Photo courtesy of Vecteezy.com
It should be clear by now (if it wasn’t before) that Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for President of the United States and Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate.
Yes, there is still a primary process to play out, mostly meaning that it will continue until Niki Haley decides to throw in the towel. Trump’s nomination is all but certain despite the still pending civil lawsuits, the multi-million-dollar judgments against him for both sexually assaulting E. Jean Carrol and continually defaming her, and the criminal trials still pending in Georgia, Florida, Washington, DC, and New York. Those things are sure to affect some voters — meaning some independents and Republicans — but who knows how many.
But even if you put all the indictments and lawsuits aside, there could not be two more different candidates for the presidency in terms of both personality and governing style. Biden likes to build consensus, while Trump wants to punish perceived enemies. Biden wants more people to vote, while Trump wants fewer voters. If Biden’s economic policies favor working people, Trump favors the wealthy. If Biden would generally prefer to talk about policy, Trump prefers to talk about Trump and his many trials, tribulations, and enemies. If Biden generally believes in the rule of law and the Constitution, Trump doesn’t seem to think much of either. If Biden’s inclinations are democratic, Trump’s seem to be authoritarian.
Should I go on? To some degree, I think, why bother? The issues in this election, at least in terms of policy, don’t really matter too much. Yes, border security is an issue. Abortion is an issue. Ukraine. Israel. Medical care. Climate. There are plenty of areas for agreement and disagreement. And, yes, they are all important, but none are the real issue on which this election will turn.
The real issue is democracy itself, whether a majority of the citizens of this country (along with most of the electoral college) believe in its republican (small “r”) or democratic (“small “d”) roots. The issue is, do we believe in the Constitution, that to swear to uphold the Constitution means exactly that. Do we believe in “the rule of law.” Do we believe in the aspirational notion of our country’s founding, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
For someone who has had a lifelong interest in American history and politics, I’m embarrassed to say that my knowledge of early American history has been sadly lacking. The history I learned mostly in elementary school was New York State’s version of American mythology. George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and said he couldn’t tell a lie. Paul Revere ran around one midnight shouting, “The British are coming, the British are coming.” Thanksgiving was a happy meal in which Puritans and Indians (in the days before they were called Native Americans, or Indigenous Americans, or whatever) joined together. And Peter Minuet bought Manhattan for twenty-four dollars.
High School was different but not much better. Ninth-grade American history was mostly reading things written by the Founding Fathers and their English and French contemporaries. In the 1950s, history was mostly about names and dates. This battle here, that battle there. This great man (almost always men) wins; that great(ish) man loses. It was true of many of the history courses that I took in college as well. It was (and still is) as far from what history really is as can be imagined.
It wasn’t until my 80s that I discovered true early American history. For some inexplicable reason, I bought Pulitzer-winning historian David Hackett Fischer’s “Albion’s Seed” and read all 900 pages of it. I was hooked by an almost anthropological description of the folkways and mores of the four major groups of English settlers in the New World. How different each of these groups was from each other despite the fact that they came from the same country, how different their views about liberty, order, the relationships between men and women, how they should design their houses, and the government of their communities. What made the book even more fascinating is how those folkways continue to find resonance in much of the country today; you can feel echoes of the feelings and attitudes of those early settlers in today’s political and social discourse.
I’ve become an unabashed Fischer fan. After reading Paul Revere’s Ride, all I can say is that if you think that Revere just got on his horse and rode around shouting, you’ve got a lot to learn about how resistance to the British in Boston was planned, how many riders actually were enlisted to alarm the countryside, and how groups of citizens took themselves to Lexington and Concord to confront the British in the victorious opening salvos of the American Revolution.
At the moment, I’m neck deep in Fischer’s Washington’s Crossing, which digs deep into the events surrounding perhaps the most iconic painting of the American Revolution, that is George Washington standing in a boat as it is being propelled across the icy Delaware River in the last days of 1776. The disasters that befell the American revolutionaries in the battles for New York, Long Island, New Jersey, and Rhode Island came close to ending the rebellion. Washington’s army was in tatters, having been decimated by casualties, disease, and defeats by volunteers going home at the end of their tour of duty.
But then, new recruits — volunteers all — came from Virginia, Massachusetts, and the other colonies. Taking lessons learned from earlier victories in Lexington and Concord, independent-minded American generals harassed the powerful Hessian mercenary army based in Trenton and arrayed in defensive positions along the Delaware, causing them to be continually on guard, chasing after small bands of Americans who attacked and then disappeared in the fog exhausting the enemy causing their morale to plummet.
Only then did Washington cross the Delaware, taking the main body of his army with him and deploying them in a three-sided attack on Trenton in the midst of the dark, ice, mud, cold, and fierce storms. Even if some of the plans of his meticulously planned operation fell apart, enough was successful that the Hessians suffered a resounding defeat, a great victory was achieved, and the course of the war permanently changed.
What is most interesting to me, though, was not the victory in and of itself. It was the way Washington, along with the various officers of local and state militias, were able to find a way to work together despite their very significant differences. If some of the militias from, say, Pennsylvania made decisions in a fairly democratic manner, with soldiers voting on plans, those from Virginia were highly structured, with all decisions being made by officers. Somehow, Washington was able to get almost all these different groups to work together, not by ordering them but by convincing them to agree; he made no major decision without first gaining consensus within his military council. In other words, by compromise, the very foundation of American democracy, a government in which different groups with different philosophies have enough in common to find their way to decisions. This, not surprisingly, was very different from their British counterparts, where all decisions came from the top.
Looking at the contemporary political scene, I’d say that Biden’s inclinations are more like the Americans of that not all-that-long ago time, and Trump’s more like the British. Is that too far-fetched? Maybe. But think about it.
But let’s go back to December 1776 when the Americans were desperate — when they had suffered grievous losses, and the revolution was on the verge of collapse. Congress, sitting in Philadelphia, decided to give Washington complete control of the army without having to consult Congress about decisions before acting. Volunteers from further away colonies — farmers, tradesmen, laborers, craftsmen, merchants, lawyers, doctors — all individual citizens, all ordinary people, decided to join in the fight.
And then there was Thomas Paine. Paine was born in England and emigrated to America in 1774 at the age of thirty-seven. A supporter of the revolutionary movement in America, he became a writer and editor. In December 1776, in the midst of revolutionary despair, he moved to Philadelphia and wrote and published (anonymously) a pamphlet, “The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776,” which was widely distributed and read throughout the colonies. On Washington’s orders, it was read aloud to every soldier under his command. It served as one of the elements that galvanized the spirits of the colonies and its soldiers as they crossed the Delaware to face their enemies.
I bring it up because it seems as meaningful today, in today’s political climate, in this year’s presidential election as it was in 1776. It is as pertinent to today’s Republicans and Independents who are uneasy about Trump but also to all those Democrats who seem to be uneasy with Biden or unhappy with some of his policies. I would say to them all that there are more important things at stake. And so, to Thomas Paine and “The American Crisis.”
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of every man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: — it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to set a proper price upon its goods, and it would be strange indeed if such a celestial article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
Thank you Michael. Worrisome and frightening times indeed.
Bravo once more, Michael. Spot on and very insightful, as always. If only all Americans had paid more attention in History class, or if they even think about things now in terms of things past.