Civilization which came out on tuesday. It is getting incredible reviews. We have hosted a series of conversations about the truman era, joe. And it kind of makes us realize we should be talking about truman more and the impact on the world stage. Lets bring in another great panel to continue the timely discussion. Former u. S. Senator now an msnbc news and msnbc political analyst, Claire Mccaskill is here. She knows truman more than anybody. Columnist and associated editor for the washington post, david ignatius. Historian and rogers chair and the american presidency at vanderbilt university, jon meacham, who unofficially advises president elect joe biden. So, jon, let me ask you, you were the first while i was writing the book and sort of developing my thoughts, you were the first to draw parallels between harry truman and joe biden and saying at the time if joe biden ended up being elected, there would be some parallels between the two that were too hard to miss. Yeah, you know, coming to power at a moment where the infrastructure of the world is either under stress and strain or is fully broken. Its a moment of global consciousness not simply intellectually but in a very tactile sense. The most tactile sense because the pandemic is a global phenomena. Fdr was very articulate in the way that bill clinton and barack obama were arctic late and george w. Bush too in an emerging fact. But the what were living through right now is that this is no longer a subject of kind of blue sky conversations but the world has in fact become so interconnected that our fates are inextricably linked. You know, truman was a longtime legislator who was as george w. Bush might say misunderestimated a great deal until he became to power and you would have not bet in the same way with i think joe biden you wouldnt have bet 18 months before harry truman became president that this was going to happen. He was a compromise choice to go on the ticket in 1944. And one of the things about predicting history this is an old observation of arthur schlesingers. He said if you had been in 1940, if you had said that the next three president s would be an obscure senator from missouri, a not very prominent officer in the army and a harvard undergraduate, you would be wrong. So its sort of it puts our predictive capacities in context. Yeah. You know, willie, it becomes very obvious that this vision of the world that began with harry truman and those that were president , the creation is going to continue again now as it did from truman through reagan through bush 41 and now once again through joe bidens administration. Yeah, Tony Blinkens speech was a rejection of the isolationism we have seen over the last four years and also a rejection of Foreign Policy as financial transaction, as so often donald trump has viewed it. Were getting ripped off by this country, getting ripped off by nato and the nato allies. What did you hear from the team, not only tony blinken, but the Team Announced by joe biden. What is that vision of the world which if you just erase the last 4 1 2 years is a familiar one to anyone whos watched american Foreign Policy. Willie, i heard competence, experience. This is a team that joe biden will feel comfortable delegating authority to. I saw a group of people who have a demonstrated capacity to Work Together. I have covered so many administrations where National Security advisers and secretaries of state, secretaries of defense were at war. They were just so hungry for media attention, for space in the National Debate thats not going to be true with this team. I think tony blinken said it clearly as did president elect biden. We want to restore americas alliances which are the heart of American Power and in a sense thats going to be easy because we have a world waiting for the return of a more traditional kind of american leadership. I want to note the way its going to be hard. The truth we all know is that you cant turn back the clock. History doesnt move backwards. Its always moving forward. Were in a different place than we were when donald trump became president. Hes done damage to americas standing, to the worlds confidence. But in other ways the world has moved on, so my biggest hope for this team is that rather than simply try to recreate what was, theyll reimagine what American Power connected to our allies, connected to our values, to traditional themes of american Foreign Policy can be in the future. But if its simply an atavistic return to the good old days thats not going to be enough. And Claire Mccaskill, i talk about your knowledge of truman, affinity for truman. Youre a truman fan because you served in a seat and you know about him, and by the way, thank you for hosting the event at the Truman Library last week for joe. It was incredible. You could really see how engaged you are in sort of the incredible impact his presidency has had on the world. First of all, let me say about joe biden and harry truman. I think joe biden is the first president since truman that regularly uses the word malarkey. That is true. That is a word right out of trumans vocabulary. Very plain spoken. Very humble at his essence. He was kind of taken by the fact that he had been thrust into this job and he was every day he hunkered down and tried to get to the basics, what would be the best thing for the future of america. He left the presidency as joe knows. He and i have talked about this very, very unpopular, but lets think about why he was so unpopular when he left. Lets tick off the list of courageous decisions he made that would have polled probably in the teens. Firing mcarthur. Integrating the armed services. The recognition of israel. Pushing very hard a robust Foreign Aid Program at a time that america was still in pain from a bitter depression that left everyone economically insecure. The notion that he was able in a bipartisan way to push that truman doctrine through the senate and through the house was really is astounding in light of how the political winds were blowing at that time. And joe, id love you to speak about that and the difference between what joe biden is facing right now in terms of polarization in congress and the skill that truman had actually getting republicans on board for what was not a very popular thing in america. No, and it was. A very popular thing in america especially because we had just gotten out of world war ii as you mentioned. Americans were exhausted. We had a long history of being isolationists in peacetime. We talked about this, claire, at the Truman Library, jon and i spoke about this at the smithsonian earlier this week. So he had to get a warweary country back on war footing and tell them just two years after winning the great war that the soviet union, our ally, was now our adversary who had designs in europe much in the same way that Adolph Hitler had a decade earlier. Jon meacham, truman did leave with 22 Approval Rating but as we mentioned we are the beneficiaries of the rating, we are the beneficiaries of the tough, unpopular decisions that harry truman made. It is in large part why the American Century exploded in the 40s and 50s and over the next several decades and its also why the United States became the indispensable power on the world stage and remained that way. Absolutely. And he to me, the marvelous thing about truman like lincoln and i would argue George Herbert walker bush among others, they were the right person for the moment. Some of that is retrospective, but one of the instincts in human nature is to tell ourselves a coherent story. But the other thing that gives i think confidence to president s is the journey of harry truman. The i have talked to more than a few of them who understand that the 22 in real time may be the price to be paid for the monuments of of the future. And not that theyre playing for monuments but they are human beings. Everybody wants to be harry truman now. Nobody wanted to be truman in 1952 and 53. So and i remember going through this with the conversations with george h. W. Bush. Remember, he got 39 of the country to vote to rehire him in 1992. And yet, as the years went by, the decisions he had made for the good of the country that were not for his own political gain have come to be seen as the right ones. And so when he died, he died a much more esteemed figure. Whats the lesson between truman and bush in that sense . The lesson is do what you think is right. Put the good of the country ahead of your personal gain and play the long game. And, you know, i think you have quoted before. You know, truman said he never slept better than when he made a hard decision but he thought it was the right decision. If you do what you think is right, often it also if you challenge your base of supporters, thats what history remembers. You know . Whats the one thing we remember about nixon thats certainly clearly positive . Its the epa, which was against the base of his party and going to china. Lyndon johnson and race, you would not have bet on november 22, 1963, that Lyndon Johnson would have end up playing that role and you would not have bet in 1945 that harry truman would have become a global thinker. The great news is have president s who want to learn,er who open to new experiences and seeing the world not only through their own eyes but through their adversaries and their allies and their advisers and have some guts that in fact if youre president of the United States youre not just playing for next week but for the next generation. Doris Kearns Goodwin said that lbj was jealous of truman for being able to sleep at night after the tough decisions. Everybody stay put right here. Well continue our conversation. Still ahead, our conversation with former secretary of state Madeleine Albright whose own family felt the impacts of communism in europe firsthand. Youre watching a special hour of morning joe. Well be right back. Special hour of morning joe. Well be right back. music swells dog barking music fades exhales experience the power of sanctuary at the lincoln wish list sales event. Sign and drive off in a new lincoln with zero down, zero due at signing, and a complimentary first months payment. [announcer] forget about vacuuming for up to a month. Shark iq robot deep cleans and empties itself into a base you empty as little as once a month. And unlike standard robots that bounce around it cleans row by row. If its not a shark, its just a robot. Lets see. Whoa . Ot, oculus. Someone please help of course. 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Right here, i want to say that no one appreciates more than i the bipartisan cooperation in Foreign Affairs which has been enjoyed by this administration. [ applause ] we are back with a special hour of morning joe and joe, you listen to that speech right there, that was the state of the Union Address in 1950 delivered by president truman talking about bipartisanship. We are starting to hear echos of that, a return to some modicum of partisanship. Is it naive to think that we can achieve some of that with joe biden and his relationships in the senate . No, i dont think its naive at all. And for those that think its impossible to strike a bipartisan coalition, go back to where harry truman found in 1947 when i write about dean atkinson receiving the two notes from the British Ambassador informing the United States they could no longer defend greece or turkey against soviet aggression and that if the United States didnt get involved not only in those two countries, but also in stemming the tide of communism across all of europe that freedom was at risk. Western civilization was at risk. Well, when truman got those notes in early 1947, the Republican Party had just taken control back of the United States senate and the house of representatives for the First Time SinceHerbert Hoover was routed by fdr. I dont think anybody thats read history of fdrs administration would consider fdr to be especially gracious to the republican minority and so they were chafing under fdr and were ready to show some independence. And the last thing they wanted to do was to help another democratic president especially in the field of Foreign Policy and yet, david ignatius, truman immediately started talking to arthur vandenburg. He immediately started to republicans and as robert isaacingson mentioned this week, they would get into the cars late at night and would drive over to the chairman of the Foreign Relations townhouse in washington and they would talk to vandenburg and update him with what had been on moving on in the day. Because he built that relationship, vandenburg proved to be a crucial bridge between harry truman and the rest of the Republican Party and this was a Republican Party that had been isolationist. Had told Woodrow Wilson flat out, no, were not going to be engaged in europe and the rest of the league of nations after world war i, but truman being a creature of the United States senate like joe biden being a creature of the United States senate knew that in the words of bismarck, politics was the art of the possible, the art of the attainable and the art of this and i love this, the art of the next best thing. Thats something that joe biden understands as much as anybody in washington, d. C. Joe, as you explained in your book, truman knew from the start he had to reach out. He was not well known. Joe biden has a much easier time of it. Hes been ex his experience has been in government. He knows a wide range of people at home and abroad. When Franklin Roosevelt died sailors at sea on our fleet in the pacific wept bitterly thinking that the war might never be won. Japanese propaganda announced at last victory was possible because the Great American leader was gone and harry truman knew he had to reach out and build a national consensus. I have always thought, joe, this is one of the things that i love about your book. You illustrate the win in which the internationalism which comes from the heartland, from places like missouri, from the arkansas William Fulbright later, the montana mike manse field, that internationalism has a resonance throughout the country and throughout the world. And i think that biden, although hes a creature of the east coast, has that basic bedrock american feel and i hope that his instinct is to reach out as trumans was to republicans in the house and senate. Hes better equipped than any democrat who could have become president to do that. And the question is whether the republicans are ready to take him up on it. Vandenburg and other republicans as you say had a lot to lose. They wanted power again. They didnt want to share power, but truman made them understand that americas interests had to come first. And thats what you hope above all joe biden will be able to communicate and the people like Mitch Mcconnell even will be able to understand and embrace. Claire, we actually dont know yet who is going to control the senate as we wait for those two runoff elections in the state of georgia. But is it powerful that joe biden served so long with so many of the senators . Are personal relationships that meaningful in getting things done . Will Mitch Mcconnell suddenly come to the table with joe biden in a way he maybe wouldnt with nancy pelosi . How do you see the dynamic changing if at all . If anybody could do it it would be joe biden. I remember back in the Obama Administration and i remember when there was a time to count noses and twist arms on votes. And for barack obama calling senators was like telling them to eat his spinach. This was not his favorite thing to do. To back slap and to talk and to call and, you know, frankly, ever go up to the hill. On the other hand, joe biden did that job a lot for barack obama. He loves the personal relationships he developed in the senate. Those in leadership, those that are ranking members and chairs, regardless of who had the majority, have known joe biden for decades and they really like him. Hes a nice guy and he will reach out personally to them. Now, if they rebuff him, if he publicly tries so hard, i think it makes it very difficult for them politically and they have six seats up in two years that arent going to be a walk in the park for Mitch