Uploaded February 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 1, Nancy Beck Young will join us to talk about the election of 1964.
Nancy Beck Young, Ph.D., is Professor of History at the University of Houston, where she has taught since 2007. Previously she was assistant and associate professor of history at McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois. Dr. Young received her B.A. from Baylor and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. She has held two residential fellowships, one at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. and another as the Clements Fellow in Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University.
She has written numerous books and is currently researching two book manuscripts— one a biography of John Nance Garner and another on the idea of the first lady. Her most recent book, Two Suns of the Southwest: Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater, and the 1964 Battle between Liberalism and Conservatism was published in 2019 by the University Press of Kansas.
Dr. Young has won a number of honors for her scholarship and her teaching including the Guittard Book Prize for her book titled Why We Fight: Congress and the Politics of World War II, the D.B. Hardeman Prize for her biography Wright Patman: Populism, Liberalism, and the American Dream, and the Ima Hogg Historical Achievement Award for Outstanding Research on Texas History. She has been named the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Illinois Professor of the Year and won the most prestigious campus wide teaching award at McKendree College in 2001.
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 1, Nancy Beck Young will join us to talk about the election of 1964.
Nancy Beck Young, Ph.D., is Professor of History at the University of Houston, where she has taught since 2007. Previously she was assistant and associate professor of history at McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois. Dr. Young received her B.A. from Baylor and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. She has held two residential fellowships, one at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. and another as the Clements Fellow in Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University.
She has written numerous books and is currently researching two book manuscripts— one a biography of John Nance Garner and another on the idea of the first lady. Her most recent book, Two Suns of the Southwest: Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater, and the 1964 Battle between Liberalism and Conservatism was published in 2019 by the University Press of Kansas.
Dr. Young has won a number of honors for her scholarship and her teaching including the Guittard Book Prize for her book titled Why We Fight: Congress and the Politics of World War II, the D.B. Hardeman Prize for her biography Wright Patman: Populism, Liberalism, and the American Dream, and the Ima Hogg Historical Achievement Award for Outstanding Research on Texas History. She has been named the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Illinois Professor of the Year and won the most prestigious campus wide teaching award at McKendree College in 2001.
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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.
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Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, a political analyst for MSNBC, and the author of several books on the presidency, including Days of Fire and The Breach. Susan Glasser is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a CNN global affairs analyst. Their first assignment as a married couple was as Moscow bureau chiefs for The Washington Post, after which they wrote Kremlin Rising. They also co-authored The Man Who Ran Washington, a New York Times bestseller.
The Divider is, at least for the moment, the definitive account of the Trump presidency. Sweeping across four years of nearly constant crisis and controversy, the book examines one of Americas most enigmatic presidencies, which included two impeachments, dramatic international events, a constantly shifting array of advisers, and the insurrection of January 6, 2021.
This conversation took place on December 13, 2022, at the LBJ Presidential Library.
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