A podcast about the role of the presidency in American life.

With political gridlock in Washington DC at an all time high, government shutdowns–or the threat of them–have become a routine occurrence. National parks close. Federal paychecks stop going out. The National Institute of Health stops admitting new patients. How did we get to the point where it has become normal for the US Government to halt in its tracks? The history, in this case, is quite recent.

In the live finale of season 2 of our podcast The Past, the Promise, the Presidency: Presidential Crises we invited three special guests to discuss the first government shutdowns of the 1990s, the political showdowns between Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton, and what the political environment of the 1990s can tell us about gridlock in Washington today.

Dr. Julian Zelizer, a Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, CNN Political Analyst, and author of Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party.

Dr. Leah Wright Rigueur, the SNF Agora Institute Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and the author of the award-winning study, The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power.

Dr. Sharron Wilkins Conrad, one of your favorite voices from season one,  The Past, The Promise, The Presidency: Race and the American Legacy. Now, she is joining us from Tarrant County College, where she is an Associate Professor of History.

This week on The Past, The Promise, The Presidency, we are exploring a tragic national crisis that hits very close to home in 2021. The crisis of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Having lived through two years of a new coronavirus pandemic, we all intimately understand just how confusing and terrifying it can be for patients, doctors, and yes, presidents to confront a new and deadly disease. One of unknown origin, transmission, and incubation. Indeed, the only thing doctors could say with real confidence in the early 1980s about the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is that those who got it died.

We have gathered three guests to help us understand the Reagan Administration’s lethargic response during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. We also explore the key roles of patients, activists, and healthcare workers who pushed the US Government to do more to combat the AIDS epidemic.

First we spoke to Dr. David Oshinsky, Pulitzer Prize winner, and director of Division of Medical Humanities at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and a professor in the NYU Department of History.

We then spoke to Dr. John Graybill an infectious disease specialist who was quite literally on the front lines of the first battles against this new virus in the early 1980s.

And finally, we spoke to Dr. Jennifer Brier, Professor of History and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. An award-winning public historian and activist, she is the author, among other works, of Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis.

Together they helped us understand a moment when public health ran headlong into presidential politics.

Maybe that sounds familiar. All right, let's get to it.

This week's crisis could have ended with the world in a giant blaze of nuclear flame, but it didn't. In fact, it's an example of how a crisis can be handled so effectively, that most people don't even remember it as a crisis. This week, we are talking about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.

It's November, 1989. Reagan famously delivered his "tear down this wall" speech in 1987, but West and East Berlin are as divided as ever. In the summer of 1989, Chinese military forces had mowed down peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square. Horrified by the images of violence, American leaders, and George H.W. Bush in particular, were eager to avoid provoking a similar crackdown in Eastern Europe.

The stakes couldn't have been higher. Both sides were armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over, and they had itchy trigger fingers.

Then, unexpectedly, at a press conference, a mid-level bureaucrat ordered an enormous change in policy. He accidentally announced that residents would be allowed to leave East Germany. Word spread like wildfire. Within hours, thousands of residents were lined up at the gates to cross into West Berlin.

Why didn't this moment turn into one of violence and bloodshed? What were the repercussions of the collapse of a global superpower and its economic system? How might things have gone differently?

To answer these questions, we have two dynamite guests. First, we have a voice that you will probably recognize. Our podcast host, Jeffrey Engel. We then spoke to Dr. Mary Sarotte, who is the Kravis Professor of Historical Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.