In all the punditry around our 250th July 4, a nostalgic theme recurs: this one is not as good as the last time. In 1976, we're assured, people were able to come together in an American spirit of optimism, despite the fact that those were also difficult, polarized times.

The 1970s were indeed difficult--stagflation, the end of the Vietnam debacle, Watergate--but there was a difference that has been overlooked. On July 4, 1976, we had real reason for optimism. People forget how Watergate ended, but I remember vividly the sense that some huge, antique, steampunkish machine had slowly begun to move its gears and then moved faster and faster until finally it was working once again.

The Constitution, I mean. Watching the Watergate hearings unfold on television was an accelerated course—guided by a brilliant Texan orator, Barbara Jordan—on how the separation of powers is supposed to work. Slowly at first but then with accelerating speed, Congress asserted its authority. On August 9, 1974, Nixon was gone--not impeached and convicted, but driven out by what Cicero liked to call the consensus omnium bonorum, the consensus of all good people. President Ford, in a move that I thought then and still think was right, pardoned him. The country breathed a sigh of relief, and smiled.

So 1976 was different, for a number of reasons. Some of them, like the universal narrative conveyed by a television with three or four channels, cannot be recovered. One can: the willingness of Congress to undertake its role and duty under Article I of the Constitution. For that to happen, "we the people," the sovereign authority invoked in the Preamble, will have to act. Our next chance to start the old machine's cogs and wheels comes in November.

~Lee Pearcy
July 4, 2026