The Summer Soldier

It takes some brass, in our view, for President Biden to launch his 2024 presidential campaign from Valley Forge. That is where George Washington and his Continental Army camped in the darkest days of the Revolutionary War, the winter that began in 1777. Those were the days heralded the previous year by Thomas Paine, who, in “The American Crisis,” warned of the “summer soldier” who shrinks from the fight. Valley Forge is a byword for sacrifice — a crucible for American nationhood as Washington and his men steeled themselves to wage an uphill struggle for independence. Strict discipline was imposed amid fears of mutiny. Deserters were flogged or worse. Earlier in Washington’s military career, he’d boasted of erecting a gallows 40 feet tall: “I am determined if I can be justified,” he wrote, “to hang two or three on it, as an example to others.”Such was the stuff of which our Revolutionary forebears were made. What, then, would our first president think of the 46th attempting to make political hay at Valley Forge? These columns have noted that Mr. Biden’s handling of his generation’s wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan “ranges from weak to disastrous.” At the start of his career he backed cutting off aid to our ally, Free Vietnam, in its fight for freedom.Later, on Iraq, as Sarah Palin marked during the 2008 vice presidential debate, Mr. Biden waved the “white flag of surrender.” In 2021 he went a step further and surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban. So Mr. Biden is hardly in a position to invoke the spirit of Valley Forge, especially as part of a campaign kickoff reportedly designed to paint President Trump and his supporters as a threat to democracy.Mr. Biden’s remarks at Valley Forge “will make the case directly that democracy and freedom,” as a Biden campaign aide says, are “central to the fight we’re in today.” Mr. Biden appears likely to echo his Independence Hall speech, in which he framed the midterm elections as a battle for “the soul of the nation” and said “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the foundations of our very republic.”It’s not our intention here to put the gloss on Mr. Trump’s behavior in respect of January 6. Yet Mr. Biden risks ridicule in escalating his campaign of self-righteousness when he faces his own constitutional critics over, say, his defiance of the Supreme Court and his online censorship regime. Not to mention his Justice Department’s attempt to convict and imprison before the election his leading rival for the White House. Then again, too, it is no compliment to the Constitution that Washington helped to forge to imagine it so frail as to prove unable to withstand the stress of a second term by Mr. Trump. The Constitution is hardly gossamer. It managed to survive the Civil War, two World Wars, and the eruption of the atomic age. It even held up despite the effort by Mr. Trump and his acolytes to stop the electoral vote count on January 6, 2021.Through all that, and with no small help from Vice President Pence, the Republic stood. Mr. Trump vacated the White House on January 20, as was his constitutional duty, and flew home to Mar-a-Lago. One doesn’t have to be a Trump voter to perceive that he did no more damage to the parchment than has been done by those who push the idea of a “living constitution,” fiat money, or substantive due process. Which brings us back to General Washington and the winter at Valley Forge. “Naked and starving as they are,” the future president said of his army then, “we cannot help but admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery.” It is to their steadfast courage that we owe our independence — and our Constitution — which will endure long after mere mortals like Messrs. Biden and Trump have faded into history._____Correction: President Biden surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2021. An earlier version misstated the year.

The Summer Soldier

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