Uploaded March 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Americans will go to the polls in a few months to vote in what innumerable commentators are calling a pivotal presidential election, even one of the most consequential in American history. But it’s hardly the first time such claims have been made. Across the last 250 years, many presidential races have featured sharply contrasting agendas, political outlooks, and personal styles, with dire predictions about the nation’s future if one candidate or the other prevailed. How did these races unfold? How did presidential races encapsulate profound cleavages running through the nation? How did the outcomes shape the nation’s future? Looking back at elections from the nation’s past may provide perspective on our own moment.
This six-part virtual series explores these and other questions through lively conversations with eminent historians of American politics and the presidency. Each session will begin with a moderated discussion led by LBJ Library Director Mark Lawrence but will allow ample time for questions from the audience. Over six weeks leading up to President’s Day, we will sweep across American political history by delving into the elections of 1860, 1896, 1948, 1964, 1968, and 1980. We will examine presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan, exploring the races that elevated them to the Oval Office and the implications of the races they won.
About the speaker:
On February 15, 2024, Jon Ward joined us to talk about the election of 1980.
Jon Ward is senior political correspondent for Yahoo News, author of Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Failed a Generation (Brazos Press, 2023) and Camelot's End: Kennedy v Carter and the Fight that Broke the Democratic Party (Twelve Books, 2019), and host of “The Long Game” podcast. His Substack newsletter is called "Border Stalkers."
Jon has covered American politics and culture for two decades, as a city desk reporter in Washington D.C., as a White House correspondent who traveled aboard Air Force One to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, and as a national affairs correspondent who has traveled the country to write about two presidential campaigns and the ideas and people animating our times. He has been published in The Washington Post, The New Republic, Politico Magazine, Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, and The Washington Times.
Americans will go to the polls in a few months to vote in what innumerable commentators are calling a pivotal presidential election, even one of the most consequential in American history. But it’s hardly the first time such claims have been made. Across the last 250 years, many presidential races have featured sharply contrasting agendas, political outlooks, and personal styles, with dire predictions about the nation’s future if one candidate or the other prevailed. How did these races unfold? How did presidential races encapsulate profound cleavages running through the nation? How did the outcomes shape the nation’s future? Looking back at elections from the nation’s past may provide perspective on our own moment.
This six-part virtual series explores these and other questions through lively conversations with eminent historians of American politics and the presidency. Each session will begin with a moderated discussion led by LBJ Library Director Mark Lawrence but will allow ample time for questions from the audience. Over six weeks leading up to President’s Day, we will sweep across American political history by delving into the elections of 1860, 1896, 1948, 1964, 1968, and 1980. We will examine presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan, exploring the races that elevated them to the Oval Office and the implications of the races they won.
About the speaker:
On February 15, 2024, Jon Ward joined us to talk about the election of 1980.
Jon Ward is senior political correspondent for Yahoo News, author of Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Failed a Generation (Brazos Press, 2023) and Camelot's End: Kennedy v Carter and the Fight that Broke the Democratic Party (Twelve Books, 2019), and host of “The Long Game” podcast. His Substack newsletter is called "Border Stalkers."
Jon has covered American politics and culture for two decades, as a city desk reporter in Washington D.C., as a White House correspondent who traveled aboard Air Force One to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, and as a national affairs correspondent who has traveled the country to write about two presidential campaigns and the ideas and people animating our times. He has been published in The Washington Post, The New Republic, Politico Magazine, Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, and The Washington Times.
![[Podcast] With the Bark Off: A Conversation with Paul Gregory About Lee Harvey Oswald](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vJ595whXpdE/mqdefault.jpg "[Podcast] With the Bark Off: A Conversation with Paul Gregory About Lee Harvey Oswald
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Paul Gregory is an expert on Russia and is currently a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. A pioneer in the study of Soviet and Russian economics, his textbook on the Russian economy was used to teach more than two generations of students. But Gregory’s latest book is on a subject that he has been reluctant to address for nearly six decades: his relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald and his young wife Marina. Gregory was one of the few people who actually knew them. His inside account of the Oswalds’s marriage offers a disturbing portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald, whom Gregory believes acted alone in the assassination of President Kennedy.
We talked to Gregory about the Lee Harvey Oswald he came to know, someone who possessed the motive, cunning, and killer instinct of a murderer who was desperately vying for a place in history.
Episode link: https://play.headliner.app/episode/11811421")
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Nicole Hemmer is a political historian and Founding Director of the Rogers Center for the Study of the Presidency at Vanderbilt University. She’s also Cofounder of Made by History, a section of the Washington Post that offers historical context and analysis, and writes regularly for the New York Times, CNN and Politico.
Hemmer talked to us about the partisan politicians, personalities and pundits who began remaking the Republican Party 30 years ago, forging a modern conservative movement that trumped the conservative coalition of Republican icon Ronald Reagan and led to the far right Trumpism of today’s GOP.
Episode link: https://play.headliner.app/episode/11373614")
