Transcripts For CSPAN3 The 20240703

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 United States was clearly the powerful country in the world and much anything that the United States put it, it put its mind to doing it could do the United States could land a man on the moon. 1969, just according to jfk schedule, right on schedule. The United States was involved in combating communism around the world and it held the line since 1945 against communist advance and the United States was engaged in a war in asia as late as 1970 was quite feasible to believe you could still do it. But of course the vietnam ends badly for United States. The us loses its first war and by the so in 1980, americans realize we cant do everything. Furthermore, the economic miracle that was the American Economy starting in the early 1940s, were spending World War Two that created the modern american middle class and it made americans wealthier and better educated and better housed and better everything. Through the 1940s, the 1950s and 1960s, it looked like that was going to go on. But then in the 1980s, things begin to fall apart and first thing that happens is the United States goes off the International Gold standard. The United States been the prop of the world financial system, and it can no longer carry that up. So Richard Nixon in 71 says, okay, were no longer going to make our dollars convertible to gold and then and then inflation sets in and gold part of it that same symbol to most people because most people didnt care whether us redeemed foreign dollars in gold or not. But when inflation set in and became that Chronic Behavior of the American Economy during the 1980s, the seventies, then americans begin to think, wait a minute, this idea that each generation is going to be wealthier than the generation before this crumbles as well. So all of this stuff is going on and then and then theres another aspect it that was had been appreciated in prospect by such astute political philosophers as johnson. Some of you will remember that in american politics during the most of the 20th century there was this phenomenon called the solid south. And do you know which party the south was solid for the Democratic Party and when Lyndon Johnson, on behalf of the Democratic Party. Lyndon johnson, by the way a southerner himself, about half a westerner being a texan when he put signature to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he turned to his secretary bill moyers and said, bill, i think weve lost the south to the Republican Party for a long time to come. So this was beginning to happen 1970, but in the 1970s, but continue the eighties, nineties this great migration of southerners out of the party into the Republican Party was underway. And what this did it didnt simply rebalance politics. It made politics much more bitter, much more partizan than they had been before because until the 1960s, American Party politics had always been a mishmash of political philosophies. There were republicans and there were democrats before that. There democrats and whigs. Before that there were federalists and republicans, but in every occasion, every decade before the 1960s, each the two Political Parties often shared some philosophical outlooks with the other party. So to take them on most and continuing party system, the modern republican and the democrats in the 1960s there were conservative republicans, the goldwater republicans, and there were liberal republicans, the rockefeller republicans. There were, liberal democrats. There were mcgovern democrats and there were conservative democrats. Most southern democrats. And so under circumstances, success in politics required and a bipartisan approach. So, for example, when Lyndon Johnson lobbied congress for civil rights legislation and he got a higher percentage of republican votes for civil rights reform, then he got a democratic votes because most of those southern democrats voted against the civil rights. But the consequence of this, that when laws passed, they had a kind of credit bility that comes only from the fingerprints of both parties on the bill. What happened in the course of the 30 years after Lyndon Johnson told bill moyers, i think weve lost the Republican Party. Weve lost this out to the republicans, whereas the two parties shifted out by 1990, there were no first of all, there were relative few southern democrats. The south went republican, which meant that all those southern conservatives who had been democrats, they become republicans and they make the Republican Party more conservative because with all of the southern conservatives pouring into the party, theres no room left for. The northeastern liberal republicans. So the republican, become the Republican Party, becomes essentially 100 conservative. And the Democratic Party becomes 100 liberal or progressive. Take pick. So here i need i need two hands for this. In the 1960s, you could get on important issue. You could get republicans over here from your side. This is the Republican Party, the right hand and you get the democrats over here and there enough overlap between the two that you could find that middle ground support. But from 1960s to the 1990s, the two parties pulled apart so that by the nineties essentially their every republican is more conservative than every democrat. And the two parties then fell. The tyranny of the primary primaries were less a big deal back in the days when there this middle ground. Sure in primaries you would run and try to get your party support. But as soon as you got the party nomination, you would to the middle and then you would usually be met there by the other nominee coming from the other direction. But now, now politics does not consist in reaching out to the it consists in mobilizing your base. And if you can the way mobilize your base is you get more extreme as the general election comes along. So this stuff was in the 1970s and the biggest part of this the biggest was the loss of faith in government and the loss of faith in government. What what underpinned the idea that government is part of the solution . The government is the solution or could be a part of the solution is a confidence when the government does stuff, it gets it right. And if you were of that generation, if i had been born 20 years earlier, 30 years early, if id been old enough to know the Great Depression, then if i had been unfortunate, for example, to lose my job in the Great Depression and discover that Social Security will provide Unemployment Compensation for me if i had lost when the banks failed and now knew that there was something called fdr i see where it guaranteed my deposits in banks, then i would think thats a government that i like and thats something that worked. And then World War Two and the American Government has never been more successful in any big undertaking than in saving democracy in World War Two, taking on in three and a half years, destroying and making the world safe for and in the process making the United States the most powerful and the richest country that has ever existed on the face of the earth government, really got stuff. Right. And this persisted through the fifties and into the 1960s. By the end of the 1960s, gone was sort of coast ing on the credibility had gotten up till then, but still it quite possible this was very common and i do remember probably saying this myself. I do remember hearing this from adults at the if you if you dont know whether the governments doing something right not well, you should probably have confidence they are because that government does they know more about this stuff than we do. If you knew as much as the president knew now it was about this that or the other thing, youd probably take the same policy. And so there were a lot of there were a lot of policy actions that didnt actually incur really close scrutiny because the idea was that, okay, these are good people and theyre doing their best and they know more about this stuff than i. So well defer to them. Well, then along comes watergate. You know, i was going to get there, so along comes watergate and along comes vietnam. And these two issues deal, a body blow to this idea that ordinary people should have confidence in, should have faith in government to do the right thing or be able to accomplish what it sets it mind to. In the case of vietnam, it was a combination because vietnam was, well, the end. In vietnam was preceded by how many of you remember ever reading the pentagon papers, or parts of them are aware that the pentagon papers were published and the pentagon papers were a secret pentagon history of the war in vietnam, which demonstrated that at times when government officials were saying in public, were going to win the war, we see the light at the end of the tunnel, private only they were telling each other, oh, boy, this is a really bad situation we dont think we can come out of this. So when the pentagon papers were published, then it became apparent that there was serious by government this war. And this is one of the things that really turned americans against the war that, first of all, last a long time, long wars are not popular, especially when young men are going to have to go off and fight them against their will. You know, the draft is going to be on. And then and then vietnam ends in a defeat. So not was government deceptive and therefore unethical and worthy of confidence, but it was also inept even when it was doing the wrong thing. It didnt accomplish it. So vietnam is a large part of the story behind the loss of confidence government. And this is crucial, the story of the 1970s. And if i write this book, this is really what this unraveling is all about. But the other part of the story, the domestic part of the story is watergate. So now im going to share with you a teaching technique, pedagogical device that i use with my students in part because i have partly because it takes me back to when i was their age. My students get younger and younger every year. And but i will tell you that the reason that i still teach is that the first day of the summer. All the first day of the fall semester. Me is the best day of the year because i get this new crop of students i teach mostly by numbers. I teach mostly freshmen, and they come in. I teach a class starts on monday morning. So im often the First College class theyve ever and we talk about a little bit and i observe and they agree for the great majority of them, this is the first time theyve ever lived away from home the first time theyve ever had an opportunity, ever the first time theyve ever been encouraged to figure what they think and not, you know, do what their parents thought or inherit what their parents. And they get to decide who am i and what do i believe in . What am i values. And another thing for somebody who has been studying American History in american politics for a long time now, its pretty easy for me to get kind of jaded and then weve got these problems that are just intractable and theyre never going to go away. But i dont tell that to my students. Theyll get jaded soon enough. No, no. But because when they come into my class, maybe you can remember some of you, maybe are not much older than 18, but when youre 18, first of all, first of all, your this new world and there are all these possibilities before you and they come in and theyre as idealistic as can and whatever, cause theyre engaged in, were going to solve problem and more power to them. And it it does keep me from just in a receding into the shallow where were never going to fix this stuff. So i, i really appreciate this for my students, but anyway, so back in 1970s when oh so the exercise that i give my students that takes me back to when i was there is when teach the second half of my us history survey. The first half goes from colonial times to the civil war. The second half goes from the civil war to the present. So nominally, we try to. To 2022, but it does that this exercise im about to describe actually works and it fits in the chronology of course, for the last essay, the last written assignment, the students have. I tell them i require them to read the news from their hometown for the week in which they were born. So go back 18, 19, 20 years and read a weeks worth of newspapers and find out what was going on in the world. I do this because i want to. Well, part of it is i wanted to learn to appreciate parents. When you 18 i think 18 is perhaps the nader of appreciation for parents when youre eight, you think that your parents are great by the time youre 38 and you have kids of your own then you realize okay all right but when youre 18, your dont know anything and so this isnt really the main for this exercise, but it is, i think, a Positive Side effect because they will learn what their parents were dealing with. And its not just what parents have to when i was your age, etc. Oh, this stuff actually happened. Another thing is i, my students all the time that if they dont like the world that they are inheriting because theyre just entering adulthood nowadays in most states, the legal age is 18, so theyre about to vote in their first election and do whatever you do as an adult and so i say if you dont like the world that you are inheriting, blame me. And i would say if you were there, id say blame them to blame the older generation, because we created this world were about to hand off to you. But one day, believe it or not, your students, statistically speaking, the great majority of you are going to be as old as i am now. And if you dont like the world, its on you because you had your chance so Pay Attention to what has gone before. So i asked them to do this and most of them really like it because oh no. So thats what was happening . And my parents told me about that, but it really did happen and so on. But theres another reason that i asked to do it and it is to give them perspective of on history and how we know what we know. And this isnt just history. When you deal with anybody and anybody tells, you something is that person is that thing. They told me, is it credible . We always weigh evidence. I mean, some some we trust more or less implicitly. Other people we distrust all the time and for most things that we consume information, we consume it somewhere between the two. So i ask that to do two things i ask them to identify something that seemed at the time but turned out not to be important. And whats the measure of this if it was reported on, lets say consistently through the week, but has never shown up in any history book, clearly in their textbook, they read now that 20 years after the fact, roughly its simply not important. And you probably be surprised to know that that accounts for about 90 of what you read in newspapers. Oh, most news is out of date within three or four days, let alone two decades. So the part of the exercise is to discover that the miss America Pageant changed its rules in 2003 or Something Like that. And at this point, nobody cares. The other part of the exercise flips it around and say, find something that is going to become important, important enough to, make it into the history books. And youve got some history book to consult. But is not reported on during the week youre reading, but whats going on during the week youre reading about . So something was happening or had happened but was not thought to be important at the time, but with perspective, distance came to seem and do you know the example that for a long time i have tried it out to my students . The thing that was not reported on but turned out to be earth shattering or at least, what shall i say, presidency destroying watergate. Because watergate first started the whole was it was to be a secret. It was not to be reported on. And the members of the president nixons reelection. They did their best to keep it quiet. But the roots of, watergate, actually go far back beyond at least a few years back, beyond the moment in june 1972, when those five burglars were arrested at the Watergate Office complex in washington, d. C. And the line that was conveyed by, the president , president nixons pr people, was that this was as his Public Relations spokesman. It was a third rate burglary that had nothing to do with the presidency. And so well just ignore it now that it was a third rate burglary, to be sure. And and one of one of the the curious storylines of watergate was only was there a cover up in all the other stuff unethical. But it was illegal, dishonest, but it was also if the burglars had been good, they never, never, never would have been arrested. But but here is where here is where i like to make sure that students dont think that things that happen in history, storylines in history are simple or uncomplicated. If theres one mission i have in life for my students its to complicate their understanding. Its to complicate your understanding of what you think about history. Because a lot of people are willing to believe that of people they know of things that happened today. Well, its complex. And there is this that all the other stuff for some reason when they look back in the past, they want things to be cut and dried. And so this is a good person, a bad person. This is a hero. This is a villain. But now thats just not the way it works. So Richard Nixon had reasonable all, i would say, ethical or maybe even honorable motives in putting in train the events that would to that burglary and watergate. I referred earlier to the pentagon, the pentagon papers, where this massive breach of american security, because the papers were all classified secret, top secret, they were not supposed to be let out. And thousands of pages came out. Who did this . How could this be done . As a recent example about what is it six months ago now there a draft of a Supreme Court opinion and are the case that overturn v wade that was leaked. And as far as i know as far as anybodys reported, the leaker not been identified. Come on, how hard can it . There arent that many people who had access to it. But anyway, so nixon is really concerned that the American National security apparatus, the people who work in the pentagon and in the Intelligence Services and in the fbi, they have decided to take policy into their own hands and of course, the point of leaking the pentagon papers is to make it more difficult for the government of the United States to prosecute the war in vietnam now that part itself complicated, nixons own job, because he was trying to wind down the war in vietnam. But theres all this other stuff that he has to deal with. But the bigger issue was nixon was in the process of forming, leading what would come to be called his opening china after. 20 plus years of, treating the government of the peoples republic of china, communist china as fiction. And the only genuine government of china, the Chinese Government on taiwan, nixon was going to normalize relations between the United States and china. And as a person who had been most vehement in opposing any thing before he became president , he knew he was going to have to do this in utter secrecy because if the word got out early, then his the enemies, the opponents of, this strategy would be able to push it aside and make it impossible for him to and that the Chinese Government would have gone along with it at all if already had become this hot issue because it was controversial for them to. So nixon engages this group that came to be called the plumbers because they stopped leaks and and they wanted to find out how daniel ellsberg, who was the principal leaker of the pentagon papers, how he got access to this stuff and why he did what he did and and this led to some crossing of the lines of individuals privacy. So ellsberg psychiatrists office was to find out if ellsberg was revealing any deep secrets to his psyche at risk, and that was illegal it was unethical. And i dont say this by any means to try to exonerate nixon, but the American Government in and worse stuff than this before that, if thats all it had been, then that would have been a comparatively venial. But it got beyond that. Once youve got this organization, some of you will have had this experience or, at least observed it, that once you hire people to do something. Youve got to find something for them to do and you cant you cant apply an uber approach. You know, you cant just hire as gig workers, people who are going to invade other peoples offices. They, you know, if theyre on the payroll, theyre on the payroll. And so to go from this approach toward policy toward china, by the way, and this was going to lead to an opening, a new opening called detente toward the soviet union. And heres the big deal. It was going to lead and nixons view and it actually did happen, lead that to the first important arms control agreement between the nuclear superpowers. So there is a perfectly worthy and insight here. But once youve got them, theyre going to do other stuff. So there was no thinking that larry obrien, lawrence obriens office in the Democratic National, uh, the Democratic National committees headquarters in the watergate, had anything do with arms control policy, but and this is where this is where my interest in history is kicks in. And it applies to nixon. And also applies refreshingly in opposite way to gerald ford, because nixon clearly was going to win the election of 1972. There was no question about it. First of all, he had won with a comfortable margin in 68. It was it wasnt a runaway by any means. But the democrats, as a result of the the debacle in chicago surrounding the national convention, they recast rules for nominations that set in motion. The of a very fellow a senator from south dakota named george mcgovern. A very decent fellow who is probably the candidate in American History for the last 60 or 70 years and if you want to know if you want to know why many people in the country think that the democrats can be counted on to act as though they know better the rest of the country and that theyre smarter than everybody else and they really dont sort of care for what ordinary people think. It goes back to this era, george, a very decent guy, but he was somebody who by any stretch of the imagination would be appealing to kind of ordinary folks his positions on all that stuff was way to the left or way off the end, and the outcome of this was that nixon won in 1972, carrying 49 out of 50 states. This was the largest landslide in history. And for nixon, it wasnt enough he could have seen this. Nixon was very shrewd. He could do the vote count. He he was going to win. But he seemed to want to get every state, all fifties, for heavens sakes. He got south dakota. The only one he didnt get was massachusetts. Some of you may remember when nixon and watergate surrounded nixon, there were the bumper stickers that said, dont blame me, im from massachusetts. Okay. So anyway, so still cannot figure out what motivated nixon to do this. It was something in his childhood. Is there something about you . Have to you cant just win big. You cant just win. You cant just win big. You have to win. You have to it all. I dont know this and i will say that nixon to me a a puzzle, an enigma, a personal enigma, because Richard Nixon was smart. He had the sound just strategic of any american president , with the possible exception of theodore roosevelt, and understanding how the pieces of the International Puzzle fit together and how if you move this piece over there, then this piece will slide there and do this in a way that will improve American Interest in the world. But why did he go into paula tics . Thats what i cant figure out. Politics is usually the arena where people who like other people go and people who are happy stand on the corner when the shift is getting off at the factory and hi, im nixon. I like your nixon was painful under a small talk. Now. So heres a story about nixon and this i hesitate to tell the story because the punchline has to be explained in advance. But some of you will remember golda meir ear ever so she was Prime Minister of israel. She also happened to grow up in milwaukee, but nonetheless she moved as grew up in. She moved to israel and became prime and she had a foreign minister named abba eban. And if you are a crossword puzzle aficionado, you know that because works really well. Theres lots things, but abba eban was educated at oxford and he spoke with an impeccable oxbridge accent, spoke english with an impeccable oxbridge accent. Nixons and also he was foreign minister of israel and americas foreign minister, which is to say americas secretary of state, was henry kissinger. And so and if you have paid any attention to kissingers career, you will know that kissinger speaks with a very thick german accent, even though he arrived in the United States from germany, the age of 13. And and and he has an old he had an older brother who spoke english, unaccented but in his field the field of Foreign Policy, apparently, if you have a german accent, it makes you gives you a greater gravitas. But anyway, so so nixon standing there at a photo opportunity with golda meir and he sang madam Prime Minister, you know, we have something in common. And golda meir, okay, where is this going . It says, yes. And nixon says we both have jewish foreign ministers, which is not particularly unusual if youre from israel. And golda meir says yes and mine speaks english anyway. Anyway, so. So its a puzzle to. Me what drove nixon to do what he did and im not going to relate the whole story of watergate, but i hope made it at least plausible that watergate is at the heart of what i consider to be the most Important Development in American History. Well, i go so far as to say in the last 80 years, and it is what im calling this great unraveling or big shift in American Attitudes toward government. Watergate is a big part, the enormous part of it as well. But i should add that watergate sort of came out of as, say, the vietnam issue, because the pentagon papers and all this. But there was this moment, there was this long when 50 years from the early 1930s to lets call it the mid 1970s, early 1970s, anyway, when americans were willing to accept a bigger Government Role because government was thought to be trustworthy, government was thought to be competent. And then when that faith in american trustworthiness that is governments trust is and competence, then americans changed their minds and are bring it back to gerald ford and his role in all of this . Therell be more on this in installments. But gerald ford was the ideal person to replace to succeed Richard Nixon, president in a very central way that i think touches on gerald fords enduring contribution to our understanding of history and politics and the way it can work and the way it should. Jerry ford did not become president because. He had that fire in the belly that drives most people to endure what they have to endure to become president. He didnt have this insatiable need to reach the top of that greasy pole. He wasnt he was quite unlike Lyndon Johnson, for example, or Richard Nixon, who in some very basic ways they would have felt their lives were failures if they hadnt reached the top, if they hadnt achieved that acme of political success. Jerry ford was not like that at all. Jerry ford to be pretty comfortable, his own skin, he was very solid citizen. He was a very solid member of congress. He had been several years the minor party leader in the house of representatives. His ambition the height of what he hoped for his political career was to become speaker of the house. But he understood that that depended on a lot himself because the republicans are going to have to win a majority in the house of representatives, which had not had for decades. And in fact, he was on the verge of retiring when nixon lost, lost when nixons Vice President , spiro agnew, had to resign because of a scandal actually unrelated, to watergate per se. But it got swept up into the whole thing. And so nixon is looking someone, the Republican Party, looking for someone whos, honesty, devotion to the national cannot be questioned and probably part of this, but also a part of the appeal is. And who doesnt have obvious ambition is to be the next president of the United States, because it would be awkward to bring somebody on board. If youre Richard Nixon. Because, by the way, so agnew is forced out at a time when watergate is becoming uncovered. It takes a long time between the the arrest of the burglars in june of 72 to the summer of 73, when the Senate Watergate hearings take place, and nixon finally resigns in the summer of 1974. So its a slow moving scandal. And the last thing nixon needs and the last that he wants to convey is that hes brought on board. This guy is going to help push him out. And so gerald ford took the job. Its its an honor. But he certainly didnt expect it to lead anything. Lead to anything he thought that this would be a nice sort send off. Ill do this and then retire. In 1976, when this term is up and, that would be that. And and ford knew no more about watergate. Everybody else did. So he didnt know where this story was going. But when the story went the way it did, when nixon as became apparent in the coverup of this and and it was at this time that the adage emerged that its not crime, its the cover up thats going to get you. And thats indeed the case. If had if he had better Public Relations people, he had professional pr assistance, then the first rule appears, get it all out there, throw everything you, have out there, because otherwise its going to dribble out. And every day youre going to be in the papers that if he had done that, it would have been there wouldnt have been any. It will last it. Oh, but theres one other thing. Theres one other thing and this gets back to the biographical part some of if you remember watergate, you remember irancontra and viewed sort of objectively and from the standpoint of americas position in the world, irancontra was a bigger deal than watergate, because watergate essentially a domestic as fair. And the republicans are trying to it harder for the democrats to get elected. And fooling with their campaign and all this. But irancontra, this was the government of the United States proclaiming this one policy in public and in secret, doing this other and evading the law quite clearly at the same time. But there was any strong desire to kick Ronald Reagan out to impeach Ronald Reagan. Why was so and why did it happen to nixon . Nixon resigned one step ahead of the impeachment. And so nixon resigned. Why did it happen to nixon and not to reagan . And i would say the difference people liked and, you know, that might sound trivial. Talking about, you know, great of government, but when you live in a democracy when you operate your politics on, the principles of democracy. Well, every election is in essence, a popularity contest. Do people like you and if they you, theyll cut you some slack. They cut reagan a lot of slack and they nobody was going to cut nixon any slack because he wasnt likable. And its a it all sounds like junior high, but. But thats the way things often work. You know, ive often thought that that clearest gauge for if you want to know who people are going to vote for, whos going win an election, the question should who would you rather sit down and have a beer with that candidate or candidate b . And if a candidate gets the sides, that candidate is going to win because. People want to feel that that person in the white house, if were talking about the president , somehow knows me and there has to be a of identification anyway. So jerry ford comes in and watergate happens all around it and ill get us to the end very quickly, i think gone over my half hour. But anyway so Richard Nixon is told well the Supreme Court has said you have to turn over these very incriminating tapes. And nixon then is in formed by republican leaders, congress, youre going to be impeached and youre going to be convicted. So you better make a decision because thats going to happen if you dont do something. So nixon resigns now. Nixon resigns. And one of the reasons he resigns and of the reasons that people are willing to accept the resignation is that this new guy, gerald ford, he doesnt have a long and obvious paper trail, but there are no scandals in his background. There is no hint of any impropriety. He, like the anti nixon because nixon now is seen as this purveyor of skullduggery and everything else. And jerry ford, this just, you know, straightforward guy from western michigan who does things the way theyre supposed to be done. But then but then in a month after nixon resigns, gerald ford pardons him. And all of a sudden, these questions are raised, why was there a deal here . Did nixon and ford get together . Or maybe intermediaries . And did ford say. , if you resign, then as president , ill pardon you. Youre not going to have to go to jail, which by this time was a real possibly pity. Now theres no evidence that anything a deal occurred and fact it strains the imagination to think that there would be anything explicit. However its entirely possible that nixon reasoned the way that ford subsequently reasoned, and that is from a constitution denial standpoint, the big deal is that this president is no longer president. Now lets move on. And thats, in fact, precisely the argument that ford made, in justifying the pardon now, the short term consequence of this was relief in the country and a sense that, okay, we can move past watergate. And so in the short term, gerry fords decision was good for the country in the slightly longer term, it was bad for gerry ford because it meant that there was way he was going to win in 1976 and in fact even with the bad news about Richard Nixon, ford could have been the favorite going to the election of 76 because if you look at the electoral map of 1972, the republicans had this huge majority and a lot of those states still vote for a republican, especially the republicans, not Richard Nixon anymore. So it cost gerry ford a lot in the short term to make this decision. But i really dont get any sense that he agonized over it much. It was the right thing to do and it cost me the presidency. But i have never said that the presidency is my highest goal in politics. So he makes the decision and he buys by the outcome. Now. And i should say that for the next 45 years, a general belief in the public at large was, it was probably a good idea. Fords decision was right, but for reasons you might very well appreciate in the last five years or so, people have started to think, you know, maybe that wasnt such good idea because we are still in a confused state of mind about whether the president of the United States can reprocess looted. Is the president above law or not . Weve never tested it. And if there ever was going to be a clear test that would have been the time. So whether gerald fords decision to pardon Richard Nixon was for the country seems little bit less clear now than it did then. But theres an interesting thing that happened that same intervening time. Well, the decision to pardon nixon was bad for jerry ford in the short term. He loses the election in 1976. It as much as anything else has caused his reputation for integrity, for character or for putting the National Interest of personal interest that has grown over the intervening time. And so what jerry ford is remembered for is the fact that he was especially maybe to our jaded eyes today, kind of a model of the Public Servant who goes into politics for the right reasons, comports himself the right and appropriate way, and is willing to abide by the decision of the people, even if it turns out adversely. So gerald ford during the 1970s was at the center of all this stuff going on and. I think he remains somebody who is very instructive us today and indeed, well, ill put it this way and this is probably an audience that might be more inclined toward jerry ford than other audiences. But if jerry ford were on the ticket in 2024, how many of you would for him . Okay. Yeah, i mean, hed be a breath of fresh air compared to most of what we can expect. Anyway, im to stop there. And now we have time. We have time for questions. Okay . Questions, please. Yes. The question its not a okay comment. Its a couple comments to enroll in your class with, all your freshmen students. Okay. Im going to tell you if you can, to austin, 10 00 on monday or wednesday morning. My door is open. I know you must realize inspiring you are to the students because you make history vibrant exciting fun factual and not dry and boring well. Thank you for that comment. Thats a very kind comment. But i you havent seen the full of it yet because i dont think in grand rapids i have done to the audiences here what i do to my students. I sing to my students. But obviously ill have to save that for another time. Yes. Oh, we have a question back here. Yes. Yes. This has to do with fords demise how he didnt how he lost the election. Its often been said that one of his problems was he wasnt his own man. He kept the nixon cabinet in place. Do you have any comment on that . Yeah. So theres a good reason why he kept the nixon cabinet in place, because he wanted to make clear that this was not an inside coup. This was he was fully aware that nobody had elected Vice President , nobody had elected president ford. So for him to come in and say, okay, im going to change things, he had no mandate to do that. It was very clear that richard was the one who was about to be impeached, that nixon was at the center of, all of this and nixons and watergate scandal. It involved a couple of members of the cabinet. But for the most part, it was people who worked in the white house. So to keep the other members of the cabinet was entirely appropriate. But youre absolutely right, it did hurt his chances because it allowed people who were not inclined to vote him or people who are on the fence or people who, for example, thought that there was this deal to say, well hes just coming in and hes taking over nixons making protecting his government. And if he would have been able to distance himself more from the Previous Administration by house. But it also would have made it simply that much to do. The governments business, because you can imagine that in the wake of watergate, being a member of the cabinet was not particularly appealing job offer. And and so to bring new people in when the government had been essentially paralyzed during most of this two year period from the summer of 72 to the summer of 74. It would have been a grave disservice to the country as a whole and i dont want to make gerald ford out to be a saint, but i do think he had this i think his Natural Inclination to ask himself, so whats the best thing to do for the country . And i think he made a very plausible case to himself that the best thing to do is to maintain as much continuity as we can, having sort of cut out, get rid of the people who are going to go to jail. I should point out that nixon did go to jail, but Something Like four dozen other members of the administration and people who worked for the administration go to jail and the whole watergate scandal. So it was this big deal. Other questions. Theres a going. Yes. How is the Media Coverage of the president changed in the last. Im glad you asked that question because i didnt get a chance to say all the things that had changed during this 1970s period. And this is one aspect of the change. It is a real sea change that is most directly connected to watergate. So i dont know if any of you perhaps have had part of your lifes work or career in journalism. But if you have, you will know that journalists before the 1970s were usually called reporters, and it was something that didnt require an advanced degree. And maybe you started out on the copy desk or something and you learned how to ask the who, what, when, where, why, questions. And you always learn to lead with the leading staff. And then you have this pyramid style where the important stuff goes to the top. Unless those things come from the bottom. It wasnt a glamor career and who made it glamorous . Woodward and bernstein, because when everybody else was saying, theres nothing to this watergate story, they at it, they kept at it. And then and they just uncover that there was more involved. And then course, to get played by, Robert Redford and dustin hoffman, you know, that makes it look pretty. Grammers boy, if i go to Journalism School, then i can be like Robert Redford or dustin hoffman. But but it also had a deeper, sort of more serious level beef before the 1970s. Im not to say specifically before watergate, ill go chronologically. It works that way. But in the 1960s, reporting on politics in washington was kind of a clubby inside baseball and reporters hung out with politicians. They went to the same cocktail. They sent their kids to the same schools and all of this and there was a tendency to think that what happens in georgetown stays in georgetown. There wasnt this desire to uncover the bad things that government is doing, call it maybe a recognition that politicians are human, to call it a willingness to respected divide between public lives and private lives. Do you need to know whos having an affair to know what how you should vote in the next election and and there are some unfortunate there some ill consequences of this theres a lot of stuff that got swept under the rug. So it would have really been a Public Service if the public had more about John Kennedys health during his presidency and how he was on lots of painkiller laws. And he just, you know, he could be tv for a while and look good and look long, young and healthy. But he really wasnt. That might have changed. That was something that would have been useful for voters to know the reporters knew it the folks who reported for the new york times, the washington post, wall street journal as they knew it, but they were not going to share that when woodward and bernstein and other newspapers caught on really sized, that they could bring down a president and see this is heady stuff then people off to Journalism School thank we we arent simply neutral reporters on what happens we can have an influence on the outcome and so journalism becomes a cause and it at least at first it was often a cause for sort of progressive reform but and this is where the historian should hesitate to ascribe much causation here because while watergate is going on. And in the half decade after the media landscape has changing dramatically and biggest change is the invention and distribution of cable television, because in the days before cable tv, the government could and did enforce fairness, what they called fairness, equal treatment of both parties. Sides of an issue on the three major broadcast networks. Because the government owned the airwaves and there a limited theres limited bandwidth. But along comes cable tv and the fcc federal Communications Says we dont need the fairness doctrine anymore because everybody can have their own cable tv station. And so instead of three, you can have 300, you can have 3000. And as long as if youre going to have a fox news, then people who dont like that can create an msnbc. And so interestingly from the historians perspective, the United States in its media landscape goes from a relative every brief period of time. Call it the age of television, really from the early fifties to about the mid 1970s, where the media were expected to be neutral. Reporters. But if you go back to the earliest days in the 1790s, political created their own news papers and the newspapers, organs of the party and in the 1800s, in the 19th century, they were always, almost always clearly identified with one party or the other, to the point of having republican in the label and, the title or democrat in the title. Its only when you get in the 20th century, when you get in this situation of narrow bandwidth that Walter Cronkite is supposed to be this one who plays it down the middle and David Brinkley and so on. But then you get cable tv and you split up again. So the media becomes partizan. In the 1970s eighties, and it does today, but it throws us back to the late 18th century, in the 19th century. So this is something thats been around a while, but it definitely did change the landscape. And this idea that. Journalists, not just reporters and not just reporters anymore, but journalists, they can be stars and you can really tell the difference if you. Well, the press conferences, they call them press conferences rather than Media Conferences or news conference. The press conference is a Franklin Roosevelt were not televised. Television didnt exist yet. And they deliberately they werent broadcast on the radio. But you could read the transcripts them. And its really clear that reporters who covered the president and took part in the the press conferences, this was much more a collegial approach. Were all trying to serve the public and those of us in government are trying to serve it one way. And you in the media are trying to serve it another way. But there there isnt idea. You dont get reporters who are constantly asking gotcha questions. Have you stopped beating your wife yet . You know, that sort of thing. But after watergate and any of you who have watched president ial news conferences, you know, somebody like when Sam Donaldson is up there, you know, you can tell whoever the president is, you know, were going to get you you know, we got you. And and so now and in the days before watergate, journalists didnt make any money. No reporters. There was poorly paid schoolteachers. But now, you know reporters, if youre a media star, you get paid like a star. So that is a this is something that has followed after watergate and watergate partly response. I wouldnt say its the whole thing, but it did change. The media landscape did change. Lets give bill brandt. Okay. Thank you very much. I sorry you turned off the mic soon i was going to get the last word because youre because this is your house now. Hes a star, right . Yes. Okay. Hi. He gets a gift. Now, this gift, i want everybody to this is a partnership that brought tonights program. This gift is a reflection of this partnership. So, you know, i represent the gerald ford president ial foundation, but the president ial library and museum is represented by brooke and joel, for example and the Hauenstein Center for president ial studies is represented by brant in the back there. We want to thank our partners for making tonight possible. It is really wonderful for us to have john and i back the Carter Library you know it has just been several years since jonathan was here. He was here for the book, a book about jackie