Many Things Considered
In “Many Things Considered” one-time journalist and full-time political analyst Marc Johnson applies his passion for context to connect current politics with political history. What are the links between the debacle of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign and the Tea Party movement? Did Alexander Hamilton foresee the partisanship that now surrounds judicial appointments? Why haven’t third parties had political success in America? Johnson weaves interviews, archival sound, humor and authoritative narration to connect political history to today’s political stories.
Episodes
15 episodes
Episode 15: Mr. Speaker
The Speaker of the House of Representatives is quitting, not forced out by scandal or defeated for re-election, but quitting after only a little more than two years in office. In historical terms that is very unusual. In this episode Marc Johnson ...
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33:53
Episode 14: When Intelligence Was Bipartisan
More than 40 years ago Congress undertook two major investigations into the nation’s intelligence agencies – the House investigation became a political train wreck, while the Senate investigation, led by Idaho Democrat Frank Church, helped create ...
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Season 2
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Episode 14
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29:06
Episode 13: The Klan
Since the 2016 presidential election various groups that keep track of white supremacist political activity – the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for example – have reported a sharp increase in such activity. Some have suggested we have entered...
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50:00
Episode 12: Big Oil and American Politics
American foreign and domestic policy is shaped by many factors, but perhaps none is more important or more pervasive than oil – Big Oil. In this episode three political stories from the past – Teapot Dome in the 1920s, Texaco’s role in supporting ...
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51:11
Episode 11: A Short History of Leaks
The business of leaking government secrets has a long, long history and the whole subject of leaking and leaks is complicated. Why do leaks happen? What motivates the leaker? Are leaks good or bad or sometimes vital? In this episode we consider tw...
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44:08
Episode 10: Fear Itself
Seventy-five years ago a president signed an Executive Order that resulted in the relocation and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese-Americans, most of them American citizens. The decision was justified by national security concerns, but we now know...
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42:59
Episode 9: Richard Milhous Trump
Despite what they say almost every politician dislikes the press – too many pesky, probing questions and that constant effort to check real facts and dispute alternative facts. Richard Nixon had perhaps the most contentious relationship with the p...
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38:45
Episode 8: Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8
It is not likely that many of us have dropped a reference to the Constitution’s emoluments clause into casual conversation. But the once obscure clause is now just one more thing Donald J. Trump has brought to the center of American politics. The ...
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39:16
Episode 7: In the Great American Tradition - Dissent
The founders of the great American experiment so valued dissent that they wrote the idea into the First Amendment to the Constitution. But while dissent has always been an American tradition it has also often created great controversy and much tro...
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39:40
Episode 6: A Christmas Like No Other
Imagine Winston Churchill as a houseguest. Then imagine him as a houseguest at Christmas…in the White House…while the world is at war. In late December 1941, three weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the British prime minister and the...
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42:16
Episode 5: All the News - Fake and Otherwise
The election is over, but the debate about journalism, politics, facts and fakes roars on. So just what is the state of political journalism in The Age of Trump? And what does our history tell us about how the Internet is remaking news for reporte...
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50:42
Episode 4: The Leader
Why has the U.S. Senate gone from the world’s greatest deliberative body to the country’s most dysfunctional political institution? The answer is complicated – perpetual campaigns, vast money, excess partisanship – but Senate history points a way ...
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50:10
Episode 3: Lame Ducks
How do we usher out “lame duck” presidents and bring on the victors? Often with stumbles and mistakes. The interval between lame duck Herbert Hoover and president-elect Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 was chaotic as Hoover biographer Charles Rappleye w...
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36:51