Bill Moyers Journal; 212; A Conversation with Henry Steele Commager

BILL MOYERS: What about this picture? HENRY STEELE COMMAGER:That is a picture I picked up on 4th Avenue many years ago of the attack on Battery Wagner outside Charleston, which had a special interest to me. My great-grandfather Henry Steele Commager was colonel of the 67th Ohio and was involved in that attack and wounded at that time. And my wife's grandfather, who was a McCall, was on the Confederate side and was also wounded at Battery Wagner in the 2nd South Carolina. And this is, I think, when was to embrace the whole of this country without picking and choosing which part of which you will embrace if you were to exalt its nature and its character.

But it was done away with, we did away with slavery. We re-cemented the country, we reunited it, that's an amazing thing to do. It very rarely happens that that is achieved and we are once more a united country politically in any event, not necessarily socially or philosophically. And this took the terrible war to do this, but there was no other solution as far as I can see to the problem of slavery than the solution of violence. And out of it came, I think, a reunited nation and a nation powerful enough to attract the admiration of the rest of the world through the rest of the 19th, and early 20th century, up until very recently, in fact. BILL MOYERS: For half a century, Henry Steele Commarger has been writing about in teaching American history. During the next hour, he discusses some of his opinions about our country's past and the issues we face today. I'm Bill Moyers. 'I'm not primarily a writer, but a teacher' Henry Steele Commager once said, 'that's what

I like best and it's what I do most.' No doubt he meant it, but the fact is Professor Commager has done many things with his mind and pen and always an alively provocative style. His chief interest have been constitutional and intellectual history. But as essayist, lecturer, editor, teacher, and conversationalist, he has ranged far and wide. These are some of his works. The Growth of the American Republic, written in collaboration with Samuel Elliot Morrison. Documents of American History, over 600 documents from the age of discovery to the present, the biography of Theodore Parker, The American Mind, Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent, books for children like the Great Declaration, the Great Proclamation, the First Book of American History, and Crusades for Freedom. The Heritage of America, and too many to list. But teaching is his first love.

He's pursued at Columbia, New York University, Cambridge, Oxford, and for several years now at Amherst in Massachusetts. We talked in his study at his home near the campus. A few years ago, the search for the American character became unfashionable. Do you still think it's desirable? HENRY STEELE COMMAGER: It is indeed desirable. The problem is the term American character, which is a very difficult term, because it suggests something concrete and formal. I prefer a word like American traits. Emerson used the term English traits to write the best book ever written about England. And I think there are distinct habits and traits, they're not necessarily permanent, as character may be, traits and habits do change or they change in a glacier-like fashion rather than in an atomic-like fashion. MOYERS: What are some of the traits, for example, that you think of? COMMAGER: Well, there are distinct ways of doing things. The trait of carlessness, for example, is a very real one, compared, let us say, to the English, or compared to the Germans.

Americans are careless to this day about little things, about big things. They're careless about being on time, for example, where the English are passionately devoted to being precisely at the moment when they're expected to be anywhere. They're careless about throwing beer bottles and cans and papers around, littering the streets. You never see that kind of litter in Germany or in Denmark or Sweden or England. They're careless about big things, no heaven knows, they've been careless about the environment from the beginning. They've laid waste the American environment from the very earliest time of our history. Remember, "Woodman spare that tree, that's now a single bough in youth thou sheltered me" and I'll protect you now, said the pioneer as he burned all the forests and sight, killed off all the animals and sight, killed off all the birds he'd get hold of, like the carrier pigeon. We've been criminally wasteful and careless about our natural resources and I think that carelessness has persists in the carelessness in financial matters, carelessness in standards of public integrity, carelessness in standards of academic integrity, let's say the casual

attitude toward cheating, the casual attitude in sports, things of that kind. That's what it is. MOYERS: Are we devoid of any positive characteristics or traits? COMMAGER: We have, indeed, many positive, one of them is competitiveness and that is a very positive trait and it is, I will not say uniquely American trait, none of these are, but I think we've carried competitiveness to a degree that no other people have with a possible exception. The Germans. In class society, it's very difficult to be competitive. The competitive spirit is a phenomenon of a classless society where it is indeed possible to marry the boss's daughter, it is possible to go from log cabin to white house as possible to be a billionaire and so forth and in European societies this was not possible in the 18th and 19th centuries. The competitive spirit, therefore, was all identified with the private enterprise with all sorts of admirable virtues and you got to the point where you were so competitive in sports that if you didn't win you were in disgrace. As the head coach of the University of North Carolina some years ago said nobody loves a loser. And I thought after all the

South did love Robert E. Lee but that was 19th century rather than 20th. MOYERS: Do people change from century to century? I remember in 1950 you said the American of the 1950s is the same as the American of the 1850s. COMMAGER: I'm not sure I said quite that definitely without qualification. If I did I was referring however to the individual in certain aspects that I was then discussing. I think individuals do not change very much from the age of 20 to the age of 60 but I think society changes under the pressure of new ingredients and under the pressure of new experiences. Remember the America of 1970 is not the America of 1870 since 1870 we have a whole new population with less than one half of the American people today are descended from the British Isles. We have a Catholic society as much as a Protestant society. We have the Blacks emerging as an independent ingredient society. All of these things have changed the pattern as

it were of character because there are holding new and independent ingredients whose character now counts the character. The Black did count of course in 1850 but not in the eyes of whites who set up their own stereotype of the Negro character and let it go at that we can't do that now. The character of women did count in the 1850s but not in the eyes of most males. Now you have to be conscious of the fact that women have somewhat different characteristics than men and be conscious of this at all times. There are also consequences of new experiences the experience of defeat is very different from the experience of victory for example the experience of guilt is different from the experience of innocence. MOYERS: Are you saying that we feel now a sense of guilt? COMMAGER: A very great sense of guilt both historically and in contemporary sense there's a very great sense of guilt about the Negro about slavery that was not present in the past on the whole of the 19th century and in the mistreatment of the Blacks from the end of slavery on to the present day, a sense that we have betrayed the promise of equality

and betrayed the promise of freedom. We have a great sense of guilt about what we did to the Indian. Indeed this is riding high at the moment it may be a way of escaping a sense of guilt about the Negro, who is there to deal with, so that if we really have a sense of guilt we ought to end our malpractices. But the need of the Indian is not there so we cannot end our malpractices very much we can to some degree. And we can just feel guilty about killing off almost all the Indians who were here in the most barbarous of fashions, taking all their lands. And we have a sense of guilt I think a very deep put about Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos, as indeed we should have. We have some sense of guilt though I don't know how widespread it is about being the only people so far so far who've used the atomic bomb we keep worried about the Russians and the Chinese using it but we are the only people who ever did MOYERS: You once quoted George Santayana saying quote "If it were given to me to look into the depths of a man's heart and I did not find goodwill at the bottom I should say without any hesitation

you're not an American." do you think George Santayana would still say that today? COMMAGER: no I do not there's more hostility in American life now there's been for a long time. MOYERS: What do you say about the moral unity or a sense of national consensus that did exist at times in the last century for example. COMMAGER: What it says is that to some degree the national consensus of the past was an artificial consensus. It was a consensus that centered on those things men agreed on and ignored the deep issues they didn't agree on such as the position of Blacks in our society or such as the use of the environment. And that today all of these things are to the front and we discover that there is no consensus and that there is less harmony in our society to my mind and at any time since let us say Reconstruction. And I think this is a very ominous development, it is not however a development unique to the United States. I think this is a development you find in British society right now which shocks the British they are not used to it. You find in French society and so forth. Perhaps

the pressures of modern life and the requirement that all intelligent people have in mind everything that goes on in modern life. Perhaps those pressures are now intolerable and are impairing the surface consensus that did obtain in the past. MOYERS: When you talk about modern pressures in the American mind you describe as the watershed or the great divide -- the period around 1890 when agrarian, domestic-centered America was beginning to feel the pressure of urban and international problems. COMMAGER: And the pressure of the immigration and large scale the pressure of urbanization of the organization of labor and of great corporations and trusts and things of that kind. MOYERS: are we still living on is that still the great divide or has there been a period since the 1890s that you think is going to affect.... COMMAGER: Perhaps the 60s and 70s are a great divide the divide of disillusionment the divide when we lost the sense of harmony, the sense of unity, the sense of mission, the sense of

purpose the conviction that God was on our side and the American flag was a flag that was flown in heaven. That has gone pretty much this is part of that sense of guilt I referred to earlier it is part of that lack of harmony that has come with the decline of the ancient verities and has come with the disintegration of much of the religious many the religious beliefs and the moral values. MOYERS: Is it all for the bad? COMMAGER: Not at all I don't think we should use words like all for the bad of the good sometimes a a surface harmony is all to the bad. The surface harmony Victorian England, for example, which ignored child labor which ignore the cruelties and brutalities of much of the industrial process but seemed in the much of the fiction of poetry the time to be a harmonious society was much to the bad. And the after all there was at least a surface harmony in Hitler's Germany -- 99% of the people voted for him. Something is to be said for people examining scrutinizing their beliefs their values or conduct more closely than they had before in discovering that what they had taken for granted and taught to children

isn't necessarily true. And then they can go about righting those situations and improving them. MOYERS: Do you think we've lost faith in law? COMMAGER: This is a difficult answer we've lost faith in some law and the ability of government to enforce law I think we still revere the law. The fact that everything is to go to the courts the fact that we are using this enormous complicated legal processes to try to understand the malpractices of this administration suggests that we still revere the Constitution, revere the courts and in theory at least respect the law. We do not, however, respect enough to obey it. That is an interesting distinction but it is not what I say with any degree of cynicism for I think this has been true of the American people all along they've disregarded inconvenient and embarrassing laws from the beginning of our history. It is partly because we inherit that long long habit of disregarding embarrassing or inconvenient laws or regulations like speed laws for example others that come readily to mind.

That we're prepared, I think to accept. with less tolerance than other people would the misdeeds of a public nature. There's one other consideration however, a minor one if you will, in the disregard of law and that is it for reasons that can be explained but would take a long time to explain. Americans respect for law has taken the form of passing thousands of, not only unnecessary but of absurd and silly laws regulating everything. The laws of Massachusetts, until just a few years ago, made it as far as I know a felony for any person single or married to use any form of birth control since in all likelihood a large part of the adult population of Massachusetts did use some form of birth control. Almost all the male adult males and females adults in the Massachusetts are violating the law nobody ever enforced but there it was on the statute books.

We put in an insane number of laws on the statute books which no one is expected to respect and this brings law in general into disrepute. MOYERS: You've written considerably about the necessity of government serving as an example or a model of respectful law and you've also written about how troublesome it is at the moment that this administration is not setting a very good example. Do you think this is peculiar? Is this the first administration? COMMAGER: Not the first to be corrupt both the Grant and the Harding administrations were corrupt both set bad examples and the examples in both cases did spread like a miasma throughout society. I would say that's however this is the first administration which quite deliberately ignored or condemned or flouted the law in the Constitution others. I don't think Grant and Harding quite knew what they were doing. Grant was an innocent who was taken as it were to take him to the to the cleaners by the men around him. He was a military man not a politician. Harding cannot be described as an innocent but Harding's

crimes were of the vulgar nature rather than of a of a vast Constitutional nature. He regarded himself as an ardent supporter of the Constitution of the law. Mr Nixon I think is quite prepared to float either the Constitution, Bill of Rights or law, if it flies in the face of his concept of national security or of his his interests and needs. And I think that example is one. The whole example of the Johnson administration too in its conduct a foreign policy -- willingness to ignore international laws, willingness to ignore the Constitutional provisions on declaration of war and fighting war. Things of that kind willingness to ignore the United Nations this too set an example which was not lost upon the country. MOYERS: But this is all not new is it? I mean Polk went into Mexico. Grant sent troops to the Dominican Republic. McKinley sent five thousand troops to invade China in 1900. COMMAGER: In all the other instances except McKinley there was a plausible justification Polk's justification was that the Santa Ana had in fact invaded American territory. We now dispute

the question whether it was or was not but there was a strong large element that believed that the initial attack came from the Mexicans rather than from rather than from the Americans. Grant and Santa Domingo again this was a temporary affair and when he tried to annex it but when the Congress voted that down he dropped the whole matter. And the interest in the Caribbean always had some kind of curious justification in that we had a special obligation for what was our Mediterranean that were our sea, and the McKinley episode is the first clear example of the president taking authority to send soldiers to a country outside the Western Hemisphere where there was no clear American interest involved. Needless to say he would not do this now to China. No president would or even McKinley wouldn't have done it to France or to England or to Spain or Italy. It is a precedent but it is a very bad precedent and most of the

precedents cited by those who defended Mr Johnson or Mr. Nixon's use of troops to enforce American will, in let us say as Santa Domingo or in Vietnam or elsewhere cite a whole series of precedents that are very bad precedents. Bad in the sense that they shouldn't have happened in the first place. Wilson should not have sent an expeditionary force into Mexico and McKinley should not have sent the the expeditionary force of 5,000 Marines into China. And again and again we can say looking back on it would have been much better had presidents consulted the Congress before they took this action or had they entirely refrained from the action they took. These are not therefore to my mind justifications for doing what the Johnson and Nixon administration has done in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. MOYERS: But do you think that the abuse of national power by your definition is the result of strong personal will on the part of individuals or does it reflect something larger in our societY

in the use of national power? COMMAGER: If reflects both, certainly reflects a larger use of national power which has rather gone to our head since World War II. We saved the world. We conquered Germany. We conquered Japan so the argument goes the Russians had something to do with destroying Hitler's Germany but the average American has ignored that. And we've bestrode the world a colossus. We knew that our will was good, that our intentions were good that we were virtuous and therefore we thought we had a moral right to impose our will on other parts of the world that were recalcitrant. MOYERS: Is this the consequence of malevolence or simply good intentions going to awry. Intentions going awrt whether you call them good intentions is to beg the question almost everyone assumes his intentions are good and fails to look at the problem from the other point of view. I'm sure Mr. Johnson thought his intentions were good when he sent 20,000 Marines into Santo Domingo we now know that this was wholly unnecessary hold a few tile

and then outrageous violation of the agreement with the American states and of the United Nations Charter but there it is. And so with our gradual invention in Southeast Asia the original intention may have been good but you know things take over after a while circumstances take command and leave even presidents in a position where they feel they have to justify their initial gesture without foreseeing the total's whole significance of that initial gesture. MOYERS: How do we guard against then the abuse of such power in the hands of the modern executive? MOYERS: The founding fathers guarded against it very elaborately with the triparte to division of government with the written constitution, with judicial review, with all sorts of provisions and if Congress were prepared to insist on the enforcement of the Constitution. These abuses could not take place if presidents respected the Constitution they could not take place. But a president Johnson did not in the field of foreign relations Mr Nixon does not to my mind in any field whatsoever. MOYERS: But Professor

Commager your president cannot really take what Congress won't give. COMMAGER: Oh yes it can in certain areas where there's a fait accompli it cannot do so in areas where you need a you need an ongoing program. But once you've landed the land of the troops there's a fait accompli and what Congress is going to recall them or leave them stranded and hungry without support. The great technique now is to act first and get support afterwards as Mr Johnson did and Tonkin Bay. MOYERS: Even at the risk of a failure or a mistake aren't there times when a president needs to act without consulting? COMMAGER: Maybe indeed in the case of a nuclear war there would be so far that hasn't happened however and that could be solved by having Congress always -- some representation of Congress always in session and prepared to use an authorization of the Congress to agree with the presidential decision. This is a proposal that has been made. I made it myself to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. A permanent committee of both houses which would always be in Washington

which the president could always consult an emergency in which could speak on behalf of the Congress in certain emergencies. Actually, however, almost all the emergencies turn out not to be. Just as almost all the requirements of national security like the break-in Dr Fieldings office turn out not to be. Certainly there was no emergency I think at the time of Bay of Pigs. Mr Kennedy went along with that and later regretted it. He knew it was a mistake. If you set up elaborate systems which are almost guaranteed to mislead you you invite being misled and invite the misuse of power. And the CIA and perhaps a Secret Service and so forth are systems whose vested interest it is to mislead the country and to believe in there's a crisis and therefore justify their conclusions about things. MOYERS: Well I also know though many men and women who serve in those organizations who felt that are who feel that they are serving the country. COMMAGER: This is why I said there was a vested interest in feeling this. They have not indeed served the

country well they have served it very ill. And they have served the international society very ill. We sometimes forget that we don't approve of the Russians when they have civil service, secret organizations in other countries. But the CIA operates in 61 different countries -- to the tune of five to six billion dollars a year -- in violation of the Constitutional obligation -- Article One: Section Nine that there shall be a public report on all revenues and expenditures from time to time to the Congress and the American people. There's never been a public report of either where the CIA is concerned and both the Congress and the executive are very much remiss in not insisting upon one. MOYERS:Isn't the Congress at fault as much as modern executive? COMMAGER: No because you yield doesn't mean you're as much at fault as those who perpetrate the crime Especially if you feel that once the crime is underway or the misdeed now practice called it what you will there's no use going back over it and once the babies are on the way as it were there's

nothing much to do about it and it used to be. The Congress is gravely at fault but it's at fault more for its pusillanimousness, for its weakness and it is for any criminal misconduct or any violation of the Constitution. It has sought to assert itself from time to time it has indeed done so. But the Constitutional requirement that you have a two to one vote in favor of asserting yourself is a very difficult requirement to meet. MOYERS: Do you believe in strong presidents? COMMAGER: Indeed I do all are great presidents have been strong presidents yes but strong strength within the Constitution not strength outside the Constitution. And this is a very important thing in the whole area of life. It is important in the area of morality. It's important in the area of marriage in the area of the academic world you have strength but you have strength within the confines of your duties and your task. MOYERS: Up until the almost the very end of the Constitutional Convention the founding fathers seem to prefer a seven-year term for the presidency and perhaps a

limit of one term of seven years do you think that would be a good idea? COMMAGER: Had it been decided that way at the time I think it probably would have been a very good idea at that time and we would have accustomed ourselves to it. Now that we have a different tradition. Now that you have a far broader basis for democracy and the habit of voting and so forth I think it would be a bad idea. Because it would be bad I think in principle bad in theory and that's very important in the democracy voters have a right to elect their own president. I think the 22nd Amendment was in principle a calamity. What it said is that our generation is smartER in any future generations we will allow you to elect man twice but not three times even though you want to. As Eisenhower said it is retroactive vindictiveness on the part of the Republican Party they were still afraid that Roosevelt might beat them dead rather than anybody alive which he could indeed do. But the to impose on the future a limit on the man they can elect their chief executive seems to be wrong. Therefore I would be against a limit on the number of

terms of office. That being the case I am against extending the single term from four to seven years because that might lead to a 14 year or in theory if we repeal the 22nd Amendment a 21 year service which would be contrary I think to our best interests. MOYERS: We're still living on the capital of those first Americans, the revolutionary generation, and you've talked quite often about our inability to come up with innovation and political resourcefulness for today. How do you explain the fact that we are not very innovative politically today? COMMAGER: Yes, I think it is important to nail down the first part of your statement that every major institution of a political and Constitutional nature was invented and developed before 1800 and that Americans since and have made no major contribution to the principle of the practice of politics. Everything from the Constitutional convention, the written Constitution, judicial review, federalism, the separation of powers

all of these things -- a political party was invented before 1800. Now you ask why we are failed to be innovative to be original very difficult question indeed. MOYERS: I remember you writing about how out of a continent of only three million citizens at that time, we produced Madison, Washington Adams, Jefferson, Franklin all of them John Marshall. What's happened to the creation of leaders in our time? COMMAGER: Well a numb er of things have happened I think to explain the decline of leadership and the decline of creativity one thing is that talent goes into whatever channels are available and are popular. There were very few channels for talent in the 18th century we could not -- there was no room for great financiers for great merchant princes for great artists for great musicians and for great courtiers for all of the things that you found place for in France and Germany and in Britain. At

the time the almost the only areas for talent were in theology and the law. And theology was on the decline and talent all went into law and public service. That is one explanation of the 18th century. Now that there's enormous, innumerable areas for talent and on the whole talent goes where the public rewards are ostentatious not just financial but in prestige. In 18th century Salzburg and Vienna it was music. Everyone child from the age of one on heard music day and night in every church in every household music was talked about and you raised the greatest generation musicians in history. In France in, let us say in the 1870s, it was art. Art was the great exciting things and the Monets and the Manets the Pissarros and the Renoirs and all came out of that area where the great rewards went to painters went to artists. In 19th and 20 late 19th 20th century

America the great rewards went to the railroad builders to the titans of industry to the men who could to to the Rockefellers and the Carnegie's and the Schawbs and scores of others whose names are familiar to the JP Morgan's and others who could master the economy of the country not to the statesmen. And it went, in other words, to private enterprise not to public enterprise. The greatest distinction between the 18th century and the 20th is in the 18th century public enterprise was prized and rewarded. Rewarded not that actually heaven knows they all went bankrupt in the country's service but rewarded in prestige and in satisfaction. The 20th century private enterprise and is rewarded and even those in public enterprise usually see to it as Mr. Nixon does and as others do they get the private rewards as well. MOYERS: In the 1700s the late 1700s the prospect of creating a nation of building institutions attracted great minds shouldn't there be a great

public enterprise? COMMAGER: There are there enough prospects and one of you will attract the great minds the prospect of solving the great international problems, problems that glare upon not the United States but the whole of the globe. A population of the destruction of resources, the destruction of the ocean of the danger of the atomic bomb of the danger of militarism. MOYERS: You're saying the public arena is still there? COMMAGER: Oh, it's it's more demanding than it was even in 1776 or 87 because it's now on a global scale perhaps this is devastating. Perhaps this discourages individuals who think they can make a contribution. The situation in 1770s was manageable in a sense. It could be done in the American context. Now it's very difficult to manage a global situation, nevertheless the demands on the public arena are tremendous and I'm happy to see that the young are responding to this. The young medical students don't want to practice medicine they want to be research doctors they don't want to practice. The young law students want to be welfare lawyers and poverty lawyers and environmental lawyers. They don't want to go to a Wall Street firm. This

right along the board of many of them. MOYERS: Isn't their danger you're reading your own aspirations. COMMAGER: Not by own aspirations there is some danger I'm reading Amherst College and similar institutions as typical. They may not be but I think they are. I think I find this as I go about the country to other institutions that the young are no longer interested in joining prestigious Wall Street firms they want to do what they want to do. Nader is the idol of the young not to the successful Wall Street lawyers they want to they want to work for Nader my students will give up everything to work for Nader in the summer and so they will all across the country. He has a hundred applications for every position he can feel in the summertime. MOYERS: Are you anticipating a renaissance of the public ethic, of the public commitment? COMMAGER: I don't know if we don't have it God help us And whether as the young get older, they marry and have three or four children and commitments ,they will still be fired by the same zeal for public service. We do not yet know let us hope so. MOYERS: Did you as a young man ever consider public service and politics instead of teaching and education. COMMAGER: Not

seriously no. no. I never thought I could be very good in public service or in politics. I might prefer to try to influence thinking as it were, perhaps even politics, as a scholar. MOYERS: Have there been any frustrations about simply diagnosing our problems and not being in the arena jousting to try to solve them? COMMAGER: Of course or frustrations in everything in life think of the frustrations of doctors who can't save lives or lawyers who can't get rid of the death penalty. Of anyone frustration is an elementary fact of life. No one ever ever ever achieves the ideal but you take frustration for granted. As teaching may be called on one hand, a guaranteed frustration, as journalism may be called. A journalist that has said writes on water. Who knows what may come out of it we know what came out of Walter Lippman. We know what can come out of great journalism we can know what can come out of great teaching and one always hopes something will come from it. MOYERS: I'm always intrigued by the sources that create a personality and a

mind and I wonder if you've ever really thought what made Henry Steele Commagar a prolific and provocative and restless spirit, always challenging the assumptions of the day. COMMAGERL I don't think one knows what makes oneself. What made me perhaps industrious was need as it often does. There's no spur like the spur of need. And aside from that, I think the this is one of these inexplicable qualities. You either want to throw yourself into activity that gets results or you prefer a wholly private life. And I don't think there's anything to choose between these two. I think it'd be very regrettable if we put such a premium on public service that we discourage the Mozart's or the Bach's or the Beethoven's of the future, or the Monet's and the Manets. Every good and whole society needs those who follow their own star who are content to be painters, content to be musicians, content to be novelists as Melville was, without any sense of obligation to

the public. As every society needs Jeffersons and the Adams' and the Washingtons who will give their whole lives to public service. And it should be remembered by the way this may be just a footnote, prepared to go bankrupt in the process. When we remember that George Washington had to borrow 500 dollars to go to his inauguration -- I don't think either Mr. Johnson Mr. Nixon did. When we remember that that Jefferson died a bankrupt with Monticello sold over his head. That Alexander Hamilton died a bankrupt so his friends had to come to the aid of his family. John Adams pitched hay in the field to keep Braintree going after he was President of the United States. there was a very different standard very different expectations. you were content to be a cincinnatus and the classical language of the 18th century -- to leave the plow and come back to the plow and not expect large rewards -- not expect to have a house on the Pacific coast and a house in Florida and a camp somewhere else and and enormous jets to fly you back and forth. The public

leaders of the 18th and early 19th century lived very simply. Lincoln lived very simply, his wife didn't, but he did he lived in a little house in Springfield and was prepared to go back there if he lived. MOYERS: But there was vanity on their part I mean Washington toward with the idea riding down the new capital on a brilliant beautiful steed. Wasn't he a vain man? COMMAGER: Not out of vanity. I don't I think perhaps out of a sense of what would be expected of a head of a new state. Remember there had never been anything like a present before in history. All other heads of state were monarchs, surrounded by the panoply of office and state. Washington however and the whole rejected most of that. He did not want to be called by elaborate names or have elaborate salons and things of that kind. There was a simplicity a straightforwardness about the American founding fathers and we've seen to have lost and we of course we can a Harry Truman had it after all and in a curious way Franklin Roosevelt had it. He took everything for granted he was he was a great

swell he lived -- was born to the purple and with the silver spoon and he took these things for granted. He didn't want any very elaborate elaborate trumpeteers announcing his coming or going. He didn't require all the special considerations that our new presidents do. This is rather a new a new development in American public life, that public servants have forgotten that they were servants they think they're masters. If there's any basic principle in American life it is that the civil servant is indeed the servant of the people of the people of masters and the people have a right to exact certain things from their civil servants. When we remember, it has been often observed of course, we remember the story of Thomas Jefferson after he gave his inaugural address walking to his boarding house and waiting until someone got up from the table so so he could sit down for dinner. When we remember John Quincy Adams facing exactly the same thing on a sailing ship from Baltimore to New York, waiting his turn in the dining room until somebody would make place for him. And contrast that with spending $280,000 redoing the presidential plane

so the family does not have to walk through offices to get their bedroom. You see how far we've gone. Leadership is present but it's not present in politics. It's present in science. It's present in in the business arena. Ot's present elsewhere even in philanthropy. And one man with a dream at pleasure can go forth and conquer a crown and three with the new songs measure can trample the kingdom down. And I think to some extent that still true is true poetically anyway whether it's true you know realistically or not the one man the three men. But the possibility, what Roosevelt could do to change the whole mood of the country overnight. I remember that perhaps better than you do it was a spectacular performance. What Kennedy did again to change the mood of the country and to revive the flagging spirits of the country. To make people believe once more in politics so that all the young threw up their jobs and went to Washington to work for Roosevelt or to work for to work for Mr. Kennedy MOYERS: Must we wait for COMMAGER: The charismatic man?

Charisma is an odd word. It is something that a society reads into a character as well as something that a character has in displays to society. And in a curious way Eisenhower had it because the American public made him a charisma character. He was not in and of himself but he was the great father image. And if a man has integrity and devotion to duty in high standards of morality, I think the public would find in that man whatever leadership they wanted. And read into him what they read into a Washington, a Jefferson, a Jackson, a Lincoln a Theodore Roosevelt, a Wilson, a Franklin Roosevelt. MOYERS: When Lincoln was a young man he was by no means sure that our institutions could be perpetuated although he knew and believed that they should be yes how do you feel about that about our institutions? COMMAGER: well I feel the way Mr. Lincoln did that they can be though I'm not sure they will be or shall be.

And there's nothing wrong with the institutions what's wrong is our departure from them Nothing wrong with our Constitutional system it's a departure from the constitutional system, the violation of the separation of powers, the flouting of the provisions of the Constitution having to do with let us say with appropriations and the power of the purse, the ignoring of the Bill of rights these are the things that are destroying us, not the provisions themselves. And I think this is true in general of our traditions and our history. and to use a word I don't like because it's jargon, our values, that they are fundamentally sound if only we could live up to them. Now of course that's a very big if and we must not expect the American people to be a great deal or more devoted to tradition and institutions and other people are. The Europeans don't always live up to their traditions or their institutions either. But in a way we have a right to expect more from the United States. Because in the first place we are the most fortunate

of peoples, we're the richest of nations, most abundant of nations. And in the second place we've we have managed with a Constitution longer than any other people have a written constitution and we've managed very well. We have thought that we had a special mission in the world and indeed we have had that mission. And one might say that you expect more as we should expect more from ourselves. I was impressed with the observation in the Times just this morning to the fact that bad as My Lai was it wasn't really any worse some of the things that the North Vietnamese did to the South Vietnamese. And occurred to me as so often before that this is not the way you judge yourself by the standards of Mr. Hitler by the standards of communist Russia by the standards of other nations. You judge yourself by your own standards. MOYERS: How do you explain this phenomenon of equating the man in the office and the presidency? COMMAGER: It perfectly normal a natural thing to do. When it started with Washington who was idolized as no other president ever

has been an apotheosized. And he made the office of presidency and he was equated with it is natural and inevitable that this should happen is it did under Wilson under Franklin Roosevelt and under Kennedy. But that equation is a moral and psychological equation not a legal equation. But Mr. Nixon is doing is something quite unprecedented/ I think he is expecting the country will will reproduce, as it were, the attitude it had toward Washington or toward Lincoln or toward Franklin Roosevelt, and requiring that we accept all of his legal arguments as concerned with the presidency rather than with the president. This is something quite new. It's new because only once before in our history has it been a challenge to the president as distinct from the presidency when that was Mr. Johnson's administration, Andrew Johnson. And Andrew Johnson himself said he was of course responsible whatever went on in the presidency that he was responsible for his

appointments and all these other things. There was no attempt to use the office of the president by Mr. Johnson to as a cloak, as a mantle for for excusing whatever actions or conduct he was guilty of. MOYERS: The presidency is also coming the minds of many citizens to represent the country to sum up the country and isn't this possibly one reason so many people fear impeachment? COMMAGERL it is indeed though it seems to me much stronger argument in favor of impeachment removal because who wants Mr. Nixon to represent the country? Who wants Mr. Nixon to symbolize a country we have to pretty good symbols in our country started with Mr. Washington and going on through Jefferson and Jackson and Lincoln and and if you will Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt and Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and and Truman and so forth. And I don't think we need Mr. Nixon as an additional symbol we can get along without that. If we have a president who's a symbol of the country we better get one

we could all admire not one who has 24/25 percent approval by the American people. MOYERS: But you shouldn't judge a president simply by the Gallup and Harris polls. COMMAGER: I didn't say simply. That is one of the observations. Now I judge him by the standards we must judge by and the man who's come nearer to bringing the office of the presidency into disrepute, and who's come nearer to impairing the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights in any other president in our history. MOYERS: Is it possible to you think to look not to personalities as symbols of the nation but to institutions or the Bill of Rights? COMMAGER: It is indeed. And the presidency as an institution. It's remarkable when no one else ever thought of it. We were the first people to have an elected head of government in history. The Supreme Court is a great institution, which is revered, as a presidency is revered more revered as an institution than either any other branch of the government. Federalism is a major institution -- all of these things must be cherished and developed protected and developed. They

don't they're not static they are of course dynamic. But what we are witnessing now I think is not a a protection or a cherishing of these institutions but a subverting of them. MOYERS: If the presidency is revered isn't there a danger that impeachment will cause people to think somehow the country itself has been found guilty. COMMAGER: I have two answers to that first and some to some degree the country is guilty. They did reelect Mr. Nixon after they knew him well by a majority of 17 million. I'm not sure the word guilt is there is the appropriate, perhaps word folly is more appropriate. And as for the larger issue there's no reason to suppose that the country fails because it impeaches the president it may fail more egregiously and not impeaching him. The egregious failure would be to accept this man and to accept the subversion of the Constitution and the violation of the Bill of Rights as an inevitable concomitant of the presidency. I think it is far more important to prove

that the Constitution means what it says. That the instrument of impeachment was put there by defining fathers to be used to a necessary and to vindicate that then it is to avoid the crisis of impeachment. MOYERS: So you think there's no reason to be afraid of impeachment? COMMAGER: there is indeed but There's far greater reason to be afraid of failing to impeach. Impeachment after all is merely a grand inquest. It is merely a trial which will then take place to find innocence or guilt. I do not understand why Mr. Nixon is afraid of it. If he's sure of his innocence he should welcome a verdict of impeachment in the house and put in prepare himself to vindicate himself and the presidency in the Senate. We have far more ground to fear a continuation of the kind of crisis that has confronted us in the next three years than we have to fear impeachment processes. And I would go further than this, and say that the whole of the civilized world is looking at the

United States to see if we dare vindicate the office of the presidency of the Constitution of the United States. If we dare show strength enough to put these matters on trial to put these matters to the test of the Constitution or if we are going to take refuge in obfuscation of one kind or another. I am tremendously impressed however at the rally of public opinion in the last year, at the awareness in the American people of the nature of the crisis and at their readiness to rally to the support of the Constitution and the support of the traditional separation of powers. And I think this augers is very well for the solution of our problem. No problems are solved the British can't solve theirs, the French can't solve theirs. the Danes, the Italians and others are in trouble. We must not expect a recreation of the 1789 syndrome as it were which was an era of the solution of great problems without comparison in all history. But I think we can get on with

the job and we can return to the tested habits and practices of our constitutional system without tearing our society apart. MOYERS: You've been a severe critic of our society. You know the argument that one hears today against critics of our society, well if you don't like it go somewhere else. COMMAGER: Of course that is the world's most fallacious argument if you don't like it change it if you don't like it do something about it. If everyone who didn't like it went somewhere else Hitler still be in power. If everyone who didn't like it went somewhere else we still be under George III. It's because people are prepared to say we don't like it we're going to change it, that things do change. And the most valuable member of society is the critic. And every primitive society maintains people whose task it is to be different as task it is to criticize and every sophisticated society must cherish and protect those whose function it is to look far ahead and to criticize institutions -- to warn against the dangers that are coming either in five years or in 50 years. If

a society fails to do that is headed for disaster. And we have ample experience in that in our own country because the Old South, the South of slavery, refused to allow criticism it refused to look ahead to what would happen in the society and in the economy dedicated to slavery. And by driving out all the critics, silencing all the journalists, silencing all the clergy and others who argued the question of slavery, the South closed ranks. And the proposition that slavery was a blessing, that a slave society was the most civilized societies, and those who did so otherwise upright and honorable men otherwise intelligent men led the South down the road to ruin such as no part of America's ever known. A society that's going to escape ruin must encourage criticism and descent. MOYERS: What was it our favorite we seem to be throwing a lot of Santayana quotes around today. What was it he said about an American to be an American. COMMAGER: Is is a career to be an American is

itself a career he said. And what he meant by that he was not himself American as you know he had this extraordinary heritage from Spain and for the Philippines and Greece and so forth. What he meant was that America represented something new in history. And to understand the new while embracing the old. To understand the American identity while knowing that that identity was an amalgam of all of Europe of the ancient world and the modern world represented a problem here to for unfamiliar to history. And the search for an identity is a central theme of American history. We know we are the heirs of Greece and of Roman of Judea we know we are the heirs of all of Europe but we know we must be ourselves as well. We have not our own language which we have we have, not our own law but we have and so it goes. And therefore this combination, this this situation where we combine, is great inheritance with our own contributions represents something relatively new in history. MOYERS: And we're still struggling with it. COMMAGER: We're

still searching for what it is to be an American for what the Crèvecoeur asked "what is this new man this American?" He's not just American he's a product of inheritance and environment and experience. These three things and this continuous interaction between the three the fact that we are speaking the language of England means that the inheritance is pretty strong. MOYERS: And before one can really be a citizen of the world doesn't need a need almost like Jefferson in Monticello to be rooted in a place. COMMAGER: The great the great cosmopolites are also the great provincials. this is true of This is true of Jefferson. This is true of Voltaire and Diderot. This is inevitable that you must have root somewhere in order to understand what it is to be cosmopolitan. And I think you must be cosmopolitan in order to understand what it is to be provincial what the advantages and the disadvantages are. Jefferson, was a patron saint of American democracy and of the American mind, was a tremendous cosmopolitan he loved what France represented he loved what Europe represented he loved Greece and Rome but he was preferred to give all of it up to settle in western Virginia.

He built Monticello according to the Palladian style. an exquisite Palladian mansion. and he placed it on the furthest frontier of Virginia looking westward across the unlimitable thousands of miles of America. And in this you have a symbol of this readiness to accept the best of Europe and to put your roots down as deeply as you possibly could in what was America. And this, is I think, essential for the health of any society. MOYERS: Where do we look today. The frontier's gone? COMMAGERL There are other frontiers. The frontiers of geography are gone but the frontiers of social reform and of social service the frontiers of collaboration the cooperation with other peoples and other nations are just now opening up. We've scarcely approached them as yet. We've scarcely begun to appreciate what it means what the great revolution of our time means the greatest revolution since the 15th century, the greatest revolution since the discovery of America, the revolution of

two-thirds of the people of the globe striving to achieve in one convulsive leap what the Western world achieved in 500 years -- to catch up with us. That we should cooperate with that we should understand and sympathize with instead of we faced ourselves against it. We turn a face of flint against the revolutions in Asia, in Africa, in South America. We put ourselves on the side of the status quo of the maintenance of the old order we are today what the Holy Alliance was in the early years of the 19th century. We are what Britain was in the middle of the 19th century. Instead of welcoming this tremendous revolution of people determined to achieve independence to achieve some degree of comfort and of decency and of health and of liberty and so forth we put ourselves on the side of the military dictatorships around the globe suppressing the development. What an opportunity there is to do here what we did in the early years of the Republic

when America was the beacon light of the Western world the -- mission of the Western world MOYERS: Those are not grating words? You don't think those words are hollow now? COMMAGER: no they they may be if they're when they're misused as they are misused by Mr. Nixon and others. But they should not be. Because the devil quote scripture doesn't mean scripture is bad. MOYERS: One final question and this is leaping back a minute. Where are your own roots? Aren't they deep in historY? COMMAGER: with a deep in this country and to some extent in Europe. They're very deep in America by people were Huguenots who came over in the 17th century they reached Ohio in 1803 and have been there ever since. They were part of the making of Americam part of the wars of America. I had any number of ancestors or forbearers who fought in the Civil War and in subsequent wars. And they are

also to some extent in Denmark but that is not so far fetched. My Danish grandfather chose to come to America very early. Founded the Danish church in America. Committed his life and his writing 20 or 30 volumes of poetry and prose to celebration of the new world. And nothing could be more ardent or deeper in the inheritance of a commitment to this country but after all what else should one be committed to but one own country though it should always be a larger commitment to the rest of mankind for for for no country can be can be an island unto itself any more than any man can be an island unto itself. The bell tolls it tolls for all of us country by country as well as individual by individual. MOYERS: from his home in Amherst Massachusetts this has been a conversation with Henry Steele Comminger I'm Bill Moyers wow