America: What's It All About?

The late historian David McCullough (1933-2022), renowned author of presidential biographies and other best-selling books, discusses American ideas and ideals - and then-president Trump - with interviewer Charlie Rose in 2017.  One cannot understand the present without understanding the past.

This interview is well worth your time.  McCullough is easy to listen to, and his voice may sound familiar.  He has has narrated many Ken Burns miniseries and other PBS documentaries.

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The Story of Harry S. Truman

Official portrait of President Truman
by Greta Kempton, 1947.
Click to enlarge.

I am so disgusted with all that is going on in our country and in the rest of the world now that I can't stomach the news anymore.  A couple of times a week, I run my eye over the headlines on the news feed, ditto the headlines on Joe.My.God., but I don't want the details.  I see the abyss opening wide ahead of us, and I can't bear to think of what may come.  Of course, I have no crystal ball, and things may yet get better instead of worse; but having a long view of human history, and knowing how mighty states have often fallen from greatness into ruin -- well, it's best not to fill my mind with dread of things I cannot prevent or control.

The Farm Journal, May 1916

I find comfort in my faith, and in revisiting the brighter spots in history.  Harry Truman was one of them, and I offer this video summary of his life in the Oval Office as a reminder of what a president can and should be.  His small-town upbringing was the source of his virtues as well as his shortcomings; but by God, he had the right stuff, never waivering in his faith in American democracy and his respect for the inherent worth of the common people.  That was a true man, a strong man, and a good man.  One of the greats.

If you find this video refreshing, I heartily recommend the definitive biography, entitled Truman, by the late historian David McCullough.  There is an audiobook version on YouTube (slow the speed down to about 75%) that makes for fascinating listening - though you can start in the middle, if you like, with Truman's sudden elevation to the presidency on the death of FDR in April, 1945, a few weeks before Germany surrendered.  The job just got rougher and tougher from there on out, but Truman plowed right on, true to his lights, keeping the country and the world on course for peace and prosperity, doing an astoundingly fine job that would have broken many a lesser man.  That's why ever since he left office in January 1953, he has consistently been ranked in the top ten of American presidents.

The video opens with Truman thanking his hometown neighbors for the rapturous welcome they gave him when he returned to Independence, Missouri, after leaving the White House for the last time.  Enjoy.

 

On a personal note, it's odd to realize I am older now than FDR was when he died, and older than Truman was when he left office.  Where does the time go?

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In Memoriam: David McCullough, 1933-2022

 

David McCullough, author and popular historian, died last Sunday at age 89.  He was a fine writer and a fine American; his biographies of Harry Truman (1992) and of John Adams (2001) won the Pulitzer Prize, and he was the recipient of many other honors and awards during his long career.  A perspicacious man of wide learning, good humor, and grace, in all his works he kept a spotlight on the American experiment in democracy:  an experiment he, like the people he wrote about, always believed was worthwhile, enduring, and noble.

McCullough also had a wonderful baritone voice, which many of us even now remember from his narration of the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War, first shown on PBS in 1990, a masterpiece of filmmaking.  It should be required viewing for every schoolchild, and indeed, for every American.  If you haven't seen it, you should.

I also highly recommend his biography of the 33rd president, entitled simply Truman, which is a masterpiece of biography.  The chapter on Truman's whistlestop campaign for re-election in 1948, leading to a surprising upset victory over Thomas Dewey, his Republican opponent, is particularly vivid and engrossing.

McCullough may be the last of his breed:  neither a crusader nor a revisionist, but in essence simply a good storyteller with a fine mind, profound respect for the truth, and a keen instinct for the telling detail.  The American mind has been so dumbed-down in recent decades, and hamstrung by propagandists both left and right, that it is difficult to imagine there is any future in history-writing at all.  

Especially when, as I have heard, there will soon be machines to write anything and everything, in any genre, any style, any viewpoint you please - what then will be the point of knowing any history - indeed, of knowing anything at all?

Here is McCullough interviewed by Morley Safer on 60 Minutes in 2013:

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What Do Americans Really Want?

 And what is the American character?  Renowned historian David McCullough answers those questions in this six-minute interview from 2017, which is highly pertinent to the present moment.

   

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You Are Not Special

Finally, somebody tells today's oh-so-cool, culturally-aware, massively-entitled, pampered-to-death high-school graduates the truth. David McCullough, Jr., English teacher and son of a renowned historian, delivers a witty commencement address at Wellesley High School, near Boston. Excerpt:

Contrary to what your u9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you . . . you’re nothing special.

Yes, you’ve been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped. Yes, capable adults with other things to do have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached you, listened to you, counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again. You’ve been nudged, cajoled, wheedled and implored. You’ve been feted and fawned over and called sweetie pie. Yes, you have. And, certainly, we’ve been to your games, your plays, your recitals, your science fairs. Absolutely, smiles ignite when you walk into a room, and hundreds gasp with delight at your every tweet. Why, maybe you’ve even had your picture in the Townsman! And now you’ve conquered high school . . . and, indisputably, here we all have gathered for you, the pride and joy of this fine community, the first to emerge from that magnificent new building . . . .

But do not get the idea you’re anything special. Because you’re not.

The empirical evidence is everywhere, numbers even an English teacher can’t ignore. Newton, Natick, Nee . . . I am allowed to say Needham, yes? . . . that has to be two thousand high school graduates right there, give or take, and that’s just the neighborhood Ns. Across the country no fewer than 3.2 million seniors are graduating about now from more than 37,000 high schools. That’s 37,000 valedictorians . . . 37,000 class presidents . . . 92,000 harmonizing altos . . . 340,000 swaggering jocks… 2,185,967 pairs of Uggs. But why limit ourselves to high school? After all, you’re leaving it. So think about this: even if you’re one in a million, on a planet of 6.8 billion that means there are nearly 7,000 people just like you. Imagine standing somewhere over there on Washington Street on Marathon Monday and watching sixty-eight hundred yous go running by. And consider for a moment the bigger picture: your planet, I’ll remind you, is not the center of its solar system, your solar system is not the center of its galaxy, your galaxy is not the center of the universe. In fact, astrophysicists assure us the universe has no center; therefore, you cannot be it. Neither can Donald Trump . . . which someone should tell him . . . although that hair is quite a phenomenon.

Full text here.