Change versus Continuity
The Perpetual Political Issue
Donald Trump has a terrible habit of calling his critics ``stupid.’’ Including some of his own supporters who have criticized his handling of the Epstein sex trafficking investigation, which he insists is ``a hoax.’’ He has called critics in his own party ``stupid Republicans’’ and ``weaklings’’ for demanding the release of the Epstein files.
Trump appears to equate ``smart’’ with ``shrewd.’’ They are related but not exactly the same thing. If you’re shrewd, it helps to be smart. But you also have to know your own interests and be determinedly self-regarding in pursuing them. Donald Trump is relentlessly self-regarding, more obvious about it than most politicians. Some would say that Trump gives self-regard a bad name.
One of the smartest students I ever taught at Harvard was from a working class background. She was an excellent student and decided to apply for a prestigious post-graduate fellowship in Britain. Part of the application process was an interview with a committee of prominent Boston Brahmins. When she came back from the interview, I asked her how it went.
``I’m not sure,’’ she replied. ``They asked me whether it was difficult for me at Harvard coming from a deprived background.’’
``And how did you respond?’’ I asked.
``I said, `What do you think I was deprived of?’’’
A shrewd answer. She was awarded the fellowship and is now a highly successful businesswoman.
Donald Trump shrewdly figured out the secret of success in American politics: if you are from the opposition party, you have to offer voters something they want that they are not getting from the incumbent. Because if voters are happy with the incumbent administration, they will vote to keep the same party in office. There won’t be much of a market for change.
That’s what happened in five straight elections from 1932 through 1948. Voters kept electing Democrats even after FDR was gone. Democrats had led the country through a depression and a world war.
Harry Truman surprised everybody by getting elected in 1948. After all, there were not one, not two, but three Democrats splitting the presidential vote that year: FDR’s chosen successor (Harry Truman), a right-wing Dixiecrat (Strom Thurmond) and a left-wing progressive (Henry Wallace). But there was just not much demand for change that year.
That came in 1952, when Republicans nominated a national hero, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who accepted FDR’s New Deal and won a world war. Truman, the incumbent, was depicted as a typical politician (``communism, Korea and corruption’’). By 1960, Eisenhower’s age (69) and his health problems had become liabilities. Voters wanted youth, dynamism and vigor – things they were not getting from Ike.
In 1960, John F. Kennedy, age 43, became the youngest person ever elected president (Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when he became president after the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901). In 1960, the Cold War was the dominant issue. JFK promised to ``get the country moving again’’ so the U.S. could outcompete the Soviet Union.
In 1968, the country was being torn apart by protests, racial violence and assassinations. Richard Nixon, who had been defeated for president in 1960 and then for governor of California in 1962, was resurrected from the political grave. (ABC ran a TV show entitled ``The Political Obituary of Richard M. Nixon’’ after his defeat for governor.)
They dug him up because Nixon offered something voters desperately wanted after the turmoil of the late 1960s: order. Nixon was a long experienced figure from the Washington establishment (former congressman, senator, vice president and presidential candidate). He knew how government worked. Voters believed he could hold the country together.
We elected Nixon and got Watergate. In 1976, what Americans were craving was morality in government. The candidate who offered it was Jimmy Carter, an obscure southern Democratic governor who taught Sunday school and promised, ``I will never lie to you.’’ Carter ended up having to deal with an economic catastrophe – an energy crisis, gas lines, out-of-control inflation and recession.
Carter was seen as weak and ``wishy-washy.’’ Enter Ronald Reagan, a candidate with strong convictions who offered decisive leadership.
Reagan’s views may have been controversial, but he was deeply respected and admired as a leader. He did something that had only been done once before in American history: he got his vice president elected immediately after him, George H.W. Bush in 1988.
Being vice president is usually a good way to win your party’s next presidential nomination (Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Gerald Ford (who succeeded Nixon to the presidency in 1974 without being elected) in 1976, Walter Mondale in 1984, Bush in 1988, Al Gore in 2000, Kamala Harris in 2024). But it’s not a good way to win the next presidential election (all but one – Bush -- lost).
After a president has served, voters typically want change, and vice presidents can’t really offer change. The only incumbent vice presidents who got elected directly to the presidency after their vice presidency were Thomas Jefferson in 1800 (after coming in second for president in 1796), Martin Van Buren (following Andrew Jackson) and George H.W. Bush (following Ronald Reagan).
Vice President Al Gore won the Democratic nomination for president in 2000 and narrowly lost the election to George W. Bush after winning the popular vote. Republicans denounced Clinton’s indiscretions in the Monica Lewinsky affair. Bush alluded to the scandal when he said in his acceptance speech at the 2000 Republican National Convention,``When I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to uphold not only the laws of our land, I will swear to uphold the honor and dignity of the office.’’ (Nuff said.)
Bush served two terms. After the stock market crash and the Great Recession of 2008, voters desperately wanted change. Enough to elect the first black president of the United States. Democrat Barack Obama was arguably the most liberal president the U.S. has ever had. President Obama’s greatest achievement (Obamacare, his national health insurance program) set off a powerful right-wing backlash. Nevertheless, Obama got re-elected in 2012 over Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a relatively moderate Republican who had sponsored his own state health insurance plan (dubbed ``Romneycare’’).
Meanwhile, the right-wing backlash continued to build and culminated in the nomination of Donald Trump as the Republican candidate for president in 2016. Trump was something new and different, whereas the Democratic Party was becoming old and tired. It was still selling big government.
Trump’s selling point was strength. Bill Clinton once made the interesting argument that ``Strong and wrong beats weak and right.’’ Trump proved it in 2016 and again in 2024. As it happened, Trump defeated Democratic women in both elections (Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris in 2024). Trump is tough and assertive – a super-masculine image that many voters associate with strong leadership.
Trump was defeated by a male Democrat, Joe Biden, in 2020, but Biden had a weak image of his own. He had been vice president, which always means he was somebody else’s man. And he got elected at age 78 – the oldest president ever elected (at that point).
Biden was likely the last president of the old generation of Democrats – FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ. Biden’s age and infirmities forced him to end his campaign in 2024, when he was replaced on the Democratic ticket by Vice President Harris. Trump defeated Harris in 2024 to become, ironically, the oldest president ever inaugurated (age 78).
Despite his age, Trump represents a new image of the Republican Party – more right-wing, more radical and more isolationist than Ronald Reagan. Trump is also extraordinarily polarizing – beloved by MAGA Republicans, hated by Democrats.
It may prove to be difficult for angry Democrats to rally around a consensus-builder. But it may be even more difficult for Democrats to support a candidate of the party’s radical left, which Trump has activated.
Next year’s midterm campaign will give Democrats the opportunity to find their voice.
Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo did that in 1984 when he addressed the Democratic National Convention: ``Mr. President [Reagan], you ought to know that this nation is more ``A Tale of Two Cities’’ than it is just ``a shining city on a hill.’’’ But Cuomo disappointed many Democrats by opting not to run in 1988.
Bill Clinton found his voice when he gave a hard-hitting speech to the Democratic Leadership Council in 1991: ``We [Democrats] have got to have a message that touches everybody, that makes sense to everybody, that goes beyond the stale orthodoxies of left and right, one that resonates with the real concerns of ordinary Americans, with their hopes and their fears.’’
Barack Obama thrilled Democrats with his keynote call to unity at the 2004 Democratic Convention: ``There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America. There’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states, red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states . . . and have gay friends in the red states.’’
Democrats are waiting expectantly for their next great voice to emerge.
Under the Constitution, Donald Trump is ineligible to run for a third term in 2028 (22nd Amendment: ``No person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice’’). Not only that, but Trump will be 82 years old in 2028 – the same age Joe Biden was last year. Would anyone really be surprised to see President Trump try to set aside the Constitution, declare some sort of national emergency and run again in 2028?