Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and presidential biographer Jon Meacham is set to headline Whitworth University’s President’s Leadership Forum tonight.
Meacham has authored biographies of U.S presidents Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and George H.W. Bush, among others. He lectures frequently on history, democracy and Constitutional ideals, and currently serves as the National Constitution Center’s Semiquincentennial Scholar.
Meacham’s latest book, “American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union,” documents America’s legacy of disagreement and compromise.
In a Monday phone interview with SPR’s Audrey Nelson, Meacham said that although America’s history gives him hope for its future, he also believes the country’s politics are at a dangerous inflection point.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
AUDREY NELSON: Do you feel that there's a precedent for where we are now in America, in terms of political divisiveness? Or does this moment feel unique to you?
JON MEACHAM: A little bit of both. I think that the forces that are dividing us are perennial, right? There is anxiety about the changes in the country, the changes in the economy, how folks can make a living. And that spills over and feeds hostility toward “the other.” And that is something that has been true in human affairs for a long, long time.
I think it's unique in that we have a party in power and a leader in power who is willing to — and eager in some ways — to amass power and wield that power in a way that we really haven't seen before.
AN: In the cases you described where we have seen things like this, what has prevented America from falling apart at those moments? What has made the difference there?
JM: Just enough of us have decided that the constitutional order, for all of its imperfections, is the way to go, as opposed to the temptations and allurements of — the autocracies of a given moment.
And it's never been a clean victory. It's never been really an overwhelming victory. And one of my favorite analogies is: In 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, we had a very close presidential election between Ulysses S. Grant, the conqueror of the Confederacy, and a white supremacist former governor of New York, who wanted essentially to repeal the verdict of the war. And that was a four- or five- point race.
The last — you know, since 2000, the presidential election average margin is about 1%. Which is, I think, somewhat encouraging, because it does mean that if enough people decide that politics should be an arena of contention where we win and we lose graciously, as opposed to a battlefield of total war, then we can survive.
AN: How do you respond to people who look at America's history either purely to condemn what came before or purely to glorify it, that black-and-white thinking?
JM: I think it's lazy. I think both sides on that front would be lazy. We are all complicated people. There are saints among us, but there are very few. Most of us are sinners. Most of us, you know, try to get through a day doing the right thing 51% of the time. And we don't often make it.
A democracy is the fullest manifestation of all of us. So why would the life of the country be somehow simpler than our own struggles, our own dark nights of the soul, and also our own finest hours? And so this struggle we have is how can we, at the end of the day, at the end of an era, how can we say — how accurately can we say we heeded our better angels just a little more often than we heeded our own worst instincts?
AN: Do you still believe in America and our ability to overcome the present moment? Are you still hopeful?
JM: I am. Well — yes, I am. I don’t want to go too high-brow, even though it’s NPR, but I want to quote one of my favorite political philosophers, John Belushi, who said in “Animal House,” “We did not give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. So we can't give up now.”
There's nothing easy about American democracy. If there were, everybody would do it. We're the oldest functioning one with a written constitution. And historically speaking, we're about a half hour old.
And so I don't want people to lose heart because it's hard. It's always hard, but it's worth it.
