Surviving Bad Presidents – The Bulwark

The Presidents and the People
Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy
and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It
by Corey Brettschneider
Norton, 358 pp., $32.50

SPEAKING ON THE PERPETUATION of our political institutions, a young Abraham Lincoln began by noting that “we find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.” We have inherited these fundamental blessings, he said. How shall we maintain them? What challenges do we face in perpetuating America’s republican experiment? What dangers can we expect to face? Lincoln insisted the danger to America was internal: “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Compared to the wisdom and sobriety of the mature Lincoln, the young Lincoln of the Lyceum Address seems overly dramatic—yet his insistence that the greatest threat to America’s form of government has been internal is altogether right. As president, Lincoln was forced to save the republic against Southern states who sought to dissolve the Union in order to preserve slavery, while he acted not only to preserve the Union but to make it “worthy of the saving” by eradicating slavery.

Today, as we witness a president with utter disregard for our political institutions, who seems intent on destroying them and retreating from the promise of American ideals, who on January 6th encouraged the very sort of lawless mob that worried Lincoln, it can feel as if the republic is doomed. Indeed, that the American people have opted to “die by suicide.” But while the current moment is unique, America has faced serious threats to our institutions and constitutional values from presidents before. Not just disagreements about the proper ordering of constitutional values, or over creating and reforming America’s political institutions, but threats that struck at the very heart of constitutional government.

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