The current tough time in the American political struggle leads me back to bits and pieces of history that I have learned. One that strikes me as particularly significant in the light of the White House, the People’s house, being cheapened by the misuse of the Trump administration.

John Adams, the second president of the United States, was the first president to live in the White House, moving in before the residence was completely finished. In his first letter to his wife Abigail Adams he expressed his feelings as follows “I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house, and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.” These words were carved in to the wooden mantelpiece at the direction of Franklin Roosevelt. When John F. Kennedy was president, he had the inscription carved in to the marble mantelpiece where it remains. Sadly the current occupant ranks low on truth and wisdom, as well as many other assets that enhance the role of President of a democratic nation.

Another thought has come to mind in the light of recent comparisons which have been made to the disgraced Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Junior Senator from Wisconsin. Early on in his destructive term (June 1950), Republican Senator from Maine Margaret Chase Smith responded with her Declaration of Conscience which read “I speak as a Republican, I speak as a woman. I speak as a US Senator. I speak as an American. I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny – fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.” Seems like the current Republican administration has been already riding those horsemen and will have no shame in chalking up another victory astride them.

I also recall a terse reminder: “Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.”