U.S. Constitution – Audibly Speaking: A Site of History and Memory

Presidential Leadership 101 holds that no President should enter a war without first cultivating the support of the American people. Efforts to do so without securing public support–the Mexican War, Vietnam–have been disasters.  No president should just suddenly and unconstitutionally attack another country without Congressional consultation, approval or public education, like the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor.  In the aftermath of such an act, it became more important than ever that Trump do what he should have done before the war–explain the reasons for the war, why it was necessary, and how it was consistent with our national security interests and our ideals. Trump utterly failed to explain why with even a scintilla of coherence why the war was necessary. He promised to commit war crimes, besmirching and weakening America’s moral reputation.  He set the stage by his failure of leadership for another disastrous failure in American foreign policy.

This episode analyzes and identifies these mistakes and shows, with the “Arsenal of Democracy speech” by Franklin D. Roosevelt in December 1940, how presidential speechmaking and the cultivation of public opinion in support of a successful foreign policy ought to be done.

In many ways, I regard this as my best recording of a chapter from “The American Yawp” yet.  I have deleted nothing from the text edited by its editors, Joseph Locke and Ben Wright.  I have added passages of my own where I think additions were needed to clarify what the original authors were trying to say.

In the wake of the American Midterm elections in November 2018, “Hijacking History” looks at how the elections are likely to be viewed in the light of history.  In order to understand how, we have to see them in the context of the rules of the Constitutional process in America. What to outsiders may have seemed like a mixed verdict on the Trump administrations, looks very different when framed by the structure of America’s political system.  Some knowledge of how America’s electoral system is structured give Democrats reason to hope in 2020, based on the outcome of the Midterm elections of 2018.