George Washington's statue in the U.S. Capitol rotunda is one of many that keep a silent watch on Congress's goings-on. Americans are getting ready to elect new legislators on Nov. 5, returning either Joe Biden or Donald Trump to the presidency.J. Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press
David Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of U.S. politics.
They speak to us still.
As the United States approaches its Fourth of July celebration, the words of great Americans often fill the air. These men and women no longer live among us, but their dreams still mark a country that will commemorate the 248th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which speaks of truths that were 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.”
In those words Thomas Jefferson argued that governments derive their powers from “the consent of the governed.” At a time when that consent seems grudging, when all Americans do not feel equal, and when happiness is more pursued than realized, it may be appropriate to contemplate the thoughts of great Americans over the years – and to measure their aspirations and expectations with today’s realities and actualities.
Washington's inauguration in 1789 brought the young republic its first elected president.U.S. Library of Congress
George Washington (1732-99)
Commanding general in the American Revolution and first president of the United States
For generations, Americans have told their children the (almost certainly apocryphal) story, promoted in 1800 by the early American author Parson Mason Locke Weems, that the six-year-old Washington hacked his father’s cherry tree with a hatchet and then, beset by guilt, said, “I can’t tell a lie, Pa; you know I can’t tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet.”
Thus began the American celebration of truth-telling and the belief that American presidents do not lie.
Today, in the wake of Richard Nixon’s attempts to escape blame for the Watergate scandal, George W. Bush’s assertion that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and Donald Trump’s repeated falsehoods, we know that American presidents do not always tell the truth.
Washington, who entered the presidency with a pure but naive sense of purpose and what the historian Richard Norton Smith has called “an image of republican dignity,” would deplore the mendacity that has become the currency of modern American civic life.
(He would probably brush off suggestions that he padded his expense account.)
James Madison would come to be known as 'Father of the Constitution' for his role in framing the founding legal principles of the United States.U.S. Library of Congress
James Madison (1751-1836)
Principal author of the Constitution and fourth president
Modern defenders of the press often quote Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
These commentators almost always forget that the third president also said, in his memoir, that “the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”
But his successor in the White House, James Madison, is perhaps a better sentinel of the power and prerogative of the press.
“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both,” he wrote in a 1822 letter to the politician W.T. Barry. “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
Words to remember the next time someone slings the phrase “fake news” or calls members of the press the “enemy of the people.”
Abraham Lincoln, who led his country through a civil war over slavery, spoke often of reconciliation and national unity.Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
Abraham Lincoln (1809-65)
16th president
Lincoln is almost always remembered principally as the commander in chief of the Union during the Civil War and as the liberator of the enslaved. But he also had a strong strain of civility and an almost romantic sense of American national unity. Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address (“we here highly resolve … that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”) and his 1865 second Inaugural Address (“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right …”) are customarily regarded as his greatest speeches. But as the United States struggles with grave divisions, and talk of civil war, it might be prudent to consider Lincoln’s views of the bonds that unify the country, and his vision of hope in his 1861 first Inaugural Address:
“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Frederick Douglass, commemorated in this mural in Boston's South End, escaped slavery in 1838 and became a leading spokesman for the abolitionist movement.Charles Krupa/The Associated Press
Frederick Douglass (1818-95)
America’s greatest abolitionist and most eloquent 19th-century spokesperson for the rights of Black people
He would have little, perhaps nothing, to say on July 4, 2024. Indeed, on July 5, 1852 – 11 years before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and a day after the customary American holiday – he explained why he refused to celebrate American Independence Day. In a speech at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, N.Y., he delivered remarks titled “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine,” he told the assembly organized by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. “You may rejoice, I must mourn,” adding, “I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.”
Social reformer Susan B. Anthony laid the groundwork for women's suffrage in the United States, though she would not live to see its arrival at the federal level in 1920.S.A. Taylor,/U.S. Library of Congress
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)
Crusader for women’s rights
Arrested for voting when women were denied the ballot, one of the forces behind The Revolution newspaper that pressed for women’s rights, tireless crusader against female suffering and for female suffrage, she would today deplore the fact that it was a cause for celebration that the number of women in the Congress now has reached 28 per cent, a record.
“The one purpose of my life has been the establishment of perfect equality of rights for women – civil and political – industrial and educational,” Anthony wrote in 1901. “We have attained equal chances in nearly all of the colleges and universities – equal chances to work – but not equal pay. We have school suffrage in half the states, taxpayers’ suffrage in a half-dozen states – Municipal suffrage in one state – Kansas – and full suffrage in four – Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho – and hope and work in faith till the end.”
Her face appears on the United States dollar coin. Women now earn 73 cents for every dollar men earn.
Theodore Roosevelt, celebrated for his deeds in 1898's U.S. invasion of Cuba, spent his presidency fighting against the corporate monopolies that dominated the Gilded Age.Reuters
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
26th president, who was known as a “trust-buster,” the early 20th-century term for those who sought to break up popular monopolies in railroads, sugar and other powerful businesses
In all, Roosevelt’s administration busted up nearly four dozen major corporations in seven years. In his remarks at the Music Hall in Cincinnati in 1902, the Republican president suggested how he might regard the power of modern Big Tech and the elements of the current American tax system that favour the wealthy and business interests:
“Whenever great social or industrial changes take place, no matter how much good there may be to them, there is sure to be some evil; and it usually takes mankind a number of years and a good deal of experimenting before they find the right ways in which so far as possible to control the new evil, without at the same time nullifying the new good.”
He added: “The biggest corporation, like the humblest private citizen, must be held to strict compliance with the will of the people as expressed in the fundamental law.”
Charles Lindbergh's views on Jews and U.S. involvement in the Second World War would colour his legacy as a pioneering aviator.AFP via Getty Images
Charles Lindbergh (1902-74)
The first aviator to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic
Lindbergh remains an American hero for his signal 1927 flight. But he also is remembered for his devout isolationism before the U.S. entered the Second World War and for views widely characterized as sympathetic to the Nazis. But he won broad opprobrium for a speech he delivered in Des Moines, Iowa, two months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
“No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany,” he said in September, 1941. “But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences.”
He continued: “Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation. A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not.”
Lindbergh said Jews’ “greatest danger to this country” was “in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.”
The remarks are a reminder that antisemitic sentiments have long antecedents in the U.S. (Antisemitic incidents rose by 392 per cent between 2013 and 2022, according to the Anti-Defamation League in a study conducted more than a year before the recent spike in antisemitic episodes.) But they also are a reminder that hatred has many colourations, for Islamophobia also is a scourge that remains alive in the 21st century.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, seated at left, takes in the view from Quebec City’s Citadel in 1943 with Mackenzie King and Winston Churchill – then prime ministers of Canada and Britain – and Alexander Cambridge, Earl of Athlone, Canada's governor-general. FDR, first elected in the Great Depression, led the United States through all but the final few months of the Second World War.The Canadian Press
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945)
32nd president who led the country through the Depression and Second World War
Roosevelt is remembered for telling the Depression-ridden country that there was “nothing to fear but fear itself” and for setting out the “Four Freedoms” he considered the basic possession of all humankind. But perhaps the single greatest statement about the purpose of the presidency came from Roosevelt before he even assumed the position.
“The Presidency is not merely an administrative office,” he said in an interview with The New York Times published two months before the 1932 election. “That’s the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership. All our great Presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.”
His remarks identifying the presidency as a forum for moral leadership takes the deeds of Washington and Lincoln and establishes them as the standard of ethical trusteeship that defines the presidency at its best. This concept provides us with the prism through which to view America’s chief executives and prompts us to wonder whether political character is revealed in private acts or public performance.
It provides us, too, with a reminder of the complexity of that question, underlined by the contradictions in several presidents: Warren G. Harding as a serial adulterer while calling on Alabama to abandon its devotion to segregation; FDR as a conductor of a private liaison with Lucy Mercer Rutherford while leading the Allies in its successful battle to end Nazi tyranny; John F. Kennedy repeatedly betraying Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy while taking the country to a moral high ground on civil rights and peace; and Richard Nixon as the leader of a massive cover-up while ending American isolation with China and promoting détente with the Soviet Union.
Harry Truman took this erroneous headline in good humour on Nov. 4, 1948, when the Chicago Tribune reported too hastily that Thomas E. Dewey won the presidency.Byron Rollins/The Associated Press
Harry Truman (1884-1972)
33rd president, who swiftly gave diplomatic recognition to Israel
On the advice of his haberdashery partner Edward Jacobson, Truman, in 1948, made the United States the first country to recognize the statehood of Israel. At the time, the new country was a place of refuge for European Jews fleeing Europe after the Holocaust and a refreshing beacon of idealism in a world still recovering from bitterness and brutal warfare. It also was the home of Palestinians whose nationhood was not recognized and whose people were marginalized.
Three-quarters of a century later, Israel remains independent and the Palestinian question remains unresolved – a 22,145-square-kilometre swath of contradictory hopes and dreams.
This was not entirely unanticipated. Two days after Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, the 1948 Republican presidential nominee, reaffirmed his position that the Jewish people were entitled to a homeland in Palestine, Truman weighed in with a statement that could be issued from the White House this weekend:
“Proceedings are now taking place … looking toward an amicable settlement of the conflicting positions of the parties in Palestine. In the interests of peace this work must go forward. A plan has been submitted which provides a basis for a renewed effort to bring about a peaceful adjustment of differences. It is hoped that by using this plan as a basis of negotiation, the conflicting claims of the parties can be settled.”
Under the banner of a 'New Frontier,' John F. Kennedy – who took office in his early 40s – hoped to energize the postwar United States with social, educational and economic reforms.George Tames/The New York Times
John F. Kennedy (1917-63)
35th president
Three months before the Massachusetts senator became the youngest person (at 43 years, seven months) elected to the presidency, he stood before delegates to the 1960 Democratic National Convention at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, unveiled his vision for the policies he labelled as the New Frontier, and urged the country to move past the older generation of Americans who had led the country through the Great Depression and the Second World War.
“Too many Americans have lost their way, their will and their sense of historic purpose,” he said. “It is a time, in short, for a new generation of leadership – new men to cope with new problems and new opportunities. All over the world, particularly in the newer nations, young men are coming to power – men who are not bound by the traditions of the past – men who are not blinded by the old fears and hates and rivalries – young men who can cast off the old slogans and delusions and suspicions.”
Kennedy acknowledged that his Republican foe in the 1960 election, Richard Nixon, 47 years old, also was a young man. “But his approach is as old as McKinley,” he said, referring to the GOP president who served from 1897 to 1901. “His party is the party of the past. His speeches are generalities from Poor Richard’s Almanac. Their platform, made up of leftover Democratic planks, has the courage of our old convictions. Their pledge is a pledge to the status quo – and today there can be no status quo.”
All that stands in contrast to November’s election, when the two major-party nominees will be 78 and 81.
John Glenn's work in the Mercury space program would help the United States to keep up with, and eventually exceed, the Soviets in the 1960s space race.NASA, Fred Jones via The Daily Press/AP
John Glenn (1921-2016)
Mercury Seven astronaut who was the first American to orbit the Earth
In two space flights, a quarter-century in the Senate, and as an unsuccessful contender for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination, Glenn often spoke of the challenge of space travel and of centuries of human dreams of visiting the far reaches of the universe.
“I suppose we all have dreams that we would like to see fulfilled in our lifetime,” Glenn said. “The important thing is to keep working toward those dreams.”
The sadness that Glenn took to his grave was the modesty of American space dreams after the 1969 landing on the moon. No American – no human – has been to the Earth’s satellite since Apollo 17 visited more than a half-century ago. The next manned visit to the surface of the moon is scheduled for 2026, a year after when Artemis II, with Canadian Jeremy Hansen aboard, is slated to circle the moon.
Robert F. Kennedy campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in Philadelphia in 1968, two months before he was shot and killed in Los Angeles.Warren Winterbottom/The Associated Press
Robert F. Kennedy (1925-68)
Brother of a president and slain 1968 presidential contender
The New York senator understood a threat that is greater now than it was when he was attorney-general from 1961 to 1964. “What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant,” he said. “The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.”
Now his son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is an Independent candidate for president with views that might be characterized as extreme. So much so that his sisters Rory Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, and former lieutenant-governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend of Maryland, and his brother, former representative Joseph P. Kennedy II of Massachusetts, issued a statement saying, “Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment. Today’s announcement is deeply saddening for us. We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country.”
Richard Nixon would resign as U.S. president just a year and a half after this 1972 visit with Pierre Trudeau in Ottawa.John McNeill/The Globe and Mail
Richard Nixon (1913-94)
37th president, and the only one to resign from office
“I’m not a crook,” Nixon asserted during the Watergate scandal. Hundreds of books have since been written that in essence examine that notion.
“Of course he was a crook,” Jill Wine-Banks, a Watergate prosecutor, told me. “His guilt was proven by all the evidence at all the trials, by his acceptance of a pardon, and by the public record. He was a crook.”
Now former president Donald Trump has been convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the trial over providing hush money to a porn star – and faces three more legal battles weighing whether he is a crook.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister whose non-violent struggle for racial equality earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Four years later, he was assassinated at a Memphis hotel.Al Drago/Getty Images
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-68)
Civil-rights leader
In his most famous speech, delivered at the 1963 Civil Rights March in Washington, King said, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”
Since he made those remarks, the country has continued to struggle with racial issues, hate crimes have continued to be committed, and hate speech has continued to contaminate the national conversation.
King died at the hands of an assassin with his dream unfulfilled. It is unfulfilled still.
Gerald Ford dances with Queen Elizabeth II at a state dinner in 1976, two years after Nixon's resignation propelled him to the presidency.Ricardo Thomas/Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library/U.S. National Archives and Records Administration via REUTERS
Gerald Ford (1913-2006)
38th president
The only president not elected by the voters – he was appointed to fill a vice-presidential vacancy left by Spiro Agnew and ascended to the presidency in 1974 with Nixon’s resignation – gave a remarkable State of the Union Address in 1975.
He remains the only president to stand in the chamber of the House and to proclaim, “I must say to you that the state of the Union is not good.” He went on to say, in words that are appropriate to our own time, “Some people question their Government’s ability to make hard decisions and stick with them; they expect Washington politics as usual.”
An impatience with “Washington politics as usual” is the animating theme of our time.
George H.W. Bush, at right with Brian Mulroney in 1986, was Ronald Reagan's vice-president before serving one term as president.Ron Poling/The Canadian Press
George H.W. Bush (1924-2018)
Former vice-president and 41st president
In a letter to his children while chairman of the Republican National Committee during the Watergate years, Bush said he expected they were subject to ribbing from their friends. But he looked ahead, telling them:
“Civility will return to Washington eventually. The excesses condoned by the press will give way to reason and fair play. Personalities will change and our system will have proved that it works – more slowly than some would want – less efficiently than some would decree – but it works and gives us – even in adversity – great stability.”
Today Bush is remembered as a political figure who personified civility. Like so many in this American Independence Day meditation, he would be disappointed in the country he helped shape.
Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press
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