Presidents Day Wisdom, Redux
An urgent plea on the eve of the holiday
In an essay on Presidents Day last year, I quoted an important speech from each of the two presidents whose February birthdays were at the origin of the holiday: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. With apologies for the repetition, on this eve of Presidents Day I refer back to that essay. What I examined then is even more important now.
Consider a paragraph from last year’s essay:
Washington and Lincoln were prescient. The spirit of party has indeed solidified a mass of the electorate behind a person – the 45th president – who (a) sought to overturn the constitutional order of the United States to remain in office, (b) as a private citizen seeking to be reinstalled, agitated for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” and (c) joked that were he to win the presidency he would embrace becoming a dictator, but only on “day one.” Perfectly consistent with what Washington said about a partisan “spirit of revenge,” the 45th president receives lusty approval from his supporters for proclaiming “I am your retribution” and promising to persecute his/their political enemies.
All that he and his administration already have done consistent with these points is too great to describe in this brief essay. The daily updates that Olga Lautman shares on Substack concisely describe and contextualize each act.
Now consider another resource, the weekly Democracy Index that former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance produces. Below is an excerpt from the initial instalment, which came out on February 10:
The important trend we can see coming off of these early days is Trump’s effort to reshape the power of the presidency in a way the Founding Fathers would find unrecognizable.
Leaving England, the Founding Fathers were well aware of the risk of having a president who aspired to be a dictator. They created a system of checks and balances that gives the president broad powers, while using the two other branches of the Congress and the Judiciary to limit the president’s ability—to achieve tyranny.
Today, Trump is trying to outrun the modern, post-Watergate understanding of how the three branches of government stand in relation to one another. He seeks to accumulate as much power into the Executive Branch as he can, without any apparent concern for what is lawful and what isn’t. He seems to be executing his plans and leaving it up to the courts to decide whether he is violating the Constitution or other laws, running fast and hard on all fronts to see what he can get away with. That’s what he’s doing with:
Permitting DOGE to access Treasury’s and HHS’s payment systems and data; and,
Unilaterally eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and USAID.
Joyce Vance’s very next paragraph ties back to what I wrote one year ago:
So far, the GOP-led Congress has been watching from the sidelines, happy to let him walk away with their Constitutionally mandated powers, like the power of the purse, not to mention the authority to decide whether federal agencies should exist at all.
I especially beseech fellow citizens who are members of or lean toward the Republican Party to read the excerpts from Washington’s Farewell Address and Lincoln’s Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois that I shared one year ago. And please take to heart this excerpt from my own essay.
Several months before his return to private life, President Washington warned of “the baneful effects of the spirit of party.” Over-identification with parties and bitter rivalry that ensues therefrom may “gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual” who will “turn[] this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”
Early in his political career, while a member of the Illinois legislature, Lincoln warned against the appearance of a politician of unmoderated ambition. Unsatisfied merely to serve as a congressman, governor or even president, he warned that such a one who “thirsts and burns for distinction” might seek satisfaction through tyranny.
[...]
Both Washington and Lincoln delivered advice with respect to this challenge.
Here again is Washington: “[T]he common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.”
And here Lincoln: “And when [an aspiring tyrant arises], it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.”
This is the charge to the community of the both decent and sensible: to discourage and restrain the spirit of party and to unite with one another to thwart a tyrant.
Are we up to the task?
The last three paragraphs of this post cite the quintessential question of this moment.
With arms open to any remaining Republicans who might be sane, Brody beseeches them to consider both the historical reasons for the creation and defense of our democracy and the warning signs of the current failure by their leaders in congress and others to do so.
Brody says our two presidents that we celebrate on this day were prescient, and he also proves with an excerpt from his post on this same day last year, that he was, as well.
Highly recommend.