Q&A With William Leuchtenburg: 2016 in the Rearview Mirror

Posted on Jan. 13, 2017

‘It appears as though the country can suddenly be swept by crazes in a way that I don’t recall having happened in the past and that are 
more characteristic of countries that have eventually moved in a fascist direction. Now I don’t think we are in danger of that kind of ending. 
But I do find this mercurial national temperament disturbing and hard to understand. The one encouraging thing I find is that they tend to be short-lived. … We are going to get the kinds of presidential candidates we deserve.’

 

As much as this assessment from Bill Leuchtenburg looks like it’s from the 2016 election, it is not. He said it in 1992, during the primary season that would leave George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot on the November ballot.

In 2016, the activist side of Leuchtenburg weighed in on Donald Trump when Leuchtenburg joined a number of prominent historians — Ken Burns, David McCullough, Robert Caro, Nell Irvin Painter, Ron Chernow and Vicki Lynn Ruiz — to comment on Trump’s candidacy.

They posted videos to a Facebook page called “Historians on Donald Trump.” Leuchtenburg called Trump unique: “We have never before had a candidate of a major party so abusive toward women, toward minorities, to so many millions of our American citizens.” Trump, he said, is not a patriot, lacks a “sense of the American past, and he doesn’t understand the achievements of this country.”

Leuchtenburg dislikes being asked to make predictions. But he does not shy from what he sees as the truth.

In an interview during the campaign, he said: “Never before have we had two candidates who are so disliked, so disrespected and so unable to generate enthusiasm for their candidacies.” He expressed concern that the country’s deep divisions have forced people farther apart, said he doubts this alienation will become permanent but noted that “all the polls indicate that voters believe neither of the candidates will pull the nation together. … We have reached a point where the constant talk radio and commentators on TV simply lacerate political comity and discourage politicians from working together. I don’t know how that is going to change.”

On Nov. 10, two days after Trump was elected, the Review asked Leuchtenburg what he took away from this campaign.

CAR: Will the 2016 presidential election’s nastiness become the norm?

WL: It is easy to forget how quickly national moods alter. Four years from now could be, and we hope will be, very different in spirit. I don’t see this in itself as something that is long-lasting. For one reason, there is a very considerable revulsion against it.

CAR: This was the fifth election in U.S. history in which the losing candidate won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College. Any chance this process will ever change — that a president will be elected by popular vote?

WL: The likelihood of it being changed is so slim that I have stopped worrying about it. So many states have a stake in the present system that chances of ratification [of a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College] are slim to none. I just don’t think it is going to happen.

CAR: What sort of president will Trump be?

WL: Historians have to be careful not to be prophets — always a dangerous gambit. But my expectations based on his past behaviors is that he will be a dreadful president. The first indication of this will be what his appointments are.

CAR: Have we ever had a situation like this before, where we’re about to inaugurate a divisive candidate whom critics perceive as a misogynistic, racist, anti-Semitic bigot?

WL: No. The reason you call on historians is that you expect them to say nothing new here, this is just the same, but I don’t see how any responsible historian could say that. There has never been a candidate who has abused so many segments of the population and then moved on to a position of power.

CAR: Have we ever seen an election where the media have so badly missed what was happening?

WL: Yes. This is the third time in my life I have seen this, the first time as a teenager in the 1936 election when the Literary Digest, which had correctly called every election since 1916, foresaw a disastrous defeat for Franklin Roosevelt. He swept every state but two. And in the 1948 election, when I was working for Richard Bolling in Missouri, I recall how badly pollsters erred who predicted a Truman defeat. Truman won.

CAR: Did any good come from this election?

WL: The only good I can imagine is that it calls the country’s attention to those pockets of unemployment and economic misery in an otherwise generally rising economy, where people have been hurt by the global economy and NAFTA, and that needs addressing.

CAR: What does this election say about our political parties, who nominated two highly unpopular candidates?

WL: I’m hesitant to make a broad generalization about political parties. What many Americans once hailed as a progressive step, a system of primary elections that take the choice out of smoke-filled rooms, means that there isn’t such a thing as a political party making a choice. This is how Trump managed to make it as the nominee of the Republican Party. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton was so dominant a figure in her party that nobody else could manage to defeat her — and the wiser ones made no effort to do so.

CAR: Are America’s voters, as you said in 1992, getting the president they deserve?

WL: Well, those who think the country needs to be turned around, and an earlier America needs to be restored, got the man they wanted to have. But whether he can deliver what they are expecting from him is highly improbable — a land of white male dominance that I don’t think we are going to see again, or should see again.

Few, if any, historians have looked as deeply into the American presidency — and conveyed it with such flair — as Leuchtenburg. Read about his history of presidential research.

Leuchtenburg was one of five Carolina professors who took part in “Consider This … 2016 Post-Elections,” a panel discussion presented by the GAA on Dec. 1. This was a follow-up to a pre-election event presented by the GAA in March before the North Carolina primary. Both videos are online at alumni.unc.edu/videos.