Episode 1: The Big Speeches™

A full episode transcript is available here.

Welcome to the first episode of season three of The Past, The Promise, The Presidency: The Bully Pulpit. The president has an awful lot of power over foreign policy, domestic policy, crises, and everything in between. One of the “softer tools” in the president’s tool box, compared to war and legislation at least, is the bully pulpit. But what is the bully pulpit? How do presidents use it? How does it shape American culture and pivotal moments? These are just a few of the questions we will consider in season three, The Bully Pulpit.

To kick of this season, we are starting with an episode on the big moments. What we are affectionally calling The Big Speeches™. Moments when the president has used his unparalleled microphone and those words have left a major imprint on history.

We are going to start where it all began, with George Washington. In September 1796, Washington printed an address to the American people and announced he would not seek a third term. Not only did Washington buck almost all political precedent, he also gave warnings and guidance to future generations.

Seventy years later, Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office for his second term and delivered a remarkable inaugural address. As the Civil War drew to a close, Lincoln mapped out his vision for the post-war United States and how to win the fight for peace.

Finally, the summer of 1979 was, as Jimmy Carter’s domestic policy advisor described it, the worst of times. There was an energy shortage, rampant inflation, and widespread unrest. But President Jimmy Carter took to the podium to address something much bigger than a gas shortage — a moral crisis in American life.

We have two excellent guests joining us today. John Avlon is a senior political analyst and fill-in anchor at CNN, appearing on New Day every morning. He is also the author of two books about our topic for today, Washington's Farewell: The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations and Lincoln and the Fight for Peace.

Dr. Meg Jacobs is a Research Scholar in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. She is the author of Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and The Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America, and Conservatives in Power: The Reagan Years, 1981-1989. As an expert of the 1970s and energy policies, she had a lot of insights to share about Carter’s Malaise Speech — and what politicians today can learn from him.

Guests:

John Avlon is an author, columnist and commentator. He is a senior political analyst and fill-in anchor at CNN, as well as the author of books on both Washington and Lincoln.

John Avlon is senior political analyst and fill-in anchor at CNN, appearing on New Day every morning. Previously, he was the editor-in-chief and managing director of The Daily Beast. He is the author of the books Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics, Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America, Washington's Farewell: The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations and most recently Lincoln and the Fight for Peace.

Avlon has appeared on The Daily Show, Late Show with Stephen Colbert, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, PBS, and C-Span.  He has spoken at the Kennedy School of Government, the Citadel, the State Department’s visiting journalist program, and civic organizations around the nation.

He serves on the board of Citizens Union of New York and The Bronx Academy of Letters as well as the advisory board of the Theodore Roosevelt Association.  He was appointed to the New York City Voter Assistance Advisory Committee in 2011.  Avlon is also a co-founder of No Labels – a group of Democrats, Republicans and Independents dedicated to the politics of problem-solving and making government work again.

Follow John Avlon on Twitter @JohnAvlon.

Dr. Meg Jacobs is a Research Scholar in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs teaching courses in public policy and history.

Dr. Meg Jacobs is a Research Scholar in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs teaching courses in public policy and history. She received her Ph.D. in 1998 from the University of Virginia and was an associate professor of history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been a fellow at the Harvard Business School, the Charles Warren Center, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. Her new book Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and The Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s, looks at why American politicians failed to devise a long-term energy policy. She is the author of Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America which was published with Princeton University Press and won the Organization of American Historians' 2006 prize for the best book on modern politics. She has also published Conservatives in Power: The Reagan Years, 1981-1989.

Other recent publications include "Wreaking Havoc from Within: George W. Bush's Energy Policy in Historical Perspective" in The Presidency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment, edited by Julian E. Zelizer (Princeton University Press, 2010); "The Uncertain Future of American Politics, 1940 to 1973" in American History Now, edited by Eric Foner and Lisa McGirr (Temple University Press, 2011); "The Politics of Environmental Regulation: Business-Government Relations in the 1970s and Beyond" in What's Good for Business: Business and American Politics since World War II, edited by Kim Phillips-Fein and Julian E. Zelizer (Oxford University Press, 2012).

 Follow her on Twitter @megjacobs100.