and is in their face. Right. I mean, we're very cognitively limited creatures. We can't, we don't understand everything happening in the world. And so, so the idea that we're all in control of the situation or something is just a total myth. Right.
- [71:19]
Ben Waterhouse
Can I use that opportunity to share my favorite Bill Clinton quote?
- [71:22]
Lee Vincel
Oh yeah, please do.
- [71:23]
Ben Waterhouse
From before he became president when he's hearing from Alan Blinder and a bunch of other economic folks and he just, he says, you mean to tell me that the success of the program and my re election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders.
- [71:36]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The bond vigilantes. And that was a big issue. And actually Greenspan and at that time said, you gotta reduce the deficit because only then will the bond traders buy. I mean, whether that was true or not, who knew? But that was what he said.
- [72:03]
Lee Vincel
Well, I think that's a great place to wrap up. Nelson, thanks so much for coming and hanging out with us. This was a lot of fun. And we will mention more than once that your Clinton book is out in paperback and that you got a new book coming out this fall. And what's the title again?
- [72:18]
Nelson Lichtenstein
The title is why Labor Unions Matter. It's in a Yale series called why X Matters. Anyway. No, it's called why Labor Unions Matter. And the part of it is myself now in my early 80s, interviewing 25 year old coffee shop workers. Inform me thinking about.
- [72:37]
Lee Vincel
That's so great. Well, thank you, Nelson.
- [72:39]
Ben Waterhouse
Thanks a lot.
- [72:40]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Welcome.
- [72:46]
Joe Fort
Well, that's the 411 home slice for us. This has been all that and a bag of chips. Word, word. Mad props for today's guests and contributors and for all of the hands that helped to make this episode a thing. Our hosts have been Ben Waterhouse of UNC Chapel Hill and Lee Vincel of Virginia Tech. The show is created in cloud spaces across the ether, but is anchored right here in the Newman Library Athenaeum on the Blacksburg campus of Virginia Tech. The whole thing chillaxes under the auspices of Virginia Tech Publishing and Press and the New Books Network distributes our show to all of the places you'll find your podcasts. Along with myself, JM Lamb and Graham Conway, our editors, Sara Beatty, built the art and animation any YouTube listeners may encounter. I am producer Joe Fortune and this has been the iHeart 90s history podcast. As a final note, I'd like to say that our deepest and most earnest gratitude has been reserved for you, our dear listener. Thank you very much for listening. Peace out,
- [74:23]
Nelson Lichtenstein
Sam.