A World of Ideas; 115; Barbara Tuchman

Thanks a lot. Good evening. I'm Bill Moyers. Two hundred years ago, Congress wrote out its instructions for America's first presidential election. Everyone knew the only candidate would be the

nation's greatest hero, George Washington. More recently, America is rallying to a different hero, Tom Cruise, a 26-year-old movie actor who made his name playing hustlers and studs. At least that's what the World Almanac found out when it pulled American high school students to see who their heroes are, the people in American life they most admire. The winner, Tom Cruise. So what explains this long leap from the revolutionary patriot to the Hollywood actor? One distinguished American historian says there were giants in the earth in those days and they didn't need scripts. Join me for a conversation with Barbara Tuckman. This program is made possible by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. A world of ideas with Bill Moyers. Barbara Tuckman is one of the most widely read historians of our day. She published her

first book at the age of 50. Now in her late 70s, she has won the Pulitzer Prize twice. For her classic work on the opening days of World War I and for her biography of an American in China, Joseph Stillwell. Mrs. Tuckman has covered many periods and people in a lifetime of practicing history, but she's also written frequently about the social and political issues of our times. We visited her in her home in Coss Cobb, Connecticut, where she has completed a new book called The First Salute. This time Barbara Tuckman turns her attention to the American Revolution. You asked the question not long ago. What's happened to the America of Washington, Adams and Jefferson? In writing this book, have you found the answer? It was terribly exciting. The American Revolution, I mean, I don't think they thought at the beginning of establishing a new kind of government, but very soon they realized that that was what they were doing. That was extremely, that was very exhilarating. The idea that they

had the opportunity to create a new political system. I think this is what is lacking for us. We have nothing that's exhilarating, nothing that's drawing us forward, a negative vision, like stopping the Russians or containing the Russians or whatever. It doesn't get anybody very excited. But something more seems to me to have happened, and that is the loss of now I get moralistic of a moral sense, which I think has caused a great deal of change from the kind of people we were, a moral sense of knowing the difference between right and wrong and of being governed by it. I think, for example, it's not only true in white color crime, as we read about every day, but in criticism, for example, where critics

of art and drama and so on, here's what I'd say, you know, for all of us. We'll accept as great, almost any damn thing, you know, that they think is funny or they think is one thing or another. Without any standard at all, and without any real belief, just because it will sell or it tickles the art dealers or it's got some attraction to the mass public. But it's trashy, basically. The acceptance of that kind of thing is an absence of moral sense, and we're being fed through, I regret to say, you're the organ of television, never seen the program of Miami Vice, but I don't suppose it's very uplifting, or some

of these others of that type, which are concerned as the ads always tell you with crime, horror, terror, pornography, and various forms of vice. I mean, that's what they advertise themselves as. But that's not going to create a public which is concerned with or even recognizes the better, or at least, I know that's a majority word to say, the better. But the values in life that are creative. Well, if tastes or moral standards have declined, people have less fear of the public judgment. That once upon a time would have said, let's throw the rascals out. Yes, that's right. That's absolutely true. You're not surprised anymore, you're just used to it. But how different is that from any period

of history? But take the revolutionary period in which you wrote about some of the movers and checkers of this country were guilty of some of the very conduct that you find so alarming today. John Hencock profited from the privateer Navy that looted during the Revolutionary War. Robert Morris, one of the signers of the Declaration, charged such high prices for food in those days that the people revolted against him. And couldn't it be that what you characterize as the evils of the modern age are just endemic in every age? Well, I think they are. The question is when they become prevailing that makes the difference. Honest conduct doesn't arouse any respect anymore. And that must ultimately turn back against us. Then we will suffer the results. I think we've already seen that we've been suffering from it ever since. Watergate where it became very apparent. And then the Iran-Contra business where are? Private war in effect. Yes. I mean, they were

off the reservation. And they're going to keep on going off and I suppose more and more. You and I first held a conversation on television like this 15 years ago during the height of the Watergate scandals. And I would not have hoped or even thought that later 15 years later we'd be discussing a similar manifestation of the extreme possibilities of a government run a mark. I would have thought we would have learned to quote the historian the lesson of history. Well, it moves very slowly the history's lessons. I remember using this example for the Middle Ages when the sewage wasn't properly exposed. People didn't pay attention to it until the waters of the rivers and so on. And the filth rose and over the doorsteps. Then they had to. Well, that's I think what

is beginning to happen. It is going to rise over the doorsteps. It is already, isn't it? Now we have the Pentagon scandals, perhaps the biggest swindle in American public life. What does it say when we don't go angry over this banality and stupidity in high office? Well, it says that we're becoming accustomed to and almost satisfied with with people in government who are vinyl and either vinyl or stupid. And we are going to be, I'm afraid, as it goes along, especially with emphasis on fundraising for all elections, which is ruining the electoral system, accepting entertainers as our candidates. People who are lockable and evocular and pleasing

on the air. Not only that, but who is activity has been in life and attainment. Not public affairs. Not public affairs. You can't govern without having a training in it. Even Plato I think said that long time ago that you need to be trained in government to exercise it to practice it. But the American public is now satisfying itself with being interested in following entertainers. I was at a seminar some time ago, a few weeks ago, really, down at the Smithsonian. They held a conference or whatever on the subject of the hero. There was the 50th anniversary of the birth of Superman. And I guess I should have taken realized since this was what it was about, that the level would not be exactly my ideal hero. And it certainly was not. It was quite weird what they considered heroes. The real

hero of the discussion was this little girl falling down a well. And everybody was rescuing her. After all, she didn't do anything to make herself a hero. She was just in the news. And the heroes they discussed were Elvis Presley. And somebody called, which I had never heard of, the Mayflower Madam. Who is that? She was a woman who ran a brothel near my apartment in New York City. Why was she a hero? I don't know. Well, they were confusing as I tried to say finally, maybe standing up and getting totally fed up with the confusing celebrity and notoriety with the word hero. And this one says not the definition of the word hero. Well, they said this was pop heroes, pop culture. And that, since this is what the public opinion takes as heroes, that's what we, that's what a hero should be. Well, this discussion was really, it was really scary. This definition of hero, fortunately, I had taken the precaution

of looking up the word hero in the dictionary before I went down there. And one of the attributes of a hero according to the dictionary, apart from being originally half mortal and half divine and performing deeds of valor, was a person of nobility of purpose. And I quoted it in the seminar, which everybody thought was rather extraneous to the whole problem of Superman, et cetera. But the change in the recognition of the nature of a hero compared to what you and I were brought up to consider a hero was, was just as scary as the acceptance nowadays of the corruption of the moral sense. It brings to mind something you wrote during the what a great, what a great crisis when you said that the American presidency has become

a greater risk than it is worth. You said, something has changed. It's no longer my country right or wrong. And that may not be necessarily good, but it's my president right or wrong. Yes, yes. So that the loyalty has been transferred from the country to the man, from the institution to the incumbent. And no man can support that. Only person never did was George Washington, who is my example of the true hero, who was a remarkable man in every aspect of his character. In spite of this, of the terrible frustrations and difficulties that he faced when all the generals were pouring letters on to his desk telling of their shortages, you know, no shoes, no money, no food. And when there were in one area there were plenty of thin, starving steered that were ready to be slaughtered for meat. They couldn't slaughter them because they didn't, couldn't pay butchers to salt them because

they didn't have any ready cash. And the butchers wouldn't do it without cash. Every aspect of running a large military war was a frustration. When it was over, you know, and he said, that his farewell gave up his commission. And at the famous scene where he announced, said, goodbye. And he took out a pair of glasses, which nobody had ever seen him wear before, put them on, and said, I have grown gray in your service and my eyes have, I forget the exact words and put on these glasses. It makes me cry too. All the soldiers wept because they loved him, you know, they admired him so. But it's very moving. It's just a gesture putting on glasses for the first time in public. And he, when my daughter was helping me with

the problem of filling out the notes and the annotations. And I was carrying on about my agonies over a loss of eyesight. And our slogan became, think of George. We almost wanted to call that, give that title for the book. Think of George. Because he overrode all this in the most extraordinary way. Is it romantic, Mrs. Tuckman, to believe that in this era of politics by the tube mass communications, that politicians can think of George when they get to the White House, or are they subjecting themselves to an impossible imperative? Well, they certainly will, the next one will be. He's going to have a, whoever it is is going to have enter a really difficult situation, won't he? Maybe the person could think of George and find the stamina and the faith. The real thing he had was faith. He had such faith

in providence, as he called it. Providence will prevail. I mean, the very decision to march his army all the way from New York to Washington, on foot. Because he had made this arrangement when the French decided to increase their help and lend a fleet. And this was arranged across the notion by letter, no telephone, no telegraphs, no satellites, no nothing but letters. It was a miracle, I believe, in many ways. And his belief that it would work, you know, especially the Cornwallis would stay put long enough to be trapped, which he did. And his investing, his reputation, the army, the fate of the revolution in this one adventure of marching down to Virginia from New York. It was a tremendous dare. You've described

it pretty hopeless or at least a pretty desperate situation in terms of our public morals today. Would we think of our Washington as a, almost an oddity? Well, you know, the trouble is that our, our public men are really artificial. They're created by the most devastating tool that technology is invented, which is the teleprompter. They don't speak spontaneously. You don't, you don't hear them meet a situation out of their own minds. They read this thing that's going along there in front of them. Words that have been created for them by PR men or by advertisers or whatever. And this is not the real man that we see. And it allows a, an inadequate minor individual to appear

to be a statesman, because he's got very good speech writers, Mr. Reagan, boy. And to read this stuff off because he reads it very well. I mean, he's an actor, I guess, trained actor. In any event, you never know that he's reading. Or do you really know this with any of them? They learned it very fast. But the teleprompter is a really, in my opinion. It's a terrible tool because what we have is an artificial result. And yet, George Washington had Alexander Hamilton as a speech writer. The farewell address is final major statement in, as he exited the presidency. It was largely penned by Alexander Hamilton. Is there a correlation? No, because the teleprompter shows the person in a situation which is not real. And which,

you know, which is phony. And which is deceptive. The thing is, you see that we're a public that is brought up on deception to advertising. We are, from the moment we're children, we learn that some kind of serial is going to make a strong and win races and one thing and another. And the next thing, you know, if you use particular kind of toothpaste, you go to Mary Gary Cooper, or at least have a glamorous romance somewhere, all that is deception. But we grow up on it. And we're accustomed to being deceived. We allow ourselves to be deceived. Advertising is really responsible for luck, I think, in the deterioration of the American public perceptions. Would you ban the use of the political commercial, the 30 second, the 60 second? Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely. I think we should have a law of some kind

that will require political appearance to be live. So that you can see the men think aloud, yes, yes, should be live and it should be more than 30 seconds, I think. You've said on other occasions that the media age has caused us to put into the president C.A. person who is lockable and avuncular, but who is ill-equipped for the office. And when I read that, I thought, however, that we had lockable and avuncular presidents who were ill-equipped for the office prior to the age of television, more in Harding, for example. Yes, yes. But we didn't have circumstances that were so demanding. What do you mean? The circumstances that surround us are very dangerous in many ways and they are very high-pressured and they are very difficult to deal with. Look at our C.I.A. type activities. For one

thing, it seems to me our government is so exo-concerned with knowing everything that's happening, very tiny little thing. There's no far too much because it's not knowledge, but it's information about what's going on in this little place, that little place. And it isn't a real knowledge of the local area that they want to act in. At the time of the Vietnam War, I interviewed by McNamara. The French would have been there for 30 years or how many years were defeated by these fellows in black pajamas who weren't supposed to have any power. And he said, but we didn't know. We didn't know. And this is so revealing because the fact this was perfectly easy to know what was the situation of Vietnam, what the people were like. We had foreign service officers who were writing all kinds of reports. I think that in our collective

wisdom, the American people did learn from the Vietnam experience, not to let another president take us into a war unless he could present overwhelming evidence that our national security was clearly at stake. Don't you find that encouraging? Yes, I think we have learned from that. I think the public has learned from that, which is the important thing. And I think it's also clear that when you try to fight a prolonged war without national support, you lose. You can't do it because the public just won't stand for it. I mean, it took a long time for protest on Vietnam to make itself felt. But it did. Then why do governments persist in folly? Uh-huh. That's exactly the point. The point is that they persist in folly because they don't want to let go of their position, of their power. And they are afraid that if they let go and if they say we were wrong or we're doing the wrong thing, they will be booted

out or they will lose their status. And if you're a lesser individual, it's not wanting to be left out of the next White House luncheon. Cyrus Vance is the only high official in recent memory who resigned a high post in protest to his president's decisions. Even though Secretary Schultz and Secretary Weinberger said that they opposed the Iran-Contra, the Iran-Sales, they didn't make it stick. They didn't stand up for it. What does that say to you? Well, this is a weakening of conscience of what I said before was the moral sense. You described yourself as a storyteller, a narrator of true stories. If you were writing about America today, what do you think would be the chief theme of the book? Well, I'd like it to be the feeling that was felt about America at the time of its beginnings. I mean, why did the, for example, why did the French noble? Why did they all go with such

a long to fight over here? What did they believe in? The belief in what America would mean for many people in Europe as well as over here was extraordinary. You know, Lafayette brought home with him enough container of enough earth to be buried in. And when he died, he was buried, didn't it? In France. In France. On American soil? In American soil, yes. Isn't that extraordinary? Does it help in confronting a steady procession of images to read history? I mean, one could say the past is past, let the dead bear the dead. History is behind us. Is there a value to reading history? Well, for one thing, it's frightfully interesting, I think. You know, when people say, what's the use of reading history? I say, well, what's the use of the beta once another? I mean, you don't have to have a use, tangible use. You have to have something that makes life more

valuable. And to me, reading history does. Even though it only shows what has passed colorage, I think it was this wonderful line who said history is only a lantern on the stern, tells you where you've been. Well, that's worth knowing where you've been. From our home in Connecticut, this has been a conversation with Barbara Tuckman. I'm Bill Moyers. .

. . . . This program was made possible by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. For a transcript of this program's end $3.2, a world of ideas, journal graphics, 267 Broadway, New York, New York, 1007. Video cassette information is also available at this address. .

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