For half of the country, the 2024 presidential election results were devastating. For the other half, the outcome was just what they wanted – or so they may think.  The next four years may reinforce what they voted for – or not.  Was Trump’s campaign rhetoric just that, a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing?  Or a real plan, not a “concept,” to destroy American democracy and move to tyranny? 

We’ve been here before, although our democratic institutions held and survived in the face of previous challenges.  1968 was a chaotic election year.  President Lyndon Johnson decided not to run for re-election in March; in May the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered in Memphis; and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in California in June.  The Democratic National Convention in Chicago that summer was the most turbulent in history, and voters were split narrowly, especially with a third-party candidate, Alabama Governor George Wallace, who campaigned on similar fears and divisions that marked Trump’s 2024 platform.  Richard Nixon won the presidency with 43 percent of the vote to Hubert Humphrey’s 42 percent (barely 500,000 votes separated the two); an ardent segregationist, Wallace won more than 13 percent of the vote.  Democrats lost five seats, and I lost my job on the Hill, but the Senate remained under Democratic control.

Nixon’s presidency was rampant with scandal, including the resignation of his vice president, Spiro Agnew, accused of accepting bribes and kickbacks, eventually pleading guilty to tax evasion.  Nixon’s “enemies list” was well-known, and he utilized his Attorney General, John Mitchell, to block federal school desegregation efforts.  Later, Mitchell served time in prison for his role in Watergate, along with many high-level White House aides. 

Nixon resigned the presidency in August 1974, ending the constitutional crisis he created, leaving Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter struggling to re-establish trust in government.  Barely six years later, the Reagan “landslide” (he won 44 states and the Electoral College, but just 50.7 percent of the popular vote) caused many to speculate that it was the end of the Democratic Party, which had the White House only once in a 20-year period.  The Senate lost 12 Democratic seats, I lost my job again, and the Senate was under Republican control until 1989.  It took 12 years to retake the White House, but Democrats did come back, with Bill Clinton’s election in 1992. 

Upon taking the presidential oath in 1974, Gerald Ford, said “our long national nightmare is over.  Our Constitution works.  Our Republic is a government of laws, and not of men.  Here the people rule.”  Fifty years later, another long national nightmare is upon us, and without a presidential commitment to maintaining the constitutional guardrails that have preserved the Republic for nearly 250 years. I’ve spoken to friends across the country who are so devastated that they have said “I’m done.”  That’s the wrong approach.  We can be sad and depressed about the election results once again, but a defeat at the polls should not mean a defeat of long-held values.  We can take some time to mourn but, as Kamala Harris said, “Don’t ever give up.  Don’t ever stop trying to make the world a better place.  This is not a time to throw up our hands, but a time to roll up our sleeves.”   

Life will go on.  The sun will come up, the leaves will fall, flowers will bloom in the spring.  I was reminded of that at a sold-out NOVA Symphony concert over the weekend. The orchestra and an enormous choir closed the concert with a stirring rendition of “America the Beautiful.”  Some of the lesser-known lyrics reflect 19th century verbosity, but one phrase can serve as a beacon for all: “And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.”  We need brotherhood (and sisterhood) to move the country back toward the center.  That’s something  we all can strive for.  It doesn’t need a particular political party platform, but our individual commitment to making our country a better place.