News commentary

The anti-Maga talkshow: After 70 years, PBS’s The Open Mind still has it

Media | The Guardian · Ed Pilkington · last updated

For decades, the TV programme has made a quiet case for depth, civility and political conversation that doesn’t insult your intelligence

In December 1973 the public television current affairs programme, The Open Mind, held a special edition devoted to what its main guest, the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr, dubbed the “imperial presidency”.

The televised roundtable discussion was well timed. Escalating oil prices from the Opec crisis were wreaking havoc with the global economy, the Watergate scandal was blazing in Washington, and Richard Nixon was looking increasingly Richard II-like in the Oval Office as he attempted to pull off what Schlesinger called an “escape from accountability”.

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