Former U.S. presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton have contributed essays to the In Pursuit project, a 250th-anniversary series curated by fired former U.S. archivist Colleen Shogan that sidesteps direct mentions of President Donald Trump while reflecting modern anxieties over presidential power.
When George W. Bush penned an essay this year about our first commander in chief, he managed to avoid writing the name Donald altogether. Barack Obama and Bill Clinton did the exact same thing. The three former commanders in chief joined a roster of historians, documentarians, and authors for the 250th-anniversary In Pursuit series, which assigns each writer an essay about a past U.S. president or first lady.
Although the project was designed to stay clear of daily political dogfights, many of the essays directly mirror the tensions flaring during Donald Trump’s presidency over executive overreach, democratic norms, and the integrity of federal institutions. The essays cover 43 presidents—excluding both Trump and Democrat Joe Biden—alongside 30 first ladies, rolling out weekly in chronological order through December.
Colleen Shogan Curates the Project After Her Firing by Trump
The project is curated by Colleen Shogan, the U.S. archivist who was fired without explanation by Trump last year. Shogan instructed every contributor to steer clear of partisan or ideological posturing. Everybody took those instructions and that guidance very seriously,
Shogan told WRAL, noting that the goal was to make all Americans feel welcome to learn from the country’s past.
“is to surface the lessons from the past 250 years of American history, so that we can learn from those lessons, from both our successes and our failures, so we can plan for the present and the future. It’s what has been described as debriefing the American story.”
Colleen Shogan, U.S. archivist
Shogan now practices her archival craft with the project after Trump removed her from her federal post in February 2025.
George W. Bush Hails Washington and the Heroism of Humility
Released on Presidents Day as the series’ debut on Substack, George W. Bush’s essay celebrates George Washington as a symbol of restraint. Without ever invoking Trump, Bush’s tribute is difficult to separate from Trump’s refusal to accept his 2020 election defeat and his public musings about bypassing the Constitution’s two-term limit.
“Our first president could have remained all-powerful, but twice he chose not to. In so doing, he set a standard for all presidents to live up to.”
George W. Bush, former U.S. president
Bush detailed how Washington resigned as commander in chief of the Continental Army and later established the two-term precedent long before it was permanently written into the Constitution. George Washington’s humility in giving up power willingly remains among the most consequential decisions and important examples in American politics,
Bush wrote in an installment that drove heavy public engagement.
General Stanley McChrystal Links Ulysses S. Grant to Law Over Loyalty
Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who commanded international and U.S. forces during the war in Afghanistan, used his contribution to analyze Union general and post-Civil War president Ulysses S. Grant. McChrystal portrayed Grant as a leader who exhibited an absolute commitment to principles larger than personal ambition
and who successfully resisted pressure to align military figures with political factions.
That analysis strikes a sharp chord in an era when Trump has repeatedly demanded personal fealty from administration officials. The temptation to bend institutions toward personal power is not unique to Grant’s era,
McChrystal wrote, adding that Our future still depends on whether our leaders choose law over loyalty.
Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and High-Profile Contributors Join the Roster
The essay lineup features a broad mix of political figures and historians. Bill Clinton authored a piece on Theodore Roosevelt, balancing Roosevelt’s crusade against powerful corporate interests with a candid examination of his exclusionary stances on Black and Indigenous Americans.
Organizers noted that Trump and Joe Biden were deliberately excluded from the roster because their time in the White House was judged too fresh for historians to fairly evaluate. By pairing presidential achievements with institutional failures, the project provides a direct contrast to calls from Trump for federal cultural institutions to embrace patriotic interpretations of American history.
Worth a look