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
S4 E10: Mourning the Presidents
For the conclusion of this season, we examine conclusions: the deaths of presidents. Not just presidents who died while in office, but those who died years after they retired from the presidency and the constant limelight. Our journey through the lives, deaths, and legacies of our presidents from 1799 to today offers surprising revelations about the constancy of mourning and the role of the president beyond the Oval Office.
Beyond exploring the moment of a president’s death, we explore the deeper historical context of that moment, and what we can learn about American society at the time. Presidents are more than just a man. They are figureheads of movements, international celebrities, and representatives (sometimes even unwillingly) of particular political and social values. And their deaths often reveal much not just about how Americans come together, but how they remain divided.
Guiding our final conversation this season are Lindsay Chervinsky and Matthew Costello, presidential historians and co-editors of Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture.
Lindsay Chervinsky is a historian of the presidency, political culture, and the government. Dr. Chervinsky is a frequent contributor to publications like the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CNN, and the Washington Post. She is also a regular guests on podcasts, such as the Thomas Jefferson Hour, and created the Audible course The Best and Worst Presidential Cabinets in U.S. History. Dr. Chervinsky is currently a fellow at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Presidential History here at SMU.
She is the co-editor of Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture, the author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, and author of the forthcoming An Honest Man: The Inimitable Presidency of John Adams.
Visit her website lindsaychervinsky.com and her Twitter @lmchervinsky.
Matthew Costello is a presidential historian specializing in the American Revolution and the early republic. Dr. Costello serves as Vice President of the David M. Rubenstein National Center for White House History and Senior Historian for the White House Historical Association. He also teaches a class at American University and has received research fellowships from Marquette University, the Virginia Historical Society, the United States Capitol Historical Society, and the Fred W. Smith National Library at Mount Vernon. After completing his Ph.D. in American history at Marquette University, Dr. Costello worked on the George Washington Bibliography Project for the George Washington Papers at the University of Virginia.
He is the author of The Property of the Nation: George Washington’s Tomb, Mount Vernon, and the Memory of the First President, which was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize, and co-editor of Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture.
Visit his website on whitehousehistory.org and his LinkedIn @matthewcostello.