John Wilsey: Our resilient republic

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, July 24th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. WORLD Opinions commentator John Wilsey on finding some precedent for “unprecedented” history

JOHN WILSEY: Well, it finally happened. After weeks of vowing to stay in the race as the Democratic nominee for president, Joe Biden bowed to rising pressure from those calling on him to quit. He threw his hat into the ring in 1988, 2008, 2020, and, for a while, in 2024. Now he’s thrown in the towel.

In the wake of Biden’s exit from the race and the attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life on July 13, we continue to hear a cacophony of apocalyptic diagnoses of the state of our union. We are in unprecedented times; our democracy is under threat; civil war is imminent. Considering the context of post–World War II politics, it is easy to become dismayed by the dramatic events of the summer of 2024.

Still, we should take the long view of things. The American republic will celebrate its semiquincentennial anniversary in 2026. That’s a mouthful, but in our 250-year history, Americans have weathered all manner of internal and external threats. Witnessing the unprecedented is a lot more ordinary for Americans than it is for other civilizations that have longer histories, like the British, French, or Chinese.

Many of us are familiar with the contentious election of 1800 between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. The election of 1860 also comes to mind as calamitous, the year that the Democratic Party split in two and Abraham Lincoln defeated three candidates that November, precipitating secession and the Civil War. Despite these and many other crises, our constitutional system has endured.

The last time Americans saw a sitting president withdraw from a reelection bid was on March 31, 1968. President Lyndon Johnson went on television from the Oval Office to announce: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” Four years after winning the largest plurality of the popular vote since 1820, Johnson’s political capital was spent after the failure of his policies at home and in Vietnam. His departure from the race sent the Democratic Party scrambling to secure a nominee who could win in November. Momentum was with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, Johnson’s bitter enemy, until he was cut down by an assassin on June 5, 1968.

The Democratic National Convention in Chicago that year devolved into chaos over divisions in the party resulting from controversies over American policy in Vietnam, and civil rights. The nation was also reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. in April, and Kennedy just weeks earlier. The party settled on Vice President Hubert Humphrey as its nominee, who lost to Richard Nixon in a closely contested race that November. Even then, the American constitutional system endured.

The summer of 2024 is a difficult time, to be sure. But Americans have faced difficult times before. Our federal constitutional system has proven its resiliency in times of civil war, depression, world war, and a host of other crises.

Republican and Democratic candidates this year will compete and the votes will be counted after Nov. 5, all according to constitutional norms. There is always the chance that some unforeseen event will forestall what we have come to expect. But up to this point, our constitutional system is running along just fine. For that, we should be thankful.

I’m John Wilsey.

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