Profiles in Courage

This episode tries to parse why.

Jacob Weisberg's new book, Profiles in Cowardice, A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era, is styled as an inverted version of President John F. Kennedy's 1956 classic, Profiles in Courage.

It's a meditation on who caves and who buckles under authoritarian and illiberal pressure.

Jacob Weisberg was editor-in-chief of Slate magazine back in the halcyon days of the Bush administration.

This episode tries to parse why.

Jacob Weisberg's new book, Profiles in Cowardice, a study of collaboration in the Trump era, is styled as an inverted version of President John F. Kennedy's 1956 classic, Profiles in Courage.

It's a meditation on who caves and who buckles under authoritarian and illiberal pressure.

Jacob Weisberg was editor-in-chief of Slate magazine back in the halcyon days of the Bush administration.

It's called Profiles in Cowardice, a Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era.

And it is in the same font as Profiles in Courage.

So Jacob, congratulations.

Tell us about, start by telling us about two people who you've written about who were weak and craven or are being weak and craven.

Well, we have one great historical example, which is McCarthyism.

And I think institutions and leaders who did that, who accommodated McCarthy and McCarthyism, including, by the way, John F. Kennedy.

I think that's part of the reason he wrote Profiles in Courage, to try to deal with his own failure to come out against McCarthy when the censure vote happened in the Senate and he took a powder.

I think those institutions, in retrospect, were harmed by that.

institutions and leaders who did that, who accommodated McCarthy and McCarthyism, including, by the way, John F. Kennedy.

I think that's part of the reason he wrote Profiles in Courage, to try to deal with his own failure to come out against McCarthy when the censure vote happened in the Senate and he took a powder.

I think those institutions, in retrospect, were harmed by that.

And there's the short view and the long view.

was part of it um definitely but i mean he he um his concession there i mean nixon actually looked like a gentleman in 1960 in a lot of ways especially especially um he never gave up till the end but there was a lot of dirty pool in that election and probably in absolute terms like in real in real numbers terms it was probably too close to call kind of full the kind of full frontal assault on nixon by the east coast press um i missed uh that kind of presentation that you know the national audience had been afforded would have um would have been somewhat unseemly i make the point about 62 because in a lot of ways like the proverbial mask dropped um What prompted Nixon's comeback? You know, as we've talked about, you know, the catastrophic defeat of Barry Goldwater, you know, Goldwater himself was a bizarre placeholder, but it wasn't just owing to a lack of personages who could interface effectively with kind of the era of new media.

You know, is that like we've talked about Kennedy's literal eulogy to Taft in Profiles in Courage, you know, post Nuremberg, there was no more American right.

It was it was It was for all practical purposes, illegal in policy terms and in ethical and optical terms.

It was just unthinkable, you know, to have an America first party.