Fathers and Daughters
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Transcript
Jon Grinspan: [00:00:00] It's almost like we want competing things that are kind of in conflict. I think maybe we're not then in now very articulate about what a good election looks like in a good political system looks like. Is it, is it one that is clean and sober and well-informed and rational, or is it one that has the most people participating as possible, including people who are kind of overlooked in other aspects of society and you had this real trade-off.
Sarah: This is Sarah
Beth: And Beth.
Sarah: You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.
Beth: The home of grace-filled political conversations.
Sarah: [00:00:57] Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of [00:01:00] Pantsuit Politics. Here we are on the Friday before father's day so a little special father's day content for you today. The top of the show, we're going to catch up on the news specifically, president Biden's trip to Europe. So we're going to talk about his meeting with the Queen and his meeting with Putin, which is about as different audiences as you could hope to ask for.
Then in the main segment of the show, I'm going to share my interview with Jon Grinspan. He's an American historian and he has written this fantastic book and it's really through the prism of a specific father and daughter that had been kind of lost to history, but are totally fascinating and so I think you're really going to love that interview in the main segment of the show and then at the end off for outside of politics, we're going to talk about our own dads but first, today is the day.
For months, we have been working with the. Fantastic team at Apple, and we are thrilled to share that Apple podcast subscriptions has officially launched. Now you can get our bonus content. It's really cool. Within the apple podcast app, there's a Pantsuit [00:02:00] Politics channel. There's the show two times a week, nothing's going to change with that, but now you can subscribe to our channel for 14.99 a month and get the news brief Monday through Thursday, Nightly Nuance Monday through Thursday, and you get to try for two weeks for free. Come on.
Beth: [00:02:18] I think that two week trial for free is what makes me most excited because it is hard to explain what our premium content does until you've seen it. We get so many questions where people say to us, how can I stay informed throughout the week without getting stressed out by the news? And we've tried to put together premium offerings that are our answer to that question.
So in the Morning News Brief, Sarah is going to in, you know, five to seven minutes, walk you through the most important things you need to know about every single day and as those stories develop, she'll tell you this is new today, or we don't have any new information today, but you're still going to be hearing about this and here's what you really need to understand. [00:03:00] So it is a great way to stay on top of the headlines without all of the conflict and stress that you hear elsewhere and then in the Nightly Nuance, I pick one story every day to walk you through in a greater amount of depth. So about around 10 minutes, we'll spend together, maybe we'll cover a specific Supreme court decision. Maybe we'll talk through things that you need to know about why lumber is so expensive.
We do a wide range of topics, but we really try to think together about what's going on and then Thursdays Nightly Nuance everybody gets excited for, because we do that one together, and look for our premium subscribers there's a whole lot of trust. We know that people who spend dollars on the show are invested in what we do and get it. So we just get a little spicier on Thursdays. We just, we drop some of our capacity for complexity and grace, and that's where we sometimes just kind of let it fly because we're all human beings who need spaces to do that.
Sarah: [00:03:56] So for example, this week, we let it fly about Mitch McConnell because [00:04:00] sometimes we need to get some things off our chest. We do that on the Thursday Nightly Nuance and look, our bonus content is really it's, it's where we spread our wings. So the news brief this week I was at Beth's house so we did it together. On Wednesday our kids did the news brief with us which was a massive hit. If you want to hear five little voices tell you to have the best day available to you, it was pretty precious. Often we'll have interviews that we can't fit the entirety of into the show, but are really, really good.
So we share those interviews and our bonus content and so that premium subscription is really it is, it's where we spread our wings. It's where we relax, it's where we get spicy. It's where we share stuff that we just can't fit into the two shows a week. So the two shows a week you're going to stay the same. Patrion's going to stay the same but now you find that you have another place to get our premium subscription, especially for those of you who are like, I love you so much. I can not add another platform so now you don't have to. Now you can get it all through Apple podcasts.
Beth: [00:04:55] And the design is really like the team has put a ton of thought into this. We know [00:05:00] because we were a small part of some of those conversations, which was such an honor and so knowing that we have a really solid channel, that's going to be easy to use and enjoy means a lot to u,s so we encourage you to go try that two week trial and then become a premium member so that you can be with us and spread your wings alongside us.
Sarah: [00:05:19] Speaking of spreading wings as a perfect transitional, just perfect, didn't even play on that to president Biden, along with his beautiful wife, First Lady, Dr. Joe Biden, flew to Europe, then went on a little European vacay. That's a joke. It was not a vacation. They worked the whole time. They went to the UK for the G7. They went to Brussels for a NATO summit. They went to Geneva and met with Vladimir Putin and they worked a lot into this trip that a lot of things in a short period of time.
[00:06:00] Beth: [00:06:02] The theme of the trip, as we have discussed before was president Biden's conviction that the world is kind of sorting itself into democratic nations and autocratic nations and that democracy is really critical to meet the challenges that citizens across the globe are facing and that really culminated in his meeting with president Putin of Russia. There was a lot of analysis about kind of annoying analysis, if I'm being honest with you about whether he could like tame Putin, and he is clearly. Yeah, well, and he has clearly said from the beginning, that is not the goal and I really thought that there was a lot of discipline around the message that this is about America's, self-interest not about collaboration and cooperation for the sake of those things, but because especially as it pertains to cyber security, we need to establish some ground rules and even though president Biden and Validmir Putin held separate press conferences [00:07:00] after the meeting, it was clear that those ground rules were discussed and that both of them understood that it's mutually beneficial to have some red lines that we don't cross in peace time.
Sarah: [00:07:11] I mean, I hate to spend so much time on president Biden's successe,. Pointing out how they are in clear contrast to the way the Trump administration function, but man it's just on full display on a trip like this, right where there wasn't drama. I mean, you could even feel the press struggling with like, how do we say I'm a hit heck, I feel like we struggle a little bit with like, how do we say it's going very smoothly one more time. Right? There was no press conferences where he threw NATO under the bus. There were no moments where he went, remember when he Putin by himself and made everybody leave the room with a heel. Like there's just no moments like that. It's just a totally run of the mill and by that, I [00:08:00] mean, essential and important diplomatic trip to Europe where he met with leaders.
I did think that him and Macron looked like they were having an amazing time together. They were very friendly, but you know, it's just, it was what it was supposed to be, which means not. Total and complete drama on display for all of us across Twitter. Like in a diplomatic mission, there should be lots of guessing among the American public and the media about what's going on because it shouldn't be writ large in the sky for everyone to watch the drama, like that's just the worst possible way to run foreign policy.
Beth: [00:08:34] There was frustration in the press about access issues. They felt they should have had more access than they did on this trip. The most dramatic thing that happened as best I can tell is that president Biden was quite late for a press conference. After the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted that he was really excited that Ukraine was going to be accepted as a full NATO member and apparently that is not what the NATO members had agreed [00:09:00] to. That there is hope that Ukraine will eventually become a full NATO member, but there are members of that Alliance who don't think Ukraine is there yet because of corruption and I think probably just relations with Russia in general. So that was kind of. Pins and needles moment because that tweet went out before Biden was supposed to face the press and he couldn't come out and validate that but otherwise it was very smooth.
Something I've been wanting to ask you about Sarah, since I've been reading this coverage, I know that one of the topics that came up between president Biden and Putin was Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader in Russia, who Putin has attempted to have killed a couple times and Biden saying, and then reiterating to reporters that it would be very, very bad for Russia if Navalny ends up dying at the state's hands and I just want to ask about Putin's response, which was basically domestic matters are not up for discussion in these [00:10:00] meetings. There is a piece of me that wants to know or wants to explore whether that's fair.
Sarah: [00:10:07] Well, I mean, at first of all, I don't think Alexei Navalny is a domestic matter anymore, right? Like they've they, the problem with Vladimir Putin, especially when there are not some really hard boundaries around him, particularly put enforced by the United States when we were just absent from that role, as we were doing a Trump administration, is that he gets a little aggressive. He goes way beyond the boundaries and so to his sort of strong men across Europe, like we saw in Bellaruse, right? Like it's almost like we're not there to necessarily punish everything that he does domestic or otherwise and I think the line is blurry often with Vladimir Putin, but it's almost as if we are putting hard boundaries around what is possible, right? Like we're not just dealing with what he's doing, we're trying to prevent what he could do and he responds to strength and I think that it's really important that even [00:11:00] if he's saying like, well, we're not even going to talk about that, like that'd be brought up overall is very, very important.
Beth: [00:11:06] I think that's a really good point that it often does not remain domestic with Putin. I've just been thinking a lot about how the traditional approach to foreign policy, which involves a lot of sanctions activity, which involves a pretty broad look at whether a leader is behaving in ways that here in America seem acceptable to us or not. I've been thinking a lot about election interference and what constitutes election interference so I'm trying to push myself to ask those questions. Like, is it fair for him to say look America wants a weak Russia so of course the parties that America support are parties that would be bad for the Russian Federation. I don't want to agree with Putin on anything, but I also don't want to be just obstinate and disagreeing with him for the sake of it and it sounds like president Biden adopted a really tough approach.
I heard a commentator on ABC's start here this [00:12:00] morning saying you have to always remember that Putin wants to be seen as an adversary and I think that the handling of those separate press conferences and the discipline message that we heard about it really upholds that, like respects the fact that this is an adversarial relationship and also that both countries are better off by keeping that adversarial posture in a certain range.
Sarah: [00:12:22] Right. Again, I just don't think that we're going to fully understand or comprehend everything that happened at this meeting. Like the snafu over Zelenskyi aside, like we should learn about all the tense moments, events, and breakthroughs years from now, now in memoirs of diplomats that were there as God intended and not on Twitter the day it happens. Right. So that's what I look forward to. I look forward to, you know, a decade from now getting a real glimpse inside what the day to day happenings were like with the NATO members and the G7 and even Putin, but I [00:13:00] don't want it displayed across Twitter so of that, I am, I am grateful.
Beth: [00:13:03] For our moment of hope today, as we stay in the positive realm, it's really encouraging that the United States Senate voted unanimously to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. So we are rapidly approaching Juneteenth. If you don't know much about Juneteenth and its history last year, we did a five things you need to know about Juneteenth episode, that we'll link here in the show notes. You can check that out and can get a fuller picture. Anytime the Senate acts unanimously to me, it is cause for celebration, we have already heard that this bill is expected to pass the house rapidly. A minority leader, Kevin McCarthy has come out as supportive of it, which is a great sign. Of course, a speaker Pelosi is supportive of it. So hopefully this will sail through and be caused for real celebration and a moment of all of us kind of coming to grips with our history and celebrating all of America's history, not just parts of it.
[00:14:00] Sarah: [00:14:00] Next step, I'm going to share my interview with Jon Grinspan. He is a historian of American democracy, youth and popular culture. He is a curator of political history at Smithsonian's national museum of American history. We met him in Iowa, where he was with a colleague collecting political memorabilia from the caucus. It was amazing. He was so kind and considerate with his time and he's recently written a book, The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy and here's my conversation with him.
John, you have written a book about a father and a daughter living through a transformative moment in American politics marked by conspiracy theories, partisan press, political violence, progressive changes, and how all that conflict manifested and the relationship to one another. Can you please tell us what year is your book in?
Jon Grinspan: [00:14:45] I guess the book is technically set from the ending of the civil war in 1865 to around 1915 or so, but the arc of this family really goes from like the, over a century from like the 1830s to the 1930s, this father and daughter
Sarah: [00:14:59] so not [00:15:00] 2021, not 2021?
Jon Grinspan: [00:15:02] No, not 2021 at all, but sometimes it, it sure feels like it.
Sarah: [00:15:05] Yeah, it really does. I mean, we just had this debate recently on our show because that particular moment in American history is so reflective of the patterns we're seeing now. So tell us how you decided to focus on this moment in this particular father and daughter?
Jon Grinspan: [00:15:25] You know, sometimes when you read a book, it's like a convergence of things you're obsessed with just make sense together. One was, I did want to look at an area things look pretty similar to today in some negative ways. I mean, we have this tendency of saying we're more divided than we have ever been since the civil war, but we were really divided in the generations after the civil war too and instead of having another civil war, people found a way to resolve some of their issues. So I kind of wanted an, a story that went from an ugly era to a more optimistic era and it's really hard to connect the dots across big errors in one person's life because people die or they're just not where you [00:16:00] want them to be, but Will Kelley and Flore Kelley, they're just always exactly where you need them to be, to move the narrative forward so this, they just connect from Abe Lincoln to Frederick Douglas, to Teddy Roosevelt. You know, whoever whomever you want to talk about. They're friends with or enemies with that person so they were really, really interesting and just kind of telling this big story of American democracy.
Sarah: [00:16:19] So the father William, I love his nickname, Pig Iron Kelley, was a Congressman and he was operating in the late 1860s after the civil war. I love this quote. "This is the fundamental paradox of their era and perhaps our own. Americans bemoan the failure of their democracy, but also joined in its worst habits with a zealous fixation." So tell us what that looked like when Will Kelley was coming into congress?
Jon Grinspan: [00:16:44] Yeah, I mean, on the one hand you can't get away from politics back then. I mean, we, we, we, we know that voting rights were really limited in that era. Women couldn't vote. People under 21 couldn't vote. It's always embattled for African-Americans to vote, but like on the [00:17:00] ground, everyone is engaged in these huge, massive elections with public rallies and protests and riots and you, you refuse to read the partisan newspapers and there's there's partisan bus slogans on the walls of cities and it just seemed like saturating an inescapable and at the same time, even as Americans are really diving into this thing, they're pretty frustrated with the results they're getting. They're not happy. Their leaders are not happy with this high level of partisanship and Will Kelley dives right into the mix.
He kind of, he grows up poor in Philadelphia and finds his after working child labor for a while, he kind of finds his, his route to success and that he's a great speech of fire and he's got an incredible voice and he can stand on a soapbox and give these incredible political speeches about workers' rights, about abolition and by voting rights and women's suffrage and so he, he kind of dives right into this big public politics cause he's a, he's a big, aggressive public personality and he's fighting all these issues, you know, as, as closely as he can and bringing them home to his family too.
Sarah: [00:17:58] Well, I thought one of [00:18:00] the illustrations of the partisanship and how it just permeated everything, you have to tell them about, you're talking about the party bosses and the way they ran partisan politics in the cities and the volunteer fire companies, but they really weren't fire companies. They were like partisan gangs. That part was bananas. You have to, you have to tell the people about the fire companies.
Jon Grinspan: [00:18:24] Yeah. It's, it's nuts. It's, there's a little bit of it in gangs of New York and I remember seeing and thinking what's happening here. It's one of those things where it's something you see in a movie turned out to be real and is even weirder in reality than in the movie. So back then, there's no fire companies from the there's no like municipal fire company. If your house catches fire, they're these private companies that come and they put out the fires, but they're all in competition with each other and for like financial in competition with each other so they, they often fight to see who gets to put out a fire and they're also all aligned with ethnic and cultural groups and religious groups and political parties.
So the Irish [00:19:00] Catholic, uh, fire company might show up at the same time as the, the kind of nativist, uh, evangelical Protestant company does, and they represent different parties and they end up fighting each other in front of your house while your house burns down or
Sarah: [00:19:11] That's just crazy.
Jon Grinspan: [00:19:12] You know, Savage like set up ambushes for each other and blow up each other's fire engines and throw them in the river and that kind of thing and they're also, when they're now fighting each other, they're they're running elections cause these elections take a lot of work on the ground and you have, these are gangs or thugs or something. I don't know quite what to call them, but they're, you have these gangs of organized people who are ready to get out the vote on election day. So they're, they're fighting fires, they're running elections and they're fighting each other and it kind of shows how the good in the bed of the era is all mixed up together, you know?
Sarah: [00:19:40] And I think that's, what's so interesting is the intensity of the era, the way that the civil war and emancipation really raised the stakes, like it led to this intense partisanship, but it also led to this, it feels like, like re-imagining of how things can be and what things could be and I [00:20:00] think what you get at so well is that Will Kelley and his daughter saw that future differently. That when it came, this really momentous moment in American history where if things can look different and we can fight a civil war and in slavery, which was so momentous, then what else can we change? What else can look different and their answers, as a father and daughter across generations and across life experiences were not surprisingly different answers.
Jon Grinspan: [00:20:27] That's so well put. They both kind of grow up in this era of political fluidity, right? Like parties are created during this era. Parties die. The Whig party stops existing. The Republican party and the know-nothings are created. Slavery is ended. People think slavery, it'll take generations to end slavery if it'll ever happen and then it happens in a few short years. So there's just a sense that, like you say, really well, there's, there's just a ton of flexibility in the system and Will kind of raises Flore, his daughter, in this era where, where he expects her to go out into the world and, and see this fluidity and then over the [00:21:00] next generation, things kind of locked down. It becomes harder to make this change and so both of them have to struggle in their own ways with living in a culture that's gridlocked, culturally and politically and that that's really challenging for people who, you know, grew up expecting rapid major revolutionary change.
Sarah: [00:21:15] Well, and I think one of the really interesting places, they sort of reach different conclusions on, the answer is, is this partisanship right, in the way that it manifests in a lot of corruption and frustration with politics and politicians. I thought this was one of the most interesting statistics you had in the book that you talked about prior to the civil war between the 1830s and before the war, it, Congress had its lowest rate of incumbency and that people really would go and serve, you know, because they were mostly like rich landowners would go and serve short term but that after the civil war, the length of service doubled, and you start to have professional politicians and then of course, you'd start to have corruption and a real frustration with the politics on the ground [00:22:00] and what it looks like and so how did Will and Flore like perceive that differently?
Jon Grinspan: [00:22:06] You know, it's interesting. These families where people come into conflict about politics, often they have shared values and express them through different political kind of horizons or goals and Will,
Sarah: [00:22:16] I mean, I think you might need to repeat that one more time because it just comes to play so often in our lives. Right? Like we don't see it as shared values, but it is, they're just expressing themselves differently.
Jon Grinspan: [00:22:25] Yeah, right and they're, sometimes that's why it's nice to use history because 150 years lets us see that this father and daughter who, you know, really see each other themselves in conflict at some points, they're working to the same goal. They're working over a century to improve the lives of workers and women and African-Americans. Uh, they just they're fighting over kind of like the means not the ends, but the ends are pretty similar. So I guess Will's end, he grows up in this era where party politics just explains everything, like the only way to make change. He helps write the 15th amendment. He sees it as [00:23:00] political action. Running campaigns, winning elections, passing laws, as the only way to make change in America. That's how you'll improve the lives of freed slaves or women who want the vote or workers whose lives are getting harder. He sees it all as kind of institutional and electoral politics. You run a campaign, you win an election, you pass a law. That's the only option and his daughter Flore who, you know, becomes much more radical is a socialist for awhile.
She grows up with an assumption in a way that political system just won't work. The politicians won't do what they should. The voters don't really see their true in interests and are kind of voting for people who aren't really helping them and so she, she starts to seek every way around electoral politics by instead of running campaigns, she'll organize boycotts or consumer things or lobbying and part of it is because she's a woman in the 19th and early 20th century and she can't vote. She can't go out.
Sarah: [00:23:48] So her skepticism is well-placed.
Jon Grinspan: [00:23:50] Yeah and in a way, yeah. I don't mean to like play down the significance of not being able to vote, but in a way that's a gift to her because she can find other options, right? [00:24:00] She, she's not locked into this party system and these big, stupid campaigns. She can kind of be really creative about, well, what's the best way to really make change. It might not be to try to pass a law. It might be to try to get consumers to boycott sweatshops or something like that. So they, they're they're working to the same goal over really a century. They just live in different areas and have different horizons of, of options and I think you'll probably see that in families today too. I mean, it seems like something you've talked about a lot about the, the ways family split along those lines.
Sarah: [00:24:27] Well, and I think what you see is that they are both finding, um, that sense of belonging that often politics offers just in different ways. Right? So I think you write so well that party's really offered a sense of community to the masses at this time period. That, you know, you talk a lot about the massive turnout during presidential elections and people would bemoan, or at least people, you know, in the elites would bemoan the sort of outcome of this but the masses were caught up in the emotion, almost a sense of [00:25:00] community within the political parties and I think she really found that in the community's a political activist and she found belonging, people who would care for her children, like the sense of purpose and this connection to the group, be it through activism or through political parties and I definitely think that still happens today.
Jon Grinspan: [00:25:19] Yeah. I mean, it, you could say in the first gilded age and the second, if you want to call it that, people who are suffering from disruption and in inequality and lacking community, organizations help them out. Well, the parties are right there waiting help you out or give you an identity at least and I think he falls for it a little more than her. She you're right, she definitely feels these benefit of these kind of progressive causes and whole house and finding these people to watch your children and help her but she's a little tougher in some ways in him and she doesn't really need to be in a party the way he does considering the fact that he survives multiple assassination attempts. She's, she's more willing to make enemies in a way and burn bridges to do what she thinks is right.
[00:26:00] Sarah: [00:26:11] Talking about these people's lives, we are this far in to our conversation and yeah, we just are now mentioning that he was the subject of multiple assassination attempts cause that's how wild it was back then.
Jon Grinspan: [00:26:23] Yeah. They didn't even mention it in his obituary cause it didn't, it wasn't a top thing thing to mention. You know, so he got shot at, so we got stabbed.
Sarah: [00:26:31] Well, and I think this is the part of the book that sort of the increased political violence is just really hard for us to wrap our heads around and I think in particular, you spend a lot of time on the patronage system and the assassination of president Garfield and the surfacing of what they called at the time, cranks. Tell us about cranks uh, and what that meant to people at the time and what you think is pretty similar to our time?
Jon Grinspan: [00:26:56] I mean, I, I do see that parallel. I'm glad you kind of saw it to the present too. [00:27:00] Um, so it all starts with the assassination of president James Garfield in 1881. There's a guy, he's already a little on the outs, he's kind of a drifter and an odd ball. He was probably honestly, mentally ill, but he gets very caught up in politics and patronage, and he decides that the America would be better off if the president was out of the way as he put it so he buys a gun and he assassinates James Garfield. With that, there's kind of, what's called the epidemic of cranks, which is this idea that they're all these people on the, kind of the outs in society who are pushing these conspiracy theories and causes to kind of undermine society or to improve society. They they're really sloppy back then with what they call a crank. Like Susan B. Anthony's a crank.
Sarah: [00:27:39] They were sloppy with language? No.
Jon Grinspan: [00:27:42] A crank kind of it's positive, not negative in that, like it's somebody who's really pushing an idea forward and some of those ideas for change are things we love today and some, you know, believe that there are giants who live in the center of the earth or, or crazy conspiracy theories about the government and, and it's all coming I think from the sense of [00:28:00] politics has really stalled. This is an 1880s. The parties are just neck and neck. These are the closest elections in American history, but the parties look pretty similar. Neither of them is really offering anything good for people. Neither of them can really promise to make much change, but they're really good at riling people up.
So you have all these people like James Garfield's assassination, assassin, Charles Quito, kind of bouncing around. They''re getting really heated up by the political system and the news and other parties but it's not going anywhere cause there's no, there's no closure. There's no laws passed. There are no landslide elections. It just, it just feels like they're boiling a pot and these cranks are kind of the people acting out and assassinating people. There are a lot of assassinations back then. There's a one Congressman killed every seven years during that era.
Sarah: [00:28:42] Oh my goodness.
Jon Grinspan: [00:28:43] I know it's nuts. Uh, and, and it's in New York too. It's uh, there's just a culture kind of, of people expecting change and not getting it and looking around for some explanation. It's kind of, you can draw parallels, I think, to Qanon and some of other cranks and conspiracies today.
Sarah: [00:28:59] Well, and I [00:29:00] thought it was so interesting as you know, Thought and read a great deal about the progressive era and I think it's this sort of under appreciated time and we take, we take for granted so many of the changes that seemed impossible, that they pushed through from the direct election of senators, to the, the secret ballot and the individualized sort of approach to politics but I'd never thought about the effect that had on turnout and participation in that when you make it an individualized act and you subtract that sense of emotion and belonging that people felt within the party system, it starts to be something out there instead of something that you're participating in day to day and I had not realized that we did see such a crash in voter turnout when one of these big progressive air changes, the secret ballot came about.
Jon Grinspan: [00:29:48] Yeah. One of the reasons I thought this history was so fascinating and wanted to write about it was because I really liked the history of it with kind of trade-offs and nuance and there's no singular good things in history and no completely bad [00:30:00] things. Everything causes some kind of knock on effect and the progressive era is full of all these changes to really improve American lives. Right? This is the era when, when women get the right to vote, when queen food laws get passed. You know, American life expectancy expands more during this era than any other, and politics gets cleaned up. You, the political violence falls away, and a lot of the corruption falls away but the way they make it fall away as, as you say, say they kind of privatized the process of being engaged in politics so you're not going with your buddies to go vote. You're going to wait in line and fill out a government document.
It's not kind of compelling to people and, and voter turnout crashes and so one of the things that book is kind of asking without saying it outright is can you have civility and participation at the same time? Is it, is it a trade-off and they managed to make their politics more civil and get a lot more done, but they lose a huge percentage of the voters, especially voters who were working class, young immigrant, non English speaking, African-American. Kind of the populations who are most vulnerable to begin with who were participating [00:31:00] 80% turnout, they they're the ones who are really hit the hardest by this so what, what are the trade offs of what seemed like unalloyed good reforms.
Sarah: [00:31:09] Well, and I think there's an equivalent right? In inside the changes they make inside sort of the political process itself, because another big fallout from the progressive era and particularly the assassination of James Garfield is the patronage system and massive changes to the patronage system. So tell people how politics sort of ran, which really was part and parcel of the partisan system, right? Because people were not just emotional because it offered a sense of belonging, but because it often offered real, tangible benefits, be it through jobs or access to the political system through patronage so tell us about that.
Jon Grinspan: [00:31:46] Yeah. I think, I think that's a really important connection to draw that I don't know when I first heard civil service reform and patronage, it sounded very dry and kind of limited like, like maybe a few lucky people got something crooked and it didn't affect anyone else, but [00:32:00] the force that's driving all of this is the political campaigns, which are the biggest, most popular events in American culture. There's there's no Hollywood, there's no NFL. The biggest events are election rallies. That's where you see the most people. That's where people shoot off fireworks and get drunk and yell slogans.
It's kind of the, the the biggest thing going on in American national culture at the time and it's a lot of work to have these big rallies and big political events and so the people behind the scenes who are, you know, buying the whiskey and the fireworks and getting everyone to march in the same line, they want to get something out of it. So campaigners and government officials start using government jobs as like a gift to whoever runs these, these big political events and so like the, the worst aspects of kind of political corruption, kind of nitty gritty of these machines are really tied intimately to the biggest aspects of popular culture. These, these partisan political campaigns that are so exciting and colorful and thrilling kind of intertwined the good and the bad of turnout with, with corruption.
Sarah: [00:32:58] Yeah. And so like when we lose [00:33:00] that back and forth, and it was our, I mean, transactional to a certain extent, you also lose the, I don't want to say motivation, but it was like you did lose some of the energy that was fueling that participation and I think we look at the civil service reform is positive, like wholly and completely positive and I wonder if after really looking at this time in history, if you feel that. Yeah,
Jon Grinspan: [00:33:27] I guess it's almost like we want competing things that are kind of in conflict and I think maybe we're not, then and now, very articulate about what a good election looks like and a good political system looks like. Is it, is it one that is clean and sober and well-informed and rational, or is it one that has the most people participating as possible, including people who are kind of overlooked in other aspects of society and you had this real trade-off from the 19th century to the 20th, where at first you have this kind of big public working class political system that gauges a ton of people and gets [00:34:00] incredible enthusiasm for, you know, these, these dog catcher elections or whatever, really, even minor elections get just huge tons of turnout engagement and they trade that off for really low turnout. It crashed turnout, many barriers along class lines, but the elections are more sober and thoughtful and um, more thinking, less shouting is the, the slogan at the time.
Sarah: [00:34:22] and more elite.
Jon Grinspan: [00:34:23] Yes. and the more elite. Yeah. That's exactly right. So you have an electorate that's more kind of upper middle class, white, suburban, American born as opposed to immigrants. Um, yeah, so they, they make this trade and they're not very reflective at the time about what they're losing to make this trade, the people who kind of manufacture it, but a hundred years later, as we're, we're kind of struggling with these issues, engagement and civility and political anger and everything, I think, I think it is helpful to think about, well, what's the trade off? Can you, can you get people engaged without getting them angry or drunken in the streets?
Sarah: [00:34:54] You know? Well, and I think that the Patronage system, you know, I was reading your book and in the midst of it, I listened to an interview with [00:35:00] Michael Lewis about his new book on Ezra Klein's show and he was arguing that, you know, one of the big problems at the CDC is that it's headed by a political appointee and that that's really changed the way the system work and that's another place like it's sort of like this patronage and we need to get rid of that, and he was definitely setting up as a total, as a wholly and completely positive thing. Like anymore, like any further elimination of political appointees is always going to benefit the system and, you know, I think reading your book it's I think he made a good case, particularly when it comes to public health that, yeah, maybe we need a more longer term appointee, but I think that I'm increasingly skeptical of the post progressive air argument that the sort of intellectual bureaucracy is always the best answer in government, because I think that you make a really good case that there is a lot lost when we think, well, we'll just let the experts lead us because it's really never that simple, right.
It's never, it's never that easy and I think we came off [00:36:00] like party bosses and, you know, Robert Moses and the idea that these people who could like use the levers of power, did it in, in really negative ways and I think that's true, but I also think it's a little more complicated than that and that they, they got things done and some of what you see. The bubbling up frustration and that the cranks of our air today is that they are pinpointing something that, that is true, that it's a system that is individualized, that is sort of locks you out of it and, and zaps the energy from the real democratic part of the process.
Jon Grinspan: [00:36:34] Yeah. I mean, in a way this, this book is kind of like the origin story of the establishment, you know, with like a capita E and that establishment has uh, I, I don't want to sound too radical cause I'm kind of in the middle on this one, but does have blood on his hand and we've seen things. You mentioned Robert Moses, we've seen things like eugenics, sterilization campaigns, a lot of things you saw done by progressive reformers in the 20th century, at least in part because you didn't [00:37:00] have 80% turnout, because when you have an election where incumbents, when an uncontested seats with, with low turnout, they can get a lot of away with a lot of bad behavior.
Sarah: [00:37:09] Or because the experts at the time said, that's what we should be doing. Right. Even you see, I think you see that with Flore, you see like some opinions that that was like sort of the intellectual elitist opinion at the time and you see her espousing things that are not exactly the approved stance today among progressives, I guess is what I want to say.
Jon Grinspan: [00:37:29] She, Florence Kelley is hostile to democracy with a small D. I mean, she, she says politicians are according a funnel for lobbyists support their ideas through. She basically thinks voters are stupid and are always wrong and are always kind of put winked, especially when they don't vote the way she wants them to. I do think one of the things we have to grapple with, especially the pur from the perspective of the progressive's is that, that the changes they want, aren't always the changes that the majority of people want and it took shutting out a lot of people to make those [00:38:00] changes. Now, on the other hand, opening the flood gates and going back to how politics worked in 1870 or whatever that is, that's not what we want..
Sarah: [00:38:07] I do not warring fire companies. I now want to go back to that. That sounds bad. I want to put that on the record.
Jon Grinspan: [00:38:13] Yeah, I don't wanna be, I thought that was optimistic. Maybe it's pessimistic there there's no good options, I guess is the message of the history here.
Sarah: [00:38:20] There are only complicated options, right? I think that's the key is that the idea is not to find a solution with no downsides, but it's always defined a strategy, opened eye to its downsides. You know, clear eyed about the trade-offs instead of pretending like they're never are any.
Jon Grinspan: [00:38:36] Yeah, that's right. I mean, if you read the, the people arguing to reform politics and quiet on democracy in the 1890s or 1900s, they say there are no downsides to these new ideas. They are better ideas and they, one of the ways they're able to, in
Sarah: [00:38:51] Should've been our first warning flag.
Jon Grinspan: [00:38:52] I know that that's set off the red lights right there. I think this is hard to do, but one of the mistakes they make is that they're backwards [00:39:00] looking in the changes they want to make. They look at this big ugly political system in the 19th century and the only thing they can kind of agree across the political spectrum is to end the old system, right. They don't want these big campaign convulsions. They don't want partisanship and passion and, and, and public politics, but they're not really articulate about what politics should look like. So by, by just kind of building, building a new system to replace the old system, they build in all these new problems and I don't know if, if reformers going forward can kind of move backwards and forwards and time to anticipate that the damage they're going to do, but we really do see the harm done by people who are just trying to end X with Y. You know, you can kind of wandering to new, dangerous territory.
Sarah: [00:39:41] On this father's day, I don't want to say that, you know, all of this complexity between Will and Flore was left unresolved. They had a time period and in her young life where they really were in conflict and they really did, weren't speaking, but that was not the entire trajectory of their [00:40:00] relationship, right?
Jon Grinspan: [00:40:01] They, they reconcile years before he, um, before he dies and build a strong, loving relationship again and he knows his grandchildren and, and she, she carries on his legacy. I mean, we have this family, this dynasty really who's fighting for working people in America for a century. There, there aren't many other examples of that. They're, they're not particularly well-known, but I think they should be better known because of them because of the positive nature of the relationship. And, uh, you know, these are, these are big personalities, they are passionate people. It's not surprising that they ended up in conflict, but I think you can really see so clearly the, the education and the training he gave her at a young age carrying on, into not just her life in the 20th century, but things we take for granted today. The social security, the new deal, attitudes towards gender.
Sarah: [00:40:46] Child labor laws.
Jon Grinspan: [00:40:47] Child labor laws. That's absolutely right. We can see all these things that they built together and so, you know, they there's our drama in their lives, but, but I do think there's a, there's a shared Kelley legacy that we all benefit from today with [00:41:00] without kind of sugarcoating over there, you know, less, less admirable traits.
Sarah: [00:41:03] Well, and I think that's so beautiful and I think that that is what you were saying, right? They shared these values of prioritizing and recognizing and valuing the people and the political values that they held dear, and that they worked for them and they worked for them in different ways. Sometimes they even worked at cross purposes, but like that, seeing that that is what united them and, you know, we have the benefit of, of looking back over the course of the family's impact, but I just think that's a really beautiful thing to keep in mind in our own relationships as well.
Jon Grinspan: [00:41:35] And you can, I think maybe just as we can all do in our own family lives, so you can connect the dots in there. So you can see will Kelley reading to a seven-year-old Florence Kelley about child labor, maybe traumatizing a small child in the process. She's working to fight child labor. She becomes probably the most prominent person fighting it a generation later. You can see him introducing her to African-American politicians in Philadelphia. She helps found the NAACP, the generation later. [00:42:00] You can just see all these, like all these values and almost like Easter eggs and causes that he introduces her to as a young girl become the causes she's fighting for well after he's, he's passed on, you know, and she's, she's not a Republican the way he was a Republican, but she's still fighting for the same causes kind of across partisan name or whatever.
Sarah: [00:42:21] No, I think that is a beautiful visual and place to end. Thank you so much for writing this book and sharing, not just the Kelley's, with all of us, but with this particular moment in American history, that is so close to our own and can offer us both lessons and I think a fair bit of hope.
Jon Grinspan: [00:42:36] Yeah. Thank you for, uh, for such an enthusiastic read and so much interest in it. It's, it's fun to talk about it.
Sarah: [00:42:41] I just want to thank Jon again. I hope y'all enjoyed that conversation. I think that period in American history is so important.
[00:43:00] Beth what's on your mind outside politics?
Beth: [00:43:02] Well, we are coming to approach Father's Day. We had a discussion around Mother's day that it seems like brands and just people on social media are starting to approach these holidays with more sensitivity and consideration for the fact that people have really complicated relationships. That there are huge variances in how folks feel about these holidays, that there is still something special about observing them and that we need to observe them with a lot of space for where everybody is. So I thought it might make sense for us to just talk a little bit about our relationships with our dads today.
Sarah: [00:43:36] There has been such tremendous change and cultural awareness on the importance of the roles of fathers and what fathers look like. You know, I just think about how my grandmother talks about her dad and how like closed off emotionally he was from them and you know, how she sees it so differently with her own sons and, you know, I can see that even with [00:44:00] my dad's that they, you know, have to, I'm very, I'm very blessed. I have my dad, John, and then my stepfather, Ron and so just watching how they embrace such more active roles as fathers and then of course, Nicholas too, like I just think that's really encouraging.
I think that our culture has taken such giant leaps. We're not there yet, as we all learned during the pandemic, it's not exactly like we fixed it and we can, you know, dust off our hands and move on but I think generationally it's so different and it's so much better, you know, even my dad moved to Arizona and then California when I was little, and even though I only saw him during the summers or our holidays, like he still was so and continues to be so active in my life was a really, really great long distance dad.And both my dad and my stepfather, you know, I wrote about this in the acknowledgements of our books just played such a role in life. You know, welcoming [00:45:00] me to the table and talking to me about what I thought and, you know, especially my stepdad would listen to hours and hours of political conversation and political debate and, you know, I just think I wouldn't, I wouldn't be who I was if it wasn't for them and I'm, I'm so grateful that I have not just one, but two great father figures in my life for sure.
Beth: [00:45:19] To that point about the way that sometimes we define fathers in too narrow of a box, I was thinking about my dad's life and how caregiving has really been a central point pillar of his life. Early in his life, he left his career in banking to move home to the family dairy farm, and work with his dad who was suffering with asthma, which turned out to be maybe providential in some respects because his dad then died a couple years later and then my grandmother, his mother, had serious dementia and my dad devoted so much of his energy and emotion and [00:46:00] time to taking care of her through the end of her life.
Um, my mother has an auto-immune disease and my dad has devoted so much of his energy and his time and his life to helping her through that and all through my life, as a dad, he has really been an emotional caretaker for me. My dad is the person who says to me, I hope that you're happy. I'm so proud of you, how are you feeling about things? And, uh, it really defies the sort of, let me give you a tie and a card that alludes to BBQ stereotype um, when I think about it, How my dad has spent his time and what his priorities have been and he truly has always prioritized his family above absolutely everything else and it's something that I am thinking about a lot and he, and he and Chad have extremely different personalities. And also I see in Chad that same [00:47:00] drive to put family first in absolutely everything that he does, and I feel very blessed that my experience with the two men who I've observed most closely as fathers it's been that way.
Sarah: [00:47:11] Yeah. My family always talks about that the women in our family are not particularly nurturing. My great grandmother's mother died when she was very young of an ectopic pregnancy and she was raised by her stepmother and back, you know, in the early 19 hundreds, it's like, your stepmother took really good care of you, but it wasn't like how we think about bonus parents now, right. So she was not, she was fantastic and amazing, and like the most amazing influence, even as a great grandmother last it's still got a lot of time with her, but she wasn't like warm and nurturing and neither is my grandmother and neither is my mother. It was the men in my life, the father figures in my life that were really, really nurturing and loving.
Both my dad and my step, my stepdad has like the softest heart and then my grandfather, my father's father, my paternal grandfather, my great uncle, Joe, [00:48:00] who was in my life a lot when I was really little, like these men who were like very nurturing and loving and caring and just like really did like adopt that caregiving role and who just sort of propped me up and gave me such confidence in life to just think that I could do you know, whatever I wanted to do.
I think I've talked about this on the show, especially with my stepdad, I realized like one of the big sort of issues we have as I grew older, as I think it felt like he was trying to argue me out of my experiences if I like, felt like I was being treated unfairly or being discriminated against or bumping up against stereotypes for women and I realized that it was like, he was, he was so sad that I really wasn't getting the chance that he believed that I would get like that. He wasn't trying to gaslight me. He was just so sad that that was my experience. It's like he couldn't accept it, but I, you know, I think it's a testament to our relationship that we kind of worked through that and like, he will take my sort of rage at times and [00:49:00] anger and frustrations at situations and just, you know, sit with me through it.
You know, my stepdad like it is truly like something out of a sit-com I just get, I get like voicemails, like I just want you to know that I just love you. I'm so proud of you and I think about people, you know, it makes me so sad and it's hard not to feel guilty because I know there are people who had, you know, really terrible relationships with their fathers, who never articulate what their kids mean to them, or don't have fathers at all due to tragedy or choice, or, you know, the wide spectrum in between. I'm just so incredibly grateful that I not only have one, but two men in my life and more father figures in those two who have given me such confidence and have loved me and supported me and continue to do so and continue to do that for my kids and I love that Chad is different from your dad. Nicholas is so much like Ron sometimes it creeps me out, but that's okay. It's just, that's my, it's my cross to bare like they're so si-s-similar [00:50:00] sometimes.
Beth: [00:50:00] You know, it's interesting that you say that about thinking through where Ron was coming from, because I've been thinking a lot about how my criticism of my dad growing up was that he had a really hot temper.
Sarah: [00:50:11] I don't know what that's like at all.
Beth: [00:50:14] And maybe he did, but now I realize that when he was 29, he lost his dad who was also the person he worked alongside every single day and he lost his dad on the farm that he continued to work on every single day and to live in that kind of grief and shock. He, his dad died my grandfather in a accident connected to a tornado so it was just so sudden and awful and looking back, I think. Gosh, he and my mom were so young. I'm reflecting on this now and I'm 11 years older than he was when that happened and I can't imagine that they have the kind of support around them that anybody would have [00:51:00] needed, even though I know the community really wrapped its arms around them. What a horrific thing that they went through and they just kept carrying on through, you know, a pretty, a pretty hard time and the hard labor of working a farm as that industry was really transitioning.
So I just have so much more compassion and respect for what they did and how they did it for me and the fact that they have raised me so well and so gently that I haven't really even considered that, you know, until I'm in my forties. So lots of love to everyone who doesn't have this luxury, because I know that the way that I am able to think about my parents is due to the luxury that I just happened to be born to these two people who have, who have given me their best love every single day of their lives.
Sarah: [00:51:50] Yeah. My stepdad also had, and has a pretty bad temper. It's kind of way better in the last few decades, but that was also a big sort of bone of contention when we were [00:52:00] growing up and I just see now that, like, I have three boys that, and like, I think a lot about masculine culture and what we tell men that just, you know, especially when he was growing up, it was just, that that was his option. That was the emotion, uh, presented to him as the like happy or mad. Those were your options and continue, I think, to be presented to men as their main options and, you know, I have a pretty bad temper, especially, you know, and I I've worked on it and thought about it and, you know, spend a lot of time on it and I, I see it, it bubbles up the most when I. Want to control the situation and I can't, and I think, well, wait it's not a surprise that men have tempers because what they are taught that they should control everything.And that they're in charge, especially in families. Right.
I don't mean like control the people, but I mean, like, keep everybody safe. Are you the primary breadwinner or just the like, you know, main breadwinner, even if somebody else's earning, like are like? I just look at my dad and my [00:53:00] stepdad and my husband, and think about all the pressure that they're under or have been under at different points in time and how like that does bubble up as like control and anger and it's not that I condone it or just sort of like blow it off, but I also have enormous empathy for it.
Beth: [00:53:18] So I know that there are people in all kinds of families listening, people who are fathers, people who are in that role for a child, people who have lost fathers, fathers who have lost children and we're just thinking about all of you and holding lots of space around all these different experiences and also kind of lighting a candle for our own gratitude for our dads.
Sarah: [00:53:41] So we hope you have the best Father's Day weekend available to you, no matter your circumstance and we will see you back here on Tuesday. Until then, keep it nuanced y'all.
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