Now, id like to invite gleaves whitney, executive director of the gerald dar ford president ial foundation, to the podium to introduce tonights speaker, gleaves. Thanks for. As joel, just said, were back. Look at this. This is great to have all these people in the auditorium after all those months of covid. So i applaud you for being here. You came for a Great Program this evening. As as you all know, weve been bringing bill brands back to grand rapids, west michigan, for many years, almost two decades. And ill introduce him in just a minute. But first, i want to welcome our cspan, our viewing audience. I want to welcome all of you who are here in person. I think we have some trustees from the gerald ford president ial foundation to recognize. I think i see bob hooker and i think j. C. Rising is here. We have one of the ford president fords family members, greg ford, a nephew of president. Mrs. Ford, welcome. Glad youre always glad youre here. So, yeah, go ahead and applaud. Absolutely absolutely. Now, those of you who have been to this gig before know that i have tried every which way possible humanly possible to introduce bill in a new way. So one year, in fact, we used his haiku poetry. Remember that year . Haiku poetry to. Introduce him because hes the author of a lot of haiku poetry that ended up in a book. Another year we looked at, oh, this was this was rich. We looked at his student evaluate options. And i had never managed the two decades ive known bill to embarrass him in a good natured way until i read the last student evaluation from a young woman who said, and you know, the best thing besides the great storytelling. Hes hot. Right . So ive run out of ideas for introducing him. So heres what id like to do. You all though, bill, youve been coming back 90 of the size. How many of you have heard bill in person . Yeah. So im going to ask you the questions. Where does h. W. Brands teach. University of texas austin. How many books is he written . A million. I think thats low. How often does he write a book . Every year . Some times. If hell get off the airplane, say, how you in book, ortiz be he. You mean books . Sometimes he publishes two books at a year. Its a really amazing. Hell be working on a biography on one hand and then the economic history of the United States on the other, really amazingly prolific. So how many of his published books have been prize finalists, and how were getting tough here . Yeah, a whole loophole out is that our homework is a 2 to 2 of them have been Pulitzer Prize finalists. Thats right. So, you know, weve got and and bill brandts a delightful person to address us. And one of the reasons i always enjoy having bill back is that hes one of the few academic historians who also bridges the gap to the reading public and, you know, it takes place in so many of the History Channel and other documentaries where you see him and his expertise. Its really a lot of fun to follow bills career that way. He always has something very interesting to say, and thats the other reason we always have him back. He can make you look at a subject you thought you knew and see it in a new light. So because hes so good at that rather than my talking any further, let me ask you, are you ready to learn tonight, huh . Ready to learn . Yes. Bill brandts. Come on up. Thank you. Glaze, for that kind introduction. Thank you all for coming. Im delighted to be back in grand rapids, to be back at the ford museum. Im here because cleaves asked me to come. And the reason he asked me to come is that he wants me to write a book. On the 1970s. He didnt put it quite so bluntly when we had the conversation that led to this invitation back in september. But he pointed out to me that we are approaching the 50th anniversary of the several events that placed gerald ford at the center of national and international attention. And he wanted somebody to sort of frame the period. So what is the america that gerald ford stepped on to center stage of . And i had actually i dont know if i told you this, but i have been thinking about the 1970 for a while, specifically. Ive been thinking about the 1970s. Since the 1970s. Now. Lately, ive been writing books about people long dead. So i wrote my most recent book is about William Sherman and geronimo and that generation of people who fought the last phase of the indian wars of the west. The book before that was about folks who lived and fought during american revolution. So when you deal with history thats that deep in the past then we all look on it essentially from the same perspective from long past the time it happened. But if we talk about the 1970s, then were talking about something that i lived through. Please raise your hand if you have of a fairly active memory of the 1970s. Okay. Yeah. Before this i should say, i was i had lunch with a friend who is a judge in austin. And one of the things that he was saying, i wrote a book a few years ago about Douglas Macarthur and harry truman and this gentleman is a little bit older. I said that was one of his earliest memories in sort of being aware of the world. He remembered when truman fired macarthur. So obviously, the farther back we go, the fewer people there are who remember this stuff. But the reason im saying this is that im going to use this as a way to kind of frame my approach to this maybe book that i might write. But i will say that glean is a very effective spokesman for his causes, and hes might very well talk me into writing this book, but youre going to be a test audience to see sort of how you like the idea, but also and im going to speak for maybe half an hour or so, and then i want to engage you in a conversation because because im by the hand that you raise just a moment ago, im talking to people who lived through the 1970s. And theres part of me that is the the author who writes books that i want people to read and by that, i want to know what would get you to buy a book on the 1970s. First question for all of you would you be more inclined or less in clyde to buy a book about a period that you lived through . So raise your hand if more inclined. Other things being equal. Okay, i think so. I mean, i can understand this. There are people who like their literature or whether its fiction or nonfiction to be sort of exotic, to take them to a place they never, never would go otherwise. Its kind of i call it i consider the sort of the travelog approach to history. So we read about some period thats very from the present time and thats the appeal for of us some of the time, maybe for other people all the time, but there definitely is. I mean, the hands raised the second time indicate that theres this interest in this time that i through. So im older than some of you and younger than some of you. But im going to tell you that this period thats now basically 50 years ago today, roughly, is a period when i was in college, the first president ial election that i voted in was the 1972 election. And i was. Just 19 at the time of the election. And this was the first president ial election where people under the age of 21 could vote. And i was for the first time becoming pretty interested in Public Affairs. Now, some of this reflected the fact that when i was in high school, i had an American History teacher that really engaged my interest in political history. And so the kind of history you see unfolding before our eyes is most evidently political history. Because if you pick up a newspaper, we find out what the president is doing or what congress done, whats happening in Foreign Policy. So this is political stuff. And i was paying attention to it in part because id this teacher that was who made it come alive in large part because this teacher focused on individuals, not events, but people. And what were people doing and what were they thinking and what made their world go around and perhaps well, maybe because i was influenced by that teacher or maybe i was drawn to that teachers approach because i had a preexisting inclination in this direction. I that when i try to write history, i always up writing biography. Some of my books are actually biographies. Its the life and times of Andrew Jackson or Ronald Reagan. But even when i write about other subjects, even when i write about a period or a subject, it always focuses on, it hinges on these individuals. Because thats the way i just tend to interpret history. And thats thats what draws me to history. And i think its one of the reasons that biography as a genre is more popular than history as a genre. Some of you will remember your history class from high school where something less than excitement, history classes in high school have a bad reputation. And i speak as somebody who used teach history in high school. I still teach history in college and perhaps ive used this line in this auditorium and perhaps some of you will remember it, although one of the groups that i speak to, the university of texas, where i teach a very active continuing education program, and this for retired folks who now have time on their hands and want to come and just hear something about history. And i preface something that i was going to say, but i dont remember if i told this group this story before and the gentleman in the back and i said this probably 20 years ago, and this gentleman in the back was probably 75 and i was 20 years younger than i am when. And he stood up and he said, sonny, if you remember, we sure as hell about running. So anyway, so the story is this about peoples recollection of their history class, their High School History classes, and this true i know in texas where ive been living for the last 40 years, perhaps in michigan as well, that a lot of people cannot remember the last name of their High School History teacher. But they do that. The first name was coach. And and it reflects the fact that there are a lot of nonspecialists teaching High School History but anyway so i had a special interest in paying attention to Public Affairs especially the american politics and American Foreign policy being in college in the early 1970s, first of all, are is there anybody in the room who was in the same situation and preferably to answer this question, if you were male, then anybody in college in the early seventies. Okay, what on your male mind except the obvious things when you were in college in the early 1970s. And why were you paying attention, for example, to who is going to win the president ial election in 1972 . What was hanging over your head . My head . Yeah. No. The war in vietnam and the draft. And so i knew that if the war in vietnam was still on when i graduated college or, heaven forbid, the College Deferment for the draft should be ended, then i might off to vietnam. Ive reflected this to my students during their lifetime. My students were born about the time the United States invaded afghanistan in 2001. Between then the time the United States invaded iraq in 2003. And i point out to them that its striking to me that neither one of those wars in afghanistan or iraq was particularly popular in the United States, but there was almost nothing in the way of protest. And i asked them to reflect. Why do you suppose that was . Do you know . The answer was, you know, draft. None of them had any skin in the game. And so it didnt matter. But it did matter when i was in college. And in fact, they did end the student deferment while i was in college. And those of you who were in college and male at the time may remember. Do you remember lottery day when they drew and they figured out, okay, are you going get drafted or not . And you remember at least on the campus where i was there was you could hear the reactions from the open windows of the dorm rooms around where there would be an all no or yeah depending on what number was drawn when your birthday came up. Anyway, so im drawn to this period and i, i much of it, but ive never, i mean, ive studied it a little bit because ive written sort of around it and through it when i wrote a book about, Ronald Reagan. Ronald reagan was active in politics in 1970. So i, i covered some of that. But to to look at it specifically and to figure what was really going on and, i have never actually centered a story about that period on gerald ford. Now im going to explain why if somebody were to write a book on american politics and Foreign Policy in the 1970s, that might be a smart idea to center it on gerald ford because he is right in the middle of some really momentous stuff. And maybe if do decide to write this book, maybe ford will play a central role. But the moment heres what im thinking. Im thinking that, well, i was telling gleaves this earlier, the title i have in mind is the great unknown raveling and i can tell you that a little bit at the time, but certainly as a historian looking backward, i see the 1970s as a period and i dont want to get too specific within. The 1970s, although the title, the talk tonight was watergate, right, when the seventies really began. I am going to talk about watergate because in the middle of this story, but the seventies is in some ways it begins well, historians sometimes argue about was 1970s more important than the 1960s. Theres a silly argument because events dont pay any attention to the calendar. They just happen and just wherever they happen to fall. But what did happen in the 1970s . The 1970s, the whole served as a time when an attitude toward and government unraveled and i put it this way in 1970, if you had come of political age in 1970. Oh, thats me. When i was 17 years old in 1970 and then 18. And so on. I knew enough about the history of politics during. The previous half decade or a half century or so to realize that starting in the 1930s, there been a shift in american and attitudes of voters regarding what expected from government in the 18th century. In the 19th century, people expected almost nothing of government. You looked to yourself and you helped the government stay out of the way as much as possible. But everybody was a believer in small Government Back in the 18th and 19th century. Now the modern Republican Party, when it was founded in the 1850s, it was the First Political party devoted to bigger government. It might be worth a reminder that the the modern republicans, they were the ones who wanted bigger government because they wanted government to assist business in the development of the American Economy. But the idea that government for example, should help out people when they lost a job when they became sick, when they were impoverished for whatever reason, now that just wasnt what government did. People would look to private charities. They would look to members of their family. They would pray, but dont to government that just governments not in that business. Grover cleveland famously said when he gave us, he vetoed a law that was going to provide aid to texas farmers. He said that i have always thought that the people should support government, not that the Government Support the people. But during the 1930s this changed because the depression hit so many people and hit them in ways that made them realize i didnt do anything wrong. I did everything right and still economy collapsed on me and i have to deal with the consequences. So there was this change in American Attitudes and Franklin Roosevelt ran on a platform in 1932. It was reelected overwhelmingly, 1936, on the idea that government should help folks out when. They need help. The centerpiece of this was the Social Security act of 1935, and that set in motion this that government should get more involved and government should help solve the problems that americans, society faces. And this at the time was characterized as the essence of american liberalism. You were a liberal those days. If you looked to government to help solve societys problems, you were you were a conservative active if you said no, no, leave those problems, leave the fixing to the private sector. And there were strong, good arguments on both sides of the issue. But the liberal side, the bigger government was winning the argument and it won the argument through the 1930s. It won the argument in the sense that it won the elections and government got bigger and each time government got bigger than people started accepting, expecting this new thing that government did before. Social security was created in the 1930s. Nobody expected it it but once people started getting Social Security paychecks, then there was no way you could take it away until the 1960s, nobody expected to be in the health care business. But along comes medicare. And now you couldnt take medicare away. George w bush tried to. He thought that maybe well privatize part of medicare and that didnt go anywhere. So there was this tendency for somebody like me in the 1960s. So i was vaguely aware of elections in the 1960s, but the early 1970s. To think this is a permanent trend, American Life and people will just expect more of government. The conservatives didnt go away. The Smaller Government people, they didnt vanish. But in american politics, if you get 55 of any vote, thats a big win and you take it and you legislate on that basis. But then but then things changed. And so in 1970, this more government is better at were still pervasive in american politics. Jump ahead to 1980 Ronald Reagan is elected on a small government platform by Ronald Reagan in his first inaugural address, says government is not the solution to our problems. Thats what the liberals think government is. The problem itself. And so some happened in the 1970s to change this view and so the unraveling im about is the unraveling of this consensus that government is your friend. Government can solve americas or at least make a good try. It it but there are other aspects an unraveling. In 1970 the