Does History Repeat Itself? | 4

WEBVTT
1
00:00:00.240 --> 00:00:03.770
Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers
2
00:00:03.960 --> 00:00:07.530
early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible
3
00:00:07.650 --> 00:00:23.699
app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's February 13th, 1866.
4
00:00:23.699 --> 00:00:28.429
It's a frigid day in Liberty, Missouri. You're standing behind
5
00:00:28.469 --> 00:00:31.609
a counter at the Clay County Savings Association, where you
6
00:00:31.649 --> 00:00:34.950
work as a bank clerk. Normally, there's a full staff
7
00:00:34.990 --> 00:00:37.880
of employees on the floor, but today it's just you
8
00:00:38.020 --> 00:00:42.219
and one other person, your father, the head cashier. Everyone
9
00:00:42.259 --> 00:00:44.280
else got to stay home on account of the snow,
10
00:00:44.619 --> 00:00:47.280
but not you. You get to spend the day poring
11
00:00:47.359 --> 00:00:50.799
over bank records with your dad. You're grateful to be
12
00:00:50.859 --> 00:00:53.850
inside where it's warm, but the truth is, you're bored
13
00:00:53.890 --> 00:00:58.619
out of your mind. You'd kill for a customer. Something, anything,
14
00:00:58.679 --> 00:01:02.179
to break the monotony and pass the time. Then, at
15
00:01:02.640 --> 00:01:06.359
around two in the afternoon, two men, dressed in blue
16
00:01:06.560 --> 00:01:08.099
Union overcoats, walk.
17
00:01:07.900 --> 00:01:08.480
Through the door.
18
00:01:08.939 --> 00:01:11.340
Welcome to Clay County Savings. What can I do for you?
19
00:01:11.859 --> 00:01:14.319
One of the men nods politely and warms his hands
20
00:01:14.379 --> 00:01:17.439
by the stove. The other man heads your way. He
21
00:01:17.480 --> 00:01:21.140
slaps a $ 10 bill on the countertop. I'd like change, please.
22
00:01:22.280 --> 00:01:25.079
Singles be all right? That'd be just fine. Yes, sir.
23
00:01:26.319 --> 00:01:28.420
You bend down to reach for the cash drawer, but
24
00:01:28.480 --> 00:01:31.540
when you stand back up, there's a pistol pointed right
25
00:01:31.579 --> 00:01:34.900
between your eyes. As you back away, the man jumps
26
00:01:34.939 --> 00:01:36.420
over the counter and hits you with the butt of
27
00:01:36.459 --> 00:01:39.530
his gun. The other man grabs your father and points
28
00:01:39.590 --> 00:01:41.730
a pistol at the back of his head. Make a
29
00:01:41.769 --> 00:01:43.890
sound and you and this old man are dead. You
30
00:01:43.909 --> 00:01:48.189
understand me? Yes, sir. The man slams a large grain
31
00:01:48.230 --> 00:01:50.780
sack on top of the counter. He presses the barrel
32
00:01:50.819 --> 00:01:52.900
of his gun into the flesh in the center of
33
00:01:52.939 --> 00:01:57.780
your forehead. Open the vault. Now, You empty the vault
34
00:01:57.819 --> 00:02:00.099
and fill the sack to the brim. When you hand
35
00:02:00.120 --> 00:02:02.500
the man the bag, he shoves you and your father
36
00:02:02.579 --> 00:02:06.090
inside the vault and slams the heavy door shut. As
37
00:02:06.109 --> 00:02:09.310
you reach for your father, something catches your eye. A
38
00:02:09.409 --> 00:02:13.360
sliver of light creeping through the vault. They didn't lock it.
39
00:02:14.370 --> 00:02:17.310
You push open the door and run to a window. Outside,
40
00:02:17.550 --> 00:02:19.469
you see the two men in blue coats with a
41
00:02:19.550 --> 00:02:23.599
dozen more armed bandits on horseback. And you see something else, too.
42
00:02:24.259 --> 00:02:27.310
A pair of unaware young men walking straight into the
43
00:02:27.330 --> 00:02:30.909
gang's path. You open the window and call out, Robbery!
44
00:02:32.039 --> 00:02:34.900
Hearing your voice, the two young men quickly turn and
45
00:02:34.979 --> 00:02:37.939
run in the opposite direction, but they're not quick enough.
46
00:02:40.860 --> 00:02:44.060
When the smoke clears, the bandits are gone. You and
47
00:02:44.080 --> 00:02:46.460
your father are alive and well, but one of the
48
00:02:46.500 --> 00:02:49.449
young men in the street isn't so lucky. You run
49
00:02:49.490 --> 00:02:51.969
to his side, but you can see there's no hope
50
00:02:52.030 --> 00:02:55.349
for him. He lays in a pool of his own blood,
51
00:02:55.849 --> 00:02:59.009
choking for air in the frigid snow as the life
52
00:02:59.090 --> 00:03:02.669
drains from his eyes. This was not the excitement you
53
00:03:02.710 --> 00:03:08.639
were hoping for. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of
54
00:03:08.659 --> 00:03:12.360
the podcast American Scandal. Our latest series tells the story
55
00:03:12.379 --> 00:03:15.289
of college counselor Rick Singer, who thought he'd found a
56
00:03:15.310 --> 00:03:18.210
way to rig the admissions process for his wealthy clients.
57
00:03:18.590 --> 00:03:23.750
until an unrelated FBI investigation inadvertently exposed the largest college
58
00:03:23.789 --> 00:03:27.400
admission scandal in American history. Listen to American Scandal on
59
00:03:27.539 --> 00:03:31.039
Audible or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham,
60
00:03:31.060 --> 00:03:34.560
the host of American History Tellers. In our latest series,
61
00:03:34.680 --> 00:03:38.159
in 1892, as millions of hopeful immigrants arrive on American shores,
62
00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:41.919
the United States opens a new immigration station on Ellis Island.
63
00:03:42.080 --> 00:03:44.340
But over time, some will find that the gates to
64
00:03:44.360 --> 00:03:47.400
the American dream are shut to them. Listen to American
65
00:03:47.409 --> 00:03:50.400
History Tellers on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts.
66
00:03:55.400 --> 00:03:59.439
From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers.
67
00:03:59.900 --> 00:04:21.529
Our history. Your story. American History Tellers On February 13, 1866,
68
00:04:21.529 --> 00:04:25.129
Jesse James held up his first bank in Clay County, Missouri.
69
00:04:25.800 --> 00:04:30.500
The take was incredible. Cash, gold, silver, and bonds worth
70
00:04:30.579 --> 00:04:36.139
nearly $ 60, 000, roughly a million by today's standards. Even more
71
00:04:36.180 --> 00:04:39.449
incredible is the fact that Jesse James wasn't even there.
72
00:04:40.389 --> 00:04:43.720
It's believed Jesse planned the heist. but couldn't go along
73
00:04:43.759 --> 00:04:46.120
for the ride because he was still recovering from a
74
00:04:46.180 --> 00:04:48.800
nearly fatal gunshot wound he received near the end of
75
00:04:48.839 --> 00:04:52.399
the Civil War. Two other members of Jesse's gang did
76
00:04:52.420 --> 00:04:56.139
the heavy lifting, Cole Younger and Jesse's older brother, Frank.
77
00:04:56.850 --> 00:04:59.949
The two outlaws donned Union coats, rode into town in
78
00:04:59.990 --> 00:05:02.470
the middle of a snowstorm, and held up two bank
79
00:05:02.509 --> 00:05:07.029
employees at gunpoint, William Byrd and his father Greenup. They
80
00:05:07.069 --> 00:05:08.850
were the victims of what is believed to be the
81
00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:13.180
first daylight bank robbery in U.S. history during peacetime. The
82
00:05:13.220 --> 00:05:16.060
holdup was also the first known criminal act of what
83
00:05:16.100 --> 00:05:18.720
would come to be known as the James Younger Gang.
84
00:05:19.860 --> 00:05:22.899
Jesse's ingenious plan to rob the bank in broad daylight
85
00:05:22.980 --> 00:05:26.879
was not supposed to involve murder, though. George Jolly Wymore,
86
00:05:26.959 --> 00:05:29.319
the young college student who fell dead at the hands
87
00:05:29.360 --> 00:05:31.779
of Jesse's gang, was in the wrong place at the
88
00:05:31.819 --> 00:05:35.160
wrong time. A few days after the robbery, or so
89
00:05:35.199 --> 00:05:39.600
the story goes, Jesse sent Wymore's parents a letter apologizing
90
00:05:39.660 --> 00:05:43.490
for his death. Jesse may have expressed remorse over Wymore,
91
00:05:43.689 --> 00:05:46.360
but his days of murder and mayhem were just beginning.
92
00:05:47.100 --> 00:05:49.500
Jesse James rose to infamy in a time when the
93
00:05:49.560 --> 00:05:53.019
country was still reeling from the Civil War. During wartime,
94
00:05:53.079 --> 00:05:56.740
he was a bushwhacker, a rebel guerrilla soldier. But after
95
00:05:56.779 --> 00:05:59.949
the war, as the world changed around him, Jesse found
96
00:05:59.990 --> 00:06:03.730
himself a man without a country. So Jesse turned outlaw.
97
00:06:04.509 --> 00:06:07.050
Over the years, he and the James Younger gang robbed
98
00:06:07.110 --> 00:06:11.370
dozens of banks, trains, and stagecoaches. Jesse eluded authorities for
99
00:06:11.410 --> 00:06:14.949
nearly 15 years and became one of the most successful
100
00:06:15.009 --> 00:06:19.790
bank robbers in American history. For Jesse, like most outlaws
101
00:06:19.829 --> 00:06:22.889
of his day, his path to infamy was paved in blood,
102
00:06:23.470 --> 00:06:27.600
and the cost to society was tremendous. It all began
103
00:06:27.600 --> 00:06:29.579
153 years ago today, February 13, 1866. An otherwise normal
104
00:06:29.720 --> 00:06:43.209
Tuesday in February became history. Music Every day starts out ordinary.
105
00:06:43.769 --> 00:06:45.860
We have no way of knowing what the day will hold,
106
00:06:46.379 --> 00:06:49.519
or whether our regular lives might be captured by urgent
107
00:06:49.560 --> 00:06:53.779
and important events. History is a horizon viewed in hindsight,
108
00:06:54.139 --> 00:06:56.980
but when it was happening, in the moment and on
109
00:06:57.019 --> 00:07:00.860
the ground, no one can say they truly predicted it. Today,
110
00:07:00.939 --> 00:07:04.439
on this special segment of American History Tellers, we're considering
111
00:07:04.480 --> 00:07:07.819
the famous quote, those who cannot remember the past are
112
00:07:07.860 --> 00:07:11.779
condemned to repeat it. David Greenberg, a professor of history
113
00:07:11.819 --> 00:07:15.399
and media studies at Rutgers University, has thought carefully about
114
00:07:15.439 --> 00:07:19.079
this idea that history repeats itself. He's an academic, but
115
00:07:19.120 --> 00:07:22.000
also writes for Politico, and has contributed to the New
116
00:07:22.019 --> 00:07:24.850
York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.
117
00:07:25.709 --> 00:07:27.889
He joined me from his offices in New York to
118
00:07:27.930 --> 00:07:30.290
talk about how we connect the past to the events
119
00:07:30.329 --> 00:07:33.550
of today. We also talk about his most recent book,
120
00:07:33.949 --> 00:07:37.779
Republic of Spin, An Inside History of the American Presidency.
121
00:07:38.420 --> 00:07:41.100
In it, he examines the history of political messaging by
122
00:07:41.139 --> 00:07:48.319
the White House. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Professor Greenberg,
123
00:07:48.660 --> 00:07:51.800
thanks for coming on the show. My pleasure. Now, you
124
00:07:51.839 --> 00:07:54.220
live a bit of a double life. You're a professor
125
00:07:54.240 --> 00:07:57.540
of history at Rutgers University, but you're also a professor
126
00:07:57.579 --> 00:08:01.060
of journalism and media studies also at Rutgers. You write
127
00:08:01.079 --> 00:08:04.350
for the public at large at Politico and Slate. But
128
00:08:04.389 --> 00:08:08.209
you're a fully credentialed PhD researching and teaching in the
129
00:08:08.269 --> 00:08:12.350
cloisters of academia. I don't believe that's too common. So
130
00:08:12.430 --> 00:08:15.050
why exert yourself trying to have two careers?
131
00:08:16.009 --> 00:08:19.360
Well, I think it is actually probably becoming a little
132
00:08:19.399 --> 00:08:23.019
more common than it once was. And there are various
133
00:08:23.500 --> 00:08:27.860
professional historians who, to varying degrees, you know, will write
134
00:08:27.899 --> 00:08:31.519
for the public, write book reviews, op-eds, be on TV,
135
00:08:31.939 --> 00:08:35.389
and so on. For me, it's really a matter of
136
00:08:35.480 --> 00:08:40.799
having two goals with my writing that I've always believed
137
00:08:41.200 --> 00:08:44.720
are reconcilable, even though it may be some work to
138
00:08:44.779 --> 00:08:48.279
reconcile them. One is to reach other scholars and to
139
00:08:48.360 --> 00:08:53.320
make contributions to the study of history that will be
140
00:08:53.960 --> 00:08:57.750
lasting and that will be influential so that other historians
141
00:08:57.919 --> 00:09:00.669
in years ahead will, you know, I hope continue to
142
00:09:00.769 --> 00:09:03.720
benefit in some way from my books. But the other
143
00:09:03.759 --> 00:09:06.919
is also to reach the general public and to help
144
00:09:07.320 --> 00:09:12.929
impart an understanding of history to all kinds of readers.
145
00:09:13.490 --> 00:09:16.789
And so you really have to hone at least two
146
00:09:17.129 --> 00:09:18.190
different sets of skills.
147
00:09:18.470 --> 00:09:21.549
Yeah, I think there's probably a very big difference between
148
00:09:21.889 --> 00:09:24.820
what academic historians are looking at it on a daily
149
00:09:24.860 --> 00:09:27.559
basis and those in the general public who are interested
150
00:09:27.580 --> 00:09:30.720
in history are consuming. As someone who straddles both worlds,
151
00:09:31.059 --> 00:09:33.370
is there a large gap? If I picked up the
152
00:09:33.950 --> 00:09:37.129
headlines of academic history right now, would I be surprised
153
00:09:37.169 --> 00:09:39.149
to see what the Academy is working on?
154
00:09:39.429 --> 00:09:43.169
Yes and no. It seems to me, and this is
155
00:09:43.210 --> 00:09:46.429
just an impression, that in the last generation, really since
156
00:09:46.909 --> 00:09:51.690
I started graduate school and then sort of came into
157
00:09:51.950 --> 00:09:55.090
my own as a historian, there's actually been more of
158
00:09:55.129 --> 00:09:59.909
an interest among academic historians in reaching the public. Partly
159
00:09:59.960 --> 00:10:04.639
that is because the internet has helped create platforms that
160
00:10:04.679 --> 00:10:07.600
have made it possible for people to break through and
161
00:10:07.659 --> 00:10:11.299
put their ideas out there, whether it's blogs or dedicated
162
00:10:11.360 --> 00:10:17.080
history websites. And partly, I think, in certain political times,
163
00:10:17.980 --> 00:10:22.539
there's a desire to connect the two, to have history
164
00:10:22.600 --> 00:10:25.950
inform our understanding. So if you look at a recent issue,
165
00:10:26.450 --> 00:10:29.110
the most recent issue of the Journal of American History,
166
00:10:29.169 --> 00:10:31.690
kind of one of the leading journals in the field
167
00:10:31.710 --> 00:10:36.480
of U.S. history, one of the main articles is about
168
00:10:36.820 --> 00:10:40.860
fascism in the 30s as an international phenomenon, and the
169
00:10:40.899 --> 00:10:46.039
way American fascists were sort of in dialogue with European fascists.
170
00:10:46.360 --> 00:10:49.820
And obviously, that's a set of questions and concerns that
171
00:10:50.059 --> 00:10:53.899
has resonances for our own day. So there are ways
172
00:10:53.980 --> 00:10:57.679
in which I think people might be surprised that academic
173
00:10:57.720 --> 00:11:04.129
history does touch on popular concerns, public political concerns. But
174
00:11:04.169 --> 00:11:07.730
also needless to say, there's plenty of fields where people
175
00:11:07.970 --> 00:11:12.250
are toiling away doing wonderful scholarship that really does not
176
00:11:12.370 --> 00:11:16.250
have that much to say to the current moment. And
177
00:11:16.289 --> 00:11:19.029
that's fine, too. Obviously, we have a need for that
178
00:11:19.100 --> 00:11:19.500
as well.
179
00:11:20.049 --> 00:11:23.019
Well, one of the often cited benefits of studying history
180
00:11:23.100 --> 00:11:26.000
is exactly that you can learn much about the present
181
00:11:26.620 --> 00:11:30.460
by studying the past. If you feel you might be
182
00:11:30.500 --> 00:11:33.059
living in a historic moment, you might search for a
183
00:11:33.139 --> 00:11:36.100
similar moment from the past. Do you think this is
184
00:11:36.139 --> 00:11:39.000
the right use of history's lessons, or should we be
185
00:11:39.110 --> 00:11:41.370
skeptical about applying a history like that?
186
00:11:41.909 --> 00:11:48.250
It's very tricky. On the one hand, I wouldn't, you know,
187
00:11:48.409 --> 00:11:50.870
I do what I do partly because I believe there
188
00:11:50.950 --> 00:11:54.070
is a connection between the past and the present. The
189
00:11:54.129 --> 00:11:57.779
past history tells us how we got here, how we
190
00:11:57.840 --> 00:12:01.240
arrived at our current moment. History is a form of
191
00:12:01.440 --> 00:12:08.559
explanation of the present. But there's also a tendency, both
192
00:12:08.620 --> 00:12:13.370
among journalists, but also even among some academics, to resort
193
00:12:13.409 --> 00:12:18.710
to a fairly crude mechanistic application of lessons. You know,
194
00:12:18.870 --> 00:12:21.960
this is what happened in the 30s, so therefore this
195
00:12:22.039 --> 00:12:26.000
is what we should do today. And usually that kind
196
00:12:26.039 --> 00:12:31.039
of thinking leads you astray. And, you know, there's the
197
00:12:31.330 --> 00:12:34.769
line from Santa Yana, the Harvard philosopher, that those who
198
00:12:34.809 --> 00:12:37.850
don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it. Um,
199
00:12:38.470 --> 00:12:40.590
And then others will say, yeah, and those who remember
200
00:12:40.610 --> 00:12:43.049
the past are also doomed to repeat it as well.
201
00:12:43.429 --> 00:12:50.269
I mean, history doesn't provide you any great inoculation from
202
00:12:50.480 --> 00:12:55.779
making mistakes. It doesn't provide neat lessons that you can apply.
203
00:12:55.799 --> 00:13:00.879
I think what it does do is help expand your
204
00:13:01.340 --> 00:13:10.080
horizons of thought. And there are possibilities. There are intellectual traditions,
205
00:13:10.259 --> 00:13:14.340
political activities that one can find in the past that
206
00:13:14.379 --> 00:13:17.000
maybe aren't so present today. And so they can kind
207
00:13:17.039 --> 00:13:21.139
of stimulate your imagination about what could be today or
208
00:13:21.200 --> 00:13:24.720
help you to ask why things aren't the case as
209
00:13:24.759 --> 00:13:27.659
well as why things are the case. So the past
210
00:13:27.700 --> 00:13:31.340
has to be used in a very sort of subtle, fluid,
211
00:13:32.080 --> 00:13:36.559
oblique way in speaking to the present. It rarely hands
212
00:13:36.639 --> 00:13:43.669
down neatly packaged, ready-made, you know, simple points of instruction.
213
00:13:44.169 --> 00:13:46.649
So you are in the history doesn't repeat itself, but
214
00:13:46.690 --> 00:13:47.549
it rhymes camp.
215
00:13:47.889 --> 00:13:50.629
I think there's, yeah, there's something to be said for that.
216
00:13:51.049 --> 00:13:53.629
You know, I mean, I think right now I brought
217
00:13:53.700 --> 00:13:57.840
up the question of the 1930s and fascism. And I
218
00:13:57.919 --> 00:14:03.039
do think over the last 50 years, sort of since Vietnam,
219
00:14:03.460 --> 00:14:09.100
the older history of American politics isolationism as a very
220
00:14:09.379 --> 00:14:14.419
destructive thing has largely been forgotten. And when we think
221
00:14:14.700 --> 00:14:19.250
of America's withdrawal from the world, we are more likely
222
00:14:19.269 --> 00:14:22.809
to think, well, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, we
223
00:14:22.850 --> 00:14:27.009
think of moments of American overreach. So having the history
224
00:14:27.250 --> 00:14:32.259
of the 30s, when isolationism clearly helped bring on a
225
00:14:32.700 --> 00:14:38.740
global catastrophe, is a useful reminder that foreign policy isn't
226
00:14:38.879 --> 00:14:44.399
simply a matter of plain black and white morality where
227
00:14:44.419 --> 00:14:47.240
America's involvement in the world just leads to bad things.
228
00:14:47.299 --> 00:14:50.840
There have been times where America's withdrawal from the world
229
00:14:51.139 --> 00:14:55.090
led to even worse things. And so having that complexity
230
00:14:55.120 --> 00:15:00.049
of thought is more useful for analyzing what America's role
231
00:15:00.070 --> 00:15:03.080
in the world should be today than simply saying, well,
232
00:15:03.120 --> 00:15:05.769
we have to avoid another Vietnam or another Iraq.
233
00:15:05.929 --> 00:15:08.830
Well, I think if the goal is complexity of thought,
234
00:15:09.070 --> 00:15:11.889
nuance and understanding, that's going to be a tall order
235
00:15:11.929 --> 00:15:16.399
for any mass public general consumption. What would be your
236
00:15:16.419 --> 00:15:21.879
advice to both producers of popular history and consumers to
237
00:15:21.980 --> 00:15:23.860
get to that complexity of thought?
238
00:15:24.120 --> 00:15:28.570
Well, I think one way I try to achieve it
239
00:15:28.649 --> 00:15:32.190
in my own writing is is through an integration of
240
00:15:32.330 --> 00:15:36.860
narrative and analysis. And often when we talk about the
241
00:15:36.889 --> 00:15:41.659
gap between popular and academic history, we're talking about a
242
00:15:41.879 --> 00:15:46.019
difference between analytical and narrative history. And that's a little crude.
243
00:15:46.059 --> 00:15:49.840
It doesn't always boil down to a strict alignment of
244
00:15:49.899 --> 00:15:54.480
those two qualities. But as a general rule, the really
245
00:15:54.659 --> 00:16:02.179
popular historians, people like John Meacham or Doris Kearns Goodwin
246
00:16:02.740 --> 00:16:07.460
specialize in narrative. And the level of analysis that they
247
00:16:07.539 --> 00:16:13.990
have to offer will typically be, you know, less sophisticated
248
00:16:14.049 --> 00:16:17.230
or complex than what you'll get from an academic historian.
249
00:16:17.809 --> 00:16:20.809
On the other hand, a lot of academic historians don't
250
00:16:20.889 --> 00:16:25.149
particularly go for narrative, or if they do, the narrative
251
00:16:25.350 --> 00:16:29.100
is a little bit of a skeleton on which they
252
00:16:29.139 --> 00:16:31.340
kind of hang the analysis, but it's not really a
253
00:16:31.399 --> 00:16:36.350
narrative-driven work. Now, I think if you can successfully integrate
254
00:16:36.750 --> 00:16:41.149
the narrative and the analysis, it's a way of almost
255
00:16:41.570 --> 00:16:49.379
smuggling into a well-written, readable story a more complex, sophisticated
256
00:16:50.299 --> 00:16:53.879
level of argumentation. And that's a tall order, but that's
257
00:16:54.320 --> 00:16:57.000
in a way what what I try to do in
258
00:16:57.139 --> 00:16:59.799
my writing. And I think you can point to a
259
00:16:59.860 --> 00:17:04.440
lot of successful historians, both inside and outside the academy,
260
00:17:04.900 --> 00:17:08.079
who do that to some degree or another.
261
00:17:08.359 --> 00:17:11.720
Well, while we're speaking about narrative, let's switch gears a
262
00:17:11.759 --> 00:17:16.779
little bit and talk about political narrative. Your most recent
263
00:17:16.819 --> 00:17:21.180
book is Republic of Spin, An Inside History of the
264
00:17:21.220 --> 00:17:25.819
American Presidency. And you investigate how politicians have cultivated their image,
265
00:17:26.119 --> 00:17:30.000
their narrative to appeal to the public. Is spin something
266
00:17:30.039 --> 00:17:33.660
that's developed recently in our political history since, I don't know,
267
00:17:33.680 --> 00:17:37.079
since the first televised debates or the rise of cable news?
268
00:17:37.940 --> 00:17:40.240
Or have we been dealing with this for some time?
269
00:17:40.880 --> 00:17:43.740
One of the arguments I make in Republic of Spin,
270
00:17:43.839 --> 00:17:47.109
and it is an argument, although I try not to
271
00:17:47.269 --> 00:17:52.210
present it in kind of relentless polemical form, is that
272
00:17:52.309 --> 00:17:56.660
spin is as old as politics. The ancient Greeks called
273
00:17:56.700 --> 00:18:00.359
it rhetoric, and so it didn't go by the name
274
00:18:00.420 --> 00:18:04.529
of spin, of course, until fairly recently, the 1980s. But
275
00:18:04.609 --> 00:18:09.549
that the craft of putting your best slant on the facts,
276
00:18:09.970 --> 00:18:13.730
of presenting the information in such a way as to
277
00:18:14.730 --> 00:18:20.069
reflect well on you, the politician, on your agenda, on
278
00:18:20.089 --> 00:18:23.319
your ideas, well, that's part of what politics is about.
279
00:18:23.789 --> 00:18:26.970
And I really trace the rise of the White House
280
00:18:27.059 --> 00:18:29.339
spin machine, which is really what the book is about,
281
00:18:29.839 --> 00:18:33.400
to the start of the 20th century, where Theodore Roosevelt
282
00:18:33.440 --> 00:18:37.759
in particular understood that there was a new age of
283
00:18:37.839 --> 00:18:41.720
mass media upon us, that we had this mass public
284
00:18:41.769 --> 00:18:44.990
that was engaged with politics, and that he could lead
285
00:18:45.430 --> 00:18:49.690
by reaching out, by taking his message to this broader public.
286
00:18:50.190 --> 00:18:53.349
And that was a very different conception of what presidents did.
287
00:18:53.950 --> 00:18:58.380
from the 19th century, when really it was Congress that
288
00:18:58.460 --> 00:19:02.660
drove the agenda. And the president would work with Congress,
289
00:19:02.720 --> 00:19:06.319
but the president's role toward the public was less about
290
00:19:06.700 --> 00:19:10.829
being an agenda setter, less about achieving a program of reform.
291
00:19:11.349 --> 00:19:14.230
And so the change in the presidency and the change
292
00:19:14.269 --> 00:19:17.910
in media bring about the development of in the White
293
00:19:17.930 --> 00:19:20.910
House spin machine. And that's really what the book is about.
294
00:19:21.089 --> 00:19:24.130
Well, let's get specific about the change in the mass media.
295
00:19:24.650 --> 00:19:27.210
What was it in the media at the time of
296
00:19:27.250 --> 00:19:28.349
Teddy Roosevelt that changed?
297
00:19:28.369 --> 00:19:32.349
Well, several things. First of all, you have the rise
298
00:19:32.490 --> 00:19:37.990
of these huge metropolitan daily newspapers. And many, many more
299
00:19:38.059 --> 00:19:43.680
people are reading the newspaper. Between immigration and urbanization, you
300
00:19:43.720 --> 00:19:46.190
have you know, cities full of people who are turning
301
00:19:46.250 --> 00:19:51.690
to these papers for their daily news. You also within journalism,
302
00:19:51.759 --> 00:19:55.940
have the rise of news itself as opposed to opinion
303
00:19:56.019 --> 00:20:00.640
or commentary. And although there are still influential editors whose
304
00:20:01.180 --> 00:20:06.339
opinions on the editorial pages matter, people are sort of
305
00:20:06.420 --> 00:20:11.160
learning to read the news columns, the reported news, and
306
00:20:11.609 --> 00:20:13.710
make up their own minds. This is kind of the
307
00:20:13.809 --> 00:20:18.230
new ethos of the progressive era of the early 20th century,
308
00:20:18.269 --> 00:20:21.089
that citizens should be sort of independent and make up
309
00:20:21.109 --> 00:20:23.710
their own mind about public affairs and not just sort
310
00:20:23.730 --> 00:20:26.119
of take their cues from what had been a very
311
00:20:26.279 --> 00:20:30.200
partisan press. The third element of that is the rise
312
00:20:30.240 --> 00:20:35.609
of reporting itself, particularly from Washington. You know, in The
313
00:20:35.869 --> 00:20:39.970
19th century, the Washington Press Corps was a pretty small group,
314
00:20:40.710 --> 00:20:43.589
and they typically covered Congress. If you were a Washington
315
00:20:43.609 --> 00:20:47.789
reporter and you wanted to get the news, you didn't
316
00:20:47.829 --> 00:20:49.670
go to the White House. There was no White House
317
00:20:49.769 --> 00:20:54.329
press room or press secretary, no press releases. This really
318
00:20:54.450 --> 00:20:58.150
starts a little bit with William McKinley and some other
319
00:20:58.890 --> 00:21:04.460
predecessors to TR, but it's really Theodore Roosevelt. who starts
320
00:21:04.559 --> 00:21:08.259
regularly gathering the Washington reporters in the White House to
321
00:21:08.319 --> 00:21:11.519
tell them what he thinks they should write. It's Roosevelt
322
00:21:11.559 --> 00:21:17.470
who starts hiring dedicated press aides, you know, communication specialists,
323
00:21:17.890 --> 00:21:21.150
we might call them today, to handle a project that
324
00:21:21.589 --> 00:21:24.529
reporters seem to have particular interest in, like the building
325
00:21:24.549 --> 00:21:28.789
of the Panama Canal. You know, it's Roosevelt who first
326
00:21:29.150 --> 00:21:33.789
contrives publicity stunts He'll do things like climb into a
327
00:21:33.869 --> 00:21:36.809
submarine and go to the bottom of Long Island Sound
328
00:21:36.869 --> 00:21:40.609
himself because he knows that will make headlines and draw
329
00:21:40.690 --> 00:21:45.170
attention to the need for submarines in the Navy. So
330
00:21:45.230 --> 00:21:49.930
there's lots of ways in which Roosevelt's sensibility, his media savviness,
331
00:21:50.339 --> 00:21:52.460
allows him to help redefine the presidency.
332
00:21:58.059 --> 00:22:01.180
Imagine you're reading Pride and Prejudice, except you're not reading it.
333
00:22:01.500 --> 00:22:04.279
Harris Dickinson and Marissa Abella are reading it to you
334
00:22:04.500 --> 00:22:07.920
on Audible. Her barbs sting you. His coldness sends a
335
00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:11.980
shiver up your spine. Your heart aches. Your ears burn.
336
00:22:12.180 --> 00:22:14.960
You yearn for Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy to profess their
337
00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.359
undying love for one another. You can't bear it any longer. Well,
338
00:22:20.099 --> 00:22:23.680
maybe a chapter longer. Performance is so good, you'll give
339
00:22:23.720 --> 00:22:27.700
love a second chance. Audible. Stories that speak to you.
340
00:22:28.190 --> 00:22:32.009
By the early 2000s, college admissions in America were more
341
00:22:32.049 --> 00:22:35.230
competitive than ever. For students and their parents, it was
342
00:22:35.250 --> 00:22:38.670
an ordeal to be endured. But for college counselor Rick Singer,
343
00:22:39.079 --> 00:22:42.299
it was a chance to get rich. Exploiting the desperation
344
00:22:42.339 --> 00:22:45.579
of his clients, he invented what he called the side door,
345
00:22:45.819 --> 00:22:48.500
a new way into elite schools for those wealthy enough
346
00:22:48.539 --> 00:22:51.079
to pay the entry fee. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, host
347
00:22:51.119 --> 00:22:54.250
of the podcast American Scandal. We bring to life some
348
00:22:54.269 --> 00:22:59.289
of the biggest controversies in U.S. history, presidential lies, environmental disasters,
349
00:22:59.589 --> 00:23:03.390
corporate fraud. In our latest series, a college counselor mounts
350
00:23:03.450 --> 00:23:06.170
an audacious scheme to get his wealthy clients into the
351
00:23:06.269 --> 00:23:08.789
universities of their choice. He thinks he's found a way
352
00:23:08.849 --> 00:23:13.089
to rig the system until an unrelated FBI investigation inadvertently
353
00:23:13.170 --> 00:23:17.180
exposes the largest college admissions fraud in American history. Follow
354
00:23:17.220 --> 00:23:20.960
American Scandal wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can
355
00:23:20.980 --> 00:23:24.940
binge all episodes of American Scandal early and ad-free right now.
356
00:23:25.140 --> 00:23:27.740
Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on
357
00:23:27.839 --> 00:23:37.269
Apple Podcasts. Now, you indicated that in this moment, we
358
00:23:37.660 --> 00:23:40.589
began to read the news items themselves and make our
359
00:23:40.710 --> 00:23:45.369
own decisions. You've said also elsewhere that we increasingly have
360
00:23:45.410 --> 00:23:50.170
the tools to be aware, resist, and challenge spin. What
361
00:23:50.210 --> 00:23:53.490
are these new tools that we have perhaps today that
362
00:23:53.609 --> 00:23:55.750
can aid in our political skepticism?
363
00:23:55.829 --> 00:23:57.789
Well, I think what happens over the course of the
364
00:23:58.009 --> 00:24:03.789
20th century is that as politicians and their aides, you know,
365
00:24:03.900 --> 00:24:09.049
PR people, advertising people, as they developed new techniques for
366
00:24:09.150 --> 00:24:13.450
projecting the presidential image, for shaping the presidential message. You know,
367
00:24:13.490 --> 00:24:17.329
we got speechwriters. Presidents began to use radio and then
368
00:24:17.430 --> 00:24:22.329
television coaches. All this professional expertise was brought to bear
369
00:24:22.849 --> 00:24:27.089
on the project of spin or presidential messaging. You know,
370
00:24:27.210 --> 00:24:31.740
audiences weren't simply passive dupes. That is a kind of
371
00:24:31.799 --> 00:24:38.500
commonly held notion. And in the early years of communications scholarship,
372
00:24:39.059 --> 00:24:42.089
that sort of was the premise on which people operated.
373
00:24:42.349 --> 00:24:45.230
But that's long since been debunked. I mean, we know
374
00:24:45.309 --> 00:24:51.990
that listeners, television watchers, audiences are engaged and we can
375
00:24:52.069 --> 00:24:54.859
think about what we're hearing and we can reject it
376
00:24:55.259 --> 00:24:57.529
or we can challenge it or we can applaud it,
377
00:24:57.660 --> 00:25:01.220
even if we know it's contrived. And so what happens
378
00:25:01.299 --> 00:25:03.599
is sort of in the course of the century, audiences
379
00:25:03.700 --> 00:25:08.910
become quite savvy about the different mechanisms. And the press
380
00:25:08.970 --> 00:25:11.609
plays a role in this. You know, starting in the 60s,
381
00:25:11.970 --> 00:25:17.789
the press becomes much, reporters become much more explicit about
382
00:25:18.410 --> 00:25:23.079
explaining the strategy behind the presidential speech, you know, even
383
00:25:23.220 --> 00:25:27.079
in the lead paragraph. So it's not just a dutiful
384
00:25:27.160 --> 00:25:30.579
recitation of the facts of what happened. but there's much
385
00:25:30.619 --> 00:25:34.720
more context analysis and explanation that goes into the way
386
00:25:35.259 --> 00:25:39.839
news is presented. This is in television news as well.
387
00:25:40.759 --> 00:25:43.789
There are studies, one famous study from the 80s showed
388
00:25:43.829 --> 00:25:47.490
that the length of sound bites, the length degree to
389
00:25:47.529 --> 00:25:52.809
which a subject would be quoted, diminishes radically from 1968
390
00:25:52.809 --> 00:25:55.730
to 1988. What does that mean? It means the reporter's
391
00:25:55.950 --> 00:25:59.720
own voice is saying more and they're just turning it
392
00:25:59.819 --> 00:26:05.940
over to the sources less. So viewers, readers become very
393
00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:12.819
aware of the context, the strategy, the intentionality behind presidential communication.
394
00:26:13.140 --> 00:26:16.480
And so we don't take it at face value. And
395
00:26:16.500 --> 00:26:19.089
of course, that poses a challenge because it can also
396
00:26:19.140 --> 00:26:23.809
lead to cynicism, which is certainly a malady of our times.
397
00:26:24.150 --> 00:26:25.930
Sometimes I think maybe it would be good if we
398
00:26:25.970 --> 00:26:30.750
had a little bit more belief, not necessarily naive belief,
399
00:26:31.049 --> 00:26:36.190
but sort of willingness to credit politicians with operating from
400
00:26:36.309 --> 00:26:41.210
conviction rather than imputing cynicism to everything that's done.
401
00:26:41.470 --> 00:26:44.059
Well, that is something I was thinking about. Okay, so
402
00:26:44.150 --> 00:26:46.839
we're not, the American public is not a bunch of rubes,
403
00:26:47.599 --> 00:26:52.019
but there is a cynicism, a public suspicion that spin
404
00:26:52.180 --> 00:26:54.839
is not just putting your best foot forward, but somehow
405
00:26:54.960 --> 00:26:59.309
deeply nefarious. We have political narratives that there are an
406
00:26:59.410 --> 00:27:03.809
established professional machinery to deceive us. In your study, how
407
00:27:03.849 --> 00:27:04.819
much of that is true?
408
00:27:04.839 --> 00:27:09.400
You know, I think what happens is when the political
409
00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.500
party or candidate prevails that we don't like, we're very
410
00:27:14.700 --> 00:27:19.819
reluctant to attribute that success to winning the war of
411
00:27:19.900 --> 00:27:23.339
ideas or winning the political arguments. So we tend to
412
00:27:23.420 --> 00:27:28.119
impute it to deception to these sort of nefarious methods.
413
00:27:28.559 --> 00:27:30.720
And if they are in agreement with our own side,
414
00:27:31.079 --> 00:27:35.019
those communication skills, we don't see them as nefarious. We
415
00:27:35.079 --> 00:27:38.119
see them as a great advantage and tool of governing.
416
00:27:38.579 --> 00:27:42.819
So I think it's a mistake to see spin or
417
00:27:42.880 --> 00:27:47.420
communication as primarily a tool of deception, which is not, again,
418
00:27:47.440 --> 00:27:53.089
it's not to say there isn't lying in And the
419
00:27:53.130 --> 00:27:55.789
reason we have a word for it that's different from lying,
420
00:27:56.369 --> 00:27:59.539
spin is the effort to kind of put your best
421
00:28:00.230 --> 00:28:08.160
slant on the facts while stopping short of demonstrably untruthful claims, right?
422
00:28:08.480 --> 00:28:12.420
That there's kind of this rhetorical battle of, how far
423
00:28:12.480 --> 00:28:16.059
you can sort of stretch the truth or pitch the
424
00:28:16.119 --> 00:28:19.200
truth so that you can feel like you've made a
425
00:28:19.259 --> 00:28:24.009
defensible claim while still trying to be as persuasive as possible.
426
00:28:24.609 --> 00:28:28.529
I think as far as the word spin goes, you know,
427
00:28:28.569 --> 00:28:33.730
the linguist or psychologist Steven Pinker has this term, the
428
00:28:33.910 --> 00:28:38.109
euphemism treadmill. And what that means is, When there's a
429
00:28:38.190 --> 00:28:42.549
word that has some unsavory connotations, we reach to create
430
00:28:42.589 --> 00:28:47.369
a euphemism. But it's still referring to a phenomenon with
431
00:28:47.410 --> 00:28:52.359
those unsavory connotations. So eventually, even the euphemism starts to
432
00:28:52.740 --> 00:28:55.720
smell a little rotten, and we look for new euphemisms.
433
00:28:56.119 --> 00:28:58.599
So if you go back early in the 20th century,
434
00:28:58.920 --> 00:29:03.109
the term propaganda used to be a neutral term. It
435
00:29:03.230 --> 00:29:07.599
didn't have those negative connotations it does now. But with
436
00:29:07.640 --> 00:29:10.220
the First World War and especially the Second World War
437
00:29:10.299 --> 00:29:14.309
and communist and Nazi propaganda, it really came to mean
438
00:29:14.390 --> 00:29:20.829
something dark, misleading. And we began to look for other words.
439
00:29:22.269 --> 00:29:26.509
Publicity and public relations was another one. But today, even
440
00:29:26.829 --> 00:29:32.400
public relations has a whiff of disreputability about it. Someone's
441
00:29:32.460 --> 00:29:36.839
trying to kind of put a gloss on things. Even rhetoric,
442
00:29:37.160 --> 00:29:41.549
that ancient Greek term that I mentioned, it can be
443
00:29:41.710 --> 00:29:44.670
used in a way that's derisive. Oh, you know, that's
444
00:29:44.710 --> 00:29:50.299
just a rhetorical posture, rhetoric as distinct from reality. But
445
00:29:50.339 --> 00:29:52.819
the truth is, no matter what term you come up with,
446
00:29:54.420 --> 00:29:59.119
there is a need to describe Political communication. Political communication
447
00:29:59.220 --> 00:30:03.279
is always going to be different from an oath taken
448
00:30:03.319 --> 00:30:08.619
in a courtroom or an argument presented in seminar. There
449
00:30:08.680 --> 00:30:11.809
are places where we expect the truth, the whole truth,
450
00:30:11.869 --> 00:30:15.930
and nothing but the truth. But we don't really expect
451
00:30:15.990 --> 00:30:18.950
that coming out of the mouths of senators and governors
452
00:30:19.029 --> 00:30:23.130
and presidents. We understand that politics is an arena of
453
00:30:23.309 --> 00:30:27.869
competing narratives, competing explanations. And that's why I like the
454
00:30:27.910 --> 00:30:30.569
term spin. I think it has a slightly kind of
455
00:30:30.910 --> 00:30:36.130
playful tone that acknowledges that politics is an arena of
456
00:30:36.250 --> 00:30:38.829
contested truth and not absolute truth.
457
00:30:39.190 --> 00:30:42.710
In your view, is spin at the levels we have
458
00:30:42.750 --> 00:30:45.049
it now necessary or destructive?
459
00:30:45.309 --> 00:30:50.049
Well, I think it's both. Spin is the language of
460
00:30:50.450 --> 00:30:55.299
politics in an age of mass communications. We really can't
461
00:30:55.410 --> 00:31:01.099
imagine political world without spin. Look, there are places, if
462
00:31:01.130 --> 00:31:04.660
you're reading the report on the Dow Jones, where did
463
00:31:04.680 --> 00:31:06.779
it finish today, if you're looking at the box score
464
00:31:06.799 --> 00:31:09.980
of a baseball game, if you're looking at the weather report,
465
00:31:10.480 --> 00:31:14.420
you should be able to expect a fair degree of neutral,
466
00:31:14.480 --> 00:31:21.269
objective information that's not inflected by political positioning. But for
467
00:31:21.329 --> 00:31:24.849
most of what we talk about in politics, we have spin.
468
00:31:24.890 --> 00:31:32.710
It's not only necessary to it's inherent in what politicians do. Now,
469
00:31:32.930 --> 00:31:37.880
it can be destructive, and particularly in recent times, there
470
00:31:37.960 --> 00:31:42.660
is a frequent crossing of the line from permissible spin
471
00:31:42.720 --> 00:31:46.900
of the sort that all politicians partake of into a
472
00:31:47.299 --> 00:31:50.460
kind of outright denial of reality.
473
00:31:50.759 --> 00:31:53.299
Well, this brings up a question of revisionist history, too.
474
00:31:53.920 --> 00:31:58.000
Is there spin in our view or use of history?
475
00:31:58.740 --> 00:32:02.920
Is our conception of what happened now influenced or infected
476
00:32:03.039 --> 00:32:04.740
by our desire to spin it?
477
00:32:05.559 --> 00:32:11.019
Sure it is. I think it's worth distinguishing between good
478
00:32:11.099 --> 00:32:15.660
faith and bad faith efforts to understand history. Everybody, of course,
479
00:32:15.700 --> 00:32:20.069
has a politics and a political leaning, but when we
480
00:32:20.180 --> 00:32:25.160
analyze the past, we try to bracket that enough so
481
00:32:25.220 --> 00:32:28.440
that when we look at the facts of what happened,
482
00:32:28.900 --> 00:32:35.109
the interpretation isn't simply going to reinforce our ideological prior convictions.
483
00:32:35.730 --> 00:32:38.609
And that's true when making all kinds of political arguments,
484
00:32:38.690 --> 00:32:43.250
but it's especially important in understanding the past. Now, it's
485
00:32:43.289 --> 00:32:45.490
still hard to achieve, and I think there are many
486
00:32:45.569 --> 00:32:52.160
historians who do read the past opportunistically, who read it
487
00:32:52.180 --> 00:32:56.079
sort of in the service of you know, a political
488
00:32:56.220 --> 00:33:02.400
or social set of values. And that can be problematic.
489
00:33:02.960 --> 00:33:06.809
And politicians do this even more. You know, if politicians
490
00:33:06.910 --> 00:33:11.869
are invoking Vietnam or World War II or any number
491
00:33:11.930 --> 00:33:17.009
of moments in the past, usually we should remind ourselves
492
00:33:17.849 --> 00:33:21.299
they're speaking not first and foremost as students of history
493
00:33:21.359 --> 00:33:25.190
who are interested in engaging us in a discussion about
494
00:33:25.250 --> 00:33:28.420
the past, but they're interested in making a political point.
495
00:33:28.819 --> 00:33:32.059
And so we should then turn to historians to say, well,
496
00:33:32.160 --> 00:33:35.539
is this an accurate view of the past? Is this
497
00:33:35.960 --> 00:33:38.059
a view of the past that is being distorted for
498
00:33:38.099 --> 00:33:41.259
a present-day political purpose? And a lot of the columns
499
00:33:41.640 --> 00:33:43.789
that I've written over the years, I used to write
500
00:33:43.829 --> 00:33:47.170
a regular column for Slate, now I've taken it to Politico.
501
00:33:47.930 --> 00:33:50.299
They're sort of designed to be a little bit of
502
00:33:50.319 --> 00:33:55.400
a check on the political abuse of history and to
503
00:33:55.619 --> 00:34:00.180
offer a little bit more context and grounding and backstory
504
00:34:00.619 --> 00:34:05.220
so that people can have a basis for assessing what
505
00:34:05.700 --> 00:34:11.960
the president or even a political columnist might be retailing
506
00:34:12.239 --> 00:34:14.159
as an account of American history.
507
00:34:22.159 --> 00:34:24.820
You stepped out for your morning jog. Except it's not
508
00:34:24.860 --> 00:34:28.159
your usual morning jog. You started listening to an epic
509
00:34:28.239 --> 00:34:32.210
sci-fi book on Audible. Thirty chapters later, you've accidentally run
510
00:34:32.250 --> 00:34:34.949
a half marathon. You lost track of how far you've run,
511
00:34:35.050 --> 00:34:37.989
somewhere just past the city limits. You can't stop. You
512
00:34:38.010 --> 00:34:41.250
have to find out what happens next. Then it's over.
513
00:34:41.929 --> 00:34:46.679
The universe seems bigger. You feel different. You feel like
514
00:34:46.699 --> 00:34:51.300
you have no idea where you are. Audible. Stories that
515
00:34:51.380 --> 00:34:51.860
speak to you.
516
00:34:52.409 --> 00:34:55.030
Hey, I'm Cassie DePeckel, the host of Against the Odds
517
00:34:55.070 --> 00:34:58.559
from Audible Originals. In each episode, we share thrilling, true
518
00:34:58.599 --> 00:35:01.099
stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the
519
00:35:01.139 --> 00:35:04.019
people who live to tell the tale. In our latest series,
520
00:35:04.219 --> 00:35:07.519
it's 1910, and a blizzard has stranded two trains carrying
521
00:35:07.559 --> 00:35:10.579
more than 100 people on an isolated stretch high up
522
00:35:10.659 --> 00:35:14.090
in the Cascade Mountains of Washington. The relentless snowfall has
523
00:35:14.119 --> 00:35:16.989
made it impossible to clear the tracks. But as snow
524
00:35:17.030 --> 00:35:20.659
piles up, the threat of a massive avalanche grows. The
525
00:35:20.699 --> 00:35:22.820
passengers and crew will have to rely on their wits
526
00:35:23.159 --> 00:35:26.559
and luck if they hope to escape alive. Follow Against
527
00:35:26.599 --> 00:35:29.619
the Odds wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can
528
00:35:29.639 --> 00:35:32.440
binge all episodes of Against the Odds early and ad-free
529
00:35:32.539 --> 00:35:35.679
right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by
530
00:35:35.719 --> 00:35:37.389
subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
531
00:35:43.030 --> 00:35:44.889
Is there an example of a moment in history that
532
00:35:44.929 --> 00:35:49.030
has been egregiously spun? A popular myth that we just
533
00:35:49.070 --> 00:35:50.269
need to disabuse ourselves of?
534
00:35:50.719 --> 00:35:52.690
Oh, well, there are so many. I mean, they sort
535
00:35:52.730 --> 00:35:58.170
of come up every day that it's sort of hard
536
00:35:58.190 --> 00:36:01.989
to pick one. You know, a few years ago, or
537
00:36:02.010 --> 00:36:05.789
a couple of years ago, John Kelly, when he was
538
00:36:05.809 --> 00:36:08.320
the White House Chief of Staff, made a remark about
539
00:36:09.219 --> 00:36:13.199
the Civil War and this being, you know, it was
540
00:36:13.300 --> 00:36:17.760
regrettable that we had to go to war and that
541
00:36:17.800 --> 00:36:21.389
we couldn't compromise on our differences. And this provoked kind
542
00:36:21.429 --> 00:36:25.909
of a huge backlash, particularly from what I guess is
543
00:36:25.949 --> 00:36:32.170
being called liberal Twitter or liberal commentators, who countered with
544
00:36:32.210 --> 00:36:35.190
a very different account of the coming of the Civil War.
545
00:36:36.050 --> 00:36:40.929
And what both sides failed to recognize is that this
546
00:36:41.030 --> 00:36:45.090
is actually a deep historical debate, or as we say,
547
00:36:45.190 --> 00:36:50.449
historiographical debate among professional historians. that for a long time,
548
00:36:50.989 --> 00:36:54.670
Kelly's view was actually the mainstream view. That Kelly's view
549
00:36:54.949 --> 00:36:59.369
was what they called a blundering generation, was just on
550
00:36:59.449 --> 00:37:04.090
both sides kind of locked into ideological position and unable
551
00:37:04.210 --> 00:37:07.730
to find their way through to compromise. It's really only
552
00:37:07.829 --> 00:37:11.829
been in recent decades that this other view has come
553
00:37:11.909 --> 00:37:14.849
to predominate that says, well, no, actually, you know, the
554
00:37:14.909 --> 00:37:19.789
North did compromise quite a bit and it didn't... arrest
555
00:37:20.010 --> 00:37:23.570
the spread of slavery. And there was actually a legitimate
556
00:37:23.610 --> 00:37:27.730
concern that if allowed to spread westward, slavery would not
557
00:37:27.949 --> 00:37:31.920
extinguish on its own. And that, of course, it was
558
00:37:31.980 --> 00:37:34.460
the South that chose to secede and chose to go
559
00:37:34.500 --> 00:37:38.000
to war. So, you know, what both sides missed is
560
00:37:38.079 --> 00:37:41.980
that this is actually a debate among historians. And sometimes
561
00:37:42.059 --> 00:37:45.360
I think people on all sides tend to look at
562
00:37:45.420 --> 00:37:50.070
history as a discrete set of facts. that is like
563
00:37:50.110 --> 00:37:55.380
an encyclopedia entry about which there is no room for dispute.
564
00:37:56.039 --> 00:37:59.860
In truth, history is, there was a Dutch historian, Peter Gale,
565
00:37:59.920 --> 00:38:04.360
who has this aperçu or aphorism, history is an argument
566
00:38:04.420 --> 00:38:07.820
without end. And, you know, I think there's a lot
567
00:38:07.840 --> 00:38:10.110
of truth to that, that Yes, you can make a
568
00:38:10.179 --> 00:38:14.190
more or less persuasive argument. I certainly am more partial
569
00:38:14.449 --> 00:38:18.849
to the necessary conflict account of the Civil War rather
570
00:38:18.889 --> 00:38:22.969
than the blundering generation account. But we shouldn't completely dismiss
571
00:38:23.030 --> 00:38:25.360
the blundering generation account. We have to acknowledge that a
572
00:38:25.400 --> 00:38:29.099
lot of historians for many years found merit in that interpretation.
573
00:38:29.500 --> 00:38:31.860
And we can't just simply say, well, Kelly's wrong or
574
00:38:31.900 --> 00:38:34.900
Kelly's ignorant or Kelly's racist. We have to reckon with
575
00:38:34.940 --> 00:38:38.210
the fact that this was a powerful interpretation that held
576
00:38:38.289 --> 00:38:39.750
sway for a very long time.
577
00:38:40.289 --> 00:38:42.650
As we're drawing to a close here, is there a
578
00:38:42.690 --> 00:38:46.539
particular moment or era of American history that you would
579
00:38:46.579 --> 00:38:49.260
like Americans to be more aware of, to have a
580
00:38:49.920 --> 00:38:50.909
more critical knowledge of?
581
00:38:51.179 --> 00:38:55.260
From what I can see, probably every period in our
582
00:38:55.360 --> 00:39:02.880
past is too little understood. History majors are declining right now.
583
00:39:03.239 --> 00:39:06.610
It's a time where there's a lot of pop social
584
00:39:06.690 --> 00:39:11.250
science thinking, that's big. And I actually see in a
585
00:39:11.289 --> 00:39:18.260
lot of students, and even among some younger faculty, a
586
00:39:18.320 --> 00:39:23.389
displacement of empirical research in favor of theory, and thinking
587
00:39:23.449 --> 00:39:27.809
that certain theories can be manipulated to tell us what
588
00:39:27.849 --> 00:39:31.119
we need to know. And I think the more kind
589
00:39:31.159 --> 00:39:36.309
of empirical fact-based research into the past that we encourage,
590
00:39:36.650 --> 00:39:40.090
the more we are going to open up creative thinking,
591
00:39:40.469 --> 00:39:44.789
creative interpretations. that it doesn't start with theory, that it's
592
00:39:44.829 --> 00:39:48.190
important to be theoretically sophisticated and not just to take
593
00:39:48.230 --> 00:39:50.849
your facts at face value, but that what we really
594
00:39:50.889 --> 00:39:55.070
need to encourage is the ability to do research, to
595
00:39:55.130 --> 00:39:59.449
do reporting, to find out facts, to question facts, and
596
00:39:59.489 --> 00:40:04.300
that those basic skills of finding and building knowledge are
597
00:40:04.380 --> 00:40:08.260
really what needs strengthening right now in our society.
598
00:40:08.739 --> 00:40:11.360
Well, thank you for your research and finding of facts.
599
00:40:11.500 --> 00:40:13.260
And also thank you for speaking with us today.
600
00:40:13.440 --> 00:40:16.320
Sure. It was a pleasure to talk with you.
601
00:40:17.059 --> 00:40:20.619
That was my conversation with Rutgers history professor David Greenberg.
602
00:40:21.179 --> 00:40:23.539
You can find him on Twitter at Republic of Spin.
603
00:40:23.980 --> 00:40:26.619
Or check out his latest book, Republic of Spin, An
604
00:40:26.679 --> 00:40:31.719
Inside History of the American Presidency. In the past, we've
605
00:40:31.800 --> 00:40:34.760
asked for feedback on the show. And we deeply appreciate
606
00:40:34.820 --> 00:40:37.269
all the reviews and notes you have sent us. But
607
00:40:37.349 --> 00:40:40.230
now we truly want to hear from you. Call us
608
00:40:40.289 --> 00:40:46.480
at 424-285-0548 to answer this question. If you could be
609
00:40:46.500 --> 00:40:49.639
an everyday person at some point in American history, which
610
00:40:49.719 --> 00:40:53.039
time period would you choose and why? Remember to include
611
00:40:53.079 --> 00:40:55.559
your name and where you're calling from. We might play
612
00:40:55.599 --> 00:40:58.489
your message on the show. Again, that's 424-285-0548. One more time, 424-285-0548.
613
00:41:06.420 --> 00:41:09.320
On the next episode of American History Tellers, we delve
614
00:41:09.360 --> 00:41:13.070
into an era that upended American society, the Great Depression.
615
00:41:13.929 --> 00:41:17.289
In October of 1929, the hopes and dreams of middle-class
616
00:41:17.329 --> 00:41:21.329
Americans who'd invested beyond their means evaporated in a single week.
617
00:41:22.010 --> 00:41:25.840
By 1932, one in four Americans would be without work.
618
00:41:27.099 --> 00:41:30.159
From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. I hope you
619
00:41:30.179 --> 00:41:34.920
enjoyed this episode. If you did, subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
620
00:41:35.260 --> 00:41:39.400
Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Wondery.com, or wherever you're listening to this
621
00:41:39.460 --> 00:41:42.380
right now. If you're listening on a smartphone, tap or
622
00:41:42.420 --> 00:41:45.059
swipe over the cover art of this podcast. You'll find
623
00:41:45.079 --> 00:41:47.760
the episode notes, including some details you may have missed.
624
00:41:48.300 --> 00:41:51.639
You'll also find some offers from our sponsors. By supporting them,
625
00:41:51.900 --> 00:41:53.929
you help us bring this show to you for free.
626
00:41:54.619 --> 00:41:56.170
And if you do like this show, one of the
627
00:41:56.250 --> 00:41:58.610
very best ways you can show your appreciation is to
628
00:41:58.650 --> 00:42:01.590
give us a five-star rating and leave a review. I
629
00:42:01.610 --> 00:42:04.210
always love to know your thoughts, and detailed reviews are
630
00:42:04.250 --> 00:42:06.269
one of the best ways for others to find the show.
631
00:42:06.949 --> 00:42:09.510
Tell your friends and family and show them how to subscribe.
632
00:42:10.449 --> 00:42:13.449
American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me,
633
00:42:13.559 --> 00:42:17.179
Lindsey Graham, for Airship. Sound design by Derek Behrens. Our
634
00:42:17.219 --> 00:42:20.539
producers are Katie Long and Jenny Lauer Beckman. Our executive
635
00:42:20.579 --> 00:42:24.059
producer is Marsha Louis, created by Hernán López for Wondery.
636
00:42:30.190 --> 00:42:34.030
American History Tellers is only possible because of listeners like you.
637
00:42:34.269 --> 00:42:36.989
So thank you. And don't miss an episode. Be sure
638
00:42:37.010 --> 00:42:40.090
to follow American History Tellers on Audible or wherever you
639
00:42:40.110 --> 00:42:43.730
get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of
640
00:42:43.769 --> 00:42:47.670
American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Audible
641
00:42:47.710 --> 00:42:50.710
in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
642
00:42:50.929 --> 00:42:54.050
And to find out more about me, including my other podcasts,
643
00:42:54.210 --> 00:42:57.079
my live show, the history tours I'm arranging, and all
644
00:42:57.139 --> 00:43:03.300
sorts of other things, go to historyishuman.com. That's historyishuman.com.