The general election is coming up in November. Two books, written within the past 10years, might help explain what is going on in 2024. One is a history and the other a biography. The historian author focuses on significant events of national importance where U.S. presidents have played strong roles. The other writer, drawing from first-person experience, is interested in ongoing national conditions that are of significant concern. Both writers give their perspectives on the functions of good government.
The Soul of America, The Battle for Our Better Angels, was written by Jon Meacham who has authored biographies of historical figures from Thomas Jefferson to George H.W. Bush. He won a Pulitzer Prize for American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. Also worth noting, he received an honorary degree from Millsaps College in 2019.
Hillbilly Elegy, A Memoir of a Family in Crisis, was written by J.D. Vance. It is auto-biographical. Mr. Vance is a United States Senator from Ohio. He is a graduate of Yale University, holding a Juris Doctor degree from its Law School.
The authors have personal and philosophical attributes that are distinctive, yet in many ways also similar. They have dissimilar accomplishments. One has been a speech-writer for the current President, a Democrat, and the other is a candidate running for the Vice-presidency as a Republican. Equally extraordinary are their education, social, and professional achievements. They both write critically about different aspects of their country while earnestly desiring the same goal - - the good of America. Therein lies the relationship.
To better understand the writers, their differences and similarities, the unsophisticated method used for the purpose of this piece was to make limited on-line searches for personal information not found in the two books.
Both Meacham and Vance actively observe mainline religions. Meacham is an Episcopalian and Vance a Catholic. Neither is afraid to express religious devotion. “Soul” is the key word in Meacham’s title. And he capably defines and describes his use of the word through theological and philosophical references. In a work I have not read, The Hope of Glory, Meacham reflects on the last words of Jesus Christ from the cross on Calvary.
In his memoir, Vance approvingly comments about “a phenomenon social scientists have observed for decades: Religious folks are happier. Regular church attendees commit fewer crimes, are in better health, live longer, make more money, drop out of high school less frequently, and finish college more frequently than those who don’t attend church at all.”
Each man experienced divorce growing up. Vance details painful experiences in his autobiography. (I used outside references to learn Meacham’s background.) To overcome their trauma, both men attribute significant impact on the foundational love and care shown by their grandfathers. Vance observes, “Reams of social science attest to the positive effect of a loving and stable home [and even] despite an unstable home . . . the social support of a loving adult.”
Both Americans have strong familial ties to the South. Meacham was born and raised in Tennessee. He comes from an upper-middle class background. Though he grew up in Ohio, Vance’s generational family is from Kentucky. Vance comes from a line of “hillbillies,” which he describes as “working class whites.” He claims that those defined by sociologists as “the working poor” in the inner cities share the same conditions of his own people. He attributes this in part to “the way our government encourage[s] social decay through the welfare state,” concluding that “our [shared] elegy is a sociological one. . . but it is also about psychology and community and culture and faith.”
Vance describes social disfunctions commonplace in working-class society, noting with comparative statistics that “American working-class families experience a level of instability unseen elsewhere in the world.” Paraphrasing President Kennedy’s inaugural speech in 1961, the present turnaround “starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what can we do to make things better.” And quoting Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a liberal Democrat senator from the last century: “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society.”
Meacham’s book praises the accomplishments of Democrats from Andrew Jackson to Lyndon Johnson. He also writes favorably about Republicans from Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush. He has written two critically distinguished biographical works on the first George Bush, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, in 2015, and The Call to Serve, The Life of George Herbert Walker Bush, published this summer.
Vance’s book is mostly uncritical of Democrat and Republican former presidents, including Clinton and Reagan. He displays enthusiasm for Barack Obama, saying “his credentials are so impressive that they’re frightening . . . he conducts himself with a confidence that comes from knowing that the modern American meritocracy was built for him.”
Meacham acknowledges that because there are no perfect men there have been no perfect presidents. Yet, he thinks that the country is facing its “greatest crisis since the Civil War” because of the divisiveness of President Trump (describing “a president [who] appear[ed] determined to undermine the rule of law, a free press, and the sense of hope essential to American life”).
While Vance did not vote for Trump in 2016 (or 2020), he wrote in his book: “Despite all of my reservations about Donald Trump . . . there were parts of his candidacy that really spoke to me: from his disdain for the ‘elites’ and criticism of foreign policy blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan to his recognition that the Republican Party had done too little for its increasingly working and middle-class base.” And, although he once shared many of Meacham’s criticisms, Vance is Trump’s vice-presidential running mate in 2024.
In my opinion, the country’s current presidential candidates have shown the morals of alley cats in their pasts. And, based on their mutual propensity to sling mud or merde (pardon my French), I have questions about their principles as applied to the future. Not to despair, I know from history, such as recounted by Meacham, that not-so-great characters have accomplished great things in office.
Meacham and Vance describe effective and proper uses of government for the nation’s good when there sits a president capable of principled implementation. I believe that unprincipled uses of government have damaged family, faith, and country. My impression of what the authors agree upon is what I believe is the proven Soul of America. That is love of family, love of faith, and love of country. Without family, there is no place for one’s heart to take refuge in times of distress. Without faith, no place for the soul to be secure. And a shared love of country is a love of the common good of liberty.
Based on these principles, I know how I will vote in the national election.
Chip Williams is a Northsider.
