← This is Gavin Newsom
This is Gavin Newsom
And, This Is What The Founding Fathers Were Worried About With Jon Meacham
01:08:20
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- [00:00]
A
It's the war of all against all. It's this constant reality show. But his reality show is our reality. People fought at Lexington, Concord and at Yorktown so that reason and deliberation would at least have a chance against force and accident. Despair is a sin. Cynicism is a sin. Democracy has to deliver or democracy doesn't survive.
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B
This is Gavin Newsom.
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A
And this is Jon Meacham. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Before we had AT&T business wireless coverage, our delivery GPS wasn't the most reliable. Once our driver had to do a 14 point turn to get back on route. A 14 point turn. An influencer even live streamed the whole thing. Not good for business. Now with AT&T business Wireless, routes are updating on the fly and deliveries are on time. And the influencer did get us 53 new followers though. AT&T business Wireless connecting changes everything.
- [01:05]
B
Jon Meacham, thank you for joining us today on the podcast. This weekend seemed to me a perfect distillation of our political life. You had the super bowl halftime show Bad Bunny. We then had this alternative programming with Kid Rock Turning Point usa. And it's interesting, I was turning on, I get my blog every morning of headlines and I thought, just read these headlines and get your reflection. It says how the NFL lost America at halftime. Next headline. It's exactly why the halftime shows. Exactly what the left wants America to look like. The anti American super bowl halftime show should be a wake up call to real Americans. Those are just some of the headlines this morning reflecting on Sunday's events. How do those events shape your thinking about the world we're living in at this moment and how should we look at them through the prism of so much of the work that you've done as an historian that has been chronicling events dissimilar and not dissimilar to those we're experiencing today.
- [02:16]
A
Well, thanks for having me, Governor. I think one of the things that we have to deal with is politics and culture have become so entwined. And that's a newish thing. It's not entirely new, but the notion that we would have had a debate about the halftime show in the Reagan years is a little crazy. Right. Interesting. So. And that's actually what the 45th and 47th president wants. No American president. And I'm very careful when I say something's unprecedented, it's against my business model. So when I say it, you know, pay attention. No American president has ever had the grip on the mind share of the country. And it's part of his strategy. It's ubiquity, it's exhaustion. I feel guilty because I fall prey to it. I'm not sure what to react to every day. And so sometimes I just think I'm going to stay in the 1950s. Right. Or the 1850s or the 1750s. But that's the strategy, and we can't fall prey to it because men hit Omaha beach, people took risks in the Underground Railroad, people fought at Lexington, Concord and at Yorktown, so that, as Alexander Hamilton said, reason and deliberation would at least have a chance against force and accident. And to me, that's the. Whether it's the super bowl or ice or these lies about the election, which we should talk about, because I think that's a genuinely unique thing we have to deal with. It's about reason and deliberation versus raw force and accident. And we have a choice to make. We haven't been invaded by aliens. Right. This is part of who we are. One of the things, with all respect to democratic politicians, that I resist when I hear is a lot of your colleagues around the country will say, this isn't who we are. Well, of course it's who we are. What matters is what is 51% of us. And that's where I think our tension has to be, is not thinking that this is a 9010 question. It's a big, complicated, disputatious democracy. You govern a state that would, what, be the fifth largest economy or something?
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B
Yeah, fourth today, fifth next year with India's rise. But yeah. Size of 21 state populations combined. Put it in perspective.
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A
Yeah, so. So it's vast and it's uneven because. And you all don't have proportionate power because of the way the constitutional structure was set up. But that's the system we have. And one of the things I think we're learning, and I say this as a centrist. Look, I'm George H.W. bush's biographer. I know I look really radical. My fashion sense comes from Fred McMurray and my three sons. So I'm not exactly, you know, a member of the squad. That said, I am a constitutionalist, not because the Constitution is perfect, but because it is. It was, in fact, the best they could come up with to keep a really complicated, even then, a complicated, now even more complicated populace together obeying a social covenant, which is that we respect each other because it's in our interest to. If you respect me, I'm more likely to respect you. And it's against human nature. Right. It's a lot. You know, democracy is about give and take, and it's a lot more fun to take than to give. The point is that just enough of us give so that we have this path forward.
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B
John, when you say it's not who we are, as sort of an observation, perhaps a critique, and clap back to some of the, you know, utterances that people make, including members of my party, you mean that historically, I mean, democracy is us, and we're. We've always been messy. You talk about 51. Is that. Is that what you mean? Ultimately, that we are. We're both, and we're complicated. You talk about Jackson and the cruelty, the competency, both. And I mean, this notion that it's a messy.
- [06:58]
A
I'm sure you're a better person than I am. That's not hard, so don't get cocky. But I know that if I do the right thing 51% of the time, that's a hell of a good day. And I don't have that many of them. And a democracy is the fullest manifestation of all of us. You know, we're celebrating, commemorating the 250th. But here's what I think is as true as anything. We've really only been a multiracial democracy since 1965. Right. We're 60 years. We're 65 years old. We're not 250 years old. So how. You know, I think about if you look like the two of us, it's been a great 250 years. If you don't look like us, it's been a little rougher. And so that's not to say, oh, the past is terrible. Let's cancel it. It's not that. But we have to look at the past, I think, not with a censorious heart or with a kind of mindless celebration, but we look it in the eye. We realize that there were competing forces. Our appetites and ambitions shaped us. And yet just enough of us, at critical points, fought for independence, achieved the end, finally, the end of slavery, undid, legalized, Jim Crow defeated Hitler, stood against Soviet totalitarianism, and it wasn't foreordained, but just enough of us did it. And so the question now really is, will just enough of us say that this authoritarian adjacent administration and this movement that is more about, I think, identity and power than any actual ideological or policy agenda, will that prevail?
- [08:57]
B
How proximate is it to prior times in our history? I mean, we are also prone. It's never been like this before. And I. I mean, I imagine you clap back on that pretty aggressively.
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A
I do. I think whenever you say clap back, I think about Speaker Pelosi at that.
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B
State of the Union ripping up the state the speech.
- [09:19]
A
Oh, God, yeah. Speaker Pelosi is like if Napoleon had worn Manolo Blahniks. Right. I mean, she's just incredible. Incredible woman. I do whatever she says because it's easier to say yes quickly.
- [09:34]
B
Trust me. You have no idea. Remember, you're talking to here. I'm sitting up in my chair right now.
- [09:40]
A
I know. Isn't it amazing? So here's my confession. Where I was wrong and where I think I'm right. For the first four years, almost exactly, I thought President Trump was a difference of degree, but not kind, that is, from 15 to 20, almost everything he did. I mean, the behavior is horrible, but in terms of discernible public action, you could find. All right, that's Huey Long, that's George Wallace. You could sort of place it. And it was recognizable. That changed in what I call the unfolding January 6th. It's not just January 6th. It was the fake electors. It was the durability of the lies. It was the attempt to manufacture a crisis that. Since we're going to dork out for a second, I'll throw this out at you. If Mike Pence had not done what he did, the plan, as they said, was to create so much chaos that the House would have to make the decision. If Trump had prevailed in the house in 2021, what do you do if you have a constitutionally sanctioned remedy for an illegal result? Right. I mean, how do you. What do you do? And what is what I think is a particularly virulent and is going to prove to be particularly stubborn legacy of this. Of this movement of Trump and the. And President Trump and the maga, is this distrust in elections whose results you don't like. If you think historically, Adams didn't do it in 1800, Andrew Jackson in 1824 hashtagged it, he branded it a corrupt bargain, but he came back to Nashville and ran again. Nobody stormed the Capitol. Douglas and Breckenridge didn't do it in 1860. Richard Nixon didn't do it in 1960. Hubert Humphrey didn't do it in 1968, Gerald Ford didn't do it in 19. These are infinitesimal elections. And of course, most famously, our friend Al Gore didn't do it in 2000. And so that is a difference, not of degree, but of kind. And it is about the social covenant. Right. It's about you accept rules and you Accept when you lose because you trust the arena and you trust that the next time you might prevail. And when that gets broken, when that trust is gone, which is what President Trump wants to do. Right. He wants us fighting about the Super Bowl. He wants us just battling constantly because his view of the world is Hobbesian. Fundamentally. I don't think, you know, it's that. It's the war of all against all. It's this constant reality show. But the problem is, of course, as you know better than anybody, his reality show is our reality.
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B
You look back, I mean, you're. As a historian, and you made the point about being a centrist and made the point about work you've done with the Bush family, notably George H.W. bush. And I want to go back to that in a moment. Have you found yourself, because of Trump, to show more of your bias, or do you feel your objectivity is still whole, meaning you are analyzing the facts. They may come through the prism or the lens, which we see them as a little bit more partisan, but that they are sort of moored still in your objectivity as an historian?
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A
Yeah. So I have a slightly different view of this than a lot of historians do. I'm basically a biographer. And so I paint portraits. And so if you'll stick with this metaphor with me. But when you paint a portrait, you do it according to the light that's streaming in the window. So any story you tell in retrospect will be shaped by the time in which you find yourself. I have become much more. And President Biden was a friend, and I helped him when I could not on policy, I pay plenty of taxes. I'm good. But I believed that and believe that he was a constitutionalist and that the journey toward a more perfect union and the arc of a moral universe were in better hands in his, obviously, than the once and future incumbents. That said, I think it's fascinating that basically, kind of Bush 41, even Reagan Republicans, are now more center or even quasi center left because of the way the world has moved. They haven't. It's like what your predecessor, Ronald Reagan, said. He didn't leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left him. And in many ways, I do think that I don't want to be overly grand about this, but I feel that to whom much is given, much is expected. I've been incredibly fortunate in my life. I was born a citizen of the United States of America. I'm a boringly heterosexual, white, Southern male Episcopalian. You know, I. I'm good, right and so I think if you don't call them as you see them, what's the point, right? If. If in this moment you are. One is not willing to say, you know, what a creeping authority creeping to galloping authoritarian in the White House, playing on the oldest of American fears. If you're not willing to stand up against that, what are you willing to stand up for?
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B
And as you paint that sort of try to paint that picture as you described in that light, which I appreciate the visual of. And being a biographer, not just in a story, in that context, how important is it to have some the temper of time meaning to reflect not in the moment, in the hot take, but looking through the lens of history and having perspective, as my mom would say, seek first to understand before you're understood, to avoid the pundantry as you're painting that picture.
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A
That's a great question. I see. I hugely admire people who have the guts like you to go into the arena. I may not agree with everything people in the arena want to do, but I've never been on a ballot. Right. And I. I think that.
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B
What used.
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A
To simply be a journalistic impulse to be kind of like Beavis and Butthead, just to kick people in the shins because you could, which was journalistic until the iPhone and then everybody became that. One of the things I say when I'm lucky enough to give commencement speeches, which I love to do, and you're really addressing the grandparents because the kids are hungover. This line has never failed. I say, just because you have the means to express an opinion quickly does not mean you have an opinion worth expressing quickly.
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B
Nice.
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A
And I really do think when Musk bought Twitter, I got off everything. I am much more healthy in a mental way. I don't follow the minute to minute, and headlines in history just don't move in tandem. And the great examples of this are Harry Truman, who left Washington with a 20% approval rating. But by 1970, everybody wanted to be Truman. George H.W. bush, 39% of the country, only 39% of the country wanted him reelected. But he died a kind of hero of the republic because people saw sometimes another little metaphor here. Sometimes you can't really see a mountain until you get far enough away from it. Nice. And I really believe that. And I think it's really important to say, which I think is true, that Ronald Reagan, George H.W. bush, George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney could not be nominated by this Republican Party. And why that doesn't force. My Republican friends, I call them PETER millar, Republicans, right. They're on the driving range. Why that doesn't lead to more of a coherent plan of action, I don't really understand. I mean, I understand the raw facts of it. I remember when this first started happening in 2016, I was at a dinner with a Southern governor and small state. And he said, you know, when you're the governor of a state this size, you know, every precinct, the Republican primary, it just happened. And when the results started coming in the Republican presidential primary on Super Tuesday in 2016, he thought there had been a computer error because these precincts that had had 100, 150 voters had 500 and 600.
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B
Wow.
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A
And it was because Trump, as he was then, had activated these folks. And so Trump was telling a story that was resonating. To me, the central work of someone like me is to tell a story that can compete with a narrative that is fundamentally about, not about. That is fundamentally not about recognizing and living into the Declaration of Independence, but about exclusion and walls as opposed to bridges.
- [20:18]
B
So that's the great challenge. And you reflected it in your opening comments. The shock and awe of Trump 24 7, dominating the news, dominating our conversations, dominating. I mean, we began on sports. I mean, the idea that we have a president who's showing up with this exception, curiously didn't show up at this super bowl, but is showing up in every other sporting venue to sort of highlight his dominance in terms of the conversation. I mean, how do we start to reflect then? I mean, is it immortal in the sort of, this, the 250th anniversary of that declaration? Is it more than those, those, those values? Should we situationally find ourselves engaged day to day? I mean, how do you, where do you find. And you've been challenged, whether you show up on mornings, you know, Morning Joe consistently, and you're sort of stuck in the headlines of the day, trying to frame it in historical ways. But for the rest of us, perhaps, you know, what, what's. Is there advice, counsel? Is there perspective that you can offer at this moment and how you confront what is so often, lies, misrepresentations, omissions, and historic deviants.
- [21:25]
A
So one thing, this is pure punditry. To answer your question, after saying, I don't do punditry anymore. One of the. Did you see the New York Times story about Senator Britt from Alabama?
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B
I've been, she's, she's been interesting. I've watched her for some time. She's actually very, very interesting couple. She's an interesting political character. I think I've had her on my bingo card. One of the rising stars in the Republican Party before she showed up in the counter programming of that State of the Union.
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A
Yeah. So if you haven't seen it, take a look at it. It was over the weekend and it, it was, insofar as there's a leading indicator of something of these kinds of Republicans.
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B
Yeah.
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A
The lead of the story is. And so it only came from one person, was the senator from Alabama sitting in her car texting. So who's the source to her staff, who she'd seen that terrible picture of an ice agent with a little boy and a spider man backpack being put into a car. And she wrote saying, let's find out about this. And that a senator from Alabama feels comfortable enough receiving. Let's be honest, the cultural approbation of the New York Times tells you something, right? It means that. And now I'm just speculating, but it means that maybe some fundraisers, maybe some donors are beginning to think, you know what, we got to think beyond the next 36 months, every day that passes President Trump's interests and the interests of Republicans who are going to be on a ballot again get a little farther apart. So the power of that picture, of that news picture tells you something. And so Senator Britt is willing to tell a story about herself, which is that she thinks that perhaps this is going too far. That's a story. And one of the hard things about, and what I think is in a self solipsistic way, I think this is important for what people like me do is so much of our public life is about a kind of common ascent. Right. It's about an ethos. And the ethos at our best has been one in which we obey the rule of law. If we don't like the laws, we try to change them. We are trying to live into the Declaration. We have to amend the user's guide, the Constitution. We do it. But that's been and imperfectly. But it's kept us going. Right. It's kept the experiment worth defending the story we have to tell. Because there has to be one. Right. Is ever harder for the lived experience of younger people. Right. So if, you know, you and I, I think, are about the same age. So you and I grew up. We didn't fight in World War II, but our grandfathers did. Right. I grew up in the south, adjacent to. I knew John Lewis. We had a tactile connection to the greatest moments in American history. The defeat of fascism, the defeat of Jim Crow. But if you were born in the 21st century, what have you got? You've got September 11, the failure of the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, the Great Recession, a biographically interesting but historically indispositive Obama presidency. You've got Covid, you've got Trump. You've got January 6th. And in something that you'll appreciate that I don't think everybody and people who don't have kids, little kids, at this point can appreciate, for more than 20 years now, we have explicitly told our children, by our actions, not our words, that we can't keep them safe in schools. We do duck and cover drills, not because of a foreign foe in Moscow.
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B
Amen.
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A
But because of what happens here. And one of the two places you're supposed to be safest, your home and your school. So why would you trust the grownups to do anything? That's why the story matters so much, is telling the story. The most important thing this country, I would argue, ever did was fight the Second World War. But we barely did, right? The Second World War began on September 1, 1939. We got in fully on the 12th of December, 1941. We didn't declare war on Germany until Germany declared war on us. We were literally dragged at the last minute into the most important thing we ever did. And so that's not to say, oh, weren't they terrible? And, boy, we would do it better. It's not to say that at all. It's to say that if they were imperfect and they got there, then in our imperfection, we can, too.
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B
It's interesting when you talk about the party leaving Reagan and reflecting on his journey as Democrat labor leader to the Ronald Reagan. We know today, the Ronald Reagan and I happen coincidentally today to be in the old Reagan mansion here in Sacramento. So the spirit of Reagan very alive in the walls surrounding me, but I will never forget. And it's been a speech that's been, you know, shown millions of times now over the course of the last few months, particularly with all the anxiety that we're experiencing on the streets, in sidewalks, that anxiety that showed up in the New York Times with that text from Senator Britt, and that is he ended his presidency and chose one speech and talked about Lady Liberty's torch. He talked about, you know, this, this. The notion of newcomers and this, this sort of, you know, remarkable speech, this about pluralism and what defines America and makes us unique. Now, we have, obviously, what appears to be an invasive species, Donald Trump, in relationship to that. But what you just painted was a picture of that's, you know, of frustration of people that have not experienced what you and I reference with our grandparents and experienced more of this historic project that obviously Ronald Reagan was a big part of as well. And it doesn't it make then more sense that there was a Donald Trump, someone who's going to shake the machine, someone who's going to scratch the record, someone who was going to challenge those institutions that are failing our kids, institutions that I know are us, they're reflective of us, but institutions that are failing a generation of people. People are stuck, 30 year old, not doing better than his parents. For the first time in American history, that populism that's not just from the far right, Donald Trump and Trumpism, but reflected very much in Bernie and AOC and our politics on the left, isn't it then it doesn't explain a little bit more of that and isn't it more fair to consider Trump and Trumpism in that light than necessarily a deviancy from more traditional Republican values or, or, or the more conservative values?
- [29:20]
A
I think, look, I totally understand how this happened as you just laid it out. It's, it would surprise the founders that it took this long, by the way, they were fully ready for this. Abraham Lincoln's first speech in 18, first public speech in 1838 was about, you know, if the Constitution and the Declaration are ever undone, it's going to be not because of a foreign foe, but because of a towering genius of a tyrant who might come along. I don't think that Trump represents a deviancy from the American story. I think he represents an extreme manifestation of, of there are legitimate cares and concerns obviously to deal with or it wouldn't have happened? The question is, can you, can you deal with the underlying issues that have led to this manifestation of fear, unease, distrust? Can you do so, but do so within a rule of law and with a devotion to a principle that has endured, not fully applied, but we've never fully walked away from it either. And is it going to be, is our public sphere going to be about raw power and force, or can it be about solutions and genuinely changing people's lives? I don't think, and I know you don't think this, these kind of performative crackdowns, are they changing? Is that bringing manufacturing back? You know, numbers suggest it's not.
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B
No. Period.
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A
So, and again, I'm not, look, I'm not particularly partisan. I just think that if we, if we, if, if people like you don't find a way to address the cares and concerns of people who do not see the path to prosperity. And when you don't see a path to prosperity, remember, this is not just about democracy, it's about democratic capitalism. If you don't have faith that your work will be rewarded and your family will do better, why would you support the infrastructure of a system that you don't believe is going to deliver for you? Democracy has to deliver or democracy doesn't survive. And there's always been. This is. Aristotle wrote about this. There's always been a. The middle class is the key to any kind of durable republic because only when you have a belief that rules should be followed. But you can benefit from the system that has rules. That's the only reason you do it. Otherwise you race to disruptive movements. And I was thinking, I'm doing a book on Eisenhower right now and it's so interesting to read his. He spent an enormous amount of time trying to get the Republican party of the 1950s to support what was then called mutual security, which became. It was the Marshall plan in the 50s, it was mutual security. It became USAID under President Kennedy. And he had. There's this great scene. There was a senator from New Hampshire named Stiles Bridges who was very much in the. There were about 12 to 15 deeply conservative senators in the Senate of McCarthy. It wasn't one of the reasons Ike was so slow to take on McCarthy is it wasn't just him. He had other votes and so nothing would have happened. It was a one vote margin in those years, very divided Senate. But there's this, and he taped it actually. So we have an audio of Eisenhower trying to talk this senator from New Hampshire, this deep conservative, into supporting mutual security. And his argument was, why, if you're a nation, if you're a people and you're trying to decide between communism and the free world, why wouldn't you throw a little money their way? Right. Why wouldn't you? Instead, you know how much more expensive it's going to be to send the army. And so it was this insight that you have to deliver conditions that enable that pursuit of happiness. And if you don't, then you get political chaos. And that's where we are.
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B
And I love the, it's interesting the frame mutual security, a much more effective frame in contemporary political terms than usaid.
- [34:46]
A
He hated Eisenhower, explicitly said, do not call this foreign aid. It's not that. It's mutual security.
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B
And you talk. So you, I mean, it's remarkable. You've got a book that you're working on. Eisenhower comes out next year. You just you're coming out next week with this new book, America's Struggle, which I don't want to forget about because it reflects what.
- [35:11]
A
Best book I ever xeroxed.
- [35:13]
B
Okay. Best book I ever xerox for the six people know what Xerox means. You seem to be talking about faxing things, but let's America struggle.
- [35:23]
A
Let me get my landline just a second.
- [35:26]
B
Yeah, Exactly. I look 250 years, not the Constitution, 250 years ago, the Declaration of Independence. And you talk about this operating system. You talk about the mission statement. Mission statement being what was printed by not just Jefferson, but that guy Adams, who's often forgotten. In this conversation, 250 years ago. Talk to me a little bit about what you've xeroxed in this new.
- [35:56]
A
So about seven, eight years ago, I wrote a book called the Soul of America. And it was my reaction to Charlottesville. And my argument was that, you know, and soul in Hebrew and in Greek means breath or life. So when God breathed life into man in Genesis, that work we translated as soul. When Jesus said, greater love hath no man than this than to lay down his life for his friends, that could mean soul. So it's the vital thing that sets us apart. And to me, the soul is not wholly good or wholly bad, but an arena of contention. It is for me. It is for you, I think it is for the country. So you have these forces. You have Dr. King, you have the Klan. It's just. And we just fight it out again and again and again. And it is a perennial struggle. There will never be. There's never been a once upon a time in American history. There's not going to be a happily ever after. Right. There will always be more work to be done. And so the Declaration is really scriptural. And it's interesting that Jefferson, who was a described attacked as a French atheist, which when you think about it's kind of redundant in his political days. He actually saw that. He saw that what he was doing. He gave his. The desk on which he'd written it, sort of his laptop. He gave it to a granddaughter saying that this has taken on sacred dimensions. And the fact that we celebrate 250 to the Declaration, as opposed to the Constitution, has a lot to do. Again, forgive the geekiness, but you called. Has a lot to do with Lincoln. Thomas Jefferson never had a better friend than Abraham Lincoln, who at Gettysburg, the middle. Remember the battle of the Civil War was about the meaning of the Constitution, secession, division of power. What does Lincoln do at Gettysburg? He jumps over 1787 and goes to 1776. Founded not on the proposition that, well, here's a Bill of Rights and here's we the people or we the state. He. He just jumps all the way back and says, no, that we became a people because of this principle. And in that moment, really, the Declaration is elevated in a way that continues to shape who we are. So in the middle of World War II, Franklin Roosevelt goes to open the Jefferson Memorial, and he talks about we are fighting a war for the declaration of independence. Dr. King, the key part of the sermon at the March on Washington is all men are created equal. Right? It is a scriptural maxim. And Lincoln also said about it that it would be a forever a reappearing stumbling block to any kind of tyranny. And so what I wanted to do with the book, I xeroxed. Had a student asked me, by the way, once at Vanderbilt, how do we used to do student newspapers? And I said, well, we would print out the columns and then we'd cut them and we'd paste them. And she said, oh, my God, that's where cut and paste came from. So not, hello, middle age. This is a gat. So the soul book. This. This is the chorus of voices from the first summoning of the Virginia House of Burgesses all the way through Steve Levitsky at Harvard, warning about authoritarianism. These are the original voices, and to me, the central voice is Frederick Douglass. Imagine what it took for a man born into enslavement who'd escaped to say in the face of Dred Scott, I, for one, do not despair of this republic. The fiat of the Almighty, let there be light, has not yet spent its force. Imagine what it takes for him to say that.
- [40:11]
B
It puts this moment where people are feeling anxiety and despair and hopelessness in perspective. What is. I mean, as you look back, you talk about rule of law a lot and, you know, bring a Plato. I mean, you think of the Founding fathers, the best of, you know, Greek democracy, the Roman Republic, 3Co. branches of government, popular sovereignty. Going back to this notion of the rule of law, I've been critical. You know, Ian Brenner, others have used the phrase, now the rule of dawn, a supine congress, no longer co. Equal branches of government, etc. I mean, what do you, you know, you talk about lighting democracy on fire, and you. Not your words, but as some have described January 6th and. And how Trump tried to wreck this country, at least from my perspective, in January 6th. But we, as we move now into the 250th anniversary of that declaration. So much of our history is being rewritten, you know, quite literally erased. Books being banned, we're censoring historical facts. You see, libraries, teachers, gag rules, what they can say teach corporate gag rules as well in many respects on dei, quote unquote anti woke legislation. I mean, how do you reflect on all of that and unpack all of that? How do we maintain this mythology that binds us together, which is so important? And I think as Democrats, we need to talk more about at the same time, you know, we are honest about that history. As we now move in to celebrate later this summer, I look forward to.
- [41:42]
A
Seeing how you do it. Good luck to you.
- [41:47]
B
Yeah, thanks.
- [41:49]
A
I have a feeling this is not the first time you've thought about this question. It is about you use a really important word, which is mythology, and it unfortunately people think it means something made, something false.
- [42:05]
B
Right.
- [42:06]
A
But a myth is a story we tell. And the most. One of the most interesting parts. Did you watch or read the Carney speech?
- [42:18]
B
I was with him 20 minutes before he gave it in Davos.
- [42:22]
A
Okay.
- [42:22]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [42:23]
A
To me, the most interesting. One of the most interesting parts of that speech is how honest he was about exactly the kind of question you're asking, which is there was a fiction we agreed to. Right. We agreed that we were going to be this western country. And yes, it was imperfect, but we decided that this was kind of the imaginative infrastructure of how we were going to be. And that's what we have to do. And it is very clear that President Trump and possibly his would be successors are really, really good at this. I think about that wall now, the colonnade at the White House where. Which is this. I mean to say it's like a funhouse mirror is just doesn't quite do justice to it. But I think I might begin the story with. It is true that we can either be we the people or I the powerful. Right. That's it.
- [43:46]
B
Nice.
- [43:47]
A
And we the people means that all of us have skin in the game. And what's the old rule? You. Even if you get a donor for $5, you want them because it changes their psychology.
- [44:02]
B
Absolutely. Yeah.
- [44:03]
A
Yeah. And what we've seen is that there is a. The absolutist tendency of the current incumbent in the Oval Office. He's made. He's actually made this story kind of easy to tell because the, the counter story. The counter story is that this is not just about. Sorry, this is my. My colleague. This is not. The future cannot simply be about the person whose name is on the ballot. Right, it has to. It's not about me. It's we. You know, what, whatever the. The phrase would be. But the first three words of the Constitution are absolutely vital in this. It is in fact we the people in pursuit of a more perfect union. And that should be empowering to people, I would think, because if it's one person, that means there are 329 million of the rest of us who are on the outside looking in. And I think that's where I'd start. I would start. The story is that Gouverneur Morris, the committee, in drafting in the Constitution, in that wonderful preamble, articulated something that was beyond the. Patrick Henry, by the way, when he attacked the Constitution, actually said, by what rights did the framers say? We the people. It's we the states. And Henry, he just didn't, he didn't get it right. Interesting guys in Philadelphia did that. There was a kind of mythic union. Andrew Jackson said the Constitution does not form a league, but a compact, it's a covenant, and it's about having each other's back.
- [46:15]
B
This notion of citizenship, I remember, I think it was Brandeis who said, in a democracy, the most important office is office of citizen. This notion that we have agency, we can shape the future. We're not bystanders. Imagine it's imbued in that, that spirit of we the people. This notion, the Founding Fathers, how is that the antidote at the end of the day? I mean, we the people to the citizen, the fear, the anxiety so many of us are feeling, is that give you some optimism at this moment in particular, that this time is not different, that people are rising up, that these voices are being shared and heard and we're inspiring one another. Or are you a little more sober and cynical?
- [46:56]
A
No.
- [46:57]
B
Where is your temperature right now?
- [46:58]
A
I'm not. I'm not cynical. I think, and I'm not cynical because of the history of the historical frame. Four years before I was born, we lived in my native region under functional apartheid, right? So on March 7, 1965, John Lewis and Hosea Williams led that march across the top of the Pettus Bridge. Anyone who has not been to the Pettus Bridge must go and like going to Omaha beach and walked into peaceably a line of state troopers and posse men asking that the 15th amendment of the Constitution be again. They weren't asking for anything new. They were asking us to live up to. To fulfill what we said we would do. And when that speech written by Richard Goodwin, when Lyndon Johnson said, I speak tonight for the Dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. And that there are moments in the life of a nation where they form a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington, Concord. So it was at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. That was 20 minutes ago. Right. And it feels like, you know, and you see it on, you know, Ken Burns does it and it feels, and because it's black and white, it feels more remote. 1965.
- [48:42]
B
Yep.
- [48:43]
A
And so if, if. And by the way. Right. The night the, the 1964 Civil Rights act, which the Republican nominee of the party that year opposed. Now seen polling shows the 64 Civil Rights act is seen as more important than. I think it's right before the Kennedy assassination and right after the dropping of the bombs in World War II. I mean, the public sees the significance of that, what was it, a 76 day filibuster. Right, right. So none of this is easy. And so I, you know, John Lewis was willing to die, you know, and I get tired by when I'm watching msnbc. That's ridiculous. Right. People shed their blood for you and me. And so I think despair is, this is going to sound preachy, but I say it about myself. Despair is a sin. Cynicism is a sin. It's not up to us to be, to despair or be cynical. It's, it's, it's self indulgent.
- [50:01]
B
I love that. It's interesting. I just, I'm reflecting now in the year of my birth, 1967, blacks couldn't marry whites. And over a dozen states in this country overwhelming opposition publicly. And then the infamous Supreme Court decision which. Or more importantly, the power of individuals like Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter that had the courage of their conviction to fight that. Loving versus State of Virginia. Overturning those laws, not overturning public opinion though at the time. Overturning laws.
- [50:30]
A
Well, and to talk about another one of your predecessors. What. How different would America be if Earl Warren had not become Chief Justice? And here's how close that was. Right. Fred Vinson, the incumbent Chief justice dies unexpectedly. I don't think he was 60 and Warren was still got, he had I think some months to go on his term. And so Eisenhower wasn't sure he would want to come and do. The chief would want that job at that moment. But Warren ended up saying yes, if Eisenhower doesn't become president in 1952 and Robert Taft had, or Adlai Stevenson had, I don't think Warren becomes Chief Justice. And the great Story of the death of Jim Crow doesn't begin in Congress, doesn't begin with a president. It begins with the Supreme Court and the war in court, the reaction to which shapes us unto this hour. Right. But this is a chancy contingent thing and you never know whether it's going to be Article 1 or Article 2 or Article 3 that's going to make it happen. So it absolutely is. What's thrilling and terrifying is I agree with you, it's up to us. And that's kind of thrilling because it's up to us. And then on the other hand it's like, oh shit, it's up to us. You know, why can't someone come save us? But no one's going to do that, right? There's not going to be Fortinbras is not coming. We've got to do it.
- [52:24]
B
I love that. By the way, I, I have pulled out of dusted off when I first became governor Warren's desk we found it.
- [52:31]
A
Oh wow. Did you.
- [52:32]
B
In a storage facility about six miles away. And, and I remind people, I mean it goes to the, the books you've written. I mean in the complexity of this human expression experience. I mean this is the same guy was interning the Japanese as well. You know, we, it's messy life, little humility, Grace.
- [52:52]
A
Oh my God. And there's a, you know, there's a scene from 1948, maybe it was a little late. There was a, there was a kind of a post war apology ultimately became in the 80s. It took us to the 1980s to do it at the federal level. But there's a scene where a young actor who was a big New Deal fair dealer named Reagan actually gives a speech attacking the internment of the Japanese in Southern California. No, I think that there's, my other favorite story about Warren is, you know, he had no middle name and he asked his father why. He said I couldn't afford one.
- [53:45]
B
I love it. And I can't afford to let you go, John, without just talking a little bit about Biden because, you know, it's not and it's, it's frankly, it's been a little upsetting to me and how quick my Democratic colleagues and you know, not my consultants but other pundits and consultants of the party say well we just need to, let's stop looking in the rearview mirror talking about Biden. Except so much of what we're talking about is in the rearview mirror though we began more contemporary terms with Trump. But I do want to reflect. How do you. I mean there's not a lot of distance. And you obviously you have, you've, you've noted your own subjectivity as it relates to your relationship with President Biden. I, and I have my subjectivity that I wear on my sleeve. I openly advocate for his policy successes and his character. What, how do you, what do you, where do you think he starts to land and when do you start to land more favorably in historic terms, meaning when do people sort of open up or are we just, you know, is this, this just evolves organically.
- [54:53]
A
I, I think about this a lot and I thought you're, I thought you were a stand up guy and watched that with, with admiration. So here's where I, here's what I think and I've told him this. So the legacy question will be, I think a key factor in how that turns out is about the 2028 election. Right? So does, does the MAGA moment, does this become a 12 year chapter in which President Biden is the Trump slayer in 2020? But then, and I would argue it is somewhat Shakespearean, it's certainly Greek, what happened to him? The forces that led Joe Biden and enabled him to overcome and endure amid tragedies that would put the rest of us in the ground from 1972 forward, from the loss of his wife and daughter to the loss of his son to aneurysms to the political ups and downs he endured. And we all have, as the French said, the vices of our virtues. And I think that he genuinely believed he was the only person who could beat Donald Trump. I don't necessarily think that was true. But as a sort of, as someone who makes his living looking at either dead people or old people and trying to figure out why they do what they do, I understand it. The forces that got him to the pinnacle kept him from stepping away from it. I don't think it was love of power. I really don't. I don't think it was the helicopter or the airplane. I think it was that what Joe Biden does is he endures. And I think that was the key thing there. But if this becomes a 12 year chapter, then President Biden becomes the sane island between the two Trump terms. If MAGA ism in some form is ratified again in 2028, it becomes a harder case to make for Biden.
- [57:43]
B
It's interesting how concerned and just with limited time are you about the midterms election integrity, about this, you know, this, this anxiety that appears very real. Evidence, abundant demanding voter rolls as conditions for removal of ice. In Minnesota, we're in litigation on that same subject matter. We talk about the Japanese internment. First time I met this masked man, Greg Bevino, it was at Little Tokyo in Los Angeles at the Democracy Center. It was a sacred site where we were interning the Japanese. When Reagan made that speech in Southern California to see what happened with what I have coined more of the rigging. The response to that with Prop 50, the mid district, mid decade, rather redistricting. So many things around won't say voter ID necessarily, but component parts of what this administration is trying to do. How worried are you about our institutions holding and the success of free and fair elections in 2026, let alone 2028?
- [59:02]
A
So you, you've. You've linked two questions that I think are vital and I think given what you do all day, you'll appreciate this. I hope. This is not about the durability of democracy, is not about institutions. It's about the people in them. It's not about the courts. It's about judges. Right. It's not about the election system. It's about registrars and secretaries of state. It is about people. And that's why the stories matter. Do you want to be Mike Pence who stood up and anyone who said, I have liberal friends who say, why do you praise him? He just did his duty. That's not. They are not someone who's ever sat in the Oval Office and been yelled at by a president. Right. And if. And I know that seems sort of facile or. But anybody. You know this I once went into. I had the moment of my. That I've been waiting for since I was 6 years old with President Biden. And he brought me in the. The Oval Office. The sunlights coming in the dust motes. I can smell FDR cigarettes. You know, this is the great. I've been waiting for this. Right? I sit in the chair that Bobby Kennedy sat in during the missile crisis and. And President Biden asked me a question and I started. I can't remember what the question was. And I started talking and it was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was better angels, blah, blah, blah. We the few. I didn't make a goddamn bit of sense. And so I finally just stopped. This is a true story. And later that day, we were in the dining room, you know, down the little hall. And I was feeling guilty about this. I'd taken. The President of the United States has limited time, right? So it was just the two of us. And I said, Mr. President, I want to apologize to you. You asked me a question back There. And I just didn't make any sense at all. Now, you're a politician. What you say at that point is, anything you say is so important that I'm just grateful you're here. Right. That's what you say. You know what Biden said? He said, that's okay. It happens a lot in there.
- [61:16]
B
Terrible.
- [61:17]
A
Which means, yeah, you didn't make a goddamn bit of sense. Okay. Anyway, so. But do you want to be. If you are an election official, I just. The story I would want you to think about is you will be honored beyond the grave if you do the right thing. And the grave is certain. Donald Trump's approval is not.
- [61:53]
B
I love that. And because I can't help myself, we could end there. But you brought up Bobby Kennedy. And if you look behind me, there's various parts of this shrine in front of me. All things Bobby. Sarge Shriver. I'm a fan of the 60s. The vernacular 60s is a picture of Bobby and my dad. Your dad right here? Yeah. When my dad was campaigning for state Senate, Bobby was out here, literally a few weeks later, he. His life was taken. So I think about the 60s and the vernacular 60s, solving for ignorance, you know, poverty and disease, this, you know, the spirit that defined those days, but also the tragedies, the setbacks, the travails that were obviously self evident, well established through assassination and so much despair and distrust and obviously war that shaped it. How, how, how do you reflect on that time in relationship to this moment and the moment that we were just discussing moving forward and the.
- [62:59]
A
I find it's a great question. I find hope in this, because if you think about 1968, as you just mentioned. So, Senator. So it begins with Tet. Gene McCarthy's already running against LBJ, nearly upsets him in New Hampshire. Senator Kennedy gets in the race on March 16th. So late March 31st, Johnson gets out of the race. And that morning, Dr. King delivers the Sunday sermon at Washington National Cathedral. He offers the best definition of democracy I've ever heard, which is, I can never be what I ought to be. Until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be. Until I am what I ought to be. That's the way God's universe is made. That's the way it is structured. Four days later, he's shot to death in Memphis. Six weeks after that, Senator Kennedy is killed. Six weeks after that, the Chicago convention disintegrates into chaos and violence. On election day, 1968, Nixon narrowly defeats Humphrey. But something we forget. George Wallace won 13.5% of the vote and carried five states in 1968. Five states in the Electoral College. And so why didn't we. Oh, and my father fought in Vietnam. 46Americans on average died a day in Vietnam in 1968. Not wounded, not died. So why didn't we fall apart then? Right. And I'm very soft on President Nixon on this front. He governed from the center. EPA proposed a health care plan. Obama would never have opposed. Proposed. It was too far. He was Andrew Yang before Andrew Yang. Right. Proposed a guaranteed income.
- [64:58]
B
That's right.
- [64:59]
A
Goes to China and had the capacity to. When he broke the law, he followed the law. He had a sense of shame. And I think that a lot of the reason things didn't end in a more serious way was that Nixon, for all of his manifold faults, believed fundamentally in the things we're talking about, about the Constitution, about we the people. And I'm not praising him beyond measure, I don't think. But I've thought a lot about why did we come out of the 60s as a country that was still together? What do you think? I mean, you've thought about this. If you look at 68, it's a totally plausible thing to think that 69 and 70 are not happy times. Do you think that. Why do you think we endured?
- [66:11]
B
It's the question I pose to you as an historian to really reflect on. And it's the right question. That decade fascinates me for all the reasons you brilliantly just laid out. But this, I think it's also in, you know, in the context of, you know, what we didn't get a chance to talk about and I'm sensitive time, you know, in the spirit of scripture too, you know, on earth, God's work is truly our own. This notion that we are all bound together by a web of mutuality, this notion of the commonwealth and this capacity of resilience and our ability to, to live together and advance together across differences. And we were able. That was expressed in so many of those leaders at the time, imbued, I think, in the action of so many of us citizens that, that, you know, senses were alive and his immune system was woken up and, and organized and, and came together. And so look, I, it's. It's the one thing I. For people that despair about this moment, I think it's so important this conversation to sort of reflect on the fact we've been there before is distinctive and unique are these as this moment is and the unique characteristics that define a guy who is obsessed with power, dominance and aggression, who doesn't believe in empathy, care and compassion necessarily. But the reconcile the fact that we have, again, agency and we can shape the future. I said it before, we're not bystanders in this world. And I think that's, to me, the most, I think, significant lesson. Looking back and what I think we're experiencing, there's the lessons we're experiencing on a daily basis in Minneapolis and cities across this country. I think people are waking up. And it gives me a lot more confidence that we'll be celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And you'll be on your 300th book, John Mitchell.
- [68:02]
A
I'll be long gone, my friend, at.
- [68:04]
B
This pace, at this point.
- [68:07]
A
Pace.
- [68:07]
B
Author of America's Struggle. Best way to buy it is in bulk and coming soon to a bookstore near your Eisenhower in the military industrial complex. I don't know. What's your subtitle? You don't even have it yet.
- [68:22]
A
I don't even have a subtitle yet. I'll tell you one damn thing, it is awfully long. My first. I'll leave you with this. My first draft of my biography of George H.W. bush was about 1200 pages. And I told Barbara Bush that, and she said, sweetheart, I wouldn't read 1200 pages about they cut like butter, governor. Go get them. You're doing great.
- [68:46]
B
Appreciate you. Thanks so much for coming on.
- [68:49]
A
Thanks. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.