In an extraordinary op-ed this past Sunday, all 10 living former secretaries of defense wrote that elections and the peaceful transfer of power are the “hallmarks of our democracy.” Attempting to use the U.S. armed forces to undermine either, they added, would take the country “into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.” This was meant as an explicit rebuke—and warning—to a president attempting to overturn the election, undermine constitutional order, and cling to power. They concluded by appealing to America’s long history of democratic transitions.
The turn to the past to illuminate the present is a recurring American impulse. Thomas Ricks opens his latest book by quoting from Ralph Ellison, who, upon accepting the 1953 National Book Award for Invisible Man, stated that “whenever we as Americans have faced serious crises we have returned to fundamentals; this, in brief, is what I have tried to do.” Facing a similar crisis after the 2016 presidential election, Ricks, a journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of several works on contemporary national security affairs, attempted to do the same. Feeling bewildered by the country he thought he had understood, Ricks wondered, in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s election, what kind of nation he was living in, and whether he truly understood its founding principles or its subsequent trajectory.
