“Well, what the hell is the presidency for?”
— Lyndon B. Johnson
The 250th anniversary of our nation’s Declaration of Independence offers an ideal moment to reimagine the national Presidents Day holiday. Presidents Day originated as a commemoration of President George Washington’s birthday. In the latter half of the 20th century, the holiday morphed into a tribute to Presidents Washington and Lincoln (also born in February) and eventually to a day honoring the office of the presidency (and consolidating several winter holidays).
The holiday asks nothing of us except to celebrate American presidents and to consume — becoming synonymous with limited-time sales on things like mattresses and cars.
So, what is it about the presidency that requires recognition? What can we learn from past presidents?
Acknowledging Contradictions
Presidents Day should be an opportunity for all of us to consider how American presidents have used their power — for both good and bad — and how that informs the ways in which we use power in our own lives.
Among countless biographies of American presidents, what distinguishes historian Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson series is its central exploration of what power reveals about individuals. What defines President Lyndon Johnson is not his Great Society policy agenda or the escalation of the Vietnam War, but how Johnson used his power. In other words, understanding whether Johnson was a good or bad president is achieved not by putting his accomplishments and fiascos on a ledger and totaling them up, but by examining how he used power selflessly and selfishly.
Johnson is most inspirational when we consider his first speech as president, soon after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, in which Johnson called for passage of a civil rights bill. In preparation for that speech, when one of his aides cautioned against immediately supporting civil rights legislation, arguing that “The presidency has only a certain amount of coinage to expend, and you oughtn’t to expend it on this,” Johnson replied, “Well, what the hell is the presidency for?” And the rest is history.
Caro clearly admires Johnson’s record on civil rights and other social welfare programs. But he also methodically reveals how over the course of Johnson’s public service career — as a political staffer, congressman, senator and finally president — Johnson doggedly used the power he was granted to promote and further his political ambitions; enrich himself (when Johnson became president, he was secretly one of the wealthiest elected officials through questionably obtained broadcast licenses); and sexually harass employees with impunity. Whatever Johnson’s motives were for pushing civil rights at the risk of costing him the power of the presidency, his view of the power he received from being a public servant and elected official was hardly one of pure altruism.
The other illustrative aspect of Johnson’s presidency and political career that should inform how we view presidents is our reluctance as a society to publicly memorialize Johnson because of the Vietnam War and his corruption (the most notable memorial to him, the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, was named for Johnson by Congress only weeks after he died in 1973).
With Johnson, we see that it is possible to praise his work as president on civil rights, voting rights, public health care, fair housing, and other social welfare programs, while talking honestly about his personal and political failings. It is long past time we do the same with the rest of our presidents — notably those who enslaved humans and will be celebrated as infallible during this 250th anniversary year.
Twelve American presidents were enslavers. We know for certain that Thomas Jefferson sexually assaulted one of his enslaved women (there is no possible way that Sally Hemings could have consented to their “relationship”). Saying these presidents were a “product of their time” to excuse this inconvenient fact deliberately ignores that many of their peers were abolitionists and that the abolitionist movement in Colonial America predates the Declaration of Independence by nearly a century. Many colonials and then Americans recognized that slavery was wrong and were not afraid to speak out against it.
Constitutional and legal historian Paul Finkelman aptly points out: “Slave-owners are all over the Continental Congress, which is adopting it [the Declaration of Independence], and so there is this inherent tension from day one between the rights of slave-owners to be free and to have liberty — including the liberty to own other people, to buy and sell other people, to whip other people, to treat other people like property — and other Americans who find this [slavery] to be immoral and appalling and horrible, and that’s the tension that comes in with the creation of the United States.”
Nobody was born hardwired to believe the institution of slavery was moral and just and thus should be excused for supporting it. And to connect the historical facts to the idea of power, these men and other “founding fathers” wielded the power to end slavery as presidents and as drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution — but they did not.
We are taught the story that they had to tolerate slavery to keep the colonies united — that the Southern colonies would not form a new nation with the Northern colonies if slavery was going to be banned. Why then did these presidents and other founding fathers who “tolerated slavery” — and especially those who condemned the institution — not at least practice what they preached? Why did they, throughout their lives and even during their presidencies, continue to enslave people? The most obvious answer is that they used their power to protect the financial rewards they reaped through the labor of enslaved African Americans, a significant truth that must be acknowledged as we continue to grapple with the hard history of the nation and the role of our nation’s leadership.
History professor Hasan Kwame Jeffries emphasizes that point, stating: “America’s founders were visionaries, but their vision was severely limited. Slavery blinded them, preventing them from seeing everyone as equal. We the people have the opportunity to broaden the founders’ vision, to make racial equality real. But we can no longer avoid the most troubling aspects of our past.”
Confronting truthfully the facts of how the presidents of the founding generation used power for their self-interest and the benefit of enslavers — and how they failed to wield it against the institution of slavery — is as essential to understanding the foundation (and contradictions) of the nation as enumerating their accomplishments.
Reimagining Presidents Day
So how do we reimagine the meaning of Presidents Day, particularly in this 250th year of the nation and with 45 presidents to remember? We are confronted with our collective civic responsibility to move beyond symbolic celebration and toward critical reflection, civic learning and renewed commitment to practicing democracy.
This commitment to democracy requires us all to move beyond selective remembrance and political idolatry. This means we are faced with a great opportunity for our time. This Presidents Day is not simply another symbolic act of patriotism but a critical juncture to reexamine the meaning of our nation’s leadership and its relationship to democracy.
Leadership’s relationship to democracy requires accountability of both the president and the people. A democracy does not function through symbolic reverence or passive citizenship; it survives through participation, scrutiny and shared responsibility.
Presidents hold immense authority, but that authority is derived from the consent and engagement of the governed. When the people neglect their civic duties by disengaging and not holding elected officials, including the president, accountable to using their leadership to fulfill the promises of democracy, then democracy weakens. Likewise, when leaders use their power for self-interest and operate without accountability, democratic institutions erode.
True democratic leadership is measured not by popularity or pageantry, but by its responsiveness to the people — all the people, not merely one political group — and its adherence to the values of democracy. And true citizenship is defined not by celebration alone, but by active participation, informed critique, respect for the human rights of others, and a willingness to demand accountability. Presidents Day, then, should not merely commemorate individuals, but invite reflection on the reciprocal responsibilities that sustain a democratic society.
This idea of power, accountability and our role is clearly summarized in the article “The Roles and Responsibilities of the President,” which states: “The president of the United States is one of the most important public offices in our nation, with responsibilities for the way our country operates and serves all who live here. Because of the authority of the office, people have a lot of expectations of the president. In a representative democracy like the U.S., the president’s powers are interconnected with other branches and functions of government. People give government authority and, therefore, have a right to participate in political power. And a crucial part of participation in democracy is to understand our system of government and hold our elected officials accountable.”
In his book The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn recounts a meeting between President Abraham Lincoln and a newly freedman from Charleston, South Carolina, Robert Smalls, who cleverly outmaneuvered those who enslaved him by sailing the Planter, aConfederate ship, to his freedom and directly to Union troops. The meeting between the president and Smalls concerned Smalls’ request for support of the enlistment of Black troops into the Union cause. The meeting that ended with a letter from Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton authorizing 5,000 Black recruits for the Union army. The following was Smalls’ response: “How can I expect to keep my freedom unless I fight for it?” Clyburn notes that Lincoln’s administration had previously raised concerns that Black men would not make good soldiers since they were untrained and untested on the battlefield. Smalls’ meeting and his holding of President Lincoln accountable proved otherwise.
We can only imagine the conversations people have had that moved presidents to use their power to advance democracy as we continue to contemplate President Johnson’s question about the purpose of the presidency. For example, what conversations from a bold citizenry representing the dreams and ideals of those “whose backs are against the wall” were had for Lincoln to eventually sign the Emancipation Proclamation, Harry S. Truman to desegregate the military, John F. Kennedy to uphold civil rights, Jimmy Carter to establish the Department of Education, George H.W. Bush to support disability rights and the American Disabilities Act and Barack Obama to be an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights?
A number of U.S. presidents have wielded the power of the office, even facing opposition, to further human rights and the ideals of freedom and justice. Although none of these presidents were perfect, their contributions in shaping democracy to be inclusive of more people and as the moment in history demanded provide with a template for true critical reflection on Presidents Day and beyond. At this point, we must reckon with our own roles and power to shape the next 250 years of this nation and how we hold the presidents and presidents to come accountable to future of generations.
In his 1981 Farewell Address to the Nation, President Jimmy Carter leaves us with his lived understanding of the power of presidency and the people: “We are asking our political system to do things of which the founding fathers never dreamed. … We are all Americans together, and we must not forget that the common good is our common interest and our individual responsibility. Because of the fragmented pressures of … special interests, it’s very important that the office of the president be a strong one, and that its constitutional authority be preserved. The president is the only elected official charged with the primary responsibility of representing all the people.”
Image at top by the SPLC.
