Rick perlstein, in your third book,in that period from 1962 to 1976, you talk about being a dark time in our history. I am talking about global warming, look at the ebola crisis. Of course, the middle east is blowing up again. In america, the crisis of inequality, we kind of have a new normal of which 7 or 8 of unemployed it is ok, the skyrocketing of inequality, the bankers that seem to be able to get away with everything, but, the 1970s were really awful too. Here you are, 13 years ago when you were talking on this program. I want to see if your beliefs are the same today. I am a europeanstyle social democrat. I probably identify with the tradition which has given America Progressive income tax, education, some kind of old age insurance, and we have nothing to be ashamed of. I believe that we can take back the standard of american politics from conservatives. I would not change a word. In this book, you write about what era . The invisible bridge. It covers from 1962 through the Repu
Religious piety. They grew up in a parsonage and were deeply influenced by the ideals of missionary calvinism, the idea that the world is divided between good and evil and that christians have to go out into the world and transform the evil into good. A very short step from that to take it into politics and believe that politically, the world is divided between good regimes and evil regimes. And that it is the duty of the good regimes, that is us to go , out into the world and destroy that evil. That is an important part of the dulles brothers formation. The other big influence on them was the decades that they spent as corporate lawyers working for this very important law firm, sullivan and cromwell in new york. That was not a law firm that you went to if you needed a contract drawn up or to be represented in court. Sullivan and cromwell had a specialty. That was pressuring small weak countries to accept the demands of big american corporations. That is what allen dulles and foster du
Recently died when that super airport in chantilly, virginia was being built. President eisenhower announced that the airport would be named Dulles Airport. When kennedy took over, he didnt want to name it after a crusty old cold war era. The was pushed back and finally the decision was made to name it after dulles. You can still see the film clip of kennedy opening the airport with eisenhower there and allen dulles there. He pulls back a curtain and behind the curtain is this giant bust of John Foster Dulles. That stands in the middle of this big airport. I went to see it while i was writing this book. I couldnt find it. I started asking security guards. Nobody had ever even heard of it. It was a long process and finally, thanks to the washington airport authority, i was able to discover that the bust had been taken away from its place in the middle of the airport and it is now in a closed Conference Room opposite baggage claim number three. I find this a wonderful metaphor for how th
Your second book nixonland, starts with the watts riots and goes through nixons landside in 1972. What is a person with your personal views of politics doing spending all this time with conservatives in this country . That takes us back a ways. I started this project in 1997, and, i might have told you last time, let me know if i am repeating myself, i was fascinated with the 1960s when i was growing up. I went to the renaissance bookstore in wisconsin. It was full of used books and used magazines. That was my playground. I would pick up books about the black panthers, i would pick up books by the reverend john noble, a fundamentalist preacher who argued that the beatles were a communist plot. When i came to new york, i realized i wanted to become a journalist. I wanted to write a book. It was right around the time that Newt Gingrichs Republican Congress was taking the world by storm, Timothy Mcveigh blew up the Federal Building in oklahoma city, and i had also been fascinated with my
Do historians watch enough tv. So just to let you know what were going to be doing were gonna have a conversation and hopefully insightful conversation around that very question, but were also going to show you some television clips. So if historians do not watch enough television, maybe youll get the chance to do it here and then were going to talk about how we work with with tv and and at the end we want to bring you into the conversation, of course, and so if youre looking at the program you can see that that frank isnt able to join us today, unfortunately, and then my lights and everything you can tell that this is being recorded for cspan. And with me today to to help moderate this sage goodwin of university of oxford. Yes. Hi everyone. So yeah, were getting pretty massive. Were gonna be filmed talking about tv, but first were gonna introduce some of the political historians we have here to talk about working on tv and were gonna you know, you can you can google them to find out i