“Justified or not, the Supreme Court has a kind of sacred status in American life. For whatever reason, Presidents can safely run against Congress, and vice versa, but I think there is an inherent popular aversion to assaults on the court itself. Perhaps it has to do with an instinctive belief that life needs umpires.”

American writer, historian, and presidential biographer, born 1969

Jon Meacham is an American writer, historian, reviewer, and presidential biographer. He was born in 1969. He is known for his books on American political history and for winning the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. Meacham has held senior editorial roles at Random House and Newsweek, and he writes for The New York Times Book Review and Time. He is the Canon Historian of the Washington National Cathedral and holds the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Endowed Chair in American Presidency at Vanderbilt University. His work often returns to the presidency, leadership, and the American past.