Q&A with David McCullough

If you’ve watched The Civil War or Seabiscuit, both narrated by David McCullough, you might have some idea of what it was like talking to the great historian on a telephone. Of course, he’s won awards and Pulitzer Prizes for his best-selling biographies of Harry Truman, Teddy Roosevelt, and the founding fathers, but even if you’ve never actually read the man, even if you didn’t know that he had anything to do with the HBO miniseries on John Adams that somehow made Paul Giamatti seem presidential—well, listening to his voice, that Yale–bred, leather-and-gold-leaf-bound voice of his—even through my cheap Nokia, David McCullough sounds like history.

It might be a strange experience then, if you are in the audience of the State Theatre on October 2, listening to David McCullough talk about the future. McCullough credits Barack Obama as the “greatest political speaker” he’s heard in his lifetime (a lifetime that includes FDR, Kennedy, and Reagan) and insists that John McCain’s credentials as a hero are impeccable.

Even for an expert on the United States Presidency as learned as McCullough, however, talking about the future is risky. McCullough believes in the old-fashioned objectivity model, and he cautions that if he does have a specialty it’s in “dead politicians.” Time is the great author of history, he maintains. Still, McCullough concedes that Americans are currently in desperate need of a great President, and he believes fervently in the power of individuals to shape history, for good or ill.

In your opinion, do great men make history or do your books demonstrate that great men are a product of their time?
The individual still counts enormously in how events turn one way or another. They don’t always count, and there are forces of history which supersede individual personality or the power of certain figures. But time and again, it really does matter, for example, who is President of the United States.

One example of this is [Harry] Truman. If John Nance Garner had succeeded Franklin Roosevelt, it would’ve been a very different kind of Presidency from that of Truman. If the man who tried to assassinate Franklin Roosevelt in Miami had killed him—it was a very near miss—and Garner had become vice president, and if Garner had been President during WWII, it would’ve been a vastly different story. Just as if the taxi that knocked down Winston Churchill in New York and nearly killed him—if he had been killed and had never been prime minister of Britain—it would’ve been a vastly different story.

The Greeks said character is destiny. Our whole way of life in this country is based on the value of the individual. And the value of the individual in a leader is more conspicuous than others out of necessity. If you believe that leaders are of consequence, then the responsibility attached to leadership becomes much greater. The responsibility of the individual is of the utmost importance. Our system only works because of the responsibility of individuals.

Is this an interesting enough time to produce a great President?
Oh, certainly. In fact, we may need one now more than ever. Our country has very serious problems that have to be addressed. We’re facing some of the most serious threats to our way of life that we’ve encountered in a long time. It’s more complicated and less obvious sometimes than the challenges of the past, but they’re there. And our political system in many ways is in jeopardy because of certain developments. The need for responsible, inspiring, intelligent leadership has never been greater.

And one must not forget that we are at war. Not just in Iraq or just in Afghanistan, but with a force, a movement in the world that’s out to destroy us. We have a very short-term memory these days, and we tend to lull ourselves into forgetting that a kick in the stomach like 9/11 wasn’t just some quirk. It’s part of something very large we have to contend with. We have as large and as serious problems to deal with today as we ever have. They’re not yet as dramatic as, say, the Depression or the Civil War, but they are there, and they could mushroom into something as large and overwhelming and destructive and painful as those experiences were.

The Presidents you write about seem to be almost disturbingly optimistic. Do you gravitate toward writing about optimists or is that just part of the DNA of a President?
I don’t think John Adams was an optimist.

Well, Roosevelt was. Truman was.
Roosevelt had periods of acute depression. They’re human beings. Nobody is up to being President of the United States. It’s a job that far exceeds the capacity of any one individual. Presidents who understand that don’t need the acclaim, or the limelight, or the power, to reassure themselves how wonderful they are. Truman’s strength was that he knew who he was. He said, “I tried never to forget who I was and where I’d come from, and where I’d go back to.” He had a sufficient enough sense of history to understand that what was being said about him or how he was being judged—measured by the moment, by the newspapers—was not what counted. What counted was how what he did would stand up in the long run. The great Presidents have all been Presidents who have a great sense of history. That’s not coincidental. They don’t have to be formally educated in history, but they have to understand history. All the good ones did, without exception.

President Bush professes to care more about how history judges him than any other measure. How do you think history will judge him?
We don’t know. At least fifty years need to go by. We don’t know what’s going to follow him. This is so important to understand in teaching history and writing history: We have to think about what these people didn’t know. And the most important thing they don’t know—all of them, just as we don’t know—is how it’s going to come out. Let’s suppose for example that we were to capture bin Laden. How would George Bush look then? How would the prospects of the Republican Party and John McCain look? Very different. We had a run of bad luck and our rockiest point in history, and I don’t just mean Bush. I mean the country too.

How inexperienced is Barack Obama relative to presidential history?
He’s more inexperienced than Truman, more experienced than Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln served, what, one term in Congress? Truman was an older man. Let me turn it around another way. Obama is young. Theodore Roosevelt was much younger. Obama has had no military experience. Neither did Franklin Roosevelt. Neither really did Abraham Lincoln. Neither did Woodrow Wilson. The charges of youth and no military experience are charges that don’t work if you’re using history as a measure.

There’s no question that Obama is a major figure in American history now because of what he’s done. Think of what he’s done! He’s come out of nowhere by himself and took on the most powerful political machine in the country, the Clinton machine, and beat it. And won. Now that is history. That is unprecedented—irrespective of whether you’re for him or against him or think he’d be a good President or think he’s too inexperienced. Just that alone makes for an extremely interesting subject.

I’ll tell you, Obama is the best political speaker in my lifetime. I thought Kennedy was terrific, Franklin Roosevelt was terrific. I was very young at the time, but I remember Roosevelt talking on the radio. But this fellow is really something. Isn’t it ironic that the only charge they can come up with against him is that he’s elite because he’s had a fine education, which is what all of us want for our children?

What about McCain? Is he as heroic as some of our martial Presidents?
Well, let’s think about what we mean by military experience or heroism. General Eisenhower was never in combat in his life. Never. And he was certainly one of the best generals we’ve ever had. Eisenhower was a much better President than he’s given credit for.

Was he top ten?
[Laughs.] I don’t do that. OK. I would say the most outstanding Presidents are obvious—I don’t have any unorthodox views about that. I’d put Washington first, Lincoln second, probably Franklin Roosevelt third. Fourth through sixth, Theodore Roosevelt would certainly be one of them, and Harry Truman. I don’t know after that. Kennedy was in office much too briefly to tell.

But to go back to the military question: Is John McCain a hero? Absolutely. He certainly is. He was in a fighter plane and got shot down. But it’s how he conducted himself under those conditions as a prisoner. [They agreed to] let him go because his father was an admiral, and here’s a guy who’s being tortured and he says no. That’s a real guy. That’s terrific. I have great respect for John McCain.

We’re extremely fortunate to have these two candidates. They’re not only good politicians—and they are very good politicians—but they’re emblematic of behavior of a kind that this country needs to have as examples.

How would the founding fathers feel if they came back today?
I think they would be astonished and very pleased and gratified that the system they put in place still stands. We still have a Congress, a President, a Supreme Court, the Constitution, and all the pillars of the Declaration of Independence. They wouldn’t be at all surprised about the contentiousness and the political ambitions of present-day politicians. It was the same then. What would really make them sick to their stomachs is the role of money today, and the fact that we the people are not nauseated by it and saying enough is enough! It is just appalling. And they’re all pandering for it— the gross fees paid to political consultants and so forth. The cost of it all, it’s really poisonous.

David McCullough will discuss the history of the U.S. Presidency as part of the Loft/Hennepin Theatre Trust Literary Legends Series, 7:30 p.m., October 2, at the State Theatre.