Jon Meacham and Amna Nawaz examine the state of our democracy on 'Settle In'

Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Amna Nawaz: We turn now to our PBS video podcast “Settle In” and an episode with Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian and bestselling author Jon Meacham. We talked about his latest book, “American Struggle,” which looks back at historical texts to tell us more about who we are today and why he still has hope in the state of our democracy.

Here’s part of that conversation.

Jon Meacham, Presidential Historian: There’s a difference between optimism and hope, right? Hope is the opposite of fear.

I am still full of hope that we can construct a present and a future commensurate with the aspirations of the Declaration of Independence and the country that abolished slavery and preserved the union and extended suffrage and did away with Jim Crow.

But the same country that did away with Jim Crow created Jim Crow, right? The same country that extended suffrage denied suffrage. The same country that abolished slavery protected slavery. So it’s never fully light versus dark.

I thought, after Charlottesville, after the tone and the chaos of the first Trump term, I thought the country would say, you know what, we wanted to send a message to the establishment. The world as it’s taken shape since — hmm, really, since the mid 1960s has not been commensurate with our cares and concerns. So get it together.

I thought that message had been sent and that people, having sent it, would realize that the messenger was now actually causing more harm than good. And in 2020, that was proven right. President Biden’s been elected. There’s a certain return of gravity. As ever, history confounds us. Human nature confounds us.

Because in the midst of that return of gravity was the introduction, to shift metaphors, of a particularly devastating virus into the body politic, which is the denial of full, free and fair elections if you don’t like the result. And so the undermining of trust and the ways in which the will of the people is expressed was something I didn’t foresee.

Amna Nawaz: It’s worth noting you’re close to President Biden. You have called him a friend. You have called him an American hero. You have advised him on his speeches.

Understanding there were a lot of other forces at play, the pandemic as you mentioned, and a lot of other things happening in the country bubbling up for a generation at least, how do you look back now on what President Biden as a leader and his administration did or didn’t do that also helped to get us where we are today?

And not just the decision to run again, right, which has been called into question and examined a dozen different ways, but also maybe not going after some of the officials from the first Trump administration the way some Democrats wanted them to. How do you look at that now?

Jon Meacham: So the first answer before I blather on is, I’m not sure. My friend Michael Beschloss, our friend Michael Beschloss likes to say it takes 20, 25 years to be able to assess a presidency in historical terms, as opposed to journalistic ones. And I think that’s true.

It was true for Truman. It was true for George Herbert Walker Bush. And it’s going to be true for President Biden. What happened with President Biden and choosing to run again was in many ways a classic tragedy. And I mean it this way.

The personal characteristics that enabled Joe Biden from 1972 until 2020 to survive and even ultimately thrive amid immense personal tragedy and remarkable political setback and stasis, right, those characteristics prevented him from stepping away.

I do not think — I would bet the mortgage on this. I don’t think President Biden was clinging to power because he wanted an airplane or because he loved power so much. It was a result of his resilience, his determination to keep moving no matter what, and not ever surrendering.

And he believed that he was the person who was the catcher in the rye, if you will, between the country and Trump, President Trump. And he was wrong. But this is — from Greek tragedy through Shakespeare, this is a fundamental human drama. The characteristics that propelled him to the pinnacle of power prevented him from doing what he needed to do to step away from it.

Do I wish that history had turned in a different way? Do I wish President Biden had made different decisions in his last two years? Absolutely. What in one season was admirable resilience became in a different season a blindness to reality.

Amna Nawaz: And you can watch that full episode of “Settle In” on our YouTube page or wherever you get your podcasts.