When George W. Bush penned an essay this year about a president named George, he notably sidestepped any mention of Donald Trump.
This omission was mirrored by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who also contributed to the In Pursuit project. This 250th-anniversary series invited a roster of historians and authors to craft pieces on various presidents or first ladies.
While explicitly designed to rise above contemporary politics, some essays within the project nonetheless echo anxieties currently flaring in the era of President Donald Trump, particularly concerning the exercise of power, the health of democracy and the integrity of the presidency.
The initiative is curated by Colleen Shogan, the U.S. archivist who was fired without explanation by Trump last year. She instructed contributors to avoid partisan or ideological stances. “Everybody took those instructions and that guidance very seriously,” Shogan told The Associated Press, emphasizing the goal for all Americans to “feel welcome to be able to read these lessons and essays and learn something from them.”
open image in galleryThe mission, Shogan said, “is to surface the lessons from the past 250 years of American history, so that we can learn from those lessons, from both our successes and our failures, so we can plan for the present and the future. It’s what has been described as debriefing the American story.”
The essays cover 43 presidents — all but Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Trump — and 30 first ladies. They are being published chronologically and weekly into December.
Trump and Biden were judged too fresh to be appraised by history, a call that may have also set aside passions of the moment.
Without naming Trump, Bush’s essay is difficult to read without thinking of Trump’s reluctance to cede power after his 2020 election defeat and his musings about a third term in defiance of the Constitution’s two-term limit.
Bush hails the heroism of humility
Bush’s essay celebrates George Washington, the original “No Kings” guy. Bush, a Republican, hails a man whose legacy only grew larger because he modeled the limits of the presidency for centuries to come.
“Our first president could have remained all-powerful,” Bush writes, “but twice he chose not to. In so doing, he set a standard for all presidents to live up to.” First, Washington resigned as commander in chief of the Continental Army, then set the precedent of serving only two presidential terms before that limit was enshrined in the Constitution.
Bush went on: “George Washington’s humility in giving up power willingly remains among the most consequential decisions and important examples in American politics.” Bush’s essay, released Presidents Day as the first in the series on Substack, drove heavy engagement.
Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who led U.S. and international forces in the Afghanistan War, sized up a fellow general, Ulysses S. Grant, in another essay that drew much attention for its parallels with today.
open image in galleryHistory offers lessons on ‘law over loyalty’
McChrystal presents the Union general and post-Civil War president as a leader who displayed “an absolute commitment to principles larger than personal ambition” and who, before his presidency, resisted pressure on military leaders to “align with political factions and be loyal to a person rather than the Constitution.”
The emphasis on personal loyalty resonates in a time when Trump has repeatedly demanded fealty from officials in his administration.
The “temptation to bend institutions toward personal power is not unique to Grant’s era,” McChrystal writes. “Our future still depends on whether our leaders choose law over loyalty.”
This month, in the latest In Pursuit installment, Democrat Clinton writes about Theodore Roosevelt, focusing on that president’s drive to expand the universe of “we the people” at the expense of powerful corporate interests, while also emphasizing Roosevelt’s exclusionary views on Black and Indigenous people.
The essays frequently address presidents’ failures alongside their accomplishments, a contrast with Trump’s calls for federal cultural institutions to stick to patriotic interpretations of American history.
Presidents, the chief justice and first ladies contribute
Among the In Pursuit contributors are Chief Justice John Roberts (writing about William Howard Taft, the only president who also served on the Supreme Court); Hillary Clinton ( Eleanor Roosevelt ); Michelle Obama ( Jacqueline Kennedy ); GOP operative Karl Rove ( William McKinley ); documentarian Ken Burns ( Franklin D. Roosevelt ); and historian Michael Beschloss ( Lyndon Johnson ). Democrat Barack Obama presents Abraham Lincoln.
The project is being staged by More Perfect, a nonpartisan alliance of dozens of presidential centers along with academics and organizations dedicated to advancing democracy. It is where Shogan now practices her archivist craft that Trump shut down by firing her in February 2025.
open image in galleryShe still has not been told why. Nor has Congress apparently been notified of the reason. The law requires Congress to be told but does not specify a deadline. The National Archives is the central repository of federal documents both precious and routine, and its leader has discretion over which records to preserve and display, and how.
“That is a position that used to be a nonpartisan position, much like the Librarian of Congress, the secretary of the Smithsonian,” she said. “And I took that very seriously and acted the entire time when I was archivist in a nonpartisan way.”
The White House did not respond when asked why Trump fired the archivist and whether the administration will tell Congress the reason.
Trump has long begrudged the archives for notifying the Department of Justice of his alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left office following his first term, though Shogan was not working for the agency then.
Shogan sees hunger for history without a slant
Shogan said she has been overwhelmed with the public response to the series so far and figures that speaks to a hunger for history shorn of partisanship. The essays have received more than 1 million cumulative views on Substack and her podcast of the same name registered 160,000 audio downloads and nearly 64,000 YouTube views at last count. A documentary about the series is scheduled to air on PBS in October.
In the essays, readers learn something new not just about the giants, but about presidents such as Millard Fillmore — “a historic punchline — best remembered, ironically, for being so forgotten,” in the words of his essayist, former New York congressman Steve Israel.
Then there was Franklin Pierce, presented by his essayist as a pro-slavery president and “permanent victim” of Washington’s alcohol-soaked culture.
Yale history professor David W. Blight recounts how Pierce won the presidency for the Democrats in 1852 despite vicious trolling by the Whigs. Fielding Mexican War veteran Gen. Winfield Scott in that election, they labeled Pierce, who also served in the war, the “hero of many a well-fought bottle.”