Lessons Learned

How would you advise students to prepare for the future if they wanted either to be in politics or to write about politics?

The joke has been for a while that if you want to be in politics, from the moment you make that decision, don't do anything controversial or interesting, let alone immoral.

Clinton is the exception that proved the rule.

I guess. I like the idea of using your years in college as a time to expand what you know, and not as a time to be narrowly, professionally focused. Obviously, if you want to be a scientist, you've got a series of building blocks, and it wouldn't be bad to actually have more scientists in politics. But sometimes people are very professionally driven. I think that especially in journalism or politics, knowing a lot about how to write and speak, and knowing a lot about history, can be much more helpful than studying the techniques of this or that. I respect journalism schools, and know a lot of good people at them. But I like the idea of journalism schools after college, and to be a sort of generalist while you're in college. And then also just do the stuff. One of the beauties of newspaper writing, especially, is that anybody can be a newspaper writer, anybody can learn how to write a sentence. You have opportunities in college papers; a lot of small towns are very short of good people to write for newspapers; you have a lot of opportunities to do that.

The other thing is just obvious, which is have some experiences; don't necessarily commit yourself immediately to a path. Do some things. Have some [experiences] you can draw on when you start doing this kind of work.

One final question, short answer, because of the time. How do you see problems ahead of the time? It's very clear in your work that somehow news strikes you, and you're grappling with a problem before ideas about it have reached fruition. You have been working on religious-based organizations, and you were doing that before it became a national conversation in the way it has with President Bush's new initiative. Tell us briefly, what is it? Is it the reading? It is your knowledge of history? Or is it just keeping informed?

Well, I hope what you said is true. Michael Harrington, the great American socialist, had a book where the subtitle was, "The History of the Future." I have always enjoyed trying to think, sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully, about how this time would look [in retrospect] in ten years. If I were reading a book about this moment, what would that book say about what happened afterward? It's just a habit of mind, for better or worse.

But, you know, some of it is luck, and some of it is just when something you happen to care about also happens to become an important issue. I've been interested in the faith-based thing for some time. I don't pretend I saw the huge interest that now exists in it coming, and yet it just struck me as natural that we were going in that direction; it was very clear that we were renegotiating the question of faith and public life. It was clear that the religious Right had an effect in making people think about this, but also that there was a revival among moderate and progressive religious people, an intellectual revival and a revival of activism. You could see that out there, and then the rest just happened more quickly because of Bush's election.

E.J., thank you very much for this fascinating conversation about your career, and why ideas have really mattered to you and why they matter in politics.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you. And thank you very much for joining us for this Conversation with History.

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