Truth, Politics and Power

A hundred years ago, a young man was about to become famous on an entirely new scale. The dawning engines of mass communication, advertising and public relations elevated Babe Ruth into a national phenomenon. When asked why he earned more money than the President of the United States, Ruth honestly answered “I had a better year.” That marked the birth of the celebrity culture that paved the way for everyone from Charles Lindbergh to Donald Trump. In a special edition of Truth, Politics and Power, host Neal Conan speaks with Jane Leavy, author of “The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created.”

Donald Trump lied routinely as a businessman and as a presidential candidate: their frequency did not change once he took office, but, on the next episode of “The Democracy Test,” co-hosts Neal Conan and Heather Cox Richardson hear an argument that the character of his lies took a turn to autocracy when he took office. The corrosive effect of a President’s lies, and why we can’t rely on checks and balances will not constrain the president on their own, but need to be animated by men and women of virtue. Plus Neal and Heather review what we’ve learned in this series and explain their enduring faith in democracy in these dark times. “Truth and Faith” is the final episode of “The Democracy Test.”

A key innovation of the American constitution, is a system of checks and balances to make sure the President can’t govern like a king. In the next Episode of “The Democracy Test,” co-hosts Neal Conan and Heather Cox Richardson explore how that system works, and what happens when Congress and the courts fail to check the chief executive. The program also delves into the unwritten rules that can lubricate the machinery of government - the “norms,” and finds some unexpected lessons from Watergate, where congress, the courts, the free press and the federal bureaucracy exposed and defeated a criminal president.