Lessons for America’s political future in the wisdom of a founding father

Ensconced in the splendid isolation of our Vermont getaway, perched near the international border, it proved impossible to sever the electronic links wafting our way.

The political news never stopped. And we couldn’t stop putting down our books to pick up our phones, seeking the latest updates on the ups and downs of the U.S. presidential race.

We Canadians think we know a thing or two about the United States — its politics, its peoples, its peccadillos. But when you are living with Americans for a few weeks, watching them live through the tumult of our times, you have a front-row seat to a full-time focus group.

At dinner every day, we listened to their musings about the rise of Vice-President Kamala Harris and the decline of ex-president Donald Trump. Yet this isn’t the first time that ideological demonization and righteous indignation have wrought dissension and disunity, as my erstwhile colleague Eric Weiner reminded us.

During his time as a correspondent for National Public Radio, working alongside us in the Middle East and Asia, Weiner covered political polarization and ideological demonization as a foreign story. Now, it has all followed him home.

Yet amid the present-day drama, Weiner remains optimistic about the outlook for America. That’s because he draws inspiration from one of its greatest historical figures:

Benjamin Franklin is the heroic subject of Weiner’s latest book, “Ben & Me: In search of a founder’s formula for a long and useful life.” This summer, this famous founding father seemingly had a seat at our dinner table, a constant companion as relevant to today’s discord as he was to the discourse of his time.

The secret to Franklin’s enduring influence, then and now, is that he channelled his intellectual curiosity into connecting with his interlocutors — allies and adversaries alike. Despite his fame, Franklin never pontificated, preferring to listen humbly rather than preach grandly, focused on genuinely conversing rather than simply converting.

Weiner, a bestselling author, writes that Franklin understood the middle path, Buddha-like in his ability to see — and hear — both sides. When America’s founding fathers were far apart from each other at their constitutional convention, he listened closely and brought them together.

As a printer and polemicist, politician and diplomat, Franklin had a way with words and wisdom. The book describes how he helped edit Thomas Jefferson’s inspirational prose into an even more artful formulation, standing out as the most famous words in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident …”

Franklin’s genius (he invented bifocals and lightning rods) was not merely in helping people make up their minds, but also changing their minds — as he did himself late in life: “At a time when opinions have calcified, Franklin reminds us that changing your mind is not only a noble act; it is also an American one,” Weiner observes.

That said, his story is as universal as it is domestic. In fact, Franklin remained the quintessential loyalist to the British Crown for most of his life, and if not for a few twists of fate might have stayed one to the end (as his estranged son did).

But when Franklin belatedly joined the American Revolution, he soon enjoined those north of the border to become part of the United States. The statesman’s miserable misadventure in Canada is a largely forgotten chapter in his storied history, brought back to life in a chapter all its own in the book.

Weiner sets up the story by first mentioning our own summer sojourns to Vermont, overlooking no man’s land and a seemingly imaginary frontier — “a borderless border … or so we thought.” Then he describes how Franklin discovered the reality of that frontier, and the enduring differences between our two political cultures nearly 250 years ago.

In 1776, Franklin tried to foment rebellion, enduring a harsh winter journey from Philadelphia that almost killed him. He discovered the American forces in disarray, and Quebecers distrustful of their righteousness.

During a truncated stay in Montreal, Franklin “never got the chance to deploy his considerable powers of persuasion. The Canadians were not in the mood.”

Franklin learned his lesson and retreated. He mused later that if “statesmen … were more accustomed to calculation, wars would be much less frequent.”

(That said, the French printer Fleury Mesplet, who accompanied him from Philadelphia, stayed behind to found what would become the Montreal Gazette.)

Weiner’s conclusion: “I’m glad Franklin failed this time. Had he succeeded, Canada would have become the fourteenth colony …. Most likely, it would have been subsumed by the dominant American culture. Canada would not be Canada.”

Franklin’s journey offers lessons learned about the great divide in U.S. politics, then and now. All of which might perhaps be coming soon to Canada, despite our different political cultures.

And now, after reading this book, back to the news.