I’ve interviewed every president since Nixon. Our nation’s identity and future have always been on a spectacular and extraordinary journey.
Our Constitution defines three equal but separate branches of government.
SCOTUS, which has six conservative members, is very favorable to President Trump’s expansion of power.
From the beginning, America was a journey, not a destination.
From the Paul Revere ride to the subway to the Oregon Trail, it was a literal journey. Founded as 13 colonies clustered along the Atlantic coast, the country has become a transcontinental behemoth with 50 states and a population of 342 million people.
This journey was also metaphorical. In a country where voting rights were generally limited to property-owning white men, a black man has now been elected president, a woman has been sworn in as speaker of the House of Representatives, and eight non-white male justices have been confirmed to the Supreme Court.
All the while, the debate over what defines America has been intense and sometimes violent. What rights? Whose rights? Who decides?
Although the Founders themselves were at times divided when drafting the Declaration of Independence in 1776, it was a bold step in the midst of the Revolutionary War and helped shape the new nation. In the following century, conflicts over slavery became the underlying issue behind a brutal civil war that threatened to tear apart the Civil War. In the 20th century, World War II was a force for national unification, and the Vietnam War was a force for bitter division.
Yet here we stand, ready to celebrate our 250th birthday in 2026, our semi-quincentenary.
America’s democratic experiment
We are the world’s oldest democracy and an experiment in self-government.
Think about it. From the reluctant George Washington to the tenacious Donald Trump, only 45 people have served as president of the United States. (The number of White House administrations now stands at 47, as Trump and Grover Cleveland were elected to two non-consecutive terms.)
Amazingly, in my career as a journalist, I have interviewed 10 people, from the 37th President Richard Nixon to his nine successors, seven of them while they were in the White House and three after they left. If you do the math, that’s more than one in five of all people ever elected to lead our country.
Their political spectrum ranged from conservative icon Ronald Reagan to rising Democratic star Barack Obama to populist Trump. Their presidencies were shaped by their times, George H.W. Bush by the end of the Cold War, Joe Biden by a once-in-a-century pandemic;
Some were hit by scandals.
In 1984, as Nixon was trying to rebuild his reputation in the aftermath of Watergate, I had dinner with him at his home in Saddle River, New Jersey. I interviewed Bill Clinton aboard Air Force One in 1999, four months after he survived the Senate impeachment vote in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. His optimism about striking a historic deal with Republicans in Congress to overhaul Medicare had soared.
For both of them, and for the president in general, America’s brand of resilience is a trait they share. In the end, Nixon’s legacy would be determined by Watergate, and Clinton was unable to negotiate that landmark bill before leaving office.
But presidents persist, and sometimes win, because they tend to believe that with a little more time and a few more people, they can turn things around.
Mr. Clinton would have happily served a third term if the Constitution and voters had allowed it, and Mr. Trump appears to feel the same way. Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and President Bush all fought for second terms but failed.
However, some presidents feel a certain fatigue at the end of their terms and are ready to take over the heavy baton. In interviews in the Oval Office as President George W. Bush prepared to leave office in 2009, it was clear that after dealing with the terrorist attacks of 9/11 early in his first term and the financial collapse late in his second, he was ready to hand over the nation’s responsibilities to his successor.
Setting a course for this diverse and turbulent country is no easy task. And it’s a journey that never ends.
What do the presidents have in common?
Their White House visits have other characteristics in common. You can’t win office unless you’re smart, stubborn, ambitious, and, most likely, willing to do whatever it takes to get there. Once in the White House, nearly all of them complained that their coverage had been too negative and that their best efforts were not recognized enough.
But all of them had some sort of vision for where America’s journey should go in the future, but those visions were markedly different and sometimes contradictory.
Voters share that, too. In covering 12 presidential campaigns from 1980 to 2024, I have been struck by how Americans of all political stripes respect the Constitution and love their country.
But which country? Whose version of the Constitution?
In each of the last three elections, voters have been angry and divided almost down the middle over the meaning of the Constitution, and they are not willing to give those who see things differently the benefit of the doubt. When it comes to issues of race and gender, immigration and crime, the rule of law and balance of power, it can sometimes feel as if a new civil war is brewing.
It’s not the first time.
President Franklin Roosevelt’s record number of executive orders when he took office during the Great Depression, and subsequent efforts to get the Supreme Court to consider them, drew angry protests from Republicans. They pushed for the ratification of a constitutional amendment that would prevent future presidents from serving more than two terms. The civil rights movement of the 1960s brought a wave of violence against its organizers and defenders. It reshaped the geography of American politics. The debate over Vietnam caused a cultural upheaval, tearing the emerging baby boomer generation from their parents.
That is not to trivialize the current conflict. Let me just say this: Our democracy has been, and always has been, most animated by the fear that it might be in jeopardy.
Happy birthday, America. Safe travels.
Susan Page is USA TODAY’s Washington bureau chief.
