It’s not every week that something as monumental as the changes in Egypt occur. It is too early to tell what the long term implications will be. For certain, things will not be the same . . . we can hope they will be better but there are other possibilities. There is no such thing as a lasting political vacuum and how the void is filled may be of even greater significance than the overthrow of Mubarak. History doesn’t repeat itself but, as Mark Twain said, it often does rhyme. We shall see.
Last Sunday, at a lecture sponsored by The History Museum of Western Virginia, Jon Meacham made a number of interesting points about history. Among his many other interests are the lives of Presidents. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography with his 2008 book, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. His presentation for the History Museum was entitled, “History Now: Politics and the Presidency in Perspective.”
Against the sharp contrast of the situation in the Middle East, he outlined four things that he thought marked our most successful Presidents. First, each had told a story and did it in such a way it caught the hearts of the people. Ronald Reagan, whose 100th birthday just passed, was used as an example. The shining city of the hill and the restoration of a sense of American pride were key points in his story. He wasn’t called The Great Communicator without credentials. Not yet can we judge from a historical point of view what Reagan’s true legacy will be, but he has become a near-iconic figure since his death. President Obama has his story line: Hope and change. Whether that will be enough to give him a second term remains to be seen. In history that most of us have forgotten, Andrew Jackson saved national unity by telling the story of what America stood for and that swayed the country away from the Nullification Act, which would have been the beginning of the dissolution of the Constitution and disintegration of the Union.
Second, successful Presidents have gone directly to the people with their message. While working with Congress, Presidents have had to gather public opinion behind them. The forcefulness of Franklin Roosevelt carried the day when isolationism was on the rise. He did this by educating and explaining, the third mark of a successful President. The fireside chat motif made everyone feel as though FDR was explaining it directly to them and they understood it. I remember as a child seeing a chat in a movie theater. Roosevelt showed a map of Europe with the Nazi invasions spreading like black ink across country after country. He told all Americans to go buy a map so they could follow what happened. Every store that sold maps ran out of them the first week. I understood that something big was happening, although I was upset that my movie, Snow White¸ was delayed. That Jimmy Carter tried a similar approach which had an entirely opposite effect spoke to the difference in the times they served, as well as the strength of their public personae.
The final point is these Presidents have been perceived as bigger than we are. An example of the opposite might be brought up to contradict that point. Harry Truman, during his tenure, was portrayed as a failed haberdasher but history has proved that opinion remarkably wrong: He definitely was bigger than we, although it wasn’t apparent until long after he had left office.
In a time of great partisanship, it is difficult for those Presidential traits to succeed. Meacham commented that the two parties do have fundamental areas of disagreement but that on the truly basic issues, they are much the same. In a memorable phrase, of which he had many, he described the Democrats and the Republicans as being afflicted with extreme narcissism over small differences. When the chips are really down, then national interests are usually served. The leadership for that, of course, comes from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Without a goodly measure of cooperation between the legislative and the executive branches then the whole system of checks and balances is out of whack. Hyper-partisanship acts as grit in the gears of government.
In post-Mubarak Egypt we can hope they will resist the rhetoric of the quick fix that will come from the extremists and realize in America we have been at this for 224 years and are still struggling to get the Constitution right. As Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst possible form of government . . . except for all the rest.” Thank goodness America, with all its faults, is the longest surviving republic in history. We can hope others will follow and Egypt will be the first of many.
