#1685 The Presidents and Political Theater

Listening to America

Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2026

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Clay welcomes one of his favorite guests, Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, back to the program to talk about political theater in American presidential history. Thomas Jefferson walked to his inauguration, met visitors to the White House, including diplomats, while wearing his house slippers. George Washington was able to quell a potential military coup (the Newburgh Conspiracy) by taking a pair of spectacles out of his pocket and apologizing that his eyesight had deteriorated in the long years of the War of Independence. How calculated were these moments of political theater? Were they planned and maybe even rehearsed, or were they more or less spontaneous evocations of presidential character? We talk about all of the early presidents, but end in a discussion of Lyndon Johnson taking the Oath of Office on the tarmac at Love Field in Dallas on the afternoon of JFK's assassination. This episode was recorded on November 19, 2025.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Clay Jenkinson. This is the introduction to this week's podcast. Dr. Lindsay
0:04.6	Chervinsky is back after an absence. We've been both crazy busy. She more than I, maybe,
0:09.3	but I've been as busy as I have ever been. Just back from England where I saw my daughter
0:13.8	take her doctorate, her defil ceremony at the Chaldonian Theater on the Broad Street in Oxford, which was built under the direction of the great British architects,
0:27.2	Sir Christopher Wren, who also designed more than 60 churches in the aftermath of the fire of London,
0:33.8	and he also built St. Paul's Cathedral with its magnificent dome.
0:39.2	He's one of the great architects and he built, or at least inspired the Sheldonian Theater.
0:43.9	He's also said to have helped to inspire the Wren Buildings, Christopher Wren Buildings,
0:48.9	at the College of William and Mary.
0:50.6	Anyway, I've been on the road.
0:52.1	It's been crazy.
0:52.9	I'm here.
0:53.8	And just getting ready,
0:55.6	you know, kind of winding down from this year, doing a lot of writing and working on a novel
0:59.5	more about that some other time and lots of other projects writing and my weekly work for
1:05.7	listening to America. You can sign up for our weekly newsletter, which is free. Our courses are there. My schedule of
1:13.3	public appearances is there. Our book club is there. You should join that. You can also contribute to
1:19.1	listening to America at the level that you feel comfortable with and so on and so forth. But
1:23.5	today's program with Dr. Chervinsky, who was in her office at the George Washington Presidential Library, was about political theater.
1:31.4	When a politician in this case presidents do a gesture of some sort that as weight evokes a certain idea of how that person conceives themselves. So just to take a really obvious example, George Washington at the Newburgh conspiracy,
1:52.0	when officers are sort of threatening a military coup, sort of half-heartedly, but still they're very upset.
1:58.0	He comes in, and as Lindsay describes it so well in this program at a certain point,
	...

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