Taking People at Their Word
November 2023 Imperfect Union
Ladies and gents, I am so beyond excited to share some news with you. I officially have a cover and a confirmed title for my Adams book. Are you ready to see it?
And there are officially links at some stores! You can pre-order now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
If you are in the publishing/press/marketing world and play around on Edelweiss, you can find the book HERE. And if you are on Goodreads, you can add it to your “To-Read” list. (While you are there, let’s be friends!).
I’m so incredibly thrilled with how it turned out. I will confess, I was nervous. I LOVE my Cabinet cover and I didn’t want to play favorites with my children. But I’m really relieved that it feels true to the book and captures my vision.
I’m starting to put together tour information and dates, as well as some other promotional goodies. One idea I’m toying around with is an “advanced reader” group. Others call it a “promo team.” Seth Godin coined the term superfans, but that doesn’t feel quite right for me. I’ve seen other authors create a group of readers who are excited to read the book and eager to help spread the word. They get an advanced reader copy (usually an e-reader copy or pdf) and are asked to leave an honest review. Like seriously. Needs to be honest or Amazon gets very fussy. The group would also have access to other behind-the-scenes stuff. Like for example, I might write some additional posts on material that didn’t make the book or the process of designing the cover. If that is something you might want to participate in, could you drop a comment below or just reply to this email? Absolutely no pressure, but it would be helpful to know if there is interest before I scale up.
Thank you in advance for all your loveliness. Working on a book can be a long slog (even though I love it) and the light at the end of the tunnel is getting to share the book with all of you.
Ok, on to the main subject.
I have lots of historical maxims. Primary sources almost always have a motive. Documents were destroyed; what exists today was a fraction of what was created. People are complex and nuanced. Find the joy and humor.
One of the most important maxims of my history practice is to take people at their word. This doesn’t mean they were always right, or that they didn’t change their mind later, or that their actions always align with their intentions. But when people tell you what they intend to do or what they care about or what they value—believe them.
For example, when I talk about The Cabinet, I almost always talk about how Henry Knox was important and overlooked. I give lots of evidence, but the most important occurred in 1794 during the Whiskey Rebellion. President Washington wanted Knox with him and was incredibly disappointed Knox hadn’t returned from Maine. Washington thought Knox was important and valuable. That’s enough for me.
When I talk to reporters or I do a tv hit, I regularly get asked the question, “how will history books write about this moment?” or “How will history books describe former President Trump?” Usually my answer is something like, “well historians are terrible future predictors, but….” and then I try and put into context whatever we are discussing on that day.
What I can unequivocally predict, however, is that when history books are written about the last decade, writers will capture the former president’s statements and demonstrate how he often followed through on his intentions. They already are. This article by Catherine Rampell helpfully lays out several examples of when Trump followed through on his more explicit threats.
I read Catherine’s article and I agree with a lot of it, but I think the historical perspective is helpful. Historians always have to decide how seriously to take historical actors and that only increases my certainty that we have to take people at their word.
We shouldn’t confuse intentions be read the same as truthfulness. According to the Washington Post, Trump lied 30,573 times while in office. Sometimes it was about stupid things, like the size of the crowd at his inauguration. Other times it was serious. All politicians misspeak, fudge details, and even get things wrong. Sometimes they lie, even if it isn’t with malicious intent. While I think they should shoot for honesty whenever possible, that’s not what I’m talking about today.
What I care about is what they intend to do while in office. The random news clips here and there are relatively small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. Their domestic policies, their foreign policy, how they treat journalists, how they treat Americans, how they treat the rule of law—these are the things that really matter.
We are just under a year from the next presidential election. I know we are all exhausted from the events of the last 8 years. I get it. Sometimes I just want to bury my head in a stupid novel (and sometimes I do). But we cannot look away and the ongoing story below is one that deserves ALL the attention.
This story began over the summer, when news reports leaked that Trump planned to issue an executive order called “Schedule F” if he returned to office. Under Schedule F, Trump would reclassify tens of thousands of career government workers (meaning they are not political appointees) so that they could be easily fired. At the same time, The Heritage Foundation was working on a new initiative called Project 2025, which would recruit and train tens of thousands of right-wing supporters to be ready to take those newly vacant positions. I wrote an op-ed for Washington Monthly about how this plan would essentially return the government to the spoils system and why that’s not such a great idea.
Then reports emerged in the last couple of weeks that Trump and his allies were compiling a list of enemies for the Department of Justice to target if he returned to power. Names on the list include “his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley.” He also planned to invoke the Insurrection Act his first day in office to make more arrests possible. Here is a video of an interview in which he discusses these plans.
In a Veterans’ Day address, Trump vowed to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascist and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”
On Monday, he posted this threat on his social media app.
All this reporting is based on Trump’s own words. None of it is exaggeration or hyperbole.
I know it’s easy to dismiss stories like these. He had plenty of cooky ideas that went nowhere while he was in the White House. The difference this time, from what I can tell, is that he has very disciplined, very strategic people trying to help make these plans a reality. Even worse, all the upstanding people that served with him last time, like Generals Milley, Mattis, and Kelly, won’t be there. This time, the people that helped prevent wars with Iran or prevented him from declaring martial law, won’t get close to the Oval Office. (For what it’s worth, I sometimes think they should have spoken out or got frustrated with certain actions, but there is no doubt in my mind that it would have been much worse toward the end without them).
I would also understand if you were inclined to dismiss these stories as liberal hysteria. To be sure, there have been times in the last eight years when progressives or Democrats or whatever name you’d like cried wolf when it wasn’t necessarily warranted. I get it. That sort of thing hardens you to future warnings. So, if you don’t believe me, that’s ok, but I urge you to listen to the speeches and read the posts online.
A lot of these ideas aren’t unprecedented in our nation’s history. We’ve had politicians that targeted communists (Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare comes to mind). We’ve had presidents that cracked down on protestors (the Palmer Raids under Wilson are an example). And we’ve had presidents that targeted political opponents (Nixon often tried to use the FBI for his own person vendettas). But all these moments were dark marks on our history, ones that we learned from, and instituted reforms to prevent those abuses from happening again. I fear we’ve forgotten those lessons.
Let me be clear, I am not telling you who to vote for. Every citizen has the duty to make their own choice. But I want to be sure that we are all walking into the next year with our eyes wide open and know exactly what the future has in store.
Books:
Currently Reading: In the Shadow of Fear: American and the World in 1950 by Nick Bunker (October 3, 2023)
Up Next: For the People, For the Country: Patrick Henry’s Final Political Battle by John Ragosta (August 17, 2023)
Coming Soon (Technically out now but could be coming soon to your house!): This Is Our Home: Slavery and Struggle on Southern Plantations by Whitney Nell Stewart (November 14, 2023)
On the Horizon: The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War by Jim Sciutto (March 12, 2024)
