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month. Slows, full turns at mintmobile.com. Hello,

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my name is David Runtzman, and this

0:42

is Past, Present, Future. We

0:45

have reached the last episode in our

0:47

current series with the historian Gary Gerstle,

0:50

in which we've been talking about

0:52

the ideas behind American presidential elections.

0:55

Today, the election we're discussing is

0:57

2008, when

0:59

Barack Obama defeated first Hillary Clinton

1:02

and then John McCain to

1:04

become America's first black president.

1:08

What did that victory symbolize? What

1:11

did it mean in practice? And

1:13

in what ways was it a harbinger of

1:15

a very different future? Gary,

1:24

we're getting closer and closer to the present. We

1:26

have reached 2008, an extraordinary

1:30

election in lots of ways. One

1:33

of the things that made it, and I remember

1:35

it all pretty well, I was avidly interested in

1:37

it. Such an exciting

1:39

race was that both of the primary

1:41

contests were real roller coasters. They were

1:43

very dramatic, and neither was in any

1:45

way a full-gone conclusion. So there was

1:48

no sitting president running. George W Bush

1:50

had finished his two terms. Both

1:52

main parties needed to pick a candidate, and

1:55

it was a tough race. The Democratic Party

1:57

race, in my memory, it started

1:59

as a three. way race, maybe

2:01

the third candidate, John Edwards, was

2:04

never plausibly going to win the nomination but

2:06

he looked pretty plausible for a while. Barack

2:09

Obama, Hillary Clinton, these were the main

2:11

candidates. And you can divide them in

2:14

lots of different ways. So there are policy differences

2:16

between them. Edwards stood

2:19

for a certain kind of politics. I think Edwards

2:21

was more of a conventional

2:24

Southern populist, democratic

2:26

politician, but also actually

2:28

further to the left than the other two on

2:30

some questions, for instance, healthcare.

2:33

Obama and Clinton, harder to

2:35

divide on some questions, but serious differences

2:37

between them. Symbolically,

2:39

very, very different candidates. John Edwards,

2:42

Southern white man, conventional

2:44

politician, lawyer. Obama,

2:46

were he to win, would be the first

2:48

non-white president and

2:51

indeed candidate for the presidency.

2:53

Likewise, Hillary Clinton. And

2:55

then they campaigned very differently. So Obama

2:58

famously saw the

3:00

potential of the internet early on,

3:02

tried to organize a grassroots campaign,

3:06

small money, little bits of money, but also

3:08

networks of supporters feeding out from

3:11

each other. Hillary Clinton, a more

3:13

conventional Clinton campaign, a big money

3:15

campaign using the party machinery. We

3:18

know who won, Obama won. But when you

3:21

look back at the contest, which is the

3:23

big division here? Is it the symbolic division,

3:25

non-white, or woman,

3:27

or white man? Is

3:29

it how they organized? Or

3:31

was it policy? Was it actually, was this

3:34

a policy contest? I

3:36

think the policy contest was

3:38

the least significant of the

3:40

division among the candidates. They

3:42

all occupied a similar space,

3:46

center to left of center. Edwards

3:49

being the furthest to the left, as you

3:51

suggested, his healthcare plan was the most ambitious

3:53

in terms of wanting to involve the government

3:56

directly as opposed to arranging some mixed

3:59

form of private and public

4:01

provision. Obama, I think,

4:03

positioned himself somewhat to the left

4:05

of Hillary Clinton, but really not that far.

4:07

And if you look carefully at their policies,

4:10

it's hard to parse the differences between them.

4:12

I think it was more that Hillary

4:14

Clinton was the establishment and

4:17

Barack Obama was this

4:19

glamorous outsider. Adamus He

4:21

did use the Iraq War as a divider

4:23

between them. He didn't vote for it. She

4:25

did. I was referring to

4:27

domestic policy. There not being many differences. But

4:31

Hillary Clinton had voted in support of

4:33

the Iraq War in 2003, and

4:35

Obama came out against the Iraq War.

4:38

And by 2008,

4:40

that issue had become very

4:42

huge in American politics. And

4:45

most people in America had felt by

4:47

2008 that this war of adventure had

4:49

been a catastrophe for the United States

4:51

and in the Middle East. And

4:54

Barack Obama used the issue of

4:57

Iraq repeatedly against

4:59

Hillary Clinton and helped to

5:02

paint her as a candidate of

5:04

the old and that he was

5:06

going to offer a new departure.

5:08

And he put himself

5:10

forward as the most compelling change

5:13

candidate. And that was the central

5:15

theme of his campaign. Yes,

5:17

we can. America can change. New

5:20

generation, fresh people in politics.

5:23

This put him in position to best

5:26

Hillary Clinton and along with a very

5:28

effective use of the iPhone

5:31

appearing in 2006. So this is the, I

5:34

call it the first iPhone election. We're

5:36

tracking various media innovations and when they

5:39

show up in politics. And

5:42

as you said, he began to build a

5:45

different kind of politics. It's often

5:47

the outsiders trying to gain an

5:49

advantage on more of

5:51

an establishment star who become the

5:54

most effective users of new media

5:56

and Obama in this case, beginning

5:58

from a point of deficit. it vis-a-vis Hillary

6:01

Clinton, looking for

6:03

whatever advantage she could find.

6:05

Having a younger, more innovative

6:07

team around him begins

6:09

to use the networking

6:11

capacities of the internet to push

6:14

supporters to raise money from lots

6:16

of small donors to network, whereas

6:19

Hillary Clinton was, this was going

6:21

to be another Clinton-style campaign. And

6:24

it should be said that for all

6:26

her qualities, which were many, very talented

6:28

candidate, very talented person, she did not

6:31

have the public charisma that her

6:33

husband Bill had and

6:35

that Obama had in abundance. She

6:37

also had to contend with a

6:40

very significant part of the electorate,

6:42

not liking the Clintons for one reason or

6:45

another, attitude that had developed over a long

6:47

period of time. And so as much as her

6:50

being part of the Clinton project

6:52

helped her, it also hurt

6:55

her and damaged her among

6:57

those who were eager to hear new

6:59

voices. We shouldn't underestimate

7:01

either the misogyny present in American

7:03

politics, not just on the right,

7:05

but in portions of the

7:07

left, or the feeling that

7:10

a woman is not as capable as a man, and the

7:12

United States remains almost singular in

7:14

terms of major nations in the world,

7:16

having had a female president or

7:19

prime minister. If Obama was

7:21

going to be the first African-American president, Hillary Clinton,

7:23

of course, was going to be the first female

7:25

president of the United States. It

7:27

was very, very close. Obama was

7:30

always a bit ahead, but

7:32

I remember it was really drawn out. And

7:34

just at the point where it looked like Obama

7:36

would seal the deal, Clinton would win another primary.

7:38

She won the big ones. One of the things

7:40

that's really noticeable about the campaign, and it's a

7:43

technical issue, but it relates to the

7:45

different styles of campaigning and

7:47

organization, which is that Obama

7:49

won the caucuses, the

7:51

caucus states, which suited his style

7:53

of politics, and Hillary

7:56

Clinton tended to win the big primaries, the

7:58

more top-down events, even in the... same state.

8:00

So I was looking it up in Texas,

8:03

same state. Obama won the caucus

8:05

vote in Texas. Hillary Clinton won

8:07

the primary vote in Texas. And

8:09

the campaign began with this extraordinary

8:12

drama over just a few days.

8:14

Obama won the Iowa caucuses,

8:17

and everyone thought he was going to knock

8:19

Hillary Clinton out. He seemed to be ahead. He was

8:21

ahead in all of the polling. It moves to New

8:23

Hampshire, and she won in

8:25

New Hampshire, turning it on its head again.

8:27

And that pattern repeated itself throughout the

8:30

whole duration of it, right up to

8:32

the convention. And she only conceded right at the

8:34

last moment. So caucus politics,

8:36

how does caucus politics suit Obama's

8:39

style of campaigning relative to the

8:41

primaries? The big primaries, presumably, are

8:43

more amenable to big money, and

8:45

caucus politics is more amenable to network

8:47

effects? Yes, yes. The

8:50

caucus politics is you assemble Democrats

8:52

to come together to discuss the

8:54

candidates and then cast their votes.

8:58

So if on the ground you built up a little

9:00

network of social influences, that's the way to go. You're

9:02

not going to throw money at advertising. You're going to

9:04

get people to talk to people. You

9:07

are going to throw money at advertising, but

9:09

the most effective way of organizing a caucus

9:12

is to have

9:14

your representatives out there networking. And

9:16

for this purpose, the communication capacity

9:18

of the internet turns out to

9:21

be extraordinarily helpful.

9:23

And the exact utility of email

9:26

campaigning in 2008

9:28

hadn't really been figured out yet. And

9:31

Obama's advisors are very clever at pioneering

9:33

this network grassroots strategy, keeping in touch

9:35

with a lot of people on the

9:38

ground. These tend to be the more

9:40

motivated voters. Those are the ones who

9:42

come to caucuses,

9:45

and they want to be involved in

9:48

the process continuously, and they want to

9:50

receive a lot of information, and they

9:52

want to be networked with other people

9:54

who are voting. They want to be in

9:56

conversation. This

9:59

requires a level of bottom-up

10:01

communication that had been much harder to achieve

10:04

prior to the Internet iPhone

10:07

age. And I think a

10:09

lot of what Obama is doing is invisible to

10:11

the broader public for a significant amount of time.

10:13

This is often the case where someone takes advantage

10:15

of a new media, they figure out how to

10:17

use it in a way that other

10:20

people have not. After the

10:22

fact, their techniques and methods are studied, and

10:25

then they spread to all the

10:27

candidates in the next election. His use of

10:29

these media gave Obama an advantage in these

10:31

caucus contests that I think for

10:33

a long time the Hillary Clinton campaign was

10:35

not even fully aware of. It was a

10:37

kind of stealth campaign, which

10:39

has something to do with her

10:41

surprise and shock at some of

10:44

the outcomes because the Clinton campaign

10:46

had trouble tracking these

10:48

developments in the old way. And

10:51

apparently she thought, we win the big

10:53

primaries, we win the nomination, win

10:55

California, win Texas.

10:58

She did win the big primaries, and she

11:01

lost the nomination. It's a weird failure actually

11:03

of basic strategic

11:05

insight. Yes, but

11:07

this occurring at a moment when the

11:09

calculations one needs to make about how

11:12

to get the nomination are in fact

11:14

changing. So this is the

11:16

technological transition in modes of campaigning that

11:18

the Obama campaign is much

11:20

quicker to grasp and embrace. Hillary

11:23

Clinton also got in trouble

11:25

in South Carolina. She won in New Hampshire.

11:27

But Bill, as much as he was trying

11:29

to stay out of this, could not stay

11:32

out of the contest entirely. And

11:34

he made some unfortunate remarks

11:37

when Hillary was having trouble coming out of

11:39

Iowa and even in New Hampshire about Barack

11:42

Obama perhaps not being the best candidate

11:44

for the Democratic Party, insinuating

11:46

that it had something to do with

11:48

his race. He didn't say this directly,

11:51

but that was the insinuation. And the

11:53

effect of that is that Hillary Clinton

11:55

got clobbered in South Carolina where the

11:57

Democratic primary voters are heavily dominated by

11:59

our African Americans. That's something that

12:01

would save Joe Biden's

12:03

candidacy in 2020. He was lumbering

12:07

along until he had South Carolina. The

12:09

black vote saved him there. And the

12:11

black vote in South Carolina, their interpretation

12:13

of Bill Clinton's comments hurt

12:16

her quite severely and created a problem

12:18

for Hillary Clinton among minority voters. And

12:21

Bill Clinton had thought of himself as

12:23

a champion of minority voters, a champion

12:25

of black voters, good relations with those

12:27

communities. Toni Morrison even

12:29

called him the first black president. So

12:31

there was an assurance about a connection

12:34

of the Clintons to the black community.

12:36

And Bill Clinton said something that rendered

12:39

that relationship problematic and

12:42

turned the African American vote

12:44

quite decisively in Obama's

12:46

favor and also ensured a very high

12:48

turnout in those ranks. So that becomes

12:50

a factor in this election

12:52

as well. That's not about technology. That's

12:54

about a

12:57

tactical error that the Quinn's made. As

13:00

you said, Hillary Clinton had a big

13:02

mountain to climb to be the first

13:04

female president, but Obama had a bigger

13:06

mountain to climb. And I think before

13:08

Obama's candidacy, most people would have thought

13:10

that America was more likely to have

13:12

a female president before it had a

13:14

black president. But Obama did climb

13:16

that mountain, but there was a point in the

13:19

campaign where it looked like race

13:21

and questions of race, leaving

13:23

aside racism as such, was

13:26

going to be his undoing. He

13:28

had to respond to revelations

13:31

of his connections to a preacher

13:34

called Jeremiah Wright and

13:36

circulating on the internet and then through

13:39

the networks, footage of some

13:41

of the sermons that Jeremiah Wright had

13:43

given that could be interpreted as an

13:45

attack on white Americans. And of course,

13:47

there's no route to the White House

13:49

for Barack Obama without the support of

13:52

many, many, many white Americans. And

13:56

it was the pivotal moment in the campaign in

13:58

a way on the democratic side. He

14:00

responded to it directly and

14:02

he came out of it, I think,

14:04

strengthened. So Hillary didn't

14:07

have an equivalent moment. How did

14:09

he do it? He

14:11

gave a brilliant speech, which I

14:13

think counts as one of the great speeches

14:16

that I have heard in all of

14:18

American politics. And I'm going to read

14:20

an excerpt in a moment. But just

14:22

to underscore the problem this caused for

14:25

Obama, Jeremiah Wright was a fiery black

14:27

nationalist preacher in Chicago. Barack

14:29

and Michelle Obama had been members of his

14:32

church for 20 years. It

14:35

was a vital life connection for Obama into

14:37

the African American community. He

14:40

grew up in a biracial home,

14:42

often raised by whites more than blacks when

14:45

his mother, because his father, left. He lived

14:48

in Hawaii for a long time, which for

14:50

an African American is a very peripheral place

14:52

to live, very multicultural, but out

14:55

of the mainstream of the centers of American life. So

14:58

for him, connecting himself to the African

15:00

American community was very important. And

15:02

something that's been forgotten about his campaign

15:05

is that there were quite a number of African

15:07

Americans skeptical of his

15:09

campaign because he was not African American

15:12

enough. His mother was white, his

15:15

father was from Kenya. Where's

15:17

the connection? This is an issue in

15:20

Obama's own life. And so this connection

15:22

to this church, Jeremiah Wright, is

15:24

an extraordinarily important part of his life and

15:26

of his connection to black life

15:28

and black community in the United States.

15:31

Wright married Michelle and Barack. I

15:34

think he baptized his two daughters. So

15:37

the familial personal connections were profound. And

15:39

then circulating on the internet are these

15:42

stories of Jeremiah Wright in

15:44

full Black Panther mode, just condemning the United

15:46

States. It's murderous

15:48

campaigns overseas, evil empire.

15:51

These are circulating on the right in

15:54

little places. And as soon as the

15:56

central news organizations of the right get ahold

15:59

of these, they... realized this could

16:01

be Obama's kryptonite, destroy whatever power

16:03

he has, and so suddenly they're

16:05

circulating everywhere. And Obama can't avoid

16:07

the issue. And the question he has

16:09

to address is, how can he, as you

16:11

suggested, be the president of all America, given

16:14

that he sat in Jeremiah's church

16:17

for 20 years listening to these sermons? Obama

16:20

chooses to give a speech in

16:22

Philadelphia at the Constitution Center in

16:24

March 2008, and literally it is

16:26

a make-or-break moment for his campaign.

16:28

Let me read a paragraph from

16:31

that speech. I

16:33

am the son of a black man from Kenya and

16:35

a white woman from Kansas. I was

16:38

raised with the help of a white grandfather who

16:40

survived a depression to serve in Patton's army during

16:42

World War II, and a white

16:44

grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at

16:47

Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to

16:49

some of the best schools in America and lived

16:51

in one of the world's poorest nations. I

16:54

am married to a black American who carries within her

16:56

the blood of slaves and slave owners, an

16:59

inheritance we pass on to our two

17:01

precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces,

17:03

nephews, uncles, and cousins of every race

17:06

and every hue, scattered

17:08

across three continents, and

17:10

for as long as I live, I will

17:12

never forget that in no other country on earth

17:15

is my story even possible.

17:18

It's a story that hasn't made me the

17:20

most conventional of candidates, but

17:22

it is a story that has seared into my genetic

17:24

makeup the idea that this nation is

17:26

more than the sum of its parts, that

17:29

out of many, we are

17:31

truly one. What's

17:35

he doing here? He's tying

17:37

his own experience to the framing

17:39

of the American Constitution. Out

17:41

of many, one, he calls for

17:43

a more perfect union. He

17:45

acknowledges the imperfections in

17:48

American life. He acknowledges the imperfections

17:51

in himself, but he also argues that

17:54

he can become more perfect in America and

17:56

can become more perfect.

18:00

the way in which he foregrounds his

18:02

white family is his

18:04

way of saying, I will

18:06

not, if elected president, simply represent

18:09

Jeremiah rights America. I will

18:12

represent the America of my grandparents

18:14

in Kansas. I

18:17

will represent Kansas. I

18:19

will represent white people everywhere. I,

18:21

as reference to his genetic makeup,

18:24

he's saying, I am black, but

18:27

I am also white. And

18:29

I perhaps am uniquely suited and able to

18:32

help America to progress to a more

18:34

perfect union. Later in the speech, he

18:36

talks, not surprisingly, about the

18:39

special challenges of African Americans in

18:41

the United States, living with America's

18:43

original sin and its aftermath, slavery.

18:46

But he has this other extraordinary paragraph

18:49

on the hardship of

18:51

white Americans and makes

18:53

a point of understanding the nature of their resentment

18:56

and the nature of their anger. And

18:59

the most important move he makes in this speech is to

19:01

say, I, as a child of both whites and blacks, can

19:05

represent the hopes and comprehend the

19:07

resentments of both groups.

19:10

And thus I can show the way to

19:12

a more perfect union. One

19:15

of the ironies of that speech, and

19:17

it connects back to the speech that first made

19:19

his name as a national politician, the speech he

19:21

gave at the Democratic convention in 2004, when

19:25

he spoke about using his own story

19:27

to symbolize the fact that Moore unites

19:30

red America and blue America, he put

19:32

it as red and blue, not white

19:34

and black then, then divides them.

19:36

And he was quite explicitly

19:38

channeling Thomas Jefferson. It was

19:40

a Jeffersonian address, Jefferson's

19:43

famous first inaugural, where he says, we are

19:45

all Federalists, we are all Republicans.

19:47

We have called by different names brethren of

19:49

the same principle out of

19:52

many one. It's a Jeffersonian idea. Jefferson,

19:54

the slave owner, Jefferson,

19:56

the man of the South. This

19:58

is a kind of Jeffersonian politics. The difference

20:00

being, as you say, Jefferson couldn't

20:02

say, it's my genetic makeup that allows me

20:04

to do it. He can only say it

20:06

as an abstract principle. His own life story

20:08

tells a very, very different story.

20:12

And for Obama's critics, it's

20:14

a remarkable speech. It's extraordinarily

20:16

egotistical. And some of

20:19

Obama's critics have found in him a tendency

20:22

to see in his life

20:24

story a solution to America's problems.

20:26

And you really have to believe in

20:28

yourself to believe that you, you embody

20:31

the more perfect union. And

20:34

he did believe that in a way. I can see both sides of

20:36

it. I can see why,

20:38

for some people, this speech looks like

20:42

an arrogant response to this problem. And

20:45

at the same time, as a piece of political

20:47

rhetoric, it is unmatchable. Yes. To

20:50

say that I, Obama, can embody

20:52

all of America is a big claim.

20:54

And I think, it turned

20:56

out, a good part of America wouldn't let

20:59

him get away with that claim. And

21:01

even though he was enormously successful

21:03

in gaining white voters, getting

21:05

more white voters in 2008 than John

21:08

Kerry got in 2004, there's going

21:10

to be an extraordinary backlash against him.

21:13

And a rejection of his claim

21:15

to embody all of America.

21:18

There's a big part of America that adhered to

21:20

the one-drop rule. If you have one drop of

21:22

being black, you are black. But

21:25

it is also an extraordinary piece of rhetoric

21:28

to try and bring the warring

21:30

tribes of America together and

21:33

to suggest that there is a way

21:35

forward. There is a path forward.

21:38

And it is the mission of the Constitution

21:41

which tells us to form a more

21:44

perfect union that commands us to follow

21:46

this path. So the arrogance

21:48

lies in saying, I am the messenger. The

21:51

humility of the speech is that this

21:53

is obligatory upon us because what the

21:55

Constitution commands us to do. And

21:58

as a black man, he's the sole... knowledgeable of

22:00

the imperfection of this constitution

22:02

in terms of legitimating slavery.

22:06

But here he's at one with Lincoln,

22:08

also a son of Illinois, saying that

22:10

the possibility of a more perfect

22:12

union out there exists and it can

22:15

be within our grasp. Yes,

22:17

we can. His

22:20

candidacy survives this and indeed from this

22:22

point on it prospers.

22:26

At the same time, this other incredible

22:28

race, probably forgotten because

22:30

it doesn't have the payoff of

22:32

Obama's ultimate victory, is taking place

22:34

on the Republican side. And actually

22:36

the Republican primary

22:38

process has a bit more in common

22:40

with what you just referenced there, which

22:42

is Biden's candidacy in 2000, because the

22:45

ultimate winner, John McCain like Biden, at

22:48

a certain point in February,

22:50

March, looked like he was

22:52

finished. I mean, he was really struggling.

22:56

And as with Biden, he turned it around.

22:58

And in a matter of a few days

23:00

and weeks, McCain went from

23:02

being very, very unlikely to be the nominee

23:05

to being almost certain to be the nominee. Before

23:09

that, Rudy Giuliani was

23:11

for a period thought to be the

23:14

favorite. And Rudy Giuliani is another extraordinary

23:16

American figure. I hesitate to say this,

23:18

academics should never do this. I

23:21

was in a taxi recently in London with

23:23

a London cab driver and he was wanting

23:25

to talk about American politics and Trump and

23:28

what was going on and why does America

23:30

have to choose between Trump and Biden in

23:32

a country of 300 million people? Isn't there

23:34

anyone better? And then he said, the thing

23:36

that's always puzzled me is what

23:39

happened to Rudy Giuliani? And by that, he

23:41

didn't mean how did this guy turn into the

23:43

joke that he is today. He more meant he

23:45

was my favorite American politician. I remember that guy

23:48

Giuliani after 9-11. He seemed to

23:50

me like exactly the sort of person who should be president

23:52

of the United States. Why did he never get a shot?

23:54

And I tried to say, well, he tried and he failed

23:56

and you don't want to see him now. But

23:59

back then, that cab driver view was quite

24:01

a widely held view. This guy had had

24:03

a good post-9-11 period, and

24:06

he seemed like he was a

24:08

plausible Republican candidate. So before we get on

24:11

to how McCain won it, what

24:13

did happen to Rudy Giuliani? It's

24:16

very hard for a mayor from New

24:18

York to get the presidential

24:20

nomination of the United States of

24:22

America. New

24:24

York's a remarkable place, but in

24:26

its diversity, in

24:29

its cosmopolitan, in

24:31

its abrasiveness, it's

24:33

not a representative place

24:35

in America. Giuliani, I think,

24:39

was extraordinary in reacting

24:41

to 9-11. I say this not

24:43

as Giuliani fan. I never liked

24:46

the man as a politician or as a figure.

24:49

But the calm he brought to the disaster of

24:51

9-11, the effort he led to get

24:54

the city through devastating events, and

24:56

in some respects the nation. This

24:59

became his national platform. It was

25:01

extraordinary. Something happened to

25:03

him because he had always been an abrasive,

25:05

hard-charging character, going after mobsters when he was

25:07

mayor of New York in the 1990s, going

25:10

hard after all criminals,

25:13

an advocate of mass incarceration,

25:15

cleaning the streets of anyone

25:18

who was threatening public order.

25:20

His police force was guilty

25:22

of manhandling, some cases brutalizing

25:25

alleged criminals, often minority, often

25:27

innocent, violating their civil liberties.

25:30

So he was very

25:32

militant on law and order matters. Many

25:34

New Yorkers gave him some credit for

25:36

that, and they reelected him as mayor.

25:39

What was most impressive about him on 9-11

25:41

was that a kind of calm

25:43

came over him and a serenity that I

25:46

have never seen in Giuliani before. And

25:48

he was able to project confidence,

25:51

calm, repose. But

25:53

when he left New York to sell

25:55

his program elsewhere, he was not an

25:57

appealing figure to many Americans. was

26:00

combative, he was abrasive, he was arrogant,

26:02

he was proved to have too limited

26:05

a knowledge of certain issues that were

26:07

important to Americans outside of New York

26:09

and primary voters wouldn't vote for him.

26:12

And this is also a time when

26:15

the Republican Party had so securely reinvented

26:18

itself as a party of the South and a

26:20

party of the West that

26:24

overcoming that as a born and bred

26:26

New Yorker was a very tall order.

26:28

And he also was a liberal

26:30

on a lot of social issues,

26:32

whether it was abortion, he had

26:34

a rather checkered family life and

26:36

married life, divorces,

26:39

questions about his personal morals, and

26:43

in what had become the Republican heartland, evangelical

26:46

America and the South, Giuliani

26:48

was not going to do well. And

26:52

he underestimated the difficulty of the

26:54

challenge and he overestimated the degree

26:56

to which 2001 had anointed

26:58

him. He was

27:01

known as America's mayor. America's mayor,

27:03

he believed his own publicity and

27:05

thus because he believed

27:08

his own publicity, the rejection of

27:10

him by Republican voters in 2008

27:12

was a devastating experience.

27:15

And as we try and explain,

27:17

the fool Giuliani has become since

27:19

his association with Trump, I

27:22

can't fully explain it. But

27:25

some of the most convincing explanations that I've

27:27

heard have to do with the despair that

27:29

overcame him after his rejection as a

27:32

national party candidate in 2008. His

27:35

drinking issues which had already been there are getting

27:37

dramatically worse. His inability

27:39

to, after he left the campaign, to

27:41

leave the house, get out of bed,

27:44

do anything, a deep depression

27:46

came over him. And this points

27:49

to unpreparedness for what the game

27:51

of American politics on the national

27:53

stage entails and also

27:55

speaks to a lack of resilience in

27:58

him to do what anyone entering

28:00

American politics has to be able to do,

28:02

which is to parry,

28:05

defeat, and recover from it. The

28:07

irony being he became the lackey of a

28:09

man who overcame the barriers he couldn't overcome.

28:11

Donald Trump is also a New Yorker, and

28:14

Donald Trump has an even more checkered personal

28:16

life, and yet Donald Trump

28:18

got elected not wholly, but in

28:20

part with the votes of evangelicals in the

28:23

South. McCain does

28:25

then win the nomination. McCain represents

28:27

a different strand of the Republican

28:29

Party. McCain is a very

28:31

well-established figure. He has run before. He ran

28:33

in 2000 against George

28:35

W. Bush. He's a

28:38

senator, increasingly hard for senators to

28:40

get elected president of the United States. Obama

28:42

did it, but he'd only been a senator for 20 minutes. McCain

28:45

had a long record in the Senate. He

28:48

could always pick apart anyone's record because he

28:50

was, among other things, someone who tried to

28:52

create bipartisan consensus on certain issues, though he

28:54

was quite far to the right on

28:57

other issues. Was

28:59

McCain a throwback by this point? Was

29:01

2008 too late for a candidate like

29:04

John McCain? Because it was right

29:06

at the end of his career. He was talked

29:08

of as a future president for quite a long

29:10

time, or at least a presidential candidate. It finally

29:13

comes to him, like with Biden, very late. I

29:16

don't think he felt like a throwback. I

29:18

think any Republican was going to have difficulty

29:20

getting elected in 2008. Bush

29:23

had been discredited in that election year

29:25

by three events. The first was the

29:27

Iraq War. The second is the financial

29:29

crisis that overcomes America in the fall

29:31

of 2008. And the

29:33

third is Bush's handling of the

29:36

devastation of New Orleans. So any

29:38

candidate would have had difficulty getting

29:40

elected. I don't think McCain's path

29:43

to the presidency was impossible because

29:45

he was a throwback. I

29:48

think it was possible. His

29:50

rise in the polls and his success in getting

29:52

the nomination had quite a

29:54

lot to do with the Republican field

29:56

being rather weak. Romney stuck his toe in,

29:58

but was a little bit of a threat. uncertain and America

30:02

was uncertain about whether they would go for a

30:04

Mormon in the White House. Huckabee,

30:07

governor of Arkansas, colorful homespun

30:09

figure but didn't

30:11

have the gravitas I think to

30:13

carry something nationally. So part

30:17

of McCain's rise was kind

30:19

of default, last man standing.

30:21

2008 was unusual for the vice

30:24

presidential candidate not putting himself forward

30:26

for the presidency. Cheney decided

30:29

not to run, would have been a much

30:31

stronger and more formidable candidate. Do

30:33

you think so? It's interesting, I never thought of that

30:35

because Cheney always struck me as a man

30:38

who exercised power most effectively

30:40

when no one was watching. That

30:42

came to be his his MO. I think he would have

30:45

had difficulty in 2008 because he was

30:47

seen as the chief architect of the Iraq

30:50

war and that fiasco but

30:53

he had an undeniable strength to

30:55

him that would have gotten him

30:57

serious attention in 2008. The Republican

30:59

Party was feeling kind of exhaustion in 2008

31:03

and there was a right-wing forming

31:05

and formation that was barely visible

31:07

in the last two years of

31:09

the Bush administration. Domestically Bush tried

31:11

to steer things after his early

31:14

years toward the center, comprehensive immigration

31:17

reform package. He had a program

31:19

for assisting African Americans and Latinos

31:21

in procuring homes for themselves. He

31:24

was trying to steer toward the

31:26

center and this was alarming the

31:28

right. In this way McCain

31:31

has also identified with what was

31:33

becoming the Republican Center and

31:35

if you're saying he's a throwback to an

31:38

earlier era, if you're saying or suggesting that

31:41

the future was going to belong to a

31:43

more right-wing Republican Party, then it

31:45

is correct to see McCain as

31:49

occupying a, it's hard to call

31:51

it a centrist space because the Republican Party was firmly

31:53

on the right but certainly a

31:55

more moderate version than what was brewing on the

31:58

right wing of the Republican Party. party. Especially

32:01

in his willingness to work with people from the

32:03

other side of the aisle. I mean, that's the

32:05

thing that is absolutely forbidden now on the Republican

32:07

side. Yes. And one

32:10

of the projects he was involved in, along

32:12

with Bush, was a big bipartisan measure

32:14

to solve the immigration problem. There

32:16

was a lot of hope for its passage

32:19

and it looked like it had a very

32:21

good chance. This was one of Bush's priorities

32:23

in his second term. And it was one

32:26

of the best examples of Democrats and Republicans

32:28

working together to reach some kind of compromise

32:31

to solve one of America's

32:33

most serious problems. And

32:36

I remember I was called to testify before

32:38

a House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration as

32:40

part of the workup to this bill that

32:42

they were doing. And

32:45

I myself got blindsided by what

32:47

I now recognize as a new

32:49

Republican right. And the reason I

32:52

got blindsided by the anger and

32:54

venom and

32:56

determination that there be no

32:58

compromise with Democrats of any sort on a

33:00

bill of this sort. One

33:02

of the reasons I got blindsided was that

33:05

this had not yet become fully visible in

33:07

the manifest character of American

33:09

politics. But it was there brewing

33:12

and Bush's decline over

33:14

the last few years of his presidency

33:16

for the reasons I've outlined, Iraq, Katrina,

33:18

and then his being on the post

33:20

for when the great financial crash hits,

33:24

gives this right wing an opportunity

33:26

to strut itself and come into

33:28

visibility and claim to be the

33:30

next wave of Republican Party politics. And

33:34

if we see it in those terms, then McCain

33:36

is seen as part of the Republican

33:38

Party that has to go as part

33:40

of the Bush wave that has to

33:42

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That's botoxcosmetic.com. The

34:49

financial crisis actually hits during the campaign.

34:51

Quite near the end of the campaign,

34:53

Lehman Brothers goes bust. In

34:56

September of 2008, and it's

34:58

an extraordinarily dramatic moment as

35:01

George W. Bush said of the entire

35:03

world economy, this sucker could go down.

35:06

And certain hours are

35:09

crucial to preventing

35:11

that from happening. All sorts

35:13

of public officials, unelected public officials, turn out

35:15

to be crucial to this process. But there

35:17

is a campaign for president going on at

35:19

the same time. It's precarious for both candidates

35:22

because there's a lot going on. And also the

35:24

question of what they're going to inherit. And

35:27

there was a remarkable moment that I remember

35:29

really vividly in the campaign. After Lehman

35:32

Brothers went bust, at the real epicenter

35:34

of the crisis, McCain suspended his campaign.

35:36

He wanted to make this grand gesture.

35:41

He's above politics in a way. There are things

35:43

that are more important than this jostling. It's a

35:45

very McCain gesture. He was,

35:48

among other things, a war hero. Sometimes

35:50

in a war, you've got to stand back

35:52

or above it. It's time for us to

35:54

suspend the campaign and come together in Washington,

35:57

the two candidates, to see how we can

35:59

help. It was a catastrophic

36:01

error and the reason it was an error,

36:03

and I can still picture the scene, this

36:05

meeting is assembled in Washington and McCain comes

36:07

to Washington. Obama

36:10

more or less says to him, so you

36:12

called this meeting, what's your plan?

36:16

He didn't have a plan. It was

36:18

a disastrous error of judgment. John McCain was

36:20

not the kind of politician to have, Obama

36:23

was, McCain wasn't the kind of politician to

36:25

have a worked up plan for rescuing the

36:27

American economy from this great crisis. He

36:30

just wanted to make the gesture that I'm the

36:32

kind of politician who recognizes that there are things

36:34

more important than politics. Well, if you haven't got

36:36

a plan, you don't look like that politician. You

36:38

look like a grandstander. It

36:40

was probably the decisive moment in

36:42

the campaign. The sense of doom

36:45

and catastrophe. Armageddon

36:48

is not too strong a word. One

36:50

of the insiders in that campaign refers to 18 days

36:54

of Armageddon spanning September

36:56

and October in which the fear was

36:58

the entire financial system of the world

37:01

would simply shut down. This is what

37:03

the failure of Lehman Brothers inspired. I

37:06

believe it's the most dangerous 18 days

37:09

in the world since the Cuban Missile Crisis

37:11

of 1962, those 13 days. There

37:16

the threat was nuclear Armageddon. Here

37:18

the threat was financial Armageddon. If you read

37:20

the memoirs of anyone who was involved in

37:23

the day-to-day management of that crisis, every day

37:25

they got up and every time they went

37:27

to bed at night, they didn't know whether

37:29

there was a financial system that would be

37:31

standing the next day. Was that

37:33

serious? McCain's

37:36

impulse to suspend

37:38

campaigning was itself not misguided.

37:41

In other words, he grasped the

37:43

enormity and the severity of the

37:45

situation. His impulse, again,

37:47

to cross the aisle, let's talk

37:50

to each other as you and I, David, are talking to

37:52

each other now and see if we can save the country.

37:54

But the idea that he would come without a plan,

37:57

without a clue, and economics was not his forte. This

38:00

is not where he established distinction

38:02

legislatively. He

38:04

was not known as a systematic thinker. He

38:06

was known for his impulsiveness, his maverickness, and

38:09

the impulsivenesses shows up in his decision to

38:11

suspend the campaign. That impulse is good, but

38:13

as you said, no way in hell do

38:15

you show up to a meeting like this

38:18

without a plan, and your advisor shouldn't

38:21

allow you to do that. So he

38:23

exposed himself as someone unready to

38:26

inherit the mantle of the presidency,

38:28

and that a Republican showed

38:30

himself unready at a time when the

38:32

financial crash happened on the watch of

38:34

a Republican president was assigned to the

38:36

American people that they could not put

38:38

another Republican in the White House, not

38:41

in November 2008. And

38:43

that certainly opened the door wider to

38:45

Obama. One of the interesting

38:47

counterfactuals would Obama have been elected absent the financial

38:50

crisis of 2008. My

38:52

feeling is that he probably would, because I

38:54

also remember McCain's suspending of his campaign as

38:58

being the act of a man who was behind and

39:00

felt he needed to make a

39:02

grand gesture to sort of reboot

39:05

his campaign in a different direction. Throughout

39:08

his contest with Obama, he was always

39:10

coming from behind. There

39:13

was a brief period where he seemed to

39:15

have taken a gamble that had paid off,

39:18

and the polling gap closed dramatically.

39:21

And this is one of the other extraordinary features

39:23

of 2008, which is deeply symbolic contest

39:28

between Obama and McCain. And

39:31

Obama's election looks like it's a historical turning point

39:33

for all sorts of obvious reasons.

39:37

It changes the face of America, American

39:39

power in the world. But

39:42

actually it was the vice presidential candidates who pointed

39:44

the way to the future. So

39:46

Obama's vice presidential candidate was

39:48

Joe Biden. McCain,

39:50

just before the convention, chose

39:52

Sarah Palin as his vice

39:55

presidential candidate. And it

39:58

was described at the time as a Hail Mary

40:00

part. He was behind, he needed to do something

40:02

dramatic, needed to make a gesture. A

40:05

genuine complete unknown. And

40:07

the rumor is that McCain didn't know who she was either

40:09

and was steered in her

40:11

direction. I think had one meeting with her

40:13

and she wasn't properly vetted. And

40:16

he thought impulsively, let's take a punt on

40:18

this lady, as I'm sure he

40:20

called her. And I

40:22

can remember this really vividly. He unveiled her

40:24

at the convention. And

40:27

really she wasn't unknown and she

40:29

gave an absolute barnstorming speech. It

40:31

was funny, it

40:33

was irreverent. She

40:36

seemed different. She seemed not

40:38

like a politician. And in many ways

40:40

she wasn't a conventional politician. She was

40:42

from Alaska, she was younger, and it

40:44

really did close the gap briefly until

40:47

people got to know Sarah Palin a

40:49

bit better and discovered she was completely

40:51

unfit to be a heartbeat away from

40:53

the presidency. Even with McCain, an older

40:56

man, nodding great health, heartbeat

40:58

mattered. But she was the harbinger of

41:00

the future. She wasn't

41:02

a Tea Party candidate as such because

41:04

that movement hadn't come into existence yet. But she

41:06

pointed the way first to the Tea Party and

41:09

then to Trump, the things that she stood for

41:11

and the kind of politics that she embodied. And

41:14

Biden, of course, no one knew it then.

41:17

No one would have believed, I think, in 2008

41:19

that he would be running for president in

41:22

2024 because they would have got out their phones

41:24

and said, now, when was he born? So how old

41:26

would he be in 2024? Yeah,

41:28

that's definitely, definitely not happening. But

41:31

here we are. Sarah

41:33

Palin was not John the Baptist to

41:35

Donald Trump's Jesus Christ, but

41:37

Sarah Palin was the

41:40

person who pointed the way to the

41:42

politics of 2024. Obama

41:44

versus McCain is not the politics of 2024. Sarah

41:48

Palin slash Donald Trump, Joe Biden

41:51

is. It's one of those weird

41:53

things that's only visible in hindsight. No one saw

41:55

it in 2008. But

41:58

that was the future. Palin having

42:01

a popular style of oratory

42:03

that was tremendously effective and

42:05

it anticipates Donald Trump. I don't see Biden in the

42:07

same way because I don't think the Biden of 24

42:09

is the same figure as the Biden of 2008. Whereas

42:12

you can draw a straight line from Palin

42:15

through Trump. I do think it was

42:17

a disastrous choice for McCain

42:20

in terms of the general population. And

42:22

here I have done polling within my

42:24

family, which includes on one side a

42:26

significant Republican contingent.

42:29

Pretty hardcore Republican, all of whom

42:32

voted for Obama in 2008. And

42:35

the reason was Sarah Palin. And

42:37

the worry was McCain is an old man. Here

42:39

Biden becomes relevant again because the old man was

42:41

71 years old, not 81. Of

42:44

course he had illnesses arising from his

42:47

years as a POW. But the vote

42:49

for Obama was on the part of

42:52

the Republican members of my family was

42:54

a sense of the profound unfitness of

42:57

Sarah Palin for the presidency. Relative to

42:59

which Obama was a safe pair of hands.

43:01

He had actually successfully by that point and

43:04

in the midst of the financial crisis. I

43:06

don't think anyone wants to think about Sarah

43:08

Palin working her way through

43:10

the financial crisis. Obama looked solid,

43:13

right? Centristan solid. And

43:15

by temperament, Palin's opposite.

43:18

Conservative, cautious, don't

43:21

do stupid things. But the

43:23

temperament issue is crucial here too. And part

43:25

of her appeal was you never knew what

43:27

was going to come out of her mouth

43:29

next. This is part of

43:31

Trump's appeal and the delight that audiences

43:34

at rallies have at the excitement of

43:36

you just never know what's coming out

43:38

of this person's mouth next. And it

43:41

is a populist style of

43:44

oratory oriented toward entertainment and

43:47

excitement and fun. Fun,

43:50

tremendous amount of fun. I often felt that

43:52

during the Covid years there would be these

43:54

boat rallies where bunches of Trump

43:57

supporters would gather in their boats and go out and

43:59

fly. fleets on rivers or bays or something

44:01

just to have a grand old time. I mean,

44:04

there were flying Trump flags and I used to

44:06

think at the time those

44:08

people are having more fun in COVID than I am. So

44:11

there's a dynamic of fun and

44:13

energy and excitement and politics, not

44:15

as a vocation, but as a

44:18

baseball match or a football match or something

44:20

that you can get really excited about and

44:23

lost in as part of a larger community.

44:25

And Palin got that Trump

44:27

got that. But the

44:30

choice of Palin, I think also was

44:32

a factor in costing McCain the election

44:34

and its characteristic of

44:37

McCain that this was being an

44:39

impulsive man, being

44:41

a maverick, doing the unconventional

44:43

thing. The maverick

44:46

thing was choosing Sarah Palin. The impulsive

44:48

thing was choosing her without proper vetting

44:50

because he didn't really know. He invited

44:52

her down to his Arizona ranch and

44:54

was charmed by her and figured, this'll

44:57

be fun, but didn't think it through in a

44:59

systematic way and it cost him a lot of

45:01

Republican votes. I want to get

45:03

your evaluation of the presidency of Barack

45:05

Obama because there are lots of elections

45:07

we could have chosen to discuss and we've, you know, we've

45:10

had people saying to us, why haven't you talked about 1876,

45:13

1948, whatever it is. 2008, it

45:17

was a remarkable and dramatic campaign,

45:19

but it was also at the

45:21

time, it seemed to be an

45:23

absolute watershed moment in American politics.

45:25

The symbolism of Obama's victory, he

45:27

represented something new. He represented hope

45:29

or Sarah Palin called it later,

45:32

the hope he changey stuff and

45:35

he embodied it and he wasn't shy about telling the world

45:40

that he embodied it. There

45:42

was a real feeling often

45:44

outside the United States as well as inside the

45:46

United States. When he came to Germany, he was

45:48

treated like the Messiah that this

45:51

was a reinvention of America. It does not

45:53

look like that in hindsight, but I still

45:55

want to get your evaluation of his presidency,

45:58

but there's also one question, one historical. parallel

46:00

here, and I think I touched on it before when

46:02

we were talking about FDR. So

46:05

in 1932, Roosevelt inherits

46:07

the presidency at a time of

46:09

profound economic and financial crisis, longer

46:12

lasting in that case, had been going

46:15

on for years. There's a five-month interregnum

46:17

in 1932 to 1933 between winning the

46:19

election and becoming president inaugurated in March,

46:22

and he refuses to do anything over

46:24

those five months to help Hoover anything

46:28

bipartisan, being constructed. He wants a

46:30

completely fresh start. He wants to

46:32

come in with clean

46:34

hands. I don't know if Obama

46:36

even had that choice because the crisis was different,

46:39

and in some ways the magnitude of it

46:41

was different, and the need for immediate action

46:43

was much more acute in an interconnected globalized

46:45

world. But Obama did make

46:47

a different choice. He got involved. Once it was

46:49

clear he was going to be president, he got

46:51

involved, and he more or less

46:54

inherited a lot of the people and

46:56

the policies that in desperation, the

46:58

George Bush administration had put in place, he

47:00

did tie his hands to a certain extent

47:03

before he became president. One

47:05

has to be humble about this because we

47:08

don't know the reports that Obama was seeing

47:10

every morning about the severity of the crash.

47:13

A difference between 1932 and 2008 is that by

47:17

1932, the Depression had worked a lot

47:19

of its calamity. The Depression had

47:21

been going on for three going on four

47:23

years. There was a sense of hitting a

47:25

kind of bottom, but it was

47:27

no longer a fast-moving set of events. Part

47:30

of what characterizes the 2008-2009 financial crash,

47:33

it is the most fast-moving global

47:35

financial crash in

47:37

all of human history. It

47:39

is almost instantaneously global. The

47:44

rapidity with which things are happening

47:46

and unfolding, I

47:48

think puts Obama in a different set of circumstances

47:51

than FDR. Or if

47:53

we imagine putting FDR in the place of Obama,

47:55

what would he have done? He might

47:57

have been more inclined to cooperate because the

47:59

sense of of the financial machinery of the

48:01

world, simply seizing up and ceasing to function

48:04

was a daily reality that people were confronting.

48:07

You didn't have this sense of

48:09

velocity that Obama had to confront.

48:13

So I understand his impulse to work

48:15

with Bush. It was a compromise because

48:19

Bush was willing to move out of some

48:21

of his doctrinaire small state

48:23

provisions, let the markets figure it

48:25

out themselves. He involved the

48:28

government and the Federal Reserve in enormous

48:30

ways in the desperate effort to save

48:32

the economy. So he was, we might

48:35

say, was moving left as Obama was

48:37

moving right. About Obama being a transformational

48:39

president, I first want to

48:42

make sure our listeners understand these are for the

48:44

younger listeners, not the listeners of our age or

48:46

older. What an extraordinarily

48:48

hopeful moment

48:50

this was for so many in American

48:52

politics. America

48:54

electing an African American president 20

48:57

to 25 years before anyone

48:59

thought it was going to happen. It has

49:02

some equivalence to the collapse of the Soviet Union. No

49:04

one could imagine that in

49:06

1989 and anyone who tells you otherwise now

49:08

is not telling the truth. In the same

49:11

way in 2008, anyone who tells you, yeah,

49:13

US was ready for an African American president,

49:16

they're not telling you the truth. I still

49:18

remember my sister's partner at the

49:20

time was an African American man who was

49:22

dying of cancer. He was with days or

49:24

a week to 10 days of death. And

49:26

I spent the evening of the South Carolina

49:28

primary with him.

49:30

And he just burst into a whale

49:33

of tears, just flooding down

49:35

his cheeks. What

49:38

was this about? So Obama won a

49:40

tremendous victory in South Carolina, which put

49:43

New Hampshire far behind and seemed to resurrect

49:46

his campaign. He knew

49:48

he was dying, this man.

49:51

And I think the tears

49:53

were, thank God I was privileged to

49:55

still be alive For

49:59

this extraordinary moment. And

50:01

the two million people who turned out

50:03

for Obama bitterly cold weather was so

50:05

extraordinary that even The Daily Telegraph not

50:08

a known supporter of. Progressive

50:10

have asked. Causes: If you

50:12

look at the reporting. Facts. As

50:15

Rhapsodic. About but this

50:17

and tail and a New Beginning and

50:19

America and among scholars and academics imagining

50:21

a post racial. America.

50:25

Turned. Out not to be that kind

50:27

of transformational racial moment for America because

50:30

pretty soon after Obama enter the White

50:32

House. A

50:35

racial backlash got underway and

50:37

a growing conviction. In

50:40

this land that had a slave system

50:42

for almost two hundred and fifty years,

50:46

At their should not be a black man. In

50:48

the White House. Trump.

50:51

Is gonna make use of this sentiment

50:53

and feeling The Tea party's gonna make

50:55

use of this feeling sentiment. It's gotta

50:57

be a crucial element of the populist

51:00

right Republican party. Rising

51:02

to power, The. Should be

51:04

said that without Obama, maybe there's

51:06

no Trump because Trump's way in

51:08

two American political life was the

51:10

birth of movement and he was

51:12

a leading light in it. He

51:15

did not believe for reasons of

51:17

his own but said remaining many

51:19

other people. but Barack Obama was

51:21

actually an American citizen. So even

51:23

dog whistle, It's just whistle. It's

51:25

just whistle. And when the Republicans

51:27

do very well in the two

51:29

thousand and ten elections, Mcconnell becomes

51:31

Majority Leader of the Senate, makes

51:33

it. Is going to deny Obama

51:36

any legislative achievement. For.

51:38

The remainder of his presidency. And even

51:40

though Obama is reelected in two thousand

51:42

twelve, there's hardly anything significant legislatively to

51:45

come out of the Obama administration. After

51:48

Two Thousand Ten. And that

51:50

also facilitates Trump Because part

51:52

of Trump's politics is Washington

51:54

is a swamp. And.

51:56

It's the democratic party that's part of the swamp

51:59

on its. Mitch Mcconnell. By

52:01

the way, as a senator from

52:03

Kentucky so close to what had

52:05

been lana slavery that Trump is

52:07

also a becomes a critic of

52:09

Mcconnell. for. Hollering this swamp

52:11

and the National Legislature of America not

52:13

getting anything done. And. So this

52:16

also in a way this backlash against

52:18

Obama and a double sets first. On

52:20

the one hand, it's birthrights, and on

52:22

the other hand, it's Mcconnell and his

52:24

supporters determine. To. Ensure.

52:27

That. Obama would be regarded as a failed.

52:31

President. This becomes part of their

52:33

missing. Quite. Apart from what

52:35

the United States needs in terms

52:37

of Congress to address it's problems.

52:39

The both these doctors underscore the severity

52:42

of the reaction against Obama that sets,

52:44

and after the glorious moments of Two

52:46

Thousand Eight. In the process

52:48

of writing my most recent book,

52:51

I rethought Obama promised as a

52:53

transformational President not just and racial

52:55

terms that in political economic terms

52:57

as well. And the

52:59

way in which he sought to. Help

53:01

America recover from. The. Global

53:04

Financial Crash. Suggests. That.

53:06

He is the last president of

53:09

the Neoliberal order. Than.

53:11

The first President of. What

53:13

comes after The neoliberal. Order.

53:16

He. Brought. Back Bill Clinton's

53:18

economic team Not. Rubin.

53:20

But many of. Ruben

53:23

Stop deputies. They are the ones

53:25

organizing the recovery from the great

53:27

financial crash. It's

53:29

also the case that Obamas major

53:31

legislative focus is on creating a

53:34

system of universal healthcare which and

53:36

eluded many democratic presidents, and he's

53:38

going to be successful on that.

53:42

But because he so preoccupied with that, he doesn't

53:44

want to create weights in terms of. Helping

53:46

America recover from the global financial crash

53:49

and he. Decides.

53:51

That his first order of business

53:53

is to save the banks and

53:55

stop the financial system from. cratering

53:57

he doesn't put a single

54:00

banker in jail. He does not

54:03

call bankers before Congress.

54:06

It doesn't have authorized the Democratic Party to do

54:08

that, to make them walk the gauntlet and take

54:11

some responsibility for an economic

54:14

crash that is arguably something of their

54:17

own doing. And it turns out

54:19

that Obama is going to do much more

54:22

for the banks in the short term than

54:24

he's got to do for ordinary Americans. And

54:27

so if the banks largely recover by 2010-1112,

54:29

if you're an American with assets in

54:33

the stock market, you are fully recovered

54:36

from whatever losses you had in

54:39

2008-2009. But if you

54:41

are an American without assets in the stock

54:43

market, the losses of the 2008-2009 financial

54:46

crash are catastrophic. Millions

54:48

of homes foreclosed on

54:51

millions of lost

54:53

jobs. Huge decline in

54:57

the wealth of households. And

55:00

the recovery of ordinary Americans is

55:02

going to take far longer than

55:04

the recovery of Wall Street. Main Street

55:06

in a sense is left in the

55:08

lurch. So that

55:10

job levels, income levels,

55:13

don't really recover for almost a full

55:15

decade after the financial crash of 2008-2009.

55:17

And this is something

55:19

that happens under Obama's watch.

55:22

And people noticed. People noticed

55:24

that the elites in America were

55:27

benefiting in ways that ordinary Americans

55:29

were not. And the sense of

55:31

inequality of sacrifice contributes

55:34

to rising populist

55:37

anger and fervor, both

55:40

on the right, which we've discussed, and

55:43

on the left in terms of Occupy Wall Street

55:45

and Bernie Sanders and

55:47

Black Lives Matter. Issues

55:49

we haven't discussed, but become really

55:52

powerful forces in American society. So

55:54

I think as I see Obama now,

55:57

I see him as preserving an older

55:59

economic order. reinforcing the inequalities

56:01

that it generated. And thus,

56:03

surprisingly and unexpectedly, it

56:06

falls to his successors to

56:09

look for ways to lead America

56:12

to a different economic future.

56:15

So when future historians look back, if Obama

56:18

is the last president of the

56:21

neoliberal era, will they

56:23

say the first president of the post-neoliberal

56:25

era is Joe Biden, or will they

56:27

say it's Donald Trump? Donald Trump.

56:37

We have reached the end of this series, but

56:39

we have also recorded a couple of

56:41

bonus episodes with Gary, one

56:44

in which we talk about the amazing election

56:46

of 1968, and

56:48

another in which he and I discuss some of the

56:50

big themes of this series and how

56:52

they connect to the politics of 2024. And

56:56

next time, we will tell you how you

56:59

can subscribe so you can

57:01

get those bonus episodes and also add

57:03

free listening to past, present, future. That

57:05

will all be in our next episode,

57:07

which is also the beginning

57:10

of our new series. I'm

57:12

gonna be talking to the philosopher and

57:15

writer, Leah Ippi, author

57:17

of the internationally best-selling memoir, Free,

57:19

Coming of Age at the End

57:21

of History, about the

57:23

history of ideas of human

57:25

freedom. Leah and I

57:27

are going to be talking about Plato,

57:30

about Machiavelli, about Kant, about de Beauvoir.

57:33

We are going to be

57:35

discussing anarchism and existentialism and

57:37

libertarianism. But we're also

57:39

talking about faith and

57:42

despair and the

57:44

possibilities for humanity and what might

57:46

come next. We've recorded a

57:48

few of these already, and I have to

57:51

say I have learnt an awful lot from

57:53

these conversations, and I really hope that you

57:55

will too. So that's starting

57:57

next time, the history of freedom. with

58:00

layer IPi, but also will be telling

58:02

you how you can become a subscriber

58:04

to past present future get

58:07

bonus episodes in this series on American

58:09

elections and the coming series

58:11

on the history of freedom and much

58:13

more plus ad free listening

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You can subscribe to our newsletter now by just

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58:21

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58:23

X at PPF ideas. There's

58:25

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58:28

I'm really excited about it, and

58:31

I hope you'll join us for all of it This

58:34

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