In Washington, DC, fears of a new war ran deep. At one particularly anxious meeting, a young staffer noticed that Secretary of State George Marshall remained cool and collected. "Mr. Secretary," he asked, "how in the world can you remain so calm during this appalling crisis?" Marshall, who was the US Army's Chief of Staff during World War II, replied bluntly, "I've seen worse."
This anecdote came to mind when I saw President Donald Trump declare that the 2020 Election should perhaps be postponed because of Covid-19 and mail-in vote concerns. I'm here to tell the President that postponement is an extreme anti-American act that Congress will never let happen.
Like George Marshall, we as a nation have seen worse, both epidemiologically and economically. Voting -- the central, unifying act of functioning democracy -- went forward in troublesome decades past.
It's insulting to the American public to even suggest that this sacred constitutional right should be undermined by an authoritarian President tanking in the national polls to Joe Biden.
From the earliest days of the republic, regular elections and orderly transfer of power have been signatures of American democracy. That we were able to achieve both so early is a testament to the wisdom of the Founders, but even they disagreed over the limits of executive authority.
Worries that a president could be seduced to monarchism and tyranny prompted them to invest Congress with the sole power to calendar presidential elections, but Thomas Jefferson, for one, worried that by not writing term limits into the Constitution (those came later), presidents could leverage an "elective monarchy" to remain in power for life.
In 1797, that worry faced its first test as President John Adams contemplated a second term in the midst of escalating tensions with France. Jefferson, Adams' vice president, feared that escalation could distract the nation from the "pivot of free and frequent elections." If war came, he wrote, no one could foresee "into what port it will drive us."
Luckily, Adams maintained the peace. The 1800 election proceeded as scheduled. And for more than 150 years after, Americans brooked no possibility of postponing our quadrennial presidential rite, despite war, panic and pestilence.
The first wartime election occurred just 15 years after Jefferson's foreboding. In June 1812, President James Madison declared war on Great Britain, precipitating the War of 1812. Through the summer and fall, American forces engaged in ferocious action in Michigan and western New York.
Public opinion was split, with most New England states refusing to send militiamen to the cause and later formulating a plan to secede from the Union. With the nation divided and under attack, Madison might easily have considered postponing that year's election.
Instead, he won a second term, kept the union together and negotiated an end to hostilities.
Less than half a century later, Abraham Lincoln faced an even more grievous threat to
