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I enjoy reading books, especially those that teach me something or provide a nuanced understanding of things I did, or thought I did, know. I also enjoy books that make me think. This excellent historical study in presidential history by Corey Brettschneider is just such a book.
Growing up in White, working class New York suburbs of the 1950s and 60s, I learned about politics in much the same way I learned religion. Our founders were saints and geniuses and we were taught about them in near mystical terms – ways that if Republicans have their way may soon return to our classrooms in the form of Hillsdale’s 1776 Curriculum or Ben Carson’s Little Patriots Program. Of course, I have enhanced my own learning since elementary and high school. But I was surprised to learn many things. For example, I did not know that John Adams came close to stealing an election and it was only the workings of a free press that prevented it. I knew Wilson was a White supremacist but did not know the lengths he went to destroy his enemies, and how he used the Alien and Sedition Act as a means to do just that. It also became clearer to me, whether we consider the Sedition Act of 1798, the Alien and Sedition Act of 1918, or the more recent Patriot Act of 2001 that it is in times of war or threatened war when we need to be most concerned about executive power overreach. I did not know, or did not remember, that Nixon worked to prolong the Vietnam War to get elected, just as how Reagan (through William Casey and John Connolly) worked to delay the release of Iranian hostages for the same reason. I also gained a better appreciation for Ulysses S. Grant and his approach to governing.
With regard to nuances, I appreciated much of what the author revealed about Lincoln’s relationship with Frederick Douglass. However, I still doubt that a real conversion took place on account of their relationship. I felt some of what he wrote compelling and cannot imagine any intelligent person not being moved by having frequent and involved interactions with Douglass. However, I still feel that most of the actions taken by Lincoln were pragmatic, based upon social circumstances, wartime necessities and political demands. He gave up on his desire to see all Blacks freed and then sent to either Africa or Central America. He only did this after being soundly rejected by the Black religious leaders he tried to convince in a meeting at the White House. The Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves but only those in Confederate States, which he hoped would compel slaves to flee plantations and assist the Union in its military operations. A major assumption of how the South would win the war was based on the Southern attitude that its subservient slave population would provide food and provisions while young men went to war, in contrast to the North having to enlist its productive workers into battle and away from the farms and factories. Fully appreciating our history as a nation, as open and progressive as he was for his time, Lincoln likely saw Douglass as an “exceptional Negro,” which if true would belie any notion that Lincoln was transformed into a believer in equal rights for Blacks.
Growing up, I learned about John Brown and how he helped spur the North into believing slavery was wrong, an immoral institution the elimination of which would only come through war. Of course, the Civil War started only a few years after his death by hanging. Brettschneider mentions some interesting detail about his work with New England donors and his strategy sessions with Douglass, who likely saw through Brown’s insanity and bloodlust. Brettschneider does weave Brown into the story in interesting ways, but in terms of his most intense activism simply mentions that John Brown “killed five proslavery men outside their homes.” This was in response to an attack on free-staters. Kansas at the time was a territory and both the North and South were pushing emigration there to ensure either slavery, as the Southern interests wanted, or a free state, as the Northern elites wanted. Not surprisingly the reputation of the area at that time as “Bloody Kansas” was well deserved. John Brown was an enthusiastic participant in the bloodshed. He did not just kill five men. In what is referred to as the Pottawatomie Massacre, he took the men outside their homes and, to most of them and in view of their families, had the victims kneel as he split their heads in two with broadswords and then continued to shoot or otherwise mutilate them.
Towards the end of the book, the author posits that we are paying the price of real threats of executive overreach, even autocracy, due to Richard Nixon never being held accountable for his crimes. This allows for the inference that Adams, Buchanan, Johnson, and Wilson were held accountable. This is just not so. Adams retired to his estate and lived a comfortable life. Buchanan was vilified, but getting little recognition for a book he wrote and having his portrait removed from the White House was the extent of his accountability. Wilson had a stroke while President, remained in office until the end of his term. He also lived comfortably enough in retirement. And although he struggled for the rest of his life to maintain relevance, his only punishment was being denied public recognition or acclaim he sought after his Presidency. Andrew Johnson survived well enough, even winning election to the Senate post-Presidency. Given this trend it would seem that executive impunity is part of our history and Gerald Ford’s pardon simply followed that pattern in the name of political expedience.
It also seemed a bit of a stretch that the grand jury seeking to indict Nixon collectively represented a “constitutional constituency.” I have no experience with federal grand juries and to agree with the assertion that the jurors represented such a constituency would require more information about the prosecutor’s approach and representations. But as a lawyer and retired Town Judge (overseeing only one jury trial in my tenure), the patriotic fervor expressed by the surviving jurors feels more like an afterthought than something experienced in the moment. This is not to say that those on the jury were not serious and I am sure they were responsible and totally dedicated to doing justice, as most jurors are.
Brettschneider ponders as to why the dominant Nixon generation of that time kept quiet after the pardon, not insisting on justice. I think it is important to remember that the same people making up this “greatest generation” were also referred to as the “bewildered herd” by social critic Walter Lippman. He was not alone in his position that governing should be left to the experts and that citizens should live personal lives with integrity and only participate in our democracy by voting. Otherwise, they should leave governing to those who know better. A lot more was going on as well. The sixties and early seventies were a turbulent time. There was probably some sense that justice was denied, while at the same time knowing that as members of the “Silent Majority” they were a part of that injustice in terms of government benefits targeted to Whites. Also, minorities were never as consistently vocal and militant as in the sixties. In response, many who might otherwise demand justice had already retreated into private lives outside of politics and were content to remain that way. Then there were those “America, love it or leave it” types for whom Nixon was a hero. For them the injustice was that Nixon was forced to resign, not that he was not held criminally liable. This was also the post-war period when many Whites believed they were reaping the entitlements that came from serving in the war as well as having worked and sacrificed for the war economy. The prevailing attitude may well have been, “we’ve done our part and continue to live as good Americans so let the elites take care of it.”
And yet, I think the problem goes deeper still. The original Jeffersonian ideal of a Yeoman Democracy, as expanded over time to include small business, lasted longer in this country as a myth than it did in reality. The Civil War was when the transformation to the predominance of capital took off, further augmented and accelerated by subsequent wars. For a while, aspects of the decentralized owning class survived and, complemented with union labor, demonstrated that a middle class could survive within a capitalist economy. But that is no longer the case. We now have an elite class of the super-rich. Replacing the traditional middle class, I would say we have a WEMS class made up of those who extract, manage and service wealth. Everyone else, whether employed or working as an independent contractor should be considered working class. All this is to say that without vibrant, interacting and mutually reinforcing local economies, a minority benefits from the system and works ceaselessly to protect it, only correcting wrongs when absolutely necessary. Nixon’s pardon held no such compelling motivation.
Concurrently, politics and commerce learned valuable lessons from Goebbels, working to turn us all into isolated voting, producer and consumer units. In this isolation we are vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation. Of course, there are social connections but these are mostly superficial and mostly based upon readily apparent or shallow commonalities, such as race and status. This, I believe, is why it would be difficult today to see a “constitutional constituency” arise to fight oppression. I say difficult, but not impossible. Brettschneider provides us with numerous examples of how the most marginalized among us were able to overcome tyranny. One way was through the exposure of hypocrisy – not much of an option today when Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans dispense with hypocrisy say the quiet part out loud. Trump has been emboldened, and so he states how he feels and tells us the actions he will take as our dictator on day one. Another way is through religion – not too reliable in the era of compromised evangelicalism and the prosperity gospel. Instead, I would look to Brettschneider’s examples of how people like William Duane, Ida B. Wells, William Monroe Trotter and others were able to influence public opinion and hold presidents accountable. But now it would take more. We would need that kind of media exposure supplemented by direct actions such as that taken by MLK, Jr. some generations later, along with some of the more radical activists of that generation. We would need the likes of Daniel Ellsberg, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.
But if we are looking for long term change, rebuilding community and restoring substantive and productive ties between and among citizens is the only long-tern solution available to us. Centralized power, along with its corollaries of personal isolation, economic marginalization, and political disenfranchisement cannot sustain a democracy, regardless of the advocacy of a few. As stated so directly by John Dewey, democracy can only exist through community. As he wrote in The Public and Its Problems he wrote, “Only when we start from a community as a fact, grasp the fact in thought so as to clarify and enhance its constituent elements, can we reach the idea of democracy which is not utopian.” Unfortunately, if we are to sustain democracy, both short term and long terms efforts will be required.