Fearful

I have been reading a book by Doris Kearns Goodwin:  Leadership in Turbulent Times. 

In her book  Kearns looks at four presidents: Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Lyndon Johnson, and particularly examines how each one handled a particular crisis in his presidency.

I read the section on Lincoln’s crisis first.  It was about the Emancipation Proclamation, and his strategy for making it take.   It also talked about Lincoln’s choice of cabinet members of all his rivals, something Donald Trump would never do.

But this description hit me because it made me think of the present time. 

It was about Teddy Roosevelt’s time:

“The dangers of the age: the rise of gigantic trusts that were rapidly swallowing up their competitors in one field after another, the invisible web of corruption linking political bosses to the business community, the increasing concentration of wealth and the growing gap between the rich and the poor, the squalid conditions in the immigrant slums, the mood of insurrection among the laboring classes.”(244)

And then, there’s Sinclair Lewis:

Here is Penguin Classic’s back-cover blurb for Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here:

"A vain, outlandish,anti-immigrant, fear-mongering demagogue runs for President of the United States – and wins. Sinclair Lewis’s chilling 1935 bestseller is the story of Buzz Windrip, who promises poor, angry voters  that he will make America Proud and prosperous once more, but takes the country down a far darker path. As the new regime slides into authoritarianism, newspaper editor Doremus Jessop can’t believe it will last – but is he right? This cautionary tale of liberal complacency in the face of populist tyranny shows it really can happen here."