Interview with Historian Eric Foner 'Life Is Getting More Difficult for Americans'
SPIEGEL: Professor Foner, almost 80 percent of Americans believe that the country under President George W. Bush is on the wrong track. Do you think that the "American spirit," the conviction that the United States is exceptional in the world, is in danger?
Eric Foner: Well, temporarily perhaps. We never had such a large number of people, at least if you believe public opinion polls, saying that the country is on the wrong track. The reason is a combination of the war in Iraq, but even more the feeling of economic insecurity. Globalization, de-industrialization, declining real wages, even for people who have jobs, life is getting more difficult. Then I think a complete loss of confidence in government. Whoever becomes president, they are going to have to convince voters that they can actually make a difference. For all the crimes and mistakes of the Bush Administration, I think one of its greatest failings was just utter incompetence.
SPIEGEL: What parallels to today's crisis do you see in American history?
Foner: Well, of course, the Great Depression and the 1890s before that was another period of tremendous social change and economic problems. Maybe the 1970s is the best example. You had this combination of various economic crises plus the Vietnam War. It is quite different from now because people had enormous confidence in the ability of the government to solve problems.
SPIEGEL: People need to be given back this confidence, but under conditions that are much more difficult.
Foner: The problems may be more deeply rooted now; the problems caused by globalization seem to be beyond the capacity of any one president. There are so many trends that are affecting everyday life that are supranational. We cannot stop jobs from going to China or India or Mexico. The nation itself is in some ways no longer the primary actor on the world stage. That is what you have to be discussing, even though nobody is really talking about it.
SPIEGEL: What does American history teach us: In times of great insecurity, do people ask for a candidate with a lot of experience or do they look for change?
Foner: It is change that people want at this time. I see this as an election very similar to 1980 where you have someone running for reelection like Carter, but Reagan is promising change. McCain is saying you can't trust Obama. He's new, he's inexperienced, and he's too extreme. That's what Carter said about Reagan. Until the weekend before the election, the polls were even. It was three days before the election when everyone decided we've got to change things. That probably will happen again.
SPIEGEL: In Europe people tend to call on the government in times of economic insecurity. Why doesn't this happen in the US?
Foner: First of all, in Europe it is the ordinary people who call on the government. Here, it is the rich who call on the government. Look at what is happening with investment bank Bear Stearns or mortgage lenders Fannie Mae. They have no qualms about turning to the government to rescue them. That is hundreds of billions of dollars involved there and the phrase here is, they are too big to fail. It is quite ironic.
SPIEGEL: Similar situations have come up in Europe. But why don't ordinary people in the US demand more help from the government?
Foner: During the New Deal, during the 1960's people did look to government. We have had two generations now of demonization of government. Bill Clinton played an important role when he said the era of big government is over. That was one of the most important sentences because it meant the Democrats are not going to go back to their notion that the government should be helping you out. Clinton used the same arguments as the Republicans. I think now that we are in this economic situation, people are looking more to government to deal with some of these problems, the regulation of the financial system, some kind of national health system. It won't be like in Europe, but we can't just keep the situation going where 50 million people have no health care.
SPIEGEL: Do you really believe every American will soon have health insurance?
Foner: If McCain is the winner, it will be a problem but I think it will come to America because business wants it.
SPIEGEL: Today big corporations bear the cost of health insurance themselves. Small companies, however, frequently do not insure their workers.
Foner: Correct, Wal-Mart for example has been running big ads, arguing that the government ought to be taking care of health insurance not private corporations. For companies like General Motors these costs are now simply too enormous.
SPIEGEL: Let's go back to this special American conviction that we talked about in the beginning. What justifies this belief in American exceptionalism?
Foner: It is deeply, deeply rooted in our culture. Some people say what is most exceptional about America is the strength of the belief in American exceptionalism. It has both religious roots and secular roots. The puritans wanted to create "a city on the hill" ...
SPIEGEL: ... a sort of holy Jerusalem ...
Foner: ... the example of a good, righteous society where the free person is the person who subjects himself to the proper moral code.
SPIEGEL: And what are the secular roots of this belief?
Foner: It really comes out of the American Revolution and the idea that this nation is a symbol of liberty in a world of tyrannies. The people who have created the nation had a great deal of chutzpah, as we say in New York. That is to say a couple of million people on the edge of civilization not just creating a new nation state, but saying this is going to be the model for all of mankind, the empire for liberty.
SPIEGEL: Do you think America is the symbol of liberty for the whole world?
Foner: Yes and no. Our country and our history have imbued Americans with a very powerful sense of individual liberty in ordinary life. Of course, other people also cherish freedom. The downside is that we do not think that we have anything to learn from anybody else because we are so exceptional.
SPIEGEL: The strong combination of religion and politics is characteristic for the United States. Is this part of the American foundation myth?
Foner: No, the Founding Fathers didn't want religion interfering with government and they didn't want government interfering with religion. Look at Abraham Lincoln, the greatest of our presidents. He was never a member of a church. He used religious language, but in his second inaugural address, a great speech at the end of the Civil War, he says, "We don't know God's will." Today, every politician knows God's will. Everybody has a direct line. God has just told me to vote for this bill.
SPIEGEL: How did this mixing of religion and politics come about?
Foner: The first one who really started doing this was Jimmy Carter. By now religion is no longer a private thing. At the beginning of the 80s I was in England and I watched the Conservative Party convention. Margaret Thatcher was in power, Ronald Reagan was coming into power in the US. The difference was really interesting. The Republican convention here was suffused with these religious preachers while the British conservatives did not mention God at all. God was not a member of the Conservative Party the way he seemed to be a member of the Republican Party.
'Freedom Has Been Privatized'
SPIEGEL: How do you explain the difference between Europe and the US?
Foner: I think here is the irony of American history. We don't have an established church. When you have an established church nobody takes religion as seriously as we do here. We have a free market in religion. The religious groups are competing with each other. Maybe our Founding Fathers made a big mistake. Maybe we should have had an established church.
SPIEGEL: We talked about the Americans' confidence that they are the symbol of freedom. You wrote a book about the concept of freedom in American culture. How did its meaning change over the centuries?
Foner: Freedom today in terms of how ordinary people think of it is entirely different from what the Founding Fathers meant. Back then, freedom was the right to participate in the political nation, the right to vote, to be a citizen. Today, freedom has been privatized. It is how you dress, what your sexual orientation is, choosing your own life. That's fine. But that is not what Thomas Jefferson was talking about.
SPIEGEL: Jefferson, the principal author of the American Declaration of Independence, talked about mankind's inalienable right to liberty but was himself a slave owner.
Foner: At the time they believed owning slaves made you free. Slavery reinforced freedom, and freedom reinforced slavery.
SPIEGEL: How so?
Foner: Free was the man who was autonomous, who didn't depend on someone else for his living. In other words: a man working for wages his whole life is not really free. That is why Jefferson said, you have to own land. Southerners said, -- and they weren't being hypocritical -- they said slavery is the foundation of freedom because if you own slaves, you are freer yourself.
SPIEGEL: The Founding Fathers declare freedom to be the right of man but a great many people do not benefit in their own country. Is that not hypocritical?
Foner: You are quite right. It is not a contradiction, however, if you are convinced that some are unworthy of freedom. Freedom reinforces racism and discrimination against omen. Today freedom has become genuinely universal in this country. But to do that required the greatest crisis in our history, the Civil War, the civil rights movement, the women's movement. It requires tremendous struggles to expand the boundaries of freedom -- that's what history teaches us. What people think freedom is 50 years from now is not going to be necessarily the same as what they think about it today.
SPIEGEL: Did the concept of freedom also change after the civil rights movement, after 1968?
Foner: This notion of diversity as essential to freedom is now deeply rooted, especially among a younger generation. I have a daughter who is in college, and she was born long after the civil rights movement. She has grown up in a world of tremendous ethnic diversity -- and she doesn't even notice it.
SPIEGEL: That is a reason for hope.
Foner: It is. At the same time non-white Americans still face barriers. Real estate brokers won't show a black person a house in certain neighborhoods. Banks won't give loans to black people on the same basis as white people. When black people claim greater rights, people say: you can vote now, you no longer have segregation, so what are you complaining about?
SPIEGEL: You have written a standard work about the missed opportunities after the American Civil War. What should have been done differently?
Foner: Let me start by giving you a number. In all of American history there have been five black senators, including Barack Obama. Two of them held office during Reconstruction, immediately after the Civil War. That war not only destroyed slavery. The Constitution was rewritten to give black people full legal and political equality for the first time.
SPIEGEL: But soon the situation changed.
Foner: It was an amazing experiment in genuine democracy. And it created a tremendous backlash among whites: the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, violence, terrorism. After 10 years the war-torn country came back together again. But the reconciliation was on the basis of white supremacy. The fact that 186,000 black men fought for the North in the Union Army was completely forgotten.
SPIEGEL: Until 1965 many blacks in the South could not vote.
Foner: Yes. With the Voting Rights Act of 1965 blacks could vote nationwide but the civil rights movement did not need any new laws or constitution. The federal government went in and registered all these people and let them vote. It wasn't like South Africa where they had to write a new constitution. We had everything. So it was a missed opportunity for a hundred years.
SPIEGEL: Now the country has a presidential candidate who is not white. What is your assessment?
Foner: The fact that a black man can be the presidential candidate for the major party is a highly significant thing. There is nobody alive today who was a slave and there is nobody alive today who owned a slave. Nonetheless, obviously slavery is still kind of a raw wound in American life. When I was growing up it barely appeared in history books, at most there would be a picture of some happy slaves playing the banjo. More recently, there's been much more attention. But still, here is an interesting fact. There is no museum of slavery in the United States. We have a Holocaust Museum. But what do you think we would feel if in Berlin, there was a giant museum about slavery and nothing about the Holocaust? When you talk about slavery, a lot of white people feel it is an accusation against them.
SPIEGEL: They feel guilty?
Foner: No. They don't feel guilty. They feel that they are being told they should feel guilty. But the reason that, despite great progress, African-Americans, are still considerably behind whites in income, in life expectancy, health, is not because of slavery. It is because of all the discrimination and inequality of the last century. It is things that are still going on today. Even though I am a historian, I think the obsession with slavery is probably wrong. It directs attention away from the poor education of black children in urban ghettos. We do need to know history. But you shouldn't use it as an excuse not to deal with today's problems.
SPIEGEL: What does this mean regarding the election?
Foner: Now, we will see. Maybe Obama will lose because a lot of people will find it impossible to vote for a black man, although I don't think so. Race is significant but it's not the only thing on people's minds. Obviously, Obama does not define himself as the black candidate even if black people see him that way.
SPIEGEL: But not all. Some do not think he is one of them.
Foner: They thought that at the beginning. Once it became apparent that he might actually win, blacks rallied around him. That is also a generational question. Obama does not represent the old generation which is a product of the civil rights movement, but a younger group. They benefited from it enormously but they weren't part of it. They also appeal to white voters. Some of these older ones don't trust that. They think they are moving away from the race-based black politics.
SPIEGEL: In his now famous speech last March, Obama told the African-American community: You are not only victims. You must also change. It was surprising, coming from someone who wants to get elected.
Foner: That is addressing white people who want to be sure that he is not just some black nationalist. Just as when McCain goes and talks to the civil rights group the NAACP, he is not going to get any votes there. He is reassuring well-intentioned suburban white voters who don't want to think of themselves as racist and who are saying, I can vote for him, and I am not a racist. So all these things are symbolic.
SPIEGEL: What can black Americans expect from Obama?
Foner: What he could do is give them more money. That would help. I hate to be old-fashioned. The biggest problem for poor people is the lack of money. The thing that has most injured black people in the last 30 years is deindustrialization. One of the greatest accomplishments of the civil rights movement was getting people access to good industrial jobs. But these jobs disappeared in the 1980s because companies moved overseas. It is not a race problem but blacks hurt most.
SPIEGEL: In Europe Obama is very well liked and he helps to improve the image of this country. How much do Americans care about what foreigners think of their country?
Foner: It depends on how you pose the question. If you ask people, do you care what French people think about us, the answer is no. But if you asked people, would you like to gain the respect of people in other countries -- sure.
SPIEGEL: The neoconservative political consultant Robert Kagan says that whoever will be president of the United States, his credo will be: What's good for America is good for the world. Is that so?
Foner: I would turn it around. What is good for the whole world is also good for America. Let's go back to the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson said, we are writing it to show "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." We don't have that anymore. A good example is our health care system. It is completely broken. But nobody says, let's look to Germany or England or France to see what they do about it.
SPIEGEL: What would happen if a president today would suggest that?
Foner: He would be attacked. Four years ago the democratic presidential contender John Kerry was attacked because he said about Iraq that we need to find an international threshold of approval. Despite all this talk, however, many Americans are not happy with the fact that we are despised so much in the world. I have a house in the country, in Connecticut. It's in this rural area. It is moderate Republican. And a local official said to me, I am embarrassed when I travel overseas to tell people I am American. A lot of Americans don't like that we are seen as bullies, aggressors, as people who don't play by the rules.
SPIEGEL: An important reason for the bad image is the Iraq War.
Foner: A situation like in the 70s. We had lost our way and we were doing things that no one else approves of. The problem now is that McCain is trying to channel Reagan by saying we have to be strong and build up the military. But economically, that would be completely unviable.
SPIEGEL: Obama also wants to expand the military and deploy more troops to Afghanistan.
Foner: Yes, he does. I think Obama is digging himself into a rather deep hole.
SPIEGEL: In what way?
Foner: The Democratic position such as it is on the war in Iraq is it's bad because it's the wrong war, we should be fighting in Afghanistan. History suggests that getting into a big war in Afghanistan is a bad idea. Many countries have tried it and they haven't succeeded. If Obama does it, his presidency will be destroyed. In six months, it will be Obama's war, not Bush's war.
SPIEGEL: Professor Foner, thank you very much for this interview.
Interview conducted by Karen Andresen and Cordula Meyer.