Welcome, everyone, to our second class. This is for the people who are here for the first time tonight, the making of the president 2020, better known as the political circus of the century. Im going to be talking about two different and yet related topics the first has to do with the factors that are considered when we look at president ial effectiveness. The second part, id like to look at a few of the more recent president ial elections. So were going to start with this, and im calling on the work of Professor Robert dahlic, a well known president ial historian. He writes, the 20th century saw an unprecedented expansion of president ial powers, primarily due to the vision and leadership skills of nine men who served in the office Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, franklin dellano roosevelt, harry truman, dwight eisenhower, john kennedy, lyndon baynes johnson, Richard Nixon and ronald reagan. Now, professor dahlics analysis only looks at the 20th century. Im going to throw in some of the president s from the 21st century as we go along. So if we can go to the first slide. Professor da lshlllek talks aboe six points. Im going to talk about these. The first is charisma, second is pragmatism. Fourth is consensus building followed by trust our credibility, luck, and im going to throw in, which is on the last slide, and that is something im going to call communication competence. Okay, were going to leave the slides behind for now. So lets start with vision. Vision, according to dallek, is that president s come up with an idea and they help us to develop something thats going to pull us all together. Its going to be something that is going to unify us. Sometimes it comes to us as a in a phrase. The new deal. The new frontier. The great society. These would be the things that are going to occur when we talk about vision. So let me talk about a few of the president s then who were involved with this. And were going to start with Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore roosevelt was the first president of the 20th century. And he came to the white house at a time when the presidency was pretty weak. It was considered, really, to be certainly not what it is today. But roosevelt began to expand that notion of it. And roosevelt looks at the white house as an invitation to opportunity. And he talks about something that he calls the square deal, and something that he calls the new nationalism. The square deal was the idea that people in america were not being treated fairly by the very wealthy in the country, by the trusts, which were groups of people that had come together in the industry to have certain sway over government. And this was going to be a way to deal with that and to make things a little more equitiable if up. So the square deal was going to try to establish a balance between the money interest and give money back to the people. The same with the new nationalism. The new nationalism was supposed to try to protect Human Welfare and property, and just to generally improve the lives of americans. Now, to go along with the vision Theodore Roosevelt had an idea that all of us benefitted from. He was a conservationist and it was because of him that we had and now have the National Park system. The National Parks, of course, enjoyed by millions of people every year, and theyre an enduring legacy to t. R. Another person with vision, Woodrow Wilson, who spoke about something called the new freedom. He said it stood for the idea of restoring unfettered opportunity for individual action and being able to employ the power of the government on behalf of social justice. Now, its kind of interesting that this comes from wilson, because, if you have been following whats transpired since the death of george floyd, then you know that some of the ideas that wilson expressed were in nature, but he didnt seem to propel those ideas while in the white house and instead really did fight for some social justice revisions and legislation. Okay, if were looking for the Gold Standard as far as vision, the personal that we need to think about is Franklin Delano roosevelt. Roosevelt of course comes to the white house at a most serious time in American History. Its the depths of the depression. 25 Million People are out of work. And he goes to the Democratic National convention. He becomes the first modern president ial candidate to fly to a convention. Just the fact that he flew was a big deal, because president ial candidates were not flying around in the 1930s. But he flew to chicago and he stood in front of the people and he said, i pledge you, i pledge myself to a new deal for the american people. And that showed extraordinary vision on the part of fdr. I assume that many of you know about some of the accomplishments of the new deal. But during the first 100 days, and we now talk about 100 days of any president ial administration, some of the legislation that would become part of this new deal is put into effect. And it includes things like the aaa, which is the agricultural adjustment act. It includes the federal emergency relief agency. It includes the National Recovery act. Now, interestingly, what finally pulls the country out of the depression i want to ask if anybody knows the answer to that what finally goes beyond the new deal and gets the country out of the depression . Anybody know . Hard for me to see. Does somebody want to speak out. Yeah, world war ii. World war ii. Thank you, chase. All of a sudden putting people back into factories and being part of the War Industries and, yes, finally world war ii extracts us, lifts us up from the terrible hold of the depression. Now, roosevelt does something as part of his vision that speaks to communication and is really considered extraordinary in its own ways. He decides he is going to talk to the people on radio. And of course the series of chats, the series of talks he gives with known as the fireside chats. What always makes me smile is there was no fireside. He was speaking from the white house, but it didnt matter. People felt that roosevelt was talking to them. President s had given speeches, but roosevelt was talking to people. When roosevelt died, a man stopped his wife, eleanor roosevelt, on the street, and he said to her, mrs. Roosevelt, i miss your husband. I miss the way that he used to talk to me about my government. Its extraordinary. Certainly no one would say that about any of our past president s perhaps in the last 25 or 30 years, certainly that i can recall. By the way, people seem to think that roosevelt was constantly on the radio, constantly speaking and giving these fireside chats. In fact, over the almost what was it . 13 years that he served in the white house, he gave 31. That was it. Moving on with the idea of vision. John f. Kennedy comes to the white house in 1960 and he talks about something called the new fronti frontier. New is a big word for president s, and kennedy says that he wants to see money spent on social reform and welfare, as well as there being ambitious projects like going to the moon. Unfortunately he never lived to see it, but it would happen before the end of the the decade. Other things that happened during his time went along with this vision, but perhaps nothing more than something that he announced at my alma mater, the university of michigan. And he announced it on the steps of the Student Union on october 28, 1960 at midnight when he told thousands of students that he was going to be proposing something called the peace corps. It remains today, and it is an enduring legacy of john f. Kenne kennedy. One last person with a vision that he tried to follow through on was Lyndon Johnson, who followed kennedy upon his assassination. And he talked about something called the great society. Johnson was never a great speaker, and were going to talk about the importance of being a good speaker as president. But he, too, wanted very much to improve the life of citizens. And during his time in office, we get medicare, civil rights passes the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights act of 1965. Johnsons reputation, unfortunately, is always associated with the vietnam war, which he was mired, in couldnt get out of, and it force him in march of 1968 to say in a radio address, i will not seek nor will i accept another term as your president. He realized that he had lost credibility and things were just not going to go well from that point on. Okay, a second point that professor dallek talks about is charisma or dynamism. What is being charismatic . Besides being dynamic . I think it means that it makes things exciting for people. Certainly we have had president s who have done that for us. I mentioned Franklin Roosevelt a few minutes ago. With his use of radio. And he made it exciting for people to be involved with the recovery of the country. Things were getting a little better. And he was a cheerleader for that. John f. Kennedy, again, a lot of charisma. He was the youngest man to serve as president. And in so doing, there was a sense of vitality. And it was an exciting time to be an american. Some of you who are listening tonight may recall there was a record album that came out during kennedys time in office. It was called if the first family. Made terrific fun of the entire kennedy clan, but the one who seemed to enjoy it mowas john kennedy. When asked about it, he said, the impersonator did a good job, but if truth he understood sod more like my brother teddy than me. So there was that nice sense of selfdeppry ra selfdepp selfdeppry kate kating humor, which was nice. Reagan had a background he came from acting and then switched to politics later on in his life. Started life out, by the way, in case youre not familiar with this, as a democrat. Later became a republican and was elected as a republican president in 1980. But again, there was always that sense of excitement. That things were going to happen, that these people were not going to sit still. Finally, im going to include in that group barack obama. Barack obama burst on to the political scene in 2004 when he gave the keynote address at the Democratic National convention. And excited a lot of people, and many people walked away from that and said, this young man has a good future coming in politics. And of course four years later, he was running for president and of course he was elected. And well talk about this in a little bit, but he had tremendous rhetorical skills. Hes a wonderful speaker, and that really stood him in good stead. As you can see on theslide, professor dallek also talks about pragmatism. Thats the idea of being practical, of being shrewd, of moving the country to where you think it should be. Im only going to use one example here, and it does involve Franklin Roosevelt. But its such a good example that i think it really does speak for itself. America was very isolationist. After world war i, the country simply did not want to get involved in any more foreign wars. A neutrality act had been pass sod that technically you couldnt even declare war. Now, roosevelt was watching what was going on in england. Actually, he was watching what was going on around the world. Hitler had come to power, mu mussolini with the fascists in italy, rise in japan. Roosevelt is watching this, but he cant do anything because the country and the congress are isolationists. They dont want anything to do with anything. Things get really desperate for the english. They are being bombed mercilessly by germany. By the way, if you want to read an excellent book about the gom bombing and what was going on at this point in the American British relationship i recommend a book to you aeric larsen that came out this year called the splendid and the vile. Wonderful history of what went on. At any rate, churchill is appealing almost daily to roosevelt saying, please, were not going to be able to hold out against hitler much longer. And roosevelt is trying to move the American Public inand the congress towards helping, and theyre not wbuying it. Finally he gives a speech. Im just going read a quick excerpt from the speech. He says to them, he says to the congress and to the country, suppose my neighbors home catches fire and i have a length of garden those four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden those and connect it up with his hydrant, i may help him to put out his fire. Now, what do i do . I dont say to him before that operation, neighbor, my garden hose cost me 15. Youll have to pay me 15 for it. What is the transaction that goes on . I dont want 15. I want my garden hose back after the fire is over. And what roosevelt is doing is hes saying to the congress and the american people, we have these old battleships and theyre standing theyre in dry dock, and we really were going to share them. We need to share them with the british people, and were going to do like this garden hose. Its going to be a lend. The british are going to pay us, but then theyre going to give them back. Now, roosevelt knew they were never coming back, but it was the idea that he needed to move people forward. And he was very pragmatic about it. He used this speech. And when it was passed we ended up aiding britain and you all know, fortunately, the end. Consensus building. Getting coalitions to support you. Again, im only going to give you one example here, but its from Lyndon Johnson and its from civil rights. Maybe its no surprise to anyone, but the opposition to civil rights was extreme, it was bitter. There were any number of votes that are taken earlier where civil rights was voted down. But finally Lyndon Johnson interestingly, a southerner, is able to put together a coalition of democrats and republicans who believe in doing the right thing, in social justice. And johnson goes out and he sells it to the people, and he gets the consensus. He builds the support and civil rights passes. And it is the law of the land. Trust and credibility. If no trust and credibility, then youre pretty much kaput as president. If anyone remembers president jimmy carter. Carter lost his credibility over a number of things that he was doing, and it really doomed his presidency. For johnson, for Lyndon Johnson, he lost that trust in credibility because of vietnam. People just did not trust him anymore. The question has been raised, though im not sure that well see it play out yet for a while, whether President Trump has lost a lot of credibility with regard to coronavirus. Well see. That one has yet to be, to play out and, you know, well see it this fall. I think that probably donald trump is very unlucky in that he was kind of moving along very well to reelection, because the economy was quite good, and then coronavirus hit, and turned all of our lives upsidedown. Now, i have a question and, again, anyone, please go ahead and yell it out. Does anyone know, and it was in the 20th century, who was considered to be the unluckiest of president s . I cant hear you. Who would be considered to be the most unlucky president of the 20th century . Nixon . President nixon . Why would president nixon be considered the unluckiest president . Watergate, maybe . Well, think of, you know, an event that really, you cant control. Unfortunately, you know, there were certain issues where president nixon could have done some controlling with watergate. Okay. Going once going twice kennedy . Kennedy. Why would kennedy be considered the unluckiest president . Because he was assassinated. Because well, yeah. Being assassinated definitely is a very unlucky thing, but no, no. Okay. Im going to help you here. It was herbert heave oover. Now, why hoover . Well, hoover comes to office in march of 1929. By the way, Herbert Hoover always get a bad rap. He was really a very, very brilliant man, had fed much of europe after world war i, comes to the white house. Hes in office. Its march, and in october of 1929, the stock market crashes, and the Great Depression begins. One historian wrote that Herbert Hoover came to the white house paused for a grand job of building and instead he was obliged to cash. He was pretty unlucky. Harry truman used to say that Herbert Hoover did not create the depression. The depression was created for him. But it didnt matter. He could not help the United States to push out from the weight of the depression, and he was he lost the election of 1932 to Franklin Roosevelt in landslide. Okay. So understanding that luck would have this effect for certain president s, again, its the same thing for donald trump. He did not create coronavirus, but he is dealing with the effects of it and you know weve been living through trying to get back to some degree of normalcy. I have one last thing to add. That is the ninety i added, which is communication contents. I believed that this is important and i base this on my own experience of watching president s and studying them for a long time. What i found is that a president , and president ial campaigners, too, and you see it right now, have to be both effective effective and their discourse appropriate. You need to be at least a decent speaker, better if youre a good speaker, best if youre an exceptional speaker. Okay . So among exceptional speakers we would certainly have to put barack obama. We would have to put Franklin Roosevelt. Maybe in the next tier down, perhaps bill clinton, but these were people who could take advantage of situations rhetorically, and all of them also had the facility to adapt to changing conditions. If things suddenly could shift, then we know that they were able to respond rhetorically. Other parts of this, too, would be grammatics correctness and cadence being able to string ideas together. So if were looking towards maybe the bottom layer, george w. Bush was not a particularly articulate president.