WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 When George W. Bush wrote an essay this year about another president named George, he avoided mentioning the one named Donald. <\/p>\n
So did Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. The three ex-presidents joined a roster of historians and authors in contributing to the In Pursuit project, a 250th-anniversary series that had each writer produce an essay about a president or first lady. <\/p>\n
Though the project was explicitly designed to transcend today\u2019s politics, some of its essays nevertheless reflect anxieties that are flaring in the era of President Donald Trump<\/a> over the use of power, the health of the democracy and the integrity of the presidency.<\/p>\n The project is being curated by Colleen Shogan, the U.S. archivist who was fired without explanation<\/a> by Trump last year. She instructed contributors not to be partisan or ideological. \u201cEverybody took those instructions and that guidance very seriously,\u201d she told The Associated Press. The goal was for all Americans to \u201cfeel welcome to be able to read these lessons and essays and learn something from them.\u201d<\/p>\n The mission, Shogan said, \u201cis to surface the lessons from the past 250 years of American history, so that we can learn from those lessons, from both our successes and our failures, so we can plan for the present and the future. It\u2019s what has been described as debriefing the American story.\u201d<\/p>\n The essays cover 43 presidents \u2014 all but Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Trump \u2014 and 30 first ladies. They are being published chronologically and weekly into December. <\/p>\n Trump and Biden were judged too fresh to be appraised by history, a call that may have also set aside passions of the moment.<\/p>\n Without naming Trump, Bush\u2019s essay<\/a> is difficult to read without thinking of Trump\u2019s reluctance to cede power after his 2020 election defeat and his musings about a third term in defiance of the Constitution\u2019s two-term limit. <\/p>\n Bush hails the heroism of humility<\/p>\n Bush\u2019s essay celebrates George Washington<\/a>, the original \u201cNo Kings\u201d guy. Bush, a Republican, hails a man whose legacy only grew larger because he modeled the limits of the presidency for centuries to come.<\/p>\n \u201cOur first president could have remained all-powerful,\u201d Bush writes, \u201cbut twice he chose not to. In so doing, he set a standard for all presidents to live up to.\u201d First, Washington resigned as commander in chief of the Continental Army, then set the precedent of serving only two presidential terms before that limit was enshrined in the Constitution.<\/p>\n Bush went on: \u201cGeorge Washington\u2019s humility in giving up power willingly remains among the most consequential decisions and important examples in American politics.\u201d Bush\u2019s essay, released Presidents Day as the first in the series on Substack, drove heavy engagement.<\/p>\n Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who led U.S. and international forces in the Afghanistan War, sized up a fellow general<\/a>, Ulysses S. Grant, in another essay that drew much attention for its parallels with today.<\/p>\n History offers lessons on \u2018law over loyalty\u2019<\/p>\n McChrystal presents the Union general and post-Civil War president<\/a> as a leader who displayed \u201can absolute commitment to principles larger than personal ambition\u201d and who, before his presidency, resisted pressure on military leaders to \u201calign with political factions and be loyal to a person rather than the Constitution.\u201d <\/p>\n The emphasis on personal loyalty resonates in a time when Trump has repeatedly demanded fealty from officials in his administration. <\/p>\n The \u201ctemptation to bend institutions toward personal power is not unique to Grant\u2019s era,\u201d McChrystal writes. \u201cOur future still depends on whether our leaders choose law over loyalty.\u201d <\/p>\n This month, in the latest In Pursuit installment, Democrat Clinton writes about Theodore Roosevelt<\/a>, focusing on that president\u2019s drive<\/a> to expand the universe of \u201cwe the people\u201d at the expense of powerful corporate interests, while also emphasizing Roosevelt\u2019s exclusionary views on Black and Indigenous people. <\/p>\n The essays frequently address presidents\u2019 failures alongside their accomplishments, a contrast with Trump\u2019s calls for federal cultural institutions to stick to patriotic interpretations of American history.<\/p>\n Presidents, the chief justice and first ladies contribute<\/p>\n Among the In Pursuit contributors are Chief Justice John Roberts (writing about William Howard Taft<\/a>, the only president who also served on the Supreme Court); Hillary Clinton ( Eleanor Roosevelt<\/a> ); Michelle Obama ( Jacqueline Kennedy<\/a> ); GOP operative Karl Rove ( William McKinley<\/a> ); documentarian Ken Burns ( Franklin D. Roosevelt<\/a> ); and historian Michael Beschloss ( Lyndon Johnson<\/a> ). Democrat Barack Obama presents Abraham Lincoln<\/a>.<\/p>\n The project is being staged by More Perfect, a nonpartisan alliance of dozens of presidential centers along with academics and organizations dedicated to advancing democracy. It is where Shogan now practices her archivist craft that Trump shut down by firing her in February 2025.<\/p>\n She still has not been told why. Nor has Congress apparently been notified of the reason. The law requires Congress to be told but does not specify a deadline. The National Archives is the central repository of federal documents both precious and routine, and its leader has discretion over which records to preserve and display, and how. <\/p>\n \u201cThat is a position that used to be a nonpartisan position, much like the Librarian of Congress, the secretary of the Smithsonian,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I took that very seriously and acted the entire time when I was archivist in a nonpartisan way.\u201d<\/p>\n The White House did not respond when asked why Trump fired the archivist and whether the administration will tell Congress the reason.<\/p>\n Trump has long begrudged the archives for notifying the Department of Justice<\/a> of his alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left office following his first term, though Shogan was not working for the agency then.<\/p>\n Shogan sees hunger for history without a slant<\/p>\n Shogan said she has been overwhelmed with the public response to the series so far and figures that speaks to a hunger for history shorn of partisanship. The essays have received more than 1 million cumulative views on Substack and her podcast of the same name registered 160,000 audio downloads and nearly 64,000 YouTube views at last count. A documentary about the series is scheduled to air on PBS in October.<\/p>\n In the essays, readers learn something new not just about the giants, but about presidents such as Millard Fillmore<\/a> \u2014 \u201ca historic punchline \u2014 best remembered, ironically, for being so forgotten,\u201d in the words of his essayist, former New York congressman Steve Israel.<\/p>\n Then there was Franklin Pierce<\/a>, presented by his essayist<\/a> as a pro-slavery president and \u201cpermanent victim\u201d of Washington\u2019s alcohol-soaked culture.<\/p>\n Yale history professor David W. Blight recounts how Pierce won the presidency for the Democrats in 1852 despite vicious trolling by the Whigs. Fielding Mexican War veteran Gen. Winfield Scott in that election, they labeled Pierce, who also served in the war, the \u201chero of many a well-fought bottle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 When George W. 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