McCullough talks Trump, history, new book

By Hillel Italie

AP National Writer

NEW YORK

David McCullough, worried about a president he calls “a cloud” on the American horizon, knows well the consolations of history.

“We’ve been through much harder times than we’re in now,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning author told The Associated Press during a recent telephone interview. “Yes, we have had problems and have had dishonest and evil people in positions of responsibility. But we have overcome those challenges, and we’re often better for it.”

McCullough, who turns 84 in July, had for decades been nonpartisan in his public life. He has praised Democrats (John Kennedy) and Republicans (Dwight Eisenhower) and hesitated to directly criticize a sitting president. His history of the Panama Canal, “The Path Between the Seas,” was cited by members of Congress from both parties as they deliberated over the Panama Canal treaties, approved in 1977.

“When I was a witness to the great debate over the Panama Canal treaties, I saw Congress at its best,” he says. “I saw people crossing party lines when they realized it was the best thing to do.”

McCullough’s latest book is “The American Spirit,” a collection of talks he has given over the past 30 years. Known for such best-sellers as “John Adams” and “The Wright Brothers,” McCullough also is one of the country’s most popular speakers, in demand at colleges, historical societies and political gatherings, including a joint session of Congress in 1989.

Like so many releases this year, “The American Spirit” was conceived well before Trump’s election, but takes on new meaning because of it. McCullough, speaking in 2016 at the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, praises the immigrants who helped build the capitol. In a 1994 commencement address at Union College, he warns against the “purists” who shun the “empirical method.” At a conference in Providence, R.I., not long after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he disputes assertions that “everything has changed.”

“But everything has not changed,” he says.

Asked what he would tell Trump should he ever have the chance, McCullough said he would urge the president to study his predecessors.

“He has to understand who has occupied that all-important role down through the years and what can be learned from their successes and failures, their conduct in the face of disappointment or in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds.”

McCullough is confident about the country, because of history – “who we are, how we got to be where we are, and all we have been through, what we have achieved.” He is currently inspired by an act of the Continental Congress from 1787, the Northwest Ordinance, the subject of a book he’s working on and hopes to have out in 2019.