A Wider Lens on 2024 with Heather Cox Richardson

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • Democracy Awakening with Heather Cox Richardson

  • Outside of Politics: Preparing Your Kids for Higher Education

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EPISODE RESOURCES

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

CONVERSATION NOTES

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:09] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:10] And this is Beth Silvers. Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

[00:00:14] Music Interlude  

[00:00:34] Thank you for joining us for a new episode of Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. Today, that approach is about stepping back from the headlines and widening the lens. We have a special guest to help us do that, who many of you know and love. Heather Cox Richardson is here. Before we share that conversation with Heather, a quick reminder that Sarah and I are currently booking for our limited speaking engagement slots for 2024, which will be here before you know it. In the past year, we have had the privilege of talking with businesses about motivating employees as folks return to the office. We've joined college speaking series to discuss how we can innovate our democracy. We've talked about the themes in our two books. We've talked about how to build a life around your own definition of success. The joy of our speaking work is that Sarah and I get to bring all the depth and breadth of our professional and personal experiences to your organizations, and listen and learn from you and share the most specific things we know that might be helpful where you are. But don't take it from us, here's what Maddie at Maryville College had to say about our visit there last year.  

Maddie [00:01:40] Hey y'all. I had the honor of hosting and serving as the guide for Sarah and Beth around Maryville College back in February. I was so excited to have them because I've been a longtime listener and a real super fan of all their work. And as you can imagine, they're just as gracious, kind and thoughtful in person as they are on the podcast. They were not only gracious to me, but to all of our students as they helped engage in political debates in a comparative politics class, to giving lots of advice to our student government that was much needed. They did it all. And students and faculty alike were enamored with them, as well as our wider campus community, who could only say great things about their event that night. So if you want to have the best college experience available to you, bring them. It will be a memory I cherish forever.  

Beth [00:02:23] Please reach out to Alise at Hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com to discuss booking us for your 2024 engagements. I don't know about you, but my news and politics word of this week is scattered. We had the second Republican debate on Wednesday night, the first official impeachment inquiry hearing on Thursday, the looming government funding deadline. And it's just been hard to know how invested to feel in any of it. What difference does a debate make when the person with a double digit lead in national and early state polling doesn't show up for it? How much attention should we pay to an impeachment hearing when the investigators consistently promise but have yet to deliver any evidence of the president's wrongdoing? How seriously should we take the possibility of a government shutdown? Will it all get worked out at the last minute? What exactly are we trying to work out in this process? It's scattered. And when we're feeling scattered, Sarah and I often look for a wider lens. Today's guest, historian, author and professor Heather Cox Richardson, is well-qualified to help us place this current strange moment in time. We know many of you read Heather's newsletter, Letters From An American. And this week she released a new book, Democracy Awakening, that serves as a guide to understanding where America stands today and how we got here. I loved this conversation and particularly valued Heather's insights on the history of the Republican Party and the power we hold as engaged citizens.  

Sarah [00:04:13] Heather Cox Richardson, thank you so much for coming to pantsuit politics.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:04:16]  I'm so thrilled to be here.  

Sarah [00:04:18] Well, our audience is going to be thrilled, too, because I know in the Venn diagram of our audiences, there is a massive amount of overlap.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:04:25] I think that's right. I also think it's totally cool that you two are in Kentucky and I'm in Maine.  

Sarah [00:04:30] Yes, we love Maine. We crossed over into Maine when we were in New Hampshire. Like, we have to set foot in Maine. This is essential to us.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:04:37] You crossed over like you had to have a passport, right?  

Beth [00:04:41] I tried to convince my husband to move to Maine after we visited one September, and he said to me, "That's because it's September, Beth. We'll come back in January before we move here so that you're sure.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:04:52] He was a wise man, because September is spectacularly beautiful and so is October. And if you like cold weather or if you least can tolerate it, I love the winter months, but they're not for the faint of heart.  

Beth [00:05:07] And I may be faint of heart, Heather. I'm just going to be honest with you.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:05:10] Well, here you go. This is such Maine in a nutshell. You know what's great about the winter months? Is that you don't have the bugs that you have in the summer months.  

Sarah [00:05:18] See, I don't like bugs, and I like cold. Maybe I'm the one that should move to Maine.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:05:22] I got to tell you, we got a bedroom waiting for you.  

Sarah [00:05:25] Well, one of the reasons that I think that our audiences are so overlapping is because we have a lot of former Republicans in our audience, and you have built so much of your career on the history of the Republican Party and illuminating steps along that history that help us get to the current moment where I think they're going to try to run an impeachment and shut down the government at the same time over in the House of Representatives.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:05:55] Crazy, isn't it? So one of the distinctions I like to make is that the current Republican Party is not the traditional Republican Party and not what I would call the real Republican Party. So I know there's a lot of people who feel homeless, or at least politically homeless. One of the things that I really like to point out is that when the Republican Party rose in the 1850s, it rose in response to a certain set of circumstances. And because of that, it articulated a vision of the United States that is as central to who we are as the Democrats version, which came from a different period. It was quite a bit earlier. They're not yin and yang. They're actually really sort of complementary, but different visions. And the current Republican Party has completely abandoned that vision. But that being said, I think that vision is still really important, even though there isn't currently a political party that's articulating it. So for people who feel like they're homeless, they are. But I also think that vision will by nature of the fact it's so important to who the American people are, will rise again, but maybe under a different name.  

Beth [00:07:07] It feels like we are a little stuck right now compared to maybe other periods of American history, but maybe that's just my bias toward the present. I think a lot about the Whigs as one does it.  

Sarah [00:07:19] I do. Is that not normal? Because I definitely do, too.  

Beth [00:07:22] But it does feel like we are so ripe for new parties to emerge. I specifically think about the energy of the progressive left and where the Democratic Party has absorbed so many people like me who were more traditional Republicans and are now under sort of the Joe Biden, Abigail Spanberger, Elissa Slotkin tent. And I look at the progressive left and think, you all have a lot of people and a lot of energy. Are you going to split off and do your own thing? So I just wonder if you think we are stuck or if those things can happen it's just going to take longer than we feel like it should.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:07:59] Well, I actually think things are moving really quite quickly at this point in the larger scheme of things. I do think we're going to see a major realignment because if you think about the relative power of majorities and minorities right now-- and I mean political, I don't mean ethnic or religious or racial-- we're sort of stuck in this idea that a group of radical extremists have taken over some of the nodes of power in our system. But the vast majority of us actually agree on most things. Now, we agree on the big picture items. We agree that the government has a role to play in regulating the economy. We might disagree about what that role looks like, but we agree it has a role. We agree it has a role in a basic social safety net. We agree it has a role in infrastructure. Again, we might disagree about what pieces we consider infrastructure, but we think it has a role to do that. And the vast majority of us agree that the government has a role in protecting civil rights. So there is a small extremist minority that wants to erase all that and say, no, no, no, the government shouldn't do any of those things. And right now they're holding key positions of power, but that can't survive. I mean, just by nature either we have to lose our democracy and let that small group overturn our history and all of our freedoms, or we have to let the majority assert its will again. And when that happens, we're going to see, I think, divisions.  

[00:09:18] One of the pieces that I think is worth talking about that we rarely do is two key demographic changes that jump out to me right now, the young people coming up, and of course, the old people leaving the voting population. So I think that one's really important because their reality is so different than what we've had in the past. Things like the Cold War, the civil rights movement, all the things looked different to them. But for our audiences, one of the things that I feel like we don't talk about nearly enough is the fact that there are a number of people, women, especially white women, in the sense that black women have always been politically involved. But white women who have had their careers, they've had children, they have skills, they have connections, meaning friendship groups, they often have at least some money. And unlike our mothers, they have a period of at least 20 years in which they have time for a new career without their children at home. And that population is really active and really capable and has its own ideas about the way the world should be. And I find it fascinating that every time I mention that in many circles they're like, oh, that's women's story, no one cares. And I'm like, have you all looked at the voting booth? Because take a look at how those people are changing society. So I think those things are going to help change the way that politics shakes out going forward as well.  

Sarah [00:10:41] And I would think those two groups (Gen-z and that older group of women) politically, there is a lot of alignment there as far as what their goals are, what they want to see happen at the federal and state and local levels. I'm wondering, as you're seeing these shifts, I'm really interested in those those competing visions and I want to hear you articulate those for people who aren't subscribed to your newsletter and are less familiar with your work. And tell us where you see those two growing groups in these two competing visions and where there are some historical examples that we can see this bubble up in American history in the past.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:11:18] The Democrats rise in the late 1820s, the 1830s, and they articulate a vision of a world in which there are the haves and the have-nots. And I'm really simplifying this. But the idea that the have-nots have to be really careful to make sure the haves don't get too much power. Essentially, they see the world as us versus them, and that the government has to be used to make sure that the wealthy people don't get too much. You can think of times in our history when that vision, boy, the government's got to step in now and make sure the rich don't get everything, has been incredibly important. Or the early Progressive Era, the New Deal. You can think of times when that really defined the United States. The Republicans, in contrast, rise in the 1850s, and they rise in a period when the Democrats have basically taken control of the national government. And when they have done so, they're really under the sway of elite enslavers. And those are extremely wealthy people who have taken over the governmental system in the 1850s. And so the Republicans first start to just organize, to stand against them. And the reason Lincoln really becomes so important as he does is because he begins to articulate a different ideology, not saying it's us versus them, but rather saying, listen, the way the world works is it's not a closed system. The pie is always going to expand. And the trick to that is rather than trying to protect either the poor or the wealthy, what the government should do is it should invest in people at the bottom, because once they start working, they're going to produce more than they need to survive and they're going to accumulate wealth in the form of capital. He actually called capital pre exhorted labor.  

[00:12:59] They're going to make more than they can use and they're going to support shopkeepers and shoemakers and all those guys, and then they're going to make more than they can consume and they're going to support a very few financiers, for example, and people who run factories they're in turn going to hire people at the bottom. So that vision of a world in which everybody shares the same interests and the way you make sure an economy grows and that everybody gets a fair shake, is by investing at the bottom. I always think of it as the Democrats really have this historic vision of align in a way this side versus this side or a teeter totter or a see-saw. And the Republicans had a vision of a web in which everybody was working together. And that, of course, could be easily perverted as the Democratic side could be, where you say only the rich people matter. And then the system's always changing. But that vision that says we got to help people at the bottom because if you give people an opportunity they're going to produce more than they can consume because people are basically good and that society should be a web, I think that's circle vision, if you will, is as important as the line vision that the Democrats have. And right now, we don't really have anybody other than somebody like Democratic President Joe Biden articulating that invest at the bottom vision. But his want is much more like the Democrats. It's the rich versus the poor. He does talk about that. He does say if you put money at the bottom, it's all going to rise. But that vision of a web, I don't feel like anybody's really articulating that, at least on the Republican side.  

Beth [00:14:35] I love this. I love this metaphor. I think the circle on the line is so helpful. I spent yesterday thinking about the farm bill and learning a little bit about the farm bill's history and looking at both SNAP and Crop insurance, trying to think about everybody's arguments about the farm bill, arguments that have been around for a long time now. And it seems like every time we have to reauthorize it every five years or so, we have all those arguments and then we say, well, never mind, we've got to get it passed. So let's just keep adding to everything and see what happens. But as you talk about where Republicans used to be, I think about a program like SNAP, which is that vision that if you invest in the bottom, things grow. I was really surprised to learn that every dollar that goes out in SNAP generates $1.79 in the economy. That is the web vision. But Republican politics have gotten so flattened out, it's almost like the Republican politics of today are the line, too. And so I just wonder how you think we got there.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:15:39] The idea of Republican politics today being a line is very much that old Democratic vision. But of course, they're protecting the people at the top rather than the people at the bottom, as the original Democratic vision was. And, again, I've really simplified that. So if anybody's going, "Wait, wait, wait, that's not what Andrew Jackson was about," that's fair. But what happened is that after World War Two, both Democrats and Republicans agreed to the things that I just talked about, that the government should regulate business, have a social safety net, promote infrastructure, and increasingly protect civil rights. And that had nothing to do with political party that, was called the liberal consensus. And the Republicans and the Democrats argued about what that looked like, but they agreed to it with one exception. And that in the United States, in other countries there were powerful leftist parties. We really never had that in the United States. The exception were those business people and Southern racists, and to some degree religious traditionalists, who really hated the idea that the government would regulate business, first of all, because they thought it stood in the way of a business man's ability to order his business as he wanted to. But social safety net, they thought cut into the purview of churches, for example. The idea of promoting infrastructure really cut into their idea that businessmen would do that more efficiently and should be able to make money from it. And the protection of civil rights really attacked the idea of a patriarchal social structure, including the idea that women were subservient to men.  

[00:17:12] So that group of people begins to organize in 1937, and they begin to say, we need to get rid of this government that does all these things. And the reason that they're able to take power, we can talk about how they use wedge issues like race to take power. But in a funny way, I think that what happened was that because that vision of society was so widely spread, the idea that government should do all those things, but in 1960, this political scientist named Phil Converse wrote an article in which he said, listen, partys got to stop talking about principles. They got stop talking about democracy and the idea of promoting a social good and a public good because everyone agrees. So you can't turn out voters if everybody agrees. It's like fish agreeing that water is wet. So what you really need to do is just nail together gather coalitions. And as both the Republicans and the Democrats did that, what happened was that small group of people who disagreed with that coalition were able to articulate a really powerful story that they, in fact, were the ones defending America and defending American liberty. And gradually they came to take over the Republican Party in the 1960s, especially as the Democrats turned to support black voting and the voting by people of color.  

[00:18:29] And gradually they came to take over the Republican Party and eventually have taken it over to the point that the Republican Party has completely abandoned. And, again, I'm talking about the modern Republican Party, which is run by extremists, has abandoned that older vision and has abandoned even I think you have to say right now democracy. Which makes me profoundly sad, because if you think about the history of the Republicans, I like to say they were called the Grand Old Party for a reason. They had a grand history that defended civil rights, not only during Lincoln's time, but also during the period before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and then they participated in the voting rights after '65. And they were behind, of course, the Roe versus Wade decision that was under the Republican Supreme Court justice. And, of course, it was a Republican court that unanimously decided Brown versus Board of Education. So you look at their history and see where they are today and it just makes me profoundly sad. And I understand if other people feel the same way.  

Sarah [00:19:34] I wonder, because I know enough about history to be dangerous. This is the actual truth, Heather.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:19:41] Me too. 

Sarah [00:19:42] And one thing we know that has changed recently is you see these long periods of party control shifting, but they held a majority for a while, you know, like we're talking several years, decades, and now we're just bouncing back and forth, bouncing back and forth every two years, every four years. And I wonder how you think about that historically. Also, in this weird way, the party control is changing, but we're about to have the second presidential election, assuming a lot of things stay the same with the same two candidates, which I don't remember the last time that's happened in American history. So how have we ended up with two of the same candidates for the second time, but party control shifting back and forth and back and forth and back and forth? It seems like a weird paradox.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:20:26] Well, yes, I'm not entirely sure--  

Sarah [00:20:28] I see you searching your brain for the last time we had two candidates--  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:20:31] That's exactly what I was doing. I'm going for Adlai Stevenson, William Jennings Bryan. And now I've got to go home and look it up. So I'm not entirely sure that what we're seeing is people flipping back and forth and control flipping back and forth. I think what we're seeing is a generational sea change or maybe even more than a generation. We had the period after Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 and takes office in 1981. And I think we're seeing the end of that and the birth of something new. Exactly what that new thing is going to look like, I think we can talk about. But that's really common, actually, to have about a 40 year span of a certain kind of mindset, whether or not it's a Republican or a Democrat in office. And the reason that happens, people argue about till they're blue in the face. But there are a couple of things that happen. One is that once a party gets into power and once a certain group of people gets into power in our system, they tend to monopolize control within the political parties, which are not part of our government. They're something separate from our government, which is interesting.  

[00:21:36] And this is one of the things you're seeing now with that radical right in the Republican Party, having taken over so many state parties that they're making those states look not at all like the majority of the voters in the state. So, for example, in Wisconsin, the fact that Janet [inaudible] was elected to the state Supreme Court by 11 points, in a state that usually decides elections by a half a point. And one of the things that voters put her in place to do, is to get rid of the extraordinarily gerrymandered congressional districts in Wisconsin that have given Republicans a crazy advantage over Democrats. Even though they lose the popular vote, they still have maintained virtually a two thirds control of the state House of Representatives. They've lost the governorship and the Senate repeatedly. But despite the fact that she was elected by that much, the Republican extremists are already talking about impeaching her, even though she's never even heard a case yet.  

Sarah [00:22:33] Oh, my goodness.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:22:34] That's really problematic. So there's partly the mechanics of the system. But the other piece that I like to play with and that seems to me to be going on is I think a lot about politics and the relationship between people and their political leaders. And one of the things that always jumps out to me is that when you get these shifts, these what I would call zeitgeist shifts, you do get not only a political shift, but you start to see the media echoing the same language that those leaders do, and you start to see popular culture echoing it. I always think of them as little tornadoes. So everything gets sucked into that tornado until that tornado starts to fall apart and then you get something new. So one of the things that always jumps out to me is that Ronald Reagan is elected in 1980. Well, in 1977 our blockbuster film was Star Wars, which talked about the individual taking on the empire. That is literally the kind of language that Ronald Reagan used. And now, of course, in this moment we're in where we have these extremists in charge of society, what was the popular book series that children who are now voting adults grew up on? Harry Potter. And in Harry Potter, you've got kids. And it wasn't just Harry Potter, it was Holes. It was--  

Sarah [00:23:56] Hunger Games.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:23:56] The Hunger Games. It was all those dystopias where kids recognized that a system was unfair and took on an authoritarian government. And talk about a zeitgeist moment, how many American kids haven't read at least one of those series?  

Sarah [00:24:14] Yeah, that's so true.  

Beth [00:24:15] That tornado helps me understand too you why the Wisconsin impeachment effort includes someone like Scott Walker, who in recent memory I would not have included as a Republican extremist in today's language. I thought he was pretty far right at the time that he was considered to be perhaps a presidential contender. But him getting swept up in the tornado helps me a lot. Do you think that about 40 year period is going to shorten in the future as everything seems to move faster?  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:24:49] That's a great question. And all I would say is that I'm a prophet of the past and not the future, so I don't know the answer to that. I do think that climate change is going to have such drastic effects on every aspect of humanity on this globe. That is something unique we have never dealt with. And, of course, we do get these really major changes. So in the United States, we got the westward movement, which gives rise to the Republican Party. We get industrialization, which gives rise to Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Party, and then later on Woodrow Wilson's Progressive Party. We get the rise of the nuclear bomb, which is going to give us, again, a moment of really coming together after World War Two with Eisenhower adopting the same kinds of ideas that the Democrats had. And in the more recently, we've had the rise of the Internet which has created all kinds of opportunities as well as all kinds of problems. So right now, the Internet seems to have torn us apart in many ways, but maybe this is another moment that will bring us together. And then, of course, we simply are going to have to figure out what to do about the extraordinary problems associated with climate change, including huge numbers of refugees, the costs associated with the kinds of storms we're seeing and the death toll, as well as the rise in disease. So, I don't know. I just know that there's a lot out there that we're going to have to grapple with. And either we separate and go at each other's throats or we figure out how to do it together.  

[00:26:13] Music Interlude.  

Sarah [00:26:30] I'm wondering how as a traditional historian, you're professor, you're writing historical texts, and then you have this newsletter, wildly popular, over a million subscribers and we know as creators on the Internet that involves an enormous amount of input from your audience. And so I'm just wondering how that worked on you as a historian, as an American, how it changed your work, how it changed your perspective as a prophet of the past with an audience very much here in the present.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:27:01] A great question. And the answer to that is the letters and this new book are entirely about my audience, in that the letters really began as an attempt to answer questions. Remember, I'm a teacher more than anything else. I'm a mom, I'm a teacher. And think of how many times as a teacher or as a mom you're answering questions that somebody just doesn't have access to the answers yet. I mean, it's not that they're stupid. They just don't know how to tie their shoes or don't know what broccoli tastes like or don't understand how we got the Declaration of Independence. I mean, basically what we do is we answer questions. So that's how the letters began. And I find it incredibly fertile because people both bring information to me or they ask questions that make me think about things in a different way. Like, have we ever before had the same two people running for president? Which is still bothering me. And so, I just started answering people's questions and that's how the letters started. And then with the book, the book began as an attempt to answer the questions that everybody asks most frequently. What was the Southern strategy? What does liberalism mean? How did the parties switch sides? And it was basically just what is the Electoral College? It was just those simple answers. And what happened was I divided the book into thirty very short chapters in three sections. How we got here, where here is, and how we get out.  

[00:28:26] And what happened was that when I wrote those, I left it aside because I went off and got married and I came back and after three or four months and it felt like all the chapters have been talking to each other without me. They are the same way that students do in a classroom, by the way, and often they come out with something that is not what you expected when you do that. But when I reread the chapters, it seemed to me they were telling a much different story than I had set out to write. And that was the story of how people who are determined to destroy democracy for their own ends can use language and history to convince people to give up on democracy. And then the Trump years, which I know incredibly well, when I stripped out the noise, the stuff I'd written about every night, the vision that was there of autocracy, of a dictatorship terrified me. When I read through this book, I'm like, oh my Lord, I had no idea. And then the final section of how we reclaim our democracy, all of those spoke to me in a very different way than I had originally written. And so I ended up rewriting about 80% of the book. And there was a reason then that the book is dedicated to my readers, is because I sort of feel like I was really just the person holding the pen, not the person writing any of it.  

Sarah [00:29:36] I love that. That's exactly how we feel about our audience 100 percent. And that's why I think this is such a great moment to have you here.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:29:43] It's a community, and it's not just your audience and my audience and red, white and blue and the people who listen to Sharon McMahon, it's a whole movement. Most people aren't even aware of it.  

Beth [00:29:55] To that end, I would love for you to give that movement a little bit of a historical pep talk, thinking about your point that there are so many women who now have this 20, 30 year period without kids to enter a new phase of life and be activated politically in a way they haven't before. I wonder if there is an anecdote from history that you think describes what happens when a new group gets activated, what kind of power that group can wield?  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:30:23] Yes, this is what I always think about. And honestly, it seems to me that it's a much bigger story than people are aware of, and that's the populist movement in the 1890s. So what happens is most people had to study the populist party in high school and probably don't remember anything about it. I know I didn't. And all the books on it are like a gazillion pages long. I'll stop with that. But what happens is that both political parties in the 1880s recognize that basically the wealthy have taken over the system. You've got this is a rise of the trusts. This is the rise of the robber barons. They basically literally own senators to the point that a senator would introduce himself as saying "I'm Joe Smith, I'm the senator for the Sugar Trust," which was the biggest trust in the country. And everybody knew this. It's when you get that that cartoon of those giant guys who look like blown up balloons and they're all the robber barons peering over the Senate. Anyway, everybody recognized that. And the Democrats were trying to push back. But basically they didn't really have control of any of the key places that you needed to be in control in order to push back on that tornado, if you will. The idea that the rich really should control everything because they were the ones who understood the economy and they were the ones who would amass wealth and build schools and build Carnegie Hall and all those sorts of museums that people could go to--  

Sarah [00:31:52] Libraries. 

Heather Cox Richardson [00:31:53] Yes, to go get culture as opposed to wasting your money by frittering in a way on housing and food and clothing. And I'm not kidding, actually, there were arguments about that. Anyway, so what happens is that in the summer of 1889 and 1890, especially 1890, people on the plains and in the American South, primarily women, start to organize and they have picnics and they have lectures in. Think about this. This in Nebraska and South Dakota in 1889, in the summer. It's hot. It's not pleasant to be out at a picnic. But they have these gatherings where they explain things to people. They don't exhort them to to go out and do something. They say, "Hey, listen, do you understand a tariff? This is what a tariff is." And one of my favorites is in the Texas Populist Party. They had this big thing where they said this whole idea of being important in politics by shooting people and by being a bully, that's not how real men act. Real men actually try and protect the community and have reasonable arguments. They don't fight with each other. And this is happening. And there's a terrible drought in the plains in that summer. And nobody back east is paying any attention. And so if you read the letters that are coming in to Benjamin Harrison, who's president at the time, literally people are there going, I'm paraphrasing, dude, we got a problem out here because nobody's going to vote for the Republican Party and no one's paying any attention. And literally, they're back east going, oh, the Republicans are going to win this election because we really won by a lot in 1888. And we're going to stay in power and on and on and on.  

[00:33:30] What happens in the summer of 1890 that nobody back east is paying attention to, is their new newspapers, their new gatherings, their new political organizations. They're known as the Alliance. It's going to become the populist party, but it's known as the Alliance movement, and it's very loosely organized groups. When the election of 1890 happens, which is the Republicans think they're going to win. Literally they're writing, we won all this, we're going to be great. They lose the House by a margin of 2 to 1 and they lose control of the Senate and they do not see it coming. Nobody saw it coming. And this woman goes to visit Benjamin Harrison and they walk around the garden. He's the president. She goes, "He just kept walking around saying, ''I don't know what happened. I didn't see this coming. I don't know what happened. All I know is it wasn't my fault.'" Which kind of sums it all up. But the reason that matters, of course, is they become a powerful force and the things they want to, for example, have the direct election of senators and to have all sorts of different financial programs, including an income tax to try and level the playing field between the haves and the have nots, become law by about 1915. Even though the populist party fades out, all of its demands get absorbed by the other parties because they're such a powerful political bloc. And it's a little hard not to see the very same thing going on right now with people like your listeners who were paying attention and saying, "Wait a minute, I'm not sure I know all the answers, but I sure know the problem." And one of the things we need to do is figure out how to address that problem.  

Sarah [00:35:14] Well, thank you for your new book. Thank you for your work. Do you have a few minutes to stay far Outside of Politics segment?  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:35:19] Sure, I'd love to.  

[00:35:20] Music Interlude.  

Sarah [00:35:30] Okay. I have a very selfish question for Outside of Politics. I just think professors have the best advice. I have a high school freshman. I know many people in our audience are sending kids to college. So just what do you see among your students? What do you see is very helpful to prepare them for college? What do you think are the best success strategies? Just lay your wisdom on us, Heather.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:35:53] Okay, Here you go. Because I have three kids of my own, they're all through college. And of course, I'm a college professor. First thing is, there is no such thing as the perfect college for your kid. There's two colleges that are dead wrong. The rest of them are going to be fine. They are really going to be fine. And unless you get a free ride to the expensive colleges, the money really does matter. So that's the first thing. The second thing is colleges look for diversity, meaning geographic diversity. And good grades matter. But more than that matters the fact your kid is doing something that they really love because they're going to excel in that. And there's ten gazillion kids who are A students at everything. But there's only one kid who has fallen in love with Pell bogs or whatever it is. And so never tell your kid not to do something so that they can go study math or something that they really are just getting by on. And the other piece of it is that when they get to any college, and that means from a community college through an Ivy League, what really matters is relationships with professors and with their peers. So encourage kids to try everything. I mean, they may not make the choir or they might end up hating their anthropology teacher.  

[00:37:24] But I cannot tell you, I loved a job I had at a state university, and we had access to so many grants and so many internships and so many prizes for things like essays. Nobody ever applied for them. And I will never forget going up to one of my best students in a big class early on in the semester and saying there's this grant I can get it for you at summer to work wherever because nobody applies and I'm sure you'd be a sure win. And she got really embarrassed. And she came back the next week and she said, "I'm sorry I ran out on you. But the truth is that somebody else just got me a grant in my field, and I didn't want to tell you no, but I've already got one." And I thought the system is wrong when we're all chasing this one student because it's the only person who's come to our office hours, the only person who's asking questions in class. And the person wasn't even necessarily a great student. It really has nothing to do with your grades. It has to do with meeting people that you click with and who have access. And every professor has access to cool opportunities.  

Sarah [00:38:35] Yeah, that's good advice.  

Beth [00:38:37] So if you roll that back, I have a 12-year-old and an eight-year-old right now. I can feel, especially with my 12-year-old, my role receding so that she can find those interests and the things that she's excited about that I wouldn't pick for her. If you as a professor could say, "Parents of older, elementary middle school kids, here are a couple of asks that I have of you for what your student will be in the future." What would those sound like?  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:39:05] Lots of reading.  

Sarah [00:39:07] I had a hunch that would be it.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:39:08] Lots of playing with basics, mathematics... And I would say I think personally this has more to do with my parenting than with my professoring. I think reading in the homes, seeing adults care about ideas, reading and talking about ideas, talking about new things in science or whatever, that's more important than almost anything else, because it says this is a lifetime skill. It's not just something you're getting through to get a job. This is something that we do in this household. It creates an expectation that this is the way we behave. So those things. But I have to say, one of the things that I wish I could do on a more common basis is basic writing skills. I used to teach writing, and it's not hard. But so many-- at least when my kids were older, when they were young, so many of the people who tried to teach them writing did it by the book and didn't really love it. And so we got this idea that writing was a chore. You have to write a paper. Oh my God, I have to write three pages or whatever. And having those skills, before my kids friends went off to college, I used to insist on teaching them how to write a five paragraph essay because I said, "If you will spend 4 hours with me this afternoon, I promise you you're going to go up a letter grade in every single class you take because it helps you think and it helps you organize your thoughts and it helps you communicate your thoughts." So to the degree that you can get a student to get a good writing teacher matters so much, and that's a little bit harder of an ask because that's not something most people have control over in choosing a teacher.  

Sarah [00:40:53] Well, I was just going to say if you still offered that services like online so I could send my children up, is that available?  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:40:59] That's not a bad idea actually.  

Sarah [00:41:01] It's not.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:41:02] There is still a lot online that helps you walk you through how to write a five paragraph essay, and it's really the basis for absolutely everything we do. When I teach it, by the way, in college, which I don't so much where I am now, but I always did in my previous job, the method I used is a fourth grade method.  

Sarah [00:41:18] Wow. My best friend Kate is a fifth grade writing teacher, she's going to flip out when she listens to the segment. She's very good at her job. She's very passionate about it. I told her, I'm like, this is you're the proof is in the pudding. We were at a football game and some sixth grade boy decked out in his sports attire came up to her and said, "How did we do on our writing portfolios? Have the test scores came back yet?" I was like, Kate, that is a success story. That this child came up to you interested in how his writing did, that is incredible.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:41:46] Why doesn't she do it?  

Sarah [00:41:47] She does. Actually, my kids know how to write the five paragraphs. I guess she was their teacher.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:41:52] But does she do it online?  

Sarah [00:41:54] I don't know. I should ask her that. That's a good idea.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:41:57] It's got to be short, but send it to me because I would love to not have to do this and take time in a college course. And I'd be happy to circulate that.  

Sarah [00:42:05] Oh, my gosh. I'm going to tell her that.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:42:07] Those basic skills are the building blocks for everything. And you can't fudge that one.  

Sarah [00:42:13] No, it's so true. Totally agree.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:42:16] But I think the most important thing, and I see this so often, is when when people get prepared to send their children to college or into a trade school or a different profession-- my husband didn't go to college-- there is the sense that you got to get the right college. Even if you have to mortgage the house, you got to get the right college. And the honest truth really is that there is no perfect college. There are colleges that can be wrong. So don't send your kid to the college that it's really clear it's a bad fit. But there aren't that many of those. It's not a marriage. It's a stepping stone to their lives. And there are lots of different ways to get to the same place. So it's not worth all the tears and the heartache and the money and everything that people throw into it. The point is your kid, not the school.  

Sarah [00:43:10] Yeah. Well, we have an amazing college admissions counselor in our audience, and she told me, she was like, "We're not going to make the child fit the school because then they will not succeed at the school. You find the school that fits the child." That's what you're trying to do.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:43:24] That's exactly right. And there are lots of schools that fit children or your students. And it might turn out that whatever they went to school for doesn't turn out to be their love or whatever. But you know what? They met the most wonderful person there that they're going to spend the rest of their life with. You can't plan everything out. I look at how upset people get about college and I'm like, really? This is not a good use of your angst because it's going to work out fine. And you know what? If you do mess up and your kid goes to that school that doesn't match at all, transfer.  

Sarah [00:43:58] Yeah, there's powerful lessons in that.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:44:00] Yeah.  

Beth [00:44:00] Well, I imagine that you never dreamt that you would write a newsletter for a million people about history and democracy, just as we never dreamt that we would have had a podcast. So keeping some lightness on your grip around these things seems like a good place to end. We are so grateful that you spent time with us today, Heather. Thank you for all of your work.  

Sarah [00:44:18] Yes, thank you so much. I was thinking when you said that debating big ideas, I was like, "Well, that's her secret sauce. That's why people love her newsletter so much as that's what she does."  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:44:26] Yeah, well, I don't write for a several million people, though. I write for about six of my friends. And then it turns out there's a lot more people in the room. But you cannot look at [crosstalk].  

Sarah [00:44:36] That's so true. That's what I always tell people. I'm like, I'm just having a conversation with Beth. It just happens to be people listening.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:44:41] That's right. Exactly.  

Sarah [00:44:42] Thank you so much. Come back any time.  

Heather Cox Richardson [00:44:44] Thank you.  

Beth [00:44:46] Thanks again to Heather for joining us. Don't forget that we are currently filling those 2024 speaking slots. We've talked to colleges with tough relationships with the surrounding community. We've talked to corporations trying to motivate their employees as we move out of the COVID pandemic. We've talked to church congregations attempting to heal after some tough theological splits. We love this work. We take it very seriously. We spend a lot of time talking with the organizers, figuring out what is most needed and how we can give people space to process and language to move forward. If you'd like to have us come speak to your organization or company or community, we would love to see how we can help. Please email Hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com. Or visit our website Pantsuitpoliticsshow.com and Alise will be in touch. We'll be back with you here next week on Tuesday. Until then, have the best weekend available to you.  

[00:45:35] Music Interlude.  

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

Beth: Alise Napp is our managing director. Maggie Penton is our director of Community Engagement. 

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima. 

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

Executive Producers: Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. The Pentons. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. Christina Quartararo. The Lebo Family. 

Sarah: Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

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