President ial elections. So were going to start with this, and im calling on the work of Professor Robert dallick, a well known historian. He writes the 20th century saw an unprecedented expansion of president ial powers, primarily due to the vision and leadership skills of nine men, who served in the office. Theodore roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, harry s. True man, dwight eisenhower, john f. Kennedy, banes johnson, Richard Nixon and ronald reagan. Now, the professors 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. The professor talks about these six points. The first one he says is vision. The second is charisma. Im going to go back and talk about these. The second is charisma, the third in pragmatism. Well move to the next slide. The fourth is consensus building, followed by trust or credibility, luck, and then im going to throw in, which is on the last slide, and that is something that im going to call communication competence. Were going to leave the slides behind for right now. So lets start with vision. Vision, according to dallek, is that 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 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 then who were involved with 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 that 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 had come together in the industry to have certain sway over government. And this was 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 moneyed 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 improve the lives of americans. Now, to go along with the vision, Theodore Roosevelt had an idea that all of us have benefitted from. He was a conservationist, and it was because of him that we eventually had and now have the National Park system. The National Parks, of course, enjoyed by millions of people every year, and theyre an enduring legacy to tr. Another person with vision, Woodrow Wilson, who spoke about something called the new freedom. He said that the new freedom stood for the idea of restoring unfettered opportunity for individual action and being able to employ the power of the government on behalf of social justice. Now, its kind of interesting that this comes from wilson, because if youve been following whats transpired since the death of george floyd, then you know that some of the ideas that wilson expressed were very in nature, but he didnt seem to pro pound those ideas while in the white house and instead really did fight for social justice revisions and legislation. Okay, if were looking for the Gold Standard as far as vision, the person that we need to think about is Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt comes to the white house at a very serious time in American History. Its the depths of the depression. 25 Million People are out of work. And he goes to the Democratic National convention, he becomes the first modern president ial candidate to fly to a convention. Just the fact that he flew was a big deal because president ial candidates were not flying around in the 1930s. But he flew to chicago and he stood in front of the people and he said, i pledge you, i pledge myself to a new deal for the american people. And that showed extraordinary vision on the part of fdr. I assume that many of you know about some of the accomplishments of the new deal, but during the first 100 days, we now talk about 100 days of any president ial administration, some of the legislation that would become part of this new deal is put into effect. And it includes things like the aaa, which is the agricultural adjustment act. It includes the federal emergency relief agency. It includes the National Recovery act. Now, interestingly, what finally pulls the country out of the depression, and i just want to ask if anyone knows the answer to this, what is it that finally goes beyond the new deal and gets the country out of depression . Does anyone know . Hard for me to see. Does someone want to speak out . Yeah, world war ii. World war ii. Thank you, chase. Yes, absolutely. All of a sudden putting people back into factories and being part of the war industries, yes, finally world war ii ex extracts us, lifts us up from the terrible hold of the depression. Now, roosevelt does something as part of his vision that speaks to communication and is really considered extraordinary in its own ways. He decides he is going to talk to the people on radio, and of course the series of chats that he gives, the series of talks, become known as the fireside chats. Now, of course, what always makes me smile is that there was no fireside. He was speaking from the white house, but it didnt matter. People felt that roosevelt was talking to them. President s have given speeches, but roosevelt was talking to people. When roosevelt died, a man stopped his wife, eleanor roosevelt, on the street, and he said to her, mrs. Roosevelt, i miss your husband. I miss the way that he used to talk to me about my government. Its extraordinary. Certainly no one would say that about any of our past president s perhaps in the last 25 or 30 years, certainly that i can recall. By the way, people seemed to think that roosevelt was constantly on the radio, constantly speaking and giving these fireside chats. In fact, over the almost what was it, 13 years that he served in the white house, he gave 31. That was it. Moving on with the idea of vision, john f. Kennedy comes to the white house in 1960 and he talks about something called the new frontier. New is a big word for president s. And kennedy says that he wants to see money spent on social reform and welfare, as well as there being ambitious projects like going to the moon. Unfortunately, he never lives to see it, but it would happen before the end of the decade. Other things that happened during his time went along with this vision, but perhaps nothing more than something that he announced at my alma mater, the university of michigan, and he announced it on the steps of the Student Union on october 28th, 1960 at midnight, when he told thousands of students that he was going to be proposing something called the peace corps. It remains today and it is an enduring legacy of john f. Kennedy. One last person with a vision that he tried to follow through on was Linden Johnson, who followed kennedy upon his assassination, and he talked about something called the great society. Johnson was never a great speaker and were going to talk about the importance of being a good speaker as president. But he, too, wanted very much to improve the life of citizens and during his time in office we get medicare, civil rights act, and the Voting Rights act of 1965. Johnsons reputation, unfortunately, is always associated with the vietnam war, which he was mired in, couldnt get out of, and it forces him in march of 1968 to say in a radio address, i will not seek, nor will i accept, another term as your president. He realized that he had lost credibility and things were just not going to go well from that point on. Okay, a second point that professor dallek talks about is charisma or dynamism. What is being charismatic . I think its that it makes things exciting for people. Certainly weve had president s who have done that for us. I mentioned Franklin Roosevelt a few minutes ago, with his use of radio. And he made it exciting for people to be involved with the recovery of the country. Things were getting a little better and he was a cheerleader for that. John f. Kennedy, again, a lot of charisma. He was the youngest man to serve as president and, in so doing, there was a sense of vitality and it was an exciting time to be an american. Some of you who are listening tonight may recall that there was a record album that came out during kennedys time in office called the first family. It made terrific fun of the entire kennedy clan, but the one who seemed to enjoy it most was john kennedy, and when he was asked about it, he said, yeah, i thought the person who impersonated me did a nice job, but the fact of the matter is, i thought he sounded more like my brother teddy than he did me. So there was that sense of self deprecating humor, which was very nice. Another president with great charisma, ronald reagan. Reagan, of course, had a background, he came from acting and then switched to politics later on in his life, started life out, by the way, in case youre not familiar with this, as a democrat. Later he came a republican and was elected as a republican president in 1980. But, again, there was always that sense of excitement that things were going to happen, that these people were not going to sit still. Finally, im going to include in that group barack obama. Barack obama burst onto the political scene in 2004 when he gave the keynote address at the Democratic National convention and excited a lot of people and many people walked away from that and said, this young man has a good future coming in politics. And of course four years later he was running for president , and of course he was elected and well talk about this in a little bit, but he had tremendous rhetorical skills. Hes a wonderful speaker. And that really stood him in good stead. As you can see on the slide, professor dallek also talks about pragmatism. Pragmatism, of course, is the idea of being practical, but being shrewd, of moving the country to where you think it should be. Im only going to use one example here, and it does involve Franklin Roosevelt, but its such a good example that i think it really does speak for itself. America was very isolationist after world war i. The country simply did not want to get involved in any more foreign wars. The neutrality act had been passed so that technically you couldnt even declare war. Now, roosevelt was watching what was going on in england, actually he was watching what was going on around the world. Hitler had come to power, muthe was a large Movement Toward militerism in japan and roosevelt was aware of this and hes watching it, but he cant do anything, because the country and the congress are isolationists. They dont want anything to do with anything. Things get really desperate for the english. They are being bombed mercilessly by germany. By the way, if you want to read an excellent book about the bombing and what was going on at this point in the americanbritish relationship, i recommend to you a book by eric larson called the splendid and the vile, a wonderful history of what went on. At any rate, churchill is appealing almost daily to roosevelt saying, please, were not going to be able to hold out against hitler much longer. And roosevelt is trying to move the American Public and the congress towards helping and theyre not buying it. Finally, he gives a speech, and im just going to read a quick excerpt from the speech. He says to them, he says to the congress and to the country, suppose my neighbors home catches fire and i have a length of garden hose 400 or 500 feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, i may help him to put out his fire. Now, what do i do . I dont say to him before that operation, neighbor, my garden hose costs me 15. Youll have to pay me 15 for it. What is the transaction that goes on . I dont want 15. I want 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 in dry dock and we really were going to share them, we need to share them with the british people. And were going to do like this garden hose. Its going to be a lend. The british are going to pay us, but then theyre going to give them back. Roosevelt knew they were never coming back, but it was the idea that he needed to move people forward and he was very pragmatic about it. He used this speech and we ended up aiding brittain and you all know, fortunately, the end of the story. Moving on to consensus building. 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. Its from Linden Johnson and its with civil rights. Maybe its no surprise to anyone, but the opposition to civil rights was extreme, it was bitter. There were any number of votes that were taken earlier where civil rights was voted down. But finally, Linden Johnson, interestingly a southerner, is able 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 builds the support, and civil rights passes, and it is the law of the land. Carter lost his credibility over a number of things he was doing and it doomed his presidency. For Linden Johnson, he lost that trust and credibility because of vietnam. People just did not trust him anymore. The question has been raised, though im not sure that well see it play out yet for awhile, when President Trump has lost a lot of credibility with regard to coronavirus. I think that donald trump is unlucky in that he was 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, and it was in the 20th century, who was considered to be the unluckiest of president s . Going once, going twice. Kennedy. Why would kennedy be considered the unluckiest president . Because he was assassinated. Well, yeah, being assassinated definitely is a very unlucky thing. But, no, no. Im going to help you here. It was Herbert Hoover. Why hoover . Well, hoover comes to office in march of 1929. By the way, Herbert Hoover always get a bad rap. He was really a brilliant man, had fed much of europe after world war i, comes to the white house. Hes in office, its march. In october of 1929, the stock market crashes. The Great Depression begins. One historian wrote that Herbert Hoover came to the white house for a grand job of building and instead he was obliged to patch. Harry truman used to say that Herbert Hoover did not create the depression. The depression was created for him. It didnt matter he could not help the United States to push out from the weight of the depression. And he was, you know, he lost the election of 1932 to Franklin Roosevelt in a landslide. So understanding that luck would have this effect for certain president s, again, it is the same thing for donald trump. He did not create coronavirus, but he is dealing with the effects of it and, you know, we have 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 that this is important, and i base this on my own experience. What i found is that a president , a president ial campaign, campaigners, too. They have to be affected and their discourse proto. We need to be a decent speaker. Among exceptional speakers, we would have to put barack obama, we would have to put maybe in the next tier down, perhaps bill clinton. These are people the situations rhetorically and they also had the facility to adapt to changing conditions. If things suddenly could shift then we know that they were able to respond rhetorically. Other parts are being d grammatical correctness. So if we were looking towards the wot m layer, george w. Bush was not a particularly articulate president. Trump is not particularly articulate, though he has the benefit of great resources in media and getting his message out, but that is a different story. But communicating incompetence is an issue. As we look at the 2020 race i think that were all wondering about joe biden and just how competent of a speaker he is unfortunately he had his issues with gaffes over the years. By the way, joe, im available, im available to anyone, i would work with him on competence and being able to frame thoughts and produce good strong responses. I have a question if you dont mind. So we talked about george bush and joe biden, and they are both gaffe prone, but something they tend to like about them is they have a folksy vibe. Theyre not particularly eloquent. So i was wondering how that plays into communication competen competence. Some people like that they sound like an uncle at a barbecue. I think that is a great point. I think with certain people, and i think that this works for joe biden and i think it worked for george w. Bush to some extent. The fact that theyre not perfect really is not a terrible thing. You know, maybe it makes certain listeners more comfortable with them. And that is okay. Im trying to think of others. Harry truman was not a great speaker. There was nothing faky about his speech. And for that reason people listen to him. Poor truman, by the way, had to deal with something that many of the others didnt have to. It was Franklin Roosevelt. He died, and he became president. And for a year many people referred to truman as his accide accide accidentency. He was carrying a big load there. They were very big shoes to fill. So these are the qualities professor teaches us of the effective president s. But what about the less successful president s of the 20th century. They lacked vision or they failed to come up with a statement where they hoped it would lead. Thinking here of three president s of the 1920s. Warren harding, calvin coolidge, and then Herbert Hoover. If you remember anything in particular about any of those three. Does anyone have any memories of them . I remember in the depression they called run downtowns herbertville. And i went to a High School Named after prth harding. Warren harding was a smalltown magazine publisher. We would not rank him among the more smarter president s. As one point they were trying to his administration was trying to negotiate a final legislation. And harding and he said to one of them i wish there was a book i could buy that would explain these economic points. And he says but darn, i probably would not read it anyway. There is more scandal about harding. He is followed into office by calvin coolidge. A man of very few words. He said the business of america is business. Neither of these gentleman were particularly good speakers. Not very good communicators. Coolidge in particular there is story that may not be true, but he was of such 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 i have a bet with someone that i can make you say more than two words, and he turned and said you loose. With herbert he was a brilliant engineer, but not a great communicator. The three men that i mentioned, they also did not have the benefit of radio. Radio really coming into its own around 1927 and i if memory serves me, hoover does make a few speeches on the radio but they dont use it much. I have not mentioned dwight eisenhower. He is a better president. He was not a man as historians would tell you of many words. He was not one of the greater communicators, but he did have some vision. Its because of eisenhower that we have the interstate road system that we have. So i dont know that i, you know, i would put him as one of the more successful president s. But the other things that we might consider with these less than successful president s is that they were not prague gna n enough to make the deals to really, really lead. So as we look at all of these i think you can see certain elements in every president , even those who we would call failures, had some of these qualities, probably not in great amount, but perhaps there was a part of him that was pragmatic. But the people that we remember are those with all of the characteristics that was mentioned. Are there any questions . Oreg otherwise im going to tell you about president ial campaigns, but any questions . You said that president wilson passed social justice legislation while he was president. Could you give some examples. I heard some things that were pretty bad about him in the opposite direction like that he resegregated the military and it is also widely known about him screening birth of a nation at the white house. I just found out recently that while he was the principal of princeton no black students were admitted. I didnt hear that, but i am not surprised. I dont know if a decision was made about this, but there was supposed to be something done with regard to the name of the Woodrow Wilson school of public affairs. Im not sure if his name was removed from it. It was. They voted to remove it . Okay, i wasnt sure. Thank you. By the way it might not surprise anyone that he wasnt really in favor of women getting the vote. But when voting passed for women, the 19th amendment, he certainly went along with it. I always found it interesting that he didnt support the vote for women because he had three daughters. And you would think maybe. Okay. So i know there was some legislation that was passed during his time in office that had to do with trying to do some things to increase public housing. And this was, this came about as a practical solution because, and i dont mean to gross anyone out, but there was 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 in the area of Foreign Affairs than in domestic legislation. And i am going to have to ask you to hang on to the next class and i will bring back some more bringing back and refreshing your memory. I want to shift gears and talk about a few elections and maybe just tell you a little bit about some of the communication elements that were functioning there and also to possibly refer back to a few things. Youre going to see a film shortly called recount. That is a film about the election of your scream. You see pictures of al gore and joe lieberman. George w. Bush, richard cheney. The election took place and as some of you may remember or read about, it seemed at first that gore won. It seemed that george bush won florida so he won. Al gore who was bill clintons Vice President conceded. By the way not one of the great kru communicators of all time. A nice guy, but not a great communicator. And then it seems that there were some problems with the physical balance being used in florida. As your hearing we may be waiting for a few i days, possibly a week to have the results of 2020 because of our use of mail in ballots. In 2000 we waited from election day until december 12th. And this is because of all of the litigation that took place in this particular race. It is a great story if youre not familiar with it youre going to learn all about it. But again, a fascinating election with an unexpected outcome. 2004 has never struck me as one of the more interesting of the elections. The incumbent was george w. Bush and Vice President richard ch n cheney. A senator from massachusetts and john edward whos is a senator from south carolina. The Vice President ial debate was a spectacle of him wiping the floor with john edwards. Cheney said to edwards, you know, senator edwards guy down to the senate every tuesday and there is off a controversy that developed that had to do with the swift votes. We will talk more about it but there was a group of veterans that said that some of the things that john kerry was claiming that he had done in the vietnam war had not been his achievements. If i had to rank them, there was not any electricity and there was no charisma. Kerry came, perhaps a little bit clos closer. Bushcheney piled up votes to carry in edwards 251. That brought us to 2008. That was again another election to remember. On the left, and police note that he has dark hair. Barack obama and below him that youngster from delaware, joe biden. And the upper right, john mccain and sarah palin. By the way, if interesting for you to do that has nothing to do with anything. Take a look at the pictures of the president s when they were inaugurated and look at them four years later. The changes are they age, it is not an easy job by any means and it takes so much out of you. Today you have barack obama completely white haired and that is not uncommon for those who have served, you know, certain certainly you look at bill clinton and it is the same thing. Professor . Yeah. There is also a really good movie about this election by hbo called game change. Yes, thank you. The woman that plays sarah palin is immaculate. Highly recommend. Even if you dont like political movies, it is a very funny movie. I dont know if you have ever heard sarah palin talk. That comes from a book by john hileman and mark i cant think of marks last name. But the name of the book is game change. I thought that maybe i would assign it to you, but the truth of the matter is its 12 years ago already and i wanted there is so much material being put out thats fine, its enough. So it is a hotly contested race. The 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 something that you wont see in all president ial elections. That is respect. Respect for each other. They may have been on very diametrically opposed, but later on were going to be looking at some of the election humor from this year, and in particular were going to look at a saturday night live recording of a debate, an appearance between Hillary Clinton who lost the nomination to barack obama and sarah palin. So that is something funny that we will look forward to. 2012, a different election. The incumbents were barack obama and joe biden. And now mitt romney who had been previously the governor of massachusetts and paul ryan who was from wisconsin, he was a congressman. He would later become the speaker of the house. This is, i think, for this is a lesson to us all in the fact that one comment can so very easily sink yourship. And one thing that really went far to sinking the ship of mitt romney in 2012 was a comment that he made when he was asked in one of the debates about women in his administration. And he said the unfortunate comment that he had a binder full of female names. That doesnt sound it sounds pretty innocuous but it got blown up. He was ridiculed for it, it hurt, but there was also something very unlucky. For romney and ryan in that election, and folks in new jersey might really remember this. October of 2012, do you remember an event that took place . If i told you it was a weather event . Hurricane sandy . Super storm sandy . Super storm 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 Campaign said that one really hurt. It was, you know, i mean it was certainly not meant to be that way, but boy, you know, there we have a media image that just ends up hurting mitt romney. Theyre defeated. And that is that. 2016 were going to spend more time on 2016 in future classes. I think everyone should remember this pretty clearly. Of course it was Hillary Clinton against donald trump. Tim cane the senator from virginia, and mike pence, the former governor of indiana. I said this before i might have even said it in the first class, but im going to say it again and that is that if someone tells you that they knew that donald trump was going to win in 2016, they knew it, they were convinced, theyre full of bologna. No one identified him as the likely winner. Everybody thought that Hillary Clinton was going to win. Even trump did not think he was going to win. But i always wondered about that because i think he is a very competitive man, and i think that as the election went along his audiences grew. The enthusiasm for him grew, and i think that he really enjoyed it and 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 she is there in the white house. So there was a number of reasons, of course, why clinton lost in 2016. But it wasnt the debates. By almost every source that i have ever been able to pull up, every ranked her as winning all three president ial debates. The Vice President ial debate was kind of a blah affair. Nothing really came out of it, but it was those three president ial debates. Hillary clinton is a good speaker, she is very articulate. Trump not as much. But, he also had a particular charisma that she didnt like. This was an election between two candidates that people did not particularly like. It has been said that if joe biden has one thing going for him in 2020, it is that he is likable. So, you know, you can sort of factor that in. So these are just some, this is just a quick look at the 2016 election. And well go back and be revisiting it. As go forward, think of those qualities that professor dallick tells us to consider. And look for it in campaigning. And we will be continuing our discussion in our next session, and i look forward to seeing you them. Have a good evening. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, go inside of a Different College classroom and hear about topics ranging from the american revolution, civil rights, and u. S. President s to 9 11. Thank you for your patience and for logging into class. With most College Campuses closed due to the impact of the it was, watch professors francer if to a virtual setting. He did most of the work to change the soviet union, but reagan met him halfway. Reagan encouraged and supported him. The freedom of the press that we will get to later, he called it the freedom of the use of the press. It is freedom to print things and publish things. It is not a freedom for what we refer to institutionally as the press. American history on American History tv every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. It is also available as a pod cast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Youre watching American History tv every weekend on cspan 3 explore our nations past. Cspan 3 created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Coming up on American History tv, a 1945 film about how americans voted in the president ial election