The Last Best Hope?

By Adam SmithArts History

The Last Best Hope? episodes

October 18, 2023 Is there a Paranoid Style in American Politics?
In 1963, the historian Richard Hofstadter gave a famous lecture at Oxford (later an essay in Harper’s) arguing that a “paranoid style” was a recurrent strain in American politics. Hofstadter cited examples ranging from the Anti-Masons of the 1830s to MCarthyism. Today, pundits often turn to the concept of a “paranoid style” when trying to explain Trumpism. Why has Hofstadter’s idea been so influential? And does it really explain anything at all? Adam discusses these questions with Nick Witham, the author of Popularizing the Past, a brilliant new study of Cold War-era historians who shaped an understanding of American history far beyond the groves of academia.
The Last Best Hope? is the podcast of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. Presenter: Adam Smith. Producer: Emily Williams.
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43 min
October 16, 2023 The Last Best Hope? Season 10

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2 min
June 09, 2023 The Geordie South: How Northumbrians shaped Appalachia
Half a million Northumbrians, the proud people of the English-Scottish border region, settled in the Appalachian mountains in the eighteenth century. And they left their mark in the song, speech and maybe even politics. Geordie culture: the often overlooked element in the forging of the American South. Adam talks to Dan Jackson, author of The Northumbrians: Northeast England and its People, and Ted Olson, Professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University.
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37 min
June 02, 2023 A City on a Hill: The exceptional history of a powerful metaphor
It is one of America’s most powerful founding myths – the pilgrims on an errand into the wilderness to create a new model society– “we shall be like a city upon the hill,” Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor Winthrop was supposed to have said in 1630, “the eyes of the world upon us”. Separated, yet visible – just like the ark, the responsibilities of such a community were awesome, the prospect of failure terrifying. What does the enduring power of this phrase tell us about American political culture? Adam is joined by Sam Haselby, a historian of religion and American nationalism, and senior editor at Aeon, and David Frum, Atlantic columnist, senior editor at Atlantic, and former speechwriter for George W. Bush.
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46 min
May 26, 2023 America's role in Ukraine: a return to the last, best hope?
What does the United States' support for Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion tell us about the state of America today? Former President Trump, who has a long track record of admiring Vladimir Putin, boasts he could end the war in a day, presumably not in a manner that would satisfy the Ukrainians. President Biden, and many Republican leaders, think that if America doesn't stand firm in opposition to militarised autocracy, then who will? Is this the latest manifestation of an old tension between a vision of America as engaged in the World, as “the last Best Hope” – or as a citadel apart from the world, the debate that roiled the US after the First World War? A debate about whether American freedom is best preserved by being isolated or involved? Adam talks to Phillips O’Brien, Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews, one of the most influential analysts of the Russian invasion, and Julie Norman, Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for US Politics at UCL.
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44 min
May 19, 2023 Was there a Culture War in nineteenth century America?
The country is deeply polarised. Each party believes the other not just to be wrong on public policy questions but a profound threat to the nation. At stake are the most fundamental of questions about the values that underpin society. The US today? But also the US in the 1850s. Culture Wars are nothing new. In this episode Adam talks to two historians who have broken the mould of how to think about the Civil War era by recognising how cultural issues like gender could shape every other political issue: Lauren Haumesser, author of The Democratic Collapse: How Gender Politics Broke a Party and a Nation, 1856-1861, and Mark Power Smith, a Research Fellow at the RAI, and the author of Young America: The Transformation of Nationalism before the Civil War. So, how do culture wars start, why are they fought... and how do they end?
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48 min
May 12, 2023 Are there lessons for Biden from the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson?
In 1968, an elderly Democrat President, with major legislative achievements behind him, who had served as Vice President to younger, more charismatic man, decided he could not win a second election. What lessons are there for Joe Biden from the troubled, truncated presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson? Adam talks to Kevin Kruse, the eminent Princeton historian, author of many books on postwar US political history, including most recently Myth America and Mark Lawrence, the Director of the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, and author of The End of Ambition: The US and the Third World. Together they discuss how LBJ's legacy should be assessed today, and why he decided -- unlike President Biden -- not to seek a second full term.
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52 min
November 30, 2022 Lincoln's "House Divided" speech and the Coming of the Civil War
The speech that triggered the Civil War? In a speech in the State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois, in 1858, Abraham Lincoln warned that a "house divided against itself cannot stand" and that the nation, like a house divided, could not remain "half slave and half free" but would have to become all one thing or all the other. The crisis had arrived; the choice was between complete freedom and complete slavery. Why did Lincoln say this, and what were the consequences? Adam travels to Springfield to find out. Featuring Professor Graham Peck, Distinguished Professor of Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois, Springfield, and Christian McWhirter, Lincoln Historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
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48 min
November 23, 2022 The Second Amendment, with Saul Cornell
Why is gun control so hard to accomplish in American politics, despite the number of mass shootings now averaging one a week? Adam talks to Saul Cornell, the leading historian of the Second Amendment, about how the Constitution shapes the politics and culture of guns in the United States.
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41 min
November 16, 2022 The Black Ships Episode
In the 1853, the closed society of Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate was suddenly confronted by the naval reach of the “last best hope of earth” – Commodore Perry’s naval expedition to “open up” Japan to American trade. The Americans were, of course, as alien to the Japanese as the Japanese were, to the Americans. Adam talks to historians Brian Rouleau and Robert Hellyer about how each side saw the other, and what happened next.

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37 min

About The Last Best Hope?

From the publisher's feed

Abraham Lincoln called the United States “the last best hope of Earth.” In this podcast, we ask whether that claim still holds — and whether it ever did.

Each episode takes a…