The Past, the Promise, the Presidency
Welcome to "The Past, the Promise, the Presidency," a podcast about the exciting, unexpected, and critically-important history of the office of the President of the United States. You'll find four seasons of this podcast: Season 1 - Race and the American Legacy; Season 2 - Presidential Crises; Season 3 - The Bully Pulpit; and the current Season 4 - Conversations. Between Seasons 3 & 4, you will also find here a new pilot series called "Firsthand History." In each season of this series, we'll tell a different story from the complex and controversial era of the George W. Bush presidency. We'll tell these stories by featuring oral histories from our Collective Memory Project - firsthand stories told by the people who were there, including U.S. government officials, leaders from foreign countries, journalists, scholars, and more. Season 1--"Cross Currents: Navigating U.S.-Norway Relations After 9/11"--explores the tangled webs of transatlantic alliance in a time of war and uncertainty. "Firsthand History" is a production of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.
The Past, the Promise, the Presidency
S3 E8: Bully Pulpits Abroad
This is the eighth and final episode of Season Three: The Bully Pulpit. This season, we explored many domestic policy issues, such as healthcare, women's suffrage, and land rights. But here in the 21st century, we all know that the president's voice reaches far beyond the borders of the United States. Has it always been this way? And how does the bully pulpit reach audiences abroad?
We invited three scholars to help us understand the many ways presidents have utilized the bully pulpit to speak to the world. We'll begin our conversation with Dr. Jay Sexton, Professor of History at the University of Missouri. Dr. Sexton explains how presidents thought about foreign policy and the bully pulpit in the 19th century, and how that all changed when Teddy Roosevelt took office.
We' then move to the presidents of the World War II era with Dr. Kaete O'Connell. A former fellow with us at the SMU Center for Presidential History, Dr. O’Connell is now a fellow at Yale university. She explains how WWII ushered in a new era in presidential communications abroad.
Finally, we invited Dr. Sam Lebovic of George Mason University to share his fascinating insights on how the US government expanded the use of the bully pulpit to include a much more complex, bureaucratic, and powerful web of communication that spanned the globe. We promise you'll never think of passports the same way again.