DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. It's Presidents' Day, a time when it's customary to remember George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and other great leaders in critical moments in the nation's history. This year, the presidency itself is arguably being redefined by the current occupant of the White House, with potentially lasting consequences for American democracy. Our guest today is Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian Jon Meacham. He wrote in a New York Times piece on the eve of the 2024 election that he regarded Donald Trump as a man whose contempt for constitutional democracy makes him a unique threat to the nation.
We've asked him back to FRESH AIR to see where he thinks the Republic stands a year into Trump's second term and to talk about his new book, "American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, And The Pursuit Of A More Perfect Union." It's a collection of speeches, letters, pamphlets and other original texts from 1619 to the present, organized into specific periods with introductions by Meachum. Meachum has written many books on American history, including biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, George Herbert Walker Bush and Andrew Jackson, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He's currently working on a biography of Dwight Eisenhower. He teaches at Vanderbilt University, and he's recently been named the National Constitution Center's semi-quincentennial scholar, a new role anchoring the center's programming around America's 250th anniversary. Well, Jon Meacham, welcome back to FRESH AIR.
JON MEACHAM: Thank God you're the one who had to say that.
DAVIES: (Laughter).
MEACHAM: I can't do it, so I'm delighted.
DAVIES: Well, you better learn because you're going to be busy with that.
MEACHAM: (Laughter) Thank you for having me.
DAVIES: You know, I read that forceful quote that you gave about Donald Trump right before the last presidential election, and, you know, I feel that I should note that you are not a partisan guy. I mean, you came up as a journalist. You were a major editor in Newsweek. You note in that piece that you are not a registered Democrat or Republican, that you voted for Republicans and Democrats, for president and other offices. Do you want to explain why you were moved to make such a direct criticism of a president in an election?
MEACHAM: To whom much is given, much is expected. I've been incredibly fortunate in my historical and biographical life. And my view was if you're not going to speak out in a moment where a former president and potentially future president had self-evidently attempted to overturn a free and fair election in 2020, if you're not going to speak out on that occasion, then when on Earth would you speak out? And I believe the sentence you read was true then. I believe it is true now. I think it was to reelect President Trump, I thought was not worth the risk. I'm not predicting catastrophe, but I am projecting, as we all do, this is what the structure of reason is, is you take data, you take previous patterns, and you make the best guess you can about how the future might unfold.
And what we saw in 2020, not just on January 6, 2021, but the entire season in which the president attempted to thwart the will of the people, was a unique threat. Andrew Jackson didn't do it in 1824. Richard Nixon didn't do it in 1960. Hubert Humphrey didn't do it in 1968 and Al Gore notably did not do it in 2000. And so when you have such compelling evidence in the public arena of how a single figure has put his own appetites and ambitions ahead of a constitutional order that, for all of its imperfections, has served us for a quarter of a millennium, I didn't see the point of running the risk again.
DAVIES: Right.
MEACHAM: And I still don't.
DAVIES: Just to provide some context for that very direct quote that you gave about President Trump, I think we want to note that, you know, you have a history as a nonpartisan. You came up as a journalist, but you said in that New York Times piece that you are not registered as a Republican or Democrat, that you have voted for candidates from both parties for president and other offices. I will note that you did do some speech writing for President Biden, I believe, right?
MEACHAM: That's right. I was George Herbert Walker Bush's biographer, and he became a friend at the end of that project, and President Biden is my friend. And so I'm arena-adjacent (laughter).
DAVIES: Right. Well, we'll talk about the Trump administration in this course of this interview, but generally speaking, is it about what you expected, his second term?
MEACHAM: A little worse, I think. Well, worse and a tiny bit better. Let's be fair. I think the tone, which does matter in the history of the presidency. FDR once said that the job was not an administrative or an engineering task, but that the presidency was preeminently a place of moral leadership. And moral means how we are with each other. And so what a president says, how he says matters. That's repeatedly demonstrated in the life of the republic. And so in that sense, it has been entirely predictable. I find the kind of political sadomasochism that's unfolded in many ways in the last year to be the most disturbing. I think that many people in the incumbent administration seem to find some political pleasure in inflicting pain. And at our best, America should strive mightily not to do that. That said, the reason President Trump is a live threat, if you will, is that we simply don't know what he will do and when he will do it.
DAVIES: I want to play a piece of audio. This is from President Trump's speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos, which was a long, meandering speech, as his sometimes are. Let's listen to this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We happen to be in Switzerland. Maybe I'll give you a quick story. But they were paying nothing. They make beautiful watches, great watches, Rolex, all of them. They were paying nothing to the United States when they sent their product in. And we had a $41 billion deficit, 41 billion with this beautiful place. Flew over it, isn't it nice? So I said, let's put a 30% tariff on them so that we get back some of it, not all of it at all. We'd still have a deficit, big deficit at 40, 41 million. That's a big deficit. And I said, let's put a tariff on - different tariffs, different places. You're all party to them, in some cases, victims to them. But in the end, it's a fair thing. And most of you realize that. But we put a 30% tariff on Switzerland, and all hell broke loose.
They were calling, I mean, like you wouldn't believe. And I know so many people from Switzerland - incredible place, incredible, brilliant place. But I then realized that they're only good because of us. And there are so many other examples. I mean, us - probably other places, but a majority of the money they make is because of us 'cause we never charged them anything. So they come in, they sell their watches, no tariffs, no nothing. They walk away. They make $41 billion on just us. So I said, no, we can't do that. So I'm going to bring it up. I still would have a deficit, pretty substantial, but I brought it up to 30%. And the I guess prime minister - I don't think president. I think prime minister - called. A woman.
And she was very repetitive. She said, no, no, no, you cannot do that, 30%. You cannot do that. We are a small, small country. I said, yeah, but you have a big, big deficit. You might be small, but you have a bigger deficit than big countries. She said, no, no, no, please. You cannot do it - kept saying the same thing over and over, we are a small country. I said, but you're a big country in terms of - and she just rubbed me the wrong way, I'll be honest with you. And I said, all right, thank you, ma'am. Appreciate it. Do not do this. Thank you very much, ma'am. And I made it 39%.
DAVIES: And that is President Trump at the World Economic Forum at Davos. Jon Meacham, what do you hear?
MEACHAM: I hear the voice of Thomas Paine echoing in my head. Thomas Paine wrote in the American Revolution that you ask, where's the king of America? The king of America is above where the law is. What you hear there is a self-described conversation by an autocrat, by a king. He didn't like the way she sounded. She rubbed him the wrong way. And therefore, he, with a singular gesture, sets national policy. One of the points of the United States of America in the late 18th century was to move civilizational covenants beyond the monarchical and into the republican - lowercase R. Largely because when you have a monarchy, almost everything depends on the habits of heart and mind, the whim, the ambitions of that single person.
And the whole history of Europe, the whole history of the world, has been the story of kings having good days and bad days. And the idea coming out of Philadelphia in the late 18th century was that, in fact, a covenant could be built in which, as Alexander Hamilton wrote, a government could be formed and executed by deliberation and reason, rather than force and accident, right? Deliberation and reason, rather than force and accident. And we are tending now - and the speech you just played, that's about force. And the rule of the strong, merely because they are strong, is fundamentally contrary to the constitutional covenant that we tried to draw 240 years ago.
DAVIES: You know, what's also striking about that moment is that he doesn't mind standing up and saying publicly, you know, to a gathering of world leaders and everybody watching on television that, yeah, she annoyed me, and that's why I did it (laughter).
MEACHAM: Well, it's all part of the shtick, right? And it's part of his elemental appeal. Let's be honest here. This is the age of Trump. People like me, my successors, will be writing about this period forever. And so no president - and when I start a sentence like that, it's worth sort of noting because when I say something's unprecedented, it is against my business model (laughter).
DAVIES: Right. Yeah, part of the point of your book is that very little of this is unprecedented.
MEACHAM: Right.
DAVIES: But these things are.
MEACHAM: But here's something that's unprecedented. No American president has ever had the grip on the - what I would call the cultural mind share of the nation. He is a ubiquitous figure. And that, too, actually runs counter to what the framers hoped for. You know, in a fully healthy society, politics is important, but it's not everything. And part of what's happened - and it is different - is that when politics becomes total war, it becomes all-consuming. And so we are living in this world where people can't talk to their relatives, right? People avoid neighbors, and it just - it should not be this way. And I go back to the - and this is a big thing for me to say 'cause I'm a Jefferson biographer, but Hamilton was right. Reason and deliberation versus force and accident. And you can, in many ways, track American history by which of those categories we've tended toward.
DAVIES: We need to take a break here. Let me reintroduce you. Our guest is presidential historian Jon Meacham. His latest book is "American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, And The Pursuit Of A More Perfect Union." We'll be right back after this break. This is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR, and on Presidents' Day, we're listening to the interview I recorded last week with presidential historian Jon Meacham. His latest book is a collection of original texts from colonial times to the present titled "American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, And The Pursuit Of A More Perfect Union." Before the break, we listened to some of Donald Trump's speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, in which he recounted being annoyed by the president of Switzerland and imposing a tariff of 39% because, as - in his own words, she rubbed me the wrong way.
Now, I just want to say he did lower that tariff, eventually. But what's remarkable about this is that in setting tariffs - not just this one but all of them - President Trump has been relying on a law passed by Congress in 1977, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which authorizes the president to raise tariffs and take other economic steps to deal with unusual and extraordinary threats to national security, foreign policy or the economy originating outside the United States, not because you're annoyed with somebody. And this is a theme in this presidency, of the president assuming powers that were granted to Congress. A lot of these issues are under challenge in the courts, typically brought by parties other than members of Congress, I think. Isn't it striking that Congress has allowed the president to usurp so many of its own prerogatives and powers?
MEACHAM: It is striking. It is unsurprising. There is a distinction. It's important. It's noteworthy. It's even essential. But when you look at the incentives that govern the lives of the Republican lawmakers, it becomes less surprising. So if you want to know whether a Republican lawmaker is likely to stand up and oppose grabs for executive power or the misuse of emergency powers in nonemergency times being taken by the Trump White House, the thing you have to look for, I believe - show me their primary electorate. Show me the approval rating the president has among likely primary voters in a district or a state, and I will be able - you would be able - to predict with some degree of certainty whether or not that person is going to stand up. Lincoln said, all men act on incentive. And as President Kennedy said, there's a reason that "Profiles In Courage" was short and one volume, right? There's...
(LAUGHTER)
MEACHAM: There are not a lot of examples. But at a certain point, these are folks who swore an oath, and they didn't swear an oath to their party, and they didn't swear an oath to their president. They didn't swear an oath to their party leadership or their donors or their social media managers or their consultants. They swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States to defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And what I say to active politicians when I have the good fortune to talk to them is, what do you want us to think about you once you're gone? I call it the portrait test.
And I draw this lesson - it's not a particularly profound one - from that marvelous story about Lyndon Johnson in March of 1965, just after Bloody Sunday, when John Lewis and Hosea Williams have led the civil rights demonstrators across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They've been beaten and tear-gassed. Johnson asks George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, segregationist, to come to Washington, to come to the Oval Office. And he sits Wallace down on these deep-seated cushions in the Oval Office, so he sort of sinks. And LBJ had a large - big guy, anyway - but a large rocking chair. And he leans over Wallace, and he says, George, when you're dead and gone, what do you want your grave to say? Do you want it to be a scrawny little pine board thing that says, George Wallace - he hated? Or do you want it to be a lovely, huge marble grave that says, George Wallace - he built? And that's a question that should be put to each of these folks every day.
DAVIES: I have to ask you, do we know what Wallace said in response to that question?
MEACHAM: He said - (laughter) I'm glad you asked. When Wallace came out, he says, if I'd stayed in there any longer, he would have had me coming out for civil rights.
DAVIES: A nod to LBJ's persuasive powers.
MEACHAM: Right.
DAVIES: You know, it struck me that when you were saying a question you would ask people in Congress is how do you want to be remembered? What will your portrait say? And I think some of the folks who are supporting President Trump here would say I wanted to say I stood up and protected America from the radical socialists who were going to destroy the country.
MEACHAM: I'm sure they will. I'm sure they do think that. Here's what I say back - I believe you could describe American history between 1932 and 2016 as a kind of figurative debate between Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, right? You see what I mean? There's this shift. Metaphor is a football field, right? FDR and LBJ and Harry Truman are over on the left 20. Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush are over on the right 20. Almost every other American president governed somewhere in between. And so we have battled, and American politics has been fundamentally shaped by a battle between not just the reality of one's opposition but the caricature of the opposition you have in your head, right? I mean, that's human nature. But we obeyed the basic rules. And President Trump is, again, self-evidently less interested in those rules.
And I do believe - I had an old editor at the Washington Monthly magazine named Charlie Peters who used to say, you know, to be intellectually honest, you have to be willing to say something good about the bad guys and bad about the good guys, depending on what the facts show. And so what I do hope is that there's a recognition that winning an election does not mean that the other side is absolutely wrong and, more to the point, absolutely morally corrupt.
DAVIES: We need to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Jon Meacham. He is a presidential historian. His latest book is a collection of original texts from colonial times to the present titled "American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, And The Pursuit Of A More Perfect Union." He'll be back to talk more after this break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF BILL FRISELL'S "WASHINGTON POST MARCH")
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. For Presidents' Day, we're speaking with Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian Jon Meacham. He's been in demand lately to talk about Donald Trump's aggressive expansion of presidential power and his impact on American democracy. Meacham's latest book is a collection of speeches, letters and other original texts from 1619 to the present titled "American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, And The Pursuit Of A More Perfect Union." We recorded our conversation last week.
I talk to a lot of journalists. I was a newspaper guy myself for many years, and I have a lot of friends. And I spoke - speak to a number of them who I respect, who really question whether we will have a free and fair election this November. As you know, I mean, the president has lately been talking about nationalizing the elections, you know, that it should be run by the federal government because there's too much corruption in places like Philadelphia and Detroit. And of course, we've seen the FBI raiding the Fulton County election headquarters, grabbing documents for a purpose that really is unclear. In your mind, is there a serious question about this - whether this election is in jeopardy?
MEACHAM: I think it is because of the evidence you laid out. If the votes are headed in a way that the White House doesn't like, do they do something to reverse that result? And that's not an unreasonable fear, concern. I don't think it would be easy to functionally do. I do think the sowing of distrust and the fomenting of discord is a different thing. Even if you're not doing something to change the count, by asserting without evidence that a result you don't like is illegitimate, you handicap democracy itself. And I think that, to me, it's almost as much the rhetorical danger of people simply saying election results they don't like are rigged.
DAVIES: You know, the other interesting thing about this as you reflect on it is the Constitution delegates the management of elections to the states. That's clear, right?
MEACHAM: Mm-hmm.
DAVIES: And yet - and when - so when Trump says, you know, if it's going to be corrupt everywhere, the - you know, the federal government needs to intervene. And of course, that's exactly what happened. In a lot of cases, for decades after the Civil War, states in the South denied the franchise to millions of African Americans with poll taxes, grandfather clauses, sometimes outright terror. And in some respects, it took federal intervention to change things, didn't it?
MEACHAM: Well, yes. You make a very good point. This is not an easy story in our past, and it's not an easy solution now. This is not - to say that one worries about the fomenting of distrust about election results is not to therefore say the federal government has no role. The major civil rights legislation, starting in 1957 and 1960, leading into '64 and '65, was about how can we empower the federal government to implement, defend the rights articulated under the 14th and 15th Amendments? So to have trustworthy elections sometimes requires some kind of federal action. That's what American history shows. But that's not why President Trump is talking about nationalizing elections. Let's be very clear.
DAVIES: Right. And I guess we should note that what happened with the civil rights legislation was that Congress exercised its will - right? - and made new laws and new rules. That's different from seizing ballot boxes and voting machines.
MEACHAM: Yes, that's correct.
DAVIES: Right? You know, it's a time of partisanship which seems unique, certainly unique in my lifetime. And it's interesting. You know, when I read the early writings in your new book, you know, there was a lot of concern by the founders about partisanship. George Washington condemned the very idea of political parties. And I think a theme of the writings when you read it is that, you know, democracy has always been threatened by corruption and power-grabbing and partisanship over seemingly unsolvable issues. How much comfort should we take in that history now?
MEACHAM: Well, human nature doesn't change much, right? And Jefferson once said that since Greece and Rome, people had tended to divide themselves into parties - Tories and Whigs. You know, there's usually folks who are more aligned with the interests of the few, and then there are people who are more aligned with the interests of the many. Partisanship itself is not the viral problem. It is reflexive partisanship that plagues us today. What America demands, what the American Constitution requires of us, is that that partisanship not be reflexive and all-consuming. If you're a Democrat and I'm a Republican, under the spirit of the Constitution, I have to be able to listen to you. And maybe 99 times out of 100, I'm going to think you're crazy. But that one time, as our old Tennessee Senator Howard Baker used to say, you know, one time, the other fellow might just be right.
That is the use of, to go back to Hamilton, reason and deliberation, rather than force and accident. That's what America requires of us. And the cultural zeitgeist, the mechanics of politics, the incentive structure, the primacy of primaries, if you will, as opposed to general elections, all push us in a direction that I believe is not commensurate to, and not within the spirit of, what the Constitution requires of us.
DAVIES: And I would add to that this pattern in this year of gerrymandering in Republican and Democratic states to maximize partisan advantage because it's going to mean that when you have gerrymandered districts, it pushes elected officials to the extremes on both sides. It makes it much, much harder to find any common ground.
MEACHAM: There's no incentive for compromise because you are representing, and your incentives are tied to, a primary electorate, not a general election electorate. And when the DNA is rejiggered to produce wholly partisan actors as opposed to political actors - I think this is important. Political actors are ones who have to respond to people of different opinions, politics - you know, city. You know, that's the origin of the term. A partisan actor is someone who only does things in the interests of their party or their leader. Politics is fine. Reflexive partisanship is what is preventing us from having a constitutional system, a vigorous era where democratic capitalism is being defended and promulgated. That's what's preventing this is this perpetual warfare where your opponent simply can't be wrong - they have to be less than. And they have to be destroyed, right? They have to be destroyed. They can't be negotiated with. That rhetoric, the president uses all the time. If we do this, we won't have a country.
DAVIES: Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with presidential historian Jon Meacham. His latest book is a collection of original texts from colonial times to the present. It's titled "American Struggle." We'll be right back after this short break. This is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR, and on Presidents' Day, we're listing to the interview I recorded with presidential historian Jon Meacham. His latest book is a collection of original texts from colonial times to the present. It's titled "American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, And The Pursuit Of A More Perfect Union."
I think one reason that we have such harsh partisanship, such inability to see, you know, humanity and reason and those we disagree with is that we're all living in different media ecospheres. We don't give ourselves access to the same information. And, you know, this new media world is just so different from anything in the previous 250 years. Do you feel like you have a handle on what that means for American democracy?
MEACHAM: Nothing good (laughter). I don't mean to laugh.
DAVIES: Yeah. No, it's...
MEACHAM: I shouldn't laugh. It's serious...
DAVIES: ...Hard to be optimistic when you look at it, yeah.
MEACHAM: It is. I mean, look, media was entirely partisan, really, until the 20th century. The 20th century was the exception that proves the rule. If you were a plantation owner in South Carolina, you read a certain set of newspapers that reflected your point of view. If you were an abolitionist in Massachusetts, you read The Liberator. The 20th century, really after Adolph Ochs took over The New York Times in 1896, becomes more - you know, without fear or favor, The New York Times motto, was a kind of market position. It's that - you know what? - we're going to try to give this to you straight and let you make the decision. And the idea of journalistic objectivity and neutrality grew out of the progressive movement.
Then the fairness doctrine, when broadcast media - both radio and television - came along, created a kind of - I don't want to call it a golden era, but it was an era of stability about information. We are now, and this is the reality we're living in - everyone is a member of the media. Anyone with an iPhone and access to the internet can offer an opinion or a take or send something out that could reach people that - more people than Walter Cronkite could ever dream of reaching. And so it's - you know, the gatekeepers are gone.
And we'd be derelict not to say that the incentives for most people are speed, hyperbole and predictability, right? So if you are a right-wing person or if you're a left-wing person, you want to respond to things quickly. You want to do it in a way that breaks through, so you're going to be hyperbolic, and you're going to be pretty predictable because you want to create an audience that wants to have the views they have reaffirmed. They want - you know, they want a familiar feel. And so people - as you say, people don't get challenged very much. And I think this is a test of citizenship.
DAVIES: So how do - you know, when we're in these moments of partisan passion, I mean, how does it break? How do we get out of this?
MEACHAM: You know, I always think about McCarthyism and, you know, the great Army-McCarthy hearings and the scene where Joseph Welch says, you know, have you no decency at long last? Have you no decency, sir? And McCarthy shortly thereafter is censured. Couple of things about that - 35% of the country still approved of him after he was censured. And Roy Cohn, his special counsel, lawyer and mentor to Donald Trump, had a very interesting point about McCarthy in an observation he made in the late 1960s. He said that every once in a while, Americans get tired of the show. They - the drama, the novelty disappears. And that McCarthy fell, not least because people were tired of the shtick. I have been wrong for almost 10 years, thinking at various points that people would get tired and want to change the channel, if you will, on President Trump. But if Roy Cohn was right, that moment may come.
DAVIES: You know, very recently, but Donald Trump late at night, I guess, reposted images of our first Black president in a - in really a disgracefully racist way, depicting him and his wife on the body of apes, and didn't want to apologize for it. What did you think when you saw that?
MEACHAM: I was horrified and interested that Republicans stood up. It was an interesting moment. I think Tim Scott of South Carolina and others said no. And what it shows, perhaps, at long last, is maybe there is a line over which he can't go.
DAVIES: We need to take a break here. Let me reintroduce you. Our guest is presidential historian Jon Meacham. His latest book is "American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, And The Pursuit Of A More Perfect Union." We'll be right back after this break. This is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR, and on Presidents' Day, we're listening to the interview I recorded with presidential historian Jon Meacham. His latest book is a collection of original texts from colonial times to the present. It's titled "American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, And The Pursuit Of A More Perfect Union."
One of the other quotes from your book that really struck me - and this one's not from one of the founders but from Jon Meacham himself.
MEACHAM: I agree with whatever Mr. Meacham said (laughter).
DAVIES: Well, you were writing about Nixon's resignation in the wake of the horrible revelations of Watergate. You know, he wasn't actually impeached. He was essentially forced to resign when he was told by people in Congress that, you know, you're not going to survive an impeachment.
MEACHAM: Right.
DAVIES: And so he resigned. And you write that this belongs to another political age. It was an age when, for all its ferocity, there was a sense of shame at the highest levels, a sense of duty to institutions.
MEACHAM: Absolutely. When President Nixon lost a key Supreme Court case - unanimous decision against him that he had to turn over tapes from the White House that were quite damaging - he said to Al Haig, his chief of staff, who called him, he said, is there any air in it? Was there anything in the opinion? Haig said no. And at that point, Nixon accepted the constitutional inevitability of having to give up an office that he had thought about, almost in a single-minded way, probably since 1946 but certainly since 1952, when he became vice president. And John Adams said when he was vice president that the actions and character of the American president would be the daily contemplation of the whole people. It was a recognition early on that in political life, the chief executive would be the center of the drama. And to whom much is given, much is expected.
And the thing that matters - I've written about a lot of presidents. I've been lucky. I've spent time with almost every president in my lifetime, except for President Nixon and President Reagan. I can tell you this - what matters most in determining whether an American president will bend the arc of history toward a more perfect union or whether that president will do damage to that union is their character. It is their habits of heart and mind. It is their sense of duty versus the demands of ambition, because you never know what's going to come at you once you're there. And in the end, the only thing that's predictable is that is the person with ultimate authority in what is still a nuclear age, is that person focused sufficiently on you and me as opposed to himself? That's the question. Is there a capacity for that person to put the good of the whole above their own self-interest? And I leave it to you to answer that question about the incumbent.
DAVIES: You know, I think the speech that you have of Frederick Douglass, which was - I think it was on July 5...
MEACHAM: Good.
DAVIES: ...In 1852, if I'm remembering this right.
MEACHAM: Yep. Rochester, New York.
DAVIES: And it's - it is remarkable because he talks about how, you know, those of us - African Americans in this country cannot celebrate this July 4. I mean, I was born in slavery. And yet, it's an optimistic speech because he says, this is a young country, and, you know, even though it hasn't lived up to its ideals, the Constitution and the declaration are full of statements of principle that we can build on. He hadn't given up. You know, a lot of the readings here are interesting. Some of the earlier ones - like, for example, Patrick Henry was against approval of the Constitution as it was finally worked out. He said, this president you've created is going to be a king, right? You let him control the Army. You know, there was some logic to it. It hasn't happened in 250 years.
And then there was this one from Ben Franklin, where he says that, you know, the Constitution isn't perfect, but he thinks that this form of government may be a blessing if well administered. And then he writes, I believe further, it is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other kind. You know, I think of Franklin as a rational and optimistic guy. Here he's saying we're going to end up in despotism?
MEACHAM: Well, this is why it would have surprised them that it took this long. You know, they believed - these were very, very astute students of history. We sometimes think of the drama of British North America as this kind of isolated miniseries - right? - that was not related necessarily to what was unfolding around the world. But Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton, they were keenly aware of the ebbs and flows of European history. It's one of the reasons religious liberty was so important to them - is they wanted to avoid religious wars. Having a war over transubstantiation was not high on their list.
And so I think to appreciate the fragility that the framers felt - right? - they weren't sure this was going to work. And they repeatedly, again and again - Washington's farewell address is in this book, and he talks about a republic cannot survive in exclusion of moral and religious principle. If I don't have the capacity to be empathetic toward you, if I don't recognize your equal standing before God and the bar of justice and of history, then you are much less likely to respect mine. And what gives me hope is that we're not really being called on to be great people. We're being called on to be practical people. And there is a pragmatism and a self-interest in mutual respect.
DAVIES: Interesting. The last question I had in mind for you, you know, is in a few months we're going to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and the National Constitution Center has asked you to help them in planning their events. Is this an opportunity for Americans to stop and reflect in a different way on how we govern ourselves?
MEACHAM: It's absolutely an opportunity to think about how did we get here, and where do we want to go? And history has the capacity - the history of the Constitution, the history of the American people, the history of the movements that have widened the mainstream, that have fulfilled the promise, that have made real the promise. I go back again and again to the Declaration of Independence. And the central claims of our largest reform movements have not been for retribution or reparation. They've been for a recognition that we simply need to do what we said we were going to do. We need to be what we said we want to be, which is a country devoted to the notion that we are created equal.
And if that sounds sentimental or out of sync somehow with the constitutional crisis of the era, fine. But I think it's the only way out. I think the only way out, really, is to know what you're defending and articulating why that order - why is the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States - why is an order based on those superior to an order based on a blind allegiance to a particular person? If you can't answer that question, then we don't get out of this. But if you can, it is an incredibly resonant force. We, the people. It's worked in the past. That doesn't mean it's going to work again. But it is, in fact, the best of the American story.
DAVIES: Jon Meacham, thank you so much for speaking with us again.
MEACHAM: Thanks so much.
DAVIES: Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian. His latest book is a collection of original texts from colonial times to the present titled "American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, And The Pursuit Of A More Perfect Union.".
On tomorrow's show, we speak with Syrian photo journalist Loubna Mrie. She wasn't political per se, but she joined protests against dictator Bashar al-Assad because her abusive dad worked for the regime, and she wanted to rebel against him. In her memoir, "Defiance," she tries to make sense of how her home and homeland fell apart. I hope you can join us.
To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram - @nprfeshair. FRESH AIR's executive producer is Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.
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