With the election over, the task facing Donald Trump is to find a way to govern a divided nation. Suspicions that the President-elect is in way over his head are widespread, and what talents Mr. Trump has to bind up the nations divisions are not clear. To his credit, Mr. Trump did put his finger on a deep discontent in the country—so did Bernie Sanders—but the campaign was conducted in an atmosphere of bigotry, misogynistic attitudes, anti-religious policy proposals—no reason to forget these things but no need to rehearse them all again here. As Mr. Trump turns to governing, I’ve been wondering if there are among his predecessors any models for what he should do and say and try to be.
I have a model to suggest to Mr. Trump, a President who came into office amid a divided nation and under a cloud of suspicion about competence and integrity. Here’s my choice: Chester Alan Arthur.
In the 1870s and 80s, Chet Arthur was a protégé of Senator Roscoe Conkling, who was the big boss of the New York Republican Party. During this time, the Republican party was deeply divided and Conkling–and Arthur—were supporters of the President Grant wing of the party, the Stalwarts, who hoped to bring Grant back for a third term. Conkling held enormous patronage power though his political machine, and the federal Custom House on Wall Street was the entrance for millions of dollars of import goods and the site of actual tariff collection. It was America’s prime patronage prize, and Chester Arthur was Conkling’s man running it. In the name of civil service reform, President Hayes fired Arthur, and when a badly divided 1880 Republican convention nominated James Garfield for President on the thirty-sixth ballot, dashing any hope for a Grant third term, Conkling supporters saw to it that Chester Arthur, Conkling’s Stalwart friend and confidant, was nominated as vice president to balance the ticket. Garfield and Arthur won the election.
Arthur was not loyal to Garfield. He kept in close contract with Conkling, Garfield’s nemesis, and in the first six months of the administration, Arthur reported to Conkling and did everything he could to subvert Garfield in his battle with Conkling. Then tragedy struck. Garfield was shot. He was shot by a mentally deranged individual who had been denied a patronage job and who yelled at the scene of the shooting in a Washington train station that he was a Stalwart and Arthur was now president.
I’m getting to Donald Trump, but I have to go through the distrust of Arthur to get to him. Chester Arthur was perceived by many to be a political hack and he was doubtless the most disloyal vice-president the country has ever known. His loyalties rested with a New York senator who opposed the president at every turn. The shooting, however, changed things. Arthur was aware immediately of what might be facing him if Garfield did not survive, and Arthur never signed up for that. He was quite aware of his limitations and he knew his less than gleaming background had not prepared him for the presidency. He even tried to get to Garfield’s sick bed apparently to apologize, but the doctors never let him in.
Arthur was devastated by the shooting. He was aware that a deeply divisive politics had created a toxic environment that had led to violence against the new, young president. (Gore Vidal once remarked that Garfield was the John Kennedy of the 19th century.) A terrible responsibility loomed before him, and when Garfield died, Arthur assumed the presidency having never wanted it, much less sought it. Facing the responsibilities of the presidency and the politics of division that were so much a part of American in 1881, Arthur did what few thought he could do—he altered course, separated himself from his past and resolved to meet the demands of his situation with high-mindedness and principled—presidential—character.
When I say Arthur was perceived to be a political hack unsuited and unfit to be president, I suspect Arthur would have acknowledged that assessment even if he might have reasonably defended himself by saying he had been playing politics by the rules of the times. Distrust of Arthur ran deep, however, and many Americans were shocked by the prospect that Arthur might become president. The opinion was widespread that Arthur may have even been involved in the shooting.
But something remarkable happened—Arthur changed. Some have speculated that an unsolicited expression of concern contributed to that change. As Garfield was dying, Arthur received a letter from a citizen, Julia Sand, a woman whom he did not know. She wrote to Arthur the following:
“The hours of Garfield’s life are numbered—before this meets your eyes, you may be President. The people are bowed in grief; but—do you realize it?—not so much because he is dying, as because you are his successor. What president ever entered the office under circumstances so sad! The day he was shot, the thought rose in a thousand minds that you might be the instigator of the foul act. Is that not a humiliation which cuts deeper than any bullet can pierce?”
And then she wrote this extraordinary sentence: “If there is any spark of nobility in you now is the time to let it shine….It is for you to choose whether your record shall be written in black or gold.”
Rather than push these sentiments aside as undeserved criticism and respond defensively, Arthur bent under their weight. Arthur saved the letter. He would reread it. It may have helped to shake him out of his old habits and push him toward a sober acceptance of his new responsibilities. And Arthur went on to support efforts at civil service reform and became known as an independent president who would stand up even to his own party leaders. That independence came with his effort to let nobility shine, and it came at a cost—he would be refused the Republican nomination in 1884.
Why should Chester Arthur be a model for Mr. Trump? The call to nobility that Arthur received in the letter from Mrs. Sand was a plea he took seriously. He knew the criticisms coming his way rang true and that he had come into office amid doubts, mistrust, skepticism, fear and savage criticism—my goodness, he was even called a murderer. But he rose to the occasion, mustered what talents he had, and while he is also remembered for being a bit of a dandy and a clothes horse, Chester Arthur made good on a promise he made to himself to work for the good of all the American people. The Pendleton Act was passed, civil service reform became his great legacy, and dismantling the patronage “spoils” system brought a sea change in nineteenth-century American politics.
The campaign just completed did little to assure American voters that candidates were concerned with the unity of national purpose. The 2016 campaign will not be remembered for being high-minded. One would look in vain for anything noble in Mr. Trump’s campaign, which included name-calling, the flinging of unfounded accusations of law-breaking and the unwarranted defaming of character and slandering of a political opponent. There was no call to what Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature.” There was little that went on that envisioned a brighter future, little that anyone can look back on with pride or that highlighted service to others, concern for the welfare of the less fortunate, and respect for the dignity of all persons that express core values Americans broadly accept and deeply cherish.
I looking ahead to a Trump administration, the individuals Mr. Trump sees as models will tell us much about who he is and where he might be going. We know he admires his father, and that is well and good, but this job he assumes is going to require a conciliatory attitude toward people who are, with just cause due to the campaign he ran, suspicious and skeptical and actually hostile to him and his policies. I don’t know if Mr. Trump will ever be able to reassure those he made the target of bigotry, misogynistic attitudes, and anti-religious policy proposals that he is a person of good will. And amid so much distrust I don’t know who Mr. Trump may tap as a model for charting a sane political course in a divided nation filled with people and political leaders who for eight years set aside the national interest to focus explicitly and exclusively on obstructing the work and vision of his predecessor. Mr. Trump, however, ought not to think of moving ahead and going it alone without finding a model to emulate, someone who can provide guidance and open a pathway in difficult circumstances. I think Chester Arthur might be a good companion. I hope Mr. Trump receives a letter like Arthur did, one that speaks to him, that calls forth the better angels of his nature and that reminds him that if there is nobility in his soul, now is the time to let it shine.
The Julia Sand quotation is from Kenneth Ackerman, Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James Garfield, Carroll & Graf, 2003 , p. 422.
