Jon Meacham:

... [What] I wanted to try to figure out is, to what extent is this period we’re in now, which feels dispiriting and depressing — no matter where you stand on the political spectrum, people are unhappy — how does this compare to moments in the past where division seemed to be the rule, not the exception?

Judy Woodruff:

Did you find true parallels then?

Jon Meacham:

Well, Mark Twain is supposed to have said that history not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

(LAUGHTER)

Jon Meacham:

History’s not — shouldn’t be cultural Zoloft, but it can give us perspective. It can give us a sense of proportion. At what point should we light our hair on fire? At what point should — just to pick an example at random — should a given tweet really upset us?

And trying to create that sense of proportion by putting this moment in context with Andrew Johnson, a president during Reconstruction who issued a state paper saying that African-Americans were genetically incapable of self-government, or Joe McCarthy, who chased after innocent people using the media of the day to create this hysterical feeling.

These were moments that were incredibly difficult, and yet we now have a country, even now, for all our problems, that, by and large, we can be proud of.

Judy Woodruff:

So, take us inside one of those moments.

I mean, the Ku Klux Klan rising in the 1920s and ’30s.

Jon Meacham:

Right.

Judy Woodruff:

How did the country grapple with that? And how did it get through it?

Jon Meacham:

Well, there are parallels, because there was a great deal of immigrant — anxiety about immigrants. There was a great deal of anxiety about global affairs, because we had come out of the First World War.

And the middle-class, working-class white movement refounded the Ku Klux Klan. Members of Congress, there were senators, there were governors who were explicitly members of the Klan.

How did we get through it? One thing is, Calvin Coolidge limited immigration, so took some of the oxygen out of the fire. But, also, a free press said, this is not who we are. Harding and Coolidge said, this is not who we are.

And, ultimately, our better angels prevailed, at least briefly.

Judy Woodruff:

You also write — there are so many other examples.

But one of the principal ones is the Red Scare after World War II, the 1950s, the McCarthy era. And Roy Cohn was a figure, someone who, coincidentally, was a mentor to Donald Trump.

Jon Meacham:

Yes, we hope it’s coincidental.

(LAUGHTER)

Jon Meacham:

I think, in many ways, the early 1930s and the early 1950s are the most analogous periods.

The early 1930s, we had a real question about whether democratic capitalism would survive the decade. President Roosevelt could have assumed the powers of a dictator if he had been so inclined.

In the early 1950s, Joe McCarthy gives a speech in February of 1950 at Wheeling, West Virginia, saying, I have in my hand the names of 205 communists.

He didn’t tweet it, but he might as well have.

And it lasted about four years. And what happened was, he understood the media. He understood how wire services worked. He understood radio. He understood television. He understood how to control the narrative.

Any of this sound familiar?...