THE REVELATION ACCORDING TO JON.

A number of writers took the surprise Donald Trump victory in 2016 as occasion to hold forth on How Horrible That Was.  Among those was Vanderbilt's Jon Meacham, who confessed to writing The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels precisely because (p. 13) "the [then] American president so rarely [rises to the occasion].  A president sets a tone for the nation and helps tailor habits of heart and mind.  Presidential action and presidential grace are often crucial in ameliorating moments of virulence and violence  -- and presidential indifference and presidential obtuseness can exacerbate such hours."

I wonder if Mr Meacham has occasion to refer to those words, and apologize for what he was complicit in midwiving.  We'll get to that in the course of Book Review N^o. 3 eventually.

By way of background, he has always come off as a smarmy, condescending grifter, perfectly suited to appear on the late evening propaganda shows that still bill themselves as comedy.  He's part of a cadre of scribblers who traffic in the role of "presidential historian," which neither implies nor is implied by holding an academic post, and which includes the likes of the long-departed Theodore H. White; and the book's dedication is to Evan Thomas and Michael Beschsloss, two more of the tribe.  For the most part, the presidential historians share the world view of the Credentialed Elite who see Governance by Wise Experts as something to be desired, and Successful Presidents as holders of the office who advance that cause.  Thus, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson rate high in that cadre's estimation, while Calvin Coolidge or Ronald Reagan ... do not.

It will be up to future genuine historians, perhaps in another three centuries, to sort those rankings more precisely.

If at this point you've concluded, dear reader, that I wasn't impressed by Soul, you may depart.  I provide specifics below the jump.

Before we get to a few observations on the book, let us verify that "Soul of America" and "better angels" come up in utterances by President Porchlight for a reason.

I wonder if Biden’s early March meeting with Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jon Meacham, and other historians, discussing Biden’s potential to be an transformative, era-defining president, stirred up Biden’s ambitions and/or delusions of grandeur. Axios reported, “They talked a lot about the elasticity of presidential power, and the limits of going bigger or faster than the public might anticipate or stomach.”

That's National Review's Jim Geraghty, last October, and he brings the reality check.

But the problem is, not every Democrat in the House and Senate was elected with a mandate to permanently expand the cost, size, and scope of the federal government in American life. Some were elected because they weren’t the party of President Trump. Opposing Trump was the only thing every Democrat could agree upon in 2020. And if Democratic primary voters had really wanted a president with ambitions like these, they could just as easily have voted to nominate Bernie Sanders

But Biden wants to be remembered as a transformative president. Well, so far he’s managed to transform his once-high job approval rating.

No, but if you put a craven man in a room full of court intellectuals who agree on what a "transformative president" does, that's what you're going to get.  It's possible that the doddering ficus wanted to be Bernie Sanders with a better haircut anyway.

Biden, instead of merely trying to revive the Roosevelt-esque New Deal, "could be calling for a full Green New Deal that focuses entirely on renewable and low carbon energy— which does not include natural gas, which does not include any fossil fuels going forward — and makes a clear signal that all fossil fuels will be ramped down to nothing within the scope of the next 10 years." [Leeds ecological economist Julia] Steinberger pointed out that he could push for America to implement targets to get the United States to net zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century.

Perhaps those dreams have been discredited for another forty years, and none too soon. Rooting out the cult of the presidency that Mr Meacham worships at will take more work.

It is a cult, as that "a president sets the tone for the nation" suggests.  Who benefits from the worshippers constituents accepting the premise?  Why, holders of the office.  Woodrow Wilson, page 37:  "He is the representative of no constituency, but of the whole people.  When he speaks in his true character, he speaks for no special interest."  Franklin Roosevelt, page 12: "[The Presidency] is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.  All our great Presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified."  John Kennedy, page 13: "For only the President represents the national interest.  And upon him alone converge all the needs and aspirations of the country, all departments of the Government, all nations of the world."  Lyndon Johnson, page 249: "The job of the President is to set priorities for the nation, and he must set them according to his own judgement and to his own conscience."   And the government shall be upon his shoulders; and his name shall be called: wonderful counselor.  What was I telling you about Credentialed Elite groupthink, dear reader?

That the president might not be, and the Framers never intended him to be, head of government (consider Barack Obama contending with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, or Dwight Eisenhower facing Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson) gets short shrift in the book, although Mr Eisenhower gets to make that case, page 39, with "I can think of nothing more boring, for the American public, than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their television screens," and with "[Leadership] is persuasion -- and conciliation -- and education -- and patience.  It's long, slow, tough work."  All he had to do was keep George Patton and Bernard Montgomery and Omar Bradley focused on the main prize.  That's been lost on numerous recent presidents, who are more about scolding and hectoring and condescension and impatience.  No wonder voters tend to gridlock the national government whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Turning to the current manifestations of government failure, we have, at page 230, wisdom from Lyndon Johnson.  "Unless we have the Republicans joining us and helping us, we'll have a mutiny in this goddamn country, so we've got to make [civil rights] an American bill and not a Democratic bill."  At page 239, we have a private meditation.  "If I just send in federal troops with their big black boots, it will look like Reconstruction all over again.  I will lose every moderate, not just in Alabama but all over the South."  Perhaps, in retrospect, he just should have lanced the boil and taken the heat, as "jackbooted government thugs" has become a right-populist complaint in the following years.  On the other hand, perhaps subsequent presidents, too high on their own supply, have been more willing to do things that their base hails, the rest of the electorate be damned.

Although The Soul of America draws on episodes that tried presidential patience (civil war and reconstruction, emergent technocracy, depression and global war, and internal strife during and after the American High) and endorses the notion of that transformative president, it concludes with an observation from Harry Truman, page 265, "The country has to awaken every now and then to the fact that the people are responsible for the government they get.  And when they elect a man to the presidency who doesn't take care of the job, they've got nobody to blame but themselves."  "Gooder and harder, adds H. L. Mencken."  Mr Meacham adds his own caution, page 265.  "American presidents are not mythic figures.  They are human beings, with good days and bad days, flashes of genius and the occasional dumb idea, alternately articulate and tongue-tied.  If we are sympathetic rather than blindly condemnatory or celebratory, we will, I believe, help create a more rational political climate."

The beginning of that healing might be in recognizing that politics too often divides, and that the political sphere, including the to-ing and fro-ing of presidents and legislative leaders, ought be circumscribed.

(Cross-posted to Fifty Book Challenge.)