![]() ![]() Biden gave Meacham a coveted four-minute slot on the final evening of the Democratic National Convention. His 2018 book “ The Soul of America,” a spirited defense of the promise of America for the Trump years, captured the attention of Joe Biden, who used the title as a catch phrase in his 2020 presidential campaign while relying on Meacham for speechwriting counsel. Bush, “ Destiny and Power,” maintained a respectable critical distance while treating his subject with sufficient dignity that the Bush family asked him to deliver the eulogy at the National Cathedral. His 2008 biography of Andrew Jackson, “ American Lion,” won a Pulitzer Prize for balancing Jackson’s many faults, including his relentless efforts to destroy Native American Indian tribes, with his success in holding together a country whose “ protections and promises,” as Meacham asserted, eventually extended to all. ![]() ![]() He is almost certainly the most well-connected presidential biographer of the moment. Meacham bids to be the redeemer in chief of the narrative of American exceptionalism: the venerable if now-shopworn story in which the United States has a providential and world-historic role as a nation distinctively dedicated to human liberty. ![]()
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