sort of came to some of the conclusions
that I have arrived at regarding what
president should aim to do the story
takes place about nine years ago in the
spring of 2009 and I received an
invitation an email the invitation from
somebody identifying himself as a member
of President Barack Obama’s White House
staff and they asked me if I wanted to
come to dinner at the White House I had
been studying presidents for quite a
while and I had met former presidents
but I had never actually I’d met one a
couple president’s father in office but
this was the first time to get serious
face time with a president Wow he was
doing what presidents do so I arrived
and found that I was one of a small
group of historians who were invited by
President Obama to come to the White
House and give him and his
administration some insight on how
previous presidents have dealt with the
problems confronting them it struck me
and some of my destroying colleagues who
were present that this was quite unusual
among presidents there it’s very rare
that presidents have any kind of
historical sensibility or for that
matter observable historical interest
but Barack Obama did maybe because he
had been a college professor and this
was like a seminar so there were about
10 of us ten of us historians one
president and I reflected on the fact
that 10 to 1 is a really good student to
teacher ratio to have 1 to 10 one pupil
and 10 professors I’ve never seen
anything like this so the dinner began
and at the beginning of the dinner the
president and his chief of staff rahm
emanuel described their impressions of
the presidency and did sort of a quick
rundown on who they consider to be the
great present
the term that they actually used were
transformative presents this is a term
from political science and it was really
clear that they had done their homework
because the immediately identified the
three presidents who are considered by a
consensus of historians and political
scientists to be the greatest of all
presidents and these are George
Washington Abraham Lincoln and Franklin
Roosevelt and they talked about how this
was the bar Washington Lincoln Roosevelt
was the bar that they were setting for
this new president and his
administration and Wow they were
speaking I was trying to figure out what
what the protocol was at an event like
this I was the guest of someone at his
house for dinner and I was trying to
figure out how forcefully I should speak
up
when I thought that what he was saying
what the premise of this meeting was was
quite wrong so you know it’s one thing
if you’re over at somebody’s house for
dinner you you don’t like to disagree
at least not disagreeably and when your
host is the President of the United
States you know it I did have to think
it over a little bit but I concluded
that the President of the United States
is a very busy man and he probably would
not have taken two hours out of his busy
schedule simply to hear himself speak
now I do know I did know that there were
other presidents who would do exactly
that thing Theodore Roosevelt used to
invite intellectuals artists people who
were distinguished in other walks of
life to the White House for dinner or
for lunch and then he would proceed to
hold forth for two hours this was not
the case in this particular dinner so I
made bold I awaited a moment when it was
a sort of commune I would then want to
interrupt but when I had a chance to
speak
said that I thought this administration
might be making a big mistake if it
aimed to achieve what George Washington
what Abraham Lincoln what Franklin
Roosevelt had accomplished and this well
I mean part of it was easy you can’t be
George Washington you can’t be the first
president unless you’re the first
president so in reality no one tries to
emulate Washington really and politics
have changed a lot since that since the
days of Washington but the idea that
Abraham Lincoln should be a model
for a presidency in the 21st century
that Franklin Roosevelt should be a
model this was something that I thought
was rather dubious now I knew I already
knew that Franklin Roosevelt was on the
mind of President Obama and his staff
because if you will recall the autumn of
2008 saw a severe financial crisis in
fact it was to that financial crisis
that I owed my invitation to the White
House
I had just published a book that very
autumn on Franklin Roosevelt and I don’t
know if any of you remember the
headlines there was there was a cover
story in Time magazine that showed a
characteristic photo of Franklin
Roosevelt in the 1930s and he’s sitting
in the back of an open-top Ford Model A
and he is greeting people he always
greeted people in the car because he
could he had no use of his legs from
polio several years earlier but he he
had a typical sort of a to his head
and he had a cigarette holder that
always went up at this jaunty angle and
there that’s what’s on the cover of Time
magazine except that the face of Barack
Obama had been photoshopped onto the
face of Franklin Roosevelt and that
caption over the picture on the cover
said Franklin Delano Oh BA MA
question mark because the question on
everybody’s mind was was the financial
crisis of 2008 going to become lead to
the Great Depression of 2009 and after
in the way that the financial crisis of
1929 led to the Great Depression of the
1930s so Barack Obama had good reason I
guess to invite somebody who knew
something or at least had published a
book recently about Franklin Roosevelt a
kiss model the Lincoln administration
Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt
was a really bad idea and I made bold to
say so and I said I think that it would
be a really good idea to keep in mind a
paradox of American political history
especially as it applies to presidents
and the paradox is this that the
greatest presidents preside over the
worst times and if you think about it
for a moment Abraham Lincoln he presided
over the Civil War there was never a
worse time in American history this was
the great disaster of American politics
in American life during the 19th century
and for Franklin Roosevelt well Franklin
Roosevelt presided over the Great
Depression the worst economic experience
in American history and then and then
World War two which was the worst five
years in the history of the world so
well so if you’re going to think I want
to be like Lincoln I want to be like
Roosevelt you might imagine in fact I’m
sure President Obama and his staff were
imagining that somehow they could graft
the success of a Lincoln or the success
of a Franklin Roosevelt on to some
somewhat less dire period but this is
this
is the essence of the paradox you don’t
get to be a great president unless the
country is in grave crisis and this for
a couple of reasons one the Constitution
is written in a way that requires the
president to divide his powers with
Congress and with the court system so a
president can’t govern as independently
as most prime ministers for example can
in parliamentary systems prime ministers
are the leaders of government by virtue
of having a majority in the parliament
in the Legislative system in the United
States that’s not the case the president
is checked the powers of the president
are checked by Congress and the courts
so in the first place the Constitution
is set up to make it difficult for
presidents to accomplish much certainly
to accomplish much independently but the
second reason and this is a reason that
is certainly goes to the heart of I’ll
call it American political culture not
so much the Constitution but political
culture and this is that the United
States historically has overwhelmingly
been a status quo system one in which
the status quo is favored it’s favored
in politics it’s favored by the
Constitution which is a recipe for
obstruction and obstruction always
favors the status quo but why are
Americans so pleased with the status quo
now I should I should qualify this
because I could ask you how many of you
are pleased with the status quo and you
know you have your own opinions
Americans grumble all the time about
politics but the grumbling almost in
fact it never has except for one time in
American history that is during the
civil risen to the level where anybody
did anything seriously seriously violent
about it and if you think about the
success of the United States in world
history
for the last quarter millenniums last
250 years the United States has been the
roaring success of world history
America’s system whether you grumble
about it on an everyday basis has been
tremendously successful in delivering
prosperity peace and opportunity to more
people than any other system in history
so it’s not surprising that there is a
preference for the status quo but
occasionally occasionally the status quo
breaks down and then and then presidents
have a chance to break out of the
stranglehold that the Constitution
applies against them and that the status
quo imposes on them when the system
breaks down as it did during the Civil
War when half the country 11 of the
states seceded from the Union and
Lincoln had the opportunity to
accomplish things that had been
impossible to accomplish before first of
all he could use his powers as commander
in chief secondly the most the largest
part of the opposition party left the
Union leaving Lincoln and his
Republicans in charge and to show you
what you can accomplish during a crisis
especially during the crisis of war
think about the fact that the American
political system had been trying to deal
with the contradiction between a
republic a system of government which
political power arises from the people
and slavery slavery is one where
political power clearly does not arise
from slaves they have no political voice
at all there was a fundamental
contradiction between this idea that
people exercise power equally that’s
sort of the Declaration of Independence
and the existence of slavery and for 70
years this question of how you square
this circle had vexed the American
political system and nothing good had
been able to be done about it 70 years
and then the crisis develops Lincoln
leaves the country to war and within a
year and a half the knot of slavery the
Gordian knot of slavery has been cut
with the sword of war
this is why Lincoln is revered the way
he is he held the Union together he
ended slavery but he was allowed to do
it only by the crisis confronting the
country absent the crisis Lincoln would
have been another James Buchanan look at
Franklin Roosevelt Franklin Roosevelt he
became president at a moment when the
American economic system which had a
spotty but overall very good record of
delivering prosperity to millions of
people had collapsed he was on life
support and Americans who had been
thinking for a while maybe we need a
more active government to deal with the
great power of big business and of the
American capitalist system Americans had
been thinking about this for a while but
they had never been able to generate the
kind of working majority they needed to
make it happen
but with the depression the capitalist
system American business was utterly
discredited and Americans were willing
to say to the president do what is
necessary do what is necessary to fix
the system to alleviate the pain the
system’s failure is inflicting on
everybody in most cases even today we
think of American politics is polarized
divided and it is and but but I would
say this is the normal status of
American politics the reason that
Americans can’t decide what to do about
health care what to do about business
regulation what to do about immigration
what to do about foreign policy what you
do of all all this stuff is not that
those Rascals in Washington can’t get
their act together is that the American
people can’t get their act together we
are split pretty much down the middle on
these big issues occasionally however
there is a working supermajority on the
side of one thing or no this happened
during the Great Depression it’s what
allowed Franklin Roosevelt to launch the
New Deal and the New Deal was followed
by world war 2 which allowed Roosevelt
to position himself as president of the
United States as leader of the free
world so I didn’t say all of that at the
dinner at the White House but I did just
suggest a little bit of this and I said
you know unless speaking to President
Obama unless you’re expecting another
civil war unless you’re expecting
another Great Depression or world war
maybe you oughta lower the sights a
little bit you know I don’t think you’re
gonna be another Abraham Lincoln because
we all hope that crisis doesn’t develop
I don’t think you’re gonna be another
Franklin Rosa we all hope that that
crisis doesn’t go up maybe you should
lower your aim a little bit consider
consider modeling yourself after the
other Roosevelt after Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt is ranked by
historians and political scientists to
be just below Washington Lincoln
Franklin Rosa
fourth or fifth he’s a progressive
president one who pushed the envelope of
government responsibility for public
affairs but who from the standpoint of
the American people had the great
advantage of presiding over seven and a
half years of peace and prosperity so
this was the message that I conveyed to
President Obama and the members of staff
who were there and the president said oh
thank you that that that gives us a lot
to think about he was he was a tough man
to read his staff they just sort of
shook my hand if when the dinner was
over and said okay you know well thanks
for the suggestion goodness a lot to
think about
I came back to Texas and the next day I
got an email from the same staff member
who had organized and said Professor
branch thank you for coming from the
University of Texas and coming up to
talk there’s we really we really have
you’ve benefited from your comments on
the nature of the president seeing
what’s required but the email ended
but we still think this can be a
transformative presidency thank you