July 4, 2026, Post I: Country Over Self redux
I’m going to write three blog posts to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s founding this long weekend, one per day. They fall into Small, Medium, and Large t-shirt sizing. Today, the Small.
I launched a limited edition podcast series called Country Over Self: Defining Moments in American History in October 2024 – at the time, I blogged about it here. The series had 13 episodes in which I interviewed prominent historians about individual presidencies and critical moments to analyze the premise of presidents choosing country over party or country over self (or not).
My hope was that, in some small way, telling some of our shared stories and highlighting some of our shared values as a country might plan some small part in bringing us back together as a nation in these polarized times. I have no idea if or how well it worked, although I did have over 50,000 downloads, but I thought this weekend would be a good time to remind people the podcast still lives on all the normal channels – Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or Amazon – and to point here to the individual episode pages on the web site.
Anyone who is interested and an American history nerd like I am – these really are great conversations. I wouldn’t necessarily call them great scholarship, but they do bring up some spine-tingling moments from our history, and some fun stories, and every single historian I had on was amazing. I was fortunate that they agreed to be on the show. Here’s the list – each page has a description, a Youtube embed, and a transcript.
- Episode 0: Welcome to Country Over Self
- Episode 1: Lyndon B. Johnson and Civil Rights with Julian Zelizer
- Episode 2: James Madison and the Bank of the United States and Dolley Madison during the War of 1812 with Noah Feldman
- Episode 3: James A. Garfield and Civil Service Reform with CW Goodyear
- Episode 4: Harry S. Truman and early recognition of Israel with Gary Ginsberg
- Episode 5: Grover Cleveland’s superhuman moral courage with Troy Senik
- Episode 6: FDR‘s consequential presidency and Eleanor Roosevelt’s intertwined career with HW Brands
- Episode 7: Gerald R. Ford’s pardon of Nixon and Betty Ford making her private difficulties public with Richard Norton Smith
- Episode 8: Richard M. Nixon and the fallacy of Country Over Self with Rick Perlstein
- Episode 9: John Adams’s rationale for virtue with Joseph Ellis
- Episode 10: George H.W. Bush’s “famous last words” campaign promise, with Mark Updegrove
- Episode 11: Abraham Lincoln and the balance of politics and sainthood, with Sean Wilentz
- Episode 12: George Washington’s many courageous acts with Alexis Coe
- Episode 13: Finale – Does of Country Over Self exist?
If you only have time for one, the finale is a good one – it’s a roundup of a longer list of presidents and has two historians on it with me with a broader analysis of the topic as a whole.
Happy 250th to our great nation!