(celebratory music)
- Well, I'm Jack Rackove.
I've taught at Stanford University since 1980.
I'm first and foremost a historian
of the American Revolution
and the origins of the Constitution.
I've come to think that of all the institutions we have,
particularly given the repeated deadlock in Congress,
the presidency has become the most important of all.
Partly, we live in a dangerous world,
and for better or for worse,
we need to have a vigorous national security state
and that creates all kinds of difficulties.
Rule-making has to be done somehow
when Congress itself is paralyzed,
and I think one of my big concerns
is that when I look at the last three presidencies,
it seems to me that there's been a concerteted effort
to delegitimate individual presidents,
but it's net effect may also be
to delegitimate the very nature of executive power.
Not that it matters that much
but going back to 2000,
I've written a lot of op eds
and a couple articles and essays here and there
arguing for having a national popular election,
One person, One vote, in the United States of America
and my initial rational for that,
originally my strongest rationale,
was really the One person, One vote rule,
that that is the fundamental norm
of modern democratic political justice
and votes should not have different weight
depending on the accident of where they happen to be cast,
but in the last few years,
I think particularly during the Obama presidency,
I've come to a second conclusion
which I'm now starting to think
is even a more powerful conclusion.
The first one I take,
that's fairly straight forward,
the rationale for that I think is fairly obvious
but if you think about the last three presidencies
and the next president, whoever it's gonna be,
the last three presidencies have all suffered
from deligitimization efforts.
And what do I mean by that?
Well, if you think about Bill Clinton,
George W. Bush, Bush 43, and Barack Obama,
for different reasons,
virtually I think from the start of their presidencies,
each faced opposition which really tried to deny
that the occupant, the resident of the White House,
was somehow legitimately there.
I think in Bill Clinton's case
a lot of it was the old Slick Willie effect,
the whole Whitewater thing,
which in the end led exactly nowhere
in terms of what happened,
the whole feudal impeachment campaign.
The case of George W. Bush,
the whole Bush-Gore thing,
the whole question of Florida,
the idea that he did not have a national plurality
or majority,
that his gaining the White House
relied upon having a five to four majority
in the Supreme Court,
I think that had a fairly significant effect.
A lot of that was mitigated by the September 11th disaster
but it wasn't wholly destroyed.
The case of Barack Obama,
Obama's election,
for me and I think for many in my generation,
was a truly great moment in American history.
I never thought I'd see an African American president
in the United States,
and you can see it on 24,
you can see it on t.v. dramas,
Morgan Freeman plays a great president or whatever
but the idea of having an African American political leader,
I never thought I'd see it.
That by itself was a great source of rejoicing
but obviously what's happened,
and we've seen enormous amounts of controversy about this
is Obama has not moved us into a post-racial society.
We know from the racist,
the overtly racist opposition he's received for a long time,
for better or for worst,
certainly for worst,
old racist prejudices are alive and well
in American politics.
So all three of those presidents
suffered in different ways
from efforts at their delegitimation.
There's no doubt that whether Donald Trump or Hilary Clinton
gets elected in November,
the same thing's going to accompany the next presidency.
(calm music)