How Did We Get Here?

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The struggle to preserve the Republic has always been fraught with challenges. The emergence of conflicting political parties, opposed by the founders, and President John Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts, which curtailed First Amendment rights, made Franklin's warning at the Constitutional Convention—"a republic, if you can keep it"—seem prophetic. In the twentieth century, America faced significant trials: economic depression, World War II, McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iran-Contra scandal, and the Iraq War, all of which gave rise to demagogues, fueled by the expansion of mass media. This was not the leadership envisioned by the Founding Fathers. The resistance to demagoguery persisted through the anti-Communist fervor of the 1950s and the Vietnam War, but the latter set the stage for Richard Nixon's election in 1968 and the subsequent Watergate scandal, which tested democratic institutions. Nixon's resignation in 1974 prompted Gerald Ford to declare, "Our long national nightmare is over." Yet, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 posed a new threat. How did previous politics and administrations lead to this current assault on democracy? Robert Dallek examines a century of modern leadership, from Teddy Roosevelt to today, highlighting the personalities and voters behind each administration. His cautionary tale emphasizes that while change is constant in history, the direction of that change is ultimately in the h