Once owned by James Madison, the Montpelier plantation remains a model for presenting a full depiction of the life of the former president as well as the lives of those he enslaved.
A leader’s machismo can lead to war, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has long displayed his version of hyper-masculinity. A historian says that for America’s founders, wars never fed their egos.
Like today, passions were strong and political discourse was inflamed in late 18th-century America. Angry mobs torched buildings. Virginians drank a toast to George Washington’s speedy death.
Shannon Bow O'Brien, The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts
Donald Trump’s lawsuit to stop the release to Congress of potentially embarrassing or incriminating documents puts the National Archives in the middle of an old legal conflict.
The Founding Fathers were unrelenting in their commitment to the idea that circumstances can arise that require public officials to take actions abridging individual freedoms.
Democracies degenerate because of cunning leaders. Democracies also crumble because of the people themselves – and the US founders believed education would be crucial to maintaining democracy.
A president’s persona is always a public act. In that way, Trump’s shtick – vulgar man of the people – was not exceptional. And every president has had to invent his version of the role.
‘Mind your manners’ isn’t just something your mother told you. Manners – and civility – are an essential component of how things get done in government, and the Founding Fathers knew it.
History shows that attorneys general who are picked by – and serve at the pleasure of – the president are not as independent as they may be expected to be.
For decades, presidents routinely replaced large swaths of the government workforce, often requiring them to pay fees to political parties in exchange for their jobs.
For his first presidential Thanksgiving, George Washington aimed to pull his country together in the face of the many internal divisions that could yank it apart.
‘Mind your manners’ isn’t just something your mother told you. Manners – and civility – are an essential component of how things get done in government, and the Founding Fathers knew it.
Donald Nieman, Binghamton University, State University of New York
The framers of the Constitution were very clear that presidential terms have time limits. Not four years and a day. Not three years and 364 days. Four years.
The United States Postal Service plays a vital role in US civic life, one that helped shape American society more than 250 years ago and continues to characterize it today.
No one involved in local government wants to see federal law enforcement agents take over their policing. But a mayor who’s also a legal scholar says there’s history and precedent for it.
Global Scholar at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC and Hopkins P Breazeale Professor, Manship School of Mass Communications, Louisiana State University
Managing Director of the McCourtney Institute of Democracy, Associate Research Professor, Political Science, Co-host of Democracy Works Podcast, Penn State