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Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. Today’s episode. We’re going to focus upon young John F. Kennedy and the lessons and insights from his early career for our somewhat difficult and partisan political moment today. What can we learn? And what do we take away from John F. Kennedy’s early career? We have with us his biographer, who is a very distinguished historian and good friend and someone who’s written quite a lot about American foreign policy, American politics and the lessons of history for contemporary affairs. This is Fred Logevall. Uh, Fred. Good morning.

I'm delighted to be with you, Jeremi.

It’s our pleasure to have you. Fred is the author of 10 books. He’s the author and editor of 10 books on American politics and Foreign Policy. Among my favorites and those which I know everyone has read, uh, choosing war, the Lost Chance for peace and the escalation of war in Vietnam, which really transformed our understanding of Lyndon Johnson’s choices for war in 1964 65 America’s Cold war. The Politics of Insecurity, which Fred co wrote with Campbell Craig, another historian, which looks at the influence of domestic politics on American Cold War foreign policy. Members of war. The Fall of an Empire in the Making of America’s Vietnam, which is really about early French and American activities in Vietnam. Before we would, we traditionally called the Vietnam War in the United States. Embers of War won the Pulitzer Prize as well as many other rewards and then his most recent book, which I hope all of our listeners will read and I know you’ll be reading a lot about soon as well.

Embers of War, The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam, which is really about early French and American activities in Vietnam before what we traditionally call the Vietnam War in the United States. Embers of War won the Pulitzer Prize as well as many other awards. And then his most recent book, which I hope all of our listeners will read and I know you'll be reading a lot about soon as well, JFK, Coming of Age in the American Century.

When Fred is not busy scribbling, he is the Lawrence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Professor of History at Harvard University. And as I said, Fred is a longtime friend and really a major figure, not just in historical circles, but in scholarly and public intellectual circles in the United States. So before we turn to our discussion of JFK and this really fantastic and fun new book, I really found it fun to read this new book that Fred has just published.

We're going to turn to Mr. Zachary, as we always do each week, for his scene-setting poem. Zachary, what's the title of your poem? The Ghost of JFK. Oh, I'm a little scared now.

Let's hear about The Ghost of JFK.

The ghost of JFK yielded its head today as I spoke with my teacher of memory. As I spoke with my teacher of memory, he told me of the fateful day when he was to see JFK on the aged steps of the Capitol. On the aged steps of the Capitol, I stood on an afternoon in May and watched all the children play as we marched past to the Capitol door. As we marched past to the Capitol door, I thought of the man that day when he bled to death in a limousine and all hope went away.

It was youth that was killed from the book depository on the square in Dallas by the grassy hill. It was youth that was killed in Dallas and we're waiting again for it still.

My poem is really about trying to ask what made JFK such a symbolic figure in American history and what made him so important in the memory of his generation, even only having served a few years as president.

Well, that is the perfect spot to turn to President Kennedy's biographer. Fred, we live in such a cynical age. Your book, as I read it, is in some ways a wonderful antidote to that cynicism. I think the place to start is why did John F. Kennedy, this person born to such privilege, such wealth, why did he get involved in the dirty world of politics? Well, let me just say, Jeremy, that that was a wonderful poem we just heard. That was just marvelous.

So hats off to you, Zachary. I'd love to hear more of your stuff. Maybe I will.

You know, I think it comes for Jack Kennedy from, in part, a bedridden childhood. He was sick a lot as a kid and read, became a voracious reader and his preferred genre or the things he liked to read about were, in fact, politics, especially European politics, diplomacy, statecraft, tales of adventure and chivalry. He was drawn to that stuff.

So he took something, I think, from Honey Fitz, even though they became very different kinds of politicians. JFK was much more sort of reserved and much more urbane as a political figure.

It developed in college, his wartime service, which we could discuss. But you do see these early influences as well.

Well, and let's turn to his wartime service. Much of your book actually covers that. And I have to say, it's a really riveting part of the book and an area where I think you have a lot of new, many new things to say about both his wartime service and his travels.

I was really taken with the many quotations you have from his travel diary, Fred. So tell us more about how the travels and the World War II experience contributed to his development as a political animal.

I mean, one of the things that I suggest in the book is that he developed both a historical sensibility, but also an international sensibility. And here again, I think Rose, who often doesn't get enough credit, it seems to me, in the scholarship, his mother encouraged him to have this wider lens, to look to the outside world.

And as you say, he traveled, beginning in a serious way in 1937 with his good friend Len Billings during college. They traveled through Europe and then there was a major excursion, which I think is really consequential in 1939, right on the eve of war, where young JFK is traveling in about a dozen countries, meeting with officials, seeing the sites.

And I think it is probably like it was for many people who were in combat. It was, I think, a profound, had a profound effect on Kennedy. Made him, in two different ways.

So it's in some ways almost a kind of contradictory, or they don't, the two attributes, the two conclusions don't necessarily mesh perfectly, but I think it's partly what he took from the war, no question. And it's worth underlining the fact, and this is a point you make, that really most of the leadership of American society for the next 50 years would have come out of this experience of World War II.

But I do think that JFK believed strongly that he himself had a role to play. And he, by the way, I think made his own decisions to seek political office in the early aftermath of the war.

JFK was really his own master when it came to his political decisions and his career decisions. But I think he felt that this wartime generation of which he was a part would now, in the aftermath of the war, in the late 40s and beyond, have a very important role to play.

I don't think it was inevitable that politics would be his chosen career. But it was a decision he made on his own. And he formed, I think, a distinctive how should I put it? Political philosophy early on.

It was a kind of pluralist, liberal outlook, which was idealistic in some respects, but also leavened with a certain pragmatic realism that I think proved to be a winning one for him, if I can put it that way. I think this is really one of the stunning parts of your book, Fred.

I hear we've gone almost 10 minutes into this discussion. It's the first time Joseph Kennedy has come up. What can you tell us about that relationship between father and son?

And I think previous authors have been absolutely correct to talk about the fact that Joe Kennedy was a giant figure in the lives of his children, including young Jack. He was a towering father figure, no question. But yeah, I think it was striking to me in the research, Jeremy, in the voluminous letters that we have and other documents that we have in the oral histories, etc., the degree to which the second son, Jack, was willing to separate himself from his father in a way that the golden child, the oldest son, Joe Jr., who was killed in the war in 1944, was never able to do, never willing to do.

And so the most dramatic example of this, I think, is the, in effect, the split between the father and the son, between Joe Sr. and Jack on the issue of U.S. intervention, on the issue of, if you want to put it this way, isolationism versus interventionism, where Joe Sr., as ambassador to Britain, and then long after having been ambassador to Britain, was a kind of unvarnished, was an unapologetic appeaser and isolationist. And Jack decided he could not be. And I think this is where the Harvard years are especially illuminating, because you see that gradually, clearly, but gradually, but clearly, this shift away from the father's position.

Really interesting. And let's talk a little bit about JFK's distinctiveness from his father, his critique of appeasement, his critique of the isolationism, and even somewhat pro-Nazi tendencies of his father. How would you characterize his emerging, shall we say, Cold War viewpoint?

I was surprised to learn of the degree to which isolationism, if we want to use that term, excuse me, the degree to which isolationism really held pretty firmly, pretty firm within the student body at Harvard. But the professors, his own reading, I think his travels that we've discussed, all of them, I think, convinced JFK by, let's say, by late 1940, or by the middle part of 1940, around the time that he completes his thesis, publishes the book, that it's really an untenable position that his father holds.

It certainly has to support the British and the French to a very large extent. And therefore, his father's position, which is that you can have a kind of fortress America in which the country more or less seals itself off from the rest of the world, just is not going to fly. And he is willing, as I've said, in a way, Joe Jr. is not, to actually confront his father with this position.

So it's fascinating to me, Fred, how that lesson for John F. Kennedy and so many others, and this is something many of us have written about you in particular, how those lessons of appeasement carry forward. And of course, one of the things both you and I teach and write about are the dangers of an analogy from one historical time being brought into another context.

Can you say more about what Kennedy takes from what you just described so well, his emerging internationalist outlook? You called it earlier a liberal internationalist outlook to some extent, tempered with realism.

He is. And here, the difference between the father is, again, pretty interesting, because Joe Kennedy articulates positions that at least some historians would later come to hold.

But alongside this, emerging, I think, in 1950, 51, and thereafter, is also a nuanced understanding of the power of decolonization, the power of nationalism in the developing world. And he argues, I think, quite presciently, when he visits Indochina in 1951, for example, but also other parts of Asia, that the United States, if it wants to be on the right side of history, and if it wants to succeed in the broader superpower struggle, needs to be attentive to what these voices are clamoring for, and including people like Ho Chi Minh.

So this is still sort of preliminary. But that tension, in some ways, exists right through to the end. He argues in his inaugural address for a...we often think of that address as being a kind of Cold War call to arms, but I don't think it really is.

If you look at the address in its entirety, it's really quite conciliatory in tone. And he says, we shall never, let us never fear to negotiate. So it's a complex picture, Jeremy, but one that I think, I hope in the second volume to further flesh out.

What makes JFK such an appealing presidential candidate, but also a congressman and a legislature? What can we learn from his rise about what kind of politician we should be nurturing today? Oh, it's such a good question. I think that what people saw right away, maybe even in that first congressional campaign in 1946, and I do think this holds something for us today, is they saw somebody who believed in politics, loved politics even.

And one of the reasons he loved politics from an early point was precisely because he believed that it was important that in a democracy, what we expect, what we demand of our elected officials can have a hugely important effect on our lives. And I think he believed and developed a philosophy, which basically said that government can't solve all of our problems, but it has a vital role to play in creating a more just and a more equitable society.

In fact, I think I show that you see it again in this first campaign, and that is the vital importance in a democracy of compromise, of reasoning from evidence, of seeing political opponents as adversaries rather than enemies. This is something that I think he stressed, and I think it's a very important notion for us today.

And boy, is that hard today in this country. But I think it's a more important message than ever.

Over more than 100 episodes, we've seen, I think, in such a range of figures, how important those precise qualities that you just highlighted so brilliantly, that those qualities of compromise and attention to evidence and deliberative policymaking, how crucial they are to a democracy. How did Lyndon Johnson interact with John F. Kennedy? Because one of the issues that comes up quite often in some of our prior discussions and in a lot of the scholarship, as you know better than anyone, is this rivalry between Lyndon Johnson and the Kennedy family.

How did JFK handle that differently from politicians today, and what can we learn from that? Well, I mean, you know, I'd say in some respects, I guess, a preliminary answer, Jeremy, because this is one of the things that I really want to delve into and will need to delve into in volume two.

One is that Kennedy respected LBJ's unsurpassed skill at maneuvering in Washington, his ability to buttonhole lawmakers and to get them to do what he needed them to do. This is evident even when he's obviously the chieftain in the Senate. And I think Kennedy rightly marvels at this ability and respects Johnson for it.

You can see, one can see why LBJ becomes resentful. There's, of course, a special friction with Robert Kennedy, which, of course, I also need to delve into as I get into this research.

I think he does credit him with helping him win. Arguably, this was one instance in recent US history in which the vice presidential choice actually did matter in the outcome, but then a problematic relationship thereafter.

I want us to close as we always do by looking toward our listeners today, particularly young listeners, and what they can take away from your book in this fraught political moment we're in today. But before I do that, Fred, I can't let us get to that concluding point without asking the question I know everyone is going to ask you. What should we make of Kennedy's extramarital affairs that you discuss a bit in the book and the question of morality and political leadership?

How does that affect your judgment of him as an early politician? Yeah, it's something obviously that I grapple with a lot, Jeremy, and I will continue to grapple with as I work on volume two, because one of the things that I conclude is that he shows a capacity for empathy, empathetic understanding, which I think is critical in a leader. And we see it maybe most notably at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, where he's actually able to put himself into Khrushchev's shoes, which is what empathy is, to be able to see things from the other side.

And if I'm going to argue, as I do in the book, that he is his own man when it comes to politics, that he's not under his father's control, that he's willing to separate himself from Joe Sr., then I can't very well say, well, you know, he became a chronic womanizer because his father was, and it's because of the example that his father set. And his father certainly did set an example. He said, in so many words, that he expected Joe Jr. and Jack to follow in his footsteps, to view women as objects to be conquered.

But I can't, you know, give him credit for his independence in one area and say that he didn't have it in the other. So it's a really good point. And this is one that, especially as I think, as I get into volume two, and he becomes in a strong power position, which makes this still more problematic, I have to reckon with.

It strikes me that you're approaching it exactly as you should as a historian, which is different from a journalist in this element, insofar as his personal behavior matters to us, it seems to me, as it relates to his role as a politician. Your book is Young JFK, his own man, but politician.

And so, you know, if people are interested in the lurid details of his affairs, that's not what you're writing about. You are writing about how those affected him as an individual insofar as he becomes a politician.

I think it's actually refreshing in a certain way without in any way diminishing the enormity of this issue, as you just pointed out so well. So, Fred, we like to finish every one of our episodes by really, really speaking directly to our audience, which includes a lot of young people, and I'll include you and I as still young people, who are concerned about our world today, concerned about democracy.

We do it every week because we're trying to bring historical knowledge and at least maybe some historical inspiration to thinking about reforming and improving our democracy in a nonpartisan way.

You've spent a good part of your life now writing about John F. Kennedy. You're going to continue doing that. What do you want young people, people who are concerned about our politics today, people who want to change our politics today, what do you want them to take away from the work you've done and from this wonderful volume?

That may be kind of an impossible thing to believe, given how corrosively cynical we have become. But I think it's absolutely true. I think it's something that John F. Kennedy really based his political career on, this idea that it is absolutely vital that we have a strong, functioning democracy.

And he says in one of his college papers, this is when he's 20 years old, and I'm paraphrasing that in effect, unless democracy can produce capable leaders, it is in serious trouble. And I think that's true.

And I think it's important for young people in particular to grasp that, to understand that if they become involved in public life, maybe choose even a career in public service, they can make a difference, that democracy in some ways hinges on this democracy hinges on having a well informed citizenry paying attention to the issues and at least to some degree but getting involved in those issues. I think that, too, is a message that JFK flawed figure in many ways somebody who had both successes and missteps as a politician. But this is something I think he both believed and he lived.

So Zachary, your wonderful poem this morning was the ghost of JFK. And one of the early reviewers of Fred’s book mutual friend of Ours, David Kennedy talks about how how John F. Kennedy still beguiles us and that in some ways Fred's book is a wonderful analysis of that Zachary Does John F. Kennedy still inspire young people like yourself? And what inspiration do you take from this? And from our conversation with Fred?

I think that John F. Kennedy is still universally, universally powerful to young people because of his youth and because of what he represents as a someone who believes he can use government to help people. I always find it very interesting whenever I ask people who their favorite presidents are. John F. Kennedy is always near the top of the list, which, which is very interesting, seeing that he only served for a couple years. And so I think that his his short time the forefront of American politics continues to inspire young people and will continue to inspire young people.

Well, I think that's a perfect spot for us to come on, Fred, Did you wanna make the last comment on that

No, I just want to say that Zachary, that's really well put on if you know, as the saying goes, from your lips to God's ears. I think that if this is indeed what especially the people of your generation and they say the generation above the young people, if they can see in JFK and in other politicians of both parties in this country, um, somebody to somebody to look to, to try to emulate in some way and, more importantly, just to become involved and become informed and engaged and and and and commit oneself to good faith, reasoning and bargaining, I think we'll be fine.

That's so well said. And I think what your book displays really in wonderful ways in entertaining ways to Fred is that we have that capacity within us. It's it's John F. Kennedy is his own man. But John F. Kennedy as such a quintessential product of American society, product of the mixing of different groups and our politics, which produces this messiness but also this capacity for compromise and evidence based creativity. So, Fred, thank you for joining us today. I know you're very busy out and around, or at least virtually on your book tour. Thank you for stopping. Stopping in with us virtually. I hope all of our readers and listeners will read, uh, Fred's exciting new book, John F. Kennedy. It's available, Um, on Amazon. It's available at all of your local independent bookstores. Just look up logo ball JFK, and it will come right up. Zachary, Thank you, as always for your poem and most of all, thank you to our listeners for joining us for this episode of This Is Democracy

Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. This week we have with us one of the foremost scholars, philosophers, and public intellectuals in the world, writing about a topic that's very close to us. I think every day, where history matters for us every day, which is how we think about memory and the ways in which memories of the past, particularly memories of a traumatic, guilt ridden, difficult past, the ways those memories are used or not used to improve or limit our democracy. In other words, what is the role for historical memory in addressing past injustices?

Susan Neiman, who is our guest today. Susan has written some of the most important work on this. She is the director of the Einstein Forum in Berlin. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and that's central to a lot of her work. But she studied philosophy at Harvard and the Freie Universität in Berlin, was a professor of philosophy at Yale and Tel Aviv University before moving to Berlin, moving back to Berlin for the Einstein Forum. She is the author of numerous books of contemporary philosophy and political philosophy as well, a number that I just like to mention, Evil and Modern Thought, particularly relevant, perhaps to our world today. Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists, I'm not sure that I'm a grown up idealist, but at least give one a try.

You probably are if you're doing this podcast.

Thank you, Susan, that makes me feel a lot better. And her most recent book, the book that's really going to be at the center of our discussion today, which is really a phenomenal book. Both Zachary and I have read it: Learning from the Germans' Race and the Memory of Evil. It has just come out, in paperback, with a brand new final section, at least for now, on the Black Lives Matter movement, and how it relates to Susan's really in depth discussion of historical memory in Germany and the United States over the last century.

Susan, thank you for joining us today. It's a pleasure. Before we turn to our discussion, as always, we have our scene-setting poem from Mr. Zachary Suri and today's poem is actually a bilingual poem from Zachary. This is the first of your bilingual poems in one hundred and twenty or so [episodes], I think. Zachary, what is the title of your poem?

“Herbst ich erinnere mich,” or “Fall I remember.” Let's hear it.

“Fall, I remember. You sneak up on us from behind the orchard fence. You seem cold and distant until the signs at the gas station begin to freeze. Herbst, ich erinnere mich an dich, der alte Mann in dem Supermarkt mit kaltem Haar, zwischen geöffnet und geschlossen Hoffnung. Fall, I remember you like a blessing, a prayer for the lost souls in tandem with the damp leaves trodden underfoot. The air is burning now. The earth is burning. The fires are so hot they feel as if they could be frozen. Und dann von hinter der Regalen hat ein Mann deinen Arm berührt. And then from behind the shelves, a man has touched your arm. He is memory. Er ist die Erinnerung. And there are the eyes of your underlings, and the eyes of the mistreated ones, and the eyes of your fathers, and your mothers and your great, great forgotten ones. Es gibt die Schuld deines Land. There is the guilt of your country. Es gibt die Schuld deiner Hand. There is the guilt of your hand. Wie kommt das Ende der Geschichte mit dem Ende der Erinnerung? Wie kommt das Ende der Erinnerung mit dem Ende der Zeit? Wie kommt das Ende der Schuld mit Erbst, mit Zärtlichkeit?”

That was really powerful. Very powerful. I think you should translate that last section for us and tell us what your poem's about.

Well, so I'll answer the latter question first. So my poem is really about how we think about historical memory and guilt. And it's particularly about this moment we find ourselves in in the fall of 2020, right before the presidential election, sort of thinking about our history and how it's going to affect our future.

And the last six lines of the poem in German translate roughly as how does the end of history come with the end of memory? How does the end of memory come with the end of time? How does the end of guilt come with fall, with tenderness?

It evokes a little bit of T.S. Eliot, right? Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Well, I was also thinking, Zachary, I don't know if you know, there's a fairly well known poem of Rilke. I don't know its title anymore, but it starts with es ist herbst, it's fall. Do you know that?

I think I may have come across it, but I was definitely going more T.S. Eliot.

But yeah, I prefer T.S. Eliot to Rilke myself, actually. But that, his herbst poem, is a good poem.

It is. You know, I'm glad you mentioned that, Susan. I read it years ago. I'm going to go back and find it when we're done and maybe put it up on the website with the link to your book. That's really, really wonderful. Susan, building on Zachary's poem and the sort of haunting elements of memory, maybe you can take us through a little bit about why you wrote this book, Learning from the Germans. It's a deep, thoughtful, intellectual book, but it's also a very personal book, which I loved.

Thank you. Yeah, it's not an academic book, although sometimes I call myself a recovering philosophy professor. [Laughter] But much of it's written in the first person.

It also contains a lot of interviews. I thought it was very important not just to have my voice in in the book, but also to have the voices of many, many people both in in Germany and in the Deep South, which is where I focused my research, not because I believe racism is only a problem in the Deep South, I should emphasize. But because the South works like a magnifying glass for the rest of the country. Everything is out in the open.

And, you know, you certainly can't say that people aren't concerned with their history. But let me go back to this book. It has two beginnings, actually. One was in the fall of 1982, when I first came to Berlin on a Fulbright Fellowship, thinking I was going to stay for a year and go back.

And the reason I didn't go back was that I became absolutely fascinated with this German concept of Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung, which I translate as working through the past. Germans like the long compound words.

Yes.

But it's not a concept that exists in any other language.

And, you know, there's a sense in which it simply emerged as a way of saying, "what the hell are we going to do about the Nazis?" And coming to Berlin in 1982, I was absolutely struck by the ways in which people were talking about the Nazi past. It was just before the 50th anniversary of the Nazi takeover of power.

And people in Berlin were preparing to commemorate it with a year's worth of exhibits and discussions and theater and people doing research about their neighborhoods and what their neighborhoods were like in the Third Reich. I should say, this was at the time, not at all a government sponsored project. And it wasn't even a majority of, certainly not a majority of, Germans and not even a majority of Berliners, who have always leaned somewhat to the left of the country.

But those were the people that I would have normally gravitated to, that is intellectuals, artists, activists. And they were examining their country's history, which also meant their parents and their teachers' complicity, with an intensity that I immediately had to ask, why aren't we doing this in the United States?

And at the time, I wasn't even thinking very far back about our history. I was thinking we don't talk about the Vietnam War anymore. We've never really talked about Hiroshima.

And that was a moment when I began to think about the contrast between the ways in which Americans dealt with their history, and or don't, and what the Germans were doing with theirs. So it's a subject that I've been thinking about, you know, for more than 35 years.

And the immediate impetus to writing the book, was when I was watching President Obama give the eulogy for the nine churchgoers massacred in Charleston in 2015. And in tears from my Berlin apartment, and thinking, however, because, you know, Nikki Haley did take down the flag, it was the first time that a major national politician had called for dealing with, or getting rid of, Confederate symbols.

And I thought, gosh, America is finally beginning a Vergangenheitsaufgabeitung. And since this is something I've thought about for a long time, maybe I can make a contribution. But I didn't want to simply do it from afar.

I had a sabbatical coming to me from my institute, and I wanted to spend some time with them, you know, even in 2016, there were Americans looking at this history, particularly around questions of racial reconciliation. So I based myself for a year in Mississippi, following people around who were doing this work, as well as people who were absolutely opposed to it, as a way of trying to figure out what would be a genuinely American Vergangenheitsaufgabeitung working of the past.

I do believe we have things to learn from what the Germans have done with their history, including their mistakes, and there have been many.

I don't think any two countries' histories are the same. And the first chapter of the book talks about all the differences between, you know, American and German history, because I knew, of course, people would object immediately. So, of course, there are many differences in those two histories.

You're a historian, so, you know, it's important to care about cultural and historical differences, but I still think there are lessons.

Well, and I have to say, I first became aware of your book [when] it had just come out and I think I had read a review of it, but I was at a meeting of the World War Two Museum, the National World War Two Museum in New Orleans, where I'm on the board. And we were talking about memories of World War Two.

And it was, it became so evident to me as we were planning a conference on World War Two memory, how little Americans have thought critically about our own war experience. And that's in no way to trash the experience of the United States in World War Two, but how much more advanced German thinking was on this. And this is a theme that resonates, I think, in your book.

Why is it that around many of these issues, the Germans have seemingly done more thinking about this, more of the work of addressing the dark and embarrassing and traumatic parts of their history than Americans? Why is that?

Well, there's several, several reasons for, you know, we can give several reasons. One is, I don't know if it's OK to swear on your podcast or not. [Laughter] Go ahead.

OK, I was actually in a radio program in, of all places, the Bay Area. And I used a slightly profane expression and the moderator apologized to her audience. So you never know.

But I'm quoting here James Meredith, one of the people that I interviewed in the book, the great civil rights hero from Mississippi. And one of the things he said to me, he said, "well, the Germans got their ass kicked and we didn't." And of course, there's a way in which that's true.

And one can say if there's any moral agreement in the world, it's that the Nazis committed the worst crimes in human history. I'll agree with that. And of course, since they were devastated at the end of the war, there was some pressure on them from the outside to, you know, do something about their history, although it was slow and faltering, certainly in the West.

And I think that's a very important message for Americans to learn. We tend to assume that the crimes of the Nazis were so awful that the minute the war was over, they fell on their knees and begged for atonement. That is not what happened at all.

In West Germany, in particular, they thought of themselves as the war's worst victims. And when I realized that, and it took me decades to realize this because it's not something they like to talk about at all. You have to work to ferret it out.

I realized that the tropes with which, West Germans in the first decades after the war spoke about the war, you know, we lost a quarter of our territory and seven million people were killed and our men were in POW camps if they survived at all. Or they were wounded and our cities were burned and we were hungry, just barely alive. Maybe you'll catch the reference there. And on top of it, the damn Yankees wanted to tell us it was all our fault.

Yes.

And I suddenly realized they sound just like the defenders of the lost cause.

Yep.

And from that, I think one can actually get a measure of hope because if it turns out that even, you know, Nazis took a long time to acknowledge that they had some atoning to do, it's no wonder that those people who are asking, you know, for similar confrontation with our history in the U.S. are getting pushback. It's no wonder that we're having a cultural war over this, because people tend, in the first instance, they like to think of their people as heroes. If they can't think of them as heroes, they think of them as victims.

That's the next best thing. But, you know, people focus on their own suffering. That's what people do.

But what was historically unique, was that the Germans made a further step, which is to say, yeah, we suffered and it was rough, but other people suffered more and it was our fault. And, you know, so yes, the defeat played a role. There's some other, however, things that sound more prosaic.

You have no idea what kind of a media landscape we have here, public media landscape. And I'm, you know, I'm pleased to see podcasts like yours appearing to make up for the fact that, you know, most radio programs and almost all of television is commercial television. It does not go in for long form discussions of any kind.

And that's entirely different in Germany. In Germany, most of the media is public and we all pay a little tax. The funny thing is that I don't actually have time.

I watch much German television or radio, but I am so happy every year to pay my little tax, which is not very much. It's like, let's say, $100 a year, because I know that that ensures that we don't have Fox News, you know, so the German public is used to serious discussions in television, in radio, in the newspapers of a kind, that we don't have enough outlets in the United States for doing. That's another thing that plays a role.

So what about a personal, confrontation? I remember reading recently a book called Germany and the Germans by John Arda in from the 1990s. And he describes going to, I think it was at the University of Stuttgart, where they had like the grandfathers and grandmothers who had lived through the war, [talk] one on one with students who grew up after the war. And there was very much a sort of generational tension.

How much of the sort of Vergangenheitsalphabetung was personal? And why haven't we had that in the United States?

So that's a really good question. And of course, it depends whether the person you're confronting is your grandfather or your father. In the late 60s, when people were confronting their parents who had served in the Wehrmacht or, you know, and certainly gone along with the Nazis. Even if they hadn't actually been members of the party, the confrontations were terrible, understandably.

And you had a sense of family structures being quite destroyed in many cases. The interesting thing, I felt like the family structures weren't destroyed. I mean, I was once invited to, you know, spend a weekend in the country with somebody who said her parents were away and said, use our house. And the parents had, you know, pictures of the father in uniform over the house. And I left the next day.

I can imagine. Yes.

[Laughter] You know, if this is what it means to have a nice relationship with your parents, I'm not sure that I'm going for it. Look, I think so. So there are people now talking about the ways in which people, you know, didn't confront their grandparents and where the grandparent was, in particular, a Nazi criminal or even a serious Nazi, that has left real scars. One of the people I interviewed in the book, Alexandra Semft, has written about her grandfather, who was actually one of the very few people executed as a war criminal, and, you know, talked about the way that that destroyed her family.

So, you know, the confrontations didn't happen at all for decades. And they certainly happened. You know, there are sort of waves of these things.

And of course, every family is personal. Look, I think the biggest problem in the United States is this hundred year old hole in our memory, as I talk about in the book, between the end of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

I was fortunate, I grew up in the South, although I know you don't hear it. My parents were from the North, but my mother was very active in the civil rights movement in Atlanta. So I'm kind of a civil rights kid. That was the you know, that was the atmosphere that I grew up in. But nobody talked about history. Everybody was much too focused on the present, you know, focused on getting rid of segregation.

And, you know, it was a time, Zachary, you're fortunate to have had your young political consciousness formed by, you know, an African-American president of great integrity and intelligence. When I was young, we couldn't imagine it. We couldn't even imagine a black cabinet member at that point.

So the focus was on the present and the future. People were not talking about the history. At least white people certainly weren't. And I rather think black people weren't either. They knew more of it, of course, than white people did, but it wasn't a focus of attention.

So we tended to think, OK, there was slavery. Slavery was terrible, but then we fought a war in order to end it. That was still the line, you know, that I learned mostly. And then there was Jim Crow, I think Jim Crow is a terrible expression.

I'm on a minor campaign to snap it out because it's a euphemism. It prettifies what Bryan Stevenson calls the age of racial terror, which I think is a much more accurate expression.

I agree.

Yeah. And the words Jim Crow allow us to think, OK, there were racial stereotypes, there was racist prejudice. But, you know, We we don't know about the web of legal continuation of various things that have been called neo-slavery.

The way in which ordinary behavior, if carried out by African-Americans, was criminalized, the way in which there was actually a deliberate turn from, you know, thinking of African-Americans as stupid and lazy, which was the stereotype during slavery days, to thinking of them as criminals. All the way through, you know, redlining and the ways in which people of color were barred from getting mortgages, were barred from getting Social Security.

So and and, of course, in the background, lynching as a real instrument of terror to intimidate people of color. So, you know, we we tended to think that all of that was more or less so. We think, OK, it was, you know, it was too bad that there was segregation, but then we had the civil rights movement and it wiped it out.

And, you know, our ignorance, and I must say myself ,very much until 2015, until I I started thinking about these questions, I was as ignorant as anybody else. And I know professors of American history who didn't know very much about it.

Of course. [Inaudible] Well, there is for a long time it wasn't even in our scholarship. I mean, you could be a scholar of American history without addressing these issues until, you know, 30 years ago.

Right. And then you had to be a scholar. You know, you had to be Eric Foner or, you know, in order to address those issues. And, you know, if it wasn't your field, it didn't get into public discussion in the way that it is now. So I think that's the main reason why Americans have not examined our racist history.

There's a second issue that I'm only going to mention because I know we don't have time to go into it. I think we are still living in a time where the Cold War has cast its shadow over American history, which is why great, you know, civil rights activists like Paul Robeson [are] almost forgotten, which is why we don't talk about Hiroshima and we don't talk about Vietnam. But that's a question for a podcast in itself.

Yeah. So we also see you talked about this in your book a lot as well. Later on, particularly in recent decades, an effort by Germans not only to talk about their past, but to take actions, to atone for it, to accept refugees and to send aid to Israel and other such activities.

How big of a part of Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung is this? And has it been applied in the United States? And how could it be?

So [that is a] very good question. I mean, let me start by saying that Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung has, you know, it's not one thing. It's not a, you know, a one off vaccination, OK?

It involves, you know, constructing a different national narrative, but that itself is not just something to be done by historians. And it's not just something to be done in history books.

It involves popular culture. You know, it involves movies, literature, songs, all of that stuff needs to be rethought of. I think reparations need to play a role.

And they have certainly played a role in Germany with reparations to Holocaust victims, reparations to the state of Israel. And here is something that Americans tend to forget or not ever to have known about. The Wehrmacht laid waste to Poland and Russia and killed 14 million Slavic civilians.

So East Germany paid a huge amount of reparations to Poland and the Soviet Union as well. So obviously, where there's been damage and, you know, again, it's a complicated subject. The damage needs to be materially repaired if there are still people who need to be brought to justice. They need to be brought to justice. We need to think about the iconography of our cities, as I say in the book. There is no Hans Wehrmacht in Germany.

I mean, I just made that up as a counterpart to Johnny Reb. Yes. What there are are thousands of memorials to both victims and the few resistance heroes that there were. All of that is part of Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung.

So Susan, this is such a powerful narrative that you put together here, and it is so compelling because it's thoughtful and you draw out interviews with major figures. You've mentioned Brian Stevenson and many others on the German side and the American side. We always like to close our podcast episode, Susan, with a forward looking, hopeful denouement.

What do you take from this about the possibilities going forward? I think Americans are maybe at least a younger generation. It seems to me, and I find this certainly with my students, are much more open to talking about a lot of these issues than my students were even 10 years ago.

So what do you see as the positive pathway forward for us taking into account your analysis of historical memory and the uses and misuses of it?

I see a lot of hope at the moment, but I think we're in a perilous time. It surprises me to complain about polarization because it's such a centrist thing to do. And I am not a centrist. I'm a Social Democrat and I'll say it to anybody who wants to hear it. I've always been on the left. But I think we need to be very, very careful in this moment.

I agree with you that people are finally in America connecting the violence, which still outrageously exists more towards people of color than towards anyone else. That violence with the violence in our past and the need for a new narrative. But I think it's extremely important that this be seen as a universalist project.

I know the word universalism is, you know, not very popular these days, but I'm making an argument to revive it. And I try and do that in the book. This is American history.

This is not black history. And it's very important, I think, that white Americans not consider ourselves as allies. An ally is someone who is, you know, has a temporary alignment of interests with someone else like the U.S. and the Soviet Union did during World War Two.

Right.

But wasn't an alliance based on principle? I support Black Lives Matter, not out of interest, but as a matter of principle, because I care about universal human justice. And I am part of, you know, many people of many ethnic backgrounds who have always done so.

Hannah Arendt, in her very important book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, criticized the state of Israel because when they indicted Eichmann, they indicted him for crimes against the Jewish people, and she says he should have…been indicted for crimes against humanity.

And I think that's exactly right. And I think we need to see the crimes against African Americans as crimes against humanity that should engage and enrage every decent American as we work to reconstruct a better country.

That's so powerful. Susan, I loved how you closed the book in what you called, "in place of conclusions." Because there is no conclusion to this story, where you talk about how in your words, "I gave tribalism a try," right? But then you say it surprised me. I had a little whiplash at the end. I didn't expect that from you. And then you said, this book itself is offered as an exercise in universalism in the hope that understanding difference will help us to find shared souls.

Zachary, this book obviously moved you. We read a lot together, but I think you really were moved by this. Why did it move you? And do you think that Susan's plea for universalism will resonate with your generation?

Yeah, I think that it really resonated for me because it's a very sort of understanding of American history and world history from a perspective, that is, that is deeply intellectual. And I think, the most accurate depiction of history that we can see.

And I think it's actually a very hopeful thing for young Americans like myself, because I think sometimes it's a little easy to be put off by people who want to be all negative about American history or all positive about American history. And I think that this book in the message of this book offers a great framework for how we can understand our history from a realistic perspective.

Thank you so much. And you know what Jeremy said also resonates with your poem. You know, there isn't a conclusion. This is something you know that's going to go on for a very long time, and it's a multi generational project. So I think it's wonderful that the two of you are doing this together.

And reading your books, Susan, it certainly felt not just like reading an exploration in memory and history, but also an exploration and redemption. What you're talking about is the most hopeful thing, right?

How democratic societies offer the possibility for redemption because this is a theme of our podcast. Weekend and week out. Democracy is about no finality. Democracy denies that there's an end to history. There's no perfect template, and we're not looking to create the perfect man and woman, we're looking to constantly remake ourselves for our times to come.

It's a constant rebuilding or in the Jewish tradition, Ledor Vador, from generation to generation. And, I think your book really captures that so well.

Thank you for joining us from Berlin today for this discussion.

Well, it's been a pleasure, and now I'll look up your podcast more often.

I hope you will.

I will.

And Zachary, thank you, as always for a moving poem in two languages this time. You keep outdoing yourself every week and most of all, thank you to our listeners. And I do want to encourage everyone to pick up a copy of Susan's book. It's now in paperback, Learning from the Germans. The title, very easy to remember.

This is Democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics, and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next. Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy.

This week we are going to discuss a perennial topic of congressional politics and a perennial debate within our democracy, one that's becoming perhaps more important than it's been in a long time. The question of whether the U.S. Senate should continue to have a rule for a filibuster, which allows a minority, a small minority, in the Senate to prevent legislation and other matters from moving forward.

This is, as I said, an age-old question. It's central to American legislation in American politics, and we're very fortunate to have with us one of the leading scholars of Congress in general, and this topic, among many others.

My friend and colleague, Sean Theriault. Good morning, Sean. Good morning, Jeremi. Sean is a professor in the Department of Government here at the University of Texas at Austin. As I said, he is an internationally recognized, widely published author and speaker on the various pathologies of the U. S. Congress. Sean has written five outstanding books, many of which have won awards.

He began his illustrious career with the book The Power of the People, appropriately titled for a Scholar of Congress. I guess that's the aspiration of Congress more than the reality. He then published a really prescient book in 2008: Party Polarization in Congress, then another book that I really enjoyed reading. I read this book on the prize committee years ago–The Gingrich Senators–really, one of the best books at explaining how Newt Gingrich and his generation transformed the U. S. Congress.

And then more recently, The Great Broadening. And just this last year, a really important book for educating all of us about these topics, Congress: The First Branch. Sean also writes widely in every major newspaper. He appears on all kinds of news shows.

We could call you, Sean, Mr. Congress. How does that sound?

I'll take that moniker, although Congress isn't so popular these days, Jeremi. [Laughter] Yeah, well, I think it's safe to say, Sean, you are more popular than Congress. Thanks, Jeremi.

Before our conversation with Sean, as always, we have our scene setting poem from Mr. Zachary Suri.

Zachary, what is the title of your poem today?

With a single speech.

Well, let's hear it.

“It is a kind of arrogance that we think ourselves so sacrosanct that we build for our posterity, a temple of democracy, and hand any old fool a key. It is a kind of arrogance that we think ourselves so chosen that we steal votes from cities, for a slew of empty prairies, to send their any old Tom, Harry, Dick, and Larrys. It is a kind of arrogance that we think ourselves so holy that they can stand among the rubble that they burned right to the ground; and with their fist hollowed oaken desk of storied Asia's pound, and cry out for the freedom of ten hours for their mouths to sound. It is a kind of arrogance that we think are stars so well foretold to turn away the crying of a child for the banknotes, pristinely rolled. To rest our eyes on empty promises, where they rest in rot and mold, and wake up in a stupor, still in the middle of our speech. And sing to the great portraits about the horror to impeach. But the old poets of the tattered haunts, they know it all too well, and can recall of every second to you in a cafe with a screech, as their voices swell. Old men cannot solve our problems with a single speech.”

Zachary, that's lovely. What is your poem about?

My poem is really about the irony that we consider ourselves such an important and original democracy. And we think ourselves so great that we don't actually need to maintain our democracy and perform the basic maintenance of democratic institutions. And even while we have these very archaic institutions, like the filibuster, embedded in our very houses of government.

Well, that's just a fantastic opening for our conversation. Sean, is the filibuster an archaic element of Congress?

So first Jeremi, how dare you make us go after Zachary! [laughter] If I ever sign up to do this show again, I'm going to mandate that he go last, so I don't have to follow that! [laughter]

You're not the first guest to say that. So you should listen to your guests, Jeremi. How dare you sucker punch us off! [laughter]

Right, so the filibuster has ancient roots. There is no doubt about it. And the filibuster has stopped lots of good legislation over time, but it's also stopped lots of really bad legislation over time, so it serves a purpose. I mean, its purpose is now being debated, much more seriously than I think it has in quite a while, right? I'm not sure how long the Senate will still have its filibuster, but it's in place now, and it's having ramifications on all sorts of debates taking place in the Senate today.

And Sean, before we talk about how this filibuster actually works, why is it there?

It's not mentioned in the Constitution, of course. So how did we get this archaic institution?

Yeah, so right. I'll give you a common person's understanding of how it came to exist, and I'm a storyteller, Jeremi. This is the reason I think my students pay attention—You're a great storyteller—on occasion.

And so, the story is that Aaron Burr, who was vice president, was looking at the Senate rule book, and he came across this thing called the motion to order the previous question. And he's like, we never used this thing, we're just going to get rid of it. Right, so this is back in the early 1800s. And so, the Senate decides to delete this motion to order the previous question from its rule book. The House keeps its version, so the rules of the House and the rules of the Senate, back when they first got started, were more similar than they are today. And so, Aaron Burr and the senators decided to get rid of this motion to order the previous question.

And with that, it comes to an understanding that the only way that you can move legislation, then, is through this thing called the unanimous consent agreement. And, of course, unanimous consent agreement is really important because of its first word–unanimous. So in order to get the Senate moving on anything, it requires all senators to agree to move on that thing. And so, what that does is it empowers any individual senator to say, “no, I don't want to move on to that thing,” and as soon as they object, then they have control of the floor.

And then that sends us down a procedural set of steps, whereby the rest of the Senate, if there's sufficient numbers, can tell that senator that they lose control of the floor, and they go into a different set of procedures; whereby they can actually start debating something, and presumably, at the end of the legislative process, even passed something. Its origins, right? The reason we have a filibuster goes back to those early decisions made by Aaron Burr a long time ago.

So like Lin Manuel Miranda's play. I mean, Aaron Burr is the villain, in a sense here, right?

Well, if you think that the filibuster is a bad thing, he's the villain. [Laughter] Or is this the reason that the Senate becomes known as the greatest deliberative body in the world? I mean, I think that it depends on what side of the filibuster fence you're on as to whether or not he's the villain or the hero.

Right. It's extraordinary, though, Sean, isn't it? That as vice president, he had that much enduring power on the way the Senate operates.

Right, and this is actually a really good lesson for the Senate. Right? So this is a precedent that is set early, and the Senate really cares about precedent. And so, a decision that they make kind of just because they never used this thing, ends up having these huge ramifications that we continue to feel throughout the next two-hundred plus years of history. It's a really important lesson in path dependence, how a decision made early has enduring effects, as you say.

How does the filibuster work, Sean?

So it's hard, right? And you know this, Jeremi, but to educate the folks who might be listening to this, so the filibuster, really, in a congressional sense, just means the delay of legislation. And so, the different forms that a filibuster can take are various, right.

So when Ron Johnson makes them read every word of the 1.9 trillion dollar relief bill, the Congress is now in the process of passing; that is a form of filibuster, right? Because that is delaying the legislative process. And so, we could call that a filibuster, but it comes to have a more particular meeting when a senator presumably takes the floor and gives a speech.

And so we normally say that that is filibustering. But we could really claim the Ron Johnson's, again, based on the unanimous consent agreement, normally, a senator, the majority, they were to ask unanimous consent to waive the reading of the bill. And if no senator objects, then the reading of the bill is waived, but Ron Johnson object[ed].

And so, according to the rules of the Senate, that bill has to be read in its entirety, and so [it is] a form of filibuster. So In other words, what the filibuster is, is a delay tactic that any senator can use, in theory, as long as they wish to use. That's right, because so much of the Senate is done through these unanimous consent agreements, there are lots of opportunities for a senator to object, and as soon as they object, they have the floor.

So we normally think of the filibuster is when the senators start[ ] giving a speech, and the only way that a filibuster can be broken at that point is through this process called cloture, and cloture is a petition. And if the petition gets signed by sixty senators, th[e]n, they can attempt to invoke cloture, and then there will be a vote on closure. And then if cloture is invoked, then there is a different procedure again. And what can happen post-cloture? Usually, it's limited to one hundred hours of debate, and then they have to move the legislation after cloture is invoked.

There's been a lot of talk lately about how the filibuster has affected our democratic institutions, not just the Senate, but Congress as a whole. How has the filibuster in the past promoted majoritarian democracy, and how has it undermined that at the same time?

Yeah, so, and it's interesting that you use the word majoritarian.

So what the filibuster does because it requires sixty votes, there's a supermajority. And so what a supermajority means is that instead of only taking fifty votes plus the vice president to pass something, it requires sixty votes in the Senate for lots of different pieces of legislation.

And so when you require those ten extra votes, it means that you're empowering lots of people, usually of the minority party, to sign off on a piece of legislation, which gives them huge control over what the final words of that legislation look like, or whether or not the final words can ever be agreed to.

And so what it means is that it requires more than just a simple majority, as the House of Representatives is just a majoritarian institution. If you have, the number of yes votes are greater than the number of no votes, then the legislation is passed.

But the Senate requires those ten extra votes, and it's even more than that, in some instances, it's sixty votes, right. It's not three-fifths of the Senate, right? So it's a sixty vote threshold. So if their Senate, because of vacancies or deaths, senators not being in town, it's not enough that three-fifths of the Senate agree, but it's that sixty votes, right? So it's literally sixty votes.

Sean, as a scholar of Congress who studied this, I think, closer than pretty much anyone else, what have been the moments when the filibuster has actually built consensus?

That's the argument it seems to me you're making. At certain moments. It forces a party with fifty-two to actually reach out and find those on the other side, at least eight of them to go along with things. And one could see, in theory, the value in that.

So what moments do you see as the moments when this has been a source of consensus building?

Yeah, so I think that we could even just go back in time to a time that most of us remember, some of us more vividly than others. When the Affordable Care Act was passed because it required sixty votes in the Senate at that time, [which] had sixty Democrats. And so what it meant was that every single Democrat had to be in favor of it, which meant that those moderate Democrats from Nebraska and Louisiana had a lot of power in shaping the legislation in order to pick up those last few votes.

Now in some ways, that piece of legislation was improved, particularly for the states of Louisiana, Nebraska, but in other senses, we could say that it required a broader consensus from the Senate as a whole. Where if [it] only required fifty votes or fifty plus the vice president, we could have imagined that there might have been a more lively debate about the public option, but because it required those sixty votes, that was a nonstarter for enough of those Democrats that it didn't happen.

And if we go back in time right, we can go back to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Voting Rights Act of 1965. If we're only talking about the number of yeses being more than the number of noes, then you don't have to have particularly broad conversations among senators to figure out what wording actually works for enough of them to pass the thing.

But because of the super majoritarian requirement in the Senate, it just requires a broader conversation and this has ramifications; absolutely on the Senate. But it also has ramifications on the House because that legislation also has to be passed by the House.

And if in the process they're moderating that legislation, then it means that perhaps it's not passing two hundred and eighteen votes to two hundred and seventeen, but maybe it's passing two hundred and sixty votes to one hundred and seventy. And so legislation that passes with broader margins usually is more sustainable. It's usually broader. It[ ] usually has more buy-in from some of the people who ultimately might object to it, and so we think of it as being longer lasting.

It's a great point. And you can see that certainly, with the civil rights legislation that you mentioned going back to the ‘57 [Civil Rights] Act, that Lyndon Johnson, as Senate majority leader, muscles his way through. And then, of course, the ‘64 Civil Rights Act and the ‘65 Voting Rights Act. What's striking about those examples, Sean, which are terrific examples, is that, you're right, the legislation gains more permanence from having to go through the filibuster threshold.

But historians, I think, would argue, [it] took much longer to get that legislation. And Jim Crow, and of course, before that, slavery, last a lot longer than they might have otherwise because of the filibuster, so you can see both sides. Would you agree with that?

Oh, absolutely, right. So in part of the arguments that we're hearing today is that the filibuster should ultimately be revoked from the rules of the Senate, for perhaps most importantly, because of its racist past. Right?

So we don't get legislation on civil rights until the late 1950s and 1960s, in part because of the filibuster and in the power of the super majoritarian requirement in the Senate. That there was no way that you could [a] get sufficient number of senators to pass something, even though there might have been fifty-one votes much earlier.

How does an effective majority leader do this?

I mean, what do we learn from someone like Lyndon Johnson?

We certainly learned that the majority leader, we learned this from Mitch McConnell too, is incredibly powerful in the Senate.

But it just seems today, when the majority leader's main role is whipping his or her own party, how have they, in the past, been able to get through this threshold? What have they done?

Right? So it means that they're talking to their members, but because it's rare that we have a party having sixty votes just done outside of the aisle, it also requires them to have conversations across the aisle. And so what it means is that there has to be a far more open dialogue between the majority leader and the minority leader than we might otherwise think. And so, good majority leaders are keeping their caucus together, which minimizes the number of votes they're going to have to get from the other side, but they're also making sure that that dialogue happens.

What we see happening, though, interestingly, especially over the last ten or even fifteen years, is that there is another set of senators that feel particularly empowered because of the super majoritarian requirement. And they come to be known as gangs, where they form a group, a bipartisan group.

And usually, the number of people in the group is explicitly tied to the number of votes that it will take to invoke cloture, so that sixty vote threshold. So if the Democrats have, let's just say fifty-five votes, then the gang will be a gang of ten because they know that they need five Republicans. And so they usually form it in a bipartisan way. So five Republicans, five Democrats. But if the Democrats only have fifty-three votes, then it would require a gang of fourteen because you need seven Republicans and then the seven Democrats that they're negotiating with, ultimately, to try and pass legislation.

And so what the filibuster does, is it means that the conversations have to happen across the aisle in a way that certainly, since you've seen since since January 6 in the House of Representatives, there is almost no conversations happening across the aisle; even though, right, Nancy Pelosi's threshold isn't that much bigger than Chuck Schumer's threshold in the Senate. But she's able to, just with her votes alone, pass legislation where it doesn't require her to talk across the aisle the same way that it does for Chuck Schumer.

So I guess, Sean, this is what puzzles me because it seems that over time in most periods, these gangs that are formed, as you say, to control getting through cloture, getting the sixty votes that are necessary. They've generally had a moderating influence on legislation because they usually are a mix of Democrats and Republicans close to the middle.

Someone like the Senator Joe Manchin today from West Virginia, who is probably closer to the middle than many other Democrats would be in the Senate or Susan Collins, I guess on the Republican side for Maine. And they've had an enormous amount of influence on legislation over time, but it seems in the last decade that hasn't happened.

And it seems as if, the filibuster is being invoked, more often than not, just to stop any deliberation, for example, on gun control, to stop deliberation on voting rights.

Is that a newer phenomenon and if so, why?

So it is a newer phenomenon.

And so what's happening is that the parties are sorting at the same time that they're becoming more polarized, which means that there are far fewer Democrats representing Trump voting states and far fewer Republicans representing Biden voting states. Which means that the senators are less cross pressured, which means that forming cross party coalitions has become exceedingly more difficult.

So we used it right if we go back to even Richard Nixon's impeachment, the average percentage that the Democratic candidate for president, so in this case, McGovern would have gotten among states represented by Democrats was exactly the same as states represented by Republicans, right? So you had lots of Republicans who are representing Democratic leaning states, you had lots of Democrats who are representing Republican leaning states.

And so those types of conversations happen much more easily when the—senators feel cross pressure from their constituencies in their parties. But what we know is over time there are so few, right? So the two that you've already mentioned are two of the most obvious examples, and the next closest ones are really tough to come to.

Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, right? Ron Johnson, Wisconsin, where the Democrat wins by a fraction of a percentage point. And so we don't think of them as being nearly as cross pressured as Susan Collins, representing Maine or Joe Manchin, representing West Virginia.

And at the same time, the margins in the Senate have decreased. So in order to get ten Republicans to go along with something that Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer and the Democrats want, you have to get to a pretty conservative Republican representing a pretty Republican voting state.

And so that's just really hard and so those conversations become much more difficult. So to move things like gun control or voting rights, it's just that much more difficult because of the particular political situations of the senators.

And what role, then, does the filibuster play in such a close Senate? Almost fifty-fifty?

How does the filibuster's role change when we get increasingly very close margins in the Senate, every Congress?

Yeah, so what it means is that you're not going to get major pieces of legislation.

The legislation can pass outside of budget stuff, right? So what we're seeing play out right now with the 1.9 [trillion dollar] relief bill is that because it's related to budget, there's a different process involving budget reconciliation, which means that it only requires fifty votes.

But things that don't require money spending like voting rights or gun control, it means that legislation is going to be so difficult to pass that many of us just can't even imagine right. So perhaps there's like at the margins changes, but you're never going to get a big thrust of new gun control or protection of voting rights.

The re emboldening of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 after the Supreme Court opinion, you're not going to get huge immigration reform. The Senate is a very, stability-inducing place, right? So it also means we're not going to get big changes from Congress to Congress.

Right? So right now the Democrats have a majority by Kamala Harris' vote, and if in four years, the Republicans have the same majority, we're not going to get big flips and legislation because of the super majoritarian requirement.

So over time, Sean, I think, as a consequence of a closely split Senate for quite a while and the difficulty of getting major legislation through there has been a chipping away of the filibuster. The budget reconciliation itself, I think, is one example of that.

Certainly, as I recall, the Democratic Party under President Obama eliminated the filibuster for judicial appointments short of the Supreme Court. And then, of course, the Republican Party under Donald Trump eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, which is how Trump was able to nominate and appoint three different members of the court.

Do you foresee a continued chipping away of the filibuster?

Do you foresee an elimination of it or just leaving it as it is?

So Jeremi, I think the filibuster's days are limited, right? So again, the filibuster in the strictest sense.

Of course, delaying legislation is always going to happen, right? But this process that we've been talking about, especially most recently, its days are limited. Right now, I think that the filibuster is still on the books because of a couple of senators, so Kristen Cinema and Joe Manchin said that they liked the filibuster in any type of process.

To get rid of the filibuster would require a majority vote, and so, the Democrats don't have it right now. So if the Republicans take control of the Senate after the 2022 election, and they get it by a couple of votes, I think that it continues to exist only because they don't have unified government.

But I think as soon as a party has unified government, that is, control of both the House and the Senate and the White House, and they have a sufficiently large margin in the Senate, the filibuster will be dead, right?

So if the Democrats, let's just say, win control, keep control of the White House, and let's say they pick up seats in the 2022 election, so that they have fifty-three or fifty-four votes in the Senate, and still a majority in the House, I think the filibuster would be dead.

Or if, in the 2024 election, Republicans capture all three and they have fifty-three or fifty-four votes and they don't need Susan Collins and maybe one other Republican senator, then I think the filibuster is dead.

So I think its days are numbered as soon as a party has unified control and they have sufficient majority in the Senate, then then the filibuster will be reformed in the Senate.

Or Sean, and this would be a road toward the end you're describing, is it likely that we will see more significant chipping away of it just in the coming months, for example, with Democrats wanting to be able to pass voting rights legislation?

Yeah, and what's interesting to me is, I think, as we've seen, the state legislatures invoke some pretty awful new rules with respect to voting, I think the more ugly process...takes place in state legislatures.

I could imagine Joe Manchin and Kristen Cinema coming around, but I can't imagine the carve outs for things like voting rights. And then I can't imagine they would then carve out something to do with gun control or right, like I just can't imagine these carve outs.

But I could imagine them implementing is a particular process. And maybe with a wink and a nod and some type of budget ramifications, them trying to include voting rights within the budget reconciliation rules that currently exist, right? So maybe it has to do with the federal government giving states money to do x, y, or z, so that voting rights certainly now would then have financial ramifications such that it could be read under budget reconciliation.

And I guess this is my last question. Sean, do you foresee the Senate moving to what Joe Manchin himself has mentioned, which is the possibility of at least making those who want to invoke the filibuster make them work harder, make them actually stand up and speak right now?

Oftentimes, right, those who are willing to filibuster simply threatened to do it, and the Senate moves on. But do you foresee them at least raising the pain threshold for filibusterers, as Manchin has suggested?

So I can imagine them doing it in very limited ways, the problem with that and you've already alluded to this the power of the majority leader to set the agenda.

So if the Senate is meeting, then Chuck Schumer wants to use the meeting time of the Senate in a way to advance the Democratic agenda. If he calls up bills that will merely be filibustered and they end up wasting twenty-four, fourty-eight hours, a week because of a filibuster, then that means he's not able to move all the other things that Chuck Schumer wants to move, many of which don't require a sixty vote threshold, right?

Judicial appointments, filling out the rest of President Biden's Cabinet, so the plenary time on the Senate trades off with the filibuster time. And so for every minute that Chuck Schumer is allowing a filibuster, right, raising the pain threshold, forcing Republican senators to talk endlessly on the floor of the Senate, means that he's not able to do all the other things that the Democrats want to do in the Senate.

And so, right, it's a good talking point, but I just can't see it playing out, except and perhaps in very limited cases. It's a great insight, Sean, that there is a trade off in terms of time for the Senate and the majority has very limited time to get things done, especially when you look at the electoral clock with a 2022 election coming up.

Zachary as we close here, what are your thoughts on this?

There's a younger generation like yours. First of all, do you pay attention to this?

Is this something that can motivate people?

I mean one thing Sean is saying is that the filibuster's days are numbered. That certainly means that this is an issue people should pay attention to, do you think that's that's the case?

I do think that's the case. I think a lot of people in my generation are very dissatisfied with the slow pace of everything in the United States Congress. And especially those who feel aligned with the Democratic Party in particular, I think are very frustrated that many of the reforms that young people have pushed the hardest for are being stalled because of these legislative rules. And so I think that you will see a lot more attention to these issues from young people and young voters who are quickly becoming a very important voting bloc in our elections.

Great point. Is that accurate, Sean, do you think?

So it is accurate, but I would warn both Zachary and folks of his generation and people that have his politics, that while it may be beneficial to your side today, in four years when the Republicans have unified control, you could imagine them getting rid of lots of things that the Democrats would not want to put in place. And perhaps even going back further, right?

Not only stripping away some of the Biden administration's achievements, but even going back to the Affordable Care Act or other policies that have lots of benefits to not only Democrats, but also a good number of Republicans.

For sure.

And there we have the reason the filibuster has survived as long as it has.

Sean, this was fantastic. You offer such detailed and insightful knowledge on Congress and related political matters. And you're so good at explaining things and also making it fun and interesting, so thank you, Sean, for joining us today.

Oh, thank you for having me on, Jeremi. It's a pleasure talking to you and Zachary today. And Zachary, thank you for your poem, as always, and most of all, thank you to our listeners for joining us for this episode of This is Democracy.

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.

Thanks so much, Jeremi. It's wonderful to be here. Before we turn to our discussion with Mark, of course, we have Zachary's scene-setting poem.

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

It is Hard to Build Utopias.

Let's hear it.

It is hard to build utopias when you burn their children in the jungle. It is hard to build utopias when you burn their children in the jungle, and your carpet bombings make whole nations synonymous with tragedy. It is hard to build utopias when you burn their children in the jungle, and your carpet bombings make whole nations synonymous with tragedy, and you shoot your own children smack dab in the middle of their righteousness. It is hard to build utopias when they are already covered in your own rusty tanks and pierced by your own bullets, when they have already realized they don't need to be saved by you, when your own children are blowing up buildings just so you'd turn around and care a little.

It is hard to build utopia, let alone democracy, let alone peace.

Very moving, Zachary. What is your poem about?

My poem is really about the very naive American attitude that we can go anywhere and build the greatest societies out of places that we've already destroyed, and we've already meddled in for long periods of time, and places where things are much more complex than peace and war and democracy and tyranny.

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

I have, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to top Zachary's poem. Zachary, that was awesome. Thank you. I think our session is over

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?

Well, I think the United States was in many places around the world in the 1960s, trying to demonstrate the applicability of its own economic and political and social systems as a way of waging the Cold War and sort of demonstrating to people all over the world that the United States had the answers when it came to human progress and development and effective governance.

This was a period of intense competition, as you well know, Jeremi, between the East and West for the loyalty and sympathy of societies all around the world. So it really mattered, I think, to Americans that they had the keys to unlocking development and democratization and progress in a broad way. Vietnam was just one of many places where Americans tried to achieve those objectives.

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?

Well, I think that the American experience in Vietnam helped to tear down this set of ambitions that ran so high in the early 1960s. Americans in the late 1960s, perhaps in the early 1970s, by and large, believed that they had the ability because of their vast know-how, their technological capabilities, their resources. The world's most productive economy believed that they could bring real change to many countries around the world, and frankly, to their own society as well. I think there's a lot of continuity that has sometimes eluded historians between the domestic arena in which JFK and LBJ and other liberals were so determined to bring reform to all facets of American life, on the one hand, and the way that they approached the international scene as well, both in the international and domestic realms. Liberals believed that by marshaling the resources of the United States, the vast expertise that the United States had at its disposal, they could achieve great things.

And I think what happens across the 1960s, and this is really what I try to get at in the book, is that Americans lose that sense of ambition. And the Vietnam War is a crucial reason, well, only one of the reasons, but a crucial reason why Americans lose that sense of ambition and American foreign policy undergoes a transformation to something quite different by the late 1960s.

But there are a lot of people who, especially nowadays, who would argue that American intervention abroad was, if not purely self-interested, was motivated mainly by self-interest. Is that accurate?

Well, I think one of the things that makes American foreign policy so difficult to understand sometimes is the ways in which self-interest and altruism blend in the way Americans think about the world. The old adage was, what's good for General Motors is good for the world. And I think that there's something really important in that kind of comment. Right? So many American policymakers believe that the United States was on the side of righteousness and had the keys to assuring progress and uplift for the whole world. But they had no doubt at the same time that the same policies would also serve the United States. So I think this distinction between self-interest and the larger global interest is clearer in retrospect than it was in the minds of the people who tended to make policy in the United States. And that was certainly true, I would say, during the 1960s.

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?

I think that is a fair reading. I tried to pick case studies, and you've listed them, Jeremi, thank you, that would illustrate a range of patterns in American behavior across the s. Two of them, Brazil and Indonesia, are very similar in demonstrating the ways in which Americans supported right-wing coups that basically eliminated very uncertain political situations in very important countries in favor of regimes, military regimes, that would clearly serve American interests much more directly and be reliable partners of the United States.

But in Iran, I think you see a similar pattern. There isn't a change in regime, but the United States becomes much more supportive and much less critical of the Shah, a deeply authoritarian figure over that time. And then I also threw in a couple of case studies that illustrate how the United States behaved in places where there was no reliable authoritarian alternative. So I look at India, where Americans had great hopes for a new kind of partnership with a regime that was hardly a candidate for a close alliance with the United States in the early 1960s. And I try to show how the United States sort of soured on that whole idea of building connections to India. And basically by the end of the decade was very much at arm's length with the Indian government and largely given up on its ambitions there.

And in Southern Africa, I try to show how in the early 1960s, Americans believed that they could find ways to support racial justice in this region that was plagued by the vestiges of colonialism and white settler rule in several places, largely abandoned those hopes and really settle for a deeply problematic status quo that at least had the advantage of being stable in the short term and therefore not a situation that would require that the United States expand vast resources or political capital on very, very difficult problems.

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.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think that it's important to recognize that the American attitude toward the wider world in the early s depended on a certain degree of confidence, right? That Americans could have their way in the wider world. It depended as well on the idea that the United States had the resources to pump into these areas to achieve the results that it wanted. And it relied as well, I think, on the idea that it was okay to take some risks, right? It might not ultimately pan out in every place, but it was worth the effort. And I think what you see across the 1960s, particularly as the Vietnam War heats up and really consumes debate in the United States, is that Americans question all of those ways of thinking that were easy to see at the beginning of the decade.

Resources are pumped into Southeast Asia in a way that makes them much less likely to want to expend resources elsewhere. LBJ becomes quite risk-averse, losing much of that tolerance for taking chances that I think had been part of the American approach in the early part of the decade, because he understood that the war was deeply controversial. And the last thing that he wanted was another controversy or another problem, another headache in the world.

So if there were reliable alternatives to be had out there in the third world, LBJ was increasingly likely to seize on those and privilege stability above change across the board, I think you could say, by the end of the decade.

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?

I do think that's true. I think by certainly, LBJ is so focused on Vietnam tha the sees every other policy challenge globally through that prism. And so even in relatively distant and perhaps somewhat unlikely places where you wouldn't think Vietnam was a major issue, LBJ is talking about Vietnam. So when he meets the generals in Brazil, when they come to visit him, I suppose I should say, or when he's talking to the Shah, Vietnam is very much on the agenda and he's looking for support. He's looking for indications that these regimes will support him, even if it's in a relatively symbolic way. That mattered a lot to LBJ as time passed.

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?

Well, because I think that it came to dominate so thoroughly the American home front by. LBJ was nothing if not a political creature who was deeply sensitive to what was going on politically across American society, deeply sensitive to what was being said about him and his leadership. And so over time, I think he came to see Vietnam as the single major issue that confronted his administration.

And for this reason was prone to seeing every other issue through that prism. And I think you see it not only in connection with foreign policy issues, where you might be more likely to see connections among different foreign policy questions. You also see it in the domestic arena, where LBJ's attitudes toward his advisors, toward members of Congress, were deeply informed by his perception of where they stood on Vietnam and how they were likely to support him or not. It's, I think, one of the tragedies of the Johnson presidency that Vietnam becomes so all-consuming for him that every other issue becomes in some ways subordinate to it.

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. So you very clearly and convincingly laid out this idea of the end of ambition and the limits that it places on foreign policy decisions. But how do you square that with the rise in global connections and global awareness among young people and others during this period?

Yeah, that's a fascinating question. And, you know, Jeremi is one of the great authorities on this issue. But the way I would answer this question is as follows. I think that LBJ, as time passed and as Vietnam consumed his agenda, became increasingly concerned with exerting control, exerting control over an increasingly chaotic situation. And that chaos was apparent not only in Southeast Asia, but also in the streets of the United States and in the streets, frankly, of other cities around the world, particularly in the all important year of 1968.

He was aware that activism and unrest was increasingly a global phenomenon. And I think for this reason, was drawn to the idea that where stability seemed to be possible, where he could find partners who would cooperate with him and clamp down on at least some of this unrest, he was ready to seize those opportunities. So, you know, I bite off a piece of that larger story by looking at American relationships with countries in the third world.

But, you know, Jeremi, I think your book Power and Protest gets at another dimension of this broad phenomenon, the quest for stability and security and predictability in an increasingly uncertain world where governmental authorities are losing their ability to control. You know, everything that's happening around the world is in some ways a big story of the 1960s.

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?

I think that the result of the trends that I write about in the book is that the United States by the early 1960s is drawn very strongly to the notion of stability in the third world. As I've said, most of that ambition that was so characteristic of the early s has disappeared. I think it really was Richard Nixon and someone you know, Jeremi, better than anyone, Henry Kissinger, who fully articulated the logic that had become clear to the Johnson administration as the 1960s passed.

What jumps out at me in connection with the history of the 1970s is how unstable some of those, many of those relationships that the United States had formed in the interest of assuring stability turned out to be. So the relationship with the Shah of Iran, very appealing, right? Under the chaotic circumstances of the 1960s gives way to massive instability in the 1970s. The quest for stability in Latin America gives rise to a new period of instability and chaos in some places, at least, as the 1970s advances. And on and on, we could go looking really around the world.

So I think what I would try to emphasize by way of the larger implications of the book is that this search for stability, which made a lot of sense under a very particular set of circumstances, gives rise to precisely the opposite as time passes and tends to confront the United States with a number of really pressing challenges. And I don't push this too far in the book, but I think it's not too much of a stretch to connect some of this instability to trends that continue to play out in the 21st century.

Southern Africa, Southern Asia, right? Southwest Asia, at least, remain areas of real contention. And they remain areas of contention for a whole lot of reasons. But I think that the history of the 1960s is not unimportant in understanding why it is that those areas remain sources of concern many years after the period that I write about.

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?

You are not kidding. I mean, the similarities between Iraq and Afghanistan, on the one hand, and Vietnam on the other, have been a subject of a vast amount of writing. I'm certainly persuaded that the similarities are eerie in many, many ways. And we could certainly spend some time, if you like, talking about some of the ways in which those wars were similar. The way I would tell the story of the way in which Americans have thought about and tried to draw lessons from the history of the Vietnam War would go something like this. In the 1960s, with the end of the Cold War, Vietnam lost some of its power in American politics and society.

But I think it was really the Iraq War, and particularly the difficulties that the United States ran into there between, say, and or so, that brought Vietnam very much back to the forefront, at least in connection with debates over foreign policy. And I think around the same time as political polarization really became that much more extremein the United States, you could also see that Vietnam continued to operate at a very deep level in American society as a touchstone for deep-seated social and cultural debates over some pretty profound issues that tend to divide Americans over questions like their Americans' relationship to their government, the reasonable obligations that government can impose on citizens, the duties of citizens to protest and object to the behavior of theirgovernment, and so forth. A lot of those questions, I think, that Vietnam really put on the table remain very much part of American political life and unfortunately tend to divide Americans very deeply to this day.

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?

Well, that lesson, I think one has to acknowledge cuts against some pretty deep-seated impulses that run through American history and American political culture, even in the post-Vietnam period. I think going a very long way back in American history, you can see a strong impulse to bring uplift and progress and reform to the wider world, to impose the American model on the rest of the world, to assume that the American model is applicable indeed to the rest of the world. So Vietnam, I would argue, and certainly many other Americans would argue, does teach the lesson of humility, of the fact that there are limits on what the United States can achieve in the world. But I think that one of the things that stands out pretty clearly in the history of American foreign relations in the last years, since the end of the Vietnam War, is that that lesson was only partially learned, only really learned by some Americans. And of course, there's a whole other set of lessons that were learned by people with a different set of preferences when it comes to American foreign policy.

There is an alternative set of lessons that would emphasize that really the key point about Vietnam is that you must not give up too early on American commitments overseas, that the United States really does have the wherewithal to achieve its objectives in the wider world. It's just that we don't sometimes have the staying power to see it through. I think there've been fascinating debates in connection with Iraq and to some extent in connection with Afghanistan that have really revealed the competing ways in which Americans of different political persuasions draw lessons from the war.

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?

Well, one of the lessons I think is the predictable one and the one that we've already spoken about, that there are clear limits on what the United States has historically been able to achieve and presumably can achieve going forward in the world. I think that lesson of Vietnam, as I mentioned just a moment ago, was imperfectly learned, was learned only by some Americans. And yet I think it's a lesson that we constantly need to be reminded of and to consider as the United States confronts inescapably more Vietnam-like, Afghanistan-like, Iraq-like problems in the years to come.

But here's the other lesson that I think comes, that's a little more original, I suppose, and comes more directly to my book. And maybe there's something a little bit optimistic here. I think that my book shows the risks, the very pragmatic risks, the very practical risks that flow from pumping too much attention and resources into one part of the world. It shows the destructive impacts that can occur in connection with American foreign policy globally if Americans lose the ability to prioritize, to decide what's really important and how much resources any particular problem is worth as Americans confront it.

And the reason why I say I think there's something a little bit optimistic in that observation is that this is probably a lesson that many Americans, regardless of where they stand on the big questions of the legacy of the Vietnam War, could perhaps agree on. We recognize that there are risks in going too far in one place and sort of losing a sense of proportionality, losing an ability to prioritize. Um, so it may be that. When the problem is framed in that way, what are America's priorities? Where, where should it attach greater importance and devote more resources? We could find space for agreements or at least broad consents.

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.

That beautifully said exactly Jeremi. And you, you phrased it in even more optimistic way. And I really appreciate that.

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 certainly do. I think one of the lessons is that these issues are always complex and never just black and white, never easy or impossible. And I think part of the problem, and, I think particularly among young people is that foreign policy issues can seem so black and white and, and, and, and, and so easy, but they're so complex. And, and part of the problem is that. Our political conversations, aren't mature enough, uh, in this country to really be able to, to address those issues appropriately.

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.

Thank you so much, Jeremi. And thank you, Zachary.

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. Today we are talking with a great author, good friend, and really outstanding thinker about a topic that we all confront every day. What is good leadership? How do we understand what it means to be an effective leader, as well as a persuasive and ethical?

In the world of social media, the world of flaming the world of difficult, difficult issues and difficult opposition to getting anything done. Our guest, Mark Updegrove, has written a number of books on presidential leadership. And his most recent book is really an. Excellent elegant study of John F. Kennedy and uses John F. Kennedy in many ways as a window into the possibilities and the limits of leadership in our world. It's a book. I hope you all will pick up and read. It's an eminently readable and deeply researched book. It's called Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency. Mark, thank you for joining us.

Always a pleasure, Jeremi. Good to hear your voice after so long.

It is nice to be able to have a conversation. Mark is a presidential historian. He's the author, as I said, of five books on the presidency; he's also interviewed, I believe, just about every living president, except for Donald Trump. Is that correct Mark?

That's that's correct. Except the guy down to Mar A Lago.

Whoever that is.

Whoever that is.

Mark serves now as the president and CEO of the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation, I get to consider him a neighbor. We don't see each other often enough. And, before that, he was the director of the LBJ Presidential Library.

Mark is also a presidential historian on ABC News. And, earlier in his career, among other things, he was a publisher of Newsweek. And if you read his newest book, you'll find out that he had a very close relationship with Hugh Sidey, who was the, I guess, the editor of Time Magazine. Is that correct, Mark?

He was, you know, he was the Washington bureau chief. Jeremi, but it was such an out, it had such an outsized power. He might as well have been the editor of Time Magazine as John Kennedy, knew as so many other presidents that he just had an incredibly important vantage point on the presidency.

As a consequence, those presidents really looked to his column in so many ways to see how they were doing.

Well, for those of you who buy and read Mark's book, there's some wonderful insights from Hughes Sidey, that Mark shares as well as insights from Scotty Reston, and many other journalists of the time. Before we get into our discussion with Mark, we have, of course, Zachary's scene sitting poem.

What is today's title Zachary?

Never Again the Same.

Let's hear it.

Never Again the Same. Let's hear it. Sometimes there are words when whispered they are meaningless, but they mean the world when you shout them in the shadow of a wall or on a football field under a hot sun which obscures the moon. Sometimes there are places when you see them on a map they seem hollow, a couple of old municipal buildings and a square in the town.

But you can see in the video recorded hazy from across the lawn how this was once for a few moments the center of the world. Sometimes there are moments when described to you they are meaningless, they seem so abstract, so absurd, unexplainable, a bullet flying unimagined. But you would have had to be there, had to have seen the way she held him as he was dying.

What would we give not to remember how it really was, to stay in that imagined moment when we all cried at the same time, to stay forever remembering the promise that was never fulfilled, the hope that was never realized, words and places and moments that never really were and would never again be the same.

I love it. Zachary, what is your poem about?

My poem is about the huge mark that John F. Kennedy, his presidency, his assassination left on the American psyche, but also the ways in which he and his family have sort of become mythologized. And we remember them in hindsight perhaps differently than we experience them as a country.

I think that's such a wonderful opening mark to discussing your fantastic book. Why did you write this book on John Kennedy? So many other books have been written. What did you have to say that others haven't said?

Well, first of all, Zachary, what a magnificent poem. And we'll come back to this, I'm sure, Jeremi, but just that phrase, a bullet flying unimagined, is just an incredible way of depicting the unimaginable assassination of John F. Kennedy when it occurred in 1963. But to answer your very good question, Jeremi, yeah, there's an old adage, write the book you want to read.

And I had read a lot of books about John F. Kennedy, some voluminous and very comprehensive, but not the book about Kennedy that I really wanted to read. And he is such a fascinating and enigmatic subject and led us through such consequential, turbulent times, triumphant in many ways, tragic in others.

And I wanted to give the reader a sense of that, sort of this cinematic glimpse of Kennedy and all that he's dealing with on any given day, internationally and domestically. I wanted the readers to feel those vicissitudes. And I hoped I achieved it with a brisk, but dramatic take on the two years and 10 months that John F. Kennedy spent in the White House.

Well, you absolutely succeeded, at least for this reader, in both of the things you just mentioned. It's a brisk read, as you said, but it's also a moving, cinematic, but more than cinematic, rueful and thoughtful account of his life. You open with one of the low points of his presidency, which might surprise a lot of readers, the Vienna Summit of 1961, when in a certain way, the leader of the Soviet Union embarrasses this young president. Why did you start there?

Because you mentioned Scotty Reston, who was the renowned columnist on the presidency for the New York Times. After this two-day summit that happened in early June of 1961, Kennedy, as you said, has just been ravaged by Nikita Khrushchev through these two grueling days, where Khrushchev is just constantly nipping at his heels and getting the better of Kennedy. Kennedy knows he's been bested.

He talked about the great chess match of leadership, and he knew he was outmatched by Khrushchev during those two vital days, and knows that Khrushchev leaves that summit emboldened, thinking that Kennedy was, in Khrushchev's words, too intelligent and too weak. By too intelligent, he means he's book smart, but he's not street smart. I can exploit this guy, Khrushchev thinks, coming out of this.

Kennedy knows this. He goes back to the American embassy in Vienna and talks off the record to Scotty Reston, and he admits to Reston that he has been savaged by Khrushchev. He realizes until Khrushchev doesn't respect him that there could be a crisis that emerges out of Khrushchev's deep confidence that he can outmaneuver Kennedy.

And he admits to Restin that he has been savaged by cruise Jeff. And he realizes until cruise Jeff doesn't respect him that there could be a. That emerges out of, uh, cruise Jeff's deep confidence that he can out-maneuver Kennedy. So that becomes this crucible in, in Kennedy's leadership. He knows he needs to show Chris Jeff, that he is a strong leader or Cru Jeff will move to exploit him. That becomes this crucible in Kennedy's leadership. He knows he needs to show Khrushchev that he is a strong leader, or Khrushchev will move to exploit him.

In your vivid description of this, and it really is vivid, and you bring out Kennedy's words, you bring out his emotions, it does resonate with, I think, the central challenge of contemporary leadership, what President Biden must live with every day, which is the sense that you're in the most powerful office in the world, but you have almost unceasing opposition from external actors of Vladimir Putin or Nikita Khrushchev, internal actors, in Kennedy's case, the military that doesn't trust him.

You're really detailed in your description, Mark, also in former President Eisenhower and others who really don't think this man is up to the job, this man who barely wins the presidency in the closest election, as you say, in the 20th century. How does Kennedy deal with that? How does he move forward in this almost unwinnable situation?

You know, you've written about this, Jeremi, you talked about the challenges of modern presidential leadership in the impossible presidency. It's a really difficult task. Kennedy, as you said, comes into the presidency with this very narrow victory, the narrowest of the 20th century, 118,000 votes to the difference between a President John F. Kennedy or a President Nixon in 1961, and yet he moves very quickly to get the American people rallying around him, partly through his iconic inauguration speech, which is so indelible, in which he says, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country, which instantly becomes this eternal expression of the American ideal, thinking about something greater than ourselves.

But while he had the country rallied around him, he quickly stumbled with the Bay of Pigs and the failed incursion of Cuba as we tried to oust Fidel Castro from leadership. And yet, and this really says something, Jeremi, and yet in that desperate hour in his presidency, so soon into a very auspicious run in the White House, he sees his approval rating at 83%. This is after the Bay of Pigs.

Only 5% of the American public disapprove of his job performance. And it shows an American far more unified than today. I mean, how different is that than today when so many people are rooting against a Joe Biden as our president?

But we also realize that it was so important to have a strong leader at a time when the Soviet Union was vying for hearts and minds across the world and trying to dominate much of the world landscape. That was the central crisis of the age. In that moment, Jeremi, and then at that desperate moment in his presidency, I think Kennedy shows to some degree his character. He's humble. He takes accountability. As he says in a press conference, success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. But at the end of the day, the buck stops with me, as Truman might have said. He took responsibility and vowed to the American people to do better. And he does.

He learns from that very important lessons that help him to circumvent the challenges in his most desperate hour in the presidency, which would come the year after with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Why do you think Kennedy was able to become such a unifying figure? I mean, in the years following one of the closest elections in American history, probably nearly every American who was eligible to vote in 1960 remembers voting for John F. Kennedy. How is it possible that he could have become such a unifying figure? It seems almost unimaginable today.

Yeah, it does, Zachary. I've always appreciated, like your father, as an author, I appreciate the power of words. I do public speaking a lot, and we get how words are enormously powerful in conveying ideas and inspiring people and getting people to coalesce.

There's a wonderful quote from Clement Attlee that I relate in the book, and Attlee was the successor to Winston Churchill, and he's talking about Churchill's rhetorical splendor during the Second World War when it was so vitally important. And he says, words at great moments can be deeds. And Kennedy shows us this.

He doesn't accomplish a great deal in the presidency, particularly compared to his successor, Lyndon Johnson, who was a legislative genius and promulgated the Great Society, which fundamentally changed America. But those ideas that Kennedy put forth so artfully, so elegantly in the speeches he gave made us believe in ourselves as a nation, and I think made citizens of the world believe in the United States as a leader, as a beacon of freedom. He goes on this rhetorical hitting streak at a last year of his life that is tantamount to Ted Williams in 1941. It's remarkable, all these speeches back to back to back in different areas that fundamentally change who we are in many respects.

And I think made, made. Citizens of the world, believe in the United States as a leader, as, as a beacon of freedom. And there, you know, he goes on this rhetorical hitting streak at a certain point in 1963, the last year of his life that is, you know, tantamount to, you know, Ted Williams in 1941. , it's remarkable all these speeches back to back to back that in different areas that fundamentally change who we are in, in many respects.

I'm so glad you brought that up, Mark. It's one of the lasting lessons for me from your book, and the quote from Attlee, which is on page 226, I had not actually seen before, and I'm going to use it now and cite you also, obviously. How does one do that?

I want to dig a little deeper, and you have so many nuggets in your book about this, because every president, of course, tries to be eloquent. Kennedy was in some sense trying to be Franklin Roosevelt, and every president since Kennedy tries to mimic Kennedy or mimic Reagan. Why is it that some presidents are able to do this and others aren't? And why was Kennedy able to do this, and even his successor, who interestingly comes on stage late in your book, Lyndon Johnson, why was he unable to do this?

It's interesting, because at one point there's an interview that Kennedy does with Ben Bradley, who was then the cover of the presidency for Newsweek. They were good friends, and before a dinner party, Bradley starts interviewing John F. Kennedy, and you can hear this interview at the JFK Library, but Kennedy calls himself the antithesis of a politician, and by that he means he's not the kind of baby-kissing, back-slapping, name-knowing politician that his maternal grandfather, Honey Fitz, the very colorful mayor of Boston was.

And yet at the same time, Kennedy concedes that he fits the times, and I think what he was suggesting is that he understood that he could master the medium of television. Great politicians, whether for good or for ill, master the mediums of their age. Jefferson did it with partisan newspapers. Lincoln did it with the written word. He was a wonderful writer and had these memorable speeches, but very few people heard those speeches. You read those speeches in newspapers.

He understood the importance of the art of photography, which he used in his successful presidential campaign in 1860. Roosevelt, who you just mentioned, mastered radio, which was the medium of his time, talking to people directly. Kennedy did that with television.

The television age was coming into prominence when Kennedy came into office, but for television, it's likely that Kennedy wouldn't have been chosen as our 35th president. The debates, the first presidential debates in history, were held on television between Kennedy and Nixon, and many of us as presidential nerds can summon those images of a very pasty-faced, five o'clock shadowed Richard Nixon versus this glowing, handsome, leading man type in John F. Kennedy, and that image really mattered.

So, good politicians understand the importance of the mediums of their time, and they understand the importance of image. Kennedy got both of those things very vividly. Just in terms of the speeches he gave, Jeremi, let me just give one example, if I may, of why Kennedy was so effective, and it comes in 1963.

Kennedy had reacted largely to the crisis of civil rights. He wasn't proactive at all. He was trying, in fact, to tamp down the Civil Rights movement because it exposed not only the nation but to the world to the worst of American apartheid at a time when, as I mentioned, we were trying to compete for hearts and minds across the world with the Soviet Union. That made us look bad, like we weren't living up to our ideals as a nation.

You call it disengaged at one point

Absolutely, Jeremi, and you and I have talked about this, how Kennedy was so reactive on this, but eventually, he sees the crisis brewing in Birmingham where Martin Luther King had brought his campaign, the most segregated city in America. He finally realizes he's got to go on TV to ensure that George Wallace, who is standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama trying to prevent its integration, does not get the headline that night, does not get the lead story on the 6 o'clock news. He is encouraged by his brother Bobby to go and speak to the issue of civil rights on television.

Ted Sorensen, his speechwriter, tells Kennedy he doesn't have enough time, in eight hours, to write a presidential primetime speech, but Bobby encourages his brother to go on anyway and to speak from his heart. This very iconic speech about civil rights is largely extemporaneous from Kennedy, who had the courage to go on national television and speak his mind about the issue of civil rights, and in so, he calls it a moral issue, elevating the cause of civil rights to a moral issue for the first time in our history, and it is a turning point in the struggle for civil rights.

And as you show, civil rights leaders who had been, let's say, lukewarm on Kennedy, like Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, and others, they themselves see it as a turning point at that time.

Uh, as Martin Luther King says, uh, of Kennedy after the speech that white boy just hit it out of the park.

I wanted to point out also, Mark, that one of the many things I learned from your book is how effective Kennedy's press conferences were as well, which I think is another version of what you're talking about now, his ability, yes, to use the words that Sorensen and other speechwriters, Richard Goodwin, had put together for him, but his ability to own the words and often to extemporize off the cuff and connect with an audience. You say, it's extraordinary, this is around page 60 in the book, that about 18 million people on average saw his press conferences, 90 percent of Americans, 90 percent of Americans watched at least one of his first three, according to a 1961 poll. That's extraordinary, that's the Twitter of its time, isn't it?

That's exactly right, and I think the American people were able to see Kennedy in his element, going toe-to-toe with some of these wonderful journalists. Kennedy had been a journalist himself at the close of the Second World War when he left the military, he went and worked for Hearst Newspapers in Europe covering the war, and he had great respect for journalists. That didn't mean he always agreed with what they wrote about him, and it certainly took exception to a lot of what they wrote, but he was so beguiling, and I think the American people could see his facility with language, with the English language, his extensive knowledge of the issues, and frankly, this was the must-see TV of its time in many ways.

We were just so beguiled, the press included, with this young, elegant, auspicious president. It's interesting, five days after his inauguration, I believe a third of all Americans tuned into that first press conference because we were so entranced by him, and among other things, Jeremi, he had to tell the American people to stop sending letters and telegrams because the West Wing was becoming overwhelmed.

I think one of the biggest concerns that a lot of young people like myself have is that maybe the skills today that are required to run for political office, to win the presidency, to campaign so effectively and win so many people over are not the same ones that are best adapted for governments. How did Kennedy's skills as a communicator translate or connect to his skills in government and as a legislator, not as a legislator, but as someone with a legislative agenda?

Well, I think he was able to convey those ideas very effectively and successfully to the American people and to a large extent the world. When Kennedy stands in front of the Berlin Wall and says, Ich bin ein Berliner, I am a Berliner because I'm a citizen of freedom, hence a citizen of Berlin, that makes a marked impression. But I think you're right, Zachary.

Those are two fundamentally different skills. On the one hand, you have somebody who needs to convey ideas to the American people, to the press, and on the other hand, somebody who has to work behind the scenes to get his agenda done. Your dad mentioned LBJ earlier and why LBJ was not able to effectively communicate as JFK did.

I think, and I just want to add to that, Kennedy, we have this word as though it's a brand new concept in 21st century America, authentic. We had other words that were just like that, sincere or genuine, but Kennedy was authentic. He didn't pretend to be anything that he wasn't.

He knew he was a child of great wealth. In fact, he gave a press conference where it was expected that he would be running for president. He whipped out of his pocket an imaginary telegram from his father and it read, Dear Jack, don't buy any more votes than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide. He didn't contrive a personality that he thought would fit the American people. He was very much himself.

Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, while he was incredibly effective behind the scenes, perhaps no one was more effective than him in the 20th century, contrived this ostensibly presidential personality that simply was not authentic. It was disingenuous and it really in effect tamped down the Lyndon Johnson that was so powerful behind the scenes. I think that was part of Kennedy's appeal. He was really the genuine article. He was the real deal and part of that was his authenticism.

Mark, that's so well said. I think your book lives up to its title. Your story is a story of policy, of course.

It's a story of an individual. It's a biography. It's an analysis of the presidency, but it is really a story of how Kennedy uses his grace to lead.

Of course, it's the oldest story in the world that the great leaders, whatever that means to be a great leader, that they have grace. Franklin Roosevelt had a certain grace about him. I think you capture that.

You describe that as well as anyone I've read on this. I wonder, though, how then you think about that in light of many of the other things you include in the book as the honest historian you are that run against this. I mean, the test of any book is does it capture the complexity of a life and yours certainly does.

In particular, you very honestly and in great detail talk about Kennedy's affairs and it's hard to have a conversation about Kennedy today without talking about that, particularly the story of Mimi Beardsley, which we only learned about, I guess, a decade or two ago, this 19-year-old intern who I think it's fair to say is sexually exploited by the president. Yet there's the image, of course, of Camelot and Kennedy and Jackie and the children. You're also very clear that Kennedy was not the most engaged father.

This is not a book on that. Kennedy is not a model of child rearing. I'm just curious how you think about this. All lives are contradictions in a way. How do you think about this in relationship to the grace that you also describe?

Yeah, it's a fair question, Jeremi, and I had to wrestle with that too, as you do with any biography. Kennedy stands on feet of clay at times and shows flashes of greatness at others, and I think that his great moral failing is his womanizing. That said, I'm certainly not rationalizing womanizing, but I remember talking to Gerald Ford years ago and he was talking about Washington in that age.

He said that it was quite common. In fact, it was the general rule that a lawmaker on Capitol Hill had affairs, illicit or otherwise. Some were very open. Gerald Ford certainly did not. I think he was faithful to his wife. They had a very close relationship, but most of his contemporaries, most of his peers did.

Kennedy was certainly no exception. In the testosterone-filled Kennedy household, it was almost a way of keeping score, a way of competing with his father and his brothers, and to some degree, so you can chalk it up to being part of the zeitgeist. By the same token, there is that relationship with Mimi Beardsley that you referenced very astutely.

You just can't get over that. He not only exploits her, he really objectifies her. He makes her almost this concubine, and in fact, at one point commands her to perform a sexual act on a friend in aid. That just can't be chalked up to the zeitgeist. That is just a deep, deep personal flaw, and it's really hard to get around. By the same token, you see Kennedy in leadership and in these pivotal moments in the presidency, and as you suggested, Jeremi, he does show a certain grace that helps us to circumvent the crises that he was laden with during the course of his presidency.

Right, and you certainly show that very well, in a really well-described few chapters, I think, on the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I want readers to read the book. I don't want us to share all that with them. I want them to buy the book to read that, because I think the Cuban Missile Crisis, as you say, is probably the most significant Cold War crisis.

I'd like us to close, Mark, on the natural place to close, the assassination, and not so much what happens. I think everyone knows the story, but more how we should think about it today. Is it really a turning point in our history, and how do you look upon it?

It's one of the things I think you do that's very new in this book. You're looking upon that assassination now, not just about 50 years hence, but also from the perspective of what's happened in the last decade or two, to the nature of American democracy. How do you look upon that moment right now?

It's a great tragedy. We have seen this president through almost three years of, again, this incredibly consequential time in our history, and he is showing tremendous promise. Kennedy is cut down, I'm going to use Zachary's words here, by a bullet flying unimagined when he is in his prime.

He's 46 years of age. He's gone through perhaps the most dangerous hour of humankind with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and stands on the world at that point unparalleled. There is nobody who has the stature of John Fitzgerald Kennedy when he is killed in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963.

I think there are myths that spring up about Kennedy partly because he's martyred, Jeremi, that get in the way of remembering Kennedy, perhaps as we should. We imagine what Kennedy would've done had he faced Vietnam or civil rights or other things. And I think my guess is there would've been travails that affected Kennedy that would've diminished our view of him in time.

There were these daunting crises that he would've faced. And we can think of Kennedy and what he would've done and imagine the very best of outcomes, but by no means would Kennedy have necessarily been able to deliver them.

I think in, and you were alluding to this earlier, in so many ways, Kennedy is also a symbol of what it is to be free.

Because of the, soaring rhetoric of his administration, including the iconic addresses he makes at the foot of the Berlin Wall and American University and, at his inauguration, we think of him in some ways as symbolizing what it is to be American and what American democracy means to the world.

I think there's a lot to that. And, our final question, Mark, and it's the one we always ask, and I know it's one you think about deeply. What should we, what should young listeners in particular, take from Kennedy's life? What are the lessons for leadership today?

You know, I think we look at the, what a perilous state democracy is in right now, I know that this is what this podcast is ultimately about, Jeremi, and we understand its fragility now more than any time in at least a generation.

But there were existential crises that democracy was going through in Kennedy's era, as well as again, we were at the height at that time of the Cold War and we saw Soviet tyranny, and to a large extent Chinese tyranny, posing a threat on the world stage.

I think that this is nothing new and we can get through it if we resolve to make this country as strong as possible. And the one thing I would urge young people in particular to do is get involved in the electoral process. Jeremi, I mean, you're married to an elected official, you know how important this is.

I would urge them to certainly to vote, but also to get to, to, volunteer at the polls, to volunteer on campaigns, to get educated on the issues. There are other things you, we can do to strengthen our democracy, but there's nothing more important than voting the right people into office.

Absolutely right, and it's one of the central messages of our podcast, the importance of participatory democracy and that means getting involved in all ways that one can, Zachary is Mark's description of Kennedy and this discussion does it open avenues for young people, you think?

I think so. And I think what's powerful about his analysis is that. It's very much aware of Kennedy's flaws. And I think we have to remember when we look back on our history, that it is not the story of a few perfect moments we've never managed to achieve again, but of a number of flawed and yet, and yet very successful, hopeful moments in our history. And we have to be able to learn from both the enormous achievements of those moments, but also also the failings

I think, Mark that Zachary has given the perfect answer for why people should read your book. What do you think?

Zachary I owe you big time, by the way, I think you should run for office, but that's a whole separate conversation.

We have that conversation quite often. And our listeners often tell me that too. Mark, thank you so much for joining us and for writing this book, I wanna remind our listeners, it's Incomparable Grace by Mark Updegrove, and it's a fantastic book. It's a thoughtful and deep read, but also a quick read.

And I encourage you to, and a quick read in the best sense in that it's a book you don't put down and you begin it, in New York City and you land in Los Angeles and you've finished it, which is the mark of a good book in my mind. Mark. Congratulations.

Jeremi Zachary. Thanks so much. It's been a delightful conversation.

Thank you, Zachary for your poem, and thank you most of all, to our loyal listeners for joining us for this week's episode of This Is Democracy.

Welcome to our new episode of "This Is Democracy." This week we are going to discuss the history of unions in the United States, and we're going to look at the current strike by auto workers, in the United States. These are auto workers who belong to one of the oldest and most important unions, but one of many unions in the history of the United States, the United Auto Workers.

And we are fortunate to be joined by one of the leading historians of workers' unions and race in the United States. This is our friend, Professor William Jones, who is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota.

He's the author of, many articles and two really important books. The first, "The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South," and then, more recently, "The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights," a book that puts the March on Washington, which everyone has heard of, especially because of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

Will's book puts the March on Washington in the context of labor history as well as civil rights history, which is really important. Will, thank you so much for joining us today.

Oh, it's great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

And of course, we have our scene-setting poem from Mr. Zachary Suri. Uh, Zachary, what's the title of your poem today? "From the UAW Picket Lines." Wow, we're gonna get an on-the-scenes account from you, Zachary? Or at least an imagining of one, yes. Okay, well let's hear it.

So here we are, waiting on the picket line, for the world to change, for the times to rhyme. They sold us the lie that if we just worked hard the dough would fry and line our pockets with bread.

Pretty soon we were left the only ones not caught up in the net or dead on a cot. They told us when we asked that they had nothing to say. Forget tomorrow. Clock out today.

But we will not be told that our futures were sold in Washington or in Detroit where the rivers fold, and wash our cars out to sea.

We will not be told to keep standing still, when the steels arrive from the mill, and we have the parts to rebuild the heart of what made this country go. We will not be told to accept our fate, to wait and say nothing forever. If anything yet we're far too late, but better too late than never.

What's your poem about, Zachary? My poem is really about, how, the ravages of the global economy in the past few years have hit at the heart of manufacturing jobs in the United States and have led to a lot of dissatisfaction, with, not just with government but also with big corporations, in Detroit and across the country. And how labor action can hopefully move towards solving those problems or at least, finding a better solution for workers.

And that's your point about late but still important, right? Exactly.

Will, this moment we're living in now that Zachary captures, I think, a bit in his poem, is that how you would frame the current labor action against the automakers? Is that really what it is? Is it about automation or what's really at the root of this?

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a number of things involved, and yeah, automation is an important part of it, and the struggle over jobs and the sort of number of jobs and employment. I think there's really three main issues at the heart of this, this current strike

One is the issue of the two-tier employment system that the Big Three auto workers have adopted, which is a product of concessions that were made by the UAW during the recession in 2009 when the auto companies were really in bad shape. And the UAW agreed to allow them to essentially start hiring workers, new workers under different systems, under lower wages, less, in some cases no benefits, healthcare benefits, pensions. And the idea was that, you know, when the auto companies were in bad shape and needed some help in recovering, the UAW, the workers agreed to take these concessions.

But now the Big Three are doing very well, and the feeling is that they, you know, the workers should not consider, continue to take these concessions. Some of the issues are around wages, and I think the union has framed that in the broader context of, I think a conversation we've been having over the past several decades about rising levels of economic inequality, the ways in which the wealthy have done well at times when the less wealthy, when the 99% has seen their living standards and their income decline.

And then the third one I think is this issue of jobs. It's related in part to automation. It's also for the auto industry, particularly related to the transition to electric vehicles, which, you know, are easier to manufacture and so they require less labor and there's a concern about the ways in which that shift to a, you know, a lower labor demand is going to affect the current workers. Right. And they're concerned about that.

Will, that's really helpful in framing this, and I wanted to come back to your first point because I think that's one that at least to my reading of the news has received a lot less attention. The fact that the auto workers not only gave up certain benefits to help the automobile companies during the 2008 recession, but also that they actually agreed to create a two-tiered system. Can you just say more about that, how that's worked and what the expectations were when that was negotiated in 2008? Right. Well, I mean the expectations were that this was going to save an industry that was really on the brink of collapse and so that, you know, which, in a sense, that has happened. The way it works though is that you get, you know, something that you hear a lot in interviews with workers on the picket lines is they'll say, you know, like they're standing next to workers who do the same jobs under the same conditions as them who earn, you know, in some cases half of what they earn with no benefits.

So they, you know, there's a sort of a fundamental sense that this is unfair, but there's also a recognition that this is a really dangerous situation when you're trying to build solidarity between workers, and it sort of pits workers against each other. And has the potential to really divide the workforce in a way that I think this strike is aimed at, you know, overcoming and sort of uniting.

Well, that point, Will, it seems to me leads really to the bigger historical question, which is what role have unions played? Why does the UAW exist? I get this question from my students all the time. Maybe that's just a function of those students being in Texas. I don't know. But, what you're describing seems to me to actually be an anathema to what unions historically have been about. Is that correct?

Yeah. I think in some respects, it's certainly anathema to the history of the UAW. And, you know, just as an aside, my students here in Minnesota, where there's a very vibrant labor union, they personally often have very little contact with the labor movement. And so, you know, I'm sure that it's more intense in Texas, but across the United States, people have very little sense of what unions do and where they come from.

The UAW is you know, comes from a particular history of one of the industrial unions of the 1930s. It was one of the founding unions of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, which is, you know, half of the AFL-CIO. The other half, the AFL, is much older, and it actually comes from a tradition that is in some ways based on drawing lines among workers or between workers. I mean, it was a sort of built by skilled workers who really kind of circled the wagons around their own particular skills, and were very exclusive. So many of the AFL unions, you know, they would limit their membership to men. They would, some of them actually explicitly said that you could not be a member of them unless you were white. So they were exclusive, and the idea was to try to draw a very narrow line and control the labor market and the access to skills within a particular labor market. The CIO unions, like the UAW, took exactly the opposite approach. They felt, "If we can organize as many people as possible across as many different lines of skill and status, across lines of race and gender, we can be more powerful if we have everybody in the same union."

And so that's really, the UAW really exemplifies that history. It emerged in the 1930s, organizing auto plants where the, which were really deeply divided, right? You had very, very highly skilled machinists, working alongside, you know, janitors, alongside, people who were, who had very little experience. You had, you know, people of many different, you know, immigrants from all over the world. People of different races, men and women working in the same factories. And the UAW was one of the first unions to say, "We're going to try to put everybody in the same union." So this idea of the concessions really cuts at the heart of that idea, of the two-tier system, and gets really to the heart of the history of the UAW.

Zachary? And what has been the recent history of industrial unions in the United States? Where in the sort of long history of American labor do you see this particular strike fitting?

Yeah. Well, I mean, so since the 1970s, we've seen a really dramatic change in the way in which labor laws have been enforced. We've again seen a weakening of the enforcement mechanisms. We've seen a sort of emboldening of employers to really ignore the labor laws, which are, in some ways sort of inherently weak, as there aren't very many enforcement mechanisms or serious enforcement mechanisms in them. At the same time, we've seen a decline in the number of workers who are employed in the core industries in the United States, partially due to automation, partially due to the globalization of manufacturing, the rise of the service economy.

And the auto industry has been, you know, at the core of that, right? They've been, we've seen declining numbers of people. It's not so much that the, you know, the cars use fewer workers. It's that a lot of the parts that are used in cars are manufactured overseas. So increasingly, auto plants in the US are really assembly plants. They're, you know, taking things from all over the world and putting them together into a finished product, and that takes fewer workers than if you have to make those products from scratch. And that has really challenged unions like the auto, the UAW. They've responded in a number of ways.

One way they've done, responded is to sort of branch out and organize other workers. I think about 20% of the UAW are actually academic workers. They're graduate students. They're contingent faculty at, mostly in the UC, the University of California system.

They've also made the, you know, they face this problem of, you know, do you sort of make concessions and do you, you know, recognize that you are in a place of weakened you know, clout and respond to that by making concessions? Or do you in as, you know, in the language of the sort of the people who run the union movement now, or the UAW now, do you fight back? And one of the important things about this strike is it occurs after the election of Shawn Fain who ran against a sort of entrenched union bureaucracy that had really been responsible for a lot of these concessions. He ran on a reform slate that was supported by people who have been fighting within the UAW for many years, for decades, to try to push the union toward a more aggressive stance in trying to push back against some of these concessions. So that's a strategic change that, you know, and I think we'll see how it plays out.  I think the strike, you know, raises that. We don't know how the strike's going to end.

Will, your discussion of the election of a new UAW leader brings up an important issue. I often hear people say very derogatory things about unions, and I think some of this comes out of the rhetoric of the 1970s and '80s that unions are corrupt and that unions are run only for the leadership. That's obviously not true, but why do you think that's said so often, and what's your response to that?

Well, I mean, it's said, it is in part true. I mean, there is a truth to the fact that there has been corruption in unions. I think like any large institution, there's room for corruption. I think it also has gained strength from the position that these big industrial unions have found themselves in, where they, it's been very difficult for them to actually deliver for their members, so there's this, you know, a sense that they don't get much done. You know, they've done an important, they've played important roles in at least holding the ground. But I think, you know, that's something that's very hard for people to see, and so there's a sort of, yes, sense that these are institutions that are on their back, and it's hard to sell them even to their own members.

On the other hand, I think it's important to keep in mind that unions have really been central to any advances that we've had toward economic equality in the United States and in other respects in terms of other forms of equality. So, you know, the UAW came out of the 1930s, but it really, I think, played its central role in the United States in US politics in the 1950s and '60s, the sort of heyday what some historians call the heyday of American liberalism. It was the UAW that pushed for universal, for healthcare programs, for workers, to provide health that employers, this sort of employer-based system that we now have. The UAW actually initially pushed for a universal healthcare program. When the auto companies pushed back vehemently against that, the UAW said, "Well, okay, then employers need to step up and provide healthcare for workers."  They pushed for, you know, all of the sort of liberal provisions of what we might call the welfare state of the 1950s, was pushed for by industrial unions like the UAW.

The UAW also played a really critical role in the civil rights movement. It was one of the unions that, you know, provided consistent funding for the major campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s. The UAW sent money to help support the Montgomery Bus Boycott. They sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the March on Washington. The president of the UAW, Walter Reuther, spoke at the March on Washington, you know, just before Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. So this, these are institutions that have really been vital to American democracy and to the sense of sort of creating a more egalitarian United States.

I'm so glad you explained that Will, because it is striking and I think undeniable that moments in our history when unions have been stronger, we have seen less economic inequality in moments such as the 1970s and '80s. When we see unions receding in American history we see more inequality. So there's at least a correlation there, as my economist friends would say. That's right. That's, I mean, if you, one chart that I like to show my students is if you chart the level of income inequality in the United States over the past century, and you chart union representation rates, they're in exact reverse correlation, right? That as unions have declined, we've seen wealth inequality grow.

Will, do you think that's why it appears that there is at least some kind of renaissance of unions in the United States? You see Starbucks workers, Amazon workers, and various others talking about unions in ways we hadn't seen before. Is that part of the story?

I think it is. I mean, one of the really remarkable things that we've seen in the Gallup polls is that, so in 2010, the Gallup poll, you know, Gallup poll every year since the '40s has asked people whether they think unions are good or bad, sort of a basic public, you know, opinion poll of unions. In 2010, that number reached its all-time low. It actually, for the first time, since they started asking it, it dipped below 50%. Wow. Last year, that number reached 70, over 75%. And so in the, you know, since 2010, we've seen the, that public approval of unions go from its historic low to close to an all-time high. And I think, you know, there's a number of reasons for that. I think, you know, there has been growing attention to income inequality. You know, 2010 was around the time that we saw the emergence of the Occupy Wall Street movement. There was this sort of conversation around wealth inequality. There were the big protests in Madison, Wisconsin, that you and I both witnessed. Yes. I think they called attention to the historic importance of unions in a way that we haven't seen in a very long time. Since then, I think we've seen, certainly during the pandemic, I think there were a number of ways in which the pandemic contributed to this growth of unions. One was the sort of outward display of workers who were really, you know, were essential, were critical for the functioning of our society, critical to protecting people from the pandemic and caring for people when they got the pandemic. Those workers were often the lowest paid, the worst treated workers in the economy. Yes. Yes. And that highlighted this contradiction, I think it led to a lot of those workers, going on strike and forming unions.

I think the third thing that I'd point to is actually this reform movement within the union movement that, you know, really goes back to the 1970s, but that people have been working within the unions to make them both, you know, to sort of root out corruption, but also to make them more aggressive and to sort of take on some of these concessions. And that, I think we're seeing, you know, all of the leadership of many of the big unions and of the AFL-CIO comes out of these reform movements that started back in the 1970s. So I think we're in some ways seeing the results of those.

In recent weeks, we've seen both the current president of the United States, and his predecessor visit UAW picket lines or at least speak with UAW strikers. How should we understand the role that this strike, will play and is playing in our national politics so close to a presidential election?

Yeah, that was really fascinating. I thought, you know, in both cases. I mean, I think it's important to point out that Donald Trump did not go to a UAW plant. He went to a non-union plant. He was also invited by the employers who were, who are sort of a vehemently anti-union, parts manufacturers. So I think that's important to keep in mind.

Biden, on the other hand, was invited by the president of the UAW, and spoke very powerfully. For the first time in history, a union, a sitting president really took a very strong position, in favor of the union, and I think really, you know, framed his remarks in the tone that the union is saying, that this is about wealth inequality, that the CEOs of the auto manufacturers have done very well, and the workers deserve to do well also. And you know, I think that that signaled that this conversation is going to be, is clearly going to be a really important part of the coming election. And I think for a first time in a very long time, we're seeing, you know, the politics of unionization, and of wealth inequality really being at the heart of the conversation leading into this presidential election.

Will, there's a lot of talk and you've been part of this discussion too about working class voters. From, you know, the period of Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt's presidency forward, there was a presumption in part because of the connections between the Democratic Party and some of the major unions that working class voters would be Democratic voters. Then the Trump movement seems to have reversed that, at least in some areas, perhaps particularly in the Midwest. How do you see that issue today? Are working class voters MAGA voters? Are they Trump voters? Are they Democratic voters? What would you say?

Yeah. I mean, I think it's important to keep in mind who, you know, what we mean when we say working class voters. I mean, there's a very, I think a very small sort of narrow segment of working class voters who are overwhelmingly white and male, they're largely rural, who have, you know, who are, have become Trump voters. Many of those voters have been conservative voters for a very long time. I mean, they were, you know, going back to Reagan, even going back to before that, to Nixon.

The working class is extremely diverse and the working class as a whole still is decidedly Democrat. But if you, if you look at a particular, you know, segments of workers, I thought it was actually interesting that, you know, Trump, spoke, gave his speech when he went to Detroit in Macomb County, which is the sort of classic place where, the sort of origin of the term Reagan Democrats. The sort of long-term Democrats who had turned to the Republican Party with the, in 1980 to vote for Reagan. So I think, you know, I think Trump's politics are often sort of framed in the context of the 1980s. Right. And he seems sort of stuck back there. But I think that was definitely part of his, thinking and going.

 Is it fair to say that the white male elements of the working class that we associate also with traditional unionism, the traditional people working in Henry Ford's plants and others, is that a smaller and smaller part of what you'd call the working class today?

Well, in some respects it's always been a small part of the working class. They've been the working class that has been most visible. I see. But certainly, I mean, in, like, if you look at core industrial jobs, I mean, if you look at the pictures of UAW picket lines, you know, they look very different. It's lots of women, and lots of Black and Latino men. So in that sense, the sort of core sort of UAW, which has always been a racially diverse union, right? But it's become, its sort of core constituency has become more racially and gender diverse. Certainly gender diverse. Right. That makes sense.

So Will, we always like to close our episodes by bringing together the enormous reservoir of information and knowledge that guests like you are sharing with us, and we're fortunate to be able to participate in that and to benefit from your knowledge. We like to bring together this historical knowledge with a forward-looking perspective. Based on this really deep and complex history of unions and workers in the United States that you have such a strong command of, what would you say to a President Biden, or it could be to a Republican presidential candidate, what would you say to them about how one could be both pro-worker and pro-growth? It seems too often we see these as dichotomous positions in our history, that you have to either be for growth or for unions. Of course, many periods of economic growth have been periods of union growth and union prosperity in our society as well. So how can we bring those two together looking forward today?

Yeah. I mean, as you said, I would point to history. I mean, if you look at the post-war period when the UAW was at its most powerful, that was also the point in which the U.S. economy was growing more rapidly than it ever has, before or since. And so I think that, you know, again, it's correlation. But it raises the question as to whether there is a fundamental sort of tension between growth and, you know, better wages, better working conditions, sort of a more prosperous working class.

I think also I'd point to, you know, a lot of that conversation goes around the sort of sense that sort of better wages for auto workers is going to be damaging for consumers, right? That, like, if we raise wages for auto workers, you know, it's gonna raise the cost of a car. We hear this in a lot, you know, if we pay fast food workers too much, it's gonna, you know, shut people out of McDonald's, right? And I think it's important to keep in mind that in each of those cases, the actual cost of labor is just a fraction of the cost of making any product. I think the cost of labor, the labor cost for making a car is around 10 to 15% of the total cost. So there's a lot of other factors going into that.

It has to do with, you know, getting products from overseas and trade policies that affect that. It has to do with, with the compensation that goes to management, and also, more importantly, the compensation that goes to shareholders and out in profit. And I think it's important to, you know, to keep in mind that those all mean that we can actually, in many cases, it's beneficial for the broader economy to make sure that people have better wages. It stimulates consumption. And that there's certainly not a contradiction between improving conditions for workers and promoting a prosperous economy.

Zachary, you spent the summer in Germany, and of course, Germany's a country with very strong unions. Do you agree with Will that Germany's an example of economic growth and worker protections going hand-in-hand?

I think so, and I think one thing about this moment that maybe is a little optimistic is that I think the attention from both parties to the issue of economic equality, albeit from two different perspectives and one often much more about cultural resentment than actual economic policy, I think that should be a positive sign that most Americans or a large number of Americans recognize that the future of our economy is not going to be in the same places and organizations that we've relied on in the last decade or so that we have to look back to the past but also look forward to find new ways of thinking about wealth distribution and economic prosperity in our country.

And Zachary, for young observers like yourself, are unions part of that story? Do you feel that your generation is giving more attention to unions than maybe the generation just before yours?

I think so, and I think quite simply it's one of the places in American politics that is most exciting but also most accessible. I think it's a engaging, exciting, political movement as much as it is a very serious, critique of our economy.

So Will, that was the last question, the really last question I had for you, which was for our listeners, particularly our younger listeners, if they're interested in learning more about unions as scholars and perhaps as activists, what are the best ways to get involved and to become knowledgeable of this subject matter?

Yeah, well, I think you can, I'll do a plug for taking labor history classes. Sign up for my classes. Go to Minneapolis and sign up for Will's class. That's right. Well, you, you don't have to come here. You can in most universities there are classes, you know, related to labor history and labor studies more broadly.

I do think that, you know, Zachary's right in terms of the accessibility. I mean, in a lot of cases young people, you know, learn about unions 'cause they go to work in a place where there's a union drive. And, you know, I've been, there's a Starbucks down the street from my house, and I've had a great time talking to people who are trying to build a union there. And they're, you know, they're all in their 20s, and they have, you know, they haven't been involved in unions before, but they're learning a lot about unions, and they're really interested in it. So that's a way that I think, you know, whether you work in a place like that or you, you know, you go to a business like Starbucks, I think you can talk to the people who work there about their experiences. And, you know, I think depending on where you live, there are a lot of union members who, you know, they don't wear their UAW hat everywhere, but they're, you know, they're around and they have experience with unions. So those are other ways you can learn about unions.

 Its such a great point. Even in a state like Texas, which traditionally doesn't have the same strong unionization as other parts of the country, teachers are part of a union, right? That's right. What I know your next project is on, Will, public service workers, right? That's right.  My wife, who's a city council member, she's actually part of AFSCME, which is the public sector union. And so there are actually a lot of people around who work with or are involved with unions. And, as you say, Will, I think that talking to them and getting a sense, positive and negative, of what their experience is, is important in informing ourselves when we're discussing these issues politically.  Yeah. I mean, it's true that, you know, if you're in high school, the chances are your teacher is a union member.

Right. Right. Well, Will, thank you so much for sharing this excursion, a necessary excursion today into the history of unions and workers in American society. There's obviously much more you could say. You could fill, I think, 500 podcast episodes on this, but you've given us really a wonderful introduction to the topic, and I hope our listeners will dig in for more. So, thank you Professor Will Jones for joining us today. Thanks for having me on. It was great to talk to both of you. And thank you, Zachary, of course, for your, inspiring and really imaginative poem bringing us to the picket lines where we all could learn a lot. And thank you for doing that, Zachary. Thank you most of all to our loyal listeners for joining us for this episode of This Is Democracy.

Welcome to our new episode of this is democracy. This week, we are going to return to the Middle East. We did an episode a few weeks ago with Peter Beinart on the conflict between Israel and Hamas. And today we're going to take an even more historical deep dive. We're going to look at the 1970s, which I think historians have come to agree is a period of major transformation in the region. And we're going to look at what happened in the 1970s and how the experience of that crucial decade had deep influence upon the events that we're seeing today and probably will continue to have deep influence upon where we go from where we are today in the region. This is a case where history is not only part of the past, but really is ever present in our contemporary conflicts and our contemporary efforts to understand the conflicts around us. We're fortunate to be joined by a person who's a close friend and someone who I think is one of the really great scholars of the Middle East from the 1960s to the present. This is Salim Yaqub. He's a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. and director of UCSB Center for Cold War Studies and International History. Salim, it's so good to have you on the podcast.

It's wonderful to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Salim Yaqub is the author of three books that I highly recommend to all of our listeners. His first book, Containing Arab Nationalism, is really, I think, as close to the definitive work as is possible on the Eisenhower Doctrine in the Middle East, which was really the first American Cold War Doctrine for major influence, even perhaps for attempted dominance in the region.

Salim's second book, which is really one of my favorites, "Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and the US Middle East relations in the 1970s". This is a book that looks at events in the Middle East, but also within the United States and the emerging Arab American community, which becomes very important as Salim shows to American politics in the 1970s. It's also a book filled with wonderful anecdotes about Woody Allen. and Henry Kissinger and various other individuals. So I encourage all of our listeners to read it.

And Salim's most recent book, "Winds of Hope, Storms of Discord". What a great title. The United States since 1945. And that title would certainly apply to the present as well as the entire period from 1945 to the present. Salim has written many important articles and other chapters on U.S. foreign policy, on the Middle East, and on Arab American political activism.

Before we turn to our conversation with Salim, we have, of course, our scene setting poem from Mr. Zachary Suri. Zachary, what's the title of your poem today? "To Israel, a Widow". "To Israel, a Widow". Wow. Let's hear it.

Isaac Singer once said you were an encounter with the supposedly dead, and I suppose he is right. You're a land of old men and infants held tight and sandy ancient ruined coasts. All of them were always supposed to be ghosts. Few wars can be fought with history, but you have fought them all, have saved a generation from fighting back the fall. Yet, though you have somehow survived on promises that you revived, it must be said you've built yourself a cage. No war should be fought with rage

The grandchildren of the widower, the children of the hollowed, held in their tunnels underground, are lost and must be found. Your neighbors remain, to say the least, uncharitable, Lips smacking for the feast, break through the garden fence. Can there be any recompense? No, I am convinced all moral questions will remain unanswered. You are alive, and soon you must have peace. If only so, it might be said, all had a chance to count their debt.

I love the doggerel in there Zachary. What is your poem about?

My poem? It's hard to explain. I'm not sure I perfectly understand what I was trying to get at either. But. I think it's sort of an attempt to understand the place of Israel today, but also in particular from the perspective of the 1970s, a period when Israel was still led in large part by a generation which was defined by the Holocaust, but it was also beginning to really develop its own sort of distinct Israeli identity that still shaped by that, the sort of last exile to Israel from Europe and other parts of the Middle East, and in some cases from within the territory of Israel.

And to understand that mindset, but also to apply that to today and how that history informs this moment of violence. between Israel and Hamas and maybe the lessons we can draw from these many decades of conflict.

I love the arc in your poem, Zachary, from Isaac Bashevik Singer, who sort of represents the early generation of European Ashkenazi Jews who settle Israel. And then, of course, the generational change that I sort of feel in your poem as it goes through to where we are today, which is a Middle East that looks very different, of course, from The world of Isaac Petrovic Singer in the 1950s and 60s, right? Yes, very much so.

Salim, maybe that's a great point of entry. As I mentioned at the top of the episode, you're one of a number of historians, you're one of the leading historians, making the case that the 1970s, this period about a quarter century after World War II, that the 1970s is a real turning point for the region and also for U.S. policy. How should we begin to understand that?

Sure. And first I just want to say, thanks for sharing that poem, Zachary. It's very powerful. I'm going to want to go back and read it again, listen to it again and linger over it.

But, in answer to your question Jeremi, the the seventies really are a very pivotal decade for a lot of reasons and in a lot of places, but certainly for the history of the Middle East and the history of U.S. involvement in that region. I mean, what you see in the 70s is the you know, sort of the last vestiges of European imperialism being removed with the British withdrawal from the Persian Gulf region in the, in the first couple years of the decade. You know, the French had vacated North Africa in the previous decade and earlier than that. And so what you see then is a new, or maybe the continuation of a previous era in which the superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union becoming more and more active in that region.

It's also, and also, you know, they're bringing the Cold War struggle, you know, to the region in a way that hadn't quite happened previously. Also, I mean, certainly the 1973 war is very key for all sorts of reasons that we'll probably get into. It's, you know, during and shortly after that war that the power of the oil producing Middle Eastern states, and in this case, particularly the Arab states, because they actually mount an embargo against the United States and some Western countries becomes, you know, unavoidable, you know, it becomes impossible to ignore.

And of course, the lingering after effects of the oil embargo and of the OPEC price increases are gonna last for the remainder of the decade and into the following one. And, you know, also the manner in which the Arab Israeli War of 1973 ends and the kind of diplomacy that comes in its wake sets the agenda for Arab Israeli peacemaking for years and in some cases, you know, arguably decades to come.

So it's, and then I guess you could, I would just add that, if you fast forward to the closing years of the decade, you start seeing the emergence of political Islam as a really powerful force, primarily with the Iranian revolution of 1978 to 1979. But there also were some pretty important events taking place in the Arab world. The seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979, you know, right around the same time that the Iranian hostage crisis begins.

And if, you know, if you want to count, consider the Middle East in its more, in a broader geographical frame, you could look at the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, also right around that time in December 1979 as ushering in a whole new set of issues that will define the last years of the Cold War and set the agenda for the way in which the Cold War ends.

Certainly you've given us a sense of the density of conflict and change occurring in that, in that decade. Zachary, you had a question? Yeah.

Why was the 1973 war, which you mentioned, so transformative for Jews, Arabs, Muslims, and also for, for many Americans?

Yeah, that's a great question. Well certainly it's transformative for Arabs and Israelis because it's sort of place puts the Arab Israeli conflict into a new dimension, you know, the immediately preceding years, you know, between 1967 and 1973 were ones in which the Israelis were occupying the lands that they had taken over in that war. And they sort of felt invincible. They didn't think that they really needed to, take seriously the diplomatic overtures that the Egyptian government under President Sadat had extended to them early, you know, earlier in the decade. They felt that they could really hold out for a much more dramatic set of concessions coming from the Arab side.

And essentially what happens with the 1973 war, which is on the Arab side, waged by Egypt and Syria primarily, is that it kind of shocks the Israelis out of their complacency and forces them to confront the fact that they actually really are still vulnerable. And that in turn, you know, makes it increasingly clear to them that they have to reach some kind of political accommodation with their Arab neighbors perhaps on terms, you know, not quite as favorable as the ones that they had been holding out for previously. And it's also, it's from the Arab side, it's important because it rekindles a sense of pride or restores a sense of pride that had been very seriously damaged by the debacle of 1967.

And in fact, I mean, from the standpoint at least of Egypt. It's psychologically very important because Egypt and Sadat feel that they need to show the world, and maybe more particularly the United States and Israel, that they're not total pushovers, that they are, you know, that Egypt is a force to be reckoned with. And having made that case, even though Militarily, the war ends up going quite badly for both Egypt and Syria. Nonetheless, because they do a lot better than they did in 1967, that restores a measure of respect, and maybe more importantly, self respect, and that gives at least Sadat the confidence to move forward and enter into increasingly intimate peace negotiations with Israel, you know, at first brokered by the United States, but eventually face to face.

I don't want us to jump too quickly to the present. I want us to stay in the seventies, but the question really has to be asked. Many have made an analogy between the October, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the 1973 attack by the Arab states on Israel, do you see an analogy between those two events?

Well, I mean, there are some similarities, but in the end, I would say they're kind of superficial. I mean, I guess the, you know, one, obviously, it's an attack on Israel. Although in the 1973 case, it's not an attack on Israel per se. It's an attack on Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. But nonetheless, it's an attack that the Israelis are not prepared for. And, is much more damaging to the Israelis than anyone thought possible.

Of course, the major difference between 1973 and 2023 is that this is, the attack by Hamas is, you know, primarily against civilians. It entails not traditional military methods, but really horrific, and, you know, close up forms of attack that were, of course, recorded in very grisly ways that, and so that the level of shock, I think extends, it's a different kind of shock. It's a much more visceral sort of shock. And I think it is extended, it has extended much more, powerfully around the world then and especially the Western world than the shock of 1973 did, you know, partly because of the nature of the attack, and also because of the nature of media now as opposed to 50 years ago.

One of the things that's striking about the '73 war to me as a historian, Salim, and I wonder if you react the same way, is how this terrible war, and a war that initially looked like it might lead to the collapse of Israel and then, as you said, turns around relatively quickly with Israel occupying for a short time more territory than it had before the war. Correct. How, this terrible war then leads to a peace process? First of all, do you see a connection between what many call the Camp David process that eventually leads to an agreement between Israel and Egypt brokered in part by the United States? Do you see a strong connection there? And how should we understand that connection?

Oh yeah, there is a very strong connection. I mean, I would frame it in the following way, that the war and its immediate aftermath opened up a new phase in which it was widely recognized that some sort of diplomatic process between Israel and its Arab neighbors was both possible and necessary. I mean, on that, virtually everyone agreed. The difference was on the scope and nature of that diplomatic process.

There was, at the end of the war, an emerging international consensus that what really needed to happen was, as some sort of comprehensive settlement, between Israel on the one hand and its Arab neighbors on the other, you know, with the Palestinians playing some kind of role, although that was not clearly understood as yet. And as a result of this process, you know, according to this vision, you would have a full Israeli withdrawal from all of the territories occupied in 1967. That would be the West Bank, Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula, and in exchange for that withdrawal, the Arab states would extend recognition to Israel and commit to living in peace with Israel, which was something they had not previously done.

And in most cases continued to refuse to do in the years after 1960 and 1973. So that was the emerging consensus that you start to see in late '73 early 1974. But there's also, there's a contrary scenario and this is the one that is put forward most powerfully and resourcefully by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who does not think that it would be a good idea for the United States to pressure Israel to withdraw from all of the territory occupied in 1967. He thinks that a more stable scenario is one in which Israel is allowed to hold on to significant portions of that occupied territory. Now, we can later talk about why he felt that way, but that's was what he wanted to do. And so what Kissinger sets out to do, and it's really a pretty remarkable diplomatic performance, is he brokers or he encourages the development of a dialogue between Egypt and Israel.

He quite early intuits that Anwar Sadat of Egypt, although he would much prefer a comprehensive settlement in which Israel withdraws from all of the occupied territory from 1973, nonetheless, I'm talking about Sadat now, would be willing to accept some, a more bilateral arrangement where Egypt gets back the Sinai and the remaining Arab territories are either, you know, either remain under Israeli control or their status is you know, less certain. I mean, the sine qua non for Sadat is getting back the Sinai, and he's willing to take a less hardline view regarding the other occupied territories. Kissinger, you know, very brilliantly senses this. You know, almost immediately after the war ends. So Kissinger, you know, very skillfully cultivates Sadat and, you know, takes advantage of the fact that Sadat is willing to be a lot more conciliatory in negotiations with Israel than other Arab parties, especially, Assad, Hafez al Assad of Syria is prepared to be.

And so through a series of very complicated and clever diplomatic initiatives, he manages to sideline Syria, although that takes, that process takes a couple of years and it's something that Asad himself is not quite aware is occurring until it's too late for him to stop it. He ends, he brings an end to the Arab oil embargo and he, essentially puts in place a diplomatic process where Egypt withdraws from the confrontation with Israel, and the beauty of that, from Kissinger's perspective, is that it results in the subtraction of Egyptian power from the Arab Israeli equation.

And once that has been accomplished, the ability of the remaining Arab actors, Syria, Jordan, the Palestine Liberation Organization, you know, these, the other parties that have territorial claims, that they want to see satisfied, their ability to get those claims satisfied is sharply diminished in the absence of Egyptian power. And that in a sense makes it impossible for another Arab Israeli war like the one that occurred in 1973 to break out. And indeed, if you look over the history over the last five decades, there's been plenty of really, really horrific strife, but there has been no general Arab Israeli war of that sort.

And, you know, that achieves Kissinger's objectives of first removing a flashpoint that he fears could spark a superpower confrontation, but it also eases the pressure on Israel. And makes it possible for Israel to take its time about considering withdrawal from any other occupied territories. And you know, as we've seen, the extent to which Israel has relinquished territories after giving up the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, that was the big key that Egypt, that was the key gain that Egypt made. And that was realized, not under Kissinger, but under Jimmy Carter a few years later with Camp David.

Once Egypt has the Sinai Peninsula back, it's out of the war. And then Israel's occupation of the remaining territories is fortified. Now obviously the conflict has taken ups and downs. The diplomacy has gone through ups and downs ever since that time. But I think the key ingredients. The key sort of strategic realities that we need to keep in mind to understand, you know, what kind of diplomatic scenarios have been possible in the years since 1973, we need to keep in mind this achievement of Henry Kissinger of pulling Egypt out of confrontation with Israel and thereby, in his view, making the diplomacy more manageable. Right.

And this is something many of us have chewed on for a long time, right? How to evaluate Kissinger's diplomatic shuttle diplomacy and his efforts to, as you say, take Egypt out of what had been a coalition of anti Israeli states. One other point I thought I'd add for you to comment on, and then I know Zachary has a question too, is part of what he's also doing is making the United States the most powerful external actor in the region. He's sidelining the Soviet Union, which had been an ally of Egypt, right? And that, of course, has implications for the United States in the region, taking us all the way up to the Iraq war, correct?

Oh, yes, absolutely. I mean, essentially what Camp David accomplishes, and this is often missed because it wasn't something that Jimmy Carter, I think, really was focusing on. I mean, he really, I think Carter genuinely was trying to make peace between Arabs and Israelis. But one byproduct of the Camp David Agreement is that, you know, Egypt is removed from confrontation with Israel. It enters into an alliance with Israel. I mean, with the United States, whereby it starts receiving nearly as much economic and other kinds of aid as Israel does for some years.

And that's a huge strategic blow to the Soviet Union. And again, that gets masked because the Soviet Union in some ways is more visibly active in the region in the years thereafter. I mean, it really, you know, it flexes its muscles. It, you know, has all kinds of agreements and makes various diplomatic gains on the Arabian peninsula with its relationship with South Yemen and, you know, further to the East, it's invading and occupying Afghanistan. It's cementing its strategic alliance with Syria. It's doing all these things that are on the surface fairly menacing, but that masks the underlying diplomatic reality, which is that the Soviet Union has basically been frozen out of Arab Israeli diplomacy and becoming increasingly irrelevant to it. And then, of course, it's not too much longer after that, that the Soviet Union itself ceases to exist.

In the United States, even though it had already been flexing its muscles pretty aggressively in the Middle East during the 1980s. And for that reason, I sometimes argue that, the cold war, the post cold war era began a decade earlier, a decade early in the Middle East. Nonetheless, by the time we get to the early nineties, it's unmistakable because the Soviet Union has ceased to exist. And the United States really is now the sole remaining superpower. And its ability to call the shots is made even more unmistakable by the victory in the first Gulf war of 1991.

Right. Right. Zachary. In this context of bilateral agreements, and a sort of cooling of the conflict during this period, why do these efforts fail to produce a Palestinian state and achieve a two state solution? Was that the point of these efforts or why do the sort of claims to statehood of the Palestinian people during this period fail to be represented at these, in these major agreements?

Well, that's a great question. I mean, there are lots of different aspects to it. I mean, on one level, you can answer it by pointing out that the gap between, if we're talking first in the early 1970s and in the aftermath of the 1973 war, the gap between Palestinian aspirations and, reality was just unbridgeable. Now that gap narrows in the years ahead, because essentially what happens is the Palestinians. scale back their ambitions in ways that make them at least theoretically compatible with Israel's continued existence. So if, you know, in the early 1970s, the formal position of the Palestine Liberation Organization was the liberation of all of Palestine, essentially the dismantling of the Zionist state and the creation of the so called democratic state.

Sometimes it's referred to as the secular democratic state, but usually the term secular was not attached to it. It was just, you know, the democratic state in which, at least on the surface, Arabs and Jews, you know, Muslims, Christians and Jews would all have equal rights. If you look closer at the proposal, you could see that it wasn't quite that because there were, there was this expectation that a large portion of the Jewish Israeli population would actually leave. And so it's really not, it's not a very serious proposal. But it's also not serious because it's just, there's just no way that it can be realized militarily.

Now, what you see happening over the subsequent years, you know, the years after 1973, is that the Palestinian movement, and in particular Yasser Arafat, who is the chairman of the PLO, they start inching towards a compromise where they, you know, the first there's all sorts of qualifications and disclaimers, but, essentially they're moving closer to accepting a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. And essentially, disavowing or at least setting aside their claims to the rest of Palestine. And over the years, this becomes increasingly explicit, you know, it becomes official in the late 1980s where the Palestinian, the PLO basically, you know, disavows its claims to the rest of Palestine and says that it is ready for a two state settlement, in which a Palestinian state will live alongside Israel.

So because the Palestinians have scaled back their demands, have essentially become more realistic, the international community takes note of this and starts becoming more forceful about pushing this two state settlement. And that's one of the reasons why I believe the 1970s are such a pivotal decade is that it's really during that decade, especially the second half, that the scenario for a two state settlement comes into existence. Now, at first, neither Israel nor the United States embraced this idea. Carter comes pretty close to doing so. I mean, if he, didn't have to think about domestic politics and other, you know, diplomatic obstacles, I think Carter, you know, during his presidency, probably would have. You know, come out in favor of a two state settlement himself, but he lands somewhere short of that because of, the issue from his standpoint just isn't quite ripe yet. But in subsequent years, you get to the point where, you know, even the United States embraces the idea of a two state settlement.

Well, the Israelis are, I mean, they've talked about the desirability of that, but they're not, they haven't made the same kinds of official undertakings that would bring that into being. And of course, I mean, a major obstacle to that is the continuing colonization of the West Bank, where you do have Israeli settlers increasing their number at a rate and, you know, in various configurations that make a viable Palestinian state harder and harder to imagine, but nonetheless, you know, the idea of a two state settlement gets enshrined, not just in, you know, international politics, but in American diplomacy as well.

Salim, the PLO, the Palestinian Palestinian Liberation Organization, which is the predecessor to the Palestinian organization led by Mahmoud Abbas today in the 1970s, it's often depicted at least within the United States, accurately or inaccurately as a terrorist organization. First of all, is that accurate? And how do we understand the intersection between concerns about terrorism, airplane hijackings, various other events, and the issues that you've laid out so well for us here?

Well, I mean, the PLO back then and in subsequent years was a very broad based organization, essentially a confederation of many disparate parties, some of which were committed to acts of terrorism and, you know, some of which actually did commit some pretty gruesome terroristic acts in the 1970s as in subsequent years.

The position of Yasser Arafat is somewhat ambiguous in that one gets the sense that he's not really crazy about this tendency and he would much prefer to see it ended, but he also feels limited in his ability to oppose some moves taken by Palestinians in the name of liberation, just because these movements have captured the imagination of Palestinian opinion, and to some extent have gained a certain cachet internationally, and there are also, you know, various, you know, more internecine disputes that he's navigating that, you know, from time to time, make it very difficult for him to stand in the way of groups like Black September. That's the organization that conducted the attack on the Munich Olympics in 1972 and similar groups. And sometimes he, you know, he goes further and actually pays lip service or, you know, praises groups that have not too long in the past committed acts of terrorism. So his position is definitely compromised. I mean, his hands are not clean in that respect.

And that of course is a, you know, a terrible political obstacle that he faces. I mean, in one respect, it, you know, his ambiguous stance on terrorism allows him to keep the Palestinian movement united. But it also serves to blacken the name of the PLO and the Palestinian movement in the eyes of many outside observers.

Is it effective though, Salim? I mean, I'm guessing that leaders of Hamas would look back and say, that the more radical PLO of the early seventies, when, for instance, Yasser Arafat comes to the United Nations and displays a weapon in his holster. And, you know, that image of radicalism and violence was more effective at getting attention than the scaling back of ambitions, as you put it before.

It's really hard to say. I mean, my overall inclination is to be, you know, very strongly opposed to the use of violence, especially terrorist violence, as a, you know, that's of course a more like a normative or moral stand. You know, when it comes to looking at it analytically and trying to assess, you know, in as detached a way as possible, you know, to what extent this move towards violence or these moves towards violence helped to put the Palestinian issue on the map I think there definitely there is a sense in which that kind of activity drew attention to the Palestinian cause and gave it a kind of visibility and stature that it might not otherwise have gained. But at the same time, it's also, as I said, blackened the name of the movement. So I would, I guess, you know, if I had my druthers and if I could wave a wand and change history, none of this, of these at least none of the really heinous forms of violence would have taken place.

I mean, obviously resisting occupation, you know, when you're confronting armed occupiers, that's a whole different ball game. So I would, I definitely, I very much regret that this move towards violence has occurred and has been embraced by so many. And of course, you know, even to, especially today, seeing, you know, what it's leading to makes me all the more firm in that conviction now, even today, though, there you're going to get arguments and they won't necessarily be completely off base that the October 7th attacks revived the Palestinian issue in a way that perhaps few other events could have done.

You know, because if you think about where things were, just, you know, in the weeks and days leading up to the attack with, Jake Sullivan, you know, kind of gloating that, oh, we've got the Middle East under control. Now we're moving towards normalization between Israel and its Arab neighbors and Arab countries further afield like Saudi Arabia. And the implication of all of that was, We're not going to be so hung up on the Palestinian issue that, you know, the Arab states will make peace with Israel and they will not condition their willingness to make peace on serious movement on the Palestine issue. I mean, there may be some fig leaf that they demand, but seriously, you know, fundamentally, they're not letting the Palestine issue stand in their way.

So there was the scenario that was coming into view of Israel normalizing relations with a whole bunch of Arab countries, especially very prosperous ones, developing all kinds of lucrative trade relations and joint ventures, you know, with these wealthy Arab states and essentially being able to continue colonizing the West Bank. And, you know, I was very depressed by that scenario. I didn't see any way of breaking out of it. Now I am utterly aghast at what's happened on October 7th. And I don't by any means favor breaking out of the impasse by those means, but that is what has happened. And the Palestine issue is on the map and on the diplomatic agenda in ways that it wasn't two months ago. So, you know, so that's the kind of logic that people will invoke. To make the case that there is a place for this kind of violence, even though I very firmly reject that argument.

I appreciate, Salim, the care and thoughtfulness in the way you said that, and I think it's a very reasonable position you've adopted. Zachary?

How should we understand the legacy of these sort of failed, but also to a certain extent successful peace agreements in the 1970s, and then also, of course, the war in '73, the developments that we've been discussing, how should we understand the legacies of these events today? I'm thinking in particular, of their legacy, in regards to the creation of Hamas and the situation pre-October 7th, which precipitated the current conflict.

Yeah, that's a really, uh, good question. A difficult one, but a good one. I mean, the way I think about what was achieved in the 1970s is that it, there's a scenario in which the moves towards greater cooperation between, let's say, Egypt and Israel, in that decade, could have led to broader peace settlements, but they did not. And essentially, that was what I think Jimmy Carter, and I think it was what, Anwar Sadat hoped for, but in a curious way. Anwar Sadat ultimately proved less adamant about linking peace with Israel between, you know, a bilateral peace between Egypt and Israel to a broader set of agreements between Israel and its other Arab neighbors, and especially, some arrangement for the Palestinians.

So there was kind of this. curious situation where Jimmy Carter, you know, he really wanted the bilateral agreement that he was brokering between Egypt and Israel to be a stepping stone to broader agreements between Israel and other Arab countries and between Israel and the Palestinians. But because of the kind of agreement that Carter was ultimately obliged to accept and because I know, frankly, the very hard line and determined stance that Menachem Begin, the Israeli prime minister at the time took. And because of, you know, Carter had other issues on his plate that were becoming more pressing, especially the Iranian revolution. You have to think, you just, when you think about the chronology, you really get a sense of how these issues fit together.

You know, the Camp David Agreement, the first agreement, the one you actually forged at Camp David, was in September 1978. The Iranian Revolution erupts in the weeks and months right after that. By the time the actual formal agreement, the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel that was kind of blocked out in general terms at Camp David is achieved. That's March 1979. So that's a couple months after the Shah has fled and the new Islamist government has taken over in Iran. And you know, it's not too long after that, that the American hostages in Tehran get taken. So Carter's attention is increasingly sucked into this black hole of misery that, you know, ultimately, you know, arguably ends his presidency.

So you know, Carter really wasn't in a position to build on the peace agreement that he had brokered at Camp David in, in the way that he hoped. And in fact, there's some poignant statements by Carter, private statements that he makes around this time and, you know, the summer of 1979 or so where he says, wow, you know, if I end up leaving office without really making a dent in the Palestinian issue, people will rightly say that I was a failure. And, you know, sadly, that was his legacy. At least as far as the Israel Palestine issue is concerned.

Salim, it strikes me that one of the legacies that's unavoidable is the continued lack of Palestinian statehood, that the two state solution that you described so well doesn't come into being. And looking back over this period over the 1970s, one might have thought that things might have gone that way.

The Arab states, as you say, in 1973 are united and they show that they are not as weak as they had been in 67. The Saudis and the other oil rich states are able to use oil as a weapon in many ways to bring down the American economy or to cause enormous pain in the United States, both at the beginning of the 1970s period, and then also at the end of the decade. So there's rising Arab power.