AMNA NAWAZ: On this Memorial Day, Judy Woodruff
is back with the latest from the "NewsHour"
Bookshelf.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Pulitzer Prize-winning author
Jon Meacham is best known for his presidential
biographies of Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson
and most recently George Herbert Walker Bush.
Last month, Meacham delivered a eulogy during
the funeral service for former first lady
Barbara Bush.
"The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better
Angels" is Meacham's latest book.
And, Jon Meacham, welcome back to the "NewsHour."
JON MEACHAM, Author, "The Soul of America:
The Battle for Our Better Angels": Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Thank you for being here.
JON MEACHAM: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, you write that the idea
for this came when you had a colleague call
you up after the terrible events in Charlottesville,
Virginia, last summer.
JON MEACHAM: Yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: A woman died in the white nationalist
rally.
JON MEACHAM: Right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What -- how did this get from
that to the book?
JON MEACHAM: Well, it kept rattling around
in my head that we have been here before.
American history, we tend to think of in nostalgic
terms.
And nostalgia is a powerful narcotic.
But in a way, it does a disservice to the
past.
It suggests that somehow or another the struggles
of the past were not as pitched or as contentious
as our own.
And what we have done again and again in American
history is run it very close to try to get
things right.
But we have always managed to get to higher
ground.
And what I wanted to try to figure out is,
to what extent is this period we're in now,
which feels dispiriting and depressing -- no
matter where you stand on the political spectrum,
people are unhappy -- how does this compare
to moments in the past where division seemed
to be the rule, not the exception?
JUDY WOODRUFF: Did you find true parallels
then?
JON MEACHAM: Well, Mark Twain is supposed
to have said that history not repeat itself,
but it does rhyme.
(LAUGHTER)
JON MEACHAM: History's not -- shouldn't be
cultural Zoloft, but it can give us perspective.
It can give us a sense of proportion.
At what point should we light our hair on
fire?
At what point should -- just to pick an example
at random -- should a given tweet really upset
us?
And trying to create that sense of proportion
by putting this moment in context with Andrew
Johnson, a president during Reconstruction
who issued a state paper saying that African-Americans
were genetically incapable of self-government,
or Joe McCarthy, who chased after innocent
people using the media of the day to create
this hysterical feeling.
These were moments that were incredibly difficult,
and yet we now have a country, even now, for
all our problems, that, by and large, we can
be proud of.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, take us inside one of those
moments.
I mean, the Ku Klux Klan rising in the 1920s
and '30s.
JON MEACHAM: Right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: How did the country grapple
with that?
And how did it get through it?
JON MEACHAM: Well, there are parallels, because
there was a great deal of immigrant -- anxiety
about immigrants.
There was a great deal of anxiety about global
affairs, because we had come out of the First
World War.
And the middle-class, working-class white
movement refounded the Ku Klux Klan.
Members of Congress, there were senators,
there were governors who were explicitly members
of the Klan.
How did we get through it?
One thing is, Calvin Coolidge limited immigration,
so took some of the oxygen out of the fire.
But, also, a free press said, this is not
who we are.
Harding and Coolidge said, this is not who
we are.
And, ultimately, our better angels prevailed,
at least briefly.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You also write -- there are
so many other examples.
But one of the principal ones is the Red Scare
after World War II, the 1950s, the McCarthy
era.
And Roy Cohn was a figure, someone who, coincidentally,
was a mentor to Donald Trump.
JON MEACHAM: Yes, we hope it's coincidental.
(LAUGHTER)
JON MEACHAM: I think, in many ways, the early
1930s and the early 1950s are the most analogous
periods.
The early 1930s, we had a real question about
whether democratic capitalism would survive
the decade.
President Roosevelt could have assumed the
powers of a dictator if he had been so inclined.
In the early 1950s, Joe McCarthy gives a speech
in February of 1950 at Wheeling, West Virginia,
saying, I have in my hand the names of 205
communists.
He didn't tweet it, but he might as well have.
And it lasted about four years.
And what happened was, he understood the media.
He understood how wire services worked.
He understood radio.
He understood television.
He understood how to control the narrative.
Any of this sound familiar?
JUDY WOODRUFF: Yes.
JON MEACHAM: But what happens?
The people in Congress stood up.
Margaret Chase Smith, Republican of Maine,
was one of the first.
They ended up censuring him.
And they ended up arguing that America is
most herself when we widen the definition
of what we mean by equality, not when we narrow
it.
JUDY WOODRUFF: One of the questions one comes
away with is, can it really be compared to
today, when you have got this explosion of
social media, Twitter, Facebook, and all the
rest of it, just this nonstop environment
of news and conflict?
JON MEACHAM: Well, but if you -- imagine if
you lived in a pre-print universe.
Having a newspaper come every week or every
month seems like a suddenly crowded arena.
Imagine the 1920s, when radio suddenly nationalizes
the culture.
Imagine the early 1950s, when television explodes.
I think it's somewhat self-referential and
self-defeating for us to think that this is
the worst time ever.
Just because something's happened before doesn't
mean it's not happening now, but we can't,
I think, suggest that our problems are insuperable,
because they're not unique.
There has always been the struggle in the
-- what I call the American soul.
People say, oh, the soul of the country is
X.
Actually, no.
In Hebrew and Greek, it means life or breath.
So, in the American soul, we have room for
Dr. King, but we also have room for the Klan.
And every era is defined by which side of
that -- of that dichotomy wins out for a given
period of time.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Everyone would agree the country
is deeply divided right now, no matter which
side you're on.
JON MEACHAM: Yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But there are a lot of people
who believe this president, this presidency
is exactly what they wanted.
JON MEACHAM: Their cares and concerns cannot
be dismissed.
I wrote this book not because American presidents
in the past have always risen to the occasion,
but because the incumbent rises to it so seldom.
And I do think there is -- there are lessons
to be learned here.
I wish the president and those who serve him
would realize that posterity rewards the presidents
who reach beyond their base, who try to unify
the country, and not simply cater to a given
audience and a given predisposed set of supporters.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, finally, how much does
it matter that this is a president who, I
think many of the people around and say, has
not paid that much attention to American history?
JON MEACHAM: Oh, I think he's paid almost
none.
I had one conversation with him, and it was
it was like pulling teeth, except pulling
teeth might have been more fun.
All I can say is that he's living in a house
where there are portraits of people.
Someday, his portrait will hang there.
And what I would hope we would do is, as he
walks down those hallways, if he looks up
from his phone, he would realize that he will
want to be seen in a warmer and better light
than he is right now.
And, as Winston Churchill once said, the future
is unknowable, but the past should give us
hope.
So I think we have to hold on to that hope.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Jon Meacham with another book.
This one is "The Soul of America: The Battle
for Our Better Angels."
Thank you.
JON MEACHAM: Thanks, Judy.
