[00:00:00] Matt: Hi, I'm Matt Blumberg, and you're about to listen to the final episode of Country Over Self, Defining Moments in American History. I hope you've enjoyed listening to or watching the show as much as I've enjoyed making it. As I said at the beginning of the series, I'm not red, I'm not blue, I'm red, white, and blue.

And I set out with this show to help in some small way a very divided America by retelling some of our shared stories, to hopefully rediscover some of our more important common values. I hope this series got the job done. These dozen interviews with top historians certainly gave me plenty of food for thought about the American presidency, presidential leadership, and the fine line that presidents walk between politics and policy, between, as John Meacham said recently, conscience and appetite.

And they also reminded me that some of the greatness and some of the shortcomings of our leaders who, by and large, over the centuries, have helped us achieve a more perfect union. One thing I did find fascinating across the interviews that I didn't cover in the finale, so I'll cover it here, was what I call my magic wand question.

I asked each historian if they could wave a magic wand and change one thing about America to strengthen our nation, what would it be? So I thought I would take a second here and recap that and give my own answer to that question. The answers from the historians were pretty varied and included electoral reforms to prevent another January 6th, laws to curb abuses of power that rely on custom and good behavior, dismantling the tools of congressional opposition like the filibuster or the debt ceiling, fixing the misinformation and disinformation problem, and eliminating the electoral college.

But a very clear plurality talked about something different. They talked about instituting some kind of youth national service program or otherwise focusing on civic education, which I thought was quite interesting. My personal list, which I'll throw in here for posterity's sake, includes expanding the House of Representatives so Congress is more accountable to their electorate, and to restore a bit of balance between large states and small states in terms of vote power.

Raising the confirmation threshold for federal and Supreme Court judges to 67 or 75. Establishing nonpartisan redistricting and nonpartisan primaries. Creating a presidential line item. Requiring simplicity of legislation so Congress actually knows what they're voting on. And automatically sundowning and therefore requiring active renewal of major legislation or agencies every 25 years.

Much like Thomas Jefferson thought we should do with the whole Constitution. I want to thank a number of people for their help on this project. My family, Marikita, Casey, Wilson, and Elise. My friends, Paul, Eileen, Neil, Raj, Stephanie, Evan, Ted, and Andrea, for all their advice and encouragement. My podcast gurus, Adam Paterino and Marshall Louie.

My producer, Fabian Rodriguez, from Culture Collaborative Media. And my friend, Steve Hayes, at The Dispatch, for promoting Country Over Self pro bono to his audience. Finally, I want to thank the dozen historians who participated in this project, but especially my friend Noah Feldman, without whom the project probably never would have gotten off the ground.

Gary Ginsberg and Charlie Goodyear for being first in, with Noah, and Alexis Coe who joins Noah with me in this final episode. We'll see if I pick this thread up and do a similar project sometime in the future. Keep following the feed in your podcast application just in case. Alexis Koh and I talk about an intriguing possible collaboration at the end of this episode.

And with that, I present episode 13, the finale of Country Over Self, Defining Moments in American History.

Welcome to Country Over Self, defining moments in American history. Each episode we welcome a notable historian to tell us the story of a president and a choice that president made to strengthen the country without regard to the impact of that decision on himself, his power, or his party.

Welcome to Country Over Self, defining moments in American history. I'm Matt Blumberg, your host, and I'm so excited to be here today with Alexis Ko and Noah Feldman, uh, both rockstar historians who have studied multiple presidents. Uh, Alexis and Noah have both been on Country Over Self, uh, talking about Washington and Madison respectively, but actually as I recorded the series.

Uh, they were the first and last guests that I had on, uh, with 10 other historians in the middle. Uh, and, uh, I'm, I'm so grateful to both of you for joining me today for the finale of the series. Uh, it's an incredible honor to have you here to talk about the overall theme of the podcast and, uh, uh, and thank you so much for doing a second one with me.

[00:05:02] Alexis: It's a pleasure. 

[00:05:03] Matt: Great to be here. Um, all right. So before we sort of roll around in the topic and do the overall wrap up, um, I would love to kind of open with a few quick hits and, you know, this is a series that where I could have done an episode on each president and that, that would have been logical and a bunch of people asked me to do that.

And maybe someday I'll come back and do some other one. There's 

[00:05:23] Noah: no season two, three, four, and five. Come 

[00:05:25] Matt: on, man. Not at the moment. Um, but, uh, what I'd love to do is just do some quick hits and ask about a few notable presidents, um, where I didn't record an episode to see if either of you has kind of a hot take on.

Uh, on whether or not that president had a country over self moment, or even a country over party moment. Um, or even an obvious self over country moment. And, uh, I'll just, you know, start going down the list that I have here. And if someone wants to grab one, that's great. And if there's no. response on one, we'll move on.

Um, but the, so I'll do these chronologically. The most obvious early one that I didn't talk about was Thomas Jefferson. Um, so why don't we start there? 

[00:06:11] Alexis: Well here, Noah and I are diametrically opposed in some ways. We have studied people who were, um, frenemies and who I think, I think Washington would argue that Jefferson did not put country over party.

What do you think? 

[00:06:28] Noah: Yeah, I think you're right that that would have been what Washington said. Jefferson and Jefferson, to be fair, always thought that he was doing everything for the benefit of the entire, not just the country, but the whole, whole, all of humanity. So he was going to tell himself that no matter what, but I think what's cool and Alexis and I should go back and forth about this is You know, Jefferson should not have approved of the Louisiana Purchase according to his own theory of what the United States was supposed to be, that is, not an empire, and also according to his own theory of the Constitution, which was to read it narrowly to limit his powers.

And what's more, Jefferson knew that, and we know that from his private writings. So it was a kind of a conflict. So maybe Alexis will say why, why Washington would say that therefore he was not putting country over party. 

[00:07:14] Alexis: Well, I'm going to have to invoke a third president from a completely different time period where, um, you know, I've been thinking a lot, obviously about Jimmy Carter and this question that actually once posed to Doris Kearns Goodwin.

In the car on the way to lunch, which was, was Carter too good of a person to be president? And part of the problem with Carter is that he came from this incredibly morally principled, um, some would say unrelenting and stubborn place. And it is not necessarily conducive to the kind of deals that have to be made in Washington and beyond.

Um, the ability to make deals was important, we know that, and Jefferson could make deals. But I completely actually agree with Noah, so I'm afraid this isn't the best debate. I will, however, say that just to add an example to this, um, Noah will talk about the Constitution, I won't even try. But I've always found it incredible that Jefferson, of all people, would agree to such a, uh, sort of mismatched treaty in which it was, it was negotiated so quickly that really none of the people involved, including Jefferson, who liked to know things, understood the territory's exact boundaries.

The purchase was, I mean, it's just, that to me is unfathomable. And then of course, it set off a good deal of, of problems, but it's also, I think, a great example. of how, and this is getting away from Jefferson, so this isn't exactly what you wanted, but I do think that, that we have to understand that domestic issues and international issues, global issues are always, um, at play.

They're always exchanging. The, the nothing is disconnected from each other. And of course the Haitian revolution plays into this, which we've heard a little bit about over the summer. And there's, there's just so much going on during this period that yes, I can't believe he did this. 

[00:09:13] Noah: So I can add one more thing about that, Matt.

I know you probably don't, didn't want to turn this to a conversation about the Louisiana party, but you're going to like this because it brings in a third president, um, or fourth, or I don't know how many we've mentioned at this point, fifth president, and that is Monroe. So Alexis raises this really important puzzle, which is.

How could Jefferson have agreed to this? And obviously, it was the olden days. Everything was by letters that went by ship. And so there's a lot of backing and forthing. But if it had been almost anyone else representing the United States in France, Alexis has a really good intuition that Jefferson might have been like, Yeah, no, we're not doing this.

But Monroe was kind of like, His guy was one of his guys. He was literally his guy. I mean, he had two guys. One was Madison. One was Monroe. Um, he slightly preferred Madison and Monroe was deeply resentful of that and it almost destroyed the relationship between Madison and Monroe because they were always competing for Jefferson's attention and the nice way to put that is they were competing like maybe sons for a father's attention.

You might say they were competing like lovers for a lover's attention. It's more, you know, I'm not being that literally, but I think that that was the kind of feeling that it gave you. But they both trust, remember, Madison was Secretary of State, and they both really knew that Monroe saw the world, roughly speaking, the way that they did.

And I think that's a big reason why they took the deal. 

[00:10:32] Matt: So I'm going to go, I'm going to go ahead and classify the Louisiana purchase as at least country over principle. Yeah. That's great. Yes. If not country over self. All right. So, um, I kind of, I was going to go in order, but let's go to Carter. Um, since you invoked Carter and then we'll, we'll, we'll pop back up, uh, to some of the earlier guys in a minute.

Um, so I, I was struck by something I read, uh, you know, just to timestamp this, if you're listening, Jimmy Carter's funeral was last week. Um, so there's been a lot of, a lot about Carter recently. And I, one of the things I read and I can't remember who, who wrote it was. Carter never took credit for a couple of really important things that he did.

One of which was do the bulk of the work on the release of the Iranian hostages who, who Reagan sort of assumed credit for because it happened eight minutes after his inauguration. But the other, which I found Very interesting was that Carter actually did a lot of industrial deregulation, uh, that then Reagan and others were able to build on.

So, to your point, Alexis, about was he just too good a person, um, what, what are your thoughts on that? Since you invoked him, you get to go first. 

[00:11:40] Alexis: Oh, dear. I mean, I think, I think that that is what we see, um, in, in anything that is celebrated from his presidency. And I think there are connections to be made in his far more celebrated post presidential career.

Which is that this idea of being stubborn, this idea of being obstinate, of working really hard, and almost being, um, A great president needs to be a great manager and Carter was a micromanager and, but to the point where he's like, I'll just do it myself. He also, in addition to working on this deal, he also managed the white house tennis court schedule.

There's no reason for that. Right. There's no time for that. Um, and so that is the only thing I will add to that at this point. And then it's really interesting that you should say that because there is this, we're, we're in the middle of this transition moment, and we've just had a similar situation in which there's a ceasefire deal and Trump is claiming credit.

And of course we know, we know the Biden administration has been working on this because it is one of the, um, largest issues that have plagued his administration. And it has been, uh, it has been substantial. It actually, I thought he wouldn't run again. I thought he might declare that he wouldn't run again in 2023 because it reminded me of that moment with LBJ before, um, the year before when he said he wouldn't run.

And so I, I'm sort of going in circles here, but I think it's interesting because, um, every president blames the president before them. Uh, Jefferson said, uh, about Washington after he left office that he is going to leave us as always holding the bag. And we have that with, you know, with Reagan and with Carter and, and we have that with Biden and with Trump, but they also love to take credit.

They love to take credit for things. And that's, um, that's important too, but I think this is one of these things where it's hard, it's hard to argue against because these things take time. And so when we're asked to rank presidents before they've left office, as I've been constantly this week, it's so difficult because you need to watch things take effect at the same time.

Then it means there are a lot of hands on it. Like everything else, there are a lot of hands on every project. 

[00:13:54] Noah: Can I just follow on what Alexis said there? Um, there was a great moment, again, we're speaking in the very closing days of the Biden administration with Trump about to take office and as Alexis said, um, a Gaza ceasefire was announced and at a press conference, Joe Biden was asked repeatedly, um, do you get credit for this or does Donald Trump get credit for it?

And Biden who had turned away from the microphone already turned back and said, is that a joke? And I guess what you could say about Jimmy Carter is he did not do that. Um, to that extent, he certainly showed class in that, in that moment. The underlying reality is certainly in the case of the negotiation of the hostages, um, who were held at the embassy in Iran.

And I think also to some degree with respect to the Gaza negotiation, the fact that someone else was coming in. Who was, in one case, an unknown, in the other case, a known quantity of being a little bit out there. Probably did contribute to the leverage that Carter had in his negotiating, and that Biden did.

And so, it really is just a matter of classiness, and maybe putting the country first, and maybe emphasizing the continuity of the presidencies, rather than their discontinuity. And that's an, that's an interesting, that's an interesting thing, the question of do you choose to emphasize the continuity or the discontinuity.

[00:15:15] Alexis: And that brings up, oh, I'm sorry. I was going to say that brings, that's such a good point, Noah, because it also brings up this idea of communication and communicating things that you have succeeded in, in, you know, executing. And one of the things that I think, um, Biden, another way in which Biden and Trump differ, because I think Trump took credit and announced the, uh, the ceasefire on truth social via Twitter, via X, whatever it is.

Um, but what's also interesting is there. Of all, you know, I've been thinking so much about Biden's legacy and writing so much about it that he was, he was terrible about communicating his triumphs and some of it, though, is, as Noah said, he's using the word classy, um, none of this would have been acceptable to 18th, 19th century presidents campaigning was considered, you know, just completely untoward and so you have this moment where Trump has signed these COVID relief checks And Biden does not because he wants to be the FDR of, of these checks.

So FDR did not, you know, he's obviously responsible for social security, but he was not signing those checks. And that is just something that Biden wouldn't do, and that is one of the reasons, um, I think his, his, he's leaving with such a low approval rating. 

[00:16:37] Matt: So hold this, hold this theme for a couple minutes.

We're going to come back to this, um, but let's jump back to the early 19th century for a minute. Uh, so let's go to Andrew Jackson, 

[00:16:48] Noah: um, was there, I'll just say briefly about Jackson. He was a president of extremes. So, the good stuff he did was really, like, enormously important, democratizing the presidency, you know, really speaking as representative of the people, just transformational and important.

Really good. And then the bad stuff he did was just, like, super bad. I mean, almost unimaginably bad. You know, his policies towards Native Americans. were break the treaties, send people on a trail of tears, you know, what today unquestionably would be called genocide and ethnic cleansing if it were performed.

And it's not like he was, you know, just part of a movement where everybody agreed with that. The Supreme Court of the United States told him he couldn't do that. And, you know, famously, at least according to legend, He said after Chief Justice, uh, Chief Justice John Marshall, you know, outlawed effectively the dispossession of, of, of Native Americans from Georgia, well, the Supreme Court has made its decision or the Chief Justice made a decision, now let him enforce it.

So Jackson is, you know, when he was good, he was very, very good. But when he was bad, he was, he was really rotten. And it's a little hard to know whether it was for country or for self because he also clearly believed about himself. at every moment that he embodied the people because he was the first truly popular president in his mind.

And if you embody the people, then whatever is in your interest is also in the people's interest. 

[00:18:16] Alexis: Agree. Again, agree. I'm sorry. I wish you should have invited someone who would disagree with Noah on, on all these topics, but we seem to be in agreement. I do think there's an interesting parallel, which we will not go into, but I would love to hear what Noah thinks this sort of face off would be this, this like challenge to John Marshall, what it'll be over TikTok and Trump and inviting the CEO to sit on the, you know, the desk for the inauguration.

One thing that's really interesting about Jackson and. Again, everything Noah said is true. When I talk to any professor who specializes in indigenous studies, they talk about how these are difficult decisions. It is not easy to be president. Some of these decisions that Jackson made had, they don't necessarily disagree with, it's his execution.

It's always Jackson's execution of his ideas that is, is really done in the cruelest way possible. 

[00:19:19] Matt: Well, when you're in charge of the executive branch, execution matters. 

[00:19:23] Alexis: Oh, 

[00:19:23] Matt: yes, it's true. Let's go to Grant. And, um, I, my favorite Grant story is actually pre president. And, and I would, I would guess that every favorite Grant story of Grant's was pre president, since his own autobiography doesn't include his presidency.

Uh, I feel like Appomattox, remember the subtitle of this show is Defining Moments in American History, and I feel like Appomattox is one of the, you know, top defining moments of American history. Um, someone want to take that one? 

[00:19:59] Alexis: I would, I would only say, I mean, you know, Grant is again, you know, the Civil War, I have somehow managed to stay away from a good, a good deal.

You cannot avoid Lincoln. It's impossible. Um, so I wouldn't speak to this with any sort of authority, but I will say that, um, what's The history of Grant and Lee, I, I have not, I could never read enough about them. And what's interesting to me and always sort of catches my attention about that is he, he talks a little bit about their history.

not a significant amount. And I live about an hour north of, of West Point. And one of my, I will get to it eventually, research topics has been their time, sort of the prequel to the Civil War. So we'll see. Um, but I think that we have, we're in this moment of, um, what people threaten will bring disunion. in a literal sense, it won't look like the Civil War.

It'll look like the 21st version of it. Um, and Grant's leniency, allowing Confederate soldiers to return home instead of facing trials, helped ease post war healing. It was also a kind of impractical endeavor. 

[00:21:17] Noah: I would just, um, to connect that up, I agree with everything Alexis said, and I think also agree that the, I think that prequel would be an amazing book, Alexis, if you ever decide to write it.

[00:21:24] Alexis: Thank you. 

[00:21:25] Noah: Um, I think that there's an interesting follow on because the criticism, you know, we, we, we always like to praise Grant at Appomattox. He's treating these people who had been called rebels as honored equals. He's effectively embracing them back in. To the United States. Sorry, and he's being 

[00:21:45] Matt: humble about it and he's being humble about it.

He doesn't show, he shows up in the dress down. 

[00:21:50] Noah: Yeah, yes, absolutely. And to the extent there's a criticism of that, um, it would be the criticism that he under anticipated the extent to which, at least in the aftermath of reconstruction, lots of white Southerners were going to say. Well, we're committed to maintaining our old ways in all but name.

You know, we can't have slavery, but we're going to have systematic sharecropping and segregation. And, um, of course, Grant had to deal with that when he was president. And what I was going to say is if you criticize Grant for maybe being too kind, too humble, not coming in like, we defeated you and now you're going to change.

He did not behave that way when he was president because ultimately with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, which people forget was originally an insurgency organization designed as insurgents against the occupying armies of the union. He really cracked down. He got Congress to pass what's called the Ku Klux Klan Act.

He sent troops back in to try to suppress. Uh, the Klan, he used martial law on occasion to attempt to, to put them down. And as Commander in Chief, in those instances, he really was standing up for the idea that the Union really had won, and that the systematic re oppression of African Americans was a bad thing.

And it's really not an accident that it was after Grant's presidency ended that Reconstruction fizzled out. And once reconstruction had really fizzled out, then we actually did get systematic segregation and disenfranchisement that lasted until the, until the 1950s and 60s. 

[00:23:31] Matt: So you're, so let's bring it back to Appomattox for a minute.

Do you think it was a mistake that he was too much of a gentleman there? 

[00:23:37] Noah: No, I think he was, you know, I'm one of those people who believes that you should always start by trying to get your opponent to cooperate and give them the benefit of the doubt. And then if they don't cooperate and then you have to crack down, then you do.

But I think extending. The hand of friendship is a good start, especially when you've just been in a war. So no, I think, I think that was totally, totally appropriate. Even if it turns out that in retrospect, it might've been a mistake. He was right to do it. 

[00:24:04] Alexis: I have also always wondered, there was a great book by Amity Shales, uh, not that, I guess maybe it was a long time ago, it might've been a decade now, on Calvin Coolidge in which it looked at his presidency through the lens of his depression after his son died, his, you know, teenage son on, after getting sepsis from playing tennis on the White House lawn.

And in the same vein, Grant suffered from migraines. And he had a really terrible migraine before the surrender, before this, before these meetings. And I have always wondered what role migraines played in his presidency. So another book. We're just coming up with book topic after book topic. 

[00:24:46] Matt: But let's move to Theodore Roosevelt, who's always been, uh, well, I think one of my favorite presidents to, to read about, um, is such a colorful character.

There were a bunch of interesting things that happened in, in his time in office, whether it's his focus on conservation, his, uh, you know, he was a Republican that went after big business, um, the Panama Canal. Anything in his presidency that strikes you as a country over self moment or equivalent?

[00:25:13] Noah: You know, Roosevelt, a bit like Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, was really sure that he just was the country. And I think he's not someone who would have even been able to conceptualize the idea that there was some, some conflict between those two things. I do think that the conservation, which I think many people think was the greatest accomplishment of his presidency, is something really, really worth Noticing it's also something which history can provide a lot of interesting context for and to me and this actually connects up to Jackson as well, why is it that the United States had these enormous tracts of land that it could devote to conservation and the answer turns out to be that those were Native American lands that had been either expropriated or dealt in a treaties that were not really fair treaties And so our perception, our public perception, and some historians have done a really good job of pointing this out, that these were big, empty spaces, that nobody lived there, you know, and that now we benefit from them.

It's just not true. You know, people did absolutely live in these spaces. Now that doesn't impugn, to my mind at all, Roosevelt's decision. He was absolutely right to do that, and I think it's had tremendous benefit. But, you know, the thing about Teddy Roosevelt is, I'm not sure we've ever had a better president who was better at self mythologizing.

You know, I mean, he really was a kind of genius that he was also an author. He wrote a lot of books, um, you know, I mean, uh, 

[00:26:36] Alexis: when he, I 

[00:26:37] Noah: think when he was a governor of New York, he wrote a biography, I want to say it was an Oliver Cromwell and someone said in a review, it was the best biography ever of Oliver Cromwell as governor of New York.

And so if you think of the, you know, our politicians say the idea that you could have a sitting president. Who wrote many books on his own. I mean, Obama actually did write an amazing book before he became president. Um, even if it was a, an autobiography. I mean, I guess in that sense, Obama's probably our greatest presidential, presidential biographer.

But he just didn't know he was going to be president when he wrote that book. But it is, it's kind of extraordinary. And Roosevelt was really good at it. He was really good at self mythologizing. 

[00:27:13] Alexis: I think it, it's hard to argue that he put country, or certainly, um, I, you know, he, he was so self aggrandizing that he came first, I guess, I guess.

Over party, over country, because of course he challenged his former vice president when he want, he ran against him, um, because he wouldn't do his bidding in office. Taft would not do his bidding in office. And so I think that Roosevelt, while there's much to praise. Put Roosevelt first, then everything else.

You know, Eleanor Roosevelt, 

[00:27:48] Noah: who, you know, they, uh, Teddy hosted Eleanor Roosevelt and founded Eleanor Roosevelt's wedding at the White House when he was president. And famously, I mean, again, who knows if this is true, Eleanor noted about Teddy Roosevelt that he had to be the bride at every wedding. 

[00:28:03] Matt: Well, I think if I remember the quote, it was the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.

[00:28:10] Alexis: Very Trumpian. 

[00:28:11] Matt: Uh, Woodrow Wilson. Let's do, we'll do two more. Woodrow Wilson. I 

[00:28:17] Alexis: mean, of course, Woodrow Wilson, the most famous thing that we can say about that is that his wife, uh, Or in the nickname of the first female president for her influential role during his incapacitation. And I think that this is a role that many first ladies have played and not necessarily gotten credit for.

James K. Polk, who we always praise for accomplishing everything that he set out to do, which isn't exactly true. His wife, Sarah Polk, had a desk next to his. She was integral to accomplishing every piece of legislation that he didn't plan in advance or agenda that he didn't plan in advance that he executed.

And so I think that that's in general a story that should be told. Um, they, they do more than just, uh, throw parties and, um, plant gardens. But I do think that, you know, when, when he suffered the attack in 1919, it was not really that much of a surprise to anyone around them that she had, um, taken this role.

She was educated. She was involved. She cared. Um, it, it, I think it was obvious to everyone around that that would happen. 

[00:29:34] Noah: I would just add, um, kind of a meta point about Wilson, Matt, in light of your entire really amazing series. I mean, one aspect of your series is to get us to think about presidential reputation and the moments that you focused on are reputation making or breaking moments.

And it's worthwhile to remind ourselves in that context that presidential reputation can change almost head spinningly fast. So, when we were students, we were taught that Wilson was kind of a model president. That the, um, you know, that the negotiation of the Versailles Treaty followed by the pressure to create the League of Nations was a kind of model of internationalist success and that he brought the United States into the world as a leader and he, he tried to introduce democratization around the world.

And then a whole series of things happened that have undermined that reputation. Um, and those include a renewed emphasis on his individual racism and on segregating the federal workforce. Um, but they also include the kind of sense that the Versailles world maybe caused more problems in some ways than it solved.

You know, we saw, you know, the breakdown of the European order in the 1990s. Um, we saw, you know, words that were, yeah. And again, it was Middle East, you know, just a wide range of problems over the last, you know, 25 or 30 years that have been in some way traceable to Wilson. Now you can say that's because Wilson was so important and so significant.

Of course, you can trace things back to him, and I tend to feel that way. But I would say his presidential reputation is, is, is pretty low right now. I mean, I'm sure there's some way to track this, but his reputation among, even among professional historians, I think pretty low right now. And it was extremely high just, you know, a quarter of a century or a little bit more ago.

So that's, that's a fascinating thing to notice. Let's let's 

[00:31:32] Matt: come back to that. We'll come back to that theme at the end. Um, so, uh, let's pick one more. Uh, 

[00:31:41] Alexis: Can I go off list? 

[00:31:43] Matt: Go off list. Go for it. 

[00:31:44] Alexis: Because Noah reminded me of something that's so interesting. When Ford was sworn into office after Nixon resigned, there was this month long period in which Pew, the research organization, was conducting a poll to see how Americans felt about a potential pardon for Nixon.

And they were, they had almost completed it. They were so close. They're on the last day. And when, when Ford, of course, announced that he was, he was pardoning Nixon, overwhelmingly Americans were against it. And of course you can take issue with polls and we can discuss who's, who's where and they called and they were home.

Who did they speak to? But that was, um, reflected in the coverage as well. Ford. said that he pardoned Nixon in order for the country to move forward. And in his memoirs, in his autobiography, I remember he stood by that. He felt confident that was the right decision. And Pew has conducted that survey over time, again and again, and there has been this upward trajectory of approval.

Of the pardon, which I think anecdotally when I talk to people, they still, you know, they still don't think it was a great idea, but in general, it seems that the people you are talking to think now it was a pretty good idea. And so that is really interesting. And that's this moment which Ford said he was putting country over self and over party.

People didn't necessarily agree with him. Now they do. 

[00:33:24] Noah: And now we've seen what it looks like when a, when the president prosecutes the previous president and I would say pretty objectively from both sides of the aisle that didn't work out too well. So I bet that's going to lead to even further support for the shift that Alexis is describing.

[00:33:38] Matt: So the, the Ford episode that I did with Richard Norton Smith was, was interesting. I did back to back with him and with Rick Pearlstein, uh, talking about, and we talked about the pardon and both, but Richard Norton Smith had a really interesting comment. He said that, um, history doesn't render a single verdict.

And it's like, there's a jury that gets just to vote over and over and over again, either because there's new evidence or new context. Um, and I think that's. Sort of exactly what you're, what you're saying. 

[00:34:06] Alexis: Absolutely. I think history is always in contention. And when we were talking about Monroe earlier, I was thinking, you know, the best way to get a Washington expert, you know, someone who works at the Washington paper sort of riled up is to say, do you think, you know, to ask like our question, like, do you think that Monroe was a good statesman?

Do you think that he was an intellectual and they will just, there'll be a moment they'll see red and then they'll lose it. They can't, they can't fathom anyone would even conceive of that. But then, of course, and I come from that background and then, you know, lately I've been thinking about some things that he did in France when he was the ambassador and he was in, he had a terrible relationship with Washington.

Well, I don't know. So, it does change over time because historians, I think good historians, um, And I would like to think that I am among these people. There's a sense of humility and that things can change, um, both in your own perspective and even when you don't necessarily see any new evidence, but you do think of things in different ways and you focus on different parts because of course we tend to see people on their best days and their worst days.

And so when people say, you know, do you like a president? It's like, I haven't even thought about it that way. 

[00:35:15] Matt: Yeah, well, so one of the things, um, that stood out to me in my conversation with Troy Senek, who I interviewed about Grover Cleveland, um, is he said that, um, that, you know, basically context has everything to do with With how we think about president's greatness or, or how terrible they are.

And that basically the presidents who, uh, you know, whose greatness is a matter of widespread acclaim, um, were elevated there by crisis, um, Washington, Lincoln, FDR, and sort of the opposite is true as well. This sort of Pierce Buchanan, Andrew Johnson. Um, so I guess my, the question for the two of you is. Of the other ones, the ones that didn't have the opportunity to serve during a crisis where they could either rise to greatness or fall into the abyss, um, is there one that stands out to you as yeah, you know, the leadership journey of that president was extraordinary.

They just didn't have the opportunity to do anything You know, anything extraordinary because it wasn't demanded of them. 

[00:36:17] Alexis: Let me give you a non answer, which is that every president, so of course there, um, a world war, uh, pandemic, those things are, uh, can derail a presidency, but almost every president gets to office and then their agenda, their hopes and dreams completely buffeted by events outside of their control.

How they attempt to. I'll 

[00:36:56] Noah: say something super unorthodox then, um, which is that Richard Nixon, though a genuinely nasty person who did more to subvert the office of the presidency than probably any other president, certainly until Trump Um, and maybe, maybe more than Trump, considering that Trump was reelected.

Um, he governed at a time where there wasn't that much in the way of external crisis. He managed a lot of those crises that he did manage pretty impressively well. So he managed getting out of Vietnam. He managed the opening to China, which was a moment where U. S. foreign policy was active, not reactive.

Uh, in a meaningful sense, he substantially expanded aspects of the regulatory state in ways that today would have made him look like a mainstream Democrat and not like a Republican. And although this is not to under, you know, to undercount all the bad stuff that he did, especially to the presidency, he's someone where it's really hard for us to get a clear sense of his legacy.

And I think he actually governed extremely successfully in a non crisis. You might say that Bill Clinton is a bit similar, you know, again, his, his, his personal troubles, which look even worse in retrospect now than they did to me at the time as a young person, partly because of our changed political understanding of what it would mean to have an affair with your 20 something intern.

Um, but he was a present in a period that doesn't have, didn't have very much in the way of crisis crisis. Um, I think he was very consciously aware that that stood between him and greatness. And I think he managed the country really pretty well, I think, in, in retrospect, in a wide range of, on a wide range of things.

[00:38:36] Matt: All right, let's, um, let's move into the wrap up. So the, so the topic of country over self, right? That's what this whole series was exploring and sort of trying to get at whether it's a thing or not. So I have two different kind of rough framings of this, and I want to run them both by you and let you guys tear them apart or agree with them or create a new one.

So the first one, I always, I tend to start with the complicated. So the first one is there are five buckets. There's country equals self. So we talked about that a little bit today in terms of people like Jackson or Theodore Roosevelt. But, but basically this bucket is. Hey, you know, presidents think about what's good for the country is good for me and vice versa.

They get out in front of the parade. Um, bucket two is sort of country over personal life. So you think about the early presidents who would spend decades away from their family. In service of the country lost children, uh, or, or died in service the country. Um, there's another bucket that I think I kind of uncovered, which I would refer to as statesman over politician.

So people like, uh, John Adams, uh, George HW Bush, uh, maybe Cleveland, uh, who, who did the right thing, made a tough call and just didn't sell it well, um, but might've been able to sell it. I think there's a bucket of country over party. But not necessarily country over self. So think about LBJ and civil rights Adams and his treaty with France, maybe HW Bush and the budget deal in 1990 I mean, then my fifth bucket in this framework is self over country.

And I think there you can, you know, point to Nixon, you can point to Trump. Maybe you can point to Biden, but at least stick with Nixon and Trump. But as I was thinking about it, and this, this originally had like six buckets or seven buckets. And then I was trying to think about like the, the, the simplest reduction of this and Alexis, I was really reflecting on our conversation about Washington.

Is there just a really simple framework of two buckets where bucket one is George Washington and bucket two is everyone else? and maybe there, maybe there's this asterisk about, about Nixon and Trump, um, at the end. But what do you, what do you think of the topic? What do you think of either those frameworks or something else?

I 

[00:40:55] Alexis: mean, it's so interesting to consider it's a judgment call and so it's hard, um, for, for me and, and the ethos that I try to bring to my work, which is a struggle. It's a challenge, you know, to, to be as. It's fundamentally subjective. Washington is an interesting case study because the thing that he possesses that I have rarely if ever seen in another president, and I wonder Noah if you can think of an example.

When he was a young man, he was out to prove something and to gain something. And then he did. He could be satisfied. That he gave up power twice was, um, it was important. He thought it was an important example. It was also what he wanted. He just wanted to go home. I don't believe he sort of, he protested at the Constitutional, he said, no, I can't possibly be the commander in chief, but he had like stuffed himself into his old uniform.

He definitely did. The rest of the time he wanted to leave. Um, and people kept compelling him to serve and I think that is, uh, that allowed him and he did the first term, the second term, he described going to the inauguration as going to his execution. And so I think that for him, he felt like he was putting country over self because he really wanted no part of it.

And, um, we, we don't know that much about his marriage. Speak to another one of your points. We don't know that much about his marriage because they burn their letters. They're about five. You can try, but you will not get them all because there's always something stuffed in the back of a desk drawer.

There's, uh, there's, you know, hopefully a trunk in an attic. And so we have about five, we know a little bit, but what we do know from Martha is that she was deeply unhappy in the position. And at one point she wrote, I think that this is better suited for a younger woman. I, I think that, that he's the only example I can actually think of who put country over self.

And I, I think that, um, our two most recent examples, both Trump and Biden, I would say have not put country over self in their, uh, their attempts to stay in office.

[00:43:12] Noah: You know, I, I really, I like, I love that. I love hearing Alexis talk about Washington. I always learn new things. Um, Matt, with respect to your different approaches, I think you're right in respect to the second one to say there is something different about Washington. And that's because everyone else who wanted the presidency had to run for it against someone else and put themselves out there.

And he just didn't have to, you know, he was fundamentally not a politician. Yeah, he was in this position of preeminence. Maybe you could make an exception to that for Eisenhower, you know, or Grant. Yeah, maybe for Grant, although even Grant was not universally massively popular in the way that Eisenhower was.

I mean, Grant could not, for example, have run as the Democratic candidate for the presidency. Eisenhower genuinely could have. I don't think anyone doubted his politics weren't especially known. Um, he could genuinely have been the presidential candidate of either party, and he would have won as the presidential candidate of either party.

I mean, I think Polk also was invited maybe to do it from both sides, but that's, uh, we'll leave, we'll leave Polk out of it, which is usually the right thing to do. So, you know, so I think that's the first point, that fits your story, Matt, that Washington is, is unique, or in Alexis's inimitable phrase, you never forget your first.

So, but the buckets are also really clarifying, I think, and actually tremendously helpful. Um, and I just want to give one example of someone who just as you were saying that, Matt, I was thinking of somebody who did self over party in a way that has only recently become clear and got zero credit for it.

And that person is George W. Bush. Now, how so? 

[00:44:51] Matt: Well, after 9 11, those of you who are only listening to this, um, Alexis and I both just tilted our heads sideways and raised eyebrows. Very 

[00:45:01] Noah: excited. So let me, let me try this out on you. And I just thought of it now, but I think it's true. George W. Bush was president.

Um, he was president during 9 11, and in the aftermath, one of the things he did, we focus on the invasion of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, which, the former of which probably anyone would have done, the latter of which looks like a big mistake in retrospect, and I say this as someone who was there on the ground after it, but he made a very self conscious choice to reject Islamophobia.

He went on television again and again with Imams, um, he told the American public again and again, we're not at war. with Islam, we're not even at war with Muslims, we're just in a war with these particular folks and with Al Qaeda. And at the time, I think a lot of people who were, like me, on the Democratic side of the aisle said, well, of course he's saying that, it's kind of obvious.

But if you think about it in terms of what Donald Trump did, running for the presidency in 2016, fully 15 years after 9 11, he ran on an Islamophobic agenda, and it really worked. And then you ask yourself, like, well, why had no one done that before? And the answer is, It was easy for a Republican to do that, hard for a Democrat to do it, and yet Bush hadn't done it, and so of course Obama also hadn't done it in the interim, and that bought us.

You know, nearly two full presidencies of not being Islamophobic in that way. And what I'm saying is, I think that cost Bush dearly in terms of the partisan capacities of his party to stay in office. He got his two terms. But had he leaned into Islamophobia, he might have been able to generate a Republican to succeed him, who might have been able to play into that argument to justify some of the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan.

And he didn't do it. And I think he didn't do it because he genuinely didn't believe in it. So I think that was principle, um, very much, um, over, you know, he was really putting his party second and putting the country as he perceived the country first. So I'm just saying that in praise of your buckets, Matt, because I think the test ultimately of any kind of analytic category is does it generate new ideas and new insights?

And you're, you know, you're one for one there. I got an idea out of it. It might be a stupid idea, but at least I had it. 

[00:47:16] Alexis: No, it's an interesting perspective, one we wouldn't have had without Trump. and so it is something to think about in the foils. I would like to know more about that. 

[00:47:26] Matt: All right. Uh, any closing thoughts from either of you on the overall subject?

Country over self, country equals self. 

[00:47:34] Noah: Well, can I ask around to you, Matt? I mean, can I just quickly ask you, I'm sorry, Lex, I didn't mean to interrupt. No, go ahead. You know, Matt, one of the things that makes this podcast so fascinating is that, to me at least, is that you're an executive. And, to a first approximation, all the people you interviewed, I believe, all of us are historians.

And not one of us has ever run anything, you know, much bigger than an office at the maximum. So, you've dealt with conflicts like this all the time. You know, company and self. And you deal also every day with other executives, and you're an expert in picking them. What are your insights from an executive standpoint in thinking about these questions?

[00:48:10] Matt: That's interesting. I was not expecting to be interviewed today. Um, no, I, I do think about, um, I do think about the presidency often through the lens of leadership, right? And, and, um, and everyone comes to the party with their own perspective. You're right. when I think about the presidency, I think about, um, the things that are sort of, you know, objectively important, you know, was the president, um, an effective leader?

at improving the lives of ordinary citizens? Was the, did the president make clear decisions? Did the president understand how to consider multiple viewpoints? Was the president a good role model? Did the president unite the country? And, you know, sort of the list goes on and on, but I, but that, that type of thing is sort of how I think about the, the, what I would call the leadership journey of a president.

And you know, I think from, from that lens, I don't know if that would help Alexis if someone asked me to rank all. All the presidents and if they asked in the middle of a presidential transition at this moment, but I, you know, I, I, I try to think about it and when I read all the biographies, um, I kind of bring this, um, this rubric to it and I think the, the learning that I had from this project and from the 12 and now 13, um, episodes is that, um, a lot of the time, um, presidents were, uh, very shrewd operators and were very good at finding the parade and getting out in front of it.

And sometimes they were legitimately at the front of the parade, but a lot of it is kind of reading the room. And trying to make the best of the situation. And while there are certainly examples of people being exceptionally principled about things and doing things that went against their self interest, those examples are few and far between, but I don't think that means that they're bad leaders.

Um, but I do think if you, if you created a report card, like if I was giving them a performance review and we had a rubric for, you know, chief executive performance like we do in the corporate world, some of them would do much better than others against some of those criteria. Uh, did they make clear and consistent decisions?

Did they consider multiple viewpoints? I mean, for me thinking about how Washington managed his cabinet in his first administration and how Lincoln managed his cabinet and assembled his cabinet, those are extraordinary. Right. Those were, those were moments of extraordinary, um, you know, sort of corporate leadership, um, that a lot of them never got to, um, and the, you know, the, the point about, you know, did this person unite the country and drive the country forward positively is another interesting one.

There's some that did, and there's some that didn't. Went the other way because it was in their political interest to do the other thing. So I, you know, I think at the end of the day, they, other than Washington and you're right, maybe Eisenhower, they're politicians, they were running for office and then they knew they wanted to run for office again.

And in one of their cases again and again, uh, and they behaved a lot like politicians a lot of the time. 

[00:51:32] Alexis: I was going to ask you a similar question. I was going to say that one of the things that I wondered about your experience during this. is, um, we're about to get this C SPAN, I don't know if you do it now, but we're about to get the C SPAN survey and there are categories as you just described, um, that are thoughtful.

I think people think we just write all the names down and kind of like, you know, have numbers next to them and move them around a little bit and that's just not how it is. But what I think, um, I was wondering is why isn't a good president is a good manager? And I've just so appreciated that with Biden.

I think that is one of one part of his legacy that will be hard to get people excited about. Um, and I wonder if it wasn't 

[00:52:16] Matt: exciting enough to get Bloomberg, uh, uh, even to the nomination, right? 

[00:52:21] Alexis: Yes, yes. But I mean, his retention has been incredible compared to any other president. Um, it's, it will be, it will be studied eventually.

It's just not the most exciting. And so I was wondering if, if. You know, you had sort of seen that as a leitmotif again, you know, throughout the like highest ranking presidents. Um, but in general, I, I think that as a citizen, you know, history podcaster, that, that you have certainly, um, experienced what, what I experienced all the time.

Noah probably also experiences is this incredible cynicism towards the presidency. Uh, not a week goes by in my life. in which someone doesn't just say to me as an assertion, aren't they all sociopaths? We're not, we're not those doctors. We're not those kinds of doctors. Those are useful ones. Um, but I do think that it is, uh, very hard for people to see them as a, a leader who has these kinds of real duties, these concrete duties, and these that, that are more akin to a, an executive.

Um, and so I, I think that country over self is hard to see in so many instances and people are so self conscious of their legacies and their letters and their diaries and everything. They're so aware of it, painfully aware. Um, and so I'm not sure I would say the verdict is still out, but I would be interested to know what others think.

[00:53:48] Matt: Well, I think maybe the successor project to this will be doing a performance review, creating the rubric and running all 44, uh, 44 of them through it or 45 of them. So, um, let's end it there. Alexis and Noah, thank you so much for joining me a second time. This was a great finale to this series and I really appreciate you being here.

[00:54:09] Alexis: Thank 

[00:54:10] Noah: you. Thank you for having us, Matt. for this amazing 

[00:54:13] Matt: series. Thank you for listening to the Country Over Self podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a minute to give us five stars and leave us a review. If you have an idea for an episode or want to reach Matt directly, please email podcast at countryoverself.

com.