Country Over Self (Matt Blumberg)

Originally recorded on 10-2-2024

00:00 Introduction to Country Over Self
00:33 Meet Joseph Ellis: Historian of John Adams
02:36 John Adams: The Most Human of the Founding Fathers
04:15 Adams' Role in the American Revolution
05:58 John Adams' Presidency and Political Challenges
11:23 Adams' Peace Treaty with France
26:25 Adams' Correspondence with Jefferson
34:00 Rapid Fire Questions and Reflections
38:58 Closing Remarks and Call to Action

In this episode, Matt and Joe talk about the 2nd President, John Adams, his unusual rationale for making virtuous decisions, the remarkable story of his retirement correspondence with Thomas Jefferson, and the importance of remembering the details of the era you're contemplating as a historian.

Joseph Ellis
Joseph J. Ellis is one of the nation's leading scholars of American history. The author of thirteen books, Ellis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Founding Brothers: the Revolutionary Generation and won the National Book Award for American Sphinx, a biography of Thomas Jefferson. His in-depth chronicle of the life of our first President, His Excellency: George Washington, was a New York Times bestseller.

Ellis’ most recent book, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, was published by WW Norton in Fall 2021.  In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, Ellis offers thrilling accounts of the origins and clashing ideologies of America’s revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal and more disorienting than any in our history, save perhaps the Civil War.  Taking us from the end of the Seven Years’ War to 1783, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England.

Ellis' essays and book reviews appear regularly in national publications, such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. Ellis’s commentaries have been featured on CBS, CSPAN, CNN, and the PBS’s The News Hour, and he has appeared in several PBS documentaries on early America, including “John and Abigail [Adams]” a History Channel documentary on George Washington

Ellis has taught in the Leadership Studies program at Williams College, the Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts, Mount Holyoke College, and the United States Military Academy at West Point.  He lives in Vermont with his wife Ellen Wilkins Ellis and two big Labradoodles. He is the father of three sons.

To learn more about Country Over Self or to check out other episodes head to Countryoverself.com. 

If you have an idea for an episode or want to reach Matt directly, please email podcast@countryoverself.com

Country Over Self is edited and produced by Culture Collaborative Media.

Welcome to Country Over Self: Defining Moments in American History.  Each episode we welcome a notable historian to tell us the story of a president and a choice that president made to strengthen the country without regard to the impact of that decision on himself, his power or his party.

To learn more about Country Over Self or to check out other episodes head to Countryoverself.com. 

If you have an idea for an episode or want to reach Matt directly, please email podcast@countryoverself.com

Country Over Self is produced by Culture Collaborative Media. 

In this episode, Matt and Charlie talk about the 20th President, James A. Garfield.  While most Americans wouldn't be able to pick Garfield out of a lineup, and he was only president for a handful of months before he died of an assassin's bullet and the ensuing infection that came from the primitive medical care available in the late 19th century.  The wheels of motion for his assassination were set in motion by a decision that seems small and quirky today, but which was incredibly consequential at the time and shook the foundations of Machine Politics and the Spoils System that dominated American politics in the 19th century.

Charlie Goodyear
C.W.Goodyear is an author and historian based in Washington, DC. He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and grew up abroad before graduating from Yale University.

His latest work is President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier, a critically acclaimed biography of America's 20th President.

To learn more about Country Over Self or to check out other episodes head to Countryoverself.com. 

If you have an idea for an episode or want to reach Matt directly, please email podcast@countryoverself.com

Country Over Self is edited and produced by Culture Collaborative Media. 

In this episode, Matt and Julian talk about the 36th President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and how Johnson used his detailed knowledge of the legislative process and his unique blend of personal intimidation and charm offensive to bring about what he considered the moral imperative of his day:  Civil Rights and Voting Rights.  In so doing, Johnson made a meaningful political sacrifice that hurt his Democratic party in a way that reverberates even today.

Julian Zelizer
New York Times best-selling author Julian E. Zelizer has been among the pioneers in the revival of American political history. He is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and a CNN Political Analyst, a regular guest on NPR’s "Here and Now," a guest host on POTUS Sirius XM, and a columnist for Foreign Policy. He is the award-winning author and editor of 26 books including, The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society, the winner of the D.B. Hardeman Prize for the Best Book on Congress and Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974, co-authored and Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party. 

The New York Times named the book as an Editor's Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books in 2020. His most recent books are Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Life of Radical Amazement and The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment (Editor), Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Lies and Legends About Our Past (co-edited with Kevin Kruse), and Our Nation At Risk: Election Security as a National Security Issue (co-edited with Karen Greenberg). He is currently working on a new book about the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the 1964 Democratic Convention entitled ‘Is this America?’: Reckoning With Racism at the 1964 Atlantic City Democratic Convention. In January 2025, Columbia Global Reports will publish his book, In Defense of Partisanship.  Zelizer, who has published over 1300 op-eds, has received fellowships from the Brookings Institution, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the New York Historical Society, and New America.

To learn more about Country Over Self or to check out other episodes head to www.countryoverself.com

If you have an idea for an episode or want to reach Matt directly, please email podcast@countryoverself.com

Country Over Self is edited and produced by Culture Collaborative Media. 

Originally recorded on 09-26-2024

In this episode, Matt and Rick talk about the 37th President, Richard Milhous Nixon as a case study of why there is no such thing as Country Over Self -- that successful politicians by definition fuse together their electoral success, their view of what's best for America, and therefore their actions while in office. 

Rick Perlstein
Rick Perlstein is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan; Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, a New York Times bestseller picked as one of the best nonfiction books of 2007 by over a dozen publications; and Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, which won the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Award for history and appeared on the best books of the year lists of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. His essays and book reviews have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Village Voice, and Slate, among others. A contributing editor and board member of In These Times magazine, he lives in Chicago.

00:00 Introduction to Country Over Self

00:57 Discussing Richard Nixon's Legacy

02:06 Exploring the Concept of Country Over Self

03:56 Nixon's Environmental Policies

06:24 Historical Examples of Presidential Decisions

08:34 The Complexity of Political Morality

14:43 Watergate and Its Implications

17:29 The Controversial Pardon of Nixon

23:04 Nixon's Rehabilitation and Legacy

27:37 Concluding Thoughts and Future Outlook

To learn more about Country Over Self or to check out other episodes head to Countryoverself.com. 

If you have an idea for an episode or want to reach Matt directly, please email podcast@countryoverself.com

Country Over Self is edited and produced by Culture Collaborative Media. 

Originally recorded on 10-24-24

In this episode, Matt and Mark talk about the 41st President, George H. W. Bush, and his campaign promise of "Read my lips, no new taxes" during the 1988 presidential campaign, and how that promise clashed with the realities of governing that led to the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 and a balanced budget...and ultimately sowed the seeds of Bush's defeat in the 1992 election.

Mark Updegrove
Mark K. Updegrove is the president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation and serves as Presidential Historian for ABC News. From 2009 to 2017, he was the director of the LBJ Presidential Library, where in 2014 he hosted the Civil Rights Summit which included Presidents Obama, George W. Bush, Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Carter. 

Updegrove is the author of five books on the presidency including Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency, published in 2022 and the executive producer of the CNN Original Series, “LBJ: Triumph and Tragedy.” He has written for the New York Times, Politico, Time, National Geographic, the Daily Beast, and USA Today, and has conducted exclusive interviews with seven U.S. presidents. His next book, Make Your Mark: Lessons in Character from Seven Presidents, will be published in March 2025. 

Previously he was publisher of Newsweek and president of Time magazine’s Canadian edition. He is married to Amy Banner Updegrove, the former publisher of Texas Monthly, and lives in Austin, Texas.

00:00 Introduction to Country Over Self

00:34 Guest Introduction: Mark Updegrove

01:05 George H. W. Bush's Impressive Resume

02:22 The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990

03:54 Bush's Controversial Tax Decision

06:47 Impact of Bush's Tax Compromise

09:57 Rise of Conservative Media and Its Effects

11:39 Ross Perot's Populist Candidacy

17:30 Bush's Legacy and the Clinton Letter

24:54 Rapid Fire Questions on Presidential Choices

30:50 Final Thoughts and Closing

To learn more about Country Over Self or to check out other episodes head to Countryoverself.com. 

If you have an idea for an episode or want to reach Matt directly, please email podcast@countryoverself.com

Country Over Self is edited and produced by Culture Collaborative Media. 

Originally recorded on 09-27-2024

In this episode, Matt and Richard talk about the 38th President, Gerald R. Ford, and his pardon of his predecessor, Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace and under threat of impeachment for the Watergate scandal - a move that almost certainly led to Ford's defeat in the 1976 election against Jimmy Carter.  Matt and Richard also talk about First Lady Betty Ford's courageous decision to turn her private struggles with cancer and alcoholism public so as to raise awareness and reduce stigmatism.

Richard Norton Smith
Born in Leominster, Massachusetts in 1953, Mr. Smith graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1975 with a degree in government. Following graduation he worked as a White House intern and as a free lance writer for The Washington Post. After being employed as a speech writer for Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke, he went to work for Senator Bob Dole, with whom he has collaborated on numerous projects over the years.

Mr. Smith’s first major book, Thomas E. Dewey and His Times, was a finalist for the 1983 Pulitzer Prize. He has also written An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover (1984), and The Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a Nation (1986). His Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation (1993) was a Main Selection of the Book of the Month Club, while his 1997 biography, The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, described by Hilton Kramer as “the best book ever written about the press,” received the prestigious Goldsmith Prize awarded by Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School. In October, 2014 Random House published Mr. Smith’s biography On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller, fourteen years in the making, and based on thousands of pages of newly available documents, as well as more than 200 interviews. The result has been called definitive by publications as diverse as The New Yorker and National Review.

Between 1987 and 2001, Mr. Smith served as Director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa; the Dwight D. Eisenhower Center in Abilene, Kansas; the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation in Simi Valley, California; and the Gerald R. Ford Museum and Library in Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor, Michigan respectively.At each of the libraries he contributed to significantly higher public visitation through major temporary exhibits, imaginative public programs, and educational outreach efforts. In addition to expanding and renovating the Hoover Library, Mr. Smith overhauled the permanent exhibitions at Reagan and Ford. In 1990 he organized the Eisenhower Centennial on behalf of the National Archives. In 2001 Mr. Smith became director of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas, where he supervised construction of the Institute’s landmark home and launched several high profile programs.

In October, 2003 he was appointed Founding Director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. In two and a half years he turned around the troubled project, which has since received international praise for its innovative approach to the Lincoln story. Beginning in 2006 Mr. Smith was a Scholar in Residence at George Mason University in suburban Washington, D.C., where for seven years he taught courses in the American presidency for both undergraduate and graduate students. During the same period he conducted oral history projects for the White House Historical Association, the Dole Institute and the Gerald R. Ford Foundation. 

In January, 2007 millions of television viewers saw him deliver the final eulogy at President Ford’s funeral in Grand Rapids, Michigan: in July, 2010 he honored Mrs. Ford’s request to do the same for her. Mr. Smith was instrumental in designing a new and highly acclaimed museum and Education Center at historic Ford’s Theater in Washington. More recently he has advised planners of the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas, and the George C. Marshall Home in Leesburg, Virginia. A frequent contributor to such publications as Time, Life, and the New York Times, he has also been a regular guest on the PBS NewsHour, and on C-SPAN, where he served as the network’s in-house historian from 2006-2014. In this capacity he organized a 2007 series spotlighting little known holdings of the nation’s presidential libraries; as well as The Contenders, a fourteen week series examining presidential also-rans whose historical contributions transcended their political ambitions; and a highly popular series recognizing America’s First Ladies, airing in 2013-14.

To learn more about Country Over Self or to check out other episodes head to Countryoverself.com. 

If you have an idea for an episode or want to reach Matt directly, please email podcast@countryoverself.com

Country Over Self is edited and produced by Culture Collaborative Media.

Originally recorded on 09-27-2024

In this episode, Matt and Bill talk about the 32nd President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.  Roosevelt was in office longer than any other president and led the country through more turbulence, both home and abroad.  And yet, what stands out is less Roosevelt's moral courage or altruism, and more his ability to fuse what he saw as good for the country with what was good for him politically, his shrewd political instincts, and his ability to mobilize both government and the population to get behind his vision and his policies.  His wife Eleanor, one of the most politically active First Ladies, operated from a similar frame of reference.

HW Brands
H. W. BRANDS holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. A New York Times bestselling author, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography for The First American and Traitor to His Class. His most recent book is AMERICA FIRST: Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War. 

To learn more about Country Over Self or to check out other episodes head to Countryoverself.com. 

If you have an idea for an episode or want to reach Matt directly, please email podcast@countryoverself.com

Country Over Self is edited and produced by Culture Collaborative Media.

In this episode, Matt and Noah talk about the 4th President, James Madison, and how he set aside his long-held and fiercely-argued belief in the unconstitutionality of the Bank of the United States and extended the bank's charter because...it worked and had been accepted by others as de facto constitutional. Matt and Noah also talk about the story of Dolley Madison, the most famous of the early First Ladies, and how she did (or didn't!) save the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington from being burned in the White House when the British invaded Washington D.C. during the War of 1812.

Noah Feldman
Noah Feldman is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and Director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law at Harvard Law School. He is the Chair of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University and a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also the co-chair of Harvard University’s Institutional Voice Working Group. He is a contributing writer for the Bloomberg View. He served as senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of the Transitional Administrative Law or interim constitution. He served as a law clerk to Justice David H. Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court (1998 – 1999). He received his A.B. summa cum laude in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 1992, finishing first in his class. Selected as a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a D. Phil. in Islamic Thought from Oxford University and a J.D. from Yale Law School, serving as Book Reviews Editor of the Yale Law Journal.

He is the author of ten books: Arab Winter (Princeton University Press, forthcoming 2020); The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President (Random House, 2017); Cool War: The Future of Global Competition (Random House, 2013); Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices (Twelve Publishing, 2010); The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (Princeton University Press, 2008); Divided By God: America's Church-State Problem and What We Should Do About It (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005); What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation building (Princeton University Press, 2004); and After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003). He’s also the co-author of two textbooks: Constitutional Law, 21st Edition (Foundation Press, 2022) and First Amendment Law, 8th Edition (Foundation Press, 2022). His newest book, To Be A Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel and the Jewish People was released on March 5th, 2024 (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2024).

To learn more about Country Over Self or to check out other episodes head to Countryoverself.com. 

If you have an idea for an episode or want to reach Matt directly, please email podcast@countryoverself.com

Country Over Self is edited and produced by Culture Collaborative Media. 

In this episode, Matt and Gary talk about the 33rd President, Harry S. Truman.  An accidental - and somewhat unprepared President who succeeded Franklin Delano Roosevelt after only 73 days on the job as Vice President, Truman became a titan of foreign policy, leading the post-World War II international order.  Truman was caught in a dilemma that pitted what he believed to be moral -- the creation of a Jewish homeland after the horrors of the Holocaust -- with what was politically acceptable to the loudest voices in his own administration, when he decided to recognize the fledgeling State of Israel a mere 11 minutes after Israel declared Independence in May of 1948 after the UN's partition and in the midst of an attack by its hostile neighbors.

Gary Ginsberg
Gary Ginsberg is a lawyer, corporate adviser, author and political operative, serving at the intersection of media, journalism, politics and philanthropy for more than 30 years. A native of Buffalo, New York, Ginsberg is a graduate of Brown University and the Columbia University School of Law. He began his legal career as an attorney at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. He left the firm in 1992 for a position in the Clinton presidential campaign and later served in the Clinton Administration in the Office of the White House Counsel and at the U.S. Department of Justice. In 1995, Ginsberg became Senior Editor and legal counsel of George, the monthly political magazine started by John F. Kennedy, Jr. Ginsberg spent eleven years at News Corporation as the company’s Executive Vice President of Global Marketing and Corporate Affairs and a member of the Chairman’s seven-person Executive Management Committee. In 2010, he joined Time Warner as the entertainment company’s Executive Vice President for Corporate Marketing and Communications. After the sale of the company to AT&T in 2018, Ginsberg joined Softbank as the company’s Senior Vice President and Global Chief Communications Officer, where he remained until December 2020. Ginsberg is the author of the New York Times bestseller First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (And Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents (Twelve). He has published opinion pieces in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and CNN.com, and was a former on-air political contributor to MSNBC. Ginsberg is the chairman of the Board of New Visions for Public Schools, New York City’s premier educational reform organization. He is also a Director of The City, the online not-for-profit news service covering NYC, and Malaria No More. From 2015-2018, Ginsberg was an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Business School where he co-taught the course Entrepreneurship in Incumbent Media. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Ginsberg is a founding partner of 25Madison, the New York City-based VC firm and start-up studio. He is also a director of Schrodinger, Inc. (Nasdaq: SDGR) and Townsquare Media, Inc. (NYSE: TSQ). He lives in New York City with his wife Susanna Aaron and two sons.

To learn more about Country Over Self or to check out other episodes head to Countryoverself.com. 

If you have an idea for an episode or want to reach Matt directly, please email podcast@countryoverself.com

Country Over Self is edited and produced by Culture Collaborative Media. 

Recorded on 09-26-2024

In this episode, Matt and Troy talk about the 22nd and 24th President, Grover Cleveland, the only president to serve two non-sequential terms in history (up to this week's election of Donald Trump), and some of the interesting similarities to the party alignment circumstances to today's environment. Matt and Troy cover a number of vignettes from Cleveland's time in office, including the role that "doing the right thing" played in his political life, the shocking way he handled his cancer diagnosis and surgery, and the extraordinarily gracious way he handled his defeat and the inauguration of his successor in 1888, all during a time of immense transition for the Democratic Party.  

Troy Senik
Troy Senik is a former White House speechwriter, having served under President George W. Bush during his second term. Today, he is the co-founder of Kite & Key, a non-profit digital media company dedicated to making public policy research accessible to the public. In 2022, he published his first book, A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland, named by the Christian Science Monitor as one of the best books of 2022.

Senik’s career has spanned journalism, government, public policy, and non-profit leadership. He is a former columnist and member of the editorial board at the Orange County Register, the former opinion editor of the Los Angeles Daily Journal, and the former editor-in-chief of Ricochet. His writing has appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, National Affairs, City Journal, and The Guardian. He has served in senior leadership roles at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council and the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy, and also spent a decade as the host of a series of podcasts on public policy for the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

A former Jeopardy! champion, Mr. Senik holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy from Belmont University and a master’s degree in public policy from Pepperdine University. Born and raised in Southern California, he currently lives in the New York City area.

To learn more about Country Over Self or to check out other episodes head to Countryoverself.com. 

If you have an idea for an episode or want to reach Matt directly, please email podcast@countryoverself.com

Country Over Self is edited and produced by Culture Collaborative Media.