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Photo by Jon Anderson
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Jon Meacham speaks at the 2026 Southern Voices Festival at the Hoover Public Library in Hoover, Alabama, on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026.
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Photo by Jon Anderson
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Jon Meacham's latest book, "American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union" sits for sale at the 2026 Southern Voices Festival at the Hoover Public Library in Hoover, Alabama, on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026.
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Photo by Jon Anderson
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Jon Meacham signs books at the 2026 Southern Voices Festival at the Hoover Public Library in Hoover, Alabama, on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026.
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Photo courtesy of Lance Shores/H
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Jon Meacham speaks at the 2026 Southern Voices Festival at the Hoover Public Library in Hoover, Alabama, on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026.
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Photo courtesy of Lance Shores/H
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Jon Meacham speaks at the 2026 Southern Voices Festival at the Hoover Public Library in Hoover, Alabama, on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026.
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Photo by Jon Anderson
People gather in the Hoover Library Theatre in Hoover, Alabama to hear Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Jon Meacham speak at the 2026 Southern Voices Festival on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026.
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Photo by Jon Anderson
People check out books for sale at the 2026 Southern Voices Festival at the Hoover Public Library in Hoover, Alabama, on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026.
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Photo by Jon Anderson
People check out books for sale at the 2026 Southern Voices Festival at the Hoover Public Library in Hoover, Alabama, on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026.
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Photo by Jon Anderson
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Jon Meacham speaks at the 2026 Southern Voices Festival at the Hoover Public Library in Hoover, Alabama, on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026.
The political “crisis” facing the United States of America, with a president and climate leaning toward authoritarianism, is not beyond repair, the Pulitzer Prize-winning political historian Jon Meacham told an audience at the Hoover Public Library Friday night.
The “great American experiment” of Democratic capitalism has proven to be very resilient because it was set up with checks on power, Meacham told a packed crowd of about 250 people in the Hoover Library Theatre as the keynote speaker for the 2026 Southern Voices Festival.
“The United States of America is a moral undertaking,” Meacham said. “It recognizes that we are fallen, frail and fallible people and also puts at the very heart of the experiment an ideal — that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” he said, quoting the preamble to the Declaration of Independence.
“This sentence has changed more lives around the world and continues to do so,” Meacham said. “Every generation can judge itself by the degree to which we have lived up to that sentence or the degree to which we have fallen away from it. … Some generations have done it pretty well. Some generations have not.”
The cares and concerns of people that have sent a particularly unconventional president to the pinnacle of power can’t be dismissed,” Meacham said. “But what can also not be dismissed is that we have checks and balances for a reason.”
The entire point of the “American experiment” is to see whether reason and deliberation can prevail against force and accident, Meacham said. Up until the creation of the United States of America, power was seen in a vertical manner with people at the top controlling those beneath them, but in the United States, the idea was that the power is shared horizontally by the people and not by an authoritarian leader, he said.
The United States currently is in a place where the culture of the country has been corroded, Meacham said. President Trump has been different than any other president because he is the first U.S. president to challenge the results of an election and try to override them just because he didn’t like them and didn’t win re-election, Meacham said.
“You cannot love your country only when you win,” he said, reminiscent of former Vice President Mike Pence’s decision to certify the results of the 2020 election that declared Joe Biden a victor over Trump. “You have to find the willingness to say something bad about your friends if the facts warrant and good about your foes if the facts warrant.”
The good thing about history is that we can learn from it, said Meacham, who described himself as neither a Democrat or Republican, but a constitutionalist. The United States of America has a soul, he said.
“Except in the most extreme cases, I don’t believe that a soul is either wholly good or wholly bad,” Meacham said. “I believe it is an arena of contention in which our worst instincts do battle against our better angels, and we hope and pray and work toward getting a 51-29 record for the better angels.”
The founders of the country realized that people are driven by appetite and ambition, Meacham said. “The constitution is a theological document,” he said. “It’s based on the Calvinist insight that mankind is depraved.”
The reason it’s so hard to get things done in American government is because the founders assumed that most of what people want to do can be wrong and that there must be checks on those inclinations, Meacham said. Reason and deliberation must prevail over force and accident, he said.
The Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma — a place where state troopers and police attacked civil rights protesters in 1965 — is a prime example of a place where the forces of liberty and authoritarianism met, and the forces of liberty eventually won that battle, Meacham said.
Meacham said he sees hope for the future.
“The good news is we have the means to endure. It’s the same thing that drove us in the past,” he said. “It’s a desire to be a little bit better than the last guys. Loving your neighbor is not easy. If it were, Jesus wouldn’t have had to command it.”
The most important thing America ever did was engage in World War II and collectively as a nation — political and business leaders and civilians — become warrior to defeat tyranny and totalitarianism around the world and usher in the greatest economic period in the history of the world, Meacham said.
But the United States didn’t enter World War II until five days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“We only did it because Hitler declared war on us,” he said. “We were dragged kicking and screaming into the greatest thing we ever did. If they can get it right, we can, too. You don’t have to be perfect.”
The answer to overcome an inclination toward authoritarianism lies in three things: curiosity, candor and empathy, Meacham said.
People have to be curious and know as much as they can about the past and present, he said.
“Withrawal and exhaustion are not options. You cannot concede the field,” Meacham said. “The American Revolution gave political manifestation to the human notion that human nature should not be about obeying the one, but empowering the many. That shift I think was one of the most important shifts ever.”
People also need to be straightforward with one another, and that can be hard, he said.
“We can polite ourselves into oblivion,” Meacham said.
Winston Churchill once said that people can face any misfortune as long as they are convinced that those who are in charge of their affairs are not deceiving them and are not deceiving themselves and living in a fool’s paradise, Meacham said.
Finally, we have to be empathetic with one another, he said.
“If we are not able to see each other as equal contenders, as equal citizens, then it doesn’t work,” he said. “We are much more likely to lend a hand if we know that someone is going to offer us one, too.”
Meacham provided everyone in attendance at Friday night’s speech a copy of his new book, “American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union,” which was just released Feb. 17.
David Chumney, a Tuscaloosa resident who came to hear Meacham speak Friday night, said he had read some of Meacham’s writings in the past and knew he was a good writer and historian, but “I never knew he was that funny … I didn’t realize he was a standup comic.”
Meacham kept his Friday night audience laughing throughout the night with insightful quips.
Meacham’s comments also made Chumney want to read more of Meacham’s work, such as his biography on George H.W. Bush.
“I think he has perspective that we need at this point in time because he did offer some hope to an audience that doesn’t see much,” Chumney said.
The 2026 Southern Voices Festival continues Saturday with an authors conference featuring veteran psychological thriller writer Hank Phillippi Ryan, mystery writer Megan Abbott, historical fiction author Ariel Lawhon, debut fiction authors Rickey Fayne and Robert Gwaltney, horror writer Lindy Ryan and romantic comedy author Katherine Center.
