A historian’s perspective on Trump: Radical or reasoned?

While the academic debate over “presentism” continues to roil the insular world of American historians, a different and far more disturbing narrative about our profession is beginning to take root in political media circles: establishment historians, who once rose above politics, are being charged with becoming radicalized partisans.

Most recently, Politico Magazine published a profile on the historian Michael Beschloss by Michael Schaffer, with a fevered headline, “The Radicalization of Washington’s Most Famous Historian.” Schaffer identified the best-selling author and NBC presidential expert as a high-profile example of “a contemporary Washington phenomenon: the radicalized establishmentarian.” 

Commentators also have asked documentary filmmaker Ken Burns — whose work typically has avoided explicit, direct connections between the past and the present — why his most recent film, “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” does just that, ending with images from the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., and the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. To his credit, Burns has responded that it is not his filmmaking that has changed — many of them end with a coda in the present — but the country.

Both critiques suggest, Schaffer’s more so, that by directly linking the present to the past historians have become somehow radicalized. Beschloss’s transformation from a “studiously bipartisan” pundit to “impassioned Trump-baiter” is evidenced in his pointed on-air commentary and tweets, Schaffer tells us. At the heart of the piece is the dilemma that has created chasms in American media and political circles: whether, in Schaffer’s words, to treat the provocations of Donald Trump that some see as “threats to democracy” as mere “political disagreements where the obligation to impartiality holds sway” or “as something out of the bounds of partisan politics” where it’s acceptable to be less neutral. 

Should Beschloss, Burns, or any other historian for that matter, be considered radical by choosing the latter course? The answer is no. 

Historians and other pundits bear a responsibility to put the current moment in perspective, providing context by clarifying American principles and summoning similar episodes in our past. The challenge is that Donald Trump is a historic anomaly. We have seen demagogues rise up balefully in American life since the country’s beginning, waging movements that gnawed at the edges of our democracy. Last century, for example, havoc was wreaked by firebrands including the segregationist former governor of Alabama George Wallace, antisemitic Catholic priest Father Charles Coughlin, and “Red-baiting” former U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy. But while each was dangerous in his own right, none had the power of the presidency at his disposal. 

Our Founding Fathers offered little about the duties of the president or checks on his power when codifying the Constitution. They assumed correctly that George Washington, seen as a beacon of moral rectitude indispensable to the nation’s fruition, would be our first chief executive and would define the position for his successors, offering a lofty standard. Perhaps naively, they anticipated neither the growing power of the executive branch of government or the nation itself. In short, they did not envision Donald Trump, who used the most powerful position in the world for self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment, trampling on democratic norms as inconvenient trifles, and who continues to sow seeds of chaos, division and discord after his reluctant departure from office.

To suggest that a historian — or any establishment figure — has been radicalized by emphatic criticism of Trump is to miss central truths that, despite their gargantuan nature, often become lost or minimized in the whirlwind of a 24/7 news churn: The Republican Party continues to be ruled by a former president who promulgates the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. This, despite more than 60 dismissed court cases contesting the election results — many presided over by judges Trump appointed — and rigorous ballot recounts in Arizona and Georgia. Moreover, as the January 6 Committee proceedings have revealed, Trump orchestrated a deadly coup against his own government to try to remain in power. 

There is more, of course, including Trump’s direct pressure to manipulate election results and more recent revelations that, for mysterious reasons, he left the White House with more than a score of boxes containing at least 300 classified documents. Those are troubling developments of their own. But one needn’t go further than his fabrications of a rigged election and the insurrection he fomented to conclude that Trump is our first anti-American president — and that given his continued political influence and viability, he continues to put the nation in peril. (Note: John Tyler, our 10th president who was later elected to the Confederate Congress, became anti-American as a former president.)

It is not the historians and critics who have become radical. It is Donald Trump, his enablers and by extension much of the Republican Party. Are those who fervently oppose those challenges to our democracy when called on to render an opinion radical in return? To expect anyone with knowledge of our history and founding principles to find an impartial position between democratic normalcy and the authoritarianism embodied by Trump is unreasonable. There is no acceptable middle ground. 

Nearly 70 years ago, Edward R. Murrow, the CBS News broadcaster, took to the air to deliver an exhortation in response to McCarthy’s ginned up communist witch hunt. “This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent,” he said. “We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result.”

Given what we know today about McCarthy’s reckless, politically motivated anti-communist campaign, Murrow’s condemnation seems judicious, and history has told the tale: “McCarthyism” is synonymous with the abuse of power, and Murrow is a touchstone for journalistic integrity. 

But Murrow’s warning is also a clarion call for today. This is no time for those who understand and appreciate our heritage and history, and care about the preservation of our system of government, to keep silent or become impartial about the current threat to our nation and its future. Indeed, to do so would be to bear some responsibility for the result. 

Mark K. Updegrove is a presidential historian and author of “Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency.” Follow him on Twitter @MarkKUpdegrove.