Michael Gerhardt, author of the new book FDR’s Mentors: Navigating the Path to Greatness, and Andrew Busch, author of Reagan's Victory: The Presidential Election of 1980 and the Rise of the Right, join Jeffrey Rosen to explore the pivotal elections of 1932 and 1980. They compare the transformative presidencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, and trace how founding-era debates between Hamilton and Jefferson over the scope of federal and executive power re-emerged during the New Deal and Reagan Revolution. This program originally streamed live on April 16, 2024.
Please subscribe to We the People and Live at the National Constitution Center on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.
Today’s episode was produced by Tanaya Tauber, Lana Ulrich, and Bill Pollock. It was engineered by Kevin Kilbourne and Bill Pollock. Research was provided by Samson Mostashari, Cooper Smith, and Yara Daraiseh.
Participants
Andrew E. Busch is the Crown Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. He is the author or co-author of more than three dozen scholarly chapters and articles as well as more than 20 books on topics involving the Constitution, American presidents, and political campaigns. Among his many books are Ronald Reagan and the Politics of Freedom, Reagan’s Victory: The Presidential Election of 1980 and the Rise of the Right, The Constitution on the Campaign Trail: The Surprising Political Career of America’s Founding Document, and the forthcoming Ronald Reagan and the Firing of the Air Traffic Controllers.
Michael Gerhardt is the Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina. The author numerous leading treatises on impeachment, appointments, presidential power, Supreme Court precedent, and separation of powers, he is also the author of several books, including The Forgotten Presidents: Their Untold Constitutional Legacy, Lincoln’s Mentors: The Education of a Leader, The Law of Presidential Impeachment: A Guide for the Engaged Citizen, and most recently, FDR’s Mentors: Navigating the Path to Greatness.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also a professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- Michael J. Gerhardt, FDR’s Mentors: Navigating the Path to Greatness (2024)
- Andrew E. Busch, Ronald Reagan and the Politics of Freedom (2001)
- Andrew E. Busch, Reagan's Victory: The Presidential Election of 1980 and the Rise of the Right (2005)
- Andrew E. Busch, The Constitution on the Campaign Trail: The Surprising Political Career of America’s Founding Document (2007)
- Friedrich Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom," Teaching American History (May 21, 2020)
- Ronald Reagan, Remarks to Commonwealth Club members on March 4, 1983, Reagan Library (July 19, 2018)
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Undelivered Address Prepared for Jefferson Day, The American Presidency Project
Excerpt from Interview: Michael Gerhardt describes FDR as a pragmatist who valued practical insights over academic theories, drawing inspiration from historical figures like Jefferson and Lincoln to legitimize his actions and decisions.
Michael Gerhardt: I think that one thing to keep in mind about FDR is he really did not have a high opinion as sort of academics. And he was not particularly interested in emulating sort of how an academic might think about things. He was very much a pragmatist. So, I think that's how he looked at Jefferson. That's how he looked at Hamilton. And particularly, what can I, FDR, derive from them? What can I learn from them that I can use now? Very utilitarian, very pragmatic. And I think that's how FDR approached most questions. He actually comments later when he's president of the United States that the economics he took in college, completely useless 'cause they had no connection to the real world. But his advisers were also frustrated because he wasn't interested in learning the sort of how economics works or economic theory.
Instead, he's just being practical in figuring out, Okay, here's something Jefferson did or here's a thought or stance or position that Jefferson took which can provide a foundation for me. And so he found more of that from Jefferson than he did from Hamilton. And I think with Hamilton, yeah, he got a really bad grade in college for a poorly researched paper that he did. And that just reflects the fact that FDR was not a particularly interested student. His mind was elsewhere. His ambitions sort of directed him elsewhere. He quit law school at Columbia as soon as he passed the bar.
He felt there was nothing he learned in law school that was useful. Later in life, the president of Columbia tells him, well, maybe you should you'd have done better maybe or maybe it's time you graduate and finish law school. And Roosevelt just laughs and says there's nothing useful to really learn in law school. So, that theme runs throughout FDR's life. This idea that, Okay, I'm gonna find support where I can find it. But the other thing that's important for FDR is to connect the dots, to be able to connect what he was doing with an earlier tradition.
He thought that was the most important thing he could do as president because it would give him a really firm foundation for whichever direction he wanted to go. So, he was always thinking back to, Okay, what is the foundation for this? So, people don't think it's FDR. They'll recognize, oh, it was Washington or Jefferson and Lincoln. Lincoln and Wilson had at least one thing in common. They were wartime presidents. And so for FDR, they were the models that he was gonna use. And, of course, he worked closely with Wilson during the First World War, basically as involved with that as anybody could possibly be. And in the time he was assistant Navy secretary, he was meeting a lot of the people that would later be admirals and generals in World War II. So, there was that connection as well. And so all along the way, FDR is he's got a thick Rolodex. He's also keeping in mind, how can I legitimize what I'm doing in terms of what went before?
Excerpt from Interview: Andrew Busch describes how Reagan switched from Democrat to Republican due to his belief that Democrats had moved from Jeffersonian ideals. Busch discusses influences on Reagan’s conservative philosophy.
Andrew Busch: Reagan grew up as a Democrat. He says that he voted for Franklin Roosevelt four times but by 1962. He switched parties. He realized he hadn't voted for a Democrat since Harry Truman in 1948. And, in his autobiography, he talks about how, in his view, the Democrats had abandoned Jeffersonianism and that that was really kind of what drove him at varying points. I'm not quite sure when he first mentions that, but throughout his time as a Republican, he would say frequently that the, he didn't leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left him that was the way he would formulate it. It's a little ambiguous because he claims to have voted for Roosevelt four times. On the other hand, Roosevelt claimed to be following Jefferson in the famous Commonwealth Club address.
He drew the distinction between Jefferson and Hamilton and put himself down on the side of Jefferson. But I think, Reagan concluded definitively by 1962, and I think gradually throughout the 1950s, that the Democrats were getting further and further away from any sort of notion of limited government or decentralization states rights, any of those sorts of Jeffersonian things. So, that was important to him. There were other factors, other mentors, you could say living and dead. He was educated in economics at Eureka College before the heyday of Keynesianism. And so he was trained in what you might call classical economics and was definitely influenced by people you could call kind of neoclassical economists, maybe in the era of Keynes, especially people like Milton Friedman.
And also he was very fond of Friedrich Hayek, who wrote a famous book the Road to Serfdom in 1844 that warned against government power in the economy. He was influenced by personal influences as well. His brother Moon was more conservative than he was initially, and seems to have had some influence on his thinking. And he really came to be a major figure. He sprung onto the national scene politically in the 1964 campaign when he gave a speech for Barry Goldwater that wound up being re-shown and videoed and reshowing on TV by the Goldwater campaign that really led to him running for governor of California. There were some California businessmen who saw the speech, said, "We love this guy. Let's get him to run for governor." And that was the beginning of his political career in a lot of ways.
The one other person I would mention, or the one other force that I would mention is William F. Buckley and the National Review. He was very fond of the National Review, and the National Review played an important role in the conservative movement because it took these different strands of conservatism that you could see in the early 1950s, and it wove them together and gave a kind of forum for these different elements to find some coherence among themselves to build a coalition. And that coalition that sort of notion that the anti-communist, the free market folks and the traditionalists like Russell Kirk, that coalition is really what Reagan represented. What signified his political philosophy going forward.
Full Transcript
View Transcript (PDF)
This transcript may not be in its final form, accuracy may vary, and it may be updated or revised in the future.
Stay Connected and Learn More
- Continue the conversation by following us on social media @ConstitutionCtr.
- Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate.
- Subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen.
- Join us for an upcoming live program or watch recordings on YouTube.
- Support our important work.
