Lindsay Chervinsky, presidential historian at George Washington University, traces President’s Day from its 1885 federal roots to Revolutionary War-era celebrations of Washington’s birthday, noting shifting legacies like Jackson’s slavery record or Bush’s post-presidency reevaluation. She contrasts modern executive power—including Trump’s 2020 claim of unlimited authority—with the framers’ congressional-centric vision and Washington’s precedent-setting restraint, warning that weakened institutions risk unchecked leadership. While past presidents accepted electoral defeats peacefully, today’s challenges demand nuanced assessments of governance versus morality, underscoring democracy’s fragility when consensus erodes. [Automatically generated summary]
You can watch the interview with former President Obama in its entirety tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN is as unbiased as you can get.
You are so fair.
I don't know how anybody can say otherwise.
You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country.
I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices.
You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their own minds.
I absolutely love C-SPAN.
I love to hear both sides.
I've watch C-SPAN every morning and it is unbiased and you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments.
It's probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country.
You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions.
Joining us now to talk more about President's Day and the current president's use of executive power is Lindsay Schervinsky, who is a presidential historian currently at George Washington, an author, discussing, obviously, the news of the day here.
Lindsay, thanks so much for joining us this morning.
Well, the observation of President's Day was created as a national holiday in 1885, and that's really when it became a federal holiday for all employees.
But the concept of celebrating George Washington actually goes back much farther.
And that is important because the official name for this holiday is actually George Washington's birthday.
We have lumped in President's Day as sort of an advertising mechanism, but it still remains George Washington's birthday.
And that started during the Revolutionary War in 1778 when Colonial Williamsburg held the first celebration in honor of the then Commander-in-Chief's birthday.
And that really continued throughout all of American history.
At times, we've added presidents like Abraham Lincoln.
Alabama includes Thomas Jefferson in their celebrations, but really the heart of it is all about George Washington, which I have to admit, being here at the George Washington Presidential Library, we don't mind very much.
I was going to say you're executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library, but tell me, why is it important to reflect on the past of all of the president's legacies?
I mean, so I think we have to be really honest that, you know, Millard Fillmore and John Tyler and James Buchanan are not in the same realm as the George Washingtons and the Abraham Lincolns.
So I don't think that people should feel like they have to celebrate all of them equally.
But it is an opportunity to reflect on the power of the office and how important it is to our daily life.
It is the only office that represents all Americans, and it has a tremendous ability to shape foreign policy, economic policy, and things that affect how we live.
So it's a good day to step back and think about where has the office come from, where is it today, and where do we want it to go?
Well, I think in Washington's case, it's slightly unusual because so little of the presidency was actually written down.
The Constitution is, as it is currently written today with all of our amendments, is the second shortest written Constitution in the world.
When we just had passed it in 1788, when it was ratified, it was just over 4,000 words.
And very few were on the presidency, which meant that Washington had to create all of these precedents and fill out what I call kind of the fuzzy bits of the presidency.
How does a president dress?
How does a president interact with other branches of government?
How does a president interact with citizens on a daily basis?
Those are the things that made Washington extraordinary, in addition to, of course, establishing two key precedents: the civilian control of the military and the peaceful transfer of power.
Now, other presidents that we remember as great tend to lead in moments of national crisis, presidents like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, or represented key turning points in American history, like Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower.
And their leadership in those big moments is what we tend to remember.
So sometimes the change comes because we are taking into account factors that we didn't before.
Andrew Jackson is a great example of this.
He was really celebrated as sort of the working man's president.
But as we've come to include things like what was their position on slavery, did they actually own enslaved individuals and bring them to the White House?
How do they treat Native Americans?
His position in sort of the American esteem has declined pretty precipitously.
Others, like Dwight D. Eisenhower, his position has risen because as more information came out and was declassified, people realized just how incredibly important he was to almost every governing decision.
He had sort of put forward an image of being kind of this old daughtery, you know, caretaker, not really on top of what was happening.
But in practice, he was actually a very active president.
And so the full complete record, once it was declassified, really changed our perspective.
And the last way that I think a presidential legacy can change is depending on what happens afterwards.
George W. Bush is a great example of this.
He left office with incredibly low approval ratings.
But as different administrations came in, we changed how we thought about him because we started to appreciate qualities that maybe weren't as important to us while he was actually in office.
Well, I think a bunch of the early presidents, there is always the question about how do we think about both their presidential leadership in combination with whether or not they held people in bondage.
And those are two really complicated thoughts to hold in our head at the same time, but I believe that we are capable of doing it as humans and that we can assess both their contributions and maybe their own personal moral failings.
And we don't have to balance them like we would a checkbook.
I think for more recent presidents, we also struggle to objectively view their legacy because maybe we don't have all the information yet.
Maybe it's not fully declassified.
Maybe we still have memories of what their administration was and they're tinted by our partisan perspective.
So it definitely takes, I think, at least 30 years for a presidential legacy to start to calcify because we have all the information, some of the passions have started to subside, and we can see how their policies evolved, survived, or what impact they had after they left office.
You know, I mean, the presidency was always supposed to be important.
The framers were very concerned with having what they called an energetic executive, meaning one that could make decisions quickly in moments of crisis, could implement the laws and enforce them, or if there is a war, could be a decisive commander-in-chief.
But the framers also really anticipated that Congress would play a central role, and they believed that Congress would be the main body representing the American people, putting forth legislation, establishing financial policy.
And Washington and the early presidents really lived by those expectations.
Even Washington, who carved out really major spheres of influence for himself over foreign policy and domestic crisis policy, still was incredibly respectful of Congress and was willing to subject himself to congressional scrutiny as part of their constitutional oversight.
It's interesting that you say that because this president, President Trump, obviously is somebody who doesn't always seem as willing to subject himself to congressional oversight and scrutiny.
A lot has been said this term about his use of executive power and his efforts to expand that executive power.
I wonder how does the way that the president and the White House now use executive power compare to other presidents in the past?
Well, I think we're seeing a couple of key shifts that have occurred over time, especially over the last several administrations, but maybe have accelerated in the current administration.
So the first is the rise of executive orders.
And this is actually largely because Congress has become quite absent from its governing responsibilities.
If you don't have a congressional body who's willing to pass legislation, to make compromises, to work across the aisle, then you're not going to get anything done.
And presidents get frustrated and they start to pass executive orders.
And we've seen this over the last several decades.
Now, in terms of sheer numbers, that has increased in the last year, but this was a process that I think began several decades ago.
And I largely attributed it actually to really weak parties.
If you have weak parties, then you can't have a party that is protecting moderates, that is encouraging that kind of cooperation and bipartisanship, protecting against intense primary challenges, or weeding out some of the crazy voices.
And so you see a breakdown in Congress actually working as a governing body.
And I think that's really one of the reasons we're seeing a rise in executive action and executive orders in particular.
Well, they had kind of a complex relationship with executive power because obviously when Washington first came into office in 1789, that was only six years after the end of the Revolutionary War.
And so when you have just won a war to depose a king, you are going to be very wary about recreating one.
And yet they had also gone through a period under the Articles of Confederation where they didn't have an executive really at all.
They had Congress that didn't have enough authority to raise money to create one foreign policy on behalf of the nation or to settle disputes between the states.
And so they kind of had this love-hate relationship where they knew that they needed it, but they wanted it to be sort of restrained.
And they did try and put checks and balances in to ensure that the worst sort of excesses of a monarchical system would not be repeated.
And largely that was because they trusted Washington.
They trusted Washington to use this power safely and to put in place norms and customs that would hopefully curb the impulses of his successors.
And it doesn't mean that there weren't questions about his use of power.
You know, for example, Washington was the first president to, of course, issue a presidential pardon.
And he issued a number during the Whiskey Rebellion, but we actually have one that he issued earlier that is for a rum smuggler who had brought in too much rum.
There was sort of limits on what you could do.
And Washington offered that person mercy because he recognized that they had largely lived a quality and upstanding life and had just made this one mistake.
But there were questions about what is the appropriate use of a presidential pardon.
And in a lot of ways, those are things that we, of course, are still discussing today.
The number of pardons has increased pretty dramatically.
And that was certainly not the expectation or intent of the framers who expected that that should be used sparingly.
In terms of parties, this process, what's really interesting about today is it actually is quite similar to the 1790s in that you did have these weak parties.
And because there are weak parties, you have a huge rise of partisanship.
And as a result, people view everything, whether it's health care, response to pandemics, foreign interference in elections, citizenship, immigration, freedom of speech, all through the lens of partisanship.
The 1824 election was thrown to the House because no one candidate won enough votes.
And it came down to John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.
John Quincy Adams ended up winning, and Andrew Jackson's supporters called it a corrupt bargain.
And they argued that John Quincy Adams was willing to make a deal with Henry Clay, and Henry Clay would become the Secretary of State in return for swinging his votes.
So there was that argument.
And then in 1876, again, there was a contested election, and there was a committee that determined the outcome and put Rutherford B. Hayes into the White House.
So I think the idea that maybe people are disgruntled about the outcome of an election is a very American experience.
That's okay.
It's okay to feel passionately about the outcome and maybe to feel really disappointed.
Where I think it's really important is that none of those defeated presidents resorted to violence to try and change the outcome.
Because in the American system, we accept the determination of the voters and we accept the determination of Congress if they are the ultimate arbiter.
And that's what it means to live in a republic: you settle your disputes in the ballot box.
Maria from Atlanta, Georgia, a Democrat, you're next.
Go ahead, Maria.
unidentified
Good morning.
Good morning, C-SPAN, C-SPAN family.
By the way, my famous president is Jimmy Carter.
I like to know about when they talk about George Washington, why do they go on and praise him so much when he owns slaves and he was treated people inhumane?
How can somebody be that great with what he did to slaves and own slaves?
This is a good question, and it's one that we grapple with here at Mount Vernon: how do you both appreciate the contributions someone made to a nation while also acknowledging their real failings?
And that is a story that we are committed to telling.
We just opened a new exhibit on Juneteenth that is a permanent exhibit exploring the life of the enslaved people here at Mount Vernon.
I think there are a couple answers to that question.
So, the first is that we have to tell the whole story.
We have to tell, of course, the people that lived here that made his life possible and his contributions because both shaped the outcome of the nation and shaped the world that we are living in today.
The second is we have to tell a story of change over time because that's, of course, what we want all people to be able to do.
And Washington did change his behavior, and he changed his perspective on slavery over the course of his lifetime.
Earlier, as a young man, when he inherited enslaved people from his father, he could be quite callous and sell people and split up families.
And by the end of his life, after seeing black soldiers fight with incredible valor in the Continental Army, he emancipated the people that he legally controlled in his will, which was a very public statement and not something that everyone did.
And while, of course, we wish that he had done more, and it's easy for us to say, you know, I wish he had said something while he was alive or president, that change is really, really important and is something that we should always, of course, tell as part of the revolutionary story, but that we should ask of all people.
The right to life of the three mentioned in the opening to the Declaration of Independence is the most foundational.
When President Trump nominated three conservative justices who correctly said there is no right to an abortion guarantee in the Constitution, would you agree that that and other actions he has taken make him the most pro-life president in history?
Well, I think whether or not he's the most pro-life president in history is probably a matter of opinion, so I'll leave it for each voter to decide.
But I just want to make one quick distinction, which is that the Declaration of Independence is a wonderful document, and it is our aspirational touchstone.
The life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is essentially what it means to try and be an American.
But it is not a legal document.
It does not form a government.
It is not a body of laws, unlike the Constitution, which of course says we the people in order to form a more perfect union.
So I like to think of those two things as connected.
The Declaration is what we aspire to be, and the Constitution is how we try and get just one step closer to being a little bit more perfect on a daily basis.
And you can join on our conversation talking more about presidential history and President Trump's use of executive power.
Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000.
Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
Now, Lindsay, I want to ask you about an interview that the president gave to New York Times a month ago in which he said that his own morality is the only thing that can stop him.
I want to go down a little bit.
It says here, when asked if there were any limits to his global powers, Trump said, Yeah, there is one thing, my own morality, my own mind.
It's the only one thing that can stop me.
I wonder, just as a presidential historian, Lindsay, how do you believe the president sees his role as president and of course his limitations?
Well, I think that, you know, I don't want to put myself in the mind of the president because that, I don't, I can't do that for anyone, but I do think that that statement reflects a certain commitment to using authority in a way that no president has been able to do so before.
And certainly some presidents would like to or would have liked to have their own interests or their own morality be their only check.
But of course, the Constitution specifies that there are several other checks.
There's Congress, which is responsible for creating the laws and providing oversight of the executive, including things like pulling back funding if they don't like what the executive is doing.
There is the judicial system, and of course, ultimately ending up with the Supreme Court, which can overrule a presidential action.
But most importantly, there are the American people, and that is both through elections, but also through making their opinions known and what they want to have happen.
Now, what I think is the interesting part of President Trump's argument in that case is that so many of those different elements of checks depend on people being willing to use them.
So whether or not Congress is willing to or the Supreme Court is willing to is, I think, a question that we're exploring right now as a nation.
But people's role, citizens' role in checking all officials that represent us is an essential part of what it means to be an American.
I think one interesting thing about that quote as well, Lindsay, is that he's being asked about his own foreign policy.
And I think that we're seeing him in a lot of ways reshape foreign policy and kind of the world order.
I wonder if he has or if you've seen other presidents do that or is that an unprecedented way that he's utilizing his power on the foreign stage, on the world stage, really?
Well, I think, you know, since I would say World War I, we could maybe even go back a little bit farther and say Theodore Roosevelt, the United States has played a very large role on the world stage.
Before then, we certainly aspired to that, you know, the Monroe Doctrine has been in the news lately, and that was President Monroe's statement written by John Quincy Adams that said that the Western hemisphere was closed to further European colonization.
That was really an aspirational statement as opposed to one that actually reflected American power.
But since, let's say, the start of the 1900s, the United States has been a position of power, and there have been moments, including Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and I would include Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, where presidents have shifted what the international world order looks like.
They have shifted what our priorities are, how we think about our allies, and how we approach the American role in the world.
What is notable about this moment is that it is certainly one of those turning points, but it seems to be a rejection of sort of the consensus that we had seen from FDR all the way up to President Biden that this world order and our allies are useful to the United States and beneficial for us to be in that leadership position.