Will America end up doing the right thing?
If, as seems increasingly likely, Hillary Clinton wins a victory of the magnitude of Lyndon Johnson’s over Barry Goldwater, or Richard Nixon’s over George McGovern, progressive Americans will be ecstatic. The rest of the world will breathe again.
Dodging the nightmare of a wilfully ignorant narcissist, an elderly neurotic, reduced to shaking rage at the mildest slight, as Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military machine in human history, is certainly worth a grateful prayer of thanks. Sadly, the human impulse after a huge military or political victory is to lose sight of the much more important and challenging task: winning the peace.
It is now a throwaway line for every pundit that President Clinton II will face the deepest hostility of any presidential winner. It may be a popular cliché, but it is historically dubious. An enormous number of American conservatives and Southern Democrats regarded LBJ as a traitor to his race, triggering George Wallace’s nasty Trump precursor campaign; and his surprisingly successful appeal to Americans’ darker angels four years later. Is Clinton as unanimously feared and detested by an even larger swathe of Americans, as was Richard Nixon in 1972? Doubtful. There are powerful lessons in each victory. LBJ, blinded to rising anger by arrogance and his enormous victory, squandered his mandate in the jungles of Vietnam. He was driven from office in shame. Richard Nixon, like a modern Richard III, descended into raging paranoia and pills, bringing shame and ignominy on his office and his legacy.
The path from delirious election night to disastrous overreach is easy to plot, but hard to resist. Your defeated enemies are bitter and truculent, flicking aside any proffered olive branch. Your supporters are exultant, demanding a rush to deliver legislative promise. The media denounce weakness in any failure to press political attack, while sneering at delays driven by necessarily slow and opaque coalition-building.
The next President Clinton must resist those partisan pressures if her legacy is to rise above that of a Johnson or Nixon.
“This time it’s different,” is the laughable claim of every economic analyst and every political pundit. But this time, it is, if not unique, then very unusual. Not since Teddy Roosevelt has the American two-party system been so profoundly threatened.
More seriously, it seems likely that The Donald, humiliated in defeat, will point a new Trump TV’s artillery at the entire Republican party in Congress.
To achieve anything of consequence, President Clinton will need to find 61 senators and a majority of Congress members, drawn from the sensible caucuses on each side of the aisle, to together show the courage required to resist the bitter attacks from their own tribes.
Clinton demonstrated considerable skill in winning support from even skeptical opponents as a senator. She is reportedly already reaching out to old Senate friends, and through them, to newcomers, to open channels of dialogue. Senate Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan have each shared with friends their understanding that the GOP rebuilding process cannot be joining Trump’s brownshirts in burning down the American Reichstag. Each understands that an electable GOP must be one seen as capable of governing.
Does such a majority exist for a renegotiated Asian trade deal, a reform of pensions, Obamacare and the absurd federal tax system? Churchill said Americans always end up doing the right thing, but only after they have already done every dumb thing.
Can such “right things” be delivered? That will depend of two things: Was this election enough of a shaming for the GOP — whose generation of flirtation with the politics of race, guns and immigrant-bashing gave birth to Trump — to now acknowledge that fatal toxin? Can they now pursue a higher path to regaining political legitimacy?
More importantly, however: Do they have a partner in the White House willing to grant them the political cover to deliver a bipartisan compromise? It’s not easy. With a strong mandate, and a public commitment to bipartisan deal-making eight years ago, Barack Obama surged into power. Within a year the gloves were off, within two he was being pounded in a midterm election defeat. This time, moderate conservatives have a big incentive to deal: refusing will not buy them peace from the Limbaugh/ Trump/Fox news attacks, agreeing will give them bragging rights on delivering Solomonic compromise, for the good of America.
Perhaps only naive wish is father to this prediction, but I’d offer a hesitant “yes” about the prospects, therefore. And then return, like the rest of world, to anxiously holding my breath.