Now & Then Episode 1: “Entangling Alliances”
June 1st, 2021
Heather Cox Richardson:
From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Now & Then. I’m Heather Cox Richardson.
Joanne Freeman:
And I’m Joanne Freeman. Before we get to our topic, because this is the first episode, I thought we’d start with telling our listeners how we met and why we decided to team up to do this podcast. And I’m going to turn to Heather because she has hinted to me that she remembers how we met and that I don’t.
Heather Cox Richardson:
And I’m convinced that’s true. And you’re going to laugh when you hear this.
Joanne Freeman:
Okay.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Joanne had just written a really big book, Affairs of Honor, her first book, which she probably doesn’t recognize was like everybody was talking about at the conference. And somebody pointed her out at an elevator bank in a hotel in Los Angeles. It was very late at night. And I went over and met her and shook her hand, because I wanted to meet her, and she looked exhausted, and she has absolutely no memory of it. Do you?
Joanne Freeman:
No, I have absolutely no memory.
Heather Cox Richardson:
But we quickly became, certainly, on each other’s radar screens because there were so few women doing political history as we came up through the ranks of the profession. And then in the last… Really, since the pandemic, we got to know each other quite well because we did so many Zoom events together and discovered that we really thought about the world very similarly, and that we liked working together.
Joanne Freeman:
And even before that point, we were sending messages back and forth and talking to each other because we, at some early point, sort of realized that we really had opinions we wanted to bounce off each other. And whenever we did that, there were so many similarities and there were so many ways in which, you and I have talked about this another time, in which I thought something, and then I said something about it to you, and you responded, and I thought, “Yeah, that’s what I meant.” So really early on, it was clear that, in our talking to each other, we each sort of clarified for the other ones some of what we were thinking.
Heather Cox Richardson:
One of the things we were really thinking in this era is we’re very concerned about the survival of American democracy. And one of the things that is really why we’re doing this podcast is to help people understand why democracy is so important and how we got to this particular moment in our history.
Joanne Freeman:
And how democracy has worked in the past and how democracy hasn’t worked in the past, and how understanding those things can help us take advantage of the current moment for a positive outcome.
Heather Cox Richardson:
And make it all better.
Joanne Freeman:
Yes. Okay. So, Heather, I’m going to let you introduce our topic today because you’re the one who kind of sniffed it out first.
Heather Cox Richardson:
So things that really interested me about the Biden administration was, from the beginning, he talked a lot about foreign affairs. And of course we know that Biden has long had an interest in foreign affairs. He was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 34 years. Soon after President Biden is inaugurated, he gives his speech on February 4th, in which he talks about how, in his administration, there’s no longer going to be a bright line between domestic and foreign policy.
President Biden (archival):
There’s no longer a bright line between foreign and domestic policy. Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind.
Heather Cox Richardson:
So Joanne and I toss ideas around and I was saying that this seemed really different to me. It sounded to me like a throwback to the Teddy Roosevelt administration. And then Joanne said…
Joanne Freeman:
What I always say, this reminds me of something in the founding era. But although, actually, what it really did remind me of was the simple fact that in the founding era, foreign affairs and domestic affairs were bound together. They were not separated. And that the idea of what Heather was interested in, that how interesting there’s no longer a bright line, I thought, well, there wasn’t a very bright line at the founding either.
And I thought people tend to think generally about foreign affairs as a separate, almost sometimes abstract, but a separate realm that sort of operates on its own. And certainly what I found when I looked all the way back was quite the opposite. And as a matter of fact, that was a huge, huge concern of people in the first, I don’t know, 10, 15 years of the American government, was foreign influence, foreign affairs.
They assumed… They’re like this brand new government. They’re 10 years old, maybe, when the… And not even when the French Revolution breaks out. And they assumed that some foreign nations on big power could sweep in and take over or warp or whatever. We’re talking England and France. And we’re like this little pipsqueak nation that for most of the 1790s was just ping ponging back and forth between those two countries.
So foreign influence was a huge concern at the time. And everyone assumed that what was happening in these foreign countries could easily sometimes deliberately, but not even accidentally, could contaminate the United States. So either a foreign state could take over or what was going on in foreign states could sweep in or sneak in. And the best example of that, in the 1790s, is the French Revolution.
The French Revolution all over the world was a huge issue. Americans sort of broke down into two camps about it. One camp, so the Jeffersonian Republicans, had this sort of idealistic, “The spark of freedom is spreading around the world and we are the ones who spread it.” But a lot of other people, and these are the Federalists. So the other big party at the time. The Federalists were horrified that some of the fear and chaos and guillotines and tossing off royalty, that some of that was going to contaminate the United States.
And frantic fear, it’s hard to exaggerate that fear. And as a matter of fact, I don’t have to, because I can offer you, I can give you, Heather, One of my favorite goofy artifacts from this time period, that happens to be related to what we’re talking about today. And you just have to know that in future episodes. I’m sure that we will both be coming up with one of our favorite historical artifacts. But this directly relates to people being terrified of the foreign influence and how foreign influence could have a huge impact on domestic affairs.
Joanne Freeman:
And it’s from my Hamilton, I’d realized this is not surprising coming from me, but it’s from Hamilton. It’s a memo that, for unknown reasons, he sat down and thought, “I want to create a seal for the United States of America.” He has no graphic sense, you’ll hear in a moment, but he sits down and he draws a globe. And on the right side of the globe is the European continent. And on the left side is North America. And there’s a colossus, as he puts it. A giant with one foot on Europe, wearing all of these trappings of the French Revolution, a Liberty cap sort of drowned in French Revolutionary this and that.
Her other foot of this figure, the colossus, is hovering over the United States. In which there’s like a figure where the shield holding it up to fend off the horror of the French Revolution. So Hamilton creates this seal of the United States that represents the United States, and what he comes out with is, “Run it’s the French revolution. This is scary. We have to fend it off.” To me, it’s like a Freudian look at the assumption that whatever’s happening overseas is beyond important in the United States.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Well, so now I’ve got to ask the first and obvious question, did he literally draw this? And was it any good?
Joanne Freeman:
I don’t think he literally drew it. Because I believe, if I remember correctly, the memo is like, “Imagine this. I did have a colleague once who drew it and it was really not very good.” And it goes on. It goes on. He says something like, “If it’s not too busy already, maybe we could have like Neptune in the middle of the sea in waves.” So it’s not good. It’s not good.
Heather Cox Richardson:
But this is not an unrealistic fear at all for the early Republic, is it?
Joanne Freeman:
No.
Heather Cox Richardson:
I mean, that’s one thing that I always feel like people forget. We think that America came out of nowhere and then sort of existed. And it really didn’t for a long time. It was entirely reasonable to think that France or England or somebody else would come and take over the entire continent, right?
Joanne Freeman:
Oh, absolutely. In the first real election in 1796, they were already afraid that France was just going to take over the election and take over the United States. Washington’s famous farewell address when he stepped down from his second term in 1796, people know he gave an address. And I suppose now, because of the Hamilton musical, they know some of the words from the farewell address.:
But the real point of it, he was warning Americans about the two things that they should be most afraid of. And one was what he called the insidious wiles of foreign influence. And the other was partisanship. Both of those things he thought could totally destroy the republic. And he stepped down and telling Americans, whatever you do watch for foreign influence, watch what’s happening abroad, try to stay detached from it, although you kind of can’t, and watch how political parties are functioning and don’t let them find themselves up with foreign affairs.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Well, so that’s it, right? That the whole idea of partisanship in his era, he’s worried is going to be attached to foreign affairs? So they really are two sides of the same coin?
Joanne Freeman:
Absolutely. And they’re bound up with a broader idea, which is why it’s so easy, seemingly, for another country to sweep in and take the United States. Not just because it’s small and it’s new, but it’s a democratic republic in a world of monarchies. And democratic republics, unlike monarchies, are grounded on public opinion.
And what that means is, because it’s a democratic government, it’s not that hard in their imagination, and in fact, in truth, for a foreign nation to come in and sway the public their way. So the simple fact of democracy, the democratic component of the government, showed them that it was really important to think about foreign influence because it would be easy to sway public opinion.
Heather Cox Richardson:
So at the end of the day, it’s about democracy?
Joanne Freeman:
At the end of the day, they might not say that, they didn’t like that word, but yeah, at the end of the day, it’s about democracy and survival.
Heather Cox Richardson:
And trying to define America against other countries? So domestic and foreign policy really can’t be separated?
Joanne Freeman:
Right. I think they would have loved to separate them, but there was no way to do that. And in his speech, Blinken made this very connection between democracy and foreign affairs.
Secretary of State Blinken (archival):
Shoring up our democracy is a foreign policy imperative. Otherwise, we play right into the hands of adversaries and competitors like Russia and China, who sees every opportunity to sow doubts about the strength of our democracy.
Heather Cox Richardson:
It’s just funny nowadays when you think about it, because we certainly grew up in a world in which domestic and foreign policy seemed very different.
Joanne Freeman:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Heather Cox Richardson:
When you were talking about that, what really jumped out to me was the fact that that kind of look at the interlacing of foreign affairs and domestic affairs is really exactly what Theodore Roosevelt was doing at the turn of the century, at the turn of the next century, when he quite deliberately uses foreign policy and foreign affairs to try and rework American democracy internally. And he does it really deliberately. Because he’s got this huge problem in the late 19th century when the American economy and American politics has really been taken over by big business and industrialists.
And he would like to reclaim American democracy for more Americans than are currently being served by the system in the 1890s. But he can’t really get a lot of traction, because of course the old guard, as they were known, really controlled everything in Congress. And so one of the things that he and his people do is they’d say, “Well, great, if America is as great as you say it is, we absolutely should export it to places like Cuba and try and take care of the humanitarian crisis in what was happening in Cuba in the late 1890s. But if it’s also ducky over there, what we really have to is bring it home as well. That if we’re going to go ahead and spread American values overseas, we can use that ideology to remake America at home.” They really were both sides of the same coin.
Joanne Freeman:
Was he promoting that idea or was that something he was kind of privately motoring to do?
Heather Cox Richardson:
He has privately doing it, but he was also actively promoting it. He’s a funny character, because he cares. Obviously, he’s a wealthy man himself, but he cares a lot about rebuilding American democracy. Not least because both his wife and his mother die on the same day in 1884 in Valentine’s Day from diseases that they picked up from the lower classes, if you will, around their home. But he actually, when it comes time to go into Cuba, the people like Teddy Roosevelt and like the small-town Americans really want to go fight in Cuba to try and save the Cuban women and children, is what they say they’re concerned about, because the bankers and the brokers in America don’t want to do that. And so while they’re making a foray into foreign affairs, they’re in many ways doing it to try and reclaim American democracy at home. And there’s this incredibly powerful moment at a dinner at the Gridiron Club in Washington, D.C.
When Mark Hanna, who is one of the operatives for the old guard and the Republican Party is down at one end of a table and someone says, “Mark, are we going to go to war with Cuba?” And Mark’s like, “No, no, no. We’re not going to go to worth Cuba. The business interests don’t want to go to war at Cuba. It’s not going to happen.” And Teddy Roosevelt is on the other end of the table. And he stands up and he shakes his fist at Mark Hanna. And he says, “We will have this war for the freedom of Cuba in spite of the timidity of the commercial Interests.
Joanne Freeman:
Wow. Here’s the question about that, though. So for the freedom of Cuba, how much of it falls on that side of the balance? Because it feels like, or certainly my impression is, there were a lot of Americans who just wanted this war, not only to deliberately force through reform, but were sort of eager to get into war, to use it for that purpose. Is that the case with this? I mean, were there like really hawkish people who are eager for war just because being in a war would be handy?
Heather Cox Richardson:
Well, being in war would not be handy, necessarily, for Cuba, the Philippines, which are part of that war, a very different story, but that it would help to rebuild American democracy. It would make men men again. It would make Americans care again about something other than money and start to care about morality and humanity.
Roosevelt also said… At one point there’s a quote from him. I love where he says the, “Spirit of the banker, the broker, the mere manufacturer, and the mere merchant is unpleasantly prominent. In political matters, we are often very dull mentally, and especially morally.” And the people who volunteer for that war, overwhelmingly from small towns. And of course, as you know, Teddy Roosevelt very deliberately makes that war sort of the cowboy war where we’re going to restore American values with our rough riders going up San Juan Hill. Without the horses, by the way. Because they all drown when they get off the transports. Don’t tell newbie that.
Joanne Freeman:
And for those out there in a podcast world, newbie is my rescue parakeet. And he might be piping up now and again, who knows, but thank you for including him, Heather. That’s very nice of you. But now here’s the thing. So when I think of this war, I guess that’s why I’m asking you all these questions, what pops into my head is something that may not have ever happened. But William Randolph Hearst, who’s the editor of the New York Journal, and there’s a photographer in Cuba who writes to Hearst and says, “There’s not going to be a war.
And the sort of legendary thing that Hearst says is you furnish photos and I’ll furnish a war. Which I think that scene is in Citizen Kane, maybe. I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere, but it’s sort of mythic. And I actually went poking around online because it popped into my head in the course of many conversations we have. And people online couldn’t agree that… Historians online were arguing with each other. But regardless, that-
Heather Cox Richardson:
The historians were arguing with each other?
Joanne Freeman:
I know it’s shocking. It is shocking. It’s because we’re so friendly towards each other. But I did find myself wondering about that, because that idea, he wants that war, in part to sell papers, that what you’re talking about, the sort of link between domestic and foreign, is actually multi-layered.
Heather Cox Richardson:
It is very much multi-layered. And of course, what I’m not talking about here is what happens in the Philippines. Which is, again, put together in the textbooks, although it’s a war in the Pacific. And it’s a very different kind of war, sort of the underside of what I’m talking about, where America goes and imposes its will on the Philippines and later acquires the Philippines and American Samoa and Puerto Rico as her territories. Which is a huge change in our policy up until that point, and includes the people who live in them as non-citizen nationals, which is an entire change in the way that we admit people into the American Union.
But it is interesting that the relationship between domestic and foreign affairs for the Spanish-American War launches Teddy on this quest to rebuild American democracy in this image of the small Western cowboy, the individualist Western cowboy. And he wins the New York governorship. Immediately after it in 1898, he says that he will do so to reign in big business and to restore democracy. And he tries to do that. He cracks down in corporations. He tries to get rid of the sweat shops in New York. And he forces corporations, especially the ones who operate in a public capacity to start paying taxes, which drives the big businessmen who’ve been running the New York legislature absolutely crazy.
And then of course he takes that into the White House as well. One of the first things he does after the assassination of McKinley, when he becomes a president, is he goes ahead and he starts trust-busting. He deliberately takes on the largest trust in the country at the time and says he’s going to break it up because he needs to restore American democracy. And as you know, from then on, he gets more and more radical.
So by 1904, in his message to Congress, he’s really advancing quite dramatic legislation to try and go ahead and restore American democracy. Because the central question in his era is, “Is it really true that all men are created equal?” You’ve got the guy who works on the shop floor, and then you’ve got Andrew Carnegie, are they really equal?
Joanne Freeman:
The takeaway here, in a sense, is related to the takeaway from my example of the 1790s, which is how bound together foreign affairs and domestic affairs are to the point that, for some of these actors, they need each other, or they’re so terrified that they feel the need to fend them off that they’re assuming they’re going to be so bound together. Now, we have another thing that we want to talk about, which does something quite different. And we are going to talk about that thing in just a moment.
So it’s interesting though, Heather, because it sounds like what you’re describing here is this eagerness, right? On the part of Roosevelt to grab at, and use, and link foreign affairs and domestic affairs for the purpose of shaping America. I just described Americans being terrified of the influence of foreign affairs. Although we’re talking about a similar link, in my period, the United States is so weak and so new that, in a sense, they had to be terrified. They had a right to be terrified. There was, who knew what a foreign nation would do? By the time we get to the period you’re talking about, it’s a very different America with obviously enormously different amount of power and a very different place in the world.
Heather Cox Richardson:
And a very different way of interacting with the world so that Teddy Roosevelt feels he’s comfortable enough to reach out and use foreign affairs to try and influence things domestically. And it works, of course. By turning the younger members of the Republican Party in favor of imperialism, he manages to grab power from the old guard and to change the direction America.
But one of the things that really made me want to do this particular episode, to start with, is something you said, and we started talking about it, when you said, “Oh, but that’s the way things used to be.” And it made me think, “Well, but they haven’t been in my lifetime.” So what changed, and when did it change that turned foreign affairs into something that seemed to be separate from domestic affairs? And that to me is really… The history is interesting, but that change, in the world in which we grew up in, it seems to me to be incredibly important right now. Because I think Biden is trying to override that.
Joanne Freeman:
Well, I want to hear more of that from you. Because my sense of this is that it has to do with bureaucracy. A 20th century thing. Which is the sort of growth of bureaucracy and its influence. So you tell me what the logistics of that war, what the dynamics of that war so that things change? I know you and I, in chatting about whatever we chat about, whenever we get to a period during which we were alive, we always have these kind of wacky cultural references. And in my… Sometimes I feel like mine are kind of half-baked. Something I saw on a TV screen. Things from the mid-20th century on.
Heather Cox Richardson:
A jingle, Joanne?
Joanne Freeman:
No. You’re outing me. You’re outing.
Heather Cox Richardson:
I told you I’d use it against you.
Joanne Freeman:
You did. You did. I have this scary jingle and theme song brain that remembers every commercial jingle and TV show theme song from the 1970s to a frightening degree. And I don’t know why it’s there. And I don’t know why it won’t leave. And it would be good if it freed up some space for some more history, because he’d really like that. But not necessarily a jingle, but just some of the things that were appearing on TV. But you start out by telling me about the structure and the dynamic.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Well, so we got thinking about this, like where was the change? And my first thought was that it was after World War I when there’s a big move among people like Henry Cabot Lodge to go ahead and convince Americans not to go ahead and join the League of Nations because that would create a one-world government. If you’ve heard that expression, that’s where it’s from. But I actually don’t think that’s right. The more we dug around in this, the more it came clear that after World War II we get the sense that foreign affairs should be conducted by experts.
And one of the things that really marks that, is in 1947, we get the National Security Act. And the National Security Act creates the Department of Defense. It brings together all the different branches of the military into this new department of defense. And it also puts in place the National Security Council. and the National Security Council operates out of the White House. And it includes the president, of course, and members of the cabinet, and other people, other experts who are there to give advice to the executive branch about the ways in which they should advance foreign and military policy.
And it also establishes the Central Intelligence Agency, which collects information in both open ways and in secret ways. And one of the things that this does, I think, is really important, because it centralizes the power over all of our defense activities in the White House. So rather than the old system which made for a much larger public discussion, with the declaration of war belonging to Congress, this really centers events in the executive branch and especially in the White House. And it lets the administration do war-like things without ever declaring war. So one of the things that it does is it’s a major re-working of the way in which foreign affairs are conducted. But it also pushes the idea of foreign affairs into the realm of experts, if you will. And out of general discussion.
Joanne Freeman:
Right. No, exactly. Into the realm of experts who are also popular today and further away in the sort of reality factor or the detail factor from the American public, right? So this is becoming something more internal and less external.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Yes. That means, I think, that it’s associated more with various presidents and whether or not you’re for or against various presidents. And I was interested, I went back and re-read Nixon’s Silent Majority speech of November 3rd, which we all know because that’s the one where he talks about… All right, you’re laughing at me.
Joanne Freeman:
I’m laughing. We all know.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Everybody knows the Silent Majority speech.
Joanne Freeman:
I’ll go with you. I’ll roll with you, Heather.
Heather Cox Richardson:
But that’s a speech where he assures people who are listening that the silent majority of Americans, which he implies are the majority of Americans, the silent majority, are on his side in Vietnam policy. But what’s really interesting in this context about that speech is he actually begins it as a way to explain to Americans what’s happening in foreign policy, because he says, “I know you don’t know what’s really going on.” And then he sits there and he says, “Well, I’m outlining what’s happened in secret that you don’t know about.”
And then he sets up what he thinks are the important points about it. So he says, basically, we’ve tried all this stuff, and none of it’s worked except… At one point he says, “We haven’t agreed on anything, except we’ve agreed on the shape of the bargaining table.” Sort of denigrating the whole thing. He goes on to sort of reassure Americans that they basically should just trust him. He says, “We have to keep doing what we’re doing. We have to keep doing what I am telling you to do. Because if we let down our allies, nobody will ever trust us again.” And then he turns and he says…
President Richard Nixon (archival):
And so tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support. I pledged in my campaign for the presidency to end the war in a way that we could win the peace. The more support I can have from the American people, the sooner that pledge can be redeemed. For the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at Paris.
Heather Cox Richardson:
And Vietnam suddenly becomes not about America’s role in the world, or whether it’s important to Americans to protect democracy at home by advancing it overseas, which had been part of the argument, at least before that, now it’s become, you’re either with President Nixon or you’re against President Nixon.
Joanne Freeman:
So it’s the deadly combination of foreign affairs and partisanship that George Washington is howling about in his farewell address as something that’s risky and can tear our country apart.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Isn’t that interesting? I actually had not thought about it that way until you put it this way.
Joanne Freeman:
It’s just shocking.
Heather Cox Richardson:
But then like you said earlier, then it becomes pervasive.
Joanne Freeman:
Right.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Then everybody thinks they’re not talking about… They’re really not talking about foreign policy, they’re talking about being pro-America or anti-America. Foreign affairs becomes a partisan cudgel to beat the other side with. And it loses all nuance.
Joanne Freeman:
So Nixon is really talking about domestic affairs and the nation. When he’s talking about whatever’s going on in Vietnam, he’s linking it back to what’s going on here and to the silent majority here. So he’s talking about that connection despite the rise of experts. And there are other people in this time period, a lot of other people in this time period who recognize that domestic affairs, regardless of foreign policy, are going to be shaped by whatever’s going on there. And they understand that connection and are talking about it.
And Martin Luther King, actually in 1967, gave a really interesting speech. It was about Vietnam. I think he called it Beyond Vietnam. And the main argument of that lecture that he gave that speech is that we shouldn’t be putting all of this money into Vietnam because that money could be used for social reform, could be used for poverty, could be used for civil rights. There are all kinds of things that, in the United States, should be focused on instead of whatever the heck is going on there. I have to read this line that he comes up with and that speech, because it’s so powerful. He says…
Martin Luther King (archival):
If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam.
Joanne Freeman:
If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam.
Heather Cox Richardson:
And that seems to me to speak directly to that idea of Nixon and other post-war presidents using foreign affairs to consolidate power around themselves, especially to make their own domestic policies go through because of foreign policy. And something really jumps out along those lines with this idea of experts, and the power and the executive branch, and the increasingly powerful president. When John Kerry comes back from Vietnam wounded, in 1971, he’s like 26 years old. And he makes a stand against Vietnam. And he testifies before Congress. And he calls out the leaders by name. He says…
John Kerry (archival):
We’re also here to ask and we’re here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We’re here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatric and so many others. Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war.
Heather Cox Richardson:
And the idea that we have these experts out there making decisions in foreign policy, and then turning around and saying to Americans at home, “You have to do what we want domestically, because otherwise you’re letting America down overseas,” really becomes one of the driving forces of American politics after World War II.
Joanne Freeman:
Once you get to for America or against America, you’re moving into hyper-partisan zone. That kind of conversation can’t be a conversation. Really. It it’s pushing partisanship to an extreme if you’re accusing the other side of being against America in some way. Not only does this become partisan, but it, in some sense, really charges the spirit of politics, and I guess of the nation, more broadly.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Well, it just becomes… If you think about the 1960s and the 1970s, Vietnam and being pro-Nixon or anti-Nixon was absolutely everywhere. It was in clothing. It was in politics, of course. It was in jingles. And it was of course in music.
Joanne Freeman:
Yeah. No, for sure. But here’s what’s interesting, is some of what you’re talking about, as far as culture. So clothing and songs. Some of that is really, really directly addressing Vietnam. And then some of it is a little bit less direct, but no less pointed. For example, some of the clothing that this… We’re moving into the hippie generation. Some of the clothing that they’re choosing is to basically… It’s protest clothing. It’s a sort of clothing as protest art that they’re wearing tie-dye or these things that are not common, bright colors, just to suggest they’re not going along with what is the sort of main thrust of government and the folks in power, right? That’s some of what is being shaped and culture by the Vietnam War. Although it isn’t explicitly, it’s not like there’s a slogan about Vietnam on the front of their tie-dye shirts.
Heather Cox Richardson:
No. And that’s one of my favorite statistics in American history, is the fact that in 1975, 75 million pairs of Levi’s sold. And I love that statistic because if you think about when James Dean was wearing blue jeans, it was a signal of being sort of an outcast. And by 75, they have become such a popular symbol of being the Western anti-government supporter, that you’re a westerner, you’re fighting back against the government.
And of course, many southern white people pick that up with the idea that they’re fighting back against desegregation. But a lot of northerners and anti-war people pick up blue jeans as well because it’s a sign that they are standing against the government that’s gone into Vietnam. And this is… You see them everywhere nowadays. Everybody just wears blue jeans, but that was a really big transition that then became a symbol. Your dad didn’t wear blue jeans.
Joanne Freeman:
Now we just have moms blue jeans.
Heather Cox Richardson:
I thought the same thing.
Joanne Freeman:
Or dad’s blue jeans, right?
Heather Cox Richardson:
Yeah.
Joanne Freeman:
We have generational jeans now. Now, let’s talk for a minute about music from that era. Because music is one of those things that can very aggressively be either direct or really indirectly related but slam you in the face with the point that it’s making about the government and the war. Are there songs from that period that stand out to you? I know there’s one for me, but are there ones that stand out for you?
Heather Cox Richardson:
On both sides. The first, for me, that stands out is Country Joe and the Fish and Woodstock singing the Fixin’ to Die Rag. Do you know that song?
Joanne Freeman:
I do know that song.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Okay. All right. Well, you’re looking vague. I didn’t know.
Joanne Freeman:
No, no, no, I was deciding whether to sing.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Please be my guest.
Joanne Freeman:
I might get it wrong, but this Is what I think it is. And you can’t criticize. You can’t laugh. Because I can see you and that you can’t laugh. But I think this is: ‘And it’s one, two, three, What are we fighting for? Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn Next stop is Vietnam; And it’s five, six, seven Open up the pearly gates Well there ain’t no time to wonder why Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.’
Heather Cox Richardson:
You got it. You know what’s so funny about that? Is the idea of you listening to that in, was it California you grew up in?
Joanne Freeman:
Mostly New York, mostly Westchester and then LA. Yeah.
Heather Cox Richardson:
And there, I was in Maine listening to that.
Joanne Freeman:
Right. Because-
Heather Cox Richardson:
Music brought people together.
Joanne Freeman:
Is that a song that you’ve thought of since the 1970s? Because… Well, I do know why. It’s in my brain. Music stays in my brain. But aside from that, until you mentioned it, and I can sort of think about what the lyric is, Fixin’ to Die, will be, you’re all going to die. It’s pretty clear. It’s kind of amazing to me, just as you said, not only Maine and California, but it sticks around it. Not only does it have an influence then, but it sticks around.
Heather Cox Richardson:
And you knew all the words.
Joanne Freeman:
That’s true.
Heather Cox Richardson:
I was thinking about that and the other thing that jumps out is Merle Haggard’s The Fightin’ Side of Me. It was number one on the Country charts for three weeks. And Haggard is… He’s known as the Poet of the Common Man. And I’m going to spare you, me singing it.
Joanne Freeman:
Sooner or later, Heather, I’m going to get you back. You just know. Just be on alert.
Heather Cox Richardson:
But this, he says in this…
Merle Haggard (archival music):
If you don’t love it, leave it
Let this song I’m singin’ be a warnin’
When you’re runnin’ down my country, man
You’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me
Heather Cox Richardson:
It’s pro-war song. It’s an anti-Vietnam song. So again, I think really speaks to that partisanship. You listen to Merle Haggard, you to that song, you were taking a political stance just by listening to Merle Haggard
Joanne Freeman:
And a lot of others because it was number one on the charts. And that’s also an example of what I was saying before, which is music being blunt, but indirect at the same time. And the great example of that for me from this era. I grew up being a huge fan of the Weavers because my parents were huge fans of the Weavers, and also became then a Pete Seeger fan as well.
And Pete Seeger, in the Vietnam era, writes the song called Waist Deep in the Big Muddy. That, ostensibly, takes place in 1942 in Louisiana, people training for war. However, it’s really clear that that’s not what it’s about. The refrain of it is…
Pete Seeger (archival music):
We were waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.
Joanne Freeman:
So it’s very obviously a critique of this war that’s going on and on and on with deadly consequences. What’s interesting is, people at the time recognized, even those seemingly about World War II, they recognized exactly what it was doing. And it was controversial. So Seeger is invited onto the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour to sing. And he sings that song. And it’s censored out because it’s too controversial. It’s too critical. I think, actually, the Smothers Brothers made a fuss and ultimately the network invited him back and he sang the song on another program, but it was a huge, huge issue. And if you think about it, think about that amount of fuss for a song that isn’t even specifically about Vietnam, but it really shows you the sorts of things that we’re talking about here, which is how close foreign affairs can be to the United States. Even in this moment where, as you’ve been talking about, the executive branch and experts are churning away on the logistics.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Although that almost makes it worse, because it becomes not a nuanced discussion, but rather, as you say, a cudgel to beat the other side with. You’re either for us or you’re against us. You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists. You either love this country or you leave it. Well, that extreme polarization that ends up being a cudgel for one side or the other, I think is the world in which we grew up. And it really jumps out at me, nowadays, when you look at different situations with different countries, there are a number of them that it’s very, very difficult to talk about. The Middle East, for example. Or during the Trump administration, what was happening with Russia became really about domestic politics rather than about a nuanced relationship in foreign affairs.
Joanne Freeman:
So as you just said, it becomes, you’re for America or you’re against America. And that kind of talk, to state the obvious, if democracy, a democratic government, is about a conversation between people and each other in between people and the people they give power to, that can be a nasty conversation. It can be an angry conversation. But there has to be a conversation. If it boils down to, you’re with America or you’re against America, it’s really hard to have that conversation, that kind of polarization in which, in this case, foreign affairs are being used to sort of, I like the word cultural, you keep saying cultural, I like it too, to sort of bang around American things into a way that will serve one party or another. Again, brings me back to George Washington. You can explicitly see why that kind of behavior, why that phenomenon is a big risk to any kind of democratic government.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Because, ultimately, it undermines democracy when you’re using foreign affairs to become a partisan tool that says you’re either pro-America and pro whatever your leaders do, or anti-America and anti whatever your leaders do. As I say, I think that’s a moment in which we have grown up, but it’s really dangerous for democracy. And I think you can see that in just how polarized America has been since the Cold War, how important communism became, and how everything in America became either you or for the American government, or you are a communist, or you are a socialist. Which has never been an accurate portrayal of what was really happening domestically in the years since World War II. And it’s gotten us into a really dangerous place where now, with a super powerful president and a super polarized population.
Joanne Freeman:
And, again, a moment in which democracy is in danger all over the world, for the most part. We’re at this interesting moment where we’re in the middle of this hyperpolarization. We’re thinking about ourselves a lot. Although, as we started out by saying Biden now is really making foreign policy a big part of his administration, but the fact of the matter is we’re in a hyper-global moment in which our democratic crisis is not the only democratic crisis. The pandemic is the most obvious thing that shows us how global this moment is. The pandemic doesn’t care about nation states and boundaries. You can’t wall it off. It’s a reminder, again and again and again and again, that the world is bound together. And so it’s a different kind of way of saying you can’t put up a wall to block out the world or to block out the nation. That you have to worry about how those things are bound together and how the nation is going to deal with that connection.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Which brings back to where we started this time around. And that’s that I’m fascinated by the way that Secretary of State Blinken and President Joe Biden are using foreign affairs to look at American democracy to say that, in fact, we need to protect democracy abroad by trying to support human rights and democratic movements abroad without imposing them on people. And we see this rhetoric across Biden’s remarks.
He also talks a lot about how he’s going to create a foreign policy for the middle class. A foreign policy that means that we’re going to rebuild America, and that we’re going to make sure that whatever we do enables Americans at home to be competitive across the world. For example, with China. And this is an underpinning of his domestic policy, that is a really interesting political move in the sense that it sort of undercuts the things that Donald Trump talked about and the attraction that he had for a lot of workers who felt that they had been outsourced, if you will. But at the same time, it’s a real position of strength to say, domestically, we have to rebuild the country in order to be able to compete internationally. So rebuilding America domestically really is about protecting American democracy at home, but also being able to protect human rights and democracy overseas.
Joanne Freeman:
Right. And in a sense, what we’re seeing now is really, in Biden’s speeches and in his policy, the ways in which human rights, and democracy, and economics, and the middle-class, the good of the middle class, are all bound together in a really interesting way. When he talks about things that are good for the middle class, democracy has to be an inherent part of that. And a great example, a great recent example of how foreign policy and human rights are blending and drawing forth commentary from Biden, is the recent forced diversion of a commercial flight. That Belarus landed this flight because there was a journalist on there, Roman Protasevich, who was talking about their government, was criticizing their government. The flight was grounded. He was removed and arrested. And Biden offered commentary on that. Which really shows the connection we’re talking about here.
In the White house statement on what happened, he said, “For months, the Belarusian people have made their voices heard, demanding democracy, respect for human rights, and the preservation of fundamental freedoms. The United States will continue to stand with the people of Belarus in their struggle.” And there, you see all of that bound together, all of that domestic, and foreign, and rights, and democracy, all in one statement.
Heather Cox Richardson:
So at the end of the day, domestic policy and foreign policy in the Biden administration really are one in the same?
Joanne Freeman:
Right. But in the end, once again, as we’ve been saying over and over again, it all boils down to democracy.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Our conversation continues for members of CAFE Insider.
Joanne Freeman:
Heather and I take you behind the scenes of each episode in a special segment of Now & Then that we call Backstage.
Heather Cox Richardson:
So join us Backstage and get an inside look at the thoughts we’re wrestling with as we’ve prepped for our weekly conversations.
Joanne Freeman:
Head to cafe.com/history to join. And for a limited time, get 50% off the annual with a special code, “history.”
Heather Cox Richardson:
That’s cafe.com/history. And the discount code is history.
Joanne Freeman:
That’s it for this episode of Now & Then. Your hosts are Joanne Freeman and Heather Cox Richardson. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The editorial producer is David Kurlander. The audio producer is Matthew Billy. The Now & Then theme music was composed by [Nert Winner]. The CAFE team is Adam Waller, David Tatasciore, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noah Azulai, and Jake Kaplan. Now & Then is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
