The Past, the Promise, the Presidency

Today’s episode is all about Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th President of the United States. It’s not too much a stretch to say we are living in the America Ronald Reagan envisioned, one in which market forces matter as much as morality in the formation of policy decisions, the American military is strong and taxes quite low by historical standards, and a Supreme Court with a noticeable conservativ...

Today’s episode is all about the 1970s. Which means we’re talking about two presidents today: Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. As you’ll soon hear, the 70s are hard. They were a time of transition, and historians often treat it as such, as a bridge between the raucous sixties of Vietnam and Nixon to the era of self-gratification and glitz that was the 1980s under Ronald Reagan.  Now, that might not b...

Today’s episode is all about Richard Milhouse Nixon, the 37th President of the United States.  But the real question is…which Nixon?? Among the most mercurial of our presidents, some might say Machiavellian while others would reach for malevolent, Richard Nixon was a man who changed over the course of the more than quarter century he spent at the beating heart of American politics. Or, did he? He...

Today’s episode is all about Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th President of the United States, and arguably its most consequential. Note we did not say best or greatest or anything overexuberant like that. But if you are talking about presidents who left their mark on American society, presidents from the past whose impact we still feel today in our daily lives, for good and for ill, you could do wo...

Today’s episode is all about John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States—a vigorous president forever young in our memory because tragedy snatched him too early from our view. Kennedy stands near the top of public rankings of presidential greatness, though professional historians tend to rank him slightly lower, a distinction that captures the way the Kennedy mystique, the Cam...

Today’s episode is all about Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States, a two term president with arguably the greatest pre-presidential resume of them all. It’s not everyone who could fill out a job application, and under experience, write: “saved Western civilization.”  That might be a stretch, but only a small one. It was Ike, after all, who oversaw the defeat of Nazi German...

Today’s episode is all about Harry S Truman, the 37th president of the United States, a man with the unenviable task of following Franklin Roosevelt, AND of overseeing the end of the largest war in human history. “Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked when consoling the newly-widowed Eleanor Roosevelt. Harry, she said, “is there anything WE can do for YOU, for YOU are the one in trouble no...

Today’s episode is all about Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Actually, we have two episodes for you on FDR.  He’s that important, and being the only person ever elected to the White House four times, he was also in office long enough to have created several legacies when issues of race arise.  Just how important was he?  Well, here’s one way to look at it: there have been three true existential crises...

Today’s episode is all about Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Actually, we have two episodes for you on FDR.  He’s that important, and being the only person ever elected to the White House four times, he was also in office long enough to have created several legacies when issues of race arise.  Just how important was he?  Well, here’s one way to look at it: there have been three true existential crises...

After the events of January 6, 2020, we invited a few friends and historians to offer their interpretations of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building. While our understanding of this historic moment will continue to evolve, we invite you to think of this conversation as a first draft of history. Featuring Dr. Jeffrey Engel, Dr. Sharron Conrad, Dr. Adriane Lentz-Smith, and Dr. Timothy Naftal...

Today’s episode is all about the roaring twenties. It’s a decade often recalled with wistful longing, and more than touch of trepidation. Longing, because that is what Americans largely felt in this era: a longing to move past the pain of the Great War and the great pandemic.  Trepidation, for us if not for them, because we know the traumas that 1930s and ‘40s would bring. Sometimes it’s no fun to...

Today’s episode is all about Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States and arguably the most consequential.  Note, I did not say one of the greats.  They aren’t holding a spot on Mt. Rushmore for him. Certainly not lately, as the national reckoning over race during 2020 has landed hard on Wilson, whose reputation has been sullied by the widespread realization that he might just vie f...

Today’s episode is all about Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States and arguably the most consequential.  Note, I did not say one of the greats.  They aren’t holding a spot on Mt. Rushmore for him. Certainly not lately, as the national reckoning over race during 2020 has landed hard on Wilson, whose reputation has been sullied by the widespread realization that he might just vie f...

Today’s episode is all about William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States. The only person on our nation’s history to serve both as Commander-In-Chief and as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Taft is one of those people in history with the sad fate of having his name forever recalled…alongside someone else’s.  But really, what did you expect would happen to the man...

Today’s episode is all about Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States. Theodore Roosevelt, TR, or Teddy, was one of the all-time great personalities in American history. Larger-than-life, captured in stone on Mount Rushmore, inspiration for the Teddy Bear and featured in countless movies, he was at once is intriguing, frustrating, thoughtful and blustery, a man ahead of his time...

Today’s episode is all about William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States, the president who brought the country into the twentieth century and whose death left the nation in the hands of one of the all-time-great leaders, and characters, in American history, Theodore Roosevelt.  Historians typically view McKinley’s time in office as a moment of, well less transition, than visible tra...

Today’s episode is all about Presidents Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison, the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th presidents of the United States—one of the most unusual transitions in US history. Cleveland served one term from 1885 to 1889, lost the election to Benjamin Harrison, who was in turn replaced by Cleveland in 1892.  Whew.  And you thought our times were complicated! Our two experts today will f...

Today’s episode is all about Presidents James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, was only in office six and a half months before he died from medical complications following a botched assassination. Just sixteen years after Lincoln’s death, Garfield was the second president assassinated. His vice president, Chester Arthur, served the remainder of...

Today’s episode is all about Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th president of the United States, a man whose name is synonymous with the end of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow in the south. But perhaps his legacy isn’t quite that simple. Here’s a quick refresher on Hayes.  Born in Ohio in 1822, he was trained as a lawyer, prior to enlisting in the Union Army during the Civil War. After serving b...

Today’s episode is all about Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, a man whose story is inextricably intertwined with the history of race in America.  He was, after all the, the commanding General of the Union Forces that ultimately won the Civil War, and he was present at every step of the way as the country faced perhaps an even larger task: reconstructing a workable union i...

Last week, President Donald Trump revealed he has tested positive for COVID-19. After experiencing symptoms and trouble breathing, he was transferred to Walter Reed Medical Center on Friday night, October 2, 2020. While receiving treatment, President Trump's staff and doctors released conflicting and confusing information about his health. But 2020 isn't the first time a president and hi...

Today’s episode is all about Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, a man whose story is at the center of the defining moment in American history. President during the Civil War, Lincoln saved the union and freed enslaved Americans, and thus casts a mighty long shadow over anyone who held office since.  Every President since, historians say, has had to “get right with Lincoln.” ...

Today’s episode is all about Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United States, a man whose presidency is synonymous with the missed opportunities of the post-Civil War era. Never elected, Johnson instead became president after Abraham Lincoln’s tragic assassination. Rather than continuing Lincoln’s agenda, Johnson instead undermined black citizenship, and attempted at every turn to thwart t...

Welcome to The Past, The Promise, The Presidency, Season One: Race and the American Legacy! This season explores one of the most pressing issues in all of American history—the country’s troubled and difficult history of race relations. This podcast focuses on the history of the nation’s most powerful office, the President of the United States, and its complex relationship with race. This episode d...