CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST:

When I was a little kid, the United States seemed to be coming apart. The president was murdered in public. The first lady had his blood on her pink suit. Then the man who killed the president was murdered, also in public.

Earlier that same year, four black girls in Birmingham, Ala., were killed by a racist bomb attack during Sunday school. Then Malcolm X was assassinated. Then Martin Luther King Jr. Then the murdered president's brother, who was a senator and likely to be the next president.

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Our cities were torn by riots and fires. Troops were deployed -- at least those who weren't half a world away in Vietnam, being killed by the thousands in a war few understood. Many thousands of young men fled the country rather than be drafted to join them. Thousands more marched to protest the war, often burning flags and battling police or counterprotesters. Unarmed students were killed by soldiers. White Americans violently resisted desegregation. War and death and disorder dominated the news.

There is a natural human tendency to think we live in the hardest times, that our challenges are uniquely difficult. As British historian Thomas Babington Macaulay said almost 200 years ago, "We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point -- that we have seen our best days. But so said all before us, and with just as much apparent reason."

Understandably, millions of Americans today see darkness. Our president is a bad person and an incompetent leader. He lies constantly, stokes flames of racial division, tries to obstruct justice and represents much of what our Founders feared about a self-interested demagogue.

Since the beginning, the United States has built a system with bad and incompetent leaders in mind. In 1866, during the era of our first impeached president, abolitionist Frederick Douglass said: "Our government may at some time be in the hands of a bad man. . . . We ought to have our government so shaped that even when in the hands of a bad man we shall be safe."

The test of our shape is underway. The House impeached the president, and though the Senate will likely acquit, the American people can witness the whole thing. The free press fostered and protected by the genius of the First Amendment has let Americans know the truth, if they wish to. They can see the facts and the process, and they will be shaped by that, both now and for the long term.

In November, Americans, fully informed, will have the chance to decide what kind of country we are and what we expect of our leaders.

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