Presidencies of the United States

Presidencies of the United States looks at the American presidency through the people around it: cabinet picks, vice presidents, bankers, aides and families. Host Jerry Landry mixes narrative installments with guest conversations. The narrative episodes lean hard on documents. Some open with a dated quotation, such as Andrew Jackson writing to James Monroe on 12 November 1816 to urge that party feeling be kept out of cabinet choices, or Senator Rufus King remarking in 1818 that Monroe had the zealous support of nobody. The Monroe material shows the method at work. Landry follows the appointment sent to Adams, then serving as U.S. Minister to Britain, and notes how slow communication was at the time. He then turns to biographer Ammon to explain why a former Federalist, and the son of the last Federalist president, was chosen. The answer involves the growing commercial wing of the Republican Party and advice from Jackson and others to reach across the aisle, exactly the kind of institutional detail the show likes to spell out. Another part traces Monroe's uneven road, from a leading role in the Confederation Congress to a struggle to win election to the Virginia General Assembly. Single figures get room. Monroe's pre-presidency runs across multiple parts, and John C Calhoun gets a three-part series. The Calhoun episode is where the dry humor comes through most clearly. While recounting the gossip aimed at a woman described as vivacious and uncommonly direct, the telling slips into sarcasm about how such treatment would surely never happen again. It also explains the calling customs that gave Floride's decision, as the vice president's wife, real social weight. The interviews are just as patient. A conversation about Thomas Willing, the Philadelphia merchant Washington and the Continental Congress turned to for funds, moves into the early republic's cycle of lending booms and crashes in 1791, 1792 and 1796. A guest on John Hay describes Lincoln as a politician through and through who needed someone to carry his ambitions to ordinary people, and recalls the rainy morning Lincoln left Springfield for Washington. David Blumenthal and James A Morone connect the passage of the Affordable Care Act to Medicare and to the hostility it had to overcome. The questions tend to be long, generous setups, and the show avoids confrontation. For a first listen, the Monroe episodes show off the document-based storytelling, and the Willing interview shows how guests take the show beyond the president himself. Episodes end on a consistent, kindly sign-off wishing listeners safety, health and kindness. The show is part of the Evergreen Podcast Network.