Rick Perlstein

[00:00:00] Matt Blumberg: 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 the 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 your host, Matt Blumberg, and I'm here today with Rick Perlstein. Rick is the award winning author of a number of books, including, Nixon Land, and The Invisible Bridge. And, Rick, it is an honor to have you, talking to me today on Country of Herself.

[00:00:52] Rick Perlstein: Thanks, Matt. I look forward to it. I, really appreciate your critical temper that you brought to this. 

[00:00:57] Matt Blumberg: Well, I want to talk today about, our 37th president, Richard Nixon. you're, essentially the biographer of record, the contemporary biographer record of Nixon. and Nixon was obviously very consequential president, the positive side of the ledger opened up China.

Staunch cold warrior, tried to end Vietnam with Paris peace accords. domestically, I think it never ceases to surprise people on the right that Nixon was responsible for the EPA, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, for title nine. Of course, it's hard to talk about Nixon without talking about Watergate and his resignation and the pardon.

and, on the subject of country over self, as I've been recording episodes of this podcast, and, I typically ask guests for an example of presidents doing country over self and not doing country over self. Nixon is the one that kind of most comes up as the not doing country over self.

and, in our back and forth, sort of scheduling this time, you really helped shape my view of this topic and actually helped me, turn the topic into an exploration of country over self and whether that's a valid construct, as opposed to just sort of seeking examples of it. So, I'm going to deviate from my usual formula here, and I'd love to start by just talking about the concept of country over self, and then we'll talk about it through the lens of Nixon a little bit later.

So I'd love to just start with sort of your view of the construct. 

[00:02:22] Rick Perlstein: So let's kind of, break that down. in, in, kind of country and self, right? So acting for the country, acting for the self. and I think it's just really important to understand that, no one who achieves a position.

like the presidency of the United States, who, acts in a way that, kind of advances their own political fortune does not do so without kind of convincing themselves and try to convince the public, that they're also advancing the interest of the country. And, in the same way, what country, right?

so, people disagree about what, advances the country. So, to give the example of, you Nixon, you said, Oh, the positive side of the ledger, he opened up China. Well, I'm not sure that, a mega Republican would think that. Opening up the world, America to China was a positive thing, you said, signing the Paris Peace Accords, to end the Vietnam War.

If you read my next book, After Nixon Land, which is also about Nixon, right? So it covers 1973 to 1976, the Invisible Bridge. You'll see that, the way Richard Nixon, ended the Vietnam War was profoundly cynical and is interpreted by a lot of historians as basically selling out the country of Vietnam and kind of letting it fall to the communists claiming one thing doing another, right? so, a selfless act, is almost always kind of a politically interested act, right? take the example of, starting the Environmental Protection Agency. one way of interpreting that is, wow, he recognized that we had an environmental problem. He, deployed the forces and spent this political capital to, create like an, an agency to begin addressing those problems.

Well, in Nixonland, I, write a little about that. I dig into, his political motives for starting the Environmental Protection Agency. One is that he wanted to distract young people from the anti war movement and give them something else to worry about. So he could be free to pursue the Vietnam War, quite, violently and cynically.

And, as I pointed out before, another is that he, didn't have any choice to address the issue. presidents don't just kind of choose their issues and their positions, out of a catalog, their political context. And this was just the perfectly. great concern of the United States, a novel concern.

It didn't really necessarily even have the partisan valences that we assigned to it now, right? It was just kind of universally, we need to do something about this. the way he created the Environmental Protection Agency didn't really add any new administrative capacity to the United States government.

What it did was it took all the various agencies that dealt with the environment, put them in a single office. made them all serve. under a certain, single administrator who served at the pleasure of the president. It was something that was very important to Richard Nixon, a concentration of power in the person of himself.

And then finally, it sounds like the Department of Homeland Security. Well, that's a pretty interesting one too. . We could get into that if you want to. That's a pretty profound example of, some serious political cynicism. But, and then finally, what did he really believe about the environment? Well, we know from the tapes, he would say, oh, these environmentalists want everyone to go back to living in trees, so, what it kind of adds up to is. a real kind of blur of motives. And, in the same way, the most high minded, independent, brave thing a president can do, that can seem like, someone just really kind of going out on a limb for the sake of, justice and equality.

a really good example of that is, first, John F. Kennedy in the summer of 1963 after a, George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door to keep people out of the University of Alabama said, This is enough. I'm going to introduce my civil rights act bill. You have a televised speech, you said, we face this moral issue, like, unlike any we've seen since the Civil War, it was a remarkable soaring peroration, right?

And when he died, of course, Lyndon Johnson picked up the bill and you kind of use the martyrdom of John F. Kennedy in order to pass a law that made it illegal to, have separate entrances for bathrooms, made it illegal to discriminate in the hiring and firing of people based on race.

All these things that we take for granted. And famously, Lyndon Johnson said to his aide, Bill Moyers, and I've talked to Bill Moyers about this. We're friends. He said, he told Bill Moyers, I just signed away the South for the Democratic Party. They're going to go to the Republicans. But, the second half of this, which, was kind of implied in that was, well, I just cemented the loyalty of African Americans in the North for the Democratic Party.

So imagine, a Democratic Party without black people as their political backbone. So, and, even, in the case of, something like, the war on poverty, the entire concept of the great society, well, country or self, I mean, these guys are megalomaniacs, if to be, if you could go down in history as, the guy who saved poverty, ended poverty in America.

this is pretty, pretty, good stuff for an egomaniac. And then finally, I mean, no one agrees about what's good for the country and what's good for the self. I mean, what's good for the country. I mean, conservatives then and now think that, the great society and the war on poverty, just kind of created this, dependency of the poor people on government, sap the will of the American people and, have worked ever since.

To try and repeal it because they're selfish. No, because they believe that this is the best for the country. So, I mean, that's the basic lay of the land there. 

[00:08:34] Matt Blumberg: Yeah. I mean, what's, interesting is that the, I wonder sometimes if the, construct, when people talk about country over self, they're, it's actually a wishful thinking.

[00:08:45] Rick Perlstein: Oh, it's very much. So a wishful one thing it's, a way of picturing the world in which there's an answer to every question. The answer is kind of self evident, like, Oh, is he going to do the right thing? Or is he going to do the, the cynical thing. the right thing can be cynical and the cynical thing could be right.

And it's, kind of, I think it's a kind of way of thinking it's often quite attractive to elites who'd like to kind of believe they're up above, the kind of cut and thrust, of politics, transactional politics. It's not transactional. It's based on kind of conscious and the heart. And, a lot of the case, a lot of the cases, the things that are framed in that way as, Oh, if only, Kamala Harris would do kind of a sister soldier, cut herself loose from some, constituency of the left, as an act of conscience. Well, it's pretty easy to interpret a lot of that stuff as, not particularly selfless on the part of the elites who wanted to, I don't know, get rid of, Lena con, who's, talking about breaking up big companies.

And it's, I mean, I'm not, I'm not being a nihilist, I'm not, I'm not, just saying, oh, there's, morality is not a part of the function of politics. I mean, maybe I'm just saying that, Life is messy, and politics is messy. And I think that the reason why I would push back against, kind of perceiving the presidency as this guy kind of wrestling in bed with his conscience at night and deciding whether he's going to do the right thing or, the easy thing is that it doesn't position us as citizens, to, we, what are we going to do?

kind of like whisper in his ear, like the first lady, do the right thing. No, you, achieve political ends, by organizing, by, creating countervailing powers, by creating narratives, all the things, political activists do. And, maybe by making your desired end look like it's an act of conscience to play to the selfish ego of the president.

I mean, if I, if I were giving a speech, that's a 

[00:11:00] Matt Blumberg: highly cynical point of view. 

[00:11:02] Rick Perlstein: It's cynical though. I mean, it's politics. creating sort of a sense of moral clarity out of, a messy subject, I mean, one of the greatest disasters ever to happen, to this country was the Iraq war.

And, the people who sold it did a very good job of getting a lot of liberals on board by making it seem like an enlightened moral thing to do. 

[00:11:27] Matt Blumberg: What do you think of the concept of country over party? 

[00:11:31] Rick Perlstein: Well, I mean, I think politics is a team sport, I think that, again, I mean, this, gets into some kind of complicated political history, but, the parties were weakened, in America, kind of beginning with the seventies, partially because of, the reaction to Watergate, to kind of, a lot of what happened with campaign finance reform, made it a lot easier, To, give money to kind of change public opinion, whereas before you would give money to kind of a party that, kind of worked on, creating an infrastructure for power, right?

And there are a lot of political scientists, one's a guy named Sam Popkin, very smart, because as the weakening of the political parties was what cut us, the MAGA world we're in now, because then you have, you need politicians who, put on a good show, right? If, someone gets elected because of a, basically they engage the party apparatus, all the way down to the precinct level, outside my door in Chicago, outside your door in New York, that's people power, right?

it's very different from winning power and becoming a president by coming up with better TV commercials, or, raising more money for TV commercials, right? So strong parties often are seen as, a necessity of a strong democracy. that's basically, a big thing in political science, it doesn't mean, authoritarian parties.

it doesn't mean, the party becomes, the horizon of your, they dictate your morality, which is, seems often to be the case in the Republican Party. in the case of Bill Clinton, the whole idea of triangulation. What was, what were the three terms of the triangle?

It was, the Republican extremists, and he would, talk about how terrible they were and it was the liberals in Congress, who, he would say, oh, they're just kind of, they're, vassals of these liberal interest groups. they're, kind of implied that they were kind of extremists.

And then there's me, little old me, Bill Clinton, right? There's the third way. All of them. So he, literally built his own power by weakening the power of his party. Well, one problem with that is, if you win election in 1992, that way, you might lose Congress in 1994 that way. In the same way, Barack Obama, this He is, in a lot of ways, he kind of was the apotheosis of this idea, this hyper principal person who stood above all, kind of venal concerns that had to do with politics.

In fact, when he uses politics, he uses it as a curse word. Washington has gotten, has devolved into politics. Well, I think that's terrible. And It weakened his party. And once again, in 2010, because he saw himself as this kind of, idealist above the fray of politics, he didn't work on the basic tasks of party building.

He saw himself as above the party. Well, that was. not necessarily great for his moral aims because the Tea Party took over. 

[00:14:43] Matt Blumberg: what do you think about when you think about Watergate? how do you think about that against the backdrop of everything we're talking about here? 

[00:14:53] Rick Perlstein: Well, so Watergate kind of got bigger and bigger as a concept, right?

As they started investigating all this stuff that the White House was doing, and they turned out that the Watergate committee went all the way back to 1969 when he started, tapping the phones of journalists, in 1970 when he kind of created these secret committees to like, secret.

Fundraising committees that, corporate executives would come with suitcases full of 100 bills, that kind of thing. So, Watergate in the broadest conception, was summarized by a famous interview that Richard Nixon did in 1977 by David Frost. if the president does it, it's not illegal.

So it was kind of, the idea that, and, I mean, So that is sort of, that statement is sort of the ultimate 

[00:15:37] Matt Blumberg: fusion of self and country, right? 

[00:15:40] Rick Perlstein: and, look, it's only I can do it. It's Donald Trump. And it's the idea, that in its, it's in its most refined form, it's a fascist idea.

It's the Fuhrer principle, right? The Fuhrer principle, the idea of the leadership principle, that all powers come from the leader, that the leader, the president embodies the will of the people, right? He is l'état c'est moi, right? So if you listen to Richard Nixon, and this is probably the best kind of deconstruction of the, the kind of, conceptual confusion of the country versus self thing, you'll, hear him talking about, carrying out the most terrifying possible crimes, ordering his, lackeys to, break into the Brookings Institution, by creating a fake fire and having fake firemen come in.

Like literally that was something they discussed in the oval office, but it was all because the, people on the other side, the, people who this very neurotic guy who saw us, these transcendent enemies, as much as, Donald Trump thinks of the deep state is these transcendent enemies were evil, right?

That they were, extensions of these radical new left people who wanted to, destroy the American way. So it's not very hard for an executive to convince themselves that they're acting in the interest of the nation when, they're just trying to preserve their own power. 

[00:17:03] Matt Blumberg: So the ultimate sort of ends justifying the means.

[00:17:06] Rick Perlstein: And, you can hear Christian conservatives. I could find you quotations of Christian conservatives leaders saying, of course, the means justify the ends, We're, working for the redemption of. Humanity, and the blood washing, mankind and the blood of the lamb.

Of course, we can lie a time or two. 

[00:17:26] Matt Blumberg: let's talk about Nixon post Watergate. how do you view, first of all, how do you view the pardon? 

[00:17:32] Rick Perlstein: Oh, well, I think the pardon was one of the worst things ever to happen in American history, and it was kind of interpreted as, a selfless act.

By Gerald Ford, right? I mean, he, the nation was swept up in this swamp of Watergate, hatred, recrimination, and he just kind of got rid of it all so we could all be united again. By the way, the longing for national unity is often, I mean, it's often, the Democrats and the Republicans, kind of uniting to kind of pick the public's pocket, kind of reminds me of Adam Smith saying, like the, butcher and the baker rarely, kind of get together behind closed doors and to fix prices, so, you get things like, we have this bipartisan agreement that we're going to bail out the banks.

We have this bipartisan agreement that we're going to go to war in Vietnam, go to war in Iraq, right? That's bipartisanship, right? So, in the case of the pardon, It's a very fascinating thing psychologically because Gerald Ford, told himself, because an aide told him that by pardoning Nixon, he was actually extracting a confession of guilt from Nixon.

Pardon was not merely just ending the problem. It was also kind of achieving justice. But, it didn't achieve justice, for one thing, every subsequent Republican. President, sort of not for himself, who was, kind of a Boy Scout, although, he had his moments, kind of could use the alibi of the Ford pardon, which was really kind of a too big to fail argument, right?

That if you tried to really bring a president to justice, it would, bring down faith in the entire constitutional system to get away with their own crimes. Ronald Reagan's national security. Guy Oliver North in the basement of the White House saying we don't care that Congress passed a law that we can't give aid to the Contras.

We're going to do it anyway. Secretly. Oh, and by the way, we're going to raise the money by selling missile parts to Iran, and negotiate with them whenever they, take one of our hostages, right? And, and then after Reagan, there was a kind of reckoning, an appropriate one, certain of his officials like, Like, Casper Weinberger were convicted of crimes.

And the next president, George H. W. Bush, pardoned them, right? The next Republican president after that, George W. Bush, did all kinds of things. He basically didn't necessarily do illegal things. He hired lawyers to make immoral and illegal things sound moral and legal, right? Or he spied on Americans. And the next president, Barack Obama after his election before his inauguration said we're not going to look forward and look backward and then you could even, kind of extend it to the elites who, were responsible for the subprime crisis, right?

That was when the metaphor of too big to fail really kind of came into our popular lexicon. We can't. put these guys in jail. We have to phone the runways and protect the banks because we have to protect the financial system. Well, if these people who kind of unfairly get foreclosed on their homes, aren't made whole, well, let's think about the system, right?

So this idea that Ford really had that we're going to kind of preserve the system at the expense of justice and justice is hard. Justice is disruptive. Justice is. divisive, right? and often fetishizing a lack of division is an elite strategy for, non accountability. And that's all happened when, Gerald Ford said, he had, one of the alibi's was so interesting because it really was disproven.

It was that If a president, if there's a criminal proceeding against the president, a former president, the current president will do nothing else. That'll kind of somehow paralyze Washington, which is a real, statement of lack of faith for our constitutional system. if the judiciary can't do its work without, the executive completely being paralyzed, but it turned out not to be true.

I mean, it's kind of ridiculous. I mean, if you told someone in 1975, Well, we're going to, we're going to put this former president in court and, it's going to be a very melodramatic thing and it's going to have all kinds of consequences, but, paralyzing the White House is not one of them, that was just It was just, but it was just kind of taken for granted.

People love this idea of creating this absolution. this, thing that, that Gerald Ford said when he, the day he became president, our long national nightmare is over. Well, so there are a lot of national nightmares in America and you don't, end them by declaring them ended. 

[00:22:05] Matt Blumberg: I mean, it's interesting to think about how different the last 50 years would have been, had Nixon gone to court.

And almost certainly been sent 

[00:22:15] Rick Perlstein: to jail. I mean, this is a guy who said, ordered, his henchmen to pay off, criminal defendants. And if he had. been treated like everyone else was treated, who does that sort of thing. And if Donald Trump is treated like everyone else, who does that sort of thing is treated, then, people are going to think twice before they commit those kinds of crimes.

And, we know that people didn't necessarily think twice about committing those sorts of crimes because the proof is in the pudding. So that's my argument about the Ford pardon. it was selfish. It's like he, he didn't want to think about Richard Nixon anymore.

he wanted to get down with his own agenda or it was, in the interest of the country, you can argue it either way. 

[00:23:02] Matt Blumberg: Yeah. 

[00:23:02] Rick Perlstein: Very subjective. 

[00:23:04] Matt Blumberg: Nixon went through some bit of a rehabilitation right in the public eye in his later years, right? I've read in a bunch of places.

He was sort of an informal foreign policy advisor to Clinton he started showing up a little bit. Oops wrote some books what do you think the long term View of him is gonna be is it just gonna be Watergate or is it gonna be? Hey, political genius did some great things.

Super smart guy, but torched himself. 

[00:23:39] Rick Perlstein: Well, I mean, it really gets into the question of this, idea of the foreign policy genius. And, I'm Bill Clinton. Actually, that's what he said. It is his summit is his funeral. they're, four presidents there, I think.

And he said, the time for judging Richard Nixon only You know, from Watergate is over. Let's think about those wonderful foreign policy things. He did the opening to China, right? Well, it turns out the opening to China, the kind of negotiations he did with the Soviet Union were inextricably linked to Watergate because he was so obsessed with, carrying out diplomacy in absolute secret that it was actually this fear of leaks, He invented something called the plumbers, the people who committed Watergate in order to plug leaks, right?

So it's pretty intimate, intimately connected to kind of who he was as a person, as a politician, right? And, there was a lot of, then you got to bring in kind of, Kissinger, right? Who is this kind of partner in crime, not necessarily in crime. Well, he committed some crimes too, actually.

Partner in governing, let's say. Let's keep it neutral. Interesting choice of words, Right. but yeah, there were crimes, I mean, Cambodia, Laos, these countries were turned into parking lots pretty much in the interest of, justly settling the Vietnam War, one of the fascinating things about opening to China was, Nixon, Kissinger were both so fascinated by kind of the geostrategic elements of that and the Cold War part of that, that, Kind of with a bit of racism, Kissinger said the amount of trade we could ever have with China is infinitesimal, right?

So, and, Kissinger and, Nixon both thought that oil would never be used as a geo, strategic weapon. And. that happened. So, in a lot of ways, he was a foreign policy genius. He knew a ton. So people would, kind of, he would do something that was kind of famous.

He would go give the tour to Horizon. He would just kind of sit there and impress, say, a donor or a senator. reeling off 60 or 70 countries and how they all fit into this kind of grand sort of chessboard. And, he knew a lot of leaders and, he was a pretty acute and shrewd judge of other people's motives.

So it probably wasn't a terrible idea that sort of, capital, was not, just kind of squandered when, new presidents came into power. It's probably a good thing that Bill Clinton would know, the things that he knew about some leaders that he might have to deal with, some traditions that he would have to deal with.

At the same time, the idea that, you know, someone who did what he did, hold the constitutional order and, naked contempt, was able to, be rehabilitated, it really kind of taught, the next generation of, people who would hold the constitution and similar contempt that, well, maybe I can, be rehabilitated and, paint cute pictures of clowns and doggies and, become, the best friends of Michelle Obama, which is, obviously what happened to George W. Bush instead of people realizing, there wasn't, the army, did our big study in 2017 about what the consequences for the Iraq war was. And they said they held it responsible for the civil war in Syria and the greatest refugee crisis in human history. they held it responsible for, the only winner in Iraq was Iran.

So, I mean, he was really bad. But, elites really want to kind of believe that, they're all kind of cuddly, trustworthy people. And next thing he's the guy, getting invited to, sup, with, the next generation of powerful leaders. 

[00:27:37] Matt Blumberg: this has been a fun conversation.

Fantastic conversation. Let me close. let me close with this question, knowing everything, about our history, our system of government, our politics. if you could wave a magic wand and do one thing or two things, regardless of how you have to get there mechanically, but if you just wave a magic wand and do a couple of things to strengthen the American project, American system of government, what would they be?

[00:28:09] Rick Perlstein: Well, Matt, if you've been listening, there are no magic wands. The only way out is through, politics is a slow boring of hard boards. I think, the book I'm working on now is called The Infernal Triangle, and it kind of apportions, the terrible state of American democracy.

and our kind of national community three ways blame for three ways, the authoritarian turn of the Republicans, the, inadequacy of the Democrats and, fighting that and coming up with a convincing alternative. But I think most importantly, I think is, the role played by, the elite.

highest level, agenda setting political media. And I think that's kind of the easiest to change. They have to think up a new set of norms. They're norms, of, kind of always apportioning kind of equal blame onto the Republican side and the Democratic side. what they now call kind of sane washing.

kind of claiming that both candidates have sets of Policies that the government, the, the electorate kind of sits back in their chair and kind of thinks over and chooses between and that, one side, promising to protect you from the evil Haitians who eat dogs and the other side.

having policies, that you can chew over, right? So the way the media represents reality, since this rise of the authoritarianism, the Republican Party just does not resemble reality. I think, historians, 50, 70, 100 years from now will say, wow, this is a lot like Pravda.

it's like the way, most Americans, think that, crime is as bad as it's ever been. Say when crime is way down, right? It says that the republicans say that and they have to report that kind of straight nuts. I know they're making this up right, so I think that a thorough reformation of A political journalism works is the best we can hope for I don't see it happening it has to happen because if the authoritarians win, they're going to start knocking off liberal institutions Authoritarians, independent.

Starting with the media Journalism, right? They're going to be lined up against the wall like everyone else and, that's saying the constitution isn't a suicide pact. Well, journalistic norms shouldn't be a suicide pact either. That's a hard project. Yeah. I don't have any easy answers, but, we have to do it differently.

[00:30:32] Matt Blumberg: So 

[00:30:32] Rick Perlstein: the new 

[00:30:32] Matt Blumberg: book is 

[00:30:33] Rick Perlstein: called the 

[00:30:33] Matt Blumberg: Infernal 

[00:30:34] Rick Perlstein: Triangle. Yeah. That's going to come out in 2026. Hopefully there'll be a country. 

[00:30:40] Matt Blumberg: Hopefully there'll be a country to read it. Rick Pearlstein, bestselling author, presidential historian. Thank you so much for joining me today. 

[00:30:47] Rick Perlstein: Bye.

[00:30:52] Matt Blumberg: 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 country over self. com.