I’ve lived through my share of American Presidents and I’ve studied a few more. Of all the things we’ve come to expect from the leader of the free world, the primary purpose of the President must be to protect America from all threats, foreign and domestic.
How did they do?
Abraham Lincoln kept the country intact in the face of a violent insurrection meant to protect the right of states to enslave human beings and keep them as property.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized the evil the Nazis represented and raised an army of free citizens to wipe them from the face of the earth.
John F. Kennedy faced down the Soviets when they placed nuclear weapons less than ninety miles from our shores, averting the World War III.
Ronald Reagan saw the existential threat of the nuclear arms race and brought the Cold War to an end.
Lyndon Johnson understood the twin threats of racism and poverty and set out to build The Great Society and created Medicare and Medicaid.
George W. Bush studied the history of The Spanish Flu as early as 2005 and put together a detailed plan to prevent and contain pandemics, down to the detail of protecting against a mutation of a coronavirus.
Barack Obama also developed his own plan to prevent and contain pandemics.
I don’t agree with everything each one of these men said or did. For some of them, I disagree with most of what they did. Some defended the United States better than others. What can’t be disputed is that when faced with a threat to the American people, none of them minimized the threat. They didn’t deny the threat nor pretend that it would simply go away on its own.
None of them actively alienated American allies nor courted American enemies. Lincoln, Kennedy and Johnson forced America to reckon with the original sin of slavery. Roosevelt and Obama took the poverty of the average American seriously and set the stage for recoveries from historic economic crises. Kennedy and Reagan went toe to toe with the Russians—and won. Roosevelt did not draw a moral equivalence between the Allies and the Axis and say “there were fine people on both sides.” At least three of them provided more healthcare for Americans instead of trying to take it away.
And all of them believed in America. All of them, in one way or the other, believed that America truly was a shining City on a Hill. All of them believed that America was greater united, not divided. All of them believed that out of the many can come one.