- This week, we celebrate Presidents' Day, a day to honor the legacy of two of America's greatest presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, as Grand Valley State University's Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies guest this week is historian, author, and speaker, Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, who gives us the history of Presidents' Day and makes the argument that it's not just an arbitrary holiday, but one that should be celebrated and honored as she joins us on this edition of WGVU's "NewsMakers."

(mellow music) Dr. Lindsay Chervinky is a senior fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, the Kundrun open-rank fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies and a professorial lecturer at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

She received her BA with honors in history and political science from George Washington University, her master's and PhD from the University of California, Davis, and her postdoctoral fellowship from Southern Methodist University.

Previously, Dr. Chervinsky worked as a historian at the White House Historical Association.

Her writing has appeared in "The Wall Street Journal," "Ms." magazine, The Daily Beast, The Bulwark, "TIME" magazine, "USA Today," CNN, and "The Washington Post," just to name a few.

Dr. Chervinsky is the author of the award-winning book, "The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of the American Institution."

And she is our honored guest here this week on WGVU's "NewsMakers."

Dr. Chervinsky, thank you for joining us and welcome to the program.

- Well, thank you so much for having me.

It's great to be here.

- Dr. Chervinsky, Presidents' Day, more like Presidents' Week here at GVSU as I said in the open.

Obviously, at the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, they take Presidents' Day very seriously.

But to the average American walking around, it may not mean as much.

Get to that in a second.

But first, can you put on your historian hat and tell us about the origins of Presidents' Day?

- Absolutely.

Well, the celebrations actually began long before we had a first president.

Almost as soon as George Washington surrendered his commission as commander in chief to the Continental Army, people started to celebrate his birthday in honor of this willingness to walk away from power.

And they continued once he was the first president in office, much to the chagrin, I should say, of his successor, John Adams.

So after Washington left office, Presidents' Day celebrations continued, always on Washington's birthday, but they were really sort of a mishmash depending on where you were and what community you belonged to.

Everyone had a different style.

In 1879, Congress passed a law creating the federal holiday in honor of George Washington.

And it was the first holiday to celebrate one individual.

But as we all know, the 22nd is on different days of the week, depending on what year we're in.

And so the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which was passed in 1968, made the official recognition on the third Monday, which is usually somewhere between the 15th and the 22nd.

So right in between Lincoln and Washington's birthday.

Now it gets a bit more complicated in 1971 when president Nixon issued a proclamation declaring it Presidents' Day because he also wanted to be included in those celebrations.

- (chuckles) Right.

- And so now, we honor Lincoln and Washington, but also maybe some people like Buchanan, and Chester Arthur, and maybe some other more forgettable characters.

- In your opinion, why is Presidents' Day a day to celebrate, and to honor, and to remember?

- Well, I like to think of it more like Presidency Day because the presidency is the most powerful office in the country.

Probably the most powerful office in the world.

It shapes our culture, our vision to the world, how we represent ourselves.

The bully pulpit is incredibly powerful, as well as the president's authority over domestic and foreign policy.

So it's an opportunity to remember the good that can come with the office or the potential for good, as well as the potential for ill.

Some of the greatest and worst moments of our history have been around the presidents.

And so it's a real opportunity to reflect on that power and what we entrust to presidents.

- That's well said.

I find it so interesting that John Adams got his feathers ruffled over celebrating Washington's birthday, and then Nixon changed it to Presidents' Day.

And you can almost make the argument he did it, just like you said, because he's jealous and he wants to be included in that celebration, right?

Which then brings up this notion of ego and the president's ego.

I want to talk to you about your blog on Imperfect Nation.

And if you're watching at home, you can read it at lindsaychervinsky.substack.com.

The piece is titled "Public Service and Sacrifice:" A Presidents' Day Musing."

I like that title.

Let's talk George Washington here in a minute, but you begin the essay on Presidents' Day talking about ego and how most presidents run for the office because they are driven by their own personal ego, some for the power, but others because of that innate feeling that they are the only one that is right for the job.

Can you expound on that thought?

- Yeah, well, this ego concept actually gets back to what John Adams was really kind of frustrated about with those celebrations with Washington, which is that we are not a monarchy.

We are a republic.

And we elect someone to have all of this power for a set period of time, but that doesn't make them any less human.

It doesn't set them above the rest of American citizens.

So that's a pretty strange dynamic.

It makes it a little complicated to celebrate someone as somehow other or more godlike, if you will, when we think of Presidents' Day celebrations.

So a certain amount of ego is required to believe that you have the answers that are posed to the really challenging questions that come before the presidency, or to believe that you can wield that authority with safety and with wisdom.

And I think that that's not a bad thing because you do have to have the confidence that you can make those right choices.

Some of our less fortunate presidents maybe have had the ego for the wrong reasons, and they want to have the power 'cause it feels good or they believe that they should.

So it's a tricky part of the office and one that we have to grapple with in that we need someone to have that confidence, but it can be a fine line between going in a bad direction as well.

- Let's talk next about George Washington because you say in all of American history, he may have been the only president who was the only person who could have filled the position at the time.

Maybe Ben Franklin.

He was a little too old, you said, at that point.

But and history shows he may not have wanted the job either.

Such an interesting story.

Can you tell our viewers more specifically about Washington's path to the presidency, and then move into his notion of service and sacrifice?

- Absolutely.

Washington served as the commander in chief of the Continental Army for eight years for the duration of the war.

He only went home to Mount Vernon once for two nights on his way down to Yorktown for that very important battle that led to the American victory.

And he had sacrificed a great deal.

No one likes to be away from home for eight years.

And he had slept in some very uncomfortable places.

He had been in charge of keeping together the army under incredibly difficult circumstances.

Any real failure on his part or death or capture would have led to the end of the cause of independence.

So when he returned his power, his commission, at the end of the war, he was immediately lauded as the American Cincinnatus, the amazing Roman general who had left his plow to serve the nation and then had gone back to his farm.

Unlike, for example, Napoleon, who was just coming down the road, or Oliver Cromwell in the rear view mirror.

And so Washington was immediately launched into the pantheon of the greats, and he was celebrated and revered up and down the country.

And at a time when there wasn't news, there wasn't social media, having that sort of national stature was really unusual.

When he came to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 in Philadelphia, just four years after the end of the war, he was there to help give that effort some prestige and respect.

And everyone knew that if he was involved, it was probably going to succeed and he lent a real air of credibility to this enterprise.

Everyone also knew that if the Constitution was ratified, and indeed it was, he would be elected the first president because he was the only person that most Americans trusted to wield that sort of authority.

It was enormous power and they were very wary of monarchy at this period of time.

But the new nation was still quite fragile.

There were very few emotional ties between the states.

Certainly, almost no emotional ties between the people and the federal government.

So Washington served as the person that brought everyone together.

And that's what made his position so unusual and really unreplicated in American history.

- It's such a good read, this essay.

If you're watching, check out lindsaychervinsky.substack.com to read the full article.

I highly encourage you to do so.

Some may say Lincoln is the greatest president of all time.

Obviously, he is on Mount Rushmore.

What can you say about his attitude towards service and sacrifice?

- Well, both Washington and Lincoln had this concept that there was a higher purpose, a higher calling, and they were willing to sacrifice themselves, their family, their personal comfort, their fortunes, their sleep, sometimes their sanity for this higher cause.

Lincoln's position, I think, was a little bit different because he was not very well-known, not very well-experienced.

Indeed, of the incredible team that he put together in his cabinet, he was the least experienced and the least famous.

So perhaps the most remarkable to be elected.

So he didn't have that air of inevitability to him.

What made Lincoln so great was it turns out he really met the circumstances.

He had the fortitude, the wisdom, the kindness, the sort of mental I would say balance to be able to endure the challenges of the Civil War and to persevere.

So he really, history proved him to be remarkable and unparalleled, but it wasn't quite as obvious in that moment.

But I think Washington and Lincoln exemplify in Presidents' Day is that the presidency and public office is not designed to enrich someone.

It's not supposed to necessarily be fun.

They did not have a great time at that high office.

And while it's hard to ask someone to do that, that's what the position does require.

- As you look back and you put on your historian hat and you look at all the presidents up into that point, are there other presidents that stick out in history like Lincoln, like Washington, maybe FDR, presidents that were really the only man for the job at the time?

- Well, FDR is certainly one of them.

Again, I don't know that he had the same air of inevitability as Washington did, although he did win in a pretty large landslide.

But he was a remarkable figure at one of the low moments in US history.

What I admire most about FDR was his flexibility, his willingness to try new things, his willingness to say to the American people, we're trying all of this stuff, and if things work, we'll continue, and if they don't, we'll try other things.

And sometimes that's what governing requires, especially when a challenge is unprecedented.

I would add two other names to that list that I think are sometimes overlooked among the people who were there at the right time for the job.

The first is Ulysses S. Grant after Andrew Johnson's presidency, and of course, after Lincoln's assassination, which brought Johnson into office.

The United States was kind of in dire straits.

Reconstruction was already beginning to be challenged in the South.

The civil rights for newly enfranchised African Americans were under fire quite literally.

And Grant, because of his status as basically the winner of the Civil War as the commanding general of the Union troops, brought that same sort of gravitas that was necessary to hold together the nation, at least temporarily.

And the other person I would add to that list would be Eisenhower.

We know with the inevitability of history that the United States persevered after World War II and the Korean War and things continued and got better and the Cold War went the way that Americans wanted it to go.

But that period of time, the 1950s leading into the 1960s, was, again, a moment of real stress that, with the Cold War looming, with the rising tensions, it required someone who had a really steady hand who understood what it meant to fight a war and preferred to pursue diplomacy instead.

And so Eisenhower was really the man for the moment.

- Mm.

If you're just joining the program, we're speaking with Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky.

She is Grand Valley State University's Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies guest this week.

She is also our guest here on WGVU's "NewsMakers."

This notion that we're talking about about sacrifice and service, Dr. Chervinsky, fast forwarding to 2022, and you make the argument that sacrifice and service are no longer at the center of politics, but there's also a paradox that exists as well by the American people.

I love what you wrote here.

I wanna read it really quickly to our viewers.

You write, "On one hand, politicians seem consumed by greed or power.

Yet, if we take the opposite approach, it's not like we laud civil servants that do humbly serve.

It's hard to expect," as you just mentioned, "the best people to serve and to demand that they don't enrich themselves from public office, and we also don't celebrate service as a central value of our political life."

Our viewers here at WGVU are educated.

They're smart.

They understand what I just read.

But layman terms, Dr. Chervinsky, what are you getting at?

What are you getting at here?

Because it really is the heart of the essay.

- Well, in Washington's time and in Lincoln's time, Americans did expect the best men, and I sort of say that with quotes, the best men to serve and to sacrifice.

But that sacrifice was appreciated and that service was applauded and was something that was expected in society.

So there were sort of intangible rewards, at least for reputation and respect, and maybe they would lead to other positions in the future.

As a society, we've lost that a bit.

So we don't applaud the same sort of service and sacrifice.

We do a bit in the military, although it's pretty convenient for us, for most Americans, to forget about military service when it's not right in front of us.

And so it's hard to expect politicians to serve for the right reasons when we don't support those reasons.

Now it's not to say that all politicians are greedy or power-hungry.

I know that there are very good and honest people who are trying to serve.

But we can't expect more of them to pursue this line of work if we don't then credit that investment in public service and in the American republic.

- Switching gears here, a big week for you.

Your award-winning book, "The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution" now out on paperback.

Tell us about the book because it really is about the creation of the president's cabinet, right?

And this is not something that our forefathers had envisioned.

This is really the brainchild of George Washington, correct?

What did you discover when you began researching this?

And can you tell us a little bit about the history of how George Washington arrived to creating a cabinet?

- Well, thank you so much.

It's very exciting to have the paperback out in the wild and available for people.

What I discovered when I was researching is that the Constitution was written in 1787 with the very best of intentions.

But anyone knows who makes a plan, when you actually start implementing it, there has to be some flexibility and some evolution of that plan.

And frankly, the Constitution was no different.

Washington did not enter the presidency expecting to create a cabinet because, in fact, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had explicitly rejected it.

But the options they had put into the Constitution were too inefficient and didn't work to provide the sort of immediate feedback and advice that the president needed when faced with diplomatic crises or domestic rebellions, some of the really big precedent-setting issues facing Washington as the first president.

And so he created an institution that did provide the support and feedback he needed that was flexible, that could evolve in step with his needs and what he needed at any given moment.

And that precedent Washington created has continued to define the presidency because every president has worked with a cabinet since Washington, and yet every cabinet and the relationships between the president and his closest advisors look different depending on who is in office.

And the public and Congress have actually very little oversight over those relationships, which sometimes goes really well and sometimes doesn't depending who's there.

And that all goes back to Washington's creation.

So it is very much a story of creation and founding, but is also very much a story of today.

- I'm curious to know, just personally, if President Donald Trump had the most rotated cabinet in history.

It seems like he hired and fired people at will during his presidency.

Any news on that?

- Yeah, so just purely in terms of numbers, excuse me, Washington, purely in terms of numbers, Trump did have more turnover than most presidents.

Most presidents have some, especially if they're in office for eight years.

But in terms of a four-year period, Trump did have more turnover than anyone before him.

- You speak about there have been some of the worst cabinets in history, some of the best cabinets in his history.

I'm gonna put you on the spot here and ask you a couple of each in a second.

But I really am curious, too, to know, as you researched the cabinet, since there have been good ones and there have been bad ones, and how much influence it has shaped the presidency over the years, was it worth it?

Was it a good idea or was it something that we should have uninvented?

- Well, as long as we have the congressional system that we have, meaning we're not going to have a parliamentary system like they have in Great Britain, and the cabinet in Great Britain is pulled from Parliament, such that it is a ruling coalition.

I think that some sort of advisory body is essential and is probably inevitable.

Now what it looks like, I don't know.

It probably could be tweaked here and there, but I think that it is probably worth it because it actually is, I think, the best way to study a presidency and to understand an administration.

Really good presidents make the most of their cabinets and do an incredible job in managing those people and get the most out of them.

And really bad presidents don't.

And so it's a really good way to examine this office and what it means to the nation as such a powerful force.

- I said, I was gonna put you on the spot, but I'm gonna ask you kind of a different stream of question.

I'm curious to know, was there a president that could've been a much better president but had a terrible cabinet and the cabinet was actually kinda the downfall of the presidency?

And then vice versa.

Was there a cabinet that sort of lifted up a president that may otherwise not have been as effective?

- Those are great questions, a good way to look at it.

So the president that was dragged down most by his cabinet was Harding.

He himself was quite charming.

He was a pretty productive president.

He didn't get in his own way.

He had a reasonable agenda and had a pretty good chance of achieving it.

His cabinet was filled with friends and sort of political cronies, many of whom were incredibly corrupt, and he wasn't a very good manager of men.

And so he delegated a lot of authority with very little oversight.

And his cabinet really undermined his administration.

Now he didn't see the results of that 'cause he died unexpectedly, and so he didn't live to experience that downfall.

But certainly, his reputation has taken a hit from it.

On the flip side, I would argue that Jefferson's cabinet was actually one of the elements that made his presidency so successful.

Thomas Jefferson had been Washington's secretary of state and had learned what he thought would make a really good cabinet from that experience.

And he decided he didn't want the cabinet to actually meet all that much because it would lead to intercabinet squabbling and conflicting agendas.

And so he was very meticulous about crafting interactions in a way that would be productive.

He only brought together the cabinet when he thought that they would be in agreement and it would be helpful.

And so the cabinet actually stayed on really good terms with one another.

There was very little turnover.

Only when people died, basically, were they replaced.

And they served as really effective liaisons to Congress and to the public and gave Jefferson's presidency really an incredible air of success.

- Okay, Dr. Chervinsky, time for my Final Four, four quick questions.

No pressure, no right or wrong answer, but I'm gonna hold your answers to you for the rest of your life.

(Lindsay laughs) First one, this is a two-parter.

True or false?

George Washington cut down a cherry tree and admitted it because he couldn't tell a lie and also had wooden teeth.

True or false?

- (laughs) False and false.

(Daniel laughs) He did have fake teeth.

They were not completely made of wood.

They were often made of bone as well as teeth pulled from enslaved people that were on his estate and others that were paid for their teeth.

- Okay, tell me a Hollywood movie that most depicts the historical accuracy of an American president that you have seen.

- Oh, that's a good one.

I really like the movie, I think "Lincoln" does a really good job.

- I was thinking about that myself.

As I wrote that question, I was like, I bet she says "Lincoln."

- It's a good one.

- I mean, Daniel Day-Lewis, how do you go wrong?

He even had the voice down.

So as an early American historian who probably knows 95% more than the general public, have you seen the musical "Hamilton," and what did you think?

- I have seen it.

I loved it.

I know every word.

When I did see it in theater, (Daniel laughs) I wasn't expecting to see it, and so it was kind of a surprise.

And I cried the entire time for three hours because it was so amazing to see so much of my work come to life on the stage.

And I totally look like a crazy person, but I absolutely loved it.

(Daniel laughs) - I absolutely loved it.

I only saw it on Netflix or wherever it was streaming- - Incredible.

- But me and the wife absolutely loved it.

That's fantastic.

Okay, and finally, let's go pre-JFK, so we don't offend anybody.

Is there an American president that deserves to be on Mount Rushmore that is not?

Who would be your choice?

Let's say even if they don't really deserve it, who is your number five on that mountain?

- Pre-JFK?

I would go with Eisenhower.

- Okay, and one, just a couple minutes left here, wanna make sure we give you some time to plug.

Tell us first about "The Cabinet" paperback out now this week.

Congratulations.

Where can people get their hands on it?

- You can buy it anywhere you like to buy books.

So even if your local bookstore doesn't have it in stock, they can order it for you.

It's also available on Amazon and any other website that you enjoy purchasing from.

- And if you aren't busy enough, you're getting into the app development game.

Tell PBS viewers here in West Michigan about Threadable.

- Yes, so Threadable is basically like an online book club.

If you've ever read a document and wanted to ask an expert about out a word or phrasing, or if you've read a book and been like, man, I really wish I could talk to somebody about that, it is a new app designed to help you do that, basically, to have a community that you can source materials from or ask questions.

And unfortunately, it's only available for iOS users right now, but they are expanding out into Android hopefully soon.

I am running some test circles for them, sharing some historic documents.

And it's been really fun to get feedback and to see what other people have to say when they're reading texts like "George Washington's Farewell Address."

- And lastly, you have another book in the works due out in 2024.

Can you give us a sneak peek about that?

- Sure.

It is attempting to resurrect John Adams' presidency from the dustbin of presidencies.

He is actually so much more important than we appreciate because Washington created a bunch of stuff, but if someone hadn't tried to ensure that it continued after Washington left office, they would be historical relics that we would read about in a history book.

So he's really essential to ensuring the preservation of things, like the presidency, the cabinet, transitions of power, peaceful elections, all that good stuff.

- Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, on behalf of Grand Valley State University's Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies and WGVU Public Media, thank you so much for the time today.

We wish you a safe and happy rest of winter to you, and we look forward to talking to you again in the future.

Thanks again.

It was an honor and a pleasure.

- Thanks so much for having me.

This was really fun.

- Thank you.

And that will do it for this edition of "NewsMakers."

Thanks so much for watching.

I'm Daniel Booth.

We will see you again next time.

Take good care.

(mellow music)