khalil muhammad. >> we're in milwaukee, wisconsin, and we're joined by michael kazin and khal khalil muhammad. thank you for joining us. >> >> thank you for having us. >> part of the reason that you're here is to look at the 100th anniversary of the election of 1912. why was 1912 important? >> well, it was an election where i think progressive reform was on the agenda for all of the major players that year. there were four important candidates in the election that year. teddy roosevelt, taft, and eugene, the socialist and all of

the different ways where the platforms opposed consolidation of big business, the trusts or the monopolies at the time and it was also a time of a lot of upheaval in the country, upheaval among workers, upheaval among black and white, to the beginning of a modernist culture in america. it was a very exciting time. >> you use the term progressivism and we hear that term today. what is your definition of that? >> my students ask that and it takes a while to explain it. what it meant at the time it people wanted a more efficient government, they wanted a social order generally that was dedicated to harmonizing relations and a government that would be more democratic and

part of that is the progressives wanted to try to either bust up the big businesses in america or regulate them much more strictly. >> was the first election in which progressivism had a voice? >> no. in 1896, even though the term wasn't used at the time, i think he was an early progressive, though he was defeated in 1896. >> i was going to say, shifting the focus slightly from the presidential level to how people managed it on the ground, progress sifism had access to every day people who wanted a better quality of life.

>> so to you, what do you see? what's your stand on the 100th anniversary of 1912? why does 1912 matter 100 years later? >> well, for me there was this wonderful moment where african-american leadership in this election really don't know where to go. they are looking at roosevelt who had all of the promises of representing a republican party and came into his position obviously in the wake of the assassination, courting african-american voters but his

star had dimmed greatly by 1912, even though he talked a tough game when it came to progressivism, he was courting southern delegates in this third-party race. this was really the first time that the republican party is not the parent for african-american voters and as it turns out, and he hopes that he's the president of all of the people and i think that resonates so profoundly with this moment and banking on wood row wilson as a democratic candidate who represents as a party leader the tradition of a white supremacist party in terms of everything following the

civil war due bois a professionalism, a kind of thoughtful leadership that could ultimately lead to him being the president of all of the people. but the rhetoric today is almost completely the reverse. the president of all of the people in the 2012 election is to push back against the potential for the president having special interests like african-american voters or latino voters. there's an interesting arc over 100 years in how that language is used. >> and i think it's really important what it's created in the progressive area, not just in 1912. you have a lot of ambiguities because they think that jim crow

is -- white people and black people develop separately, they will not get in each other's way and you have dubois on the other side. >> and these were progressive planks? >> yes. >> even the regulatory state that we take for granted on one hand and attack on the other came into being in the progressive period. >> and for some conservatives, like glenn beck say america started down the bad road in 1912. wood row wilson was the beginning of the left's triumph making a huge state. >> would you say progressives are more successful by not becoming in the presidential

power because you've pointed out things that have become law. we have not had a progressive candidate for president, or one who has been elected. >> well, we have progressive party which is an instrument for theodore roosevelt to run for president. he lost to taft. >> would you term president obama as a progressive candidate going into 2012? >> i would. the term liberal took over the term for progressive for a long time and now progressive is back being used again. there are huge differences between barack obama and woodrow wilson, of course, but they both do believe in using the government to a power of big business. >> and the person that we've skipted over here is frank din

radiosed it best ideas of the progressive area and some of his administrators cut their teeth in government. >> who is a democrat then. he didn't support it wilson and became part of his cabinet. >> you pointed out the four candidates that ran that year and all pretty prominent americans. why in the 100 years since we've had an election would that sort of fire power in terms of four separate parties and candidates? >> well, this goes back to the structure of the american party system. in most times the two parties were able to absorb discontent, either on the right or on the left to a large degree and convince enough voters that third parties don't make a lot of sense because you'll be wasting your vote or helping the greater evil defeat the lesser evil. we've had third parties but kind of like the progressive party in

1912, one-shot deals, like ross perot. and then he gives it up. >> i think there's another point to add, which is an important one, obviously in the wake of television is a platform for big media, it's difficult for candidates today to mount successful independent parties. on the one hand, that's counterintuitive and because of the way that the media works, it's much more easily discredited. and so you could produce that out of the scrabble, anti-big business world of indiana, that could built resources and build upon them without being attacked in print media. any real contender today

eventually has to go up against big money and big media. that's very difficult to maintain a strong edge. >> c-span to be the only network and everyone can take part and you wouldn't have to worry about ads. >> i want to go back to your the endorsement of wilson. that was a moment that you said began to attract african-americans. how do they view this? >> terribly. there was a huge disappointment for any number of reasons. probably the most sell rated was wilson's betrayal of african-americans was one of the first hollywood blockbuster called "the birth of a nation." it celebrated redemption, the

world of the klan and the reremoval of african-american leadership. woodrow wilson endorsed the film, said -- it's a true story of race relations and really saw long standing regional differences of the north and south racial equality. and that was absolutely a betrayal to people that dubois supported. it most certainly was a significant one. the other thing is that federal patronage, partly as a capitulation to southern congress people, he purged african-american leadership and there were 31 federal jobs down

to 8. >> under wilson? >> under wilson. >> and he allowed post office departments where there's a group of black leaders, newspaper journalists in washington denounces the president, in effect, in his office and after that wilson says i don't want to meet with any of these people again. they don't understand me. we have nothing in common. that was quite an amazing moment, actually. >> you are writing recently, your recent book is called american dreamers, how the left changed the nation. we've been talking a bit about progressive politics but what's the general thesis of your book? >> well, the thesis is really about people to the left of

progressivism. >> to the left? >> yes, people who want a fundamental transition of society, economically, politically, socially. and so i traces people who were interested in bringing about this transformation to socialists, communists, new blackists, black power advocates and others. and the thesis is that this kind of left, the radical left, has failed to build institutions, parties, unions, other groups which really can vie for power politically. but it's been much more successful, i think n. changing the moral sense of american society, changing the attitudes about first slavery, gender equality, the idea of homosexual quality which is something that

didn't come out of the left completely, entirely, but certainly people in the left in the 1960s was a very important part of that gay rights movement. >> so you see it as these individuals, whether it's for racial rights or for homosexual rights, you need people on sort of the far left? >> yeah. you need people to dream big dreams, which is calling for individual freedom to be respected and extended to everybody regardless of race and national origin, sexual preference, gender, and also for calling for, you know, we have a responsibility, taking care of one another. well, radicals argue this means you need to have much more social leveling, certain redistribution of resources, too. so i trace how people on the

left in many ways succeeded in changing people's minds about those things and leaning social movements as well but not in many parts of the country forming socialist parties that lasted very long and had a lot of power in forming are radical unions that were going on strike to change the whole basic economy. so that's the argument. >> professor muhammad, has black leadership always been aligned with the left or are there marriages of convenience here and there on issues? are there areas where, more broadly speaking, african-american leadership disagrees 180 degrees from the american left? >> it's a lot messier today than it was in the past. and so -- >> why? >> well, because you have a strain of conservatism, social conservatism among african-americans that doesn't match their politics or political voice which tends to be democratic, which tends to be

some kind of reformist version of anything that starts on the black left. so on one hand, you have blacks and social communists who were in scope and saw the rest of the world as evidence of capitalists and imperialism and most certainly in the context of the golden era which everyone talks about, combining interests of labor and racial democracy. so there's a richer history of leaning much more to the left and the long running critique, of course, of black leadership and those sympathetic to organizing the left but not necessarily self-identifying the social communist or variation of black politics was that there was internal racism. there was manipulation for the

purpose of gaining leverage in the american ideological debate but not really recognizing the unique challenges of african-americans and even the call for subverting the race question to the class question was a problem for eugene who had a very explicit vision of racial equality among black workers and white workers and it basically called for in an imagine na tif way which wasn't true. it was both race and class when it came to african-americans and without recognizing that sensitivity and without listening to the voices of those who pointed it out, it created longstanding friction. the one that was more consistent is that at the union gate, at the workshop floor, african-americans often had a choice either to subject themselves to discrimination among unions or to fall in line

with companies who were holding out the carrot of opportunity in the wake of labor strikes. and that problem was -- it was always there and richard wright, an african-american writer, the bosses of the buildings who effectively use their leverage to divide and concur, there was plenty of racism who identified them as white socialist ambivalent about black leadership in these organizations. >> you pointed out, in our conversation earlier, that the beginning of parting of ways in african-americans and republican party, even though teddy roosevelt want party of this election, why has the party had such trouble in recent elections? >> the short answer to that is

barry goldwater. the realignment of the political party -- i mean, when fdr became the party of -- coalition democratic standard bear and combined labor, women sufferage, as well as african-americans moving from south to north, it split through the democratic party and you get strum thur man in 1948 and a long steady road to the erosion of white southern democratic support for the national party because they continue to make gains in civil rights. eisenhower is fairly moderate, even though he's a republican, it suggests that the race question is gaining a national foothold that can't be put in the bottle. by the time you get to the early 1960s that sustained civil rights activism, there's a move towards repudiation of the

democratic party and ultimately a strategy emerges and republicans take over the south. >> i wanted to ask you about the political support for progressive causes because i think the article -- an excerpt you write about the early 20th century. >> well, it goes up farther to world war i at least, was one period when there was a lot of white, middle class, working class people, small farmers and business people that were not on the left but sympathized with the poor laborle things that people on the left like eugene were seeing. the socialist party was predominantly a democratic

party. and radical causes, you know, from be a bow lichl ligsism and then to the 1930s and '40s, this alliance that you mention, who were educated and idealists, and they feel that they have things fairly good and they don't really see a need to make radical changes. in the one period a lot of american people saw it because they saw the corporate resolution changing america and enlarging the gap between rich and the poor. that wasn't true earlier and not true later on as well.

so in many ways throughout most american history on the left, it's been more successful than this top and bottom alliance in putting forth are rebellious ideas of a different society and not organizing the majority of people to support their goals. >> looking back to 1912 and professor kazin just referred to the 2012 election, can that wind up being a real issue of debate between the two candidates and how -- where do not only african-american leaders but where do other political leaders line in their view on the issue of inee faulty and what is called inequality between them? >> this is not clear what the debate will be. we know under president obama there's an effort to galvanize

working people. he certainly has proposed a jobs bill and clearly in his case there's a sensitivity and a kind of policy-based response to contemporaneous debate. and they have been very successful in pursing a politics of supply side economics that argues that inequality can be addressed by putting more money in the hands of the people by shrinking government and those people can be rich or middle class. as long as they have their money, the markets will take care of inequality. they are both for addressing the issue of inequality but these are both long running differences as to how you do that. we live in a different time than we did before. the country was most certainly

center left in the moment of woodrow wilson's success as opposed to being center right today and think about we're moving from a moment of 1912 into kind of a period of lazy economics of three african-american presidents in the 1920s and yet you end up with the new deal. so whatever blip on the screen of center left politics and addressing questions of inequality go from 1912 to 1972, you've got only really a small window in there that produces the great depression and we basically build an infrastructure and institutionalize the best of the ideas and establish our social welfare system that gave voice and fuel to the emergence of the new right. they are still fighting against the impact of fdr's policy. "the wall street journal" just

had an op ed talking about president obama and roosevelt in his 1936 election run. in effect, the stakes are much different today because there's a much more compelling populist attraction to the supply economics and the right has been advocating for it for a long time. >> one of the things that khalil said earlier, grassroots progressivism, it explains why it was a center-left country then and it's more of a center-right country now, those building up structures, institutions, like labor unions, farmer unions, like naacp, which was founded before 1912, settlement houses, many others, women suffer rage groups which what was going on in the political room and helped pressure politicians like it like they are not to become more

progressive. woodrow wilson was not a progressive until 1912 and then he realized he had to be more progressive to get elected. and similarly, or in reverse, conservatives have been building very strong institutions i think in the last 30 years and politics is not just about people who run for office or even about the parties. it's about social forces and when the social forces are organized on one side or another side of the political spectrum, that obviously helps that group -- mitt romney on one side and barack obama on the other side, we'll hear so much about them. you will be talking about them on c-span, journalist s the hore race.

but which one wins and loses is who is enthusiastic or who enthusiastically dislikes them. so that's more about what is happening in the last 20, 30 years and it sets the stage for that. >> i do have to ask you about the american dreamers. you write about ted in there, dr. seuss. >> yep. >> what do you say about him? >> well, you know, i read dr. seuss' books when i was a kid and i read them with my children, of course, when he was no longer writing them and i was struck by something which anybody who has read them seriously, at least not all of them but a lot of them, he was a man to the left, but the battle book and the sneechs and lorax which was recently made into a not very good movie, language creative ways, art creative ways really reflect and represent the views of the left about racial

quality, anti-authoritative and i could keep going. and so i started the book saying it was inspired by dr. seuss because i thought about writing this book re-reading dr. dues to my children and realizing that the left would be influential sometimes without even the creators of these ideas saying, i'm on the left but in fact they become part of the cultural bloodstream, if you will. >> i think this is a great place to go because one of my favorites is all of the places you'll go. and it's one of my favorites because i kept getting it at every smile phone in graduation. one of the things that it speaks to, to what mining kell is describing, is the embrace of the contradictions of life's journey, that the part of the sort of main stay of the left is

to take on the challenges and the uncertainty of a future and to be vigilant about what it means to protect democracy, not to simply embrace aspiration as the key to the future, which is very much conservatism because aspiration becomes about the individual, becomes a retreat as to what an individual is willing to give to their future. what i love about that book is that on that journey there's that dark space that the pro trag nift has to travel and for a kids' story it's unexpected. and i think that legacy of the left, of the cultural left is one that privileges art and visual expression as a way of reminding people that contradiction and uncertainty and pain, one of the greatest poets of all time really celebrated those competing forces of good and evil that exists in all of us