I am delighted to welcome you to this afternoons discussion, with the authors of republican populists spiro agnew and the origin of Donald Trumps america. By the sponsored center for the study of democracy in maryland. The center is a joint initiative of the college and the historic st. Marys city, the site of marylands first capital. The centers goal is to promote understanding of democratic values, traditions, and institutions through the exploration of contemporary and historical issues. Ugez, jr. Is the director of the center and joins me here this afternoon. Thank you, tony, for being here. The chair of the department of history here at the college is also with us this afternoon. Our History Department is pretty active, offering many opportunities for research and options for studying abroad. Courses and programs in the Department Help our students develop a deeper understanding of themselves, their culture, and humanity in general. Thank you, charlie, for being here this afternoon. And i would like to introduce our guests. I know itden sounds so incredibly official check is a professor of history here at st. Marys college of maryland. He is the author of the new Academic Freedom and liberalism and unc. Zach is the president of ribbon, wisconsin, where he is also a professor of politics and government. He is coeditor of understanding the global community. He was also the very first director of the center for the study of democracy here at st. Marys college. I would say welcome back. But zach has been the president at ribbon since 2012, and he has remained engaged in st. Marys community through both the center for the study of democracy and his family. Susan, theyelcome have a home north of campus. They are indeed a family of service with a strong sense of community as evidenced by susan for many years serving as the president of the College Foundation board of directors. Zach and chuck along with the third author, gerald, wrote republican populists spiro agnew and the origin of Donald Trumps america. Spiro agnewou know, was Vice President under president Richard Nixon. Agnew resigned from office in 1973. I was just a child then. You can tell, right . To hisleading no contest charges. He was also marylands 55th governor, serving until 1969. Published by the university of virginia press, republican populist is described as a fascinating political portrait of agnew, from his preVice President ial career through his scandal driven fall from office and beyond. Book explores his role as one of the Founding Fathers of the modern Republican Party, a gop that represents the silent majority. The publisher further notes that in order to understand our current in sternal internal struggles in the Republican Party, we need to fully appreciate the agnew, known as a populist everyman and prototypical middleclass striver who was one of the first proponents of what would become the ideology of Donald Trumps gop. The president and professor holden are here with us to celebrate the publication of their new book and to share with us some insights about agnew and the modern Republican Party, how we got to where we are today. Your you both for sharing insights with st. Marys college and the broader local community. Without further ado, i ask you to join me in welcoming Charles Holden and zach m asetti. [applause] thank you, president jordan. Just say how beautiful campus looks, and this building in particular. Marys,irst came to st. It looked a lot different then. And this is just absolutely spectacular. The centeror that has a nice suite of offices in this space. It is really, really stunning. As well forntonio hosting and being the director of the center. Here,such an honor to be since this was the first job i had in higher education. Indulge me for a minute, i want to talk about the center before we get going, because it actually plays a big role in why chuck and i decided to write this book with jerry code air. 17 years ago, a group of faculty thenistrators, staff from college as well as the community, came together to create a center that would promote civil discourse about democracy. It was based on marylands history. What lessons can we learn from history that told us about Current Events . I am so proud that it continues forward. This job that i had from 2002 to 2007 was a job that i loved. Discussionsizing between students, faculty, policymakers, diplomats, historians, journalists on a range of topics that were important to marylanders and important to americans. And that mission is more important today than ever before. And so as i look out in the audience today, i see former colleagues, friends, mentors, a lot of people that i admired as a junior faculty here, and i want to recognize a few of them briefly. Professor michael kane of the Political Science department followed me as the centers director. He and i cowrote the original National Endowment for humanities grant that currently funds the center and its operations. Discussion and civil dialogue person and someone i have admired and always looked up to. Helen and tom are here and i wanted to recognize them. Helen was a longtime member of the Sociology Department at st. Marys, a great reporter of the center. She and tom put forward their time, intellect and treasure to make sure the center was possible. And i want to thank them for all they have done for me and for the college and the center. They are still a big part of why i am here today and i think thank them. I want to thank two others who are not here because they passed away in the recent year, but their presence looms large. J. Frank raley, who those of you who are students here, you see his portrait in the great hall. He was in the Maryland Legislature in the 1960s and a great friend of the center. He knew spiro agnew personally. We spent hours together at the roost and lindas cafe, talking about maryland politics. I think you would be pleased to be here today. The other person i would like to recognize is ben bradlee. He was one of the founders of the center and it was our Great Fortune to get to know him. When i was the centers director, i was the person who was bradlee to organize the lecture in journalism. I know the lecture is later this week. But the lecture is more or less a call that i would make to ben and he would say, who do you want to have . I would run through the great names in american journalism and he would choose one speaker. They would come to the college and we would go to his house and talk with him. Thats where the idea for this book was born. The speaker for the lecture in 2005 was the Washington Post who wast richard cohen, the bureau chief for the Statehouse Correspondent in annapolis in 1973, whence bureau agnew resigned. Chuck and i got to spend a great evening at portobello with ben and Richard Colin after a talk on corruption in maryland politics. And we laughed a lot that evening. In fact, one of the things that is indelible, that stays in my mind, is Richard Colin said to ben bradlee, i cant member whether you said this but it does not matter, its all the same, you are one and the same. [laughter] greatght about what a line, because it is true. We talked a lot that night about agnew and we realized no one had done a real look at his legacy. At the time, we wrote an occasional paper about it for the center of democracy. We spent a lot of time going through his papers where very few had ventured before. Some of the democratic new deal employed prolabor policies to was more of an excuse Vice President and Baltimore County executive and governor, he had a direct line to where the Republican Party had ended up. Much like the mission of the center, we saw a lesson from marylands history in contemporary politics. The spring of 2016, the american Political Science 40 scholars tod name the worst Vice President in the last halfcentury. Their consensus was an easy 1 spiro agnew. We disagree, and that is what we are going to talk to you about today. Of spiro agnew in 1968 proved to be one of the most underrated, consequential decisions in modern american politics and it reverberates a halfcentury later. His contributions in office were limited, but that is not why he was chosen. Instead, he took on the Important Role of reshaping the trajectory of the Republican Party. His suburban middleclass image mixed with his antielite political style launched his rise from an obscure county executive in townsend, maryland to being a heartbeat away from the presidency. Agnew ran for Circuit Court judge in Baltimore County and lost. He came in fifth out of five. Eight years later, he was Vice President of the United States. Our book is not a biography. We placed agnew within the context of the changing nature of the Republican Party over the past century. This is important, and here i will pick up a little bit about what our third author talks about in the chapters he authored. For much of the 20th century, the Republican Party was the party of wall street, country clubs, white males who win to Ivy League Schools and worked for banks. Not the party of the common man. While its a was among the plain folk protestants of small towns in rural midwestern areas, the power center lay in the big money blamed for the great depression. Over the staff of the contributions to the Republican National committee came from the banking and brokerage centers. The republican president ial ran on a that year platform of individual responsibility, fiscal restraint, governmentand governo decentralization. This led to him being crushed by fdr. They won every state except for maine and vermont. Roosevelt situated the forgotten man at the heart of his political appeal. The Republican Party or the responsibility for the regatta mans flight. Republicans of the 1920s to the image of the businessmen as the exemplar of American Progress and prosperity were on the wrong side of an elemental shift after the shock market crash stock market crashed and the onset of the great division. Roosevelt, a workingclass supporter, was the only man we had in the white house whod a sontand that my boss is of a bitch. How did these parties become representatives of the white workingclass . Why did people likes to your agnew and Ronald Reagan and donald trump, all who started out as democrats, change affiliation and reverse their roles in the parties party in the space of half a century . Agnews story helps illuminate this turnaround. Now i will turn to chuck to talk about it. Thank you, zach. I will cover two of the points our book makes, first that agnews combative style and his overlooked success of recruiting white southerners to the Republican Party in the late 1960s and early first, 1970s. Background. He was born in Baltimore City, the son of a greek immigrant father. And like so many others of his generation, his path led him out of the city and into the 1950s and 1960s middleclass. He was a world war ii veteran and fought at the battle of the bulge. He recalled sleeping on ice for a week. Degree byd his law going to night school at the university of baltimore at a time when the school was not even accredited. He moved out of the suburbs to Baltimore County after the war and lived very much the middleclass life. Waselonged to the pta, he father of four children, husband to a stayathome wife, judy. Relaxation and entertainment, he played golf, he was a huge fan of the baltimore colts, and he played pingpong. One of his many admirers likened himself to agnew as a conservative, hardworking, middleclass, reasonably normal. Person or, as nixon would call them, the silent majority. What we see in agnew is that while on the outside the experience looked very comfortable. Tv in the living room, airconditioning, two cars in the garage but for many of these middleclass, life felt precarious and unstable. As the sociologist William White had written at the time in his donning middleclass world of consumerism, somewhere lies the good life, but it vanishes as quickly as one finds it. Earlyhimself in the 1960s said the following. In our homes, we are bombarded by demands. Watch that show, read that book, go to this lecture, take that course, join this club, play with the children, the list seems endless. He added, it is no wonder we feel harassed and frustrated, we barely have time to think. So in response, in his political career, spiro agnew offered moral clarity and utter certainty. He must be right, he is so certain. That struck a chord with the nervous middleclass of the 1960s. But the certainty carried with it a corollary that that if things did not go his way, there must have been trickery and underhandedness involved. I will give you one example here agnew in the late sat on the 1950s Baltimore County board of appeals. It dealt with matters such as zoning pursuits. In a growing place like Baltimore County, it is actually a really important position. 1961, the Baltimore County council, all democrats, decided not to reappoint agnew to the board. While agnew blamed partisanship for his removal, he also portrayed himself as the victim of darker forces. Whereas he was the aggrieved warrior for justice against the local elites. He hinted at conspiracy and charged that an underground campaign had been waged against him. It really wasnt very underground at all. The local Democratic Power was i, he boasted, am quoting afraid they cant control me. The final meeting where his removal was made official, people nearly came to blows over the decision. In this episode, despite his always calm exterior showed an early ability to stir passions and get under peoples skin, and to excite those who relished his lashing out at the elite. He was already making a name for himself as a straight shooting politician, developing the art of attacking opponents verbally, but then plainly that he was just calmly, rationally telling it like it is. And his middleclass, suburban supporters in Baltimore County loved it. In after martin 1968 luther kings assassination launched agnews career at the highest level. Following his murder, he met with africanamerican leaders as the uprising in protest built into day three. Around 100 africanamerican leaders gathered for what they thought would be a dialogue with the governor. Instead, agnew attacked his audience for having failed to push back against the radicalism of groups like the student Violent Court nonviolent coordinating committee. Consider the optics of this meeting. Surrounded by police commissioner, who is white, the head of the Maryland National guard, also white, and the head of the state police, also white, agnew literally pointed at his audience and charged that it was the silence of most of you here today in the face of those radicals that led to baltimores unrest. Said, parts of our city lie in ruins. Who lit the fires . They were not lit in honor of your great fallen leader nor from an overwhelming sense of frustration. Rather, the fires of baltimore were kindled by the advocates of violence. His audience filed out almost immediately. To be lectured at and blamed at this particular moment and setting was more than they were willing to accept. For a moment after agnews clash with the callie Council County council, he had rallied to win the race for Baltimore County executive. In 1966, he easily won the republican nomination for governor. In the 1966 governors race, the state Democratic Party for one last time nominated a segregationist. George mahoney. Against him, the support of the black vote almost guaranteed agnews election and the sense of betrayal was palpable. Backlashngly for the years of the late 1960s, the Baltimore Sun as well as agnews office reported that the positive reaction to his comments overwhelmed the negative. By one count, agnews office received over 1100 letters of support to just 69 opposed. The letters to the editor and the sun revealed solid local approval of agnews remarks. We are proud to be republicans, one wrote. And another i am thankful to hear that the white people will have a strong voice in government. There were also very pronounced law order and tell it like it is themes. One was signed by 50 Baltimore Police officers who noted, and im quoting, it has been a long time since we heard a politician who have the guts to bring it out in the open and lay it on the line as you did yesterday. Meanwhile, as this conflict unfolded, a Young Political staffer named pat buchanan began to feed information to his boss Richard Nixon. Nixon had rehabilitated his career after his defeat to john kennedy and his stunning loss in the california governors race in 1962. By 1968, he had emerged as the clear front runner for the republican nomination. And even with more Surprising Development that year, however, was the rise of George Wallace as an independent candidate. With his bombastic style, to the appealed anticivil rights, antigreat society, provietnam war voters that the republicans had to have. But nixon wanted to maintain his statesmanlike image. He had worked so hard to create it since the dark days of 1962. How to reach those wallace supporters while appearing to be above the fray . Pick a running mate to do it for you. So it was that spiro agnew became the surprise choice for Vice President at the Republican National convention. In the appeal to white and workingclass voters, they were helped disaster helped wonderfully by the disaster is Democratic National convention in chicago that year. The audience witnessed nightly scenes of street protests and heavy policing outside the convention hall. Democratichall, leaders criticized the Chicago Police and chicago mayor Richard Daleys estoppel tactics , as the mayors responded on stage with an antisemitic slur that the breeders were able to detect. With thedicted nixonagnew victory, instead of radicalism, america would likeience dual things patriotism, incentive, respect for law and order. To the student hecklers, agnew came up with clever retorts. After antiwar protesters in portland, oregon had been removed from his talk, agnew quipped now is the now that the delegation from hanoi has left, now we can conclude. The audience roared its approval. Went after student hecklers again, saying they have never done a productive thing in their lives. They take their tactics from castro and their money from daddy. In the end, the nixonagnew team won in a close race and the evidence is clear that agnew helped draw in the kind of voter nixon needed to win. Let me shift directions to talk about agnews success in. Ppealing to white southerners already by the end of the first as his Vice President , stunt speech regularly laid into the antiwar movement, the black power movement, the counterculture, the New York Times was already reporting that spiro agnew was one of the most popular man in the south and a new leader in the drive to expand republican strength in the south. By 1971, agnew was being hailed as exceeds a bridge. Dixi favorite. The south in the error of the Voting Rights act had felt threatened and abandoned by the increasingly liberal Democratic Party. Despite being the Vice President president of the United States the United States, he shared their resentment of the elite. Having been mocked by columnists, comedians, and cartoonists since he had been named as nixons running mate, agnew told the predominantly white audience in alabama that he understood what it was like to wake up each morning to learn that some prominent man or in fusion has institution has implied it you are a bigot, racist, or a fool. Harry dent reported to his boss that southerners were ecstatic over the Vice President s recent series of speeches. He urged nixon to keep deploying agnew to the south to take full advantage of the Current Situation and to try and get more switch overs, a word they used, to the Republican Party. Nixon agreed, so agnew continue to pay special attention to the south and it worked. And newspapers are filled with glowing letters from southern journalists, politicians, disgruntled southern democrats from this time, a testament to the success he had in helping to reshape the gop during these years. Typical of these letters was one from congressman james collins, who wrote the message comes through loud and clear. You are doing Tremendous Service for the country as a spokesman for the silent majority. By the end of 1969, the New York Times reported the Vice President is cutting seriously into mr. Wallaces race of base of strength in the south. Many observers believe that his southern popularity may have surpassed mr. Wallace. With impressive foresight, it was noted that local southern democrats feared that the Vice President is the cuttingedge of the republican threat that could eventually cause the solidly ones once solidly democratic south to become republican. 1972, there was some discussion agnew might be bumped off the ticket and it was his southern supporters who rallied to his defense. Jesse helms of North Carolina warned that if the president was persuaded to replace mr. Mr. Agnew, he will lose a vast amount of the vital conservative support he enjoyed in one of his constituents wrote 1968. That while he had worked on isons campaign in 1968, he waiting to see if he will dump spiro agnew in if dumped, come 1972. Election time, he said i could go fishing that day. Nixon and agnew swept the south in their landslide win over George Mcgovern in 1972. Southernersd, white in particular were among the most enthusiastic in anticipating an agnew president ial run in 1976. The gop county chairmen wrote to carolina of north wrote to agnew a new wind was blowing in the political life of the south. If you go for the number one spot, we are for you. One cannot help but notice that this letterwriter used south to refer to a solid republican south. I will turn it back to his act. To zach. I am going to pick up a story that is the most familiar, and that is spiro agnew after he becomes Vice President. We are going to go quickly, because we want to get your questions and talk about it that way. Nominated to be Vice President , he stands up and notes the improbability of the moment. Nobody knows who he is. In fact, there is a headline that has spiro who . A significant percentage of people think that he is some sort of shellfish. He is really an unknown. He comes out of nowhere. He shows it on the campaign trail. These are some of the things that are most wellknown about him, but again, see the parallels here to particularly where the current president is. He called a Baltimore Sun reporter of japaneseamerican dissent a fat jap, he calls polish americans pol and calls Hubert Humphrey more names. Some of the same backlash you see today you saw then. Many of you who study Political Communications will know this, the tagline is it would not be as funny if it were not so serious. But as chuck alluded to, president johnson gets credit for helping nixon with the election. Particularly border states. Agnew initially looks like he will have a prominent role in the new administration. Is given an office in the west wing, a first for Vice President. He is given a highprofile. It looks like he is going to florida to have a conference with Richard Nixon before the inauguration and it looks like he is going to have a prominent role, but what is clear from the beginning is that he is way out of his league. His staff is largely from annapolis and townsend, and not used to playing on the national stage. He is given ribboncutting responsibilities and low level assignments he is bored in the first few months of being Vice President , and you can see this in his notes. So he starts to give a series of redmeat speeches in the fall of 1969, 1 of which culminated in his most famous speech. He does it in des moines, iowa at the midwestern regional republican conference where he takes on the news media. And the speech really is seminal and im just going to quote from it. And its broadcast on all three networks. Preempted the National Broadcasting for a Vice President ial speech he says a tiny and close fraternity of privileged men elected by no one and enjoying a monopoly sanctions and licensed by the government. If commentators and producers live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of washington, d. C. And new york city. Both communities bask in their own provincialism and their own parochialism. We can conclude these men read the same newspapers and draw their political and social views from the same sources. Worse, they constantly talk to one another, thereby dividing providing artificial reinforcement to their shared viewpoints. The impact of the speech was immediate. The white house and networks received tens of thousands of telegrams. Most of them agreeing with the Vice President. Nixon had a big hand in writing it and buchanan in his autobiography said that this was the speech that flicks the scab off it all. This is the beginning of fox news. Roger ailes was the Communications Director inside the nixon white house. They saw this as the first shot in a battle against the liberal media. Agnew continues on through the spring and fall of 1969 and 1970. He goes after College President s, antiwar protesters, the idea of affirmative action. All this well Richard Nixon is archly quiet. He does not have to be the person out there talking. He gives lincoln day dinner speeches all over the south and the midwest. The tones of these talks are clearly pretrumpian. In the 1970 midterm elections, he goes after people like Charles Caddell of new york, who was against the vietnam war. He is the father of roger goodell. But nixon does not like agnew. If you read the nixon tapes, he ridicules agnew and wants to drop him. Chuck alluded he wants to replace him with john connolly, but prominent republicans like Barry Goldwater would not let this happen. Nixon and agnew are reelected in a landslide and agnew is the front runner for 1976. The Bumper Sticker reads the spiro 1976. He is given the important responsibility of running the bicentennial, which agnew thinks is a loser of an issue. He wants something more prominent. But as watergate begins to unspool, agnew looks like hes in a good position because he is so far out of nixons orbit, he has nothing to do with watergate. Mcgruder is playing tennis with agnew when agnew asks him going what is going on. Mcgruder says, my instinct was to be candid. It was our operation. We screwed up and we are trying to take care of it. Agnew response, in that case, i dont think we should discuss it anymore. Agnew new to stay far away from this. In 1973, agnew has his own problems with taking kickbacks while governor and Vice President of the United States. These were largely off of contracts in the state of maryland where he got a percentage. It came in brown paper bags and andread the depositions evidence and it is pretty damming. People such as robert bork, nixons solicitor general, thought agnew should go to jail. We will go into this more, but there are some real heroes here. The attorney general of the United States, republican elliot richardson, who prosecutes the case, the u. S. Attorneys office in baltimore leaves no stone uncovered. And they go after agnew even though the attorney in baltimore , who was the brother of the republican senator these are , publican appointees who go after the Vice President. Lets go into that more in the questionandanswer. It is fascinating. A few words about agnew postresignation, its really interesting and the part that nobody ever thinks about or reads about. He is disbarred and cannot practice law. He becomes an Early International lobbyist. He works for people like Saddam Hussein and the argentine military. He writes a novel which is a steamy novel about a vice thatdent who has an affair is reviewed as saying if he was as good a novelist as he was a Vice President , we are in a good place. He is accused of antisemitism, perhaps rightfully so because he talks about the press being controlled by israel. He writes an autobiography where he says Alexander Haig wanted to have him killed. Unveiledy has his bust in the senate and his portrait restored in annapolis, but not until the late 1990s. In oceann obscurity city, maryland, in 1996. He is basically ghosted out of American History. He is a trivia answer to questions on jeopardy. Recently, the has been renewed interest in him. Many of you know Rachel Maddow had a popular podcast that focused on agnews legal problems. Its clear that his impact on the Republican Party is real. There have been a series of opinions written noting the connections between agnew and the current Republican Party. The antiimmigration stance, the antiaffirmative action. The strong law and order, being against the media, being against intellectuals. Pat buchanan was quoted about saying about trump, i was delighted when he got in. The connection here is real. Chuck and i talk about this in the last part of the book, both agnew and trump are political opportunists. They have chips on their shoulders. There is a general mistrust of institutions. They use the public speech as a way to connect with audiences. They appeal to the silent majority in the white south. Many of you know agnew from his alliteration, thats fake news. That is fake news. Their critical of fellow republicans who do not fall in line. Friendly to authoritarian regimes. Agnew was a greekamerican. He was the only democratic leader who met with the colonels in greece in 1970. There was a sense that authoritarian leaders were friendly. Again, the connection back to today. It has been said that the vice presidency is not worth a bucket of warm spit. Thats what people say. It is a job that is not important. Thise argue that marylander had a profound impact influence on politics. And his impact was longer and wider lasting the best wider and longer lasting than realized. We believe he continues to be an important figure long after many of his successors in the vice presidency have receded. He is a rare public official in his or any other era who can lay claim to a legacy. With that, we are open to taking your questions. [applause] charles j. Holden so if you have a question, we would like you to go to the microphone over here so we can get it recorded. When you started this book, was donald trump already the president . I did not think so. Did you have to shift . Why do you decide to write about him . Zach messitte when we initially started thinking about agnew, donald trump was not president. We saw this much more in biographical terms to explore his papers and talk about why he had been ghosted out of American History. When trump was elected in 2016, we had a phone call. This is much bigger and much more relevant than we had previously thought. New look at Republican Leaders over the last halfcentury, goldwater to agnew to buchanan to sarah palin to trump, that sort of lineage was real. This redmeat republican populist message, all of a sudden, we thought the project had far more salience and to a much larger audience. When we first started, the tea party was in the back of our mind. This tea party, antiobama care, that rhetoric was out there. We thought this looks familiar to us. Then trump happened. We got an email from our coauthor at 3 00 a. M. On the night of the election that just said simply our book just got way more relevant. [laughter] thank you so much for a wonderful presentation. Both of you. Articulate and well reasoned. In comparing the trump era with the nixonadd new era, there is one huge difference that immediately occurred to me. That is the labor union difference. Trump was able to mobilize many of the White Working Class men that would have been in labor unions in the 1960s and 70s but not so much anymore. Do you address that at all on in the book . If not, what is your thinking on that . Zach messitte somewhat. This is where agnew was helpful. Nixon was beginning to reach out to the White Working Class. The hardhat voters. He was already starting to have some success peeling them away. And i think part of the success they were starting to have was pressing these cultural issues, as opposed to your economic wellbeing, much to the frustration of humphrey and mcgovern. Those should be good, solid, democratic voters. And they were starting to get soft, in terms of their support for the democrats. We can see in ad newspapers that buchanan and the others sensed that the hardhat vote was there for the taking. A lot of these guys had been in vietnam and had brothers or cousins who had been in vietnam. They looked at these student protesters as a bunch of entitled punks. And to someone with a finely tuned antenna like Richard Nixon, he is able to zero in on that. But it was often agnew who would reach out to the hardhat vote. Theres a great piece scale she wrote in the magazine where she goes to a workingclass bar and she goes twice. It washave been 19721973, i think. Shes basically asking, why do you guys support nixon . The workingclass vote is starting to be peeled away. We will just repeat it. [indiscernible] i wonder if you mention narcissism in your book . [indiscernible] Zach Messitte he does not admit guilt, blames others. Do we talk about narcissism . I dont know that we talk about narcissism, but this was someone who cared very much about his appearance. He was well groomed and he wore impeccable suits. And i think in part because of his background, there was an insecurity. This was someone who originally started at johns hopkins, failed out, went into the military and served honorably in world war ii. He came back and got his undergraduate and law degree at the university of baltimore and had a series of really obscure jobs. He worked at a Grocery Store in the 50s almost as an enforcer. Really obscure stuff. Worked at an insurance agency. He was on the fringes of political society. He wanted to be in politics but was on the fringes of it. Ofdecided to move out Baltimore City to Baltimore County and to change parties so that he could be a big fish in a small pond. He could be the big deal in the Republican Party were there were no republicans and rise up the food chain quickly. There are Great Stories about him reading Readers Digest memorizing words so he could talk in big words like the people he is dealing with. There is this deep sense of insecurity intellectually that he is not quite up to snuff. We got the sense this was an overcompensation at some level for this lack of education and background. He is working with kennedys and others who are ivy league players. And he comes from this very humble, very modest background. I think he plays into that. Charles j. Holden absolutely. I also think it speaks to what i mentioned. The image we have of the family in the suburbs in the 1950s looks very stable. But it wasnt. I think agnew just embodies that. They always worried. This is a depressionera generation, always worried that it would fall apart or slip out of their hands. There is this chip on the shoulder. In some ways, he and nixon make a Wonderful Team of insecurities. Nixon always felt he had a chip on his shoulder because he went to Duke University for law school and not harvard. Imagine how agnew must have felt. He went to night school. What i think is key here is that what we see with spiro agnew at the highest levels, he is the Vice President of the United States, its not an ideological legacy. It is a style of politics. It is a temperament he brings to politics. It is always being on the offensive, always being on the attack. Never admitting a mistake, never backing down. And it works for him. Ithink at some level, represents who he really was great i think he was also smart enough to recognize this works. Zach messitte and the people he was going to attack, that just played into what everybody else was thinking. In some ways, politically, its brilliant. Charles j. Holden the des moines speech zach mentioned, one of the things we try to point out is the speech where he attacks the networks, and everyone understands he is attacking the networks but everyone gets that he is attacking the press. This was not just voicing frustration or complaints, this was orchestrated. This was planned. Buchanan talks about going to nixon ahead of time and saying basically, lets go after the networks. He says it will discredit their views for millions of viewers. They are doing this on purpose. What we would say today is they are weaponizing the attack as opposed to just venting. And i think that is an important difference. And it works. The next day, the head of cbs and nbc, they are just falling all over themselves to accuse agnew of advocating for censorship. Right . And nixon loves it. It worked. They were just going into meltdown, practically, over agnews speech. And meanwhile, his supporters loved it as well. Perhaps he was not governor long enough to answer my questions, but i remember he was considered the populist with theve t democratic clubs in Montgomery County supporting him. I have two questions. What can you say about what kind of governor he was . What did he accomplish . Was he the progressive people expected . And once that meeting took place in baltimore after the riots, was that a uturn . Zach messitte he takes office in january of 1967. August of he is pretty much on 1968, the campaign trail. He does not technically resign until after the election, but he is not governor very long. About a year and a half roughly. Track record is he has a Democratic Assembly to deal with , right . They pass an open housing law. Against racist housing programs, techniques. They passed gun legislation. They redo the state constitution. And ill see what you think about this. In some ways, he is like larry hogan. If you want to govern in maryland, you will have to govern as at least a moderate republican or you just wont get elected, for one thing. To the second part of your question, he had started mixing it up with his own constituents. He had gone out to the Eastern Shore when brown had been at cambridge and had said some pretty sharp things about black power leaders. The students at bowie state had started to sit in at the Governors Office in late march and early april of 1968, protesting just the facilities were falling down. So the students then go to annapolis and sit in his office and they arrest like 250 of them. Something like that. He has got very stern words for them as well. That he will close the campus, if he has to. Until they start to shape up. That protest then gets pushed aside with kings assassination. So the track record, you can look at him as a moderate governor, but after april of he 1968, makes this hard turn to the right. Holden when he is elected, he runs in the democratic primary. There are three primary candidates. One is the congressman from Montgomery County. A progressive. The other is the attorney general from baltimore. The third is this segregationist mahoney also from Montgomery County. Vote splits three ways. And there are these republicans for our new clubs. We interviewed a couple of them. Acheson, trumans secretary of state came out proudly for in 1966 because they did not want to vote for this segregationist candidate. He does pass some fairly progressive things, overturning the ban on interracial marriage. When he is governor, he works with the legislature. There was not a lieutenant governor. Your dad was also in the legislature at the time. He finds Common Ground way hogan finds Common Ground with democrats as well. He is a supporter of rockefeller initially for president. That is an important side story. Rockefeller leaves him hanging at the last minute. Rockefeller is in manhattan and is about to announce whether he will run. Everybody is excited and that he says im not running. Agnew had not heard anything. He is sort of left at the altar. There is this all right there is this odd shift. He is initially seen as a moderate. And then particularly on questions of law order that buchanan seeds, he is seen as someone who can appeal to white southerners. Thats how they end up using it. Zach messitte we mentioned there really is not much done on agnew. A biography came out when we were getting the book underway and its fine. It does what a biography should do. He was a moderate who became conservative. But we did not feel that was really the important story here. It is this temperament and rhetoric that he brought. Whether as county executive or Vice President , that is consistent. Thats what he had honed over the years. That is what we feel like is more important than where he fits on the ideological spectrum. The 60s and early 70s were a really tumultuous time politically. So where to place him on the political spectrum is tricky, and we feel, not the most significant way of looking at him. One more . Charles j. Holden one more question. Was he selfdestructive . [indiscernible] [laughter] Zach Messitte the question is, was he selfdestructive, why did he take the money . Charles j. Holden he was not making much as a Public Servant and he did not come from wealth. The amount of money he was taking is so little it boggles your mind. We are talking a couple thousand dollars here or there. This is not hundreds of millions of dollars. Its just a couple thousand dollars. But he felt he needed it and he needed it to participate in Washington Society and annapolis. He needed to have this money. His defense, when cornered, was everybody else in maryland is doing the same thing. The answer is, he probably was right. Everybody else in maryland was doing the same thing at the same time. Or as Baltimore County attorney went to jail. His successor was eventually pardoned by Ronald Reagan but was also convicted of a crime. Everybody was kind of doing it at some level. That doesnt make it right, but he was playing in a faster lane. And it was so sloppily done. When you read the indictment, they had codenames for drops. It was just silly how small it was. One has to wonder why he would have these bagmen from baltimore comehe was Vice President down with manila papers filled with 20 bills and slide them across the table. It boggles the mind how small the stakes were and what he was playing with. We talk about this in the book, when you play the great what if game, this is someone who he was who was indicted and resigned in october. 10 months before nixon resigns. If he had held on and not left office, he would have been president in 1974. If you was president in 1974, there is no gerald ford. There is probably no Ronald Reagan because he would have lane inhe conservative 1976 and beyond as a candidate. You have the sort of butterfly effect that occurs where, if he had not actually been pushed out when he was, American History would look entirely different. Of course, the characters who were involved at the end of his time in office, its amazing the kind of things going on at the same time. On october 9, he is pushed out. On october 6, the yom kippur war started. On october 19, the saturday night massacre. The amount of stuff compacted into 10 days, his story, yeah, it was not world war ii but , theres so much else going on at the same time that this was just one of many things. It kind of feels like the same thing now. There are so many things going on. You think today its ukraine, yesterday was whatever. In many ways, we may be living through a similar era. Thank you all so much for being here. We really enjoyed it. [applause] thank you all for coming. And ae a book signing reception right outside. You are welcome to join us. Thank you. This is American History tv on cspan3, where each weekend, we feature 48 hours of programming exploring our nations past. Next, historian Nancy Bristow talks about the 1918 influenza pandemic and how it devastated american civilians and soldiers during the final year of world war i and beyond. She also explains why the epidemic is not memorialized like the war itself, despite causing a higher number of deaths. Ms. Bristow is the author of american pandemic. Museumional world war i and memorial in kansas city, missouri, hosted this talk as part of their annual symposium. I do believe that is my cue to head this direction