Ctrl + Q
It is often observed that American national identity is less a condition than an idea. What we have come to refer to as “the vision thing” is an expectation that our presidents will bring to the office a particularly strong sense of national mission. The four chronicled here (Thomas Jefferson, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan) may have understood the special character of America in different ways, but in all cases a belief that there was a distinctly American way of doing things guided their decisions.
Walter Cronkite
George Washington
Morley Safer
John Adams
Andrew Young
Thomas Jefferson
George Will
John Quincy Adams
James Carville
Andrew Jackson
Mario Cuomo
Martin Van Buren
Charlie Rose
John Tyler
David Gergen
James Buchanan
Norman Schwarzkopf
Ulysses S. Grant
Billy Graham
James Garfield
Lowell Weicker
Grover Cleveland
William F. Buckley Jr.
Theodore Roosevelt
Colin Powell
William H. Taft
Bob Dole
Herbert Hoover
Jimmy Carter
Self
George H. W. Bush
Self
Bill Clinton
Self
