This week we are sharing an episode from our companion podcast, Live at the National Constitution Center. In this episode, these three leading experts on American presidents—Sidney Milkis and Barbara Perry of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, and Stephen Knott of Ashland University—warn about the increasingly demagogic nature of the presidency. Their discussion traces a historical journey, from George Washington, who governed as a neutral and unifying officeholder, to modern presidents—from Teddy Roosevelt to FDR and Woodrow Wilson onward—who fanned populist passions. They also offer solutions for how to restore the Framers’ vision of the constitutional presidency today. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
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Today’s episode was produced by Bill Pollock, Samson Mostashari, and Lana Ulrich. It was engineered by Bill Pollock. Research was provided by Lana Ulrich, Samson Mostashari, Cooper Smith, and Yara Daraiseh.
Participants
Stephen Knott is the Thomas & Mabel Guy Professor of American History & Government at Ashland University, and an emeritus professor of national security affairs at the United States Naval War College. He is the author or co-author of 10 books on the American presidency, the early republic, and American foreign policy, including The Lost Soul of the American Presidency: The Decline into Demagoguery and the Prospects for Renewal and Coming to Terms with John F. Kennedy.
Sidney Milkis is the White Burkett Miller Professor of Governance and Foreign Affairs and a professor of politics at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. He is the author or co-author of several books, including the text book The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776–2021 and What Happened to the Vital Center?: Presidentialism, Populist Revolt, and the Fracturing of America.
Barbara Perry is the Gerald L. Baliles Professor in Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, where she co-directs the presidential oral history program. She has authored or edited 17 books on presidents, first ladies, the Kennedy family, the Supreme Court, and civil rights and civil liberties. Her most recent book is The Presidency: Facing Constitutional Crossroads.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also a professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources:
- Stephen Knott, The Lost Soul of the American Presidency: The Decline into Demagoguery and the Prospects for Renewal (2020)
- Nicholas Jacobs and Sidney Milkis, What Happened to the Vital Center?: Presidentialism, Populist Revolt, and the Fracturing of America (2022)
- Michael Nelson and Barbara Perry, The Presidency: Facing Constitutional Crossroads (Miller Center Studies on the Presidency) (2021)
- Stephen Knott, Coming to Terms with John F. Kennedy (2022)
- Sidney Milkis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy (2009)
Excerpt from interview: Barbara Perry on why Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016.
Jeffrey Rosen: Barbara, your thoughts and help us understand the relevance of the new deal and the decline of the party system after the 1960s and the rise of new technology and the new modes of visual communication that you talk about in your essay that arose during Reagan. One obvious question is, why did it take until 2016 to have a Trump victory? And why not earlier?/p>
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Barbara Perry: To Sid's point about how, if this had been up, left up to the convention, no, he would not have been nominee in 2016 and forever after then Trump he would never be mentioned by Mitch McConnell by name. If someone said, "Are you supporting him?" He'd say, "I'm supporting the nominee of my party." And Mitch still says that about 2024. So let's go back to the bridge. So if we have the rhetorical presidency beginning in earnest with Woodrow Wilson out on the stump, going out around the country speaking directly to people then we have FRD as Sid mentioned I'll call him the mass electronic media president with his use of the newer technology of radio.
And then John F. Kennedy, of course, embraces television as the newer form of communicating with the people and his primetime press conferences that were on average twice a month. Imagine that a president speaking to the press twice a month on primetime TV was the greatest entertainment going in Washington. And I have a friend here who was in the, a very junior officer in the Foreign Service who said, "Oh, we would always go to the, to the state Department. We were, we were working there. We'd go to the auditorium and we'd sit in the back and we'd listen to Kennedy. He was a quick study, he was informed, and his wit was incomparable, and he was now coming in to people's living rooms."
I then would put Reagan into the mix as what I call the celebrity president. It wasn't as though we didn't have other celebrities who had been president, but they typically were military heroes starting with Washington. And then so many of the, obviously Jackson, but so many of the presidents after the Civil War had, Grant had been a general and a leader, and we also had very high ranking officers. So they often were celebrities in terms of being heroic military men. But in terms of a Hollywood celebrity, that that first goes to Reagan. And I think that is the direct step into the Trumpian presidency that really in part comes about through his use of social media, the newest media at that time, as well as his starring role in his reality TV show.
Excerpt from interview: Sidney Milkis compares modern-day threats to democracy to historical threats.
Jeffrey Rosen: … Are we at an inflection point in American history akin to the election of 1800 or the Civil War or not? And what does the history of the presidency teach you about our current challenges?
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Sidney Milkis: When I give lectures on the carrot situation, I lay out the dangers that we're facing, seemingly intractable, as you say, to propose solutions almost seems, seems, seems naive. While I do agree with Steve that if we could put an ingredient of peer review back into our presidential selection process, which the electoral college did not provide that kind of filter, but parties did, that would help. That's not perhaps out of the question. But when I give the lecture about how dangerous things are, I point out that all of our major transformations, that every major development in American democracy occurred during periods of tremendous conflict and partisan polarization.
And during these periods, the American political system is disrupted. But we embrace a redefinition of the social contract which connects a new generation of Americans in in, for their time to the declaration and the Constitution. I think the last time that so clearly happened was the new deal, with the new deal. It hasn't happened since and since the 1960s, Jeff, we've been an intractable in intractably divided, I think in part because the fundamental question emerges is what does it mean to be an American with civil rights questions and, and, and, and immigration? And that requires a reckoning with some very difficult issues that we only faced previously in our history in the Civil War. And that led to a civil war. And a lot of people refer to our current situation as the cold civil war.
I think if we're gonna do something about this intractable divide I think one of the things that distinguishes contemporary politics from these previous great transformations in American politics is we had some intermediary institutions, that really provided a structure for the rebuilding of consensus in American politics. And a lot of those have been greatly weakened. We've talked about the parties, we haven't talked about Congress and what's happening with Congress. What you know the rule of law is really, I don't have to tell you this, Jeff. The rule of law is central to Republican government, and we do things administratively now. We don't really pass laws in the way we did in previous periods of American history.
So think about the Civil War with the Civil War Amendments. You think about the New deal with the enactment of major pieces of legislation like social security, how are we gonna move in that direction under the current conditions of American politics? So I really think we have to think about strengthening the intermediary institutions that in our past have allowed us to kind of confront these crises in a way that led to some kind of restored consensus. Presently, our politics is unfiltered. And the conflict between the tribes in America is direct confrontation.
We don't have time to talk about rebuilding all our intermediary institutions. But I think for all the controversy of the abortion decision, restoring, restoring that decision back to the states has led to some really interesting developments that are worth talking about. So something like that a return to appreciation of some of these intermediary institutions. I think it's necessary to move us from our current crisis to a new consensus in American politics, a new understanding of American democracy.
Excerpt from interview: Stephen Knott discusses his thesis on constitutional presidencies and the dangers of demagogues.
Stephen Knott: Well, thank you, Jeff. It's great to be here. Yeah. I've argued that the constitutional presidency, as I've called it, that was put forward by Washington, by Hamilton, and even James Madison. Madison had disagreements with Washington and Hamilton, but I don't think over the nature of the presidency. All of those men were deeply concerned about the dangers of the tyranny of the majority. And they viewed the President as a potential check on that majoritarian tyranny. And it, they put significant emphasis on the President's responsibility to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. And that may mean that the president has to resist majoritarian impulse targeted at various unpopular minorities, whether those minorities be political, racial, economic, whatever.
That all changes, Jeff, as you mentioned with Thomas Jefferson, who begins to sort of, I would argue, refound the American presidency and argue that the President is in a sense a spokesman for the majority, and that he derives his powers from the electoral mandate that he receives. And that Andrew Jackson, as you mentioned, sort of blows the doors wide open by explicitly arguing that the president is the tribune of the people, and that the majority is to govern as Jackson put it in one of his State of the Union messages.
Now, those two are kind of the exceptions for 19th century presidents, but they do serve as role models for some of the later progressives, beginning with T.R and Woodrow Wilson, who share a more activist view of the federal government than either Jackson or Jefferson. But they do believe that the Jackson and Jeffersonian conception of the President as a spokesman for the majority, as the one nationally elected figure who can see the entirety of the American political order, they embrace that with vigor. And that's the presidency that you and I are living with today.
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