The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It
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- Expected Jul 2, 2024
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- Pre-Order
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Publisher Description
American presidents have often pushed the boundaries established for them by the Constitution; this is the inspirational history of the people who pushed back.
Imagine an American president who imprisoned critics, spread a culture of white supremacy, and tried to upend the law so that he could commit crimes with impunity.
In this propulsive and eminently readable history, constitutional law and political science professor Corey Brettschneider provides a thoroughly researched account of assaults on democracy by not one such president but five. John Adams waged war on the national press of the early republic, overseeing numerous prosecutions of his critics. In the lead-up to the Civil War, James Buchanan colluded with the Supreme Court to deny constitutional personhood to African Americans. A decade later, Andrew Johnson urged violence against his political opponents as he sought to guarantee a white supremacist republic after the Civil War. In the 1910s, Woodrow Wilson modernized, popularized, and nationalized Jim Crow laws. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon committed criminal acts that flowed from his corrupt ideas about presidential power. Through their actions, these presidents illuminated the trip wires that can damage or even destroy our democracy.
Corey Brettschneider shows that these presidents didn’t have the last word; citizen movements brought the United States back from the precipice by appealing to a democratic understanding of the Constitution and pressuring subsequent reform-minded presidents to realize the promise of “We the People.” This is a book about citizens—Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Daniel Ellsberg, and more—who fought back against presidential abuses of power. Their examples give us hope about the possibilities of restoring a fragile democracy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Political scientist Brettschneider (The Oath and the Office) provides an essential survey of crises of democracy provoked by American presidents. He opens the account by describing anti-democratic activities and attitudes commonly associated with former president Trump—including plotting to undermine the certification of an upcoming election's results, considering journalists enemies, using the attorney general against political foes, and making common cause with white nationalists—then reveals that the actions he's summarizing were actually committed by five previous presidents. In chapters vividly recreating those crisis points, Brettschneider profiles the presidents—John Adams, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and Richard Nixon—and the people who opposed them. Adams persecuted journalists and likely formulated a plot to steal the 1800 election; Buchanan, Johnson, and Wilson all used federal power to roll back African Americans' civil rights. Though Brettschneider contends that those four presidents were meaningfully opposed by an informed and politically active citizenry "galvanized on behalf of democracy," he suggests that Nixon, who consistently acted as if above the law, offers a different lesson—"that the recovery of democratic principles is not inevitable." Brettschneider savvily articulates how the structures that enabled Nixon remain largely in place today, and also offers captivating insight into how subsequent administrations recovered from each crisis. The result is an invaluable breakdown of present-day concerns in an illuminating historical context.