The Jefferson Scholars Foundation and the Shadwell Society welcomed Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham, the author of recent The New York Times bestseller “Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power,” Friday evening to Old Cabell Hall.
Meacham has written various books covering American political history, including “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House” (for which he won the Pulitzer Prize), as well as “Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship” and “American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation” — both were bestsellers. Meacham is currently the executive vice president and executive editor at the publishing firm, Random House, and was formerly the editor of Newsweek.
Meacham focused on Jefferson’s platform in explaining his methodological approach to history.
Jefferson and many of his peers viewed politics and culture as “a seamless garment,” and this outlook is something today’s society has lost, Meacham said.
“Politics is something we either want to outsource or we want to push it aside because it seems sadistic, ugly, fatally compromised,” Meacham said.
The founding fathers, Meacham said, believed the public should embrace politics, Meacham said. He said as the political atmosphere in Washington becomes more complex and tense, he looks to Jefferson’s philosophy in solving current challenges and concerns.
Jefferson understood “disagreement was not a problem to be solved but a reality to be managed,” Meacham said. Compromise in the “purest sense of the word,” he added, was the key to Jefferson’s success.
Meacham pushed back on the notion that the United States' founding fathers have some aura of inaccessible greatness, noting Jefferson himself had flaws, most notably his hypocrisy involving slavery.
“I think if we look them in the eye, we can learn something,” Meacham said. “Assess them for what they were and then hope that the future looks at us for the same measure of importance.”
Despite many of Meacham’s misgivings of today’s political culture, he noted a significant change in today’s college students.
“There is a keener sense of globalism than was true in my time, and my experience is that the students are very engaged of the situation around the world,” Meacham said.
Fourth-year College student Kate Travis, a Jefferson Scholar who attended the event, said Meacham’s position on history was relevant within our own historical context, “a compelling moment for U.Va. and for the United States.”
Meacham is currently working on a book about President George H. W. Bush and editing a book by former Vice President Al Gore.
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