Richard Nixon – 1968 – NBC Meet The Press

CONTEMPT—Raw, in-your-face, unapologetic, and morally bankrupt.

Every so often, the country reaches a point where character is not an abstraction but a requirement. We’re in one of those moments now. The country’s cynicism level has reached DEFCON 1.

You can feel it in the way the culture has shifted. You can see it in how some treat once-trusted institutions with insolence. Some insist this is unprecedented. It isn’t. We’ve seen contemptible conduct before, and history is clear about the cost.

E.g.: Andrew Jackson approached the presidency like a battlefield. Disagreement wasn’t negotiable; it was a personal insult. The Supreme Court wasn’t a coequal branch; it was obstruction. Jackson believed he alone carried the will of the people, and anyone who disagreed was somehow betraying that will. His contempt didn’t just weaken institutions; it normalized the idea that institutions were obstacles rather than guardrails.

A century later, Richard Nixon carried the same instincts into the White House. To Nixon, the Press, Congress… especially Congress, weren’t partners in a democratic system; they were potential threats. Much of his contempt played out behind closed doors, but the effect was the same: when a leader treats the system as an enemy, the system eventually breaks. What ended his presidency wasn’t a clash of ideas; it was the destruction of trust: one leak, one list, one lie at a time.

Joseph McCarthy presented another lesson. He never reached the Oval Office, but he reached the national psyche. McCarthy understood the power of accusation and the spectacle of contempt. Entire agencies were smeared, careers destroyed, institutions discredited, not by evidence, but by insinuation. Fear and suspicion became political tools. It took one moment, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?,” to remind the country how far we had drifted from our moral center.

Huey Long utilized the same template, but with a populist flourish. He built a political empire on personal loyalty and public grievance. Boundaries were optional. Critics weren’t opponents; they were targets. Long wrapped it all in promises of uplift, but underneath was the same message: institutions exist only as long as they serve the leader.

Different men, different eras. But they shared a common destructive, me-first impulse: a willingness to undermine the very structures that make democracy possible. Each of these men carried their contempt in full view: never softened, never qualified, and never hidden. Whether it was Jackson defying the Court, Nixon turning suspicion into policy, McCarthy disregarding decency, or Long destroying anyone who stood in his way, the message was unmistakable: restraint was for others, not for them.

And here we are again—where anger is coin of the realm and outrage is the strategy of choice, without regard for the people it harms. Institutions once seen as stabilizing forces are described as biased, corrupt, and untrustworthy.

Contempt—cruel, defiant, toxic—is no way to lead a country.

The lesson is as simple as it is old: character still counts. Democracy doesn’t endure contempt. It endures decency, responsibility, and humility.

When are we going to learn that lesson?