To Rescue the Constitution

Bret Baier gives us a stylish and sensible portrait of the Foundingest Father of them all. At a time when a serious political dialogue has become virtually impossible, it is refreshing to be transported to a time when argument itself was the answer, and one man understood that surrendering power was the ultimate measure of leadership.Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize Winning Historian; Author of His Excellency: George Washington

Bret Baier has done it again! To Rescue The Constitution is a masterful exploration of the electrifying struggle to unite a young United States. Meticulously researched and powerfully written, in these pages Baier presents riveting portraits of the era’s key leaders and above all of George Washington himself. This book should be required reading in Washington, DC and the rest of the nation. With To Rescue The Constitution, Baier clearly takes his place as the country’s most significant journalist-historian. What a tour de force!Jay Winik, New York Times bestselling author of April 1865 and The Great Upheaval

Bret Baier’s narrative–careful, detailed, and evocative–captures what is arguably the most interesting (and in our schools often largely ignored) periods of American history. George Washington’s times were more divisive than today’s, but Baier clearly demonstrates how our first president brought the country together, largely by force of his character and example. To Rescue the Constitution fills the gaps in all readers minds; it informs, illuminates and deepens understanding. And gives us perspective from which hope might arise. It is very much worth reading.Bill Bennett, United States Secretary of Education under President Ronald Reagan

Once again Bret Baier has taken readers on a journey into American history, dramatizing the suspenseful years around the birth of our nation. The scenes have striking relevance in today’s fractured political climate, underscoring the need for constant vigilance to protect the values of our republic.Mark Levin, lawyer, author, and host of syndicated radio show The Mark Levin Show and Life, Liberty & Levin on Fox News

All students of American history should read Bret Baier’s compelling new book on George Washington – a great look at our indispensable Founding Father.David Rubenstein, Chairman of the Council of Foreign Relations, bestselling author, and Host of PBS’s The David Rubenstein Show

In “To Rescue the Constitution”, Bret Baier adds another important volume to his now-extraordinary series of five books written about key moments of transition in American politics and history. As with his other books, Bret Baier combines the journalist’s instinct for narrative with a flair for writing history and biography which now places him in the ranks of America’s best and most important historians. “To Rescue the Constitution ” doubles as a personal, political and military portrait of Washington and -by far- the most readable and cogent account of America’s war of independence and rise to nationhood, As Baier shows, America’s birth as a free nation owed much – almost everything– to Washington who is profiled from birth to death as America’s founding father, indisputably “First in War, First in Peace.” Additionally, this has become my favorite book on the Revolutionary war, on the Constitutional Convention, on the ratification debates and on Washington’s two precedent-setting terms as president, all of which fulfilled Washington’s personal goals while completing the American revolution. It should be added that “To Rescue the Constitution” is written for our troubled times. The story it tells is a powerful reminder that for America, the road to consensus and progress has always brought forth differences, differences inherent in our makeup as free people and in our great political, social and economic diversity. The story it tells shows that with statesmanship and a renewed commitment to citizenship, no major problem confronting Americans is ultimately is beyond resolution. Like Bret Baier’s other four books, this book is fun, readable and inspiring. Like the others, it is my favorite book of 2023.David Eisenhower, Director, Institute of Public Service, Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania, and author of Eisenhower: At War

In this timely study of the early, halting, fragile launch of the American experiment in self-governance, Bret Baier provides an antidote to the anxiety of our own times. Straddling the political reality of two eras, the division of twenty-first century America and the “internal conflicts of an emerging nation.” Baier proves a perfect guide to the violent, acrimonious, compromise-laden creation of our political system. He finds hope for the future in this study of the past—our “dissent was baked into the cake,” he notes, “but so was union.” In his continuation of an examination of Presidential leadership, Bret Baier returns to the beginning—the role played by George Washington in the creation of our system of government. He ultimately finds Washington’s contribution to be without parallel. Exploring the challenges Washington faced in winning American independence and driving the story through the creation of the Constitution and the Presidency, Baier powerfully places Washington’s signature acumen for leadership at the center of the remarkable creation of our shared revolutionary experiment in self-government. Rejecting simplistic and romantic notions of America’s extraordinary Founding, Baier writes from the experience of years covering contemporary politics and revels in bringing the violence, selfishness, ignorance, and extreme partisanship into full conversation with the inspiration, dignity, and compromise which has characterized American political history from the beginning. Washington emerges as a real, bold, visionary, and effective politician whose unique perspective and experience provided steady guidance in the midst of the maelstrom of revolution. This study could be an essential introduction to the extraordinary story of the birth of the United States and a great refresher for many who have forgotten the sheer will and brilliance of our shared Founding and ongoing effort to find a more perfect Union.Douglas Bradburn, PhD., President and CEO, George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

It is not possible for one book to do justice to George Washington. But it is possible, and long overdue, for one book to put Washington’s role in the framing our our Constitution center stage. Without these critical months as the presiding officer of the Constitutional convention —“Washington gave no speech. He maintained his reserve to the end” as Bret Baier writes in To Rescue The Constitution—all the strength, endurance, courage and victory Washington displayed in the Revolutionary War would have been wasted as the union dissolved after the peace was secured. Without that Convention and its blueprint, Washington’s two terms as president would not have provided the bedrock example of selfless service on which the Republic would depend until Lincoln and Grant arrived to guide it through its greatest storm. Washington is the indispensable man in our nation’s story, and his role at the Constitutional Convention his greatest moment of leadership for the new nation. More than as its Commander-in-Chief during the war, more than his record as its first president, without Washington presiding over its deliberations the Convention of 1787 would have come to naught. Kudos to Bret Baier for resurrecting these critical months in Washington’s life, putting them exactly in the middle of that most amazing life, and reminding the reader, again, that along with “No Washington, no country” and “No Washington, no presidency,” there is surely a third absolute: “No Washington, no Constitution.” A book that could not be more timely as the country again seeks leaders of dignity and courage, resolve and restraint. Hugh Hewitt, Former Director of the United States Office of Personnel Management

Bret Baier’s To Rescue the Constitution is the epic saga of how George Washington emerged as the indispensable leader of the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787. Written with historical exactness, dramatic flare, and reader-friendly prose, Baier once again proves that he is a first-rate popular historian. The George Washington that emerges from these pages is a decorated Revolutionary War hero whose personality strengths are pragmatic risk-taking, philosophical wisdom, good judgment, and unwavering patriotism. As Baier makes clear, our first president was duty-bound to build a durable United States of America. Highly recommended!Douglas Brinkley, Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University. He is the author of American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race.

Bret has done it again- bringing to life the real life drama and brilliance of our founding fathers in constructing our Constitution and recounting the remarkable leadership of George Washington. I can see him covering it all in the 1789 version of Special Report!Brian Kilmeade, Fox and Friends, Host of the Brian Kilmeade Radio Show, and bestselling author.

Baier offers a reminder both useful and poignant of a truth we’ve forgotten: our republic has often felt fragile before. The tale of Washington, who chose not to run when he could, rings down the decades.Amity Shlaes, author, Great Society and Forgotten Man