What Does it Mean to Be an American?

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[01:33] Nobody does it better than Regent Seven Seas Cruises. Enjoy all-inclusive unrivaled luxury with unlimited shore excursions, indulgent cuisine, personalized service and more aboard spacious all-sweet ships. Visit com to experience the unrivaled. [02:11] Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. On today's show, my good friend and fellow speechwriter for Barack Obama, Ben Rhodes. [02:19] America's 250th birthday has been on my mind a lot lately, especially since Donald Trump seems intent. [02:26] on making the country semi-quincentennial all about himself. [02:29] His parties, his name on everything, his guests. [02:32] and his version of the American story.

[02:34] But of course, there's another version of our story that resonates with at least half of us, likely more. At the very least, Americans have been engaged in an argument about what this country is and who belongs since we declared independence two and a half centuries ago. Ben has written an incredible, timely book about that argument. Truly, it's fantastic. I read the whole thing in about a day. [02:59] You all know what a big reader I am these days, so that's saying something. The book is called All We Say. [03:05] a history of the United States in 15 speeches.

In it, Ben traces the history of America through some of the nation's most consequential speeches, from a long-forgotten speech from a Native American chief and Lincoln's second inaugural to I Have a Dream, and speeches from Barack Obama and even Donald Trump. [03:21] It's a beautiful book about the ways in which, in the words of our old boss, this union may never be perfect, but generation after generation shows it can always be perfected. [03:32] Ben and I were psyched to have this conversation, both because we got to nerd out as former speechwriters and dig into what the two of us talk about when we're not in front of a mic, how those of us who don't love being governed by Donald Trump can win the argument about what this country is and where it needs to go.

[03:47] about how we close the gap between America's best ideals and our current... [03:53] fairly bleak reality. It was a great conversation and we'll get to it in a minute. But before we do, please consider becoming a Crooked Media subscriber if you haven't already, so that you don't miss out on any of the great content we're putting out for our friends at the pod. Subscribers get ad-free episodes of all your favorite podcasts, including this one. You also get our extra new episode of Pod Save America called Pod Save America Only Friends.

Other subscriber-only shows like Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer. Access to all of our excellent sub-stack newsletters like Pod Save [04:23] tabs, and you get to feel good about supporting one of the few independent, proudly pro-democracy media outlets left in Trump's America. So head to com slash friends and please subscribe. Let's get to it. [04:36] Here's Ben Rhodes. [04:39] What's up, Ben? John, this is the interview I was looking forward to since I finished my book, I have to tell you, honestly. I was going to say, I love when we have an excuse to pod together, especially this time, because you wrote a book about speeches, which is perfect for the two of us.

For people who don't know, I know a lot of you probably do, but Ben and I wrote speeches for six years together, sometimes quite literally together, like side by side with our laptops [05:07] But this is also a book about American identity and an argument over the American story that's been raging for 250 years, which has also become an obsession of mine as of late. But I want to start with something you wrote about the book, and you wrote that it's the third in a trilogy that started with your memoir, The New York Times.

[05:25] then your book about authoritarianism, and now this, and that finishing this one means you're ready to let go of your past identities as a White House staffer, foreign policy advisor, and speechwriter. [05:35] Say more about that while you're letting go. I actually really thought about this, John, because... [05:42] So I wrote my memoir, which was a very kind of raw experience, right? It was like I didn't digest it at all. I wrote that in a year. That came out in 2018. Then I very much my last book was in my kind of foreign policy, global politics, pod save the world, if you will, self in terms of traveling around and understanding what had happened in Russia and China and Hungary under Viktor Orban.

[06:12] using the experiences, contacts, networks I had from being in that world. And then this one is entirely – I wanted to go back into history because I had a sense that I could find a lot there, that you could understand this argument that we're having now [06:33] by tracing it back from the beginning. And frankly, my original conceit was Obama and Trump kind of encapsulate represent two different [06:43] opposing stories that we've [06:45] had throughout our history in competition with each other. And I'm not an historian. And so the vehicle I knew that I would choose is speeches.

And I found myself kind of returning to that core identity, that guy who showed up in the Obama campaign office when you were the chief speech writer. You're my boss. I remember walking in from my think tank culture in C. and wow, my boss is wearing a T-shirt, you know, like this is a different vibe. [07:15] foreign policy good thing i'm here yeah but i i i say this actually seriously to you like because you know you've been through this you kind of don't want to go through life as like [07:26] John Favreau or Ben Rhodes, former Obama X.

And I kind of feel like I've mined it now. This is not a memoir at all, but it drew deeply on all the things we did in speech writing. And so I felt like, but kind of more fundamentally and existentially too, I think I finally came to terms with... [07:54] How it all ended, you know, in the sense that Trump was this kind of rebuke of the inevitability of progress, right, of the arc of the moral universe bending towards justice kind of on its own, if you will. And [08:07] And I think reliving all of American history kind of allowed me to situate our experience [08:15] in a continuum where it's actually not that unusual that this happened.

You know, Reconstruction was followed by segregation. You know, the Civil Rights Movement was followed by backlash. So for all those reasons, I really did internally, like you have to trick yourself, you know, as a writer, and you are a writer, you know, you have to kind of tell yourself a story. And my story was, this is the third in a trilogy. [08:45] and kind of [08:46] you know, is me coming to terms with [08:49] How our chapter ended. And yeah, now I can move on. See what happens next. So I read the book.

I started it Sunday night when we got back from Lovett's wedding. And then I read most of it. [09:02] Yesterday and last night, we're recording this on Tuesday. You're listening to it probably on Sunday. First of all, I absolutely fucking loved the book. It is incredible. Everyone should read it. I also, it did give me this sense of, [09:15] hope and also peace, like you say you came to terms with it, sort of peace about like, the last 10 years and where it fits. Yes. Because you read, [09:25] The speeches you selected were specifically selected because they each tell a story about American identity and this argument over what America is that we've been having since the founding.

And when you lay it all out like that, along with the different characters, you really do get this sense that we have been here before and people – [09:49] in these moments have been able to [09:52] speak and march and fight their way out of these moments. And I don't think it's... [09:59] It's not Pollyannish at all, but it's sort of like a hard-earned hope that you get from reading it. But I thought it's outstanding. You opened the book with, of all people, D. Vance and his speech last summer at Claremont about American identity, which listeners to this show and especially offline know that I can't stop talking about.

Austin is nodding his head very knowingly right now. [10:29] opening the book with it. What made you finally decide that Vance's speech was the way into a book about 250 years of American identity? [10:39] So, [10:40] A prologue for a book is a fascinating thing because you kind of have to – [10:45] telegraph your argument. The book starts in real time. [10:51] with Benjamin Franklin, which we can get to. But I don't want to drop people in there. I wanted to give people a sense of kind of what the argument of the book is.

And I always had in mind – [11:03] when I was literally selecting these speeches, which was an interesting process, and as I was writing chapter after chapter, that – [11:14] If you really distill it down, [11:17] There are two stories of what American identity is, you know, with obviously their permutations and all exactly the same. But I think you can simplify and say there is one story that. [11:30] is a nationality of inheritance that you can call it originalism. You can call it blood and soil nationalism. But essentially, this was a white Christian nation founded by a particular set of people with a particular set of beliefs.

And now I'm literally quoting D. Vance and the [11:52] It's the inheritor of kind of Western civilization. Sometimes that's Western supremacy. And sure, other people live here of different races and ethnicities, but they kind of have to subordinate themselves. [12:06] to this original identity and american exceptionalism is just a given [12:11] Like we are exceptional because we're American. We are the city on a hill. We're in some ways God's chosen people. We can do whatever we want to the people in this country, whether they're Native Americans or black people or immigrants, and we can do whatever we want to other countries.

Right. And again, I'm casting it negatively. But I frankly think that that at a core that that is a strain that runs through American history. [12:41] David Plylar,: And that American history is a story of people trying to change the country for the better, trying to make a more perfect union, to use a phrase. And that's how you get the abolitionist movement and the suffrage movement and the civil rights movement and the labor rights movement, all these things. D. Vance comes along. [13:03] and decides to tell [13:06] the first version of the story for me, because that speech is literally, I mean, when I knew I was going to use it is when he said, we are not a nation founded on a creed.

And he name checks the Declaration of Independence and the idea that all men are created equal. He says, no, that is not American identity. We are a particular people from a particular place with a particular [13:36] But what particular people – [13:38] do we think he's talking about? He has this kind of logic way where, well, who could argue with us being a particular place and a particular people? Actually I can argue with it because – [13:48] We were 13 states at the beginning on the Northeast coast. We weren't. [13:53] Our geography is wildly different today.

The people in this country today don't look at anything like the people in those [redacted address] of life, I mean, walk down the street in my neighborhood in Venice. There's a ton of ways of life there, right? And so I actually think that JD did the service of framing – [14:13] the other story for me. And so I literally opened with it. You mentioned that and that other people have to be subordinate to sort of this white Christian identity. And I've heard people say, and I've talked to people about this, that

D. Vance, when he spouts this like anti-immigrant xenophobic rhetoric, is full of shit and doesn't really believe it and couldn't really believe it because his in-laws are immigrants from India. His wife [14:43] There is another possible explanation here that you touch on, which is this obsession Vance has, and he does it in the speech, and we've heard him do it, and he's mocked for it in other times and other places, with the need for everyone to show gratitude, particularly foreign-born American citizens, immigrants, that if you're here and we let you come here, then you need to show gratitude to the people who've been here the longest or to our ancestors or to this way of life.

[15:13] and this culture. And I do think that's how you reconcile. Because if you ask D. Vance, he would say, well, I'm for immigration. I'm for a diverse country. That's fine. But his problem is [15:25] that if you don't have seven generations of ancestors buried in Kentucky, which he said at the Republican National Convention, then you don't get to complain about this country. I mean, basically he said that about Mamdani, too. Mamdani had some, like, Fourth of July message where he was like, yeah, and we've got to continue to improve this nation, and something very mild about perfecting or improving the nation.

And D. Vance was like, how could he do that? We let him in here and blah, blah. It's, like, really fucking crazy. Yeah, if you believe... [15:55] Because he said that you have to show gratitude in that speech. And I posed the question in the perlogue, gratitude to whom? Yeah, who are we? For what? Who are they? Who was everyone supposed to face? Who are these people? Yeah, because actually... [16:09] Immigration was a much bigger theme than I actually expected it would be in this book because you keep bumping into that.

And Benjamin Franklin – [16:19] His father was an immigrant. He left religious persecution behind [16:24] as well as seeking economic opportunity. And then you run through the other people in this book. Louis Brandeis was a Jewish immigrant who left anti-Semitism behind in Europe. Mary Lise, a populist, came from a poor Irish family that fled the oppression of the British. [16:47] Obviously, you get up to the 20th century. Interestingly, Dolores Huerta comes from a family, [16:54] people don't think about enough, John. A part of her family weren't immigrants, and [16:59] The border just got redrawn and brought them into the United States.

There are a lot of brown people in this country that were here before the [17:07] a lot of white people and we just, you know, [17:11] expanded and redrew the border around places like New Mexico, for instance. And fundamentally, it comes down to the question of, do you believe that someone – [17:22] Zora Mamdani, for example, is as American – [17:25] as someone who, [17:27] whose family's been here for seven generations. Right. I genuinely do. Yeah. And I'm not, that's not a virtue signal. That's just a, [17:35] How can citizenship not be equal?

Like, how can some people be more American than other people? Like, we are supposed to be a nation anchored in laws, the Constitution, and a creed, the Declaration of Independence, which suggests not that we should have open borders, which is how D. Vance kind of shorthands it. He says, well, if everybody who believes in the Declaration of Independence is American, then we'd have billions of people. Don't we have to admit them all? No, we don't. That's not what he says. That's not what our laws say. We can have a border.

[18:05] Other times, I don't necessarily agree with that, but we can by matter of policy. [18:10] The people who are American are American and they're equally American. And and frankly, the. [18:16] The thing we should be grateful for is that we are a nation that is able to have all these different people come here and enrich this country. I mean, how boring would this country be if it was just comprised of people like D. Vance? I think fundamentally – [18:38] I felt myself – [18:41] Because you kept encountering people didn't like the Irish when they came here.

People didn't like Chinese people when they came here. Some people have never liked black people being here, even though they were brought here mostly against their will. The people didn't like Jewish people when they came here. And guess what? You've rolled the tape forward. Does anybody think that this nation is not better for having Chinese Americans and Jewish Americans and Irish Americans? No, I don't think even D. Vance would make that argument. So what are we really talking about here? [19:11] And it's been said many times by many people, but that is what the core of American exceptionalism is all about, which is we can't we can go live in Germany and live in Japan.

We can't become German or become Japanese. [19:26] But anyone can come to America and become American. And that is a unique, exceptional quality of America. And that is the experiment. I think we're also different. [19:39] Because we were founded by people who immigrated here. Like we were founded not by the indigenous people here. And I think that – [19:47] that does kind of create [19:50] and an additional legitimacy for the idea that if this is not a nation, [19:56] of indigenous americans then it is by definition a nation of people who have chosen an identity yeah and set up a government that [20:07] could be flexible enough to absorb energy [20:11] different people, a lot of the speeches that spoke about the virtue of immigration, Frederick Douglass, Louis Brandeis, they talked about the fact that [20:21] the decision to come to America is like the first step in becoming American.

Like that's a strive. And, and again, [20:29] there's an inherent striving in that. I want a better life. I want to be a part of something different. I want to be a part of this project. I want to sign up for this creed. And yeah, you have to go through the process. Again, not the D. Van Sing with to let everybody in, but that idea of striving self-improvement type people is ingrained in American identity and is [20:56] With ICE, we're seeking to kind of push that out. [20:59] Music. [21:06] Pod Save America is brought to you by Bombas.

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When you head to com slash crooked. [23:25] You mentioned Benjamin Franklin, the first speech you opened the book with, of all the founders. [23:31] you pick Franklin, um, and the speeches, uh, his closing argument for the constitution. Um, and then you, you bookend at the end of this, at the end of the book, uh, Trump's second inaugural with Franklin's warning about despotism. Um, [23:46] What made Franklin sort of unlock the book for you and why him among the founders? [23:53] Yeah, so Franklin and unlock is exactly the right word because I went through a really interesting process.

[24:00] where I must have read, I don't know, a couple hundred speeches. And how do you tell the story? And as you know, as a speechwriter, if you know the beginning of the story and – [24:13] have some idea at the end of the story um [24:16] uh you're gonna it's gonna make a lot easier to fit the pieces in and i came across this franklin speech that i had not [24:24] really read before. It's a closing argument at the Constitutional Convention. [24:29] Franklin is chosen because he's the old wise man.

He's also the most famous American in the world. He's kind of the de facto host of the convention in Philadelphia. He gives a speech. [24:41] that does not say a word about the Constitution itself. It's pretty remarkable. Like he doesn't talk about anything in it. The entire speech is about the virtue of compromise itself. And he essentially says, when you get a bunch of people together to benefit from all of their wisdom, you're also assembling all of their different interests, all of their selfish interests, all their prejudices, you're getting the good and bad.

And out of that kind of assembly, you can't have some kind of perfect agreement. We have to compromise if we want a union. [25:11] And to me, [25:13] He has rhetorical tricks, John, that are really interesting because he basically takes on infallibility and dogma or the kind of antagonist in the speech. [25:26] you know, [25:27] And this is actually why we're not founded on religion. Each religion thinks it's... [25:32] It's got the answers. And if we have that same mindset, then this place will never – [25:37] be a home for people that might not agree with exactly that version of things.

And so inherent in the Constitution is compromise. [25:46] and imperfection. Now that compromise allowed the union to be [25:52] made, but it also set in motion all of the conflict and competition that followed because we compromised about really big things. We essentially compromised about identity. [26:02] There was still slavery. There were uncertain questions about immigration. You know, different states had different immigration policies. Obviously, women did not have rights of citizenship at that time. And so we kind of pushed those issues out. Franklin, very interestingly, was, you know, a lot of people who were in the United States.

[26:17] The last public act he did, which is one of the first things he did after the Constitution because he didn't live very long, was petition Congress to abolish slavery. So he was living his own... [26:28] theory of the case, which is [26:30] compromise, set up the union, and then work within the system to change it. Now, he also had this warning that I found very chilling, which is he said, this new government can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government being incapable of any other.

And that landed like a two by four today. And I filed that away and I said, I think I might [27:00] And I do. And now it helped that Trump got elected. That kind of and that doesn't mean I think that that's happened fully. It's a moral warning that if we don't arrest this direction, that's where we could end up. Yeah, I mean, that Franklin speech. [27:15] basically shows that the conflict and the argument that we've been having for the last 250 years was like a function of the design of the government.

It was preordained because, of course, if you're going to have a country where people of such different backgrounds come from different places to try to make a home and want to live in freedom from what they escaped from in Europe, [27:45] then you're going to have the only government that's going to make that work is one where different people have a voice, different people with different opinions who are going to be at war with each other or be in argument with each other, fight with each other. And it can't be any different than that.

And so then you look through the whole 250 years, you're like, well, yeah, slavery, the Civil War, everything. Like, of course, we were going to have these arguments because that was sort of the idea behind the government that they created. [28:15] And so the pieces fit in just to take the first – [28:20] I broke the book into thirds. Each has five speeches for a certain period of American history. And so the first five are, okay, [28:27] We set up this constitution. Then I have Red Jacket saying, wait a second, we're not in your constitution.

Leave us alone. Then I have a woman named Maria Stewart, who's an abolitionist, a remarkable kind of penniless woman who came out of nowhere and became a superstar speaker on the circuit in Boston, who says... [28:46] wait a second, black people deserve equal rights. She's an abolitionist and a feminist. Women need to be empowered. We need to be teaching black people and women the same way we teach white people, and we need to claim our rights. Then I have Alexander Stevens, the vice president of the Confederacy, saying, wait a second, no, no, this is a quality thing.

We don't believe in that. White supremacy is the cornerstone of the Confederacy. He said that. I'm not projecting leftism onto him. That's what he said. And then Lincoln resolves it all. [29:16] in the second inaugural and says, no, we are an abolitionist nation. We fought this war to right the wrong in our constitution. And in the most radical sense ever spoken by an American president says, essentially, if every drop of blood drawn by the lash must be paid for by a drop of blood drawn by the sword, essentially, so let it be done.

A president of the United States [29:46] imagine saying that today. So that's just in those five speeches you see [29:52] the tug of war, and then Lincoln tries to resolve it. [29:56] And then it starts all over again. Right. And, you know, and we've gone through [30:01] the cycle of reconstruction to segregation, uh, [30:05] to FDR. [30:06] Starts all over again. Civil rights movement to backlash to civil rights movement to Obama to Trump. And so we're just living different versions of [30:14] of the same argument and I would argue in this book, speeches [30:19] are actually the place where we have most prominently done that.

Yes. You know, standing up in front of somebody as an activist or a politician and making your argument. [30:29] is different than writing a book or an op-ed or something. Because that's inherent in persuading people about who we are. I want to sort of dive into some of that that you just mentioned. Alexander Stevens, right? So he's this, who I hadn't heard of, by the way, before. [30:48] this book, Vice President of the Confederacy. Fascinating character. He's a Georgia politician who goes from [30:56] wanting to avoid secession to then standing up in Savannah, Georgia in 1861 and delivering this speech, which, like you said, is just literally a case for white supremacy, that the superiority of whites over blacks is a, he says, physical, philosophical and moral truth.

Yeah. [31:17] What I found fascinating about that is, this is in 1861, even at the time, slavery defenders were already learning to publicly talk in code, states' rights, economic way of life, northern aggression. He just... [31:31] says the quiet part out loud. [31:34] What did you make of that as a rhetorical and political strategy? [31:39] in the context of that time. So I found the speech and I was like, I got to do this because he says the quiet part out loud. And I think those are the best speeches. So the most interesting ones.

And [31:50] For each chapter... [31:52] And, [31:53] I think you'll appreciate this as a speechwriter. I kept in mind, what makes a speech unique and consequential? One, we have to understand the person who gave it. [32:00] What is their whole life story that allowed them to give the speech? And then what is the cause or movement that they're speaking to? Now, Alexander Stevens was against secession precisely because he believed that, [32:12] Rightly that slavery was going to be more easy to protect inside the union than outside of it. Right. So it wasn't a virtuous anti-secessionism.

But after. [32:22] George, his home state secedes, he just signs up. He says, okay, I'm going along with this. And he becomes a co-author of the Confederate Constitution, which is kind of a cut and paste of the American one, except it makes very clear that despite all the talk about states' rights – [32:39] No state shall abolish slavery. So so so much for states. Right. And and what's so interesting about that speech? [32:49] is [32:50] He gave the kind of normal stuff about we're going to get rid of these tariffs and these things we don't like that the North imposes on us.

But then he gets to slavery and white supremacy and – [33:03] He doesn't defend it as a necessary evil. He doesn't say, well, we have to have this for our economy to work or we're going to have – we'll keep this for a period of time. He turns white supremacy into like a progressive enlightenment discovery, philosophical discovery. [33:23] Moral truth, as you quoted, he compares the discovery of. [33:28] of the supremacy of the white race... [33:30] He literally compares that to enlightenment discoveries of free markets and the way that the astronomy works.

And it seems bizarre to read now, but you see he's trying to tell people – [33:48] You're actually ennobled. [33:51] by believing that you're superior to black people. He's speaking to an audience that includes a lot of poor white people who don't own slaves who are probably going to have to go fight [34:00] for slave power and he has to give them something to fight for. And so what he's giving them is not just that they can feel better than somebody else. That's [34:10] a huge thing he's giving them, but also, [34:12] That they're good.

They're doing what's right. And he actually framed this is good for black people too. Like they need to learn from us, you know. And I found it so interesting because we progressives – [34:27] sometimes can forget, [34:29] that what can appear to be the most reactionary ugly ideas – [34:34] Those people actually think that they're in their own way, [34:37] progressive ideas and not in the terms of left, but in terms of like this is evolution in a positive sense. He even says in that speech that this discovery will spread around the world, that other countries are going to come to see the necessity of white supremacy.

And I found that so interesting because – [34:57] The same... [34:58] technique that i admire in like fdr pivoting to four freedoms um to give the nation a bigger bigger purpose alexander stevens could do this for white supremacy now of course after they got their ass kicked in the war he repackaged it as states rights and lost cause and all the rest of it and was rehabilitated and reelected to congress and it worked you know so yeah i know that that was the other thing i thought about from that speech is and and reading you close the book with [35:28] inaugural and i had forgotten he did this probably because i was like half blacked out when trump was giving it because i couldn't believe we were going through it again but trump was like and today's martin luther king day and and i have a dream too and like this ability uh and tendency for reactionary politicians and reactionary forces to use rhetoric to repackage really unpleasant

[35:58] into ideas that are more broadly popular and acceptable to the rest of the country. And that sort of use American symbolism and American culture and the founding documents and principles to kind of repackage and hide their really odious ideas. And that has been, you know, that you can draw a through line right from Alexander Stevens right through to Donald Trump. And somehow that works. [36:28] Peter Robinson [36:41] Did talk a lot. [36:42] in language that we might and by the way Barack Obama did too Frederick Douglass did talk a lot about [36:49] taking responsibility and the need for black people to kind of self-empower.

Now, [36:56] He also talked a lot about the need to have a government that allows them to do that, that they cannot do that if they are kept down in systems of segregation or systems where they can't own property or they can't get an education. That part is left out. King did talk about the fact that we want to live in a nation where you're not judged by the color of your skin, by the content of your character. But in order to get to that kind of nation, you need a government.

[37:24] that keeps its promissory note, as he said in the I have a dream speech, that we're going to treat black people equally. We're going to allow them to be in a nation where they're judged by the content of their character. Obama got criticized sometimes for practicing, quote, unquote, responsibility politics, too, when he talked about the need for the black community to value education. But it was always coupled with having a government that provided opportunity equally to people. And so it shows you how the two stories I talked about are in competition, right?

[37:53] Thank you. [37:54] They draw from each other. So the more reactionary story needs to take the heroes of the progressive story and kind of pull them into their narrative. Reagan loved to cite King and the content of your character, not the color of your skin, while leaving out those parts. [38:13] And I think that you have to keep an eye on that because if you go back and actually experience these people in their times – [38:22] They were radicals. Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King were absolutely radical figures, like fringe figures at times, who have now been kind of repackaged as people that were like welcomed at the time.

And that was not the case. [38:39]. [38:46] This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. [38:48] Life is a lot sometimes. Regardless of what's keeping you up at night or leaving you overwhelmed, it's easy to feel like you have to figure it out on your own. But you don't have to face these challenges alone. Having someone to listen, to understand, and to support you can make all the difference. And that's where BetterHelp comes in. BetterHelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the S. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals.

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So they don't reject the language and symbolism of the dominant culture that's oppressing them. They embrace it as a way to highlight the gap between ideals and reality. [41:52] this is different from what you hear from some activists today about America being inherently racist or imperialist. And I think we both experienced this with Obama did that all the time. But it was happening with. [42:08] Frederick Douglass and King with the promissory note, right? Is that I didn't, I came here to cash to, because I, this is what the American declaration says.

And we need to live up to that. And I, and I worship the American declaration and Frederick Douglass was like that too. And so they are. [42:25] sort of radical figures in their beliefs, but their rhetoric is very much targeted to a much broader population than just activists. That's right. We progressives do the same thing that I just said the reactionaries do. We claim parts of the other story as well. Douglas had a big falling out. [42:46] with um william lloyd garrison the famous abolitionist who helped propel douglas's career because garrison rejected the constitution because he said that was written by a bunch of slave owners you know uh he was kind of a you know post 2020 look like uh let's just you know tear the whole thing down right and douglas said no no no when i look at the constitution i see a document that

[43:09] that rejects slavery. That's the part of the constitution I'm looking at. And I can make that work for me. I want to stay inside of this system and I want to make the constitution my own. You [43:21] King, the promissory note was on the Declaration of Independence. You said all men are created equal, and you've never lived up to that. And actually, frankly, almost every activist in this book [43:31] In fact, everyone uses the Declaration of Independence to make their case that they want to close the gap between the reality in that document.

Which, by the way, is why it has fallen out of favor with D. Vance and some of the national conservatives today, because the declaration is a fucking problem for them. [43:48] It's a big problem. And now what if those activists had said – [43:53] That document was written by a white slave owner. Right. So I can't use that rhetoric. And I think there's a lesson in that for today, which is – [44:05] If you want to persuade people and if you want to advance people, [44:08] rights in this country, you actually have to embrace the whole story, like even the parts we don't like.

Maybe I'm not saying you embrace Alexander Stevens' worldview, but you're embracing the fact that this country was founded by flawed people. [44:23] that did, in some cases, terrible things, certainly to black people and to Native Americans. But they left [44:29] enough of a foundation that we can work with you know like and i mean the title of the book [44:35] is taken from Martin Luther King's speech the night before he died, all we say to America is be true to what you said on paper. Like that's like almost his last words, you know?

Yeah. And I think that's important. Obama would always do that too. And we should talk about the race speech, but it's about – [44:53] Just like individual people contain... [44:56] complexity, so does America. Nobody's perfect. How do you draw out the better [45:01] and and [45:02] build a message and a story and a speech from that. [45:06] Lincoln has a line that you quote in that chapter on the second inaugural. And the line is, if we were situated as they are, we should act and feel as they do. And if they were situated as we are, they should act and feel as we do.

And we never ought to lose sight of this fact. [45:36] the white resentment and backlash. And there is this pattern of the speakers you chose in the book, both activists and politicians, probably especially the politicians, of working especially hard to show that they understand and maybe empathize with their opponents because their larger project is to [46:02] preserve [46:03] this union and this country, which is much harder. It's much harder work than just being able to, you know, either secede from the country or, or, you know, try to, you know, subjugate some other group, like trying to keep everyone together, even when the people that you're trying to win support from don't believe you should have the rights that you have,

[46:26] That's fucking hard. I was stunned to find myself coming away from this admiring Lincoln even more. Yeah, me too. But because he goes through this torturous process trying to figure out the meaning of it all. And he goes through a torturous process with slavery. You know, first, you know, he wants to restrict its spread. Then he wants to preserve the union without messing with it. Then he kind of out of wartime necessity turns to abolition. [46:56] the cause of the war, not just the preservation of the Union. He's moving in the direction of Douglas, the activist and abolitionist.

Douglas was becoming more pragmatic, though. He was saying he used to castigate Lincoln. Then he's like, wait a second, I think Lincoln's moving in the right direction. I'm going to kind of meet him there. And so he starts to talk to Lincoln. He starts to work with Lincoln. He gets up and Lincoln gives that second inaugural address. He's about to win the war. [47:22] He does not talk about that. He doesn't say like we've won these great battlefield victories. He does not talk down the South, but he does give an absolutely – [47:33] unapologetic and almost religious people [47:38] case for abolition as the second founding of the United States.

And, you know, [47:46] But the way he's saying it, the way he frames it, [47:49] is [47:50] That is going to be good for the South and the North. This is redemption, you know, that we're finding. We have this opportunity to start over having cleansed ourselves of this sin. [48:02] And there's this kind of insane moment. Well, it blames the North as well as the South, right? Like a real, like we were, I know that we're fighting you right now and you're going to lose. Didn't say it, but we are all complicit in what has happened over the last however many years.

[48:20] Right. Not southern slavery because North profited off of it, too. You know, yeah. And there's this great scene where that night he's at the White House and he's greeting a receiving line. And Douglas tries to get the receiving line to see him and gets booted out. And someone tells Lincoln, Lincoln says, well, let Douglas in. And Douglas comes in and he stands in this line and he reaches the front and he shakes Abraham Lincoln's hand. [48:46] And Lincoln says, what did you think of the speech? And Douglas says... [48:50] I'll write you a letter.

It's like a thousand people here. And he said, no, no, no, no. [48:54] I am more interested in what you think of this speech than anybody else. And Douglas just looks at him and says, [48:59] It was a sacred effort. And I read that and I was like, all right, whatever you think about this country – [49:07] That happened? A former slave meets with the president. A former slave in the White House meets with Abraham Lincoln and has that conversation because they both evolved. They both changed. Douglas became more pragmatic.

Lincoln became more radical. And Lincoln could only do that because he was able to inhabit – he could look at the world through Douglas' eyes and through a southerner's eyes. And that was Obama's. [49:34] I mean, we should talk about the race speech. I'll tell you, I originally ended the book with the Selma speech. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get into that. Obama's favorite, which is good. Triumphalist, you know, pro-reation. And after Trump was elected, you know, me and my editor were talking. We're like, well, that's probably not the right note to end on.

And... [49:53] And so I just like I got in with Trump. And actually, I went back to read the race speech again. And it was more relevant today than it was even in 2008 when he gave it. Because he is able to he's saying. [50:06] Well, he's doing what you're talking about, which is inhabiting through his grandmother and Reverend Wright – [50:14] And through the diagnoses of the white working class and the black working class, he's saying we all encompass these complexities. And until we can look at the world through each other's eyes, we're never going to move forward.

And that's the same thing Lincoln was saying. Yep. It's funny because – [50:31] I was reading that chapter and just reading the whole book, sort of having flashbacks to... [50:36] The night... [50:37] when I first talked to Obama about... [50:41] the race speech and what he wanted to say in that. And he laid out a lot of the thesis of your book, which is that these competing arguments that we've been having in this country since the founding, and at the very beginning was slavery and race that we've been having to grapple with.

And you write in the book how I ended up doing a draft and have the beginning and the end, [51:11] track changes and writes an entire speech in the middle of the speech and sends it back. Because I think he had had that [51:19] in his mind for a very long time. Like he was able to, you know, analyze and talk about the Reverend Wright controversy. But if you had lifted the Reverend Wright controversy out, all of the other themes and things that he says in that speech were definitely running through his mind for a very long time because they were themes throughout history.

That's exactly right. And I, as you should know, you were the speechwriter on it. And by the way, I don't short [51:49] got him to that middle. Sometimes that's the speechwriter's job, to get the [51:54] principle to where he can have that outpouring of track changes. [52:02] understood better today. [52:04] both because of what's happened and from writing the book, is... [52:08] First of all, Reverend Wright was a more interesting character to me today. In 2008, he was like a pain in the ass. Like, why is this guy saying this crazy shit that's going to mess up our campaign?

But actually – [52:19] Having written this book, [52:20] And then having lived the post-Obama experience, Reverend Wright emerges out of the black church tradition of the Jeremiah, which is a speech that is intended to call out a nation's sins. So what he was doing is the same thing that Frederick Douglass and Maria Stewart and all the people in that tradition did in this book. King did it often, too. [52:41] And by the way, some of what Reverend Wright said –