Annotations for Speakers: Jeremi Suri

[Music] Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. This week we're going to discuss the topic of participatory democracy.

How have and how can people be more involved in our democracy, not just when it comes to voting, but to day-to-day activities to make our democracy more full, more rich, and more real for people. We're going to focus on a particular moment in our history when a young group of citizens came forward with a statement about the importance of participatory democracy, a statement that inspired hundreds of thousands of people and continues to inspire many people. This is the Port Huron Statement of 1962, written by Students for a Democratic Society.

And we have with us one of the foremost scholars of participatory democracy and Students for a Democratic Society and the Port Huron Statement, Dr. Vanessa Cook. Dr. Cook received her PhD in U.S. history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2015. She wrote a fantastic dissertation that I in part supervised and had the opportunity to learn from.

It's a dissertation that's been published as a really wonderful book that I encourage everyone to read. The book is titled Spiritual Socialists, Religion and the American Left, and it's about those issues and much, much more with some fascinating figures who contributed to our democracy in all kinds of ways. She's written articles in the Washington Post, Dissent Magazine, Religion and Politics, and she's currently the Defense POW MIA Accounting Agency Historian, in residence, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Missing in Action Project.

Vanessa, thank you for joining us this morning.

Before we turn to our discussion of participatory democracy and the Port Huron Statement, we have, of course, Mr. Zachary Suri's scene-setting poem. Zachary, what is the title of your poem this morning?

Let's hear it.

I love all the imagery there, Zachary, from the parking lots to the Statue of Liberty. What is your poem about?

I love the intergenerational element of that, Zachary. Our podcast is designed to be intergenerational.

Well said.

Vanessa, can you give us some background on this Port Huron statement of 1962? Who wrote it and what was the message that they were trying to promote?

Why at this moment in 1962, Vanessa, what led to this moment producing this document?

It sounds in many ways like an echo or a precursor to a number of issues we contend with today. One being the non-representativeness of the Democratic Party in some ways and other parties.

Members of SDS criticized the Southern Democrats, the so-called Dixiecrats, for resisting civil rights actions and resisting a response to the large numbers of citizens who felt disempowered within the political structure. And then also the concerns about inequality, economic inequality, both of which you mentioned so well.

What were their solutions? What were they proposing in place of what they saw as a stagnant political process that was non-representative and problems of inequality? What were they proposing?

You raised a really important issue about culture and social relations. One of the criticisms that was thrown at the Port Huron statement, and that's often thrown at leftist politics, as you described them so well, Vaneessa, is the criticism of being socialist. And many would argue then and have argued now that some of these ideas are un-American because they're socialist.

How do you respond to that?

But socialism really comes down to equality. And I think Students for Democratic Society, they were advocating for a recognition of more equal treatment of everyone in the country. And that ties into democracy because everyone needs to be seen as equal if they're going to have an equal voice in the political process.

And do you think that this argument and the case that was made so eloquently in the Port Huron statement, did it contribute to the civil rights movement?

Vanessa, as you're describing these issues so well with regard to civil rights and anti-war, anti-militarist activities, one can't help but think that these issues haven't gone away. Why do you think that's the case?

Do you think that in some ways that we forgotten about these issues, that these issues that were put out so eloquently and in such an influential way in the early 1960s and structured many of the debates of that time, that we've sort of forgotten this history? And if so, what do you think is a good way to bring these issues back into our discussions today and to bring young people back into these discussions around these issues?

I love what you've said there, Vanessa. I mean, it does seem to me that we use the word democracy, but we too often mean legalistic elements of our society and institutional elements, all of which are important. But the, as you put it, the culture and the personal part of democracy, what it is that brings people together to work together, to participate and address common concerns. That seems strangely to be absent from a lot of our discussions.

And strangely, it seems that that is actually undermined by social media, which often encourages us to yell at each other, not to actually have these deliberative moments where we participate in conversation, bringing our various points of view together. How practically do you think we can build on the SDS and the Port Huron model today to maybe get past these limitations in our current democratic culture?

And of course they could read your book on many activists who valued and stretched and opened the concept of democracy in our society, that these are your spiritual socialists in many ways and they're as spiritual and as democratic as they are inspired by socialist ideas.

Zachary, I wanted to ask you, do you see this work that Vanessa is describing, this work of opening, discussing democracy, bringing more people in, putting ideology perhaps aside and encouraging participation among different kinds of people, do you see this germinating among young people today and do you see a possibility for more of this among your generation of young people who care so deeply about these issues? Where do you see this going?

It's very well said, Zachary. It's like Vanessa pointed out earlier, we use the word democracy in our education, but we don't really talk about what it means and as Vanessa put it, how one practices democracy. And maybe a focus on that and a focus on bringing young people together to write and think about it, as Vanessa described, is something we should do more of in our communities and in our educational institutions among other places.

Vanessa, are you hopeful that this work will happen and that it will be done?

It's such a perfect title, Vanessa.

In many ways, our podcast is designed to be a nationwide course in problems and opportunities of democracy. And one of the really fascinating parts of democracy as a concept is that it encompasses so many different issues and it can encompass so many different people and produce new kinds of ideas, new kinds of solutions to problems.

It's the ever experimental element of democracy that inspires our podcast. It inspired Franklin Roosevelt, in many ways, the historical mentor for our podcast and it is so well embodied. This notion of historical experimentation among diverse groups, it's so well embodied by your work, Vanessa, and what you shared with us today.

Looking back on the Port Huron Statement in 1962, as you've done, really provides us a lesson and inspiration, not to rewrite the statement per se but to think about what an agenda for a new generation and what a more expansive democracy would look like in the 21st century. We need that conversation now more than ever. Vanessa, thank you so much for the work you've done to help ground and inspire this conversation.

You've really shared so much with us today. Thank you.

It's so true. Zachary and his generation are a new greatest generation in the making. We're fortunate to have them as part of our podcast.

We're particularly fortunate to have Zachary's poems every week. Thank you for your Port Huron revisited reflections, Zachary. Most of all, thank you to our audience for working hard to improve and expand our democracy every day.

Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. This week we're going to discuss the Vietnam War and its legacies, its continuing legacies in American society, in global policy, and particularly in light of a recent set of conflicts that produced similarly controversial outcomes for American society and global policy, the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are very fortunate to be joined by a friend, colleague, distinguished author, and distinguished scholar, Mark Lawrence.

Mark is the director of the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum here in Austin, Texas, which is the best presidential library, and I say that without any bias at all. Mark is also a professor in the UT Department of History, and he has taught courses on American and international history and various other topics. He's written three fantastic books.

His first book, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam. His second book is a wonderful narrative history of the Vietnam War as a whole, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History, and it's the only history of the Vietnam War I've seen that is truly concise. It's very hard to write a concise history of the Vietnam War.

And Mark's most recent book, the book that has just come out that we're going to talk about today, is on the Vietnam War and its legacies. It's called The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era. Mark, congratulations on your book, and thanks for joining us.

Before we turn to our discussion with Mark, of course, we have Zachary's scene-setting poem. What is your poem titled today, Zachary?

Let's hear it.

Very moving, Zachary. What is your poem about?

That's a perfect gateway into our discussion with Mark Lawrence. Mark, these are issues you've grappled with in your scholarship for decades.

It's always downhill after Zachary's poem, Mark. But Mark, you have, especially in this recent book, you've really delved into the ways in which the effort to build utopia, or a Great Society as Lyndon Johnson called it abroad in Vietnam, really distorted American thinking and American society. First of all, why was the United States trying to do this in Vietnam? Why were we looking to build this utopia, as Zachary put it, in a place so far away that so few Americans could even identify?

And why were our failures there? And of course, you and others have written in depth on the sources of our shortcomings in these activities. But why was it so disruptive? Why did it have such a deep effect at home, as Zachary refers to in his poem? And also,as your new book really narrates in such depth and in such compelling detail, why did it have such an effect on American foreign policy in so many other areas?

And Mark, I think your book is really brilliant on that point because it shows, especially in your country-specific chapters, and I hope all of our listeners will go ahead and buy and read the book. Mark has chapters on Brazil, India, Iran, Indonesia, and Southern Africa. In each of these chapters, there's kind of a similar narrative arc, it seems to me, where the United States is initially pursuing self-interested goals, but also goals that are merged to some sense of democratic hope, some sense of positive change. And then in almost every one of these chapters, Mark, to my reading, the effects of the Vietnam War to push the United States toward more support for authoritarianism and often more militaristic behavior or supportive militaristic behavior on the ground. Is that a fair reading? And if so, why does that happen?

And Mark, why this arc? Why in each case does it seem not only that the United States is less ambitious as you put it so well in your title, but also that the United States becomes, I don't know if this is fair, but it seems to me more cynical in its policies.

And just to build on that, Mark, another thing that struck me in your book was how often LBJ, the President of the United States, was willing to work with people he wouldn't work with otherwise if they were willing to support him in Vietnam. So in a strange way, the Vietnam War became a driver of American policy rather than American interests and ideals. Again, is that fair? And what are your thoughts on that?

So Mark, could you just say a little more about why that happens though? I mean, your book narrates that so well. And I was particularly struck by the Brazilian generals as well, because to me, you couldn't get farther from Vietnam than Brazil, right? But why is, I mean, this is the most powerful person in the world, President Lyndon Johnson. He's got so much experience also dealing with political failure as well as political success. Why does this small, as he says, this small country far away, why does it come to dominate everything this way?

Right. You and I have talked about this before. I mean, even his views of students in the United States become defined by where they stand on the Vietnam War, which is extraordinary if you think about that. Zachary.

Yeah, I thought, Mark, your book did really a wonderful job of taking that story that some of us have focused on and really connecting it to the story of what was called the third world and how this impacted not simply detente policy, a search for stability between the US and the Soviet Union and a search for law and order at home. Lyndon Johnson's the first to really use that phrase, law and order. But as you show in this book, as I think no one has before, how this really comes to define, again, American policy in Brazil and Indonesia, which to me was, again, startling. I had seen hints of this, but my gosh, the depth of it, I think we have not appreciated until reading your book.

I wonder, Mark, what you think about the legacies. I guess I'm asking you in this question sort of for your extended conclusion. You have an excellent conclusion to the book, but how would you extend it on for where this takes us, not just in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but in the last decades of the Cold War?

Sure. And the Middle East, you talk about and write about Iran, and that certainly would be a major element of what you're talking about here. Mark, how then should we explain, taking in all that you've shared with us in elucidating these changes in American policy and the implications for American democracy and for international affairs, how then do we situate that in relationship to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have an eerie echo of the period you're writing about?

I think that's super helpful, but then it opens up another question, right? If so many American leaders who were making policy and American voters who were voting for those leaders had the experience of Vietnam in mind in one way or another, and here I'm thinking about people like recently passed Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Vice President Richard Cheney, Obama himself, who was reading about Vietnam at the start of his presidency. How could they make mistakes of excessive ambition, if that's what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, if, as you point out, the lesson was so clearly to limit ambition?

Mark, we always like to close with a focus on how history can provide us some optimistic, positive steps forward. And that's an article of faith for our podcast. As you know, it's an article of faith for me.

I have to believe this. And your book is so rich in its recounting of this period. What are the lessons that you hope, especially in the context of Afghanistan and Iraq now, what are the lessons you hope that readers take as they think about American foreign policy and American democracy going forward?

I think that's wonderful, Mark. Another way I think of thinking about that and, and you've, you've really provided such a strong foundation for this is to recognize that trying to win unwinnable wars is not what we should be doing. That there are many other opportunities for the use of America's vast resources, right.

I had to find some optimism, Zachary, as, as we close. Uh, I know you and your friends have been talking a lot about what's happened in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, war in Afghanistan and Iraq, obviously the Vietnam. Do you see lessons for your generation in this story?

I think there's a lot to that. And there's a lot between cynicism and the utopia. You talked about it in your poem, right? I think, I think Mark's book shows that there actually are. There's a lot that can be done in between maybe that's, what's abandoned because of the obsession with Vietnam. Mark, this has been a really insightful conversation. I encourage everyone to go out and read and read your book and buy it and give it away as gifts as well. The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam era. Mark, thank you so much for joining us.

Zachary, Zachary. Thank you for your poem and thank you. Most of all, to our listeners for joining us for this episode of This is Democracy.

Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy, our first new episode of 2020 of the new decade. And we are so fortunate this morning, we are discussing Congress and war powers, an issue that's been in the news really for 240 years in American history, and an issue that's certainly at the center of American attention today. And we have with us, probably the person who's studying these issues most deeply as a historian, Clay Katsky. Clay, welcome.

Nice to have you on with us. Clay is finishing his PhD here at the University of Texas, and he's writing his dissertation on Congress's role in managing and dealing with presidential war powers, particularly in the 1970s and 80s. And so we're so fortunate to have him here. He knows more about this subject than anyone else. He's also a fantastic teacher. And so we're delighted to have you here, Clay. Before we turn to our discussion with our expert, with Clay, we have our scene-setting poem. I haven't had a chance to say that in a little while, our scene-setting poem with Zachary Suri. What's the title of your poem today?

My gosh. So you've taken an Allen Ginsberg, who I know is one of your favorite poets, and you have adapted one of his poems for our discussion today. Is that correct?

Okay. So we have the merger of Zachary Suri and Allen Ginsberg. Let's hear it.

Wow. Nice. I love the imagery there, Zachary. So why did you choose this Ginsberg poem and why did you adapt it in the way you did?

I think that's a perfect spot to turn to Clay. This is something the founders thought about, right? About the question of how you can maintain a democracy and still fight wars when necessary for the national defense. This is something the founders thought about, right? About the question of how you can maintain a democracy and still fight wars when necessary for the national defense. Yes. How did the framers think about this?

Right. And so they gave Congress particular powers. What are the constitutional powers that Congress has?

Right. Forcing a vote at least every two years on the money for the conflict.

Wow.

Right. Right. Right. And it's actually a two-thirds vote, isn't it?

Yes.

How has that story evolved over time?

The president has what some would call an agenda setting power, right? He can send American forces. He can do something and then, in a sense, almost threaten Congress that if they don't support that, that they'll be abandoning American forces overseas. Right. And so he really gets the first move in a sense. Why have presidents been able to do this more effectively and why, as you already said earlier on, Clay, have Congress's day to day powers over the military and over military and war decisions, why have they diminished so precipitously in the 20th century and early 21st century?

Yes, yes. And so how do those powers work? What power does that give Congress?

Right. And oftentimes, until recently, at least, historians and journalists would criticize those moments. I mean, one of the critiques of the 1920s is of American isolationism and in particular of Congress's excessive efforts to limit presidential power after World War One with the Nye Committee, for example, which alleged that war profiteers were driving American policy. Even future President Harry Truman was involved with these hearings. You have a different view, right? On what? You have a different view in the sense that you don't see these hearings as as undermining the Constitution and undermining American power. You see them as actually crucial, correct?

Why have they not enforced that more than why? Why since, as you said, since World War Two, have we continually been at war? And why has Congress either done nothing or, as in the current situation, authorized military force in 2001, 2002? That's the current legislation that's used by many presidents through this current president. Why have they allowed that to go on? Why have they allowed presidents to stretch the legislation or operate without legislation at all?

Right. Right. Zachary, you had a question.

If I remember, he did report to Congress, but he said he didn't believe he had a constitutional duty.

So and this is your book, Clay.

This is the committee that Adam Schiff chairs.

Yeah. So you said, Clay, and I think the consensus among historians would agree that the War Powers Act of 1973 did not really limit presidential war making. Have these reforms of the 1970s, the reforms that include the creation of House and Senate committees, the findings requirement, the executive order that's signed after pressure from Congress to prohibit assassinations, signed by Gerald Ford, I believe. Have these efforts by Congress to limit or at least create consultation for covert activities? Have they worked?

Right. And certainly a a sovereign leader of Iran, someone who's someone who's responsible for the military in Iran.

Well, back to your discussion of Ronald Reagan, one of the things Reagan did that many people praise him for was support the Mujahideen against the Soviet military in Afghanistan. The Soviets called the Mujahideen a terrorist organization. We certainly didn't believe that justified their assassinating our president. The Soviets called the Mujahideen a terrorist organization. We certainly didn't believe that justified their assassinating our president. And thankfully, they didn't. Right. So your point is very well taken to simply say that a sovereign leader is working with people that we don't think is legitimate, doesn't justify assassinations, at least under the 1975 order.

So I think what your scholarship, Clay, and this really thoughtful analysis you've given us shows is that there's an inherent tension between Congress and the president. And perhaps the founders wanted that. Legal scholars call it an invitation to struggle. An invitation to struggle. And maybe there's something productive about that, if that's the case.

And here's where we turn to the sort of positive looking forward part of what's so crucial to our discussions each week here on This is Democracy. What are the ways that understanding this 200 years, 240 years of struggle as you do so well, what are the ways in which that understanding can help inform us going forward? What are what are the opportunities we have going forward from this moment today to have Congress more involved, more effectively, not in preventing presidents from from defending the country, but helping presidents to do a better job and still protect our democracy in the process?

Kellogg-Briand Pact, for example.

How do they do that when you have a president now, and he might not be the last president to do this, who says, ”I’m not going to follow. Washington said he wouldn’t turn over the negotiation papers with the British. I’m not going to let people in my office and even when someone like my former National Security Adviser, John Bolton says he’s willing to testify, I’m going to invoke executive privilege.” What should Congress do?

What about the use of the power of the purse? One of the things where we started this conversation and where I’d like us to come to a conclusion is around the role Congress has clearly in the Constitution as the place that appropriates the money.

How can Congress more effectively make sure that it has control over money? We have fought wars since 9/11 actually off budget. Where we go to war without actually money even being appropriated by Congress and the president assumes that Congress will then follow on in the program.

Congress could also pass legislation saying money shall not be used for fighting a war in Iran or something like that.

Gotcha. Zachary, for a long time, Americans have not really liked paying attention to Congress. Most Americans don’t like Congress.

Very low approval ratings, I think almost lower than dentists in some respect.

Lower than the president. Americans tend to vote for their incumbent congressional representatives to go back to office but still say they hate Congress, they don’t pay attention. It’s not sexy to read about Congress than the way it is to read about the executive. Do you think, Zachary, that young people will start to pay more attention to these issues?

I think that’s very well said. Certainly, I think we’ve been educated in the last 20-30 years on the importance of having debates over the use of war power. I think one of the points Clay made so well is that during the Cold War, there was a premium placed on acting fast and delegating authority because of the concerns that if we acted too slow, we would be the subject of a nuclear attack or some sort of communist expansion.

Then after September 11th, concerns about terrorist activity and the need for an executive to act quickly there. I think we’ve learned in the last 20-30 years, Democrats and Republicans in our society, that we need more debate around these issues. I think that’s such a strong and important moment for our democracy because it reminds people that we need branches of government like Congress to be standing up and offering serious debates. Part of what you’re talking about, Clay, seems to me is that these investigations offer a forum for a public discussion of American politics.

We have seen that happen in 2018.

The change whether one approves of it or not is quite significant. What we’ve seen with the House of Representatives is a completely different approach to efforts at holding the president accountable, whether one agrees with it or not. One can expect that the 2020 election might produce another class of members of Congress like those in the 1970s like the 2018 class that will be very intent on investigating and discussing policies surrounding a variety of American foreign and domestic issues.

That more than anything else is why citizens need to pay attention, vote and elect members of Congress who care about these issues, less about whether they’re from your party or not and more about whether they have the requisite knowledge, integrity, and commitment to address these issues as Clay and Zachary have laid them out so well. I think today we’ve learned so much about the role of Congress and how crucial Congress is to questions of war and peace in our society. Clay, thank you so much for sharing your research with us.

Zachary, thank you for your as always stunning poem.

Yes, Zachary, he’s a budding Beatnik in the 21st century. So much fun and thank you all for joining us on This is Democracy.