The first has to do with the factors that are considered when we look at president ial effectiveness. The second part id like to look at, a few of the more recent president ial elections. So, were going to start with this. Im calling on the work of Professor Robert dallek, wellknown president ial historian. Dallek writes, th 20th century saw an impressive expansion of president ial powers, due to the leadership skills of nine men who served in the office theodore roosevelt, woodrow wilson, frank lynn delano roosevelt, harry s truman, dwight d eisenhower, john f. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines johnson, richard nixon, and ronald reagan. Now, professor dalles now professor deluxe analysis only looks at the 20th century. Im going to throw in some of the president s from the 21st century as we go along. So, if we can go to the first slide, professor dallek talks about these six points. The first one, he says, is vision. The second is charisma. The third is pragmatism. Welll move onto the next slide. The fourth is consensusbuilding, followed by trust and credibility, luck, and then im going to throw in, which is on the last slide, something im going to call communication competence. And were going to leave the slides behind right now. So, lets start with vision. So, vision, according to dallek, is president s come up with an idea and they help us to develop something thats going to pull us altogether. Its going to be something that is going to unify us. Sometimes it comes to us as a, in a phrase. The new deal, the new frontier, the great society. These would be the things that are going to occur when we talk about vision. So, let me talk about a few of the president s who were involved in this. And were going to start with theodore roosevelt. Theodore roosevelt was the first president of the 20th century, and he came to the white house at a time when the presidency was pretty weak. It was considered really to be, certainly not what it is today. But roosevelt began to expand that notion of it. And roosevelt looks at the white house as an invitation to opportunity. And he talks about something he calls the square deal, and something that he calls the new nationalism. The square deal was the idea that people in america were not being treated fairly by the very wealthy in the country, by the trusts, which were groups of people that came together in the industry to have certain sway over government. And this is going to be a way to deal with that and to make things a little more equitable, if you will. So, the square deal was going to try to establish a balance between what had been the monied interest and give more back to the people. The same with the new nationalism. The new nationalism was supposed to try to protect Human Welfare and property, and just to generally improveat anys appealing almost daily to roosevelt, saying please,were not going to be able to hold out against hitlers much longer hitler m muchuc much longer. Resident appeals to america and congress and theyre not buying it. Finally, he gives a speech. Im going to read a quick excerpt of the speech. He says to the congress and to the country, suppose my neighbors he catches fire, and have a length of garden hose five or 400 feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, i may help him to put out thisire. Now, what do i do . I dont say to him, before the operation, neighbor, my garden hose cost me 15. Youll have to pay me 15 for it. What is the transaction that goes on . I dont want 15. I want t my garden hose back after the fire is over. And what roosevelt is doing is saying to the congress and the american people, we have these old battleships and theyre standing, theyre in dry dock, and were going to share them. We need to share them with the british people. And were going to do, like this garden hose, is going to be a lend that the british is going to pay us, but theyre going to pay us back. Roosevelt knew they were never going to come back, but he needed to move people forward. And he was very pragmatic about it. He used this speech and we ended up engaging britain, and you all know, fortunately, the end of the story. Moving on to consensusbuilding. Consensus building is the idea of putting together a coalition, getting coalitions, getting people to support you. And again, im only going to give you one example here, but its from Lyndon Johnson and its for civil rights. Maybe its no surprise to anyone, but the opposition to civil rights was extreme. It was biter. There were any number of votes that were taken earlier, where civil rights were voted down. But finally, Lyndon Johnson, interestingly a southerner, is abable to put together a coalition of democrats and republicans who believe in doing the right thing, in social justice, and johnson goes out and he sells it to the people and he gets the consensus, he built the support and civil rights passes. Trust a. S the law of theland. Credibility, then youre pretty much kaput as president. If anyone remembers president jimmy carter, carter lost his credibility over a number of things that he was doing, and it really doomed hihis presidency. For johnson, for Lyndon Johnson, he lost that trust and credibility because of vietnam. People just did not trust him anymore. The question has s been raised though im not sure that well see it play out for a while, whether President Trump hass lost a lot of credibility with regard to coronavirus. Well see. That one has yet to play out, and you know, well see it this fall. I think that, probably, donald trump is very unlucky in that he was ki of moving along very well to reelection because the economy was quite good, and then coronavirus hit and turned all of our lives upside down. Now, i have a question, and again, anyone please go ahead and yell it out. Does anyone know, it was in the 20 century, who was considered to be the unluckiest of president s . I cant hear you. Coolidge . Who would be considered to be the most unlucky president of the 20th century . Nixon, maybe . President nixon . Why would nixon be considered to be the luckiest president . Watergate, maybe . Well think of an event you cant really control. Unfortunately there were some issues where the president couldve done some controlling. Wiwith waterga ok. Going once. Going twice. Candidate . Kennedy. Why would kennedy be considered the luckiest president s . He was assassinated. Well, yeah, being assassinated is definitely a very unlucky thing. But no, no. Im going to help you here. It was Herbert Hoover. Why hoover . Hoover comes to office in rch of 1929 by the way, Herbert Hoover always gets a bad re he was really a very, very brave men, had fed much of europe after world war i, comes to the white house. Hes in office since march. And then in october of 1929, the stock market crashes and the Great Depression begins. One historian wrote that Herbert Hoover came t to the white house poised for a grand job of building, and instead he was obliged to catch. He was pretty unlucky. Harry truman used to say that Herbert Hoover did not create thehe depressn. The depression was created for him. But it didnt matter. He couldnt help the united statates from push out from the weight of the deession and he lost the election in 1932 to Franklin Roosevelt in a landslide. Ok, so understanding that luluck wou have thisffect for certain president s, again, its the same thing for donald trump. He did not create cocoronavirus, but he is dealing with the effects of it. And you know, weve been living through trying to get back to some degree of normalcy. I have one last thing to add. That is the point that i added which is communication confidence. I believe this is important and i based this on my own experience on watching president s and studying them for a long time. What i found is that a president , and president ial campaigns, campaigners too, and youre seeing it right now, have to be effective in their discourse, appropriate. You need to be at least a ddecent speaker, bter if youre a good speaker, be if youre an exceptional speaker. Ok, so among exceptional speakers, we would certainly have to put barack obama. We would have to t Franklin Roosevelt. Maybe in the next tier down, perhaps bill clinton. But these were people who could take advantage of situations, rhetorically, and all of them also had the facility to adapt to changing conditions. If things suddenly could shift, then we know they were able to respond rhetorically. Other parts of this, too, would be grammatical correctness and cadence, being able to string ideas together. So, if we were looking towards maybe the bottom layer, george w. Bush was not a particurly articulate president. Donald trump is not particularly articulalate, thoug he has the benefit of great resources in media anand getting his message out. But thatss a different story. But communication competence is an issue. As we look at the 2020 race, i think that were all wondering about joe biden and just how competent a speaker he is. Unfortunately, hes had his issues with gaffes over the years, so this is something, if they hired me right w to work with him and by the way, joe, im available im available to anyone i would work with him on cocommunicare competence and being able to frame thoughts and being able to produce good, strong, rhetorical responses. Dont mind. Please come ago. Please, go. We talked about george bush and joe biden. They are both gaffe prone, but what people tend to like about them is they have that full sea fiber. Because theyre not particularly eloquent, so i was wondering if that plays into communication competency. People love their uncle at a barbecue. They have that very hometown vibe. I think that is a great point. I really do. I think this does work for joe biden and i think it did work for george w. Bush. E fact that they are not perfect. Really, is not a terrible thing. It, you know, maybe it makes certain listeners more comfortable wh them. And thats ok. Im tryiying to think of others. Harry truman was not a great speaker. But he, he was plain spoken. And there was no artifice. There was nothing fakey about his speech. And, for that reason, people listened to him. Poor truman, by the way, had to deal with something that many of the others did not have to. Remember who he followed into the white house. It was Franklin Roosevelt. And Franklin Roosevelt had died. And truman became the president. And, for a year after, many peopuman as his accidentcy. He kind of was carrying a big load there trying to continue with roosevelt programs. Certainly they were very, very big shoes to fill. So, these are the qualities professor dallek teaches us. But what about the less successful president s of . Of the 20th century . Dallek tells us thathey lacked vision or failed to come up with a simple phrase to explain where they hope to lead it. Im thinking here of three president s of the 1920s. Warren harding, calvin coolidge, and d then. Herbert hoover. Im wondering if you studied these in history class or in Political Science or maybe even in communication. If you remember anything particur about any of those three. Does anyone have any memories of them . During the depression they called Homeless People town hooverville. That is one of the things i remember. I wento a High School Named after president harding. Did you really . Oh, ok. Warren harding was a small town magazine blisher from marion, ohio. We would not rank him among the more smarter president s. At one point, they were trying to, his administration was trying to negotiate some financial legislation. And hoover sorry, harding said to one of his secretaries you know, i wish that there wass a book i could buy that would explain these economic points. Then he said, b but, darn, anyway. Thats the kind of person he was. A fair amount of scandal connected with warren g. Harding, but you will have to tune in another night and we will talk about the scandals. Hes followed into office by calvin coolidge. Calvin coolidge, a man of very few words. He was the one who said the business of america is business. Neither one of these gentlemen was a particularly articulate speaker. Not very good communicators. Coolidge in particular, the his story may be apocryphal, maybe it is not true. He said so few words that a woman sat down next to him at a dinner in the white house one night and she said to him, mr. President , i haveve a bet with someone that i can make you say more than two words. And he turned to her and said, you lose. That was a kind person h he was. Of course, with hoover again, he was the a brilliant engineer but he was not a good commucator. Remember, ttoo, the three men i mentioned, harding, coolidge and hoover did not have the benefit of meradio. Radio really comes into its own around 1927. If memory serves me, hooever hoover make a few speechehes on the radio but they do not use it very much. I have not mentioned dwight eisenhower. And he wawas actually one of the better president s. Was not a man as, historians would tell you, of many words. Was not one of the great of communicators, but did have some vision. It is because of eisenhower that we have the interstate road system tt we have. So, i dont know, i would put it has one of the more successful p president s, but the other things that we might consider with these less than successful president s is that, um, they werent pragmatic enough to make the deals that needed to bring the country along to be in step with them. And they lacked the charisma and the character to really, really late. So, as we look at all of these, i think we can see certain elements in every president , even those who we would call failures. Had some of these qualits, probably not, not in a great amount. But perhaps there was a part of harding that was pragmatic. Perhaps coolidge did have some abability to have peoe trust in him. But the people that we remember are those that have all of the characteristics that professor dallek mentioned. Are there any questions . Otherwise i will tell you a little bit about some president ial campaigns but any questions . You said that president wilson passed the social justice legislation while he was president. I was not aware of that. I was wondering if you can give some examples because i had heard some things that were pretty bad in the apposite direction, he resegregated the military and it is widely know that he screened bithrth of a nation. I was wondering if you could explain some of that. I was perplexed by that point. I found out recently that while wilson was the president of princeton university, no black students were admitted. I did not know that but i am not surprised. I dont know if a decision was made about this but there were supposed to be something done with regard to the name of the W Woodrow Wilson school of public affairs. Im n not sure if his name was removed from it. They voted to remove. Ok, thank you. By the way, it might not surprise anyone that he was not really in favor of women getting the vote. But then when voting passed for women, when the 19th amendment passed, he certainly went along with it. I always found it interesting that he did not support the vote for women because he had three daughters. And you would think maybe. Ok, so i know that there were some legislation that was passed during his time in office. That had to do with trying to do some things toincrease public housing. And this came about as a practic solution because and i do not mean to gross anyone else but they were so many rats in washington. And they were such a problem. In some of the neighborhoods that he was in favor of it. Truthfully, wilsons achievements are more from the area of foreign affairs. Then in domestic gislation. And i am going to have to ask you to hang on to the next class and i will bring back some more in turn some more examples because i have got to go back and just refresh my memory. Anim just having trouble recalling but i do remember the legislation aboupublic housing. Just remind me of that for next time. Ok, very quickly. I want to shhift gears and talk about a few elections, and maybe just tell you a bit about some of the communication elements that were functioning there, and also, to possibly refer back to a few things professo dallek said. You folks are going to be seeing a film very shortly. It is called recount. And that is a film about the election of 2000. On the left side of the screen you see pictures of al gore and joe lieberman, who is a senator from connecticut. And george w. Bush and richard cheney. The election took place, and as some of you may remember or you may have read about, it seemed at first that gore had won. And then it seemed, no. Ththat george w. Bush had won the state of florida. So he had won. Al gore, who was bill clintons Vice President , conceded. By the way, not one of the great communicators of all time. Nicest guy in the world, but not a great communicator. And then it seems thatt [coughs, there were some problems with the physical ballots being used in florida. And, because of that, as you hear, as you are hearing right now, we might be waiting foror maybe a few ds, possibly a week, to have the results of the election of 2020, because of our use of mailin ballots this year. Well, in 2000, we waited from election day until december 12. And that is because of all the litigation that took place in this particular race. Its a great story. If you are not familiar with it, you are going to learn all about it, but again, a fascinating election with an unexpected outcome. 2004 has never struck me as one the more interesting of the elections. The incumbent was geoe w. Bush and Vice President richard cheney. The challengers were john kerry, who is a senator from massachusetts, and john edwards, senator from south carolina. There was a, the Vice President ial debate had the spectacle of cheney absolutely waking up the floor with john edwards. At one point, cheney said to edwards, you know, senator edwards, i go down to the nate every tuesday and i never sue you. I do not recall having seen you. There was also a controversy that developed that had to do with something called the swift boats. We will talk more about it. But there were a group of veterans who said that some of the things that john kerry was claiming he had done during the vietnam war really had not been his achievements. The debates between kerry and, uh, george w. Bush. Ad 12 ten, ione to 10, because there was not any electricity. There certainly was no charisma. Even the fact, though, kerry came perhaps a little bit closer than was expected, because bush cheney piled up 286 elect for bolts to electoral votes to 51. That brought us to 2008, and that was, again, another election to remember. On the left, an interestingly please note the hair. Is barack obama and below him that youngster from delaware joe biden. On the upper right, john mccain and sarah palin, the governor of alaska. By the way, its Something Interesting to do that has nothing to do with anything, but take a look at the pictures of the president s when they were inaugurated and look at them four years later. The changes are profound. Yeah. They age. It is not an easy job by any means. It just takes so much out of you. You know, today, barack obama is completely white hahaired. And thats not uncommon for those who have served. You know, certainly you look at bill clinton, the same thing. Ok. There is also a good movie called hbo, called game change about this election. The woman who play sarah palin is immaculate. Highly recommend, even if you dont like political movies. It is a very funny movie. I dont know if you heard sarah palin talk, ever. And, that comes from a book by john heilman and mark i cant think of marks last name but the na of the book is game change. I had thought that maybe i would assign it to you, but the truth of the matter is, i wanted you, they were so much material bei put out. Its enough. So, its a hotly contested race. The, uh, debates between both obama and mccain and sarah palin and joe biden are entertaining. If you watch the debate between mccain and obama, youre going to notice someing that you will not see in all president ial elections, and that is respect. Respect for each other. They may have been on very diametrically opposed politically, but they respected each other. Later on, were going to be looking at some of the election humor from this year, and in particular, looking at a saturday night live rerecording of debate, im sorry, an a pprance betwe Hillary Clinton who lost thnomination to barack obama and sarah palin. So that is something that is funny and something we look forward to. 2012. A different election. The incumbents were barack obama and joe biden. And now mitt romney, who had been previously governor of massachusetts, and paul ryan, who was from wisconsin. He was a congressman. He would later become the speaker of the house. Um, this is, i think for, this is a lesson to us us in the fact that one comment can so very easily sink your ship and one thing that really went far to sinking the ship of mitt romney in 22 was a comment that he made when he was asked in one of the debates about women inhis administration, and he made the unfortunate comment that they had a binder fullf female names. Now, that does not sound it sounds pretty innocuous but it got blown up. He was ridiculed for it. Ut there was s also something very unlucky for romney and ryan in that election. Folks in new jersey might remember this. October 2012, do you remember an event that took place . . If i told you it was a weather event told you it was a weather event. Hurricane sandy. No one remembers. Superstorm sandy. Superstorm sandy. Right. Some of you may remember that barack obama came to new jersey, and he and Chris Christie had their arms around each other. And later on, the republican ccampaign said that one really hurt. You know, i mean, it was certainly not, not meant to be that way, but boy, there we have the media image that just ends up hurting that romney, they are defeated and that is it. 2016. We ar going to spend a lot more time on 26 in future classes. I think everyone should remember this pretty clearly. Of course, it was Hillary Clinton against donald trump. Tim came, kain, the senator from virginia and mike pence the former governor of indiana. I have said this before. I mightve said and the first class but im going to say it again, and that is someone tells you that they knew that donald trump was going to win in 2016, they knew it, they were convinced, they are full of baloney. There was nobody who identified trump as the likely winner and 2016. Realal clear politics, everybody thought the Hillary Clinton was going to win. Even trump did not think he was going to win. Ive always wondered about that. Because i think he is a very competitive man. And i think, as the election went along, his audiences grew. The enthusiasm for him grew. And i think he really enjoyed it. I will tell you that i know that Melania Trump was not very happy about the win. She had no desire to be first lady but you know. Shes there in the white house. So, there are number of reasons why clinton lost in 2016 print but it was not the debates. By almost every source that i have been able to pull up, everyone named her as winning all three president ial debates. The Vice President ial debate was a blah affair. It was those threee president ial debates. Hillary clinton is a good speaker. She is very articulate. Trump not as much. But he also had aparticular charisma, which she did not like. Which she did not have. This was an election between two candidates that peoeople did not particularly like. Its been said if joe bidehas one thing goioing for him in 20, it is that he is likable. So, you know, you can factor that in. So, these are just some, this is just a quick look at the 2016 election. And we will go back and be revisiting it. As we go forward, think of those qualities that professor dallek tells us to consider in president ial effectiveness. And look forward in campaigning. And we will be continuing our discussion in our next session, and i look forward to seeing you then. Have a good evening. American history tv, on cspan 3. Every weekend. Coming up this weekend for election day, november 3rd. He will look at esidents and president ial elections