Mary Frances Berry and Douglas Brinkley

Can President Biden unite a divided country? This week on Firing Line 

BIDEN SWEARING IN: ..so help me God.

JOHN ROBERTS: Congratulations Mister President (applause)  

The oath of office…at the scene of an insurrection

Biden: We’ve learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.

President Biden is leading a country in confronting a series of crises: a raging pandemic and a struggling economy, simmering racial injustice, and the realities of a changing climate. Perhaps most daunting — a nation bitterly divided

NAT: Jan. 6 riot 

If what’s past is prologue, what does history teach us about what’s now?

‘FIRING LINE WITH MARGARET HOOVER’ IS MADE POSSIBLE IN PART BY THE MARGARET AND DANIEL LOEB FOUNDATION, ROBERT GRENEAR, CHARLES R. SCHWAB, THE DAVID STEPPER CHARITABLE FOUNDATION INC.
THE FAIR WEATHER FOUNDATION, AND BY — CORPORATE FUNDING IS PROVIDED BY STEVENS INC.

HOOVER: Douglas Brinkley, welcome to Firing Line, and Mary Frances Berry, welcome back to Firing Line. 

BERRY: Thank you. 

HOOVER: I am delighted to welcome two renowned scholars of American history to the program this week who can add historic perspective to President Biden’s inauguration. Professor Berry, you are at the University of Pennsylvania and you have written extensively about civil rights, about women’s rights and about the Constitution. And Professor Brinkley, you are a professor at Rice University, a commentator and prolific author about the presidency and many other areas of American life. Take a listen to a portion of President Biden’s inaugural address. 

BIDEN: This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge and unity is the path forward, and we must meet this moment as the United States of America. If we do that, I guarantee you we will not fail. We have never, ever, ever, ever failed in America when we’ve acted together.

HOOVER: As you listened to the inaugural address, Doug, how did it compare to the great inaugural addresses in American history in your view?

BRINKLEY: Well, I don’t think it’s going to be remembered like Lincoln’s first and second inaugural, which are almost foundational texts. It didn’t have the poetry of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural. The truth of the matter is, Biden’s speech, I think, is going to be seen as very important because he did talk about the disunity and dysfunction in the United States, that we really are coming apart at the seams, and reminding us about our heroic past. And in the most important thing, Margaret, beyond the words of the speech, were the optics that were going on around it on inaugural day, ranging from the fact that all those former presidents, having George W. Bush with Bill Clinton and Obama saying we’re the Presidents Club, Donald Trump’s nowhere to be seen. President Trump got out of town and went to Mar a Lago instead of being there. Gracious last note, though, was Trump did leave a note for Biden, which is important. A little bit of a healing gesture.

HOOVER: I’d like you to both take a look at this image of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor administering the vice presidential oath to Kamala Harris using Justice Thurgood Marshall’s Bible. Professor Berry, what does this image tell you about this moment in American history?

BERRY: Well, I think the symbolism is perfect. I think the whole thing was quite magnificent and reassuring and inspiring. Here we are, some people of color, these two women, a woman for the first time as vice president. And there’s Thurgood Marshall’s Bible and all of the imagery. You cannot beat that for inspiring people, making people feel that a change has come. And so all of it was there and in that visual.

HOOVER: Biden also said, quote, “I know the forces that divide us are deep and they are real…”

CUT TO BIDEN: …but I also know that they are not new. Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonization have long torn us apart. 

HOOVER: President Biden was calling on our history to give Americans comfort and courage to tackle our current challenges. You know, what parts of our history, Professor Brinkley, can President Biden draw upon to overcome the challenges of this moment?

BRINKLEY: I think he has to draw upon the notion that the federal government is the friend of everybody in America. There’s become a demonization of the federal government, the swamp that needs to be drained, a disdain for Washington bureaucrats. So I think what he can say is, look at Franklin Roosevelt providing Social Security. And then Harry Truman integrated our armed forces. Dwight Eisenhower did the interstate highway system and created NASA, and Kennedy and the moon shot, and Lyndon Johnson with Medicaid and Medicare, and Richard Nixon, the Environmental Protection Agency, and endangered species. Jimmy Carter created FEMA, Department of Energy, meaning activist government, government is your friend. And that’s needed now because we’re going to have to attack the covid-19 crisis. And what Trump did was allow each state to decide what to do and it became very disorganized. So if Biden and Mitch McConnell can work together and say, ‘America can lick this public health menace, that we can go out and conquer the covid-19,’ we could be triumphalist in the sense that we’re one country fighting covid right now.

HOOVER: President Biden mentioned the word unity eight times in his inaugural address, but he also said, quote, “disagreement must not lead to disunion,” which is the first time the word disunion has appeared in an inaugural address since the Civil War. So Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia told me on this program last week that the American people are as divided now as during the Civil War. Professor Berry, how does that strike you as a historian?

BERRY: Well, I think Manchin is unfortunately correct. I loved the Biden speech and I love all the calls for unity. But it’s also true that there are some deep seated fissures in our country on major issues like race and law enforcement and poverty and homelessness and jobs. And what do you do about all these problems, quality education? None of those went away, of course, while Trump was there and they haven’t gone away yet. And after the pandemic, they will still be here. And I was struck by listening to Doug. All of those great accomplishments are wonderful. But the major accomplishments we have made on the issue of human rights in this country, civil rights, women’s rights and so on, are born out of protest. They are born out of when we talk the history we should learn is the history of the people demanding of their government that it do the right thing on various issues, that you have the power to do it. You have the power not only to vote, which you’ve done, and you’ve changed the presidents, but you also have the power to make policies that will lead to unity. Unity will not just come because of a speech or because of the election. What is it, 74 million people voted for Trump even after all that had happened? This is a signal to us everything that’s going on that we have to attend to people’s needs. We’ve got all these issues that need to be dealt with. And I think if Biden deals with them and the Congress helps him and doesn’t stand in the way in both the House and Senate, that he’ll be able to deal with them. And if the American people demand change —  in a nonviolent way, obviously — that I think the change that we would like to see will come. And our history teaches us that whether it’s a friendly president or an unfriendly president, whoever it is, that we can bring pressure to bear to make the change we want.

BRINKLEY: We have deep, deep problems. And I think one of the great events of 2020 was Black Lives Matter, and the fact that we do need to, in the history world, teach more about African-American history, teach more about women’s history, teach about the gay rights movement. I thought Barack Obama was opening the narrative quite well when he was president. So I find that we should try to be hopeful, the best we can right now, because if you don’t give young people a sense of hope that our democracy is going to get better, we’re simply playing a kind of identity politics and scolding the people that are in power. Running anything hard. Running a Department of Transportation is hard. What we need now is good governance and honest governance, a government that doesn’t lie to the people. And hopefully President Biden will be providing us with that.

BERRY: And I don’t think that’s – I don’t think that’s enough. I want that. I want a president who tells the truth, although all politicians lie, occasionally. I learned that. I was in five different presidential administrations, Republican and Democrat, so I’ve had that experience, in addition to being a historian about the experience. I want young people to learn about all the symbolism and all the changes that are symbolic, that have been made. But I want them also to learn that if you want something done about poverty, something done more about racism, if you want something more done about the homeless people on our streets, if you want to end the forever wars, if you want all of that, you need to mobilize and impress whoever is in office – who has lots of things to deal with – that your issue is the one. Climate change. That’s OK. But if you have to organize and you have to demand change and put your issue there, so, because the squeaky wheel gets the oil, in politics as in everything else. So I want our students to learn about the protest tradition in American history while they learn everything else. 

HOOVER: Here’s what I’d like your perspective on as a historian, both of you, actually. The conspiracy theories that have blossomed during the Trump administration, particularly the QAnon conspiracy.  Followers of QAnon believed that President Trump would remain in the presidency until just moments before Joe Biden took the oath of office. What can you tell us about how these conspiracy theories have flourished in addition to the other far right wing extremist groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters. All of them have proved that they’re willing to use violence and were emboldened by the attack on the Capitol. Can you put that into context for us within the scope of our own history? 

BRINKLEY: I mean, these hate groups have been there, but social media has now created these platforms, and you can shut one down and they find another. And until we get control over the social media situation – and we saw at the end, out of desperation, Twitter, Facebook had to ban Donald Trump. And I don’t want to start banning people, but we can’t have hate speech and conspiracy theories becoming equated with factual empirical data. 

HOOVER: With that in mind, Professor Berry, take a look at this clip of what three former presidents had to say just this week. 

OBAMA: You know, one of my fondest memories of the inauguration was the grace and generosity that President Bush showed me and Laura Bush showed Michelle, and it was a reminder that we can have fierce disagreements and yet recognize each other’s common humanity, and that as Americans, we have more in common than what separates us. 

BUSH:  I think if Americans would love their neighbor like they would like to be loved themselves, a lot of the division in our society would end. 

CLINTON: That’s what this means. It’s a new beginning and everybody needs to get off their high horse and reach out to their friends and neighbors and try to make it possible. 

HOOVER: Professor Berry, three former presidents thought it was urgent enough that they spoke together with the same message to the American people about the importance of a peaceful transition of power. Has anything like this ever happened in American history?

BERRY: No, we haven’t had that symbolism of the three guys there, three presidents together making those statements, and they made them because of the riot that broke out at the Capitol and the interference with the election. And it was important that they do that to try to reinforce the Biden administration and reassure the American people as we go along. But I would tell you that until we listen to and try to parse out what people are attracted to in supremacist groups, conspiracy theorists and all the rest- what is it that they’re at? Are they all mentally ill or is there some goal they have or some issue? – engage in some kind of dialogue, all that will happen is that they will go underground. We know that from the experience and the history of what happened when Timothy McVeigh bombed Oklahoma City, all the way back from Ruby Ridge, the Branch Davidians, and all of those things. We thought we had suppressed white supremacists or people who had unpopular views that couldn’t be tolerated, and all they did was they went underground, and McVeigh was radicalized by it. I think, we don’t have to agree with theories that they have or anything else, but see what their real issues are, and try to discuss them while we punish people who engage in any kind of violence because violence is totally unacceptable.

HOOVER: President Trump left the White House with a 34 percent approval rating, according to Gallup, tying him with George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter when they left the White House. Harry Truman left with an even lower approval rating: 32 percent. But President Trump had the lowest average job approval rating of any president in modern polling history at 41 percent. As historians, what does the approval rating tell us about a president in terms of how he’ll be viewed by history, Doug, later on?

BRINKLEY: You know, Ronald Reagan used to say if you’re not above 50 percent, you’re selling bad product, or  you’re not listening to the American people. Donald Trump never tried to win 50 percent of America. He was always operating on some kind of base philosophy that he could get reelected with his base and 40 percent. At last, he’s failed. Trump will be ranked, in my mind, as the worst president in American history. I don’t believe he belongs in the president’s club even, because he tried to destroy the US federal government. In the same way that I would look at Jefferson Davis or look at Benedict Arnold during the American Revolution. He is an odd coincidence, Trump, of really a third party movement piecing together different realities in America. He adopted George Wallace’s segregation-ism and Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrat party. He took Ross Perot’s anti-NAFTA sentiment. He brought in this weird Lyndon LaRouche conspiracy theory side that’s always out there in America. I mean, we’re a country that still has, you know, millions of Americans that believe Neil Armstrong never went to the moon. And he mixed all these together with being a TV celebrity. He seems to me to be a very weird, strange, one-off president and hence is going to go now, be facing lawsuits, pouring on him from what he did to the Georgia secretary of state, trying to say, find me the votes. The New York Southern District is going to be coming after him. He has scores of sexual harassment suits. I don’t see how Trump has a resurgence in American history. I think that his numbers are even going to go lower as ex-president. There’s no chance for a rehabilitation in the way that George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter were able to do them, Carter through winning the Nobel, fighting Guinea worm disease and river blindness, George W. Bush for showing empathy and an open heart. Right now, Bush, 43, is doing paintings about immigration. His views are very pro American immigration. So they have opportunities to go up. Trump, I think, only goes down, and he’s got a, perhaps, a second impeachment trial coming right now and he may very well get banned from running in American politics again.

HOOVER: Professor Berry, what is your view of what President Trump’s legacy will be?

BERRY: Well, I think that what his legacy will be depends on what happens now and in the next few years. By 20 years from now, or 30, we will know how successful the Biden presidency was, what happened on the issues, both foreign and domestic. We don’t know that now. But the bottom line is that it depends on your public relations. It depends on what kind of media you get. It depends on what kind of staff you have to project what you’re doing. Trump has had bad public relations from the beginning. He’s not a politician. He doesn’t understand politics at all and how to do anything. And from day one, as everybody says, we had protests, we had people crying that he was elected. He stumbled out during the campaign and he’s been stumbling ever since. But there were some things that I think in retrospect, people are going to turn around and say, ‘well, you know, that wasn’t bad that he did, you know, giving pardons to people who had been in prison for a long time for either no reason or some simple reason.’ So, how Trump will be perceived will depend on events and it will depend on the public relations that other presidents have from now on. 

HOOVER: There’s been a recurring question. I’m going to take us back to William F. Buckley. When he welcomed historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to the program in 1986 and they talked about executive power. Take a look at this clip. 

SCHLESINGER: In the recent period, the swing away from presidential power was so marked that by the end of the 1970s people were talking about the presidency as an impossible job–

BUCKLEY: About the imperial presidency and all kinds of things.

SCHLESINGER: Well, the imperial presidency reached its climax– but post-Watergate, people wrote books about the illusion of presidential power. I mean, Gerald Ford gave a thing that said what we need fear is not the imperial presidency but the ‘imperiled’ presidency and so on. One thing that I give President Reagan credit for is restoring faith in the presidency as a workable office. And in so doing, one of the ironies I think historians will find in the Reagan period is this man who came to the White House in order to dismantle government, who said in his inaugural address, ‘Government is not the solution, government is the problem’ has had as one of his ironic legacies a renewal of the faith in the presidency and in government.

HOOVER: This argument about the imperial presidency and the increasing power of the executive branch, especially at the expense of the legislative branch. President Obama issued 276 executive orders, but President Trump issued many as well: 212. After Trump’s excesses, could there be a backlash brewing, in your view, and an opportunity for the legislative branch to reassert itself? 

BERRY:  I don’t think so. I think that the Congress has in a way been diminished during this presidency and even before, while it may not appear so on the surface. It takes them forever to do anything, so the wait is always endless and sometimes nothing happens. The president can move more swiftly, and using executive orders, as Obama did and as Trump did and as Biden is doing immediately, is a faster, easier, cleaner way to do something. And the impeachment narratives during this Congress that sits now of Trump all came to naught. I don’t know what will happen in this next one, but impeachment has become almost like a routine procedure that you do the presidents, maybe. I really think that the presidency, being a strong president, is here to stay. Many people are asking for even more strength. People are asking that the president take command of the national fight against the pandemic, that the president take personal command of doing something about the economy. There’s more of a yearning to have a voice, although to me it sounds like authoritarianism, that the president be strong and that Congress be sort of slapped down and kept in their place and asked to move. And if you look at polling data, if you care about that sort of thing, the Congress consistently polls worse than the president. They’ve even polled worse than President Trump, if you can imagine that. I was quite surprised to see that that was the case. So I don’t think that the strong presidency is in decline. I think it’s probably in ascendancy.

BRINKLEY: I agree with Professor Berry completely. I mean that right now Congress has lower ratings than any president. The American people’s lost faith in it. The last president that has done a great job, I think, working with Congress was Bill Clinton, who was, through his triangulation, was at least able to get some things done to the point that by the end of this two terms, our country had a surplus, economic surplus, due to his willing to take one issue and work across the aisle. So hopefully Biden and McConnell, friends for a long time, at least, with COVID, coming out right now and tackling it together, might be able to lift all boats by showing this ability to collaborate. Reagan would collaborate with Tip O’Neill and Ted Kennedy. And I think Biden’s going to make it clear that he’s not a hater, that he actually likes some of the Republicans that might be opposing him, and hopefully will be able to negotiate some infrastructure bills and the like right now. I have to stay optimistic. I don’t feel it’s helpful for us to keep thinking America’s– our better days are behind us. You’ve got to believe in our future.

HOOVER: Professor Berry, you and Kamala Harris share an alma mater in Howard University, a historically black college. What does it mean to you to have a graduate of Howard University just a heartbeat away from the presidency?

BERRY: My first reaction is: it’s about time. As a student at Howard, she was a fantastic — student body president, good in the classroom. She came and protested when some of us organized the free South Africa movement to end apartheid in South Africa. And so, as far as I’m concerned, her whole record has led to this moment. And I expect good things from her. She’s wise, she’s smart politically. And so I’m very proud of her being a Howard alum.

HOOVER: With that, Professor Brinkley, Professor Berry, thank you for adding some historical perspective and helping us understand it all a bit better. 

BRINKLEY: Thank you, Margaret. Appreciate it.

BERRY: Thank you very much for having me. I enjoyed it very much. 

‘FIRING LINE WITH MARGARET HOOVER’ IS MADE POSSIBLE IN PART BY THE MARGARET AND DANIEL LOEB FOUNDATION, ROBERT GRENEAR, CHARLES R. SCHWAB, THE DAVID STEPPER CHARITABLE FOUND DAY OF THE ACCIDENT — FOUNDATION INCH.
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