[Abridged] Presidential Histories

What's it like to be on the inside of a dark horse presidential campaign? 

Chelsea Waliser knows.

Waliser was an Obama campaign regional field director during the lead up to first-in-the-nation 2008 Iowa Caucus. For nearly a year, she hired, trained, and organized volunteers for a candidate who was viewed by many as a long shot. What drove her to Obama? What's it like to spend a year of your life in Iowa? And how did Obama&...

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." - Barack Obama, on the campaign trail, Feb. 5, 2008

Nothing was ever going to come easy to Barack Obama, and many thought he was crazy for trying, but belief himself was something Obama had in spades, and it lifted him to the presidency of the United States. Follow along a...

Sahba Azami was born an Afghan refugee.
Today, she's an Afghan refugee once more.
But, for nearly 20 years, she was not a refugee. She was simply an Afghan. And the future was bright.
Brought back to the country of her parents' birth after the United States toppled the Taliban, Sahba joined a vanguard of young women who were going to make the most of the precious opportunity that had been denied every generati...

Donald Trump does not talk like a politician. But where some hear truth telling, and others hear something unhinged, professor Jennifer Mercieca hears a consistent rhetorical strategy designed to bind audiences to Trump and sever them from everyone else.

A strategy good enough to win the presidency not just once, but twice.

Communication professor Jennifer Mercieca, author of Demagogue for President: The Rhetorica...

"I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." - George W Bush, World Trade Center Site, September 14, 2001

George W. Bush did not get the presidency he thought he would. He expected to be the tax, entitlement, and education reform guy. Not the war on terror guy.

But the deadliest attack in World History will do that to you.

"It's the economy, stupid" - Clinton advisor James Carville, 1992.

Bill Clinton left office with a 66% approval rating. This was in large part because 81% of Americans approved his handling of the economy - 71% said the 1999 was the best economy of their lifetimes (according to Gallup).

But how much credit does a president really deserve for an economy? And how does Clinton's record on free tr...

“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.’” — Bill Clinton's inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1993.

Bill Clinton has the highest end-of-term approval rating of any president in modern history - 66%. But that doesn't mean things came easy. It doesn't even mean he succeeded in what he set out to do! Follow along as Clinton rises from Arkansas poverty to become the youn...

For the third consecutive year, four podcasters got together to record their annual Friendsgiving History Podcast Spectacular. Tune in as I'm joined by three fellow history podcasters and friends for a roundtable discussion on U.S. and presidential history. The other podcasters are:

• Howard Dorre, Plodding through the Presidents
• Jerry Landry, Presidencies of the United States
• Alycia, Civics & Coffee 

Happy Th...

George H.W. Bush presided over 4 of the most consequential years in world history. Before he entered office, a Cold War divided East and West: Democratic Capitalism vs Dictatorial Communism. After he left office, Democratic Capitalism had won. How did Bush usher in an age of American hegemony? And what role did he play in dramas ranging from the reunification of Germany to the independence of former soviet states like Russia and Uk...

“The Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push again. And I’ll say to them: ‘Read my lips, no new taxes.’” — George Bush's GOP Nomination Acceptance speech, Aug. 18, 1988.

"Poor George [Bush], he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." - Texas Governor Ann Richards at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.

G...

Americans have long had a complicated relationship with taxes. We don't like paying them, but we love the things they pay for. In the decades after World War II, both political parties agreed - taxes are worth it.
Then came Ronald Reagan and the anti-tax movement.
Michael Graetz, a Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale University and Columbia University and author of The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked ...

On September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned recently-resigned president Richard Nixon of any crimes he may have committed in the presidency, and the pardon has never been the same since. Law Professor Kimberly Wehle, author of the new book Pardon Power: How the Pardon System Works - and Why, discusses the origin and history of the presidential pardon and the danger its potential abuse poses to the future of democracy.
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Pandemics, political violence, partisans recognizable by the color of their hat - it may sound novel, but it's been with us practically since the beginning of the republic. Historian Lindsay Chervinsky, author of the new book Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic, discusses the wildly volatile John Adams administration (1797-1801) and the lessons it offers as we face our own modern polit...

"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem," - Ronald Reagan's inaugural address, January 20, 1981.

For the first 50 years after the onset of the Great Depression and the election of Franklin Roosevelt, the United States had been led by politicians who believed government held the power to make life better for the American people. Then came Ronald Reagan, one of the most talent...

When unemployment and inflation began to rise side by side in the 1970s, nobody knew what to do. Economic theory suggested it should have been impossible, and yet the numbers couldn't be denied. Stanford Historian Jennifer Burns, author of Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative, discusses how American presidents of the 70's tried and failed to curb stagflation, what led Carter to Paul Volcker, and how Volcker's medic...

It's commonly accepted wisdom that presidents are less effective in their second terms, when the term limits of the 22nd amendment turn them into Lame Ducks who cannot be elected to office a third time.

But what if that common wisdom is wrong?

Former NYU economics professor William Silber, author of The Power of Nothing to Lose: The Hail Mary Effect in Politics, War and Business, argues that lame ducks only ...

When Jimmy Carter won the presidency, his Democratic party held a 61-37 majority in the Senate and a 292-143 majority in the House. Why then, with such a clear governing majority, were his relations with Congress so poor, and his agenda so challenged?

Jonathan Alter, a long-time journalist and author of numerous books on the presidency, including His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life,  discusses how Carter's outsider st...

"The erosion of confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and political fabric of the nation," - Jimmy Carter, July 15, 1979

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Jimmy Carter may have been the luckiest presidential candidate and unluckiest president in American history. Chasing the presidency after Watergate and the pardon of Nixon had crushed American faith in its leaders, Carter's outsider message was the righ...

From 1953 to 1969, the Supreme Court was a vanguard of progressive change for the United States. But then came Tricky Dick.
Michael Bobelian, author of Battle For The Marble Palace: Abe Fortas, Lyndon Johnson, Earl Warren, Richard Nixon and the Forging of the Modern Supreme Court, discusses how presidential candidate Richard Nixon and senate conservatives blocked LBJ's efforts to cement a progressive court for years to com...