History in the making

The past two weeks have been, for lack of a better word, interesting for Jason Williams who teaches history and government at Saratoga Middle High School.

Within the span of a week, the country witnessed the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump and the decision by President Joe Biden not to seek re-election. Were these events to occur during the school year, rather than in the middle of summer, Williams likely would speak with his students about both of them. Not just from a historical perspective, but as a lesson in government.

Similar, but different

After several weeks of reports that leaders of the Democratic Party were encouraging Biden to drop out of the race following his televised debate with Trump, the President announced he was doing just that on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“As far as a president not seeking re-election, it’s not terribly uncommon. Up until Franklin [Delano] Roosevelt there weren’t any term limits but George Washington established that unspoken rule, limiting himself to two terms,” said Williams. “Everybody else followed suit up until FDR.”

FDR, a Democrat, was elected to third and fourth terms as president and died at the beginning of his fourth term in office in 1945. In 1947, the United States Congress passed the 22nd Amendment—which was ratified in 1951—limiting a president to two terms.

“Lyndon Johnson, he did not seek re-election. I think what makes this unique is it’s happening so late in the game. It’s July, the [general] election is less than four months away,” said Williams. “It puts the Democrat Party in a tough spot to not only figure out who their candidate is going to be to nominate, but get behind them and make that push. The Republicans have had over a year to do that and the Democrats now have three-and-a-half months to get that done.”

While Biden formally endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in another social media post, it would only make her the presumptive nominee as the Democratic National Convention doesn’t begin until August 19. That hasn’t stopped some, such as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, from claiming that replacing Biden with Harris would be “wrong and unlawful.”

‘Trust the process’

Speaker Johnson, on CNN, also appeared to insinuate that switching candidates after some states have already held their primary elections was not a democratic process. Election law experts, however, have disagreed with the Speaker’s comments. Williams, too, has issues with those comments.

“We don’t live in a direct democracy. We vote for people who will hopefully cast votes for laws the way we would want them to. We don’t vote for every law and we don’t vote for the President. We have the Electoral College,” said Williams. “It’s the same thing with each party. Each party has their own system of how they nominate and elect their nominee for president. It’s very similar to the Electoral College. I don’t vote for my nominee. I might cast a vote but then someone else actually goes to the convention and votes for Wyoming and for South Dakota and all the other states.”

Prior to 1968, when Lyndon Johnson declined to run for re-election, primary elections were a rare occurrence and nominees were selected through the convention process. It was this process which selected Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s vice president. Humphrey eventually lost to Richard Nixon. After the events of 1968, the Democratic Party put processes in place which required delegates be selected through primaries or caucuses. The Republican Party quickly followed and, since 1972, both parties have selected nominees this way.

“Our constitution has set a process in place. A term I use in coaching is trust the process. What I mean by that is, if we exercise what we’re doing correctly we’ll get the outcome that we want. If we trust the process that our constitution has established, that’s what’s important right now,” said Williams. “Just like the election, if it’s contested there’s processes we can go through that are in place. Either we’re going to choose to trust it or we’re not. That’s the decision we’re going to have to make: do we trust our constitution, do we trust our process or not.”

According to the Voice of America, while the United States Constitution doesn’t mention political parties or their nomination processes, the Supreme Court has recognized political parties as being covered by the “freedom of association” clause of the First Amendment. Over the years, according to the Voice of America, courts have given political parties a lot of latitude on how they operate.

Not surprised, unfortunately

A week prior to Biden declining the nomination of the Democratic Party, Trump was campaigning in Butler, Pennsylvania when a 20-year-old man fired several shots killing one person and wounding two others.

“When I heard there was an assassination attempt on former president Trump, I wasn’t surprised unfortunately,” said Williams. “We’ve become a society that, if we don’t agree, we don’t try to find middle ground. We just want to eliminate the other person.”

As Congress questions the director of the Secret Service, there is still no clear motive on the part of Thomas Matthew Crooke, who was shot and killed at the event.

“I wasn’t surprised to hear about an attempt, but I was surprised to hear it was a 20-year-old kid that really didn’t have much training or background. It almost seemed like he decided he was going to go do this one day and he was able to get within 150 yards of the president and take multiple shots at him,” said Williams. “When I found out those details, my first thought was that our enemies would look at that and think ‘If this kid could do that, what could a trained professional do?’ That was concerning for me. It felt like a banana republic, that mentality of ‘we're going to literally eliminate our competition.’”

What happened to compromise?

For Williams, the events on July 13 are an example of how far the United States has moved away from compromise.

“Compromise has almost become a dirty word in politics and we forgot we wouldn’t have our constitution if our founders weren’t willing to compromise,” said Williams. “You read [James] Madison’s notes about the [constitutional] convention and that’s all they did was compromise and some great things came out of that. Our Bill of Rights came out of compromising.”

Williams added it seems people want to overpower each other with their voice rather than learning from each other. As a history and government teacher, Williams believes the US Constitution is a great document, but said it wasn’t thought of as a great document when first drafted. He added people had to compromise to make it better.

“I think our country’s in a dangerous place with an unwillingness to compromise at every political level. I understand that there’s people who think compromising equals selling out. That’s not a good place for us to be as a country,” said Williams. “Nobody’s willing to compromise and Trump’s one of them. He’s valuing personal loyalty with his inner circle more than anything and I don’t know how I feel about that. If I’m a coach and I’m doing something wrong, I want people to be able to tell me and say ‘How about we do this?’”

We The People

Williams said he knows it sounds cliche, but that to change the current state of discourse in the United States it goes back to the first three words in the preamble of the US Constitution.

“It’s got to start with who we are choosing to be our voice. We’re not a direct democracy, we elect people to be our voice and we’re at a time when we’ve got to be pretty intentional and deliberate with that and make sure that they’re not only voting for things we want them to vote for, but how they conduct themselves,” said Williams. “I wouldn’t tolerate my basketball boys treating people that way, so why should I tolerate my elected officials doing that?”

According to Williams, he often speaks with his students about rights and obligations. Among those obligations, he believes is voting, volunteering, serving on local boards and listening to other viewpoints.

“Be willing to listen to people you don’t agree with. Follow those people on social media. I would tell my students, make an intentional effort to listen to people you ordinarily wouldn’t listen to, that you ordinally wouldn’t agree with. Don’t listen to argue, listen to understand,” said Williams. “It really has to start with us, with the citizens. If we expect our government officials to act in a civil manner towards one another, we have to start with that too.”