E-mail a friendMichael Beschloss
airdate June 8, 2007
Newsweek calls Michael Beschloss 'the nation's leading Presidential historian." He was recently appointed to that position with NBC News—the first time any major network has created such a title. Beschloss is also the only nationally-known historian with a degree from the Harvard Business School. He appears regularly on news and public affairs TV shows, offering expert analysis of the executive branch, and is the author of several best-selling books. His latest is titled Presidential Courage.
Michael Beschloss
Tavis: Michael Beschloss is a noted historian and best-selling author who many of you loyal PBS viewers will recognize, of course, from “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.” He also serves as Presidential Historian for NBC News. His latest book is once again a "New York Times" bestseller and it's called "Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789 to 1989." Michael, nice to have you on the program.
Michael Beschloss: Great to see you, Tavis. Thank you.
Tavis: Good to see you. Glad to have you on the West Coast.
Beschloss: Oh, thank you. I don't think I want to leave.
Tavis: Yeah. You're welcome to stay.
Beschloss: Thank you.
Tavis: Come by once a week and talk to me (Laughter)
Beschloss: You got a deal, you got a deal.
Tavis: When I first saw the book come across my desk, I looked at it and the cynic in me said, "I'm glad that Michael stopped at 1989" because one could argue that in 2007 or in recent years there's not a whole lot of courage in the Oval Office. That's my own take on it.
I raise that only because I wonder, from your perspective, what it is that makes being a courageous president so challenging today as compared to these greats that you talk about in history in this text.
Beschloss: Well, take a look at George Washington, the first guy whose story I tell. He did something called Jay's Treaty. People hated him for it at the end of his presidency. How did he find out that people were angry? He'd get some letters; he'd get some newspapers that would drift in after a couple of weeks.
Not the same thing as being told by your pollster that you, Mr. President, you dropped twenty-five points last night and your donors are telling you they're checking out and they won't give you any more money and everyone is asking why you did something so politically stupid. If a president does something unpopular now, he's going to hear about it in about two seconds.
Tavis: What's the difference, though, between doing something unpopular and doing something that is courageous, and aren't they sometimes one and the same?
Beschloss: Sometimes, but I'm trying to talk about presidential courage in a really specific way. For instance, Richard Nixon in 1970 invaded Cambodia and was very unpopular. He said, "I'm really courageous." It was maybe a little courageous, but it was also a stupid decision because it lengthened a hopeless war and killed a lot of Americans and Vietnamese.
To be really presidential courageous and be in this book, I'm doing the stories of nine presidents who took a big political risk losing popularity or election or even their life like Abraham Lincoln, but also something so wise that the rest of us years later as Americans say, "Gee, it sure is a good thing that John Kennedy, for instance, sent a big Civil Rights Bill to Congress."
Tavis: Is that your definition of courage where this book is concerned?
Beschloss: It is, it is. And it's something we expect of our presidents. You can be a good senator and just follow the polls and represent your state, but to my mind, to be a good president, you've got to be willing to say, you know, there may be a moment I've got to look into the abyss and sacrifice myself for something really important.
Tavis: I want to just throw some presidents at you and get your take on - just give me some examples of what you mean by courage where the text is concerned. Harry Truman.
Beschloss: Harry Truman recognized Israel in 1948. His Secretary of State almost resigned over it. His wife, Bess, was a terrible bigot. You know, she did not allow Jewish people in her house. I hadn't known that before. On the other side, he had a Jewish business partner who pushed him the other way and said, "Help my people."
But in the end, you know, Truman was a big Bible reader and he was also a big history reader who thought, you know, "If I recognize Israel and at least give the Jews a home after the holocaust, then I might go down in history," he said, "like Cyrus the Great" who was someone he had read about as a kid.
Tavis: You mentioned Lincoln earlier, but we didn't get into the particulars of what you mean by his courage.
Beschloss: Well, a very big event because Lincoln was told in 1864, "The only way you can get re-elected is to get rid of this Emancipation Proclamation. Northern voters are furious at you because they're willing to fight the Civil War to bring back the south, but not to free the slaves. You changed the signals."
The thing is, Tavis, you know, I'm from Illinois. I would have thought that Lincoln would have said, "Well, of course, I'll do the right thing," but actually thought, "Well, maybe I should get rid of this Emancipation if it'll let me win." But in the end, he did the right thing.
He said, "I can't be Abraham Lincoln without doing the right thing." Plus, he said, "My place in history is probably going to be" what he called, "a liberator of a race," which he was. In the following spring, although he was re-elected, he was killed by a man, John Wilkes Booth, who hated him for freeing the slaves.
Tavis: You've got Ronald Reagan's picture on the back of this book.
Beschloss: Got a lot of Democratic friends. As you know, I'm a registered Independent and I've got to stay out of politics as a historian, but a lot of my friends were furious and horrified that I would put Reagan in a book on presidential courage, but not when I told them why.
Late in his term, Ronald Reagan made a lot of risky decisions to end the Cold War, said Mikhail Gorbachev is for real, I think we can really do this, abolish nuclear weapons. The people who were most angry at him were most of his oldest supporters who loved him when he was a Cold Warrior.
The point is that Reagan understood that, you know, we always hear, Tavis, about a politician holding on to his or her political base. Reagan knew that, yes, hold on to your base, but in the end, you have to be its leader and not its captive.
Tavis: I don't know that there's a simple answer to this, not that it matters. You defined earlier what you mean in this text by presidential courage. Let me go a little deeper though. Where does that come from? I mean, to the extent that certain people have the capacity -
Beschloss: - in a human being.
Tavis: To be courageous as president or otherwise. What's your sense where presidents are concerned for where that comes from? The courage to make those unpopular decisions?
Beschloss: It's germane now because we've got to look at these candidates and figure out who to vote for.
Tavis: I'm wondering next, yeah.
Beschloss: Yeah, and we're all looking at them. So what do you look for? One thing is, is there something else in the candidate's life aside from politics? John Adams made his party very angry by making peace with France. He was defeated as a result, but he said, "You know, I wanted another term, but I've got a wife whom I love, Abigail, and kids and a farm and all this stuff."
John Kennedy in 1963 when he sent the Civil Rights Bill to Congress immediately lost the white south. He might have lost the election of 1964 as a result, but he said, "You know, I really wanted a second term, but I want to go down in history doing something important that's worth it." Plus he had other things in his life too.
Tavis: As you and many of our viewers know, of course, I'm honored to, on June 28, moderate a presidential debate.
Beschloss: Indeed. We're looking forward to it very much.
Tavis: Yeah. Live and prime time on PBS for the Democrats.
Beschloss: Sometimes, Tavis, there's justice in life. We're delighted to see it.
Tavis: Well, I'm glad to have the opportunity. So in September, of course, we're doing the same thing for the Republicans. I only raise that because I was just making some notes the other day about where I want to kind of take this conversation. One of the notes I made in my daily journal was that my sense has always been where presidents - and quite frankly, where most people are concerned - where you have been is a good indicator of where you're going to be.
Beschloss: Absolutely. You're so right, absolutely.
Tavis: Where you've been is a good indicator of where you're going to be. I raise that in this conversation because I wonder whether or not it is true of all the persons you profiled.
Beschloss: No, it isn't.
Tavis: You see where I'm going with this.
Beschloss: John Kennedy in the late 1950s. You know how he tried to get nominated for president? By going to every white segregationist governor in the south and saying, "Support me." He thought he'd get nominated with the many southern delegates that were in the Democratic Party in those days against civil rights.
Jackie Robinson ran into Kennedy at a banquet in 1958. Kennedy says, "Jackie, come on over and let's have a picture." Robinson was so furious at Kennedy that he turned his back and walked away. It was events that finally changed him.
But in a way, you know, one of the only things we can look for now in these candidates is, is there - and maybe this is a question you can ask in these debates - is there something that you feel so strongly about, you, a possible president, that you would be willing to give up your re-election or your popularity to do?
Tavis: Is it your sense then, though, that being in the White House and facing different events can help create the kind of courage in a person that has been not been evident heretofore?
Beschloss: I think it can. Kennedy evolved, for instance, when he sent up the Civil Rights Bill. You know, this is the kind of thing he had hoped not to have to do because he wanted to win, but he finally was propelled by Martin Luther King and others who were working for civil rights trying to put pressure on him.
But the thing is, that we'd like to have someone in office where you don't have to have them grow, where you don't have to have them pressured, where they will do the right thing because of what's in them.
Tavis: I was in a conversation the other day with somebody. Maybe the subject matter is crazy for you, but you're the Presidential Historian here and not me. But every president seems to get in trouble in the second term, number one.
Beschloss: They sure do.
Tavis: And number two, it seems - it's my crazy way of thinking - that if you made it clear, if not to the American people, at least to yourself, that you were only going to do it for one term, if nothing else, it might allow you to be more courageous in the first, knowing you don't care if you have a second term. Does that make sense?
Beschloss: It makes a lot of sense. But if someone does that, they'd better not let anyone know because, as you know, if everyone knows the guy is going to be gone in three years, they'll just say, "We'll just wait it out and not do anything you want." But I think that would be a great idea.
Tavis: (Laughter) I'm just trying to figure out some ways to help inspire these candidates to be more courageous and to get away from the script. One of the things I'm concerned about with our presidential forum, watching the others, I am so over everybody's sticking to script.
Beschloss: I hate that.
Tavis: And nobody wants to stand out and just express how they honestly and earnestly feel. It's staying on message, which to me seems antithetical to being and saying and doing things that are courageous.
Beschloss: And what you are doing is so important because this process is probably going to be over by midnight on February 5, so you've got to find some way of showing the sides of these people that we have not seen before and get them somehow to show us what they're like unplugged.
Tavis: Back to where I started this conversation, is it your sense right now - I don't know if you can answer this question - that, when you write a book a few years down the road and pick up after 1989, that there's enough courage to write a book this thick?
Beschloss: Might be. I mean, you might look at something like Bill Clinton in 1993. He took a pretty courageous decision on the budget that laid the groundwork for some of the prosperity of the 1990s. But, you know, the main thing, Tavis, is for historians, we need about twenty or thirty years hindsight to know how the story turned out and also to get information that we didn't know before.
When Truman went back as an ex-president to Missouri, you know what his poll ratings were? Twenty-two percent, which is like about eight now because people were more polite. But now a half century later, we know that it was his ideas that ended the Cold War ultimately, so we think he's a pretty great man.
Tavis: Don't laugh at me, but might it be possible, might it be remotely possible, that George W. Bush is right and that, thirty years from now when you write the book including his presidency, you will be saying that you have your Democrat friends mad at you for including George Bush, like they were mad at you for including Ronald Reagan, about the Iraq War?
Beschloss: Well, anything is possible. You live long enough and you get to see anything, so who knows? Maybe you'll have me back in thirty years and we can talk about it. I hope we're still around doing this.
Tavis: (Laughter) I hope so. It would be fascinating to see, though, whether he made the list. I mean, seriously, his argument all along is that "I am making the right decision and history will eventually catch up with me."
Beschloss: Yeah, and that would require the Iraq War to go wonderfully, establish a lasting democracy in Iraq that spreads through the Middle East. Anything is possible, but it sure doesn't look that way tonight.
Tavis: I rest my case on that.
Beschloss: Right.
Tavis: (Laughter) He ain't going to make the book.
Beschloss: We've got to disagree more than this, Tavis.
Tavis: (Laughter) The new book by Michael Beschloss, perennial "New York Times" bestseller, is "Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789 to 1989." Nice to have you on the program.
Beschloss: Great to see you. You're a great man.
Tavis: Honored to have you. You are as well.
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