What great Americans from the past would think of its current political leaders

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On July 4, Americans would do well to reflect on how Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King Jr. and others imagined a greater nation – and what those people might think of Biden vs. Trump

George Washington's statue in the U.S. Capitol rotunda is one of many that keep a silent watch on Congress's goings-on. Americans are getting ready to elect new legislators on Nov. 5, returning either Joe Biden or Donald Trump to the presidency.David Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of U.S. politics.approaches its Fourth of July celebration, the words of great Americans often fill the air.

Today, in the wake of Richard Nixon’s attempts to escape blame for the Watergate scandal, George W. Bush’s assertion that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and Donald Trump’s repeated falsehoods, we know that American presidents do not always tell the truth. But his successor in the White House, James Madison, is perhaps a better sentinel of the power and prerogative of the press.

Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address and his 1865 second Inaugural Address are customarily regarded as his greatest speeches. But as the United States struggles with grave divisions, and talk of civil war, it might be prudent to consider Lincoln’s views of the bonds that unify the country, and his vision of hope in his 1861 first Inaugural Address:

“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine,” he told the assembly organized by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. “You may rejoice, I must mourn,” adding, “I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.”

In all, Roosevelt’s administration busted up nearly four dozen major corporations in seven years. In his remarks at the Music Hall in Cincinnati in 1902, the Republican president suggested how he might regard the power of modern Big Tech and the elements of the current American tax system that favour the wealthy and business interests:

Lindbergh remains an American hero for his signal 1927 flight. But he also is remembered for his devout isolationism before the U.S. entered the Second World War and for views widely characterized as sympathetic to the Nazis. But he won broad opprobrium for a speech he delivered in Des Moines, Iowa, two months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The remarks are a reminder that antisemitic sentiments have long antecedents in the U.S. But they also are a reminder that hatred has many colourations, for Islamophobia also is a scourge that remains alive in the 21st century.Franklin Delano Roosevelt, seated at left, takes in the view from Quebec City’s Citadel in 1943 with Mackenzie King and Winston Churchill – then prime ministers of Canada and Britain – and Alexander Cambridge, Earl of Athlone, Canada's governor-general.

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