Now, id like to invite Gleaves Whitney, executive director of the gerald dar ford president ial foundation, to the podium to introduce tonights speaker, gleaves. Thanks i would like to invite executive director of the president ial foundation to the podium to introduce tonight speaker. As joel just said, we are back. Look at this. It is great to have all these people in the auditorium after months of covid. I applaud you for being here. You came for a great program. For many years, almost two decades. But first, i want to welcome our cspan viewing audience. I want to welcome all of you in person. I think we have trustees we have president fords family members, greg ford, nephew of the president. Always glad you are here. Go ahead and applaud. Absolutely. Those of you who have into the skate for know that i have tried every which way possible, humanly possible to introduce bill in any way. One year, in fact, we used his haiku poetry. He is the author of a lot of haiku poetry that ended up in a book. Another year, we look at the student evaluations. I had never managed to embarrass him in a goodnatured way until i read the last student evaluation from a young woman who said, and the best thing besides the storytelling, he is hot. I have run out of ideas for introducing. Here is what i would like to do. You all know bill. You all have been coming back. How many have heard bill in person . Going to ask you the questions. Where does teach . How many books has he written . I think thats low. How often does he write a book . Sometimes, hell get off the airplane. Its really amazing. The economic history of the United States on the other. Amazingly prolific. How many of his published books have been finalists . Know we are getting tough. Is it two . Two of them have been Pulitzer Prize finalists. Weve got a delightful person to address us. One of the reasons i always enjoy having bill back is that hes one of the few academic historians who also bridge the gap to the reading public. Takes place in so many of the History Channel and other documentaries were using him and his expertise. It is really a lot of fun. He always has something very interesting say. He could make you look in the subject you thought you knew and see it in a new light. Because hes good at that, rather than i talk any further, let me ask you, are you ready to learn tonight . Are you ready to learn . Bill brands, come on up. Thank you, Gleaves Whitney for that kind introduction. Thank you all for coming. Im glad to be back at the ford museum. I am here because Gleaves Whitney asked me to come. He wants me to write a book on the 1970s. He did not put it quite so bluntly when we had the conversation that led to this invitation back in september but he pointed out to me that we are approaching the 50th anniversary of the several event that placed gerald ford at the center of national and international potential. He wanted somebody to frame the period. What is the america that gerald ford stepped on centerstage of . I do not know if i told you this but i have been thinking about the 1970s for a while. Specifically, ive been thinking about the 1970s since the 1970s. Lately ive been writing books about. My most recent book is about william sherman. That generation of people who fought the last phase of the indian war. Was about folks who lived and fought during the american revolution. When you deal with history that is that deep in the past, we all look on it. Essentially from the same perspective. We talk about the 1970s, were talking about something. Please raise your hand if you have a fairly active memory of the 1970s. Okay. Before this, i had lunch with a friend who is a judge in austin. I wrote a book a few years ago about Douglas Macarthur and harry truman. Said that was one of his earliest memories in being aware of the world. The farther back we go, the fewer people for this stuff. The reason im saying this is that im going to use this as a way to frame my approach to this. I will say that Gleaves Whitney is a very effective spokesman for his causes and he might very well talk me into writing this book. You are going to be a test audience to see how you like the idea but also, im going to speak for half an hour or so. I want to engage you in a conversation because by hands that you raised a moment ago, and talking to people who lived through the 1970s. Theres part of me that is the author that writes books that i want people to read and by. I want to know what would get you to buy a book on the 1970s. First question, for all of you. Would you be more inclined or less inclined to buy a book about a. That you lived through . Raise your hand if you are more inclined. Okay, i think so. I can understand this. There are people who like their literature, whether its fiction or nonfiction, to be exotic. To take them to a place they never were and never would go otherwise. We read about some. That is very different from the present time. There definitely is an interest in this time that i lived through. I am older than some of you and younger than some of you but im going to tell you that. When i was in college. The first president ial election that i voted in was 1972 election and i was 19 at the time of the election. This was the first president ial election where people under the age of 21 could vote. For the first time, i was becoming pretty interested in Public Affairs. Some of this reflected the fact that when i was in high school, i had an American History teacher that engaged my interest in political history. The history you see unfolding before our eyes is most evidently. If you pick up a newspaper, we find out what congress has done, whats happening in foreign policy. I was paying attention to it in part because i had the speech teacher who made it, in large part, because this focused on individuals. What were people doing . What made their world go around. Maybe because i was influenced by that teacher or maybe i was drawn to that teachers approach because i had a preexisting inclination in this direction. I always end up writing biographies. The life and times of interjection. Even when i write about other subjects, even when i write about it. Or a subject that focuses on the hinges of individuals because that is the way i tend to interpret history. One of the reasons why biography, as a genre, is more popular than history. Some of you will remember your history Classroom High School with something less than exciting. History classes in high school have a bad reputation. Perhaps ive used this line and perhaps some of you will remember. The university of texas reiki teach has a program for retired folks who have time on their hands in want to hear something about history. I prefaced something i was going to say. I told the story before. The gentleman in the back, i said this 20 years ago. He set up and said if you dont remember, we dont remember. Anyway, the story is about peoples recollection of their history class, their High School History class. A lot of people cannot remember the last name of their High School History teacher but they do remember that the first name was coach. It reflects the fact that there are not a lot of nonspecialists teaching High School History. But anyway i had a special interest in paying attention to Public Affairs, especially american politics and American Foreign policy. Being in college in the early 1970s, first of all, is there anybody in the room i was in the same situation and preferably, to answer this question. Anybody in college in the early 70s . What was on your mail might accept the obvious things . When you were in college in the early 1970s. Where are you paying attention to who was going to win what was hanging over my head . The war in vietnam and the draft. When i graduated from college or the College Deferment with a draft should be ended, the i met the app to vietnam. I reflect on this to my students during their lifetime. I want about the time the United States invaded afghanistan in 2001. I point out to them that it is striking to me that neither one of those was particularly popular in the United States but there was almost nothing in the way of protest. I asked them to reflect. Why do you suppose that was . Do you know the answer . None of them had any skin in the game. It did not matter. It did matter when i was in college. Do you remember lattery day . You could hear the reactions from the open windows of the dorm rooms around where there would be an oh no or yeah depending on what number was drawn whenever they came up. Anyway. I am drawn to this and i remember much of it. Ive studied it because ive written around and through it. I covered some of background. To look at it specifically and figure out what was really going on, and i have never actually centered a story about that. On gerald ford. Going to explain why if somebody were to write a book on american politics and foreign policy, it might be a smart idea to center it on gerald ford because he is right in the middle of some really momentous stuff. Maybe if i do decide to write this book, maybe will play a central role. At the moment, heres what im thinking. The title i have in mind the great unraveling. I can tell you that a little bit at the time but certainly as a historian looking back words, in the 1970s and i dont want to get too specific within the 1970s. The title for the talk tonight was watergate. When the 70s really began. The 70s, in some ways, historians sometimes argue about was the 1970s more important. Events dont pay any attention of the calendar. They just happen. And attitude towards politics and government unraveling. I put it this way. In 1970, if you had come of political age in 1970. When i was 17 years old, i knew enough about the history of american politics during the previous two realize that starting in the 1930s, there had been a shift in american attitude. Attitudes of American Voters regarding what they expected from government. In the 18th century, 19th century, people expected almost nothing of government. You look to yourself and you help the government stay out of the way but everybody was a believer in small government. The modern Republican Party, when it was found in the 1850s, it was the First Political party devoted to bigger government. Might be worth a reminder that the modern ends wanted government to assist business in the developing of the American Economy. Should help out people when they lost a job. When they were for whatever reason. People would look to private charities, members of their family, they would pray. Government is not in that business. He vetoed a law thats going to provide to texas farmers. He said i have always thought that the people should support government, not the government should support the people. But during the 1940s, this changed because the depression hit so many people and hit them in ways that make them realize i did not do anything wrong. I did everything right and still, the economy collapsed and i have to deal with the consequences. There was this changed american attitude. On the idea that government should help folks out when they need help. The centerpiece of this was the Social Security act of 1985. That set in motion this idea that government should get more involved and government should help solve the problems that American Society faces. This, at the time was characterized as the essence of american liberals. You were a liberal in those days if you look to government to help solve societys problem. You were eight conservative if you said no, leave those problems, leave the fixing of the private sector. There were arguments on both side of the issue with the liver liberal side was winning the argument. It won the argument to the 1930s. The government got bigger. Each time the government got bigger, people started accepting anything the government did. Once people started getting Social Security paychecks, there was no way you could take it away. Until the 1960s, nobody expected government to be in the healthcare business. Along comes medicare and i you couldnt take medicare away. George w. Bush tried and it didnt go anywhere. There was the tendency for somebody like me in the 1960s. I was vaguely aware of elections of the 1960s. This is a permanent trend and people will expect more of government. The conservatives didnt go away. In american politics, if you get 55 of any vote, that is a big win. But then things change and in 1970, this work government was still pervasive in american politics. Jump ahead to 1980. Ronald reagan is elected. Government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem, itself. Something happened in the 1970s to change this view. The unraveling im talking about is the unraveling of this consensus that the government is your friend. Government can solve americas problems or at least make a good. There are other aspects. In 1970, the United States was clearly the most awful country in the world and anything that the united dates put its mind to doing, it could do. The United States could land a man on the moon in 1969. Just according to jfk schedule. Combating communism around the world and it held the line since 1945. The United States was engaged in a war in southeast asia. The vietnam war ends badly. The u. S. Loses its first war. The americans realized we cannot do everything. Furthermore, the economic miracle that was the American Economy starting in the early 1940s was spending on world war 2 that created the modern, american middleclass. Through 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, it looks like that was going to go on. In the 1980s, things begin to fall apart. The first thing that happens is the United States goes off the International Gold standard. The United States is in the prop of the world Financial System and it can no longer carry that out. Richard six Richard Nixon says okay, were no longer going to make our dollars convertible. And then inflation sets in. That seems symbolic to most people because most people didnt care. Became the Chronic Behavior of the American Economy, then americans began to say wait a minute, this idea that each generation can be wealthier than the generation before, this combos as well. All of the stuff is going on and then there is another aspect of it that had been appreciated by political philosophers. Some of you will remember that in american politics, during most of the 20th century, there was called the solid south. Do you know which party the south was solid for . The Democratic Party. When Lyndon Johnson on behalf of the National Democratic party, when he put his signature to the civil rights act, he turned to his secretary and said bill, i think weve lost the south the Republican Party for a long time. This was beginning to happen in the 1970s but continued into the 80s, 90s. This great migration of southerners of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party was underway and what this did, it did not simply rebalance politics. It made politics much more bitter, partisan that they had been before. Until the 1960s, American Party politics had always been a mismatch of political philosophies. There were republicans and there were democrats. Before that, there were democrats and before that, there were federalists and republicans. In every occasion, and every decade before the 1960s, each of the two Political Parties often shared some philosophical outlook with the other party. The modern republicans and democrats in the 1960s, there were conservative republicans. The goldwater of publicans. There were liberal applicants. There were liberal democrats, there was the conservative democrats. Most southern democrats. Under those circumstances, success in politics required and permitted a bipartisan approach. For example, when Lyndon Johnson lobbied congress for civil rights legislation, he got a higher percentage of republican votes for civil rights reform and he got undemocratic boats. The consequence of this was when laws passed, they had a credibility that comes from the fingerprint of both parties on the bill. What happened in the 30 years after Lyndon Johnson i think we lost the Republican Party was the two parties sifted out. By 1990, there were relatively few democrats. The south went republican. It was meant that although southern conservatives who had been democrats, they become republicans and they make the Republican Party more conservative because with all this pouring of the party, there is no room left for the northeastern liberal bogans. Becomes 100 conservative. The Democratic Party becomes 100 liberal. He needed two cans for this. In the 1960s, on any important issue, you get republicans over here on your side. You get the democrats over on the side. There was enough overlap between two that you could find middle ground support. From the 1960s to the 1990s, the parties pulled apart so that by the 1990s, every republican is more conservative and ever