ACUTV proudly presents
On Campus with your host, ACU
vice president and dean of campus life,
Dr. Gary McCaleb.
Here's Gary.
on campus today,
we're pleased to welcome Dr. Paul Birria,
former LBJ professor of history at
see you now devoting full time
to the writing in the field of history.
Thank you for being with us today.
My pleasure, Gary.
I'm looking forward to this visit as we
talk because this whole subject of the
American presidency is one that you've
especially given attention to.
And and it's always a fascinating one,
fascinating one to talk about.
But I think be interesting
if we begin by asking you
if you were to tell a little bit about
the two books that you've already written
in that area.
Well, the first one, Gary, came out in
1981 and I called it presidential
anecdotes.
It's a series of essays on each of the
presidents, beginning with Washington
and then going down to Ronald
Reagan and then accompanying each
of the essays. I had some stories
that I thought emphasized
what their personalities, their
characters, outlooks were.
Now, some of the stories are dramatic.
Some of them are kind of sad, but
a lot of them are funny to D.C.
And my idea was an experiment I
wanted in the essays.
I was concentrating on what they were
like as human beings.
And then I tried to link them up with
stories that would highlight
their character traits and so on.
And then the second book, which
came out in 84, I
called the presidential campaigns
and there I had an essay on each of the
campaigns, each of the elections,
beginning with Washington in 1980,
in 1789, and then ending with
the 1980 campaign in which Ronald
Reagan won.
And then I had each other accompanied
by highlight's, campaign highlights,
stories, funny things that happen,
maybe dramatic events to see.
So that's the format of both of the
books, you know, talking
about the presidential campaigns,
the whole.
Everything that attaches itself to the
presidential campaign in America
creates quite a phenomenon, it seems
like, in our country.
From your perspective, is there anything
really like this anywhere else in
the world?
I don't I don't really think so.
For one thing, our campaigns, as
you know, are very long.
They go on for months, sometimes
for a couple of years, really.
In Britain, campaigns are
just a few weeks, as you know.
And then American campaigns are,
as you know, by all sorts of hoopla,
um, parades of campaign
songs and so on.
And the one Britisher
called referred to our campaigns as
the great American shindig.
And one I Apley, I think, and
I like that phrase.
I used it in my book.
The thing I found out was that our
campaigns are serious,
many of them serious issues are
discussed, but they're also a lot of fun.
A lot of silly things are done in
them. A lot of silly things are said,
some of them.
And the old days used to be pretty
scurrilous, too.
There's an awful lot of mudslinging in
the 19th century.
So I found that they were serious, they
were silly, but they scurrilous, too.
I think they've become more genteel
in recent years.
Actually, that's an
interesting observation because
in some ways I think people would have
thought of the old time as being the
more the gentlemanly
era of our society than today.
I know, but I see the point you're
making.
Yeah, it's interesting.
We think of people like Washington and
Jefferson as being such
revered figures, which of course they
are. But in their own time,
their enemies threw mud
at the Jefferson
was all called all sorts of things when
he was running for president in eighteen
hundred and George Washington, the great
George Washington, when he finally
decided not to run for a third
term and issued his farewell address,
some of his enemies said, well, it's
about time you retired.
I wish you'd retired four years before.
It's hard to believe, isn't it?
That is when you look
at the long term perspective
from Washington to Reagan,
other than the fact that you've said
it's become more genteel, are there any
other major shifts of either emphasis
or style or approach
to campaigning that you could pinpoint?
I think yes.
In recent years, of course, as you know,
television has come to play a
dominant role in our campaigns.
I think it's changed the basic
nature of our campaigns.
Now, a days the voter
gets his or her impression of
a candidate from television.
And this means image is important.
Do you see? Sure.
And so
now we have media advisers.
Every candidate has to have a media
adviser.
They take lessons, you know, an
allocution.
They have polls, poll takers
and their staffs who will, you
know, from day to day try to sense what
public attitudes are toward the campaign
as it proceeds.
So it's become a much more
complicated and a much
more carefully planned event
than it used to be in the old days.
I guess it's the bottom line.
The question that is most important
for us to ask is, does this
great American shindig,
both in the past and in the present,
serve us as people well
in providing a process
through which the best
man for president has
been elected?
Of course, I think you realize
a lot of that depends on your own
personal view and whether your
candidate wins or not.
I would say this an awful
lot of emphasis, of course, is on image.
And we all know that President Reagan
comes across marvelously on
television.
People who even disagree violently with
his position on certain
issues still are impressed by his
appearance.
On the other hand, I think we we usually
know what the candidate or what
the candidate's positions are.
You know, apart from image, I
think that was true in 84.
I think the differences between Mondale
and Reagan came across quite clearly
on television.
I think we usually know what we're voting
for.
Who is you look all the way through
the gamut.
Who are the the master campaign
campaigners?
Well, certainly Franklin Roosevelt
was one of the best.
Now, of course, he was good in person
and he was also good on the radio.
He was excellent. I'd say he was the
first great radio
orator.
Now, how he would have been on
television, I'm not sure.
It's hard to say.
He was, after all, crippled.
He couldn't move, move around.
I don't know whether that would have made
any difference.
Now, another good campaigner, I think,
was Adlai Stevenson back
in the 1950s.
Now, he ran twice against
Eisenhower and lost both times.
But he was another
good, very good speaker.
So I'd have to single out a loser
as well as the winner.
Some campaigners, somebody
like Harry Truman, was not very good at
reading ghostwritten speeches.
He was awkward at that.
He wasn't good at it.
But when he was giving
these short little talks, you know, from
the rear platform of the train when he
was barnstorming cross-country, then he
was good.
He he makes some short, sizzling
Truman esque remarks, you see, and then
he'd bring his wife out.
How do you, like, meet the boss?
And he'd bring best out and
meet the boss's boss, and he'd bring his
daughter Margaret out.
The crowds loved it.
So he was good at that kind of campaign,
you see. So there is a good deal.
Let's just talk, if we could, about some
of the more recent ones and if you would
give your evaluation of how they measure
up as a campaigner.
For example, you've already mentioned
Ronald Reagan's. Let's go to Jimmy
Carter. How would you evaluate him as a
kid now?
Carter, I don't think that came
through so well on television.
It's an interesting thing.
People who were close to him said he was
always better and face
to face relations with
a smaller group.
Then he came through loud and clear.
But when he was reading speeches on
television, he
didn't do so well.
I think I think that's probably quite
true.
What about Nixon?
Well, I don't think Nixon did so well
either, and that's that's an interesting
person to mention.
You know, since 1960, we've had these
television debates and
there's no doubt that when he confronted
John F. Kennedy in the first debate
in 1960, he didn't do so well,
partly because of his appearance.
And apparently he had been ill.
He wasn't feeling so good
at the time.
And somehow or other people
who heard the two of them on radio
thought that came out about even the
people who saw them on television were
convinced that Jack Kennedy, you know,
carried the honors.
It's interesting because you're saying if
they were listening to it, it wasn't
making millions.
If they were watching.
If they were watching it.
That's right.
Nixon had a five o'clock shadow.
He looked, as I say, he's been in the
hospital with an affected knee.
He looks sort of pale and emaciated.
And Jack Kennedy just looked
dashing, you know, comfortable, sure.
Of himself.
And the image contrast made
a difference. There isn't any question.
But what don't forget,
Nixon was better known at the time.
He'd been vice president for
two terms and Kennedy
had been in the Senate. He didn't have
that national profile.
But out of that first debate, he won
that national attention.
Now, you said an image contrast
made a big difference.
Is that is that good?
Is that bad or.
Uh, well, for some of us who
take the issue seriously, we're
really bothered by this.
Why? After all, I keep thinking,
how would Thomas Jefferson have been on
television?
Thomas Jefferson was shy in public
D.C. He he quit
going over to Congress and making
speeches to Congress, D.C.
because of that Abraham Lincoln,
he wrote beautiful English, his
we still read Lincoln,
but he wasn't an impressive speaker.
He had a, you know, sort of a Midwestern
rustic accent.
And I just wondered how he would have
gone on television because they used to
say he was ugly, too.
He used to say that about himself.
I don't know. I think it was exaggerated.
But I've wondered sometimes it seems to
me perhaps we're putting too much
emphasis on how you come off
on the tube.
That bothers me.
Is there any way that that can be
compensated for or overcome or is
it going to be something that we're just
going to have to?
I think it's something we're going to
have to accept. We live in the age of
television.
I mean, there's no use lamenting it.
We have to see where we go from
here. This is my editing.
You know, an interesting additional
factor to that, it seems to me, is that
so many times when the campaign
are not necessarily the president, but
often the president is campaigning
his message over television
as far as advertisements are concerned,
or 30 second spots or 60
second spots, and you don't get a lot of
content as far as the issues
are concerned.
I think you're right.
By the way, another thing becomes
important. It's what reporters
in recent years have been calling gaffes.
They picked up that French word.
I guess it means a booboos slip.
And these have become important,
you know, was really tough on forward,
wasn't it? I was thinking of that one.
Now, that was television again, where
for some reason I've never been able to
figure out what he meant at some point.
And the answer to a question from one
reporter, he made the statement
that Poland was not under Soviet
domination.
And The New York Times reporter said, no,
wait a minute, let me hear that again.
And Ford repeated it.
Well, then afterward,
he tried to correct
his statement. You see that by then
this has made headlines.
See, reporters like to when
they're covering a campaign, you know,
that long hours of boredom covering
campaign. So any little thing like a
gaffe gives them something to write
about. In fact, the reporters, even
this was back in 1976
when Ford was running against Carter.
And one reporter that I was reading
about had covered Ford
all day once.
And he said then they haven't done it.
He hasn't pulled the gaffe.
You know, I've got nothing interesting
to send back to my local paper,
you know, additional that they made such
a big deal about the fact he once
hit a golf ball and it hit a spectator
and he once stumbled coming off a plane
or something. And I know and it really
got exaggerated way beyond.
I think it got very exaggerated.
Ford is a physical.
He's an athlete.
He's as he said himself, I'm a
physical activist.
And if you're active physically, you're
going to hit some bumps and stumbles and
so on.
So I agree.
I think that was exaggerated.
When you take a break here for just a
second. When we come back, you've got
another book coming up about presidents
wives that we might talk OK with his good
day with Paul Butler.
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It's Radio Worth every minute.
We're back on campus and continuing to
visit with Dr. Paul Boler, historian
and author, and the book that
you're currently working on is about the
other side or the other half.
The president, the president's wife.
That's right.
What made you decide
to do a book in that area?
Well, I got to thinking, if I really
want to know these presidents, I know
something about the women that
they married and I'm
in the middle of it now.
I've done a lot of hard work, but I'm
learning a lot. And I really
have noticed that. I'm getting to
understand the the presidents better
as I come to know their wives.
Can you demonstrate or illustrate that in
the case or to you, in other words, how
well, how the wife helps you understand
the president himself?
Well, one of the examples that comes to
mind right away is the wife
of John Quincy Adams,
the son of John Adams.
His wife, Louisa, was
brought up in London.
She was a very talented, attractive
young woman who was brought up with a
great deal of freedom.
And when she married John Quincy Adams,
he came from a rather narrow
lewington background
and she found that she had to adjust
to this.
So it was a kind of a strained
marriage. For many years.
She felt she was
a woman of talent.
She felt that she wanted to do something
on her own.
She was happy to be a good wife
and a good mother.
She also wanted to be an individual of
her own. And this led to great
strains between the two.
I was fascinated to find that at one
point she started
writing her memoirs, her autobiography,
and she called it The Adventures of a
Nobody.
You see here. She was married into The
Addams Family, all these famous people,
and she felt like a nobody.
Well, let me say, I found
this very interesting.
I began to understand how really
tough and hard John Quincy Adams
was.
But this has a happy ending, though,
after he lost the presidency,
had Congress and got involved in the
abolitionist movement, she became a
partner in this campaign.
And finally they began working together
and she began to feel now that
she was important, you see, in his
life.
And so the marriage became a good one.
And the current political campaigns,
we see the president's wife becoming very
active at times and very prominent
in through the media, especially
television. Nancy Reagan has
been very visible in Ronald Reagan's
administration and and
so in the past.
Yes.
Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Nixon and so
forth back.
Do you believe that in the campaigning
process the wife
is considered by the voters or
influences the voters in any way in the
selection of the president?
Well, let me say this by way of
background.
This the importance of the wife
of the president in the
campaigns and and in the
White House. This is a recent
development. In the 19th century,
the presidents wives
maintained a low profile.
Some of them, in fact, were in delicate
health, as it used to be said.
And after inauguration,
they go to bed to remain there,
you know, ailing for the rest of the
their husband's tenure of office.
I'd say it wasn't until
in a way, until you get to Eleanor
Roosevelt, you begin to get a
turning point. Eleanor, as you know,
became very much of
an activist as the wife
of a president.
Well, Bess Truman remained in the
background and Mamie
did to some extent.
But by this time, the press,
newspapers and magazines were
more curious about the wives
of the presidents.
And so you begin to find
I began to find more articles,
interviews, essays about
them.
So I don't know then
every president's wife, starting
certainly with Jackie Kennedy, felt that
they had to do something special.
Jackie really did the White
House and collected historical
furniture and things to finish up with.
And after that, each president's wife,
with the possible exception of Mrs.
Nixon, had to do something special.
Lady Bird, for example, beautification
of our highways, getting rid of
billboards.
See, and of course, as you know, Mrs.
Reagan, it's the the fight
against the drug drug epidemic
and so on. That's all a recent
development, I'd say.
So are you suggesting then that
under the current under that
kind of current situation that
the wife does become,
uh, a potential asset or a liability
to the.
And I think, for example, in being
reelected, perhaps even I
think it makes a difference,
when I went campaigning,
he took this is true.
He took Mrs. Eisenhower along with
him. And when he'd speak from the black
backed platform of the train, when
he'd finished, he did what Harry did he
bring he said, how'd you like Mamie?
By the way, if they'd had a little spat
before then, he'd say, how would you,
like, meet Mrs. Eisenhower?
You know, but in other
words, it is an asset.
And people in the Republican Party
who met Mrs. Eisenhower,
she circulated freely, you know, during
the campaign. They said, oh, boy, she's
worth, you know, 50 electoral
votes.
In other words, it does seem important.
But the wife is like
from the standpoint of the
American presidency,
we're talking so far about
the wife of the president.
But we, some people
think are coming closer and closer
to a point where we might be talking
about the husband of a president.
Do you see that
that's something or the implications of
that?
I don't doubt that it will come
some day.
I don't see it in the immediate future
because I don't see any, you know,
potential and woman as a potential
candidate.
But I have a feeling when it comes, it'll
come naturally.
I mean, after all, there have been women,
uh, heads of state and other
countries for years.
So I think when the time comes, there
won't be any real problem with it.
But I don't see it for some reason.
I don't see that in the near future.
Today in presidential campaigns, the
issue, the big issues seem to continually
be budget, defense
and then maybe
economy or
international relations and some things
like that. Have you seen major
issues shift in their importance
down through the press, your study of the
presidents, are they always been the same
major issues?
No, I think they've shifted.
I think foreign policy has,
you know, certainly since the nineteen
thirties.
Come to be a major issue
ever since the late 30s.
I think every president, every
presidential candidate has had to discuss
this in great detail.
Although I get the impression that
even in times of crises
in the world, the economy,
economic situation is crucial.
In other words, normally, if times
are good, a president
can get reelected, if
times are bad, he's sunk.
See, the people seem still to vote
and what their economic situation
is.
Herbert Hoover, for example, he
just didn't have a chance with
the Great Crash and the Depression.
And I think I think that
despite the foreign crises,
I think voters still tend to vote
on domestic issues.
To what extent? You know, in the study of
major corporations, often people say
that if you know the man,
you know the company,
Thomas Watson was IBM,
J.C. Penney was that company
and so forth.
To what extent would you say
if you know the story of the men who were
the president of the United States,
you know the story of the United States?
I think there's some truth in that.
I think that the presidents often
embody and reflect
what the country is like.
For example, Ronald
Reagan.
Well, let me put it this way.
In 1964, Barry Goldwater
ran for president as a conservative.
His views are quite similar to those of
Ronald Reagan. And he was swamped,
as you know, by LBJ.
If Ronald Reagan had won in 1964,
I don't think he would have won.
In other words, by 1980,
the country had shifted.
I think the there was a
mood of conservatism in the country
as a whole that Ronald Reagan reflected
as well as shaped himself.
Do you see what I'm saying?
Yes, I do.
Your book about anecdotes of presidents
causes me to ask this question is,
is it possible that the American people
see?
Their idea of what this president
is like and yet behind the scenes,
there's really a totally different man
when he's off camera or not in the
public,
or are we really seeing
the same person?
Well, that's that's a very good question.
There's this
gap or between the
public public person and the private
person. It makes it pretty hard
on a human being.
After all, as president,
he certainly is involved
in certain kinds of activities.
As a private person,
he he may have
interests that seem trivial.
He may just like detective stories or
to watch soap operas or something.
But if he does his job as president,
well, you can't criticize
him for, you know, relaxing
in his private life.
I think it bothers some people.
Some people like to think of their
presence as being on a heroic
scale all the time.
But this is really unfair to them.
It's what I was wondering.
I wonder if we kind of expect a level of
perfection out of them that says
it's OK for me to make a gaffe, but the
president should never make one.
That's right. Kind of.
I think.
Yeah, I think there are a lot of people
who look at it that way.
And so when you get when
you get these exposes in which they point
out that some of our presidents had
certain weaknesses, it's disappointing to
many people is the other
kind. There is a cynical kind
that just enjoys
finding the peccadilloes
of people in high office.
As you know, we call them
muckrakers.
They often go looking for
this. They just simply will not believe
that a person doesn't have flaws while
most people do have flaws, of course.
But I do think on the whole, average
American likes to admire
his president.
He likes his present to be thought well
of the broad.
You see, I think that
one of the weaknesses that Jimmy
Carter, who was a very intelligent
person, but a lot of ability, I think,
and I think he accomplished a lot.
Nevertheless, he would sometimes
take an apologetic view of
things in public.
He made a famous speech,
the crisis of confidence.
The country is in a crisis
now. He may have been right about that,
but a president doesn't get up and tell
the American people that DC, because
I've come to the conclusion that the
president, among other things, he's many
things, of course, is chief executive.
He's head of his party.
He's foreign policy leader.
He's commander in chief and so on.
I sometimes think he's also our chief
psychologist.
You know, Franklin Roosevelt, in the
midst of the depression, told
the people we have nothing to fear but
fear itself.
And he went around with a big smile on
his face and that lifted the spirits
of people and this crisis.
And I think one of Ronald Reagan's
appeals is this.
Do you see that he expresses
this great hope and
faith that problems can be solved
and that we're doing all right?
So I think Americans like that.
Is it possible for you, with
all of the study you have given to the
American presidents, to be able
to distill
two or three characteristics that you
would say apparently
are essential characteristics for
a man or a person who would be president?
I certainly think he
must have a capacity for
leadership.
He must let me put it this way first.
He he must have a sense of direction,
as he must have some idea of what he
wants to accomplish or he wants to go.
Now, this may be very broad,
very general, but I think he's got to
have that and he's got to
convince the American people that
he has this, that he is capable
of acting decisively in
a crisis.
I think that's perhaps the most important
thing. There are other things they like.
They like a present to be good
humored.
They have a nice sense of humor or they
don't like them to go too far.
They don't want to be too funny, you
know, but but I think they like that,
too.
But I think it's this feeling
of confidence, faith
in the country and ability to make
it a crisis, I think is the things that
Americans want in their leaders.
What is that? What is the sense of
humor?
Why is that important?
And I don't think Americans like people
who are too sound too pedantic to
pompous, too uptight.
I think it turns them off.
You see, I do.
And they so they do like
presidents.
Franklin Roosevelt had a nice sense of
humor. So did John
F. Kennedy.
And Reagan, as you know, was famous for
his quips, people like this.
But I don't think they'd like him joking
all the time.
Say, sure, I'm sorry, we are
out of time because it's been a
delightful visit.
Thank you for taking the time to be with
us today. I enjoyed it very much.
Gary. Thank you for being with us on
campus, the Dr. Paul Butler.