I am delighted to welcome you to this afternoons discussion, with the authors of republican populists spiro agnew and the origin of Donald Trumps america. By the sponsored center for the study of democracy in maryland. The center is a joint initiative of the college and the historic st. Marys city, the site of marylands first capital. The centers goal is to promote understanding of democratic values, traditions, and institutions through the exploration of contemporary and historical issues. Ugez, jr. Is the director of the center and joins me here this afternoon. Thank you, tony, for being here. The chair of the department of history here at the college is also with us this afternoon. Our History Department is pretty active, offering many opportunities for research and options for studying abroad. Courses and programs in the Department Help our students develop a deeper understanding of themselves, their culture, and humanity in general. Thank you, charlie, for being here this afternoon. And i would like to introduce our guests. I know itden sounds so incredibly official check is a professor of history here at st. Marys college of maryland. He is the author of the new Academic Freedom and liberalism and unc. Zach is the president of ribbon, wisconsin, where he is also a professor of politics and government. He is coeditor of understanding the global community. He was also the very first director of the center for the study of democracy here at st. Marys college. I would say welcome back. But zach has been the president at ribbon since 2012, and he has remained engaged in st. Marys community through both the center for the study of democracy and his family. Susan, theyelcome have a home north of campus. They are indeed a family of service with a strong sense of community as evidenced by susan for many years serving as the president of the College Foundation board of directors. Zach and chuck along with the third author, gerald, wrote republican populists spiro agnew and the origin of Donald Trumps america. Spiro agnewou know, was Vice President under president Richard Nixon. Agnew resigned from office in 1973. I was just a child then. You can tell, right . To hisleading no contest charges. He was also marylands 55th governor, serving until 1969. Published by the university of virginia press, republican populist is described as a fascinating political portrait of agnew, from his preVice President ial career through his scandal driven fall from office and beyond. Book explores his role as one of the Founding Fathers of the modern Republican Party, a gop that represents the silent majority. The publisher further notes that in order to understand our current in sternal internal struggles in the Republican Party, we need to fully appreciate the agnew, known as a populist everyman and prototypical middleclass striver who was one of the first proponents of what would become the ideology of Donald Trumps gop. The president and professor holden are here with us to celebrate the publication of their new book and to share with us some insights about agnew and the modern Republican Party, how we got to where we are today. Your you both for sharing insights with st. Marys college and the broader local community. Without further ado, i ask you to join me in welcoming Charles Holden and zach m asetti. [applause] thank you, president jordan. Just say how beautiful campus looks, and this building in particular. Marys,irst came to st. It looked a lot different then. And this is just absolutely spectacular. The centeror that has a nice suite of offices in this space. It is really, really stunning. As well forntonio hosting and being the director of the center. Here,such an honor to be since this was the first job i had in higher education. Indulge me for a minute, i want to talk about the center before we get going, because it actually plays a big role in why chuck and i decided to write this book with jerry code air. 17 years ago, a group of faculty thenistrators, staff from college as well as the community, came together to create a center that would promote civil discourse about democracy. It was based on marylands history. What lessons can we learn from history that told us about Current Events . I am so proud that it continues forward. This job that i had from 2002 to 2007 was a job that i loved. Discussionsizing between students, faculty, policymakers, diplomats, historians, journalists on a range of topics that were important to marylanders and important to americans. And that mission is more important today than ever before. And so as i look out in the audience today, i see former colleagues, friends, mentors, a lot of people that i admired as a junior faculty here, and i want to recognize a few of them briefly. Professor michael kane of the Political Science department followed me as the centers director. He and i cowrote the original National Endowment for humanities grant that currently funds the center and its operations. Discussion and civil dialogue person and someone i have admired and always looked up to. Helen and tom are here and i wanted to recognize them. Helen was a longtime member of the Sociology Department at st. Marys, a great reporter of the center. She and tom put forward their time, intellect and treasure to make sure the center was possible. And i want to thank them for all they have done for me and for the college and the center. They are still a big part of why i am here today and i think thank them. I want to thank two others who are not here because they passed away in the recent year, but their presence looms large. J. Frank raley, who those of you who are students here, you see his portrait in the great hall. He was in the Maryland Legislature in the 1960s and a great friend of the center. He knew spiro agnew personally. We spent hours together at the roost and lindas cafe, talking about maryland politics. I think you would be pleased to be here today. The other person i would like to recognize is ben bradlee. He was one of the founders of the center and it was our Great Fortune to get to know him. When i was the centers director, i was the person who was bradlee to organize the lecture in journalism. I know the lecture is later this week. But the lecture is more or less a call that i would make to ben and he would say, who do you want to have . I would run through the great names in american journalism and he would choose one speaker. They would come to the college and we would go to his house and talk with him. Thats where the idea for this book was born. The speaker for the lecture in 2005 was the Washington Post who wast richard cohen, the bureau chief for the Statehouse Correspondent in annapolis in 1973, whence bureau agnew resigned. Chuck and i got to spend a great evening at portobello with ben and Richard Colin after a talk on corruption in maryland politics. And we laughed a lot that evening. In fact, one of the things that is indelible, that stays in my mind, is Richard Colin said to ben bradlee, i cant member whether you said this but it does not matter, its all the same, you are one and the same. [laughter] greatght about what a line, because it is true. We talked a lot that night about agnew and we realized no one had done a real look at his legacy. At the time, we wrote an occasional paper about it for the center of democracy. We spent a lot of time going through his papers where very few had ventured before. Some of the democratic new deal employed prolabor policies to was more of an excuse Vice President and Baltimore County executive and governor, he had a direct line to where the Republican Party had ended up. Much like the mission of the center, we saw a lesson from marylands history in contemporary politics. The spring of 2016, the american Political Science 40 scholars tod name the worst Vice President in the last halfcentury. Their consensus was an easy 1 spiro agnew. We disagree, and that is what we are going to talk to you about today. Of spiro agnew in 1968 proved to be one of the most underrated, consequential decisions in modern american politics and it reverberates a halfcentury later. His contributions in office were limited, but that is not why he was chosen. Instead, he took on the Important Role of reshaping the trajectory of the Republican Party. His suburban middleclass image mixed with his antielite political style launched his rise from an obscure county executive in townsend, maryland to being a heartbeat away from the presidency. Agnew ran for Circuit Court judge in Baltimore County and lost. He came in fifth out of five. Eight years later, he was Vice President of the United States. Our book is not a biography. We placed agnew within the context of the changing nature of the Republican Party over the past century. This is important, and here i will pick up a little bit about what our third author talks about in the chapters he authored. For much of the 20th century, the Republican Party was the party of wall street, country clubs, white males who win to Ivy League Schools and worked for banks. Not the party of the common man. While its a was among the plain folk protestants of small towns in rural midwestern areas, the power center lay in the big money blamed for the great depression. Over the staff of the contributions to the Republican National committee came from the banking and brokerage centers. The republican president ial ran on a that year platform of individual responsibility, fiscal restraint, governmentand governo decentralization. This led to him being crushed by fdr. They won every state except for maine and vermont. Roosevelt situated the forgotten man at the heart of his political appeal. The Republican Party or the responsibility for the regatta mans flight. Republicans of the 1920s to the image of the businessmen as the exemplar of American Progress and prosperity were on the wrong side of an elemental shift after the shock market crash stock market crashed and the onset of the great division. Roosevelt, a workingclass supporter, was the only man we had in the white house whod a sontand that my boss is of a bitch. How did these parties become representatives of the white workingclass . Why did people likes to your agnew and Ronald Reagan and donald trump, all who started out as democrats, change affiliation and reverse their roles in the parties party in the space of half a century . Agnews story helps illuminate this turnaround. Now i will turn to chuck to talk about it. Thank you, zach. I will cover two of the points our book makes, first that agnews combative style and his overlooked success of recruiting white southerners to the Republican Party in the late 1960s and early first, 1970s. Background. He was born in Baltimore City, the son of a greek immigrant father. And like so many others of his generation, his path led him out of the city and into the 1950s and 1960s middleclass. He was a world war ii veteran and fought at the battle of the bulge. He recalled sleeping on ice for a week. Degree byd his law going to night school at the university of baltimore at a time when the school was not even accredited. He moved out of the suburbs to Baltimore County after the war and lived very much the middleclass life. Waselonged to the pta, he father of four children, husband to a stayathome wife, judy. Relaxation and entertainment, he played golf, he was a huge fan of the baltimore colts, and he played pingpong. One of his many admirers likened himself to agnew as a conservative, hardworking, middleclass, reasonably normal. Person or, as nixon would call them, the silent majority. What we see in agnew is that while on the outside the experience looked very comfortable. Tv in the living room, airconditioning, two cars in the garage but for many of these middleclass, life felt precarious and unstable. As the sociologist William White had written at the time in his donning middleclass world of consumerism, somewhere lies the good life, but it vanishes as quickly as one finds it. Earlyhimself in the 1960s said the following. In our homes, we are bombarded by demands. Watch that show, read that book, go to this lecture, take that course, join this club, play with the children, the list seems endless. He added, it is no wonder we feel harassed and frustrated, we barely have time to think. So in response, in his political career, spiro agnew offered moral clarity and utter certainty. He must be right, he is so certain. That struck a chord with the nervous middleclass of the 1960s. But the certainty carried with it a corollary that that if things did not go his way, there must have been trickery and underhandedness involved. I will give you one example here agnew in the late sat on the 1950s Baltimore County board of appeals. It dealt with matters such as zoning pursuits. In a growing place like Baltimore County, it is actually a really important position. 1961, the Baltimore County council, all democrats, decided not to reappoint agnew to the board. While agnew blamed partisanship for his removal, he also portrayed himself as the victim of darker forces. Whereas he was the aggrieved warrior for justice against the local elites. He hinted at conspiracy and charged that an underground campaign had been waged against him. It really wasnt very underground at all. The local Democratic Power was i, he boasted, am quoting afraid they cant control me. The final meeting where his removal was made official, people nearly came to blows over the decision. In this episode, despite his always calm exterior showed an early ability to stir passions and get under peoples skin, and to excite those who relished his lashing out at the elite. He was already making a name for himself as a straight shooting politician, developing the art of attacking opponents verbally, but then plainly that he was just calmly, rationally telling it like it is. And his middleclass, suburban supporters in Baltimore County loved it. In after martin 1968 luther kings assassination launched agnews career at the highest level. Following his murder, he met with africanamerican leaders as the uprising in protest built into day three. Around 100 africanamerican leaders gathered for what they thought would be a dialogue with the governor. Instead, agnew attacked his audience for having failed to push back against the radicalism of groups like the student Violent Court nonviolent coordinating committee. Consider the optics of this meeting. Surrounded by police commissioner, who is white, the head of the Maryland National guard, also white, and the head of the state police, also white, agnew literally pointed at his audience and charged that it was the silence of most of you here today in the face of those radicals that led to baltimores unrest. Said, parts of our city lie in ruins. Who lit the fires . They were not lit in honor of your great fallen leader nor from an overwhelming sense of frustration. Rather, the fires of baltimore were kindled by the advocates of violence. His audience filed out almost immediately. To be lectured at and blamed at this particular moment and setting was more than they were willing to accept. For a moment after agnews clash with the callie Council County council, he had rallied to win the race for Baltimore County executive. In 1966, he easily won the republican nomination for governor. In the 1966 governors race, the state Democratic Party for one last time nominated a segregationist. George mahoney. Against him, the support of the black vote almost guaranteed agnews election and the sense of betrayal was palpable. Backlashngly for the years of the late 1960s, the Baltimore Sun as well as agnews office reported that the positive reaction to his comments overwhelmed the negative. By one count, agnews office received over 1100 letters of support to just 69 opposed. The letters to the editor and the sun revealed solid local approval of agnews remarks. We are proud to be republicans, one wrote. And another i am thankful to hear that the white people will have a strong voice in government. There were also very pronounced law order and tell it like it is themes. One was signed by 50 Baltimore Police officers who noted, and im quoting, it has been a long time since we heard a politician who have the guts to bring it out in the open and lay it on the line as you did yesterday. Meanwhile, as this conflict unfolded, a Young Political staffer named pat buchanan began to feed information to his boss