On the Brink of Democracy: FMC Fast Chat with Douglas Brinkley

In this episode, U.S. presidential historian and bestselling author Douglas Brinkley talks history and current events to help us make sense of America today. No easy feat, but Brinkley does it seamlessly, illustrating exactly why he's been dubbed America's new pastmaster by the Chicago Tribune.

FMC Fast Chat takes you inside the news so you can be in the know in 30 minutes. Hosted by Fair Media Council CEO and Executive Director Jaci Clement, Fast Chat features no Today we welcome back U.S.

presidential historian and bestselling author Douglas Brinkley to talk about the Biden administration thus far and the state of democracy. Doug is in Austin, Texas, which means our historian has actually been trapped inside a current event with the Texas blackout. So the first thing we want to do is check in with Doug to see how he is and how things are doing in the Austin area. Doug, how are you? I'm doing well, Jaci. So Doug, how is everything?

Hey Jaci, how are you doing? Thanks for having me back.

Happy to.

We're just— it's been a brutal week, I can't lie to you. We had our electricity off for a long time and the water off, and with 3 teenagers, we were trying to make ends meet. The days were long and hard. Grocery stores, if you can get to one, were just minus goods. Everybody had raided the stores. So we were crippled here in Austin, and then some people still are. Eventually, I even did a CNN broadcast by candlelight, having to deal with the iPhone. They wanted me to report what was going on, and I did. And we didn't get our water back till last night. So it was first night here we could take showers. So it had been days of trying to make ends meet. But, you know, Texas Yeah. Our grid is unique. It's an electric grid that is unfortunately doesn't share with other states. They hadn't winterized any of their natural gas generators. They pretend in Texas that we're not living in the age of climate change. And so we're gonna be having to meet at our legislature here in the spring and find ways next winter not to have a repeat of this if this, the system can't handle A little bit of ice and snow.

Yeah. Now, I did see that you did an interview talking about how the issue as reported was so much larger than what came across in news reports. And I kind of find that interesting because now the news media is usually accused of taking a person and building them up to be larger than life. And here you have an actual disaster and it's minimized.

You know, it's hard to show what no electricity does. I mean, what do you say? You can do a drone over a city and say they don't have electricity, but you have to break it down house by house by house. And there are people that need it for, you know, kidney dialysis, you know, or that have a certain condition that they need electricity for. It, of course, afflicts people that are poor or in apartment complexes. They don't have access to a car because at least in the car you could turn on and get warm for a minute. But then people died from going into their car with their children and keeping it in the garage and dying from carbon monoxide poisoning. But yeah, you're right, it's a larger story. The only time I felt that, that was when Hurricane Katrina hit, because in Katrina I was in New Orleans and yes, you can feel the deprivations of a neighborhood, but the swath, the amount of people that were suffering in the Gulf South back in 2005 was so immense.

Yeah.

This is a smaller event than that, but it's a warning to states like Texas and all the southwestern states that in the future we're going to have to be prepared for a new type of weather event, meaning cold weather is going to be regularly hitting Texas as surely as hurricanes are going to be hitting Gulf South states.

Yeah, here on Long Island, a lot of people are still rebuilding from Superstorm Sandy. And that was another storm that was criticized for what actually happened being so much larger than what you saw in the news. But I'm also kind of wondering, does this play into a larger issue, which is, is the news media really equipped to be telling, you know, climate change stories, or is this more of a specialty?

I think that the news media is failing to report the climate change story as a whole. It's just hard. We're living in a visual and audio age. What do you do? How do you show a melting glacier? How do you, you know, keep showing a wildfire over and over and over again? Because there are always people that will say, well, there have always been wildfires. There have always been hurricanes. There have always been ice storms. There have always been freak weather events. And, you know, this idea of planet in peril, unless it becomes the lead news story, in the country on a regular basis, it's going to be hard to get people's notice and put it front and center. We have presidential debates and they barely mention climate change, although in history, 100, 200 years from now, it might be the largest issue of our time, the way people are being affected with demographic changes and the way that certain parts of the world are more vulnerable right now to climate disaster events. Walter Cronkite in the 1960s, when you only had the big 3 networks, they could start putting Earthrise behind Walter Cronkite and say every half an hour news, we're going to show dead fish in Lake Erie. We're going to show, you know, sludge in a river in Missouri. And they started being that— doing that regularly actually led to the birth of the Environmental Protection Agency. and Clean Air and Water Acts. It's the news media that said it's number one. I mean, the networks made Earth Day 1970, they treated it like a Republican or Democratic convention. They covered it live and big. Earth Day teach-in all over the country. And so there's, I think the, speaking of the media culture at large, has to find a way to keep climate change on the front pages of newspapers and And why do you think it fell off the radar?

Is that something, a leadership issue from the top down where the president just wasn't interested anymore?

No, I think a lot of advertisers on television news, for example, auto companies up until recently, and oil and gas, Shell and Exxon, they don't really want it as a story so that if you start overdoing it, you just don't buy ads in that magazine or network. They have a lot of power, the advertisers. the extraction industries writ large as a group. I think that's part of the problem. And then, yeah, I mean, there's no president that wants to prioritize it yet. I mean, Obama tried to do it for a little while, but he made the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, his big one-off thing that he was going to be synonymous with.

Yeah.

And now, and Donald Trump did more of the wall with Mexico, immigration reform. You have President Biden now in crisis, having to deal with COVID-19 and the pandemic and how to get vaccines to people as being his big early initiative. And so it always seems to straggle and, you know, as a secondary issue when it might need to be the main issue of our time, treated as that.

No matter how you slice it, Biden is going to be wrapped up in how he handled the pandemic. And that may be the only issue we know him for. What are your thoughts on how is he doing thus far?

The 100 days is largely a media creation. Once Franklin D. Roosevelt came in in March of 1933 and he put all those New Deal measures into play, the Civilian Conservation Corps and Work Progress Administration, on and on and on, it became a very kind of unique thing, FDR's 100 days. And so now the media keeps since then, and particularly in the age of cable television, keeps using that as a way to judge a president on their 100 days. Biden has done a good job of picking a cabinet, getting most of his people confirmed. There's still a few lingering, but I think that went pretty smoothly, the confirmation hearings. But this inability to get united on the $1.9 million COVID-19 relief package, the fact that we're talking about it and the money's not getting to people is a representative of gridlock. And I think Biden's first 100 days will be about judging by vaccines, COVID deaths, how is that, how is our country, when are we getting out of this health crisis and is Biden leading us properly? But I don't think it's a lot of gold stars that are gonna be given to Biden in history because Basically, he's inheriting a crisis that there's no instant solution to and is trying to work his way out of the hole.

One of the major stories the past few days has been America surpassing the 500,000 mark in COVID deaths. I think we still see, though, there are a lot of people who think the COVID issue is either overplayed or an actual hoax in the news media. So we're still grappling with a very divided America. So I'm wondering if there's been a time in our history where we've seen that happen before, and if so, how did it manage to bridge itself back together again?

Well, you know, when you deal with the Spanish flu epidemic of, you know, 1917, '18, '19, that whole period of the Wilson administration there, We were at war, and in war that became the national priority. We were all in it together to beat Germany. Yes, there were conscientious objectors during that period, but by and large our country was war-focused. So the pandemic took a secondary note, and it wasn't this idea of public shaming for not wearing a mask or wearing a mask. And so, you know, we lost 600,000 people, but it was number 2 issue. behind the war. Now, right now in the Biden administration, the pandemic is front and center. It's a war against coronavirus. And Biden's going to be judged on— I mean, if Trump did the vaccines in record time, the Trump administration produced the ability to get vaccines. Now Biden's going to get judged by distribution. So shots in arms matter for the Biden legacy. If people are— whether we're gonna debate it or not, if people got one shot, they better go get their second. We've gotta— and at least he'll be able to say, under my administration, we were able to get this percentage of America, 40% of America vaccinated, 50%. That would at least start this idea of herd immunity kicking in. The one thing that will hurt Biden's legacy is if these vaccines don't manifest itself or they're wasted away or they're not getting into the elderly or into communities of need. There's already a racial disparity going on on this administration. I personally think Biden, because he wants to be low-key and no drama, and it's worked very well in the 2020 campaign, and it's actually kind of a relief to have a leader acting so mature. Biden administration might want to have a governing principle, a slogan, something, you know, the effect of infomercials and commercials. The federal government really needs to be encouraging people to get vaccines. And they're going to have to sell that. The idea that people are going to come to that their own conclusion— there are a lot of anti-vaxxers in America. There's some feeling between the Trump movement that the vaccines are overrated. You know, so Biden's got a lot of hurdles, but what he needs to do is connect the soul of America, which he talks about, to getting vaccinated.

Okay. So let's talk a little bit about the idea, though, of our commander-in-chief actually being a salesperson. Do we see that in history? I mean, who was the best salesperson as a president from your perspective?

You know, the great presidents are incredible salespeople. I mean, Theodore Roosevelt was able to create an idea of conservation and save 234 million acres of America when there was no mandate to do— save national parks in Idaho and California. You know, he created it and sold it. He used the teddy bear as his symbol.

Yeah.

Get little kids holding bears to go save the wilderness. John F. Kennedy was a master salesperson, recognizing that he barely won in 1960, just squeaked past Richard Nixon, and he wanted to unify the country, and he chose going to the moon. And on May 25th, 1961, meaning in office only months, said, we're going to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. We're going to beat the Soviets. He sold it in football terms of winning and beating. in a competition. And so the country got behind that effort. You know, Ronald Reagan was an extraordinary good salesman promoting the idea that America's greatness is coming back. We had been pretty beaten by Watergate and the Vietnam War. Patriotism was on a low ebb, and Reagan ratcheted up and sold the idea that America is stronger than ever and that we still have our great spirit of democracy to promote. So yeah, those types of presidents, I think both Roosevelts were great salespeople, Kennedy, Reagan, you know, Bill Clinton at his moments was a great salesperson. Donald Trump was a great salesperson to a base. But as president, you have to try to find unifying issues. I don't know what Biden is forced to have COVID, the war against COVID-19, as his issue. He doesn't have any choice. It'll be interesting to see if we get through this ordeal in 2021, what Biden in 2022 might prioritize. And, you know, whether it's a new energy grid, whether it's re repairing the roads and dams of America. I feel that the public would be pretty game, bipartisan, to do something big with roads that are crumbling. Our interstates are in disrepair, and that might be an area that Biden might be able to work with across the aisle with Mitch McConnell and the Republicans. We'll have to see.

Let's talk a little bit about the actual state of democracy. we've seen long-form media in particular running long commentaries on how America has lived past its lifespan of a democracy being 200 years. And I'm going to say easily, we've been reading these articles now for about the past 30 years, talking about how we're on the decline. And if we look at the 8 stages of democracy as it's laid out, I'm wondering, How all of that comes together with, in particular, the events of January 6th.

Well, January 6th will be remembered forever. The Trump insurrection, as it's going to be called. And we're having hearings trying to figure out what's going on now. The second impeachment of Donald Trump was really about gathering information, and the studies of what occurred are going to grow. But there's no question our democracy is in peril, but not dead. And the question is, what can we do? There are a lot of different theories on it. You know, the great Nobel Prize-winning American writer Pearl Buck once wrote that, you know, democracies only work in smaller countries. In her mind, places like Denmark or or the like, where everybody can know each other and you'll be able to have a kind of democratic process. So if that's true, America's got to work on a state-by-state basis. It just can't be the federal government with democracy, meaning every single state's got to make sure its democratic principles and values are intact. And so it takes 50 democracies to make the United States work. On the federal level, I was heartened by the amount of that we were able to run the 2020 elections with active voter participation. A decade ago, we were all saying that our democracy was in decline because people weren't voting. I think the trend trend is good that people are are voting. So the danger in our country is just this neo civil war that they're just two different. Philosophical views on what the country should be, and they're at loggerheads, and nobody knows when one will run out or how that will change. And social media has allowed people to feel like they're being participatory in our democracy by tweeting or putting a post out. And yet a lot of democracy is about helping your neighbor get his car out of the ditch, helping people like here in the in the Texas blackout, helping, you know, sharing a plumber between 3 houses and who's going to be able to bring supplies to help. There's a lot of just grassroots aspects to democracy that we have to make sure that we keep. So I think on a village-by-village basis, I feel a little better about our country, but there's no question Washington, D.C. is very dysfunctional right now. and that people don't like politicians. And if they do like a politician, it's one who spends their time bashing democratic institutions, meaning somebody like Trump or somebody like Biden, who's kind of repairing things, the repairman as president.

Yeah.

I'm wondering where and when we can re-get a real kind of vigorous leadership and be on the same page. The Cold War helped us. Because during the Cold War, we all had the common foe of the Soviet Union.

Okay.

Right now, our business, the global— globalism since the 1990s has— our companies are all over the world and nobody's really quite sure who the enemy is. So cultural issues start being magnified. Are you pro-Roe v. Wade or are you against Roe v. Wade? Do you believe in climate change or you don't believe in climate change? And these start becoming our defining issues instead of thinking about the genius of our founders and how lucky we are to live in a country that has this amount of abundant resources and how many people in the world still want to come here and live here and move here because all things considered, it's still a remarkable place to live.

As you mentioned, though, particular issues seem to resonate more with people than, I guess, the actual party system. Which brings me to the concept of 2 major parties. Is there a future for that?

I think the money that got in through to the 2 major parties, the amount that you have to have, $1 billion to run for president right now, is problematic, meaning Citizens United has cost us a lot of woes. Niagara Falls of money that's needed, a flood of cash to run for Senate. And so that's not very democratic. That's sort of hyper-capitalism, but it's not democracy at a kind of more authentic level.

Mm-hmm.

I don't know if one could break through with the 2 parties. The idea of a 3rd party, maybe. But, you know, every— you know, usually it has to be a billionaire. The only real third party anybody was talking about this last round was whether, whether Michael Bloomberg might create a third party because he had the money to do it.

Mm-hmm.

And Ross Perot ran as a billionaire in 1992, got 19% of the vote as a third party. So I think you could have a third-party person, but the thought that that has to be a billionaire in order to pull it off, and even then it's hard to qualify for the debates. Is, is, makes it troubling because some of these smaller parties, the Libertarian Party or Green Party or, you know, Constitution Party or something, there's no way they're going to be able to raise that kind of capital that's needed.

For the benefit of those of us who don't get to take your class there at Rice, you know, some people will argue, yes, we're a democracy. Others will argue, no, we're a republic. But then there's also that third argument that we're not a pure anything right now. So you liken what we are a bit more toward capitalism now. So are we not— are we kind of hyphenated, a republic that's a democracy but with a capitalist bent that overarches over everything that we do?

Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, I think we're hyphenated.

Okay.

And that, you know, what's clear is that the money still rules, that there's great power over corporations in America that have a great controlling effect, that we are a country of capitalists and Wall Street is the Mecca. A deeper problem, though, is this loss of our middle class. And that people can't really have a— make a living wage, and that we're paying into things like Medicaid and Medicare, Social Security. And well, there's a fear of how they will survive 20 years from now, that how does the funding for all of this work? We're having robotics and automation, and people don't need the blue-collar jobs that they once wanted. And the topic that Trump capitalized on is this outsourcing of, you know, building factories everywhere else but in the United States. How do we re-attract manufacturers to stay in America where it might cost a little more to build something than it would in Mexico or the Philippines? So the challenges are mighty, but I find that underneath it all, our research and development in America is good, our infrastructure is fair, that we've got— we still have a lot of freedoms, our Constitution still matters, our judicial system works. I mean, look at Donald Trump saying the election was rigged. He went to court after court after court that threw him out. And so I don't think our judicial system is broken, but they're overworked. Our teachers are underfunded. Our infrastructure is getting perilously close to being dysfunctional. And we're now having to deal with possible climate disasters like wildfires that would burn Napa vineyards in California or a hurricane that could just knock Tampa or Miami off the map. And in a— or a New York City that's You know, having to deal with if we continue to have public health concerns, if COVID-19 isn't unique, but due to changing the Earth around by overindustrialization, are we going to have more viruses coming? And how— what does that mean for public transportation? Who's going to ride in the subways? What does it mean for the infrastructure of Manhattan? Are we creating a new society of people working at home instead of going to a workplace? Things are very much in flux right now.

We have a question from the audience. Even though Doug doesn't think a third party will really take hold, what about the Republicans who say the Republican Party has lost its way because of Trump and do want to try and form a so-called New Republican Party that adheres to traditional Republican values and policies?

I think that's the one party that might be able to take off if Trump If Trump decides to run in 2024, there may be a group of wealthy Republican, you know, Wall Street-inclined globalists who decide to run a Republican, you know, bolt the Republican Party and form a new centrist party, and therefore stopping Trump from having a second term. And they might be able to come up with a candidate and get the money. That would be a huge development if you could actually split the Republican Party in 2. That did happen in 1912 when Theodore Roosevelt created the Bull Moose Party. In those days, the Bull Moose Party were progressives in the Republican Party. Today, it's a battle between—

Mm-hmm.

The Romney Republicans versus the Trump Republicans, and it seems like they're— they can't live together. And Trump is still the dominant figure in the Republican Party. If Trump left and created a MAGA party, he would overnight have probably 20% of the American public, if not a lot more, sticking with him.

So I guess the question is, how long does Trump remain newsworthy?

I think as long as he's intimating that he may run in 2024, he's going to the CPAC on Sunday. And if he goes there and it starts, as reports say, he's going to start already talking about beating Biden in 2024, helping make America great again, Trump Republicans get reelected.

Mm-hmm.

He will start continuing to be a major news source because people just can't get— even people that loathe him keep watching him. He's still a presence. I don't know how his health is. I don't know whether he feels like going at it again in 4 years. But just intimating that he's looking to run in 2024 means he owns the Republican Party. And so he will be seen as the alternative to Biden.

Okay. I'm wondering, though, now with, with the pandemic really kind of showcasing where we are technologically as a society, one of the things that's happened in the past year is how artificial intelligence in particular has really propelled forward. So now we're seeing a really great divide between the people that have tech skills and those that don't. Also coming into play. How far away are we from an education president?

Oh, it would be so important. I find personally one of the things that happened in our country is the technological revolution went so quickly, and the beneficiaries of it were places in Silicon Valley or Round Rock, Austin, or Seattle, and then MIT corridor in the East Coast did all right. But the Midwest got left behind at the same time that manufacturing left— auto manufacturing, tires, spark plugs, you know, people building abroad because it's cheaper and you get around the labor unions in America— and created the Rust Belt. There was no attempt to try to bring the tech revolution to Ohio and Michigan and Wisconsin. Minnesota's done all right because they have such genius there on their healthcare. And, you know, not just Mayo Clinic, but their notion of public healthcare in Minnesota. They've hung in there. But western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and all— they're all left behind. And we need now to fight to make that a tech revolution in the heartland. To bring those— everybody, every school in America needs to be able to be in range, you know, be able to have internet access for education. And so, yes, it would be wonderful if education became the bully pulpit for a future president.

So what do you see bubbling to the surface? What do you see short range and long range happening here?

I just think that we're still deeply divided.

Mm-hmm.

I think Biden has got an opportunity if the vaccinations can be distributed, if you get shots in arms, if by the midsummer, let's just say August, you can start getting some semblance of public gatherings back, baseball games, rock concerts, on and on. And certainly if by Christmas we could say the COVID crisis is over, That means the economy might jack up. People will feel we the worst is behind us. You might get a new optimism going in America. We're still a place, a country where foreign countries want to invest. You might be able to get climate accord going with China and start really trying to think global about about climate change. So we might be able to get on an up. tick. On the other hand, if COVID lingers and the economy stumbles and we stay in a kind of low-grade recession, it gives an opportunity for Trump to say, look, when I was president, we had all-time highs in the economy. Biden is now acting like a traditional liberal, a Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis liberal. He's got all these programs using executive power, has no legislative agenda.

Mm-hmm.

And that turned back to me. So we are not out of this Trump versus Biden, you know, square-off. I think Biden's going to have to get results very, you know, within a year, or else people are going to start, start, you know, craving change. And it's hard to believe that they would go back to Trump after all the problems that he brought. He still controls a lot of power in the Republican Party.

Now, what do you attribute the great divide in America to?

Well, it's been there since the Civil War, and it gets patched up from time to time. But there's a feeling of states' rights versus a strong federal government. I think there in the South right now, where I'm at in Texas, The South is having a resurgence economically. A lot of people are wanting to do business in Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia because of warmer weather, and it's no longer a backwater. I mean, when FDR was president, the South— he had electrified the South. It was considered a backwater. Today the South is booming, and so there's a lot of Southern pride in the New South economy and the fact that, you know, like a state like Texas, you don't have to pay as much in taxes. So it's attracting businesses from California and New York and all. So it's making the red zone, red America, feel that we're the real America. We're not having the problems that New York and California are having. Well, of course, this Texas blackout belied all of that. It showed that Texas is not some miracle place because of low taxes. It's simply that they have a lot of land, and so you can live here cheaper. But things like cutting corners on the energy grid can end up being disastrous for the state of Texas if this becomes every winter there's going to be a new winter storm due to climate change. Texas hasn't considered that. So they're going to— they're in the same, same kind of hole as New York and California in the end. But then race is a big part of it. Who's the real American? Changing demographics, you know, xenophobia and anti-immigration, a feeling of white America losing something that we're no longer— you know, our heritage was a core of white heritage and now we're being called racist. And, um, and that, um, you know, everybody— we're considered the bad guys who killed Native Americans and genocide and perpetrated slavery. And it sort of fuels and angers, um, a certain segment of white America that, that, you know, this is a time where people are looking, rethinking Black Power movement and women's rights. And, and so white men are feeling marginalized and in decline, and that creates some of the angst that's going on right now.

One last question and we need to wrap up, but I'm wondering how you feel about the news media reporting on red states and blue states. What is your take on that?

I think a lot of— I think it's very reductionary because there really is a lot of many things happening that aren't being reported. I mean, is Georgia a red state or blue state? They just, they just got 2 Democratic senators in with everybody paying attention. And so it's hard to call a lot of these states red or blue. I understand it. And, you know, I use it. We all do it because it's sort of an easy way to kind of look at the map and, and figure that out. But I think more and more states are up for grabs. I mean, I don't know what Arizona is or Colorado is or Michigan is, or, you know, I mean, certainly we can see progressivism is going to have a huge sway in California and that, you know, Republicanism or, you know, has a huge sway in Alabama and Mississippi. But things are starting to shift around a lot as people are moving different places. And we'll have to And a lot of this depends on gerrymandering and the like, another problem that we're having to deal with. But it would be better if we did report it, I think, more in the news, actually what's going on in a state instead of the stereotype of the state. Texas, where I'm in, we had the first lesbian mayor in American history in Houston.

Mm-hmm.

San Antonio is one of the most multi-diverse cities in America. Austin is as progressive as Berkeley, California, but sometimes I go north and people think of Texas as people carrying guns and wearing cowboy hats. And, you know, that's all over. We have a misperception of different regions that we don't live in. And so we have to be careful with those kinds of stereotypes.

And we have one more question here, which is, to what degree is the news media responsible for the great divide?

Well, there's no question about it. But I think once we've got cable television, not nightly news, you're losing the referee and arbitrator concept. And now people are gravitating to the news stories they want to hear. They— and the— and so we're just, as you— everybody knows, it's an epidemic that we're dealing with conspiratorial news, news that's not accurate, people cherry-picking the news they want to believe in. So there's not one national public square. There's— and they're not just 2. There might be 20 that people are getting, you know. So it's, it's very hard to be unified if you're not sharing the same set of facts and assumptions. The Fair Media Council is a 501 nonprofit organization advocating for quality news and working to create a media-savvy society. For more information about the Fair Media Council and other This podcast is a part of the C-Suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-suite-radio.com.