Jon Meacham on What Makes a Great President

>> Andrew Roberts: Jon Meacham is one of the best known historians in the United States and is co chair of the Vanderbilt University Project on Unity and American Democracy. Jon, you're the chair at Vanderbilt University in American Presidency. I've read five of your books on different presidents. So the question really asks itself, what is it about the office of the presidency that's led you to write about it so often?

>> Jon Meacham: Well, thank you. I think I've read more of your books than that, and yours are longer. So I want a particular merit. I'm delighted to be here because I'm the longtime admirer of yours all the way back to Halifax.

>> Andrew Roberts: Wow, that was 30 years ago, plus, thank you.

>> Jon Meacham: So I'm an OG Robertonian. To me, the presidency is when people say, why do you write about the presidency? I sometimes say, well, why would you write about anything else? It's a line I've stolen from David Fromkin, the great World War I historian, who I asked once, why do you keep going back to the Great War?

He said, why would you write about anything else? Not to compare the authors in any way, but it's rather, why did Shakespeare write his history plays about kings? There's an intrinsic interest, I believe, in the character of those who amass and wield power. And I am fascinated by, in the figures I've written about, not by their perfection or even sometimes their virtue, but by the fact that they managed at critical moments to do things against their immediate incentive.

Which I think is the rarest of human events, if you will, beginning with the third chapter of Genesis, right? There's a piece of fruit and we want it and we take it. And the presidents I have spent time on have been those who, while they might have done damn near anything to amass power at critical moments, they have used that power to bend the arc of the universe toward justice.

>> Andrew Roberts: How important is the presidency? I'm constantly reminded how America came. It rose to world greatness essentially between Lincoln's assassination and Teddy Roosevelt becoming prime minister, where you didn't have any great, truly great presidents. I know some people are saying that McKinley was a great president, but compared to, certainly to those two bookends.

So America became the most powerful nation essentially, certainly economically, in the world without having great presidents. How important is the presidency, therefore?

>> Jon Meacham: Well, I would argue that there have been different moments and therefore different levels of significance. Since the summer of 1945, there can be no more important office in the world, simply because of the potential destructive power that these, so far, all men carry around in their pocket.

The, the Gilded Age. You know, Lord Bryce, I believe I'm right. That was. Didn't the American Commonwealth have the chapter why great men do not become president? I think I'm right about that. But Bryce understood too that there was immense, as did Woodrow Wilson. There was an immense capacity to the office if used wisely.

I think, as you say, we rose to greatness in the sense of raw economic power, both because of our geographic situation and because of the animal spirits, if you will, of the frontier. I think Frederick Jackson Turner had it largely right. And one of the great things about America, I think, is that not unlike Britain 80 years before, is in the face of immense prosperity, we chose to make gentler the life of the workers and the world, the part of the world that made that prosperity possible.

So the Gilded Age leading to the Progressive Age, without being overly simplistic, I think in many ways tells you about the virtues of our American democracy, which is that forces that are attractive ebb and flow and forces that are destructive ebb and flow. And as you know as well or better than I do, the business of history, the moral utility of history, I think, is how do you get the good forces flowing a bit more than they ebb.

>> Andrew Roberts: In your book Thomas Jefferson, The Art of Power 2012, you emphasized the ideological flexibility of Thomas Jefferson, his ability to build coalitions. How important is that in the presidency, would you say?

>> Jon Meacham: Even more so than in a parliamentary system, because we tend not to elect actually people with mandates.

It's one of the arguably unfortunate elements of the American system. We elect stewards as much as we do doers, I think. And Jefferson fascinated me because for a man who spent most of his life saying that he did not like politics and he wanted to go back to Monticello and live a life of retirement.

He spent most of his life running for office and avoiding Monticello. And so there, there was. The inconsistencies of Jefferson to me become quite explicable when you see him not as he wishes to have been seen, but as what he was, which was a politician. And I published that book in the middle of the Obama years.

And I will admit in the middle of it I realized I was writing about a tall, cool, intellectual American who disdained politics but quite liked power. And so I leave that to your listeners to connect. I also think in one of the great sort of passive aggressive moments in American history when Jefferson decided not to put his presidency on his epitaph.

He thereby guaranteed that for the rest of human history we would be sitting here saying, wasn't he humble? And wasn't it interesting he didn't mention that he was president, so he guaranteed.

>> Andrew Roberts: Do you think that crossed his mind, when he decided to just call himself-

>> Jon Meacham: I do, he understood, Jefferson and Lincoln both understood All great leaders, as you know, master the media of their time, and they were really good. Both Jefferson and Lincoln were particularly facile and they wrote for the ear and Jeffers. One of the reasons Jefferson was given the Declaration of Independence to write was not simply because of Virginia, though that was John Adams's stated purpose, is that Massachusetts was seen as too radical. So if Virginia proposed independence, it would go over better.

But because he wrote quickly and well, he certainly did that. My God, the power of the wordsmithery of that particular document, which obviously, as an Englishman I see as completely overwrought.

>> Andrew Roberts: But it's beautifully written and absolutely gorgeous when it-

>> Jon Meacham: One of the great pieces of propaganda.

Yes, exactly.

>> Andrew Roberts: But could the founding fathers have kept together, could they have kept their coalition together if they had followed up on this idea that all men are created equal, i.e., if they had abolished-

>> Jon Meacham: Self-evidently not. The compromises with the slave power were fundamental. They were at the heart of the American economy and they became even more part of the American culture in the ensuing half century.

 

That's an important detail in the history of American slavery. It went from being seen, if you read the constitutional debates, slavery was more often than not described as a necessary evil. We blamed you for it.

>> Andrew Roberts: Thanks.

>> Jon Meacham: The British had brought this. We had to now live with it because it was already here.

It was kind of a Burkean reaction to it. It was part of the reality of reality that's an anachronistic use of that term, but that's what it was. And only when movements toward emancipation and abolition unfolded in the states in the first part of the 19th century did the shift from slavery as necessary evil move to slavery as in John Calhoun's phrase, a positive good.

 

It's when people wanted to take it away that it forced people from my part of the world, I'm a Southerner, to recast the arguments. And it was recast both theologically and constitutionally as, quote, a positive good. So no, I think if, if there had been a full on attempt to emancipate in the late 1780s, the Republic would not have taken form.

The other thing to remember about American slavery is it was a state institution. And my friend Sean Wilentz at Princeton is, and James Oaks, these are really good historians on this. It was the notion of abolition when it was being argued was to abolish it in the states.

And when Lincoln comes to power and he gives that quite moderate inaugural address, he's reassuring, trying to reassure the south that he's not going to interfere with a state institution that his anti slavery impulses were about where the Constitution gave the federal government direct power, which was the territories and federal establishments.

And so the story of abolition and emancipation are infinitely more complicated than they've come down to us. You mentioned Monticello earlier, of course. Jefferson was the quintessential Renaissance man with fascination for science and architecture and education, agriculture, yachts and so on and setting up the University of Virginia.

>> Andrew Roberts: Has there been anyone like him?

>> Jon Meacham: No, there have been people who wanted to be him. I have a theory. You're one of the few people on the planet who would care about this theory. So God has brought us together that when presidents talk about other presidents they are either seeking sanction and justification for current actions or they are seeing someone as they wish to be seen themselves.

Precisely, yeah, it's very much true of British prime ministers as well. Even when Churchill's talking about Chamberlain, he's talking about modern day politics and the way he wants to be seen himself. It's an absolute classic, very well known phenomenon and I'm glad it's true of America as well.

So Franklin Roosevelt very much wanted to be Jeffersonian. He was rather like Jefferson. He was not a very good architect. One of my favorite parts about Monticello is it sort of fails on the top. If you go there are bits and pieces that are suddenly sort of instant addicts which could not have really been planned and did he run out of money or something?

That's usually. As you know, one thing you do not want to invest in, I have found is amateur architecture. That's one that's a false economy. But he opened the. He pursued in the middle of the war the completion and dedication of the Jefferson Memorial. And it was dedicated in 1943, very much so that the Democratic Party would have a memorial because the Republicans had the Lincoln and he very much wanted to be seen that way.

When President Kennedy had the Nobel Prize dinner and uttered the immortal line about this is the largest gathering of talent at the White House with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone, I think it was kind of like aren't I rather like Thomas Jefferson to have thought to invite all of you here?

So I don't think there's been someone with that range of a genuine accomplishment. We've had good writers, we've had. But really as you know, there are not many people and this is becoming more and more true. The Daniel Patrick Moynihans of the world, right? The Churchills, marvelous painter, Churchill is the Jefferson of Great Britain.

Right.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah.

>> Jon Meacham: Harder to find those people willing to suffer the slings and arrows.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes.

>> Jon Meacham: Of a highly polarized world.

>> Andrew Roberts: Do you also think that the fact that politicians aren't expected to write their own speeches, at least not the first drafts of their own speeches any longer, might have something to do with it?

You know, the phrase, like men are created equal and so on. These are ones that spring from the mind of great politicians. But if you're going to have your speeches written by other people, and I know I'm not holding this against you. I know you're a presidential speechwriter, but doesn't that in some way.

 

>> Jon Meacham: I have moonlit.

>> Andrew Roberts: But doesn't that in some way also sort of mitigate against the chances of having something come from the mind of the man himself or woman? It's a very interesting point, and someday, perhaps, I will discuss more fully my experience with President Biden as a volunteer from time to time.

But the case I know best that goes to this point is the FDR experience.

>> Jon Meacham: I mean, he had Robert Sherwood, the playwright, he had Sam Rosenman, a New York judge. He had remarkable writers around him. And it's interesting when you look at his drafts and the memoirs of those folks how often the memorable phrase did come from him, it's interesting.

The only thing we have to fear, and fear is, is fear itself comes from Thoreau, which FDR was sort of leafing through. So there's a great debate, I love this, in the Four Freedoms speech. The original, right, the speech says, we stand for freedom of worship everywhere in the world.

We stand for freedom from want everywhere in the world. And in the process of preparing that speech, Harry Hopkins says to Roosevelt, Mr. President, I would take out the everywhere in the world. No American gives a damn about freedom of worship in Java. And FDR says, well, they're gonna have to now, Harry, interesting moment.

>> Andrew Roberts: It is, of course.

>> Jon Meacham: I think you're right, I worry. You know what I worry about, and this is presentism and all that. I just worry. And you must find this. You're in the arena as well. I find it worrisome that the people who come anywhere near the pinnacle of power have almost no time to replenish intellectual capital, right?

I think it's so important, certainly true in Britain as well, the chances of a prime minister having enough time to sit down and read Thoreau is dwindling. Some of them try, all of them try, but frankly, the 24/7 nature of politics makes it next to impossible. And that worries me because I think that leadership, I know in my.

We all know sort of ourselves, that. That if you don't have some mind space to test assumptions, then you end up, in a phrase of our mutual friend George W. Bush, you end up as a cork on a raging river.

>> Andrew Roberts: And so I was about to mention him as an exception, in fact, to this rule, because, of course, he and Karl Rove did read History and Biography, didn't they, they famously had a sort of competition and still do.

Let me move on to your book, American Lion, Andrew Jackson in the White House, which of course won the Pulitzer Prize. In that book, you argue that Jackson transformed American democracy, how so?

>> Jon Meacham: Prior to Jackson, the American presidency was seen as an office that would be accessible to Virginia landowners or Adamses from Massachusetts.

There was no one from the elite outside what would have passed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, an elite circle had risen to the pinnacle. Jackson believed fundamentally in the frontier. He believed in a kind of white democracy for all white men. And really until the 1830s, you know, suffrage was not.

There was not white universal male suffrage until the age of Jackson. And I think it was., this is a case where the personal is the political. He had risen from the lowest ranks of white society. His family had been lost in the Revolution. He never knew his father.

His mother had died in the Revolution, his brothers had died in the Revolution. And so his, the connection to the Union, his connection to the Republic was an elemental one. And part of my evidence for this is his economic and indeed his temperamental tendencies would have led him to be closer to Calhoun and sort of the nullification.

Not quite secessionist, but nullification forces at the time. And he stood up to them. Here was a man who ran against the bank of the United States, ran against what he called a corrupt bargain. He hashtagged that when he had the presidency had been taken away from him in a deal between Henry Clay and John quincy Adams in 1825.

But there was a, an emotional connection to the we the people that led him to act against his economic interests, against nullification, to preserve the supremacy of a federal government that in other circumstances he would have reviled. And so he, to me, Jackson did two things. He brought more people into the political conversation.

And also asserted, and, in many ways, guaranteed, cuz you can see counterfactually how it could have been different, gave us 30 more years to form what Lincoln would call the mystic chords of memory. There was nothing guaranteed about a supreme federal government in the 1830s. And we see how fragile it was in 1860.

So if it was that fragile in 1860, think how fragile it was in 1830.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, so he's defending the common man against the elites, the danger of a sort of American aristocracy being all powerful. This explains, of course, his Veto of the Second bank recharter in 1832.

>> Jon Meacham: To be clear, this is something that people don't know about the bank. This was not the Federal Reserve, right? This was not a central bank. In that sense, this was a the deposits of the federal government. Government went into a bank that then threw off private profit and paid an extraordinary number to stockholders and paid an extraordinary number of very generous retainers to members of Congress and others to defend the interests of that bank.

So it was not a sore, it played a stabilizing economic role, it did, but it wasn't as if he ran against the Federal Reserve. And the veto message is in many ways the ur text of a kind of principled populism. If the government's going to start giving out favors, then it needs to be for everyone and you if when the government begins.

This is also a conservative point. As the world is developed, it should not be picking winners and losers in the question of majority versus minority rights, which obviously goes deeply through the whole of American history. We obviously have Jefferson, sorry, Jackson acting very aggressively against the Native Americans.

>> Andrew Roberts: Is that part of his frontier what you mentioned earlier as his frontier mentalit? Is that's an essential part? Because you can't have a great nation from sea to shining sea unless you essentially defeat the Native Americans.

>> Jon Meacham: Yes, and I don't want to in any way excuse Andrew Jackson and the American experience with the indigenous peoples.

I live on land that was, I'm sure, belong to the Cherokee Nation. I grew up three miles from Chief John Ross's house in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and 800 yards the other way was Braxton Bragg's headquarters, which is where Arthur MacArthur led the charge up Missionary Ridge and won the Medal of Honor at the age of 17.

So to me, I can still find the Nabals in my yard. So this is all tactile history. So undoubtedly racism, undoubtedly the darker sides of Manifest Destiny, all of that played a role. Directly to your question, I do believe that one way to explain Andrew Jackson's view of the world is that he saw himself, interestingly given a man who had no blood children of his own, as the father of a nation.

And he saw his role as the father of that nation to defend against any threat. It explains his hatred of the British with all respect. It explains his hatred of financial elites and it explains his actions against Native Americans. Native Americans were to him a domestic threat and the British were not above colluding with them.

To him, he wanted to drive the enemies of the America as of America, as he defined it, out of the way. And so to me, that's a through line with Jackson. And nullifiers threatened it, the bank threatened it, Indigenous peoples threatened it, the British threatened it. So he was going to stand there and as he put it in his proclamation to the people of South Carolina on December 10, 1832, I speak to you with the feelings of a father.

Do not, do not run away from this compact. And for white democratic lowercase D forces. That was his view. And it's been very hard. I mean, Jackson's had a rough time in the United States. My view, for what it's worth, and your nation's history is even more full of this.

My view is that if you try to cancel someone or remove them from the conversation, in the case of Jackson, that's letting the rest of us off the hook, right? There was not-

>> Andrew Roberts: What do you mean?

>> Jon Meacham: Well, think about it, there was not a massive pro Native American movement in this country to defend the interests of Native Americans.

There were some Quakers, there were some New England evangelicals, but there was no William Lloyd Garrison, was there? There was no William Wilberforce. Right. Yeah, it was a national undertaking. And so it's rather convenient to send one person to the timeout box for a broad based cultural dereliction, which is what it was.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Absolutely. Let's move on to Abraham Lincoln and your book. And there was light, Abraham Lincoln and the American struggle from 2022. Here you have a man with massive moral vision, obviously, and leadership qualities, but also personal humility. You make out in your book. Now, it's not easy, is it, to be a genuinely humble person.

There are other examples and you've written about certainly one of them. There's only one member of the House of Lords on the call. So I will ask you. No, absolutely, I mean, nobody's ever accused me of humility, I can assure you, Jon. In fact, I'd rather like you.

But the fact is that getting to the very top, the apex of politics in any country at all, but especially a democratic country like the United States, how much genuine humility does someone have who on a very regular basis has to stand up and give speeches and was a lawyer and was a sort of stump orator and he used his bully pulpit and he suspended habeas corpus.

I mean, are these the things that genuinely humble-

>> Jon Meacham: We're not talking about St. Francis here. This is not Franciscan humility. All things are relative, as you suggest. I do think in the 19th century this was a little different in that it's not fully plausible today to think of someone with Lincoln's track record rising to the pinnacle in the way he did.

Right. It's just a different thing. But to me, the test of a political life, the test of a moral life, is not did you get everything right, or were your motives pure but taken all in all, did you leave the experiment? Did you leave the arena in the American context more fully in compliance with the Declaration of Independence or farther out of compliance?

To me, that's the test. I'm George HW Bush's biographer, and George H.W. Bush I didn't fall in love with him, but I came to love him. As the way I put it, in the course of 25 years or so, President Bush would have cut your throat for a vote, but he would have been the first person to then call 911.

Right. See what I mean? And so to me, it's not about how you amass power, is what you do with it. And Lincoln, if you want to go, go look at the Lincoln Douglas debates that he gave in the Illinois Senate election of 1858. The speeches he gave in Southern Illinois are the source of the most virulently anti black things that a man who was a devoted anti slavery advocate ever said.

But he was trying to amass power. And so I have a, it's not that you give them a pass, but if you want perfect people, then politics is political. History is probably not the place to go. Right. There's not an overabundance of that. As Senator, as Alan Simpson used to say, the traffic on the high road in Washington is not crowded.

There's not a lot of competition for this. And so with Lincoln, the thing that strikes me, and I wrote the book in conversation to some extent with my friend Doris Goodwin, whom I love and respect, and Doris's book, Team of Rivals, argued brilliantly that Lincoln was the great political genius in American history.

And that's certainly true. My view was not different, but a slightly different angle, which was that if he had solely been a political actor, then he would have done some radically different things at critical moments. And that there was a moral core to what he wanted to do.

And he was willing to risk, and I think this was humble, he was willing to risk his political power to do the right thing. And it's just really hard to find examples of that, particularly in a crucible like the Civil War.

>> Andrew Roberts: Let's talk about two people who also haven't been accused of humility, Franklin and Winston wrote a book of 2003.

And may I point out, obviously this is just audio, so nobody knows that you're chomping on and smoking a cigar throughout this.

>> Jon Meacham: I am.

>> Andrew Roberts: Throughout this interview. I've been very impressed by that.

>> Jon Meacham: Maduro 50 from Nicaragua.

>> Andrew Roberts: Some of my interviewees have been, have been drinking through their interviews, but you're the first person to smoke.

I'm very pleased about that, I have to say. So, let's talk therefore about these, the personal chemistry that's important, that's vital, obviously, in understanding the relationship between FDR and Winston Churchill. You've got the American Sphinx in, in FDR, you've got the exact opposite.

>> Jon Meacham: Nobody accused Churchill of being sphinx like about anything at all because he told you exactly what he was thinking, almost a running commentary.

He said he wasn't thinking. He just told. All the way through his life and was loved for it. You know, as well, of course. Why did that work, that personal chemistry so well? Obviously later in the war, they had to put national interest above their personal friendship. But nonetheless, why did it, why did it, why did they click?

It was a love story. This was framed for me in a conversation in, I want to say Mayfair, wherever Lady Soames. Noting Hill. Her house was 25 years ago or no more than that now. I went to see her when I was doing the book.

>> Andrew Roberts: Let's just point out for readers that she was Winston Churchill's daughter.

Sorry, carry on.

>> Jon Meacham: And I had decided to do the book because of a footnote in John Lukac's book Five Days in London, which noted that on September 11, 1939, when FDR reached out to the new First Lord of the Admiralty, saying, I want anything you want me to know send in my pouch and I'll send something to you.

An unusual outreach, right, for the head of, Head of state of 1 to reach out to a member of the cabinet of another, that it had begun, that there are then 2000 messages and 120 days together turned out to be 113 as I calculated it. But I thought 113 days.

There had to be something else going on. And it wasn't just that travel was difficult. They must have enjoyed this. But I went to see Lady Soames and she said, well, she said two things she said that were critical to me. One was whenever I think of Papa and the President, I think of the proverb in love, there's always one who kisses and one who offers the cheek.

And Papa was always kissing and President Roosevelt was always offering the cheek. And I thought, bingo, perfect. The other was, she said that sitting with them was like sitting between two lions roaring at the same time. And I think that's the answer to your question is that they liked being lions together.

They loved history. They were from great families. They loved the idea that they were, as a fellow dinner guest in 1941 at the White House, said they were like a couple of emperors and they spoke in the same vernacular. In many ways, I think their differences are overdrawn.

Their overview of politics was very alike as well. The noblesse obliges, duty of the of the privileged person to take care of those less privileged, and so on.

>> Andrew Roberts: They both came from.

>> Jon Meacham: And of you Churchill saw this. He wrote a profile of FDR, I think, in 33, 34, maybe Roosevelt from Afar, it was called, and he saw all that.

And also saw that the lights from FDR's Washington might help I'll slightly garble the phrase, might help overcome the baleful lights emitting from Berlin and Moscow. So they were they spoke in the same vernacular. Also I don't want to overdo this, but I think it does matter. The Book of Common Prayer, the King James version of the Bible, they understood a kind of Anglican world.

They saw the world in that way. To me, one of the most moving moments and also one of the most politically effective moments in the 20th century is on the. The Prince of Wales In August of 1941, the church parade that Churchill very carefully crafted at the meeting, which later became the Atlantic Charter meeting, where Churchill thought quite explicitly, how do I engage the heart and mind of this man who the selected.

Look, our draft was being renewed by a single vote in that season in 1941.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, he took time working out the correct hymns, got our help in ages past onto that. And for those in peril on the sea, which obviously was something for fdr, who was Secretary for the Navy and so on.

It was a really very, very thought out program.

>> Jon Meacham: And wonderfully, onward Christian soldiers.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes.

>> Jon Meacham: Led FDR to say in the launch, returning from the Prince of Wales to the Augusta, to his son Elliot, who wrote problematic books later and who was anti British. So we have to credit this, FDR says to his son, onward Christian soldiers.

We are Christian soldiers and we will go on with God's help. If nothing else had happened to cement us while we were here, that did it. That's the President of the United States reacting to Churchill's insight. And what they do, of course, also is to sign the Atlantic Charter.

Do you agree with the idea that this is really the founding of the concepts of United nations, of NATO. It's a very difficult dominance document to agree, of course, because it talks about democratic self-government while Britain was in control of India. So it did require some, some pretty careful wording.

But nonetheless it is a gigantic moment, isn't it, where the two of them are able to sign this single document which is so full of ideals about the modern world, the future world. Yes, and I don't think it would have happened if they hadn't had rather a good time together.

It's a press release, basically, had no force of anything. Right. It was not really a charter, actually. It was just a statement of belief. And so, yes, and I think that it was picked up then with the United Nations Declaration, when we used United nations for the Allies, then at Christmas after Pearl harbor and Hitler's declaration of war.

I do think so. And I think that, you know, you generously pointed out your nation's shortcomings. I should also point out that Franklin Roosevelt was the president of a nation that lived with a certain level of apartheid in that era. And so again, if you want perfection, find some other line of work.

George HW bush, we mentioned earlier your book Destiny and Power from 2015. I'm very interested in the word destiny there because of course, I've used the word destiny in my biography of Winston Churchill. It's a powerful word. But how much do we really, as logical, rational historians believe in the concept of destiny?

>> Andrew Roberts: Why did you choose that in the title?

>> Jon Meacham: It's a great question. I debated it a long time, I don't know if I've ever discussed this. For a long time, my working title was The Last Gentleman, a homage to Walker Percy's novel of that same title. And it was, it was derailed by my 11 year old daughter.

This is not an Amy Carter nuclear moment, but it's. This is a true story. Sitting in our house in Nashville, I was asked by my daughter, what's the title of this book? And I said the Last Gentleman. And this was probably 24, 2013 or so. And she said, does that mean that President Bush, the second President Bush and President Obama aren't gentlemen?

And I was like, well, no, it's not supposed to mean that. And so I thought, I changed it, and I changed it, Destiny for the Bush. The difference in our two uses of it, I think, see if you agree with this is Churchill very much wanted that to be part of his story.

Given the Walking with your title, right? The, the, the key, the key paragraph in Gathering Storm, you know, I felt as if I were walking to destiny and all my life have been preparation for this hour and for this trial. I was sure I should not. George Bush would never have used that word, but there was a sense about him from his very earliest days.

And I'm using, before I did it, I wanted to be sure. These are contemporaneous examples where people from the time he was in his early 20s were saying things like, Poppy will be president. You know, it was just sort of, it wasn't assumed exactly, but it was a totally plausible scenario that he would become the President of the United States.

And part of it also was a. You never met Churchill, right? You were too young. I was two years old when he died, sadly. But I knew President Bush and I, I was an undergraduate when he was president and so I had kind of a view of him rather through the prism of the 1992 experience, which was that he was a little out of touch.

It was not, he was not fully engaged in the culture. It was not a large figure in my head. I went to meet him in 1998 with our mutual friend Michael Beschloss, and within about four minutes I would say I thought, that's why he became president, he communicated this kind of care, concern for you that invited a reciprocal confidence in that having your.

If you have to put your fate in one person's hands, this was the kind of person in whose hands that would be safe. And that's not a rational experience, that's charisma, right? That is about destiny, it's about to use the definition of a sacrament. It's an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual reality.

And to me, it was just the case. And so I thought, this is a man who, because of these personal characteristics which go under the umbrella of a kind of destiny, sought power and exercised it all in all for the good. And that's what you meant when you called him a modern founding father, that he was a person of virtue who you would follow because you trust him and of course, he's got charisma.

And he came from a world where he never worried about economic insecurity, he never worried about his place in the world. But instead of using that immense, to use a word we use all the time now, he was born into a life of privilege, into a life of pre.

There had been previous people who had created a foundation and an infrastructure for his life that made his life in a material and psychological way, quite comfortable. But instead of simply keeping that privilege for himself, he entered the arena and served. And to me, that's what the founders did as well.

And of course, also Winston Churchill in all of those things you just mentioned, today actually is the 60th anniversary of Winston Churchill's death. And therefore, which anniversary of Lord Randolph's death. And therefore, yes, exactly, the 130th anniversary of his father's death.

>> Andrew Roberts: So we've mentioned these five giant presidents, and as you say, we've talked about how they weren't perfect, but they understood the importance of virtue.

And as you say, also acting against incentive. You say that the president's break between stewards and doers. Most of these are, in fact, all of these are doers. Where do you think that President Biden will fare? How will he fare historically?

>> Jon Meacham: It's a marvelous question. I'm not sure yet is the answer.

I believe President Biden's biographical journey is one of remarkable personal tragedy, decisive political setbacks and unexpected summits. And there's almost no. It's interesting, when it comes to Joe Biden and the American presidency, there's almost no fourth gear, right, everything is either in a trough or at a pinnacle.

And even his own presidency that became, he prevails in 2020. I mean, if you think about him, just to go back one step, so he comes into the national political story amid unimaginable personal tragedy. He endures, he seeks the presidency. He implodes in 1987, 88, he's left for dead politically, he's almost left for dead, literally, because of aneurysms.

There's no expectation in 1988, 89, that he would become A presidential figure. Again, President Obama makes the decision that he makes. He's back, you know, near the pinnacle. Personal tragedy intervenes again with the loss of his son Beau, which in many ways is what kept him from running for president in 2016.

And then makes that one last, well, almost one last run in 2020, and prevails. And prevails. I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Republican. My view of him, and the reason I did help him when I could, was that he was trying to stand between us and a constitutional abyss.

And I believed that was a worthwhile project. And as a citizen, I never served, I never served in the military. I'm from a family that did two combat veterans in the Second World War, my grandfather's and a combat veteran in Vietnam with my father, but I did not.

And so when an opportunity arose unexpectedly to help an American president do something, I. I said yes. Now, the decision to seek reelection at his age is one that will now be part of the same paragraph of assessment that we're. We're discussing. In retrospect, it was a mistake.

The question will be for historians, will be,, which is where we started. Taken all in all, did he do more good than harm? Did he do more good than ill? This is the Dorothea Brook test, right? George Eliot wrote, things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been because of people who rest in unremembered tombs.

So I'm not sure yet. I think he had a very strong legislative presidency. I think that his reaction to Putin's aggression in Ukraine and his strengthening of NATO, enlargement of NATO are historic achievements. But it is the nature of American politics that strengthening NATO is not something that is a big boat getter here.

And so we'll just have to see all of these great presidents who you've written five books about them. What are the lessons from history? And by the way, quoting, I think it was Middlemarch, wasn't it, that you. From President Biden, I think. Very impressive. Look, what has the lessons.

We're always trying to impress you all.

>> Andrew Roberts: Well, that's the important thing. That's the key thing, really. Thank you very much. Jon, what's your advice for an incoming president that taken from these, these big lessons of history, lessons about.

>> Jon Meacham: I can do this quickly. I think you have to be curious.

I think that Jefferson did what he did, doubled the size of the country with Louisiana, the declaration, which was not a presidential act, but which is foundational. Thomas Jefferson was able to do what he did, not simply because he was a bright politician, but because he had been in a kind of figurative conversation with.

What you and I would think of as the modern world. He understood Gutenberg. He understood the democratization of information. He understood the Protestant Reformations. He understood what the effect of the translation of Sacred Scripture into the vernacular had been. He understood the Enlightenment. He understood the Scottish Moral Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution.

He understood that the world was shifting from being seen as vertical to being seen as more horizontal, and was able to do what he did because he had an intellectual curiosity that he translated into political action. So I think curiosity is essential. I don't know how a modern leader of a 21st century state could do their job without a deep curiosity about the implications of globalization.

The changing nature of the climate and its implications for geopolitics, the immense pressures that in the old days we would call the bourgeoisie, but a middle class is facing. No democracy survives without a middle class that believes in the rule of law, because the rule of law guarantees their chance of advancing.

And so if you don't have a middle class, you have the conditions for revolution. So you need to know that. It seems to me, I think we have to be honest with each other. I think that, and I base this on your man Churchill, who, as you remember, said in the winter of 1942, the British people can face any misfortune with fortitude and buoyancy, as long as they are convinced that those are in charge of their affairs, are not deceiving them, are not themselves dwelling in a fool's paradise.

It's a two-pronged test. We want to be sure they're not lying to us, and we want to hope they're not lying to themselves. And if we can check those two boxes, then I think the covenant of modern democracies is that we'll do. We'll follow you, but just let's be sure that we're all dealing in reality.

And that model is under immense stress. Obviously, the last, which I think is the oxygen of democracy, is empathy. If you and I can't notionally put ourselves in each other's shoes, then we're not going to be part of a. We cannot sustain a social compact in which I delay my gratification in favor of yours with the expectation that my.

That I'll get my time, but why should I pay taxes to build a bridge in your town that I'm never going to go over except that I might need a bridge? And so it's a kind of practical empathy. And that's what democracies need. And it's not just moral, but it is ethical.

It does require a Certain habit of heart and mind. And President Biden tried to articulate this again and again. It's very hard. But I don't see as a historian, not as a voter in 2025, but as a historian, and tell me if you agree with this. Without a covenant that's driven by a kind of empathy, popular government doesn't long endure.

Do you agree with that?

>> Andrew Roberts: Certainly the case in a country which is founded on a written document. I think with England, if you're a subject of the crown, it's slightly different because we've got a longer history of doing what we're told, I think.

>> Jon Meacham: Sort of, right, but you all do a bit of cognitive dissonance with that and always have, right?

I mean, you.

>> Andrew Roberts: That's what works. That's what saved us from a revolution for 300 plus years.

>> Jon Meacham: But without 1688, 89, is there still a crown?

>> Andrew Roberts: Well, also without it there is a crown, but it's an authoritarian one. But without 1688, 89, is there 1776?

>> Jon Meacham: No, because I'm a big believer in the argument that we rebelled because we felt we weren't being treated as Englishmen.

>> Andrew Roberts: Exactly. Yes. Yes, I think that's right. What's the book you're reading at the moment? The history book or biography?

>> Jon Meacham: History book I'm reading is the galley. So it's unfair to your listener of Clay Risen, who's a writer, has written-

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, very good writer.

>> Jon Meacham: Red Scare, it's a history of McCarthyism.

He is arguing by implication, which I approve of and is taking us back into what America was truly like from 50 to 54. And I think it's out in March. What if, the counterfactual I to me it is. This is. I don't know. Do you rank these by dorkiness?

I don't know.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't worry. They're ranked by pretty much everything. And dorkiness is always a very important phenomenon.

>> Jon Meacham: Okay, my counterfactual is the lost American presidency of Hannibal Hamlin.

>> Andrew Roberts: Okay, you've got me there.

>> Jon Meacham: I have you?

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, yeah, yeah, tell me, tell me.

Damn it, damn it, that's very dorky. I'm afraid I don't.

>> Jon Meacham: Do you know who he was?

>> Andrew Roberts: No, you're gonna have to tell me.

>> Jon Meacham: I got you, this is so great.

>> Andrew Roberts: You got me, you got me. I love this.

>> Jon Meacham: Hannibal Hamlin was a Republican from Maine who was the Vice President of the United States from 1861 until 1865.

He was not put back on Lincoln's ticket and was removed for Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson, a Tennessean, is arguably one of our worst presidents. He was a terrible white supremacist who opposed the 14th and 15th Amendments, opposed the Freedmen's Bureau, which was the great American effort to lift up the newly emancipated, and did everything he could to repeal the verdict of the Civil War, with the exception of the simple continuance of Union.

The implications of civil rights, of potential egalitarianism. Johnson opposed and set Reconstruction on a course that would require us to take another century before we could fully recognize those implications. If Hannibal Hamlin had been President after Ford's Theatre, would a New England Republican of more advanced Sumner-like views on egalitarianism.

Would we have emerged from Reconstruction a more harmonious and potentially created a multiethnic, multiracial democracy a hundred years before we did?

>> Andrew Roberts: Jon Meacham, preeminent biographer of the American Presidency, thank you very much for coming on Secrets of Statecraft. As you chomp away on your cigar. Lord Roberts.

Thank you. Thank you, Jon. On the next episode of Secrets of Statecraft, my guest will be General Lord Richard Dannett, the former head of the British Army.

>> Presenter: This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution where we generate and promote ideas advancing freedom. For more information about our work, to hear more of our podcasts or view our video content, please visit hoover.org.