The strand is the sole survivor now run by a thirdgeneration owner and we want to thank you for your support. We are so appreciative. Tonight we are beyond excited to have with us journalist and historian Richard Kreitner to launch his new book break it up. Richard grew up in new jersey and studied philosophy in montreal. Since 2012 hes been affiliated with the nation as a intern editor and writer and also published essays, reviews and articles. The new york review of books in the New York Times. His books are break it up and the secret history of america the Perfect Union and a travelers guide to literary locations around the world and also writes only united name and occasional newsletter on politics and history. Joining richard in conversation is rick perlstein, author of reaganland. Before that he published the invisible bridge, the fall of nixon and the rise of reagan. New york times bestseller, one of the best nonfiction books of the year by over a dozen locations. Winner of the 2001 Los Angeles Times book award for history. Former chief National Correspondent for the village boy voice. His journalism and essays have appeared in newsweek, the New York Times and many other publications. Without further ado, please join me in welcoming richard and rick to the stage. Hello. Hello. You have a job to do right now. Yes. We have decided since we are equal in all things, richard and ricky, ricky and richard, eric and richard that we are going to put the coin to decide who asked the first question on the other. We ask you to do the honors. I think ricky, you should call it. Okay. You choose who goes first. All righty. Tales. Its heads. Rick . I will go second. In asking a question . Yes, you will ask him the question first. Audit. I will get my questions here and i think what most people remember about reagans president ial campaign of 1980, which is a culmination of reagan reaganland, your new book is the speech he gave kicking out the general Election Campaign where 16 years earlier the bodies of civil rights worker had been discovered murdered by the clan in cahoots with the local police and people accused reagan up at racism justly for doing that and you shall in the book that reagan was really uncomfortable with that and visibly so and kind of muddled his remarks in the ended up causing backlash. Didnt help him at all. My question is, my whole book is about secession and states rights of what did reagan himself believe in states rights the area of constitution or was he on occasionally using it in strip meant only connect thank you, richard. One of the things that excites me so much about your book, impacts on my so that that i almost felt like you had written the book i dreamed of writing maybe 10 or 20 years from now is that you place absolutely at the center of the narrative the fact that the idea that the United States are united is a myth. It exists in fragment in the four books i read. Why american elites so frantically and insistently want to believe that america is united, so the extent to they deny all the structural conflict american life. That gets into the answer of the question you asked. This is one of the most famous things happening in the 1980 campaign and the reason one of the reasons its so indelibly remembered as it was one of the only things that the Carter Campaign did during the election that was truly effective and competent. The background is really quite striking and ironic. One of the main parts of reagans political strategy was derived from a pollster of his who basically came up with a guidebook, the 167 guidebook, for the campaign. One of his principles was, people think that Ronald Reagan is a bigot, they fear that Ronald Reagan is a bigot but they might have sympathy with his ideas, they might even harbor a little bigotry themselves, so the most important thing they had to do about that was to convince all voters supporting Ronald Reagan was not an act of bigotry. The way they realized they could do that was a template that all republican campaigns have repeated since, in which in fact the Trump Campaign repeated in spades last week at their convention, which is to speak as often as possible for African American audiences and have as many africanamericans as possible speak on his behalf. That this was not an attempted outreach for black loaders but an outreach toward what we would now call suburban moderate. That was why when they decided where they were going to open their general Election Campaign they decided to do it before the urban league. The big africanamerican mainstream civil rights organization, in fact, probably the most moderate of all the civil rights organization. But there was a scheduling snafu so the part that was supposed to be the second speech ended up being the first speech. The idf are speaking at a county fair in mississippi was to send a signal to the Carter Campaign that they could not take the president s home region for granted. That the south was going to be and play really for the First Time Since the civil war. As you understand as well as anyone. He was just going to give his standard speech but he got picked up at the airport by his Mississippi Campaign chairman, a young congressman named trent locked, trent lott had been the president of the fraternity at ole miss that served as the arsenal for the writers who kept James Meredith from matriculating on campus in 1962. If he really wanted the crowd eating out of his hand he would say he was a supporter of states rights. Which of course was the code word phrase that every racist would bellow at the top of their lungs at a place like the Neshoba County fair in order to signal their sympathy for whites of pharmacy. Ronald reagan did this but as i argue. If you actually listen to the speech, his energy drains and drains and drains, the closer he comes to the violation. Its one of the worst Ronald Reagan speeches ive ever heard, he keeps telling three times more jerks than he does, three times more charming stories that he does than usual and by the time he gets to the work he practically mumbles them. You can hear them on youtube. That is because Ronald Reagans most strong psychological drive was his sense of his own innocence. He was not a venal person he was not a demagogue and his ability to project that innocence was absolutely crucial to why he did such a good job of reassuring americans that policies that propounded by other politicians like Barry Goldwater in 1964 was some reactionary national selfish bigoted. He gave the speech and the Carter Campaign and democrats around the country immediately pounced. It was so effective and basically exactly reversing the attention of the entire strategy of the Dragon Campaign and pigeonholing dragon as someone who is in sympathy with africanamerican abwith bigots, that one of his Campaign Workers for mississippi wrote an angry letter to the campaign saying we have mississippi in the bag and now its a tossup. To this day the Neshoba County speech is remembered as Proof Positive that Ronald Reagan stoked the fires of bigotry in order to win the election. The thing that connected it up to your work is that the official code of the gatekeeping media leaves when it comes to electioneering is the fiction that somehow america is united enough ab reagan fell foul of those gatekeepers, those referees, writing editorials about reagans divisiveness precisely because he had stepped over some invisible boundary that reminded people these conflicts exist when we were supposed to pretend they didnt exist at all. The old conflicts had been transformed into the language. We are now a colorblind nation. Then he caught back too obvious which was the trouble that trump got into and charlottesville what did they say online . a the biggest difference between Ronald Reagans appeal to conservative electorate and Donald Trumps is that Ronald Reagan was in fact the master of the dog whistle. Donald trump as the train whistle. You ask, does he in fact hold a section of the constitution that rhymes with the southern doctrine of states rights, the answer to that is abhe opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act on the same ground that Barry Goldwater did to tell businesses what they could and could not do. He opposed an open housing referendum by saying people have the right to dispose of their property as they wished. He criticized the 19 625 Voting Rights act saying that it singled out the south and that it was unfair. His whole constitutional doctrine, his whole idea of the role of federal government was that it should be as small as possible. He definitely believed that states should use certain powers that had previously been held by the federal government but a big part of his success as a politician was an ability to present this in a way that had shaved off any racial reference. That was why he was successful and thats why it was so dangerous for him to signal this sort of racial entailment in his Neshoba County speech. The fascinating question is, considering the fact that as president he did things like cut the budget for Public Housing by 0. 80, does that make him less of a contributor to americas racial ordeal or more of a contributor to americas racial ordeal. Was his ability to persuade white voters who were voting for him in some sense because he was taking the federal government out of the business of uplifting africanamericans and we know from the exit poll results that people who believe the federal government was doing too much for blacks, voted for reagan overwhelmingly over jimmy carter, was this a reactionary thing . I think the answer is yes. He kept racial policymaking going when it had been on fumes precisely because he had absolved america of the taint of racism unless people vote for him in a way that made life work for africanamericans a throughout American History american politicians find success by subsuming racism into the rhetoric of National Unity, that was the basis on which White Supremacy aup to 1861 and then after 1855. The question was, White Supremacy was to threaten the unity of the nation. Right. I have a question for you. One of the fun things about writing this theory is you get to what denies hindsight in order to dramatize how things that now seem inevitable almost didnt happen. Its especially powerful in your book because it turns around the formation of the United States itself. You have a picture of a continental three dollar bill with the latin motto, the outcome is in doubt, what are some of the reasons the outcome was in doubt that the United States almost did not become the United States . Thank you for the question. To me this goes to why did it take so long for a union to be formed in the first place . We kind of skip over the colonial pretty quickly but it was 150 years from same time a acolonies existed without a union and it wasnt because they didnt have the idea and nobody suggested it, but they rejected it out of hand, they wanted nothing to do with one another, they didnt want to form a union. When the revolution came they formed one as a means to the end. They only joined together because it seemed like that was the only way to beat britain, to rebel against the crowds, some of it at least considered here. That reluctance, i suggest, played a role in the fragility of this coalition and it was fragile from the start. Why did it almost break apart were not even survive through the civil war . The declaration of independence did not create a union, it was this union document, the secession manifesto that adopted the colonies out of their relationship with great britain, united one vehicle with another but didnt form a new nation, it wasnt a constitutional document. To create that, they needed to work on one and draw it out, that was ultimately the articles of federation. The summer of 1776 they came to terms of union they couldnt find any agreeable document they could all sign. It took absolutely forever up until the end of the war. There were a few issues and divisions that really decided the American People one was western lands, who would control this vast landmass on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains that the americans expected they would come into. Who was proand who was con. Of your large state like virginia who had a colony dating back to the early 17th century abthe colony of great britain. Right. They said they had all the land from sea to sea from the atlantic to the pacific, no better abif you are a county like marilyn he didnt have that on your chart and virginia wanted to control the land that it thought was its right and marilyn wanted all the new land to go into the national domain, wanted congress to control it and ultimately break it apart into the new states, the union on equal terms as the original 13 members. This is why maryland was the last holdout state that refused to ratify the articles of confederation right up until almost the end of the war. I tell the story in the book there is very little known story about why maryland finally did that. Thats because they were being blackmailed by a foreign power. We think that foreign meddling like by russia, trump and whatnot, is a new thing but it really isnt. It was all over the new republic in the 1770s all the way up to the early 19th century to stop maryland was facing british invasion in 1780 1781 and requested france, americans great patients to send ships and the french ambassador to the United States took the opportunity to give maryland an offer they couldnt refuse and said, maybe we will see about sending the ships it would be great if you ab ratify the articles of federation because were tired of dealing with states amiles per. We have independence before there was a nation. That the confederate theory. Thats precisely what lincoln was arguing against. He said there was a union before there was independence. Its kind of an academic aat the time im not really relied on that. Another story about that period showed that even if there was a union before the declaration of independence, and lincolns theory it was formed by the trade point the Continental Congress divides in 1774, lincoln was daring with the Secessionist Movement in South Carolina, during the debates in the Continental Congress in 1774 over that trade boycott, South Carolina walked out the congress to protest the provision they didnt like and they only agreed to join once the provision was taken out. Even if there was a union before, it was compromised from the very beginning by the very same tendencies that lincoln was dealing with in his time. The western land was one issue, the other issue is representation, which we know a lot about today. With the people he represented in the congress or with the states . What the states have equal voting power as they did today in the senate. That was a massive thing in the revolutionary period. Good stuff. [inaudible] only the president themselves. Obviously these candidates are in social and cultural history. [multiple speakers] [inaudible] it is a story of the american presidency. Lbj advocates often in march 1968, nixon, we know what nixon did. Discredited the presidency ab and then carter comes along and abeven the best the democrats can say is when hes running for reelection 1980. [multiple speakers] why did biden say . Providing his preserving his viability for 1980. I thought of the review in your book talked about trumps very brief appearance. I think the biden appearance is even more interesting. My question is about the presidency, seems by 1979, 1980 that could anybody fill this office of the presidency . It struck me while reading your book that its faults, ragan mightve saved the american presidency. The ability to do the job. Do you see it that way . Thats a really interesting question and i have a very specific answer that it was very clear, almost from the beginning that became almost doctrine and i think accurate doctrine by the team james follows wrote this cover article in the Atlantic Monthly just as carters presidency is falling apart follows had been a speechwriter for carter, although almost at the same time, Nicholas Lemmon wrote a similar article in Texas Monthly and they talk about how jimmy carter is such a micromanager and trying to kind of keep his finger in all the roles of the administration of the executor ranch and thats one of the major reasons for his failure as a president. He almost causes a full revolt by the entire Democratic Caucus of the United States, these guys. [multiple speakers] there is a moment where he presents the idea hes allowed 150 federal judiciary. This part of it is micromanaging. The other example is one