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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host David Axelrod.

John Meacham has one of those resumes that just makes you want to shake your head.

A prodigy in journalism of Pulitzer Prize winning historian and biographer, television commentator and part-time professor of theology, and he's still in the prime of life.

I sat down with Meacham yesterday as the hours ticked down on the campaign to talk about this moment and its meaning, and much more. Here's that conversation.

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John Meacham, it's great to see you at an auspicious time for our country. I thought, who better to sit down with than someone who chronicles history.

So welcome and tell me about the moment we're in.

I hope it's auspicious. That is more of a optimistic and forward leaning characters.

You know, but I say auspicious because there is a certain majesty to the America people raising their voices.

I see these images of all these people waiting online sometimes for eight and nine hours to make sure that their vote is counted.

I'm inspired by it as I was when I started my passion for this as a little boy.

Yeah. Well, I was six when I first went to a polling place. My grandfather was on the ballot in a municipal election in Chadenogatena, and the spring of 1975.

And my main memory of election night was they had these really nice square cupcakes. That were really good.

But I had the same reaction. I used to go to the fire hall at the foot of the part of missionary ridge where Braxton Bragg's headquarters had been on the top of the hill.

The Confederate general who got run out of there by grant and precisely I grew up 800 yards from the spot at which Sherman was able to go into Georgia.

And about three miles away from chief John Ross's house. So to me, history was always quite tactile. You know, it was right there.

There is a majesty to this. And you don't have to be as hopelessly romantic as the two of us are to appreciate the remarkable and durable experiment.

My slight caveat is I like you believe this is an existential moment. I think the character of our democratic lowercase D institutions is very much on the ballot.

And I wasn't and for whatever it's worth, I wasn't a doom sayer four years ago. I understood at least intellectually that enough people believed, as it turned out, 46.1% of them believed that the consensus that had run really from FDR through Obama was not commensurate with what they wanted.

And it wasn't being in their view responsive to their needs. And they were willing to take a flyer on a wildly unconventional president.

But the evidence of the last three years is that I don't see how there is a rational pro Trump case at this point.

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