Win or lose, today we confront who we are as a people and a nation.
This morning I got an email from our correspondent in Canada that was insightful for me. George Shafer from Almonte, Ontario, wrote “Good luck, may sanity return to your nation.” Those eight words got me to thinking about my country, about who we have been and what our future might be.
America is great, a truth that I, like many, took for granted until Donald Trump came along. I’ve come to understand that the long applauded virtues of our government and its constitution are frighteningly fragile and ultimately dependent upon the good will of our leadership. I’ve also, regrettably, discovered that the apparent goodness of many people is often an illusion. Both observations – and I say this as an historian – have given me a much better understanding of the forces of history in forging human destiny. These past few years have shown how dangerously close we have come to losing our democracy.
May today be a testament to our greatness, not the baseness that has driven us to this point in our history.