Americans hoping for political peace are in for more disappointment
Americans who hope for a more peaceful political scene are in for more disappointment, I fear. The forecast is more division followed by a storm of craziness — but take this with a side order of salt. I can predict everything except the future.
Let’s start with where things stand today. The Biden administration, working with a small and fractured majority in the House and an eensy edge in the Senate, has done a lot of legislating. President Biden has signed a huge coronavirus relief bill, an enormous infrastructure bill and a gargantuan budget bill festooned with once-taboo earmarks. Being Democrats, the lawmakers overshadowed these achievements by fighting bitterly over even larger projects they failed to fund. But raging inflation suggests that the U.S. economy might finally have had all the debt-driven stimulus it can, for the moment, tolerate.
Biden’s poorly managed end to the long war in Afghanistan has been followed by a well managed response to Russia’s savagery in Ukraine — though each day of the Ukraine crisis presents new tests of Western resolve. Regarding the pandemic, Biden drifted from triumphal to a shrug, saying there is “no federal solution.”
In the bully pulpit, Biden has partially fulfilled his promise of a return to normalcy. Still, when big issues are on the line, he remains the oratorical equivalent of a kid learning to ride a bike in a room full of Ming vases.
Heading into the midterm elections, the public appears focused on the downsides of this mixed record. As Amy Walter of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report observes, “Every metric we use to analyze the political environment — the president’s approval rating, the mood of the electorate, the enthusiasm gap — all point to huge gains for the GOP this fall.”
A larger, seemingly cultural force also bodes ill for Biden’s party. Americans prefer divided government in Washington. Voters broke the Republican grip of 2004 with a Democratic backlash in 2006; the Democratic sweep of 2008 was undone by the Republican tea party of 2010; Republican victory in 2016 turned to Democratic victory in 2018. That history might not qualify as a “metric,” but it’s a strong tendency, likely to be repeated this year.
Turning to the longer term: The return of divided government will commence the public phase of a presidential free-for-all. Everything appears possible, from a rematch of Biden vs. Donald Trump to a race in which neither man is on the ballot. By “possible,” I don’t just mean freak-accident possible; I mean entirely within the realm of likely outcomes.
For a variety of reasons,
Biden’s grip on renomination is unusually weak. The first is his age. The United States has been around for almost 250 years, yet there has never been an octogenarian president. Inaugurated at 78, Biden is already the oldest to hold the office. He also represents a party battered by its intramural warfare over the failed Build Back Better agenda.
A stronger incumbent would be closing off all avenues of attack from inside the party. Instead, Biden has opened at least two lanes: He can be challenged by a more progressive candidate — as incumbent President Jimmy Carter was challenged by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in 1980. And he can be challenged by a candidate offering a torchpassing to the next generation.
Should Biden choose not to run for reelection, the Democratic race will be entirely up for grabs, as Vice President Harris struggles to be more than the faintest of favorites.
Even so, Democrats will have it easy compared with Republicans — especially if Trump elects to run again. Though he is no spring chicken himself, the Mar-a-Lago Mauler is beloved by the Republican base. He’s also uniquely detested by the electorate at large.
Turnout in 2020 was massive: Trump won more votes than any candidate before him yet still lost by more than 7 million. Given that Republicans did well in down-ballot races, the tsunami was clearly a wave of Dump Trumpers.
Since then, the former president has doubled down: more claims of election fraud, more puckering up for Vladimir Putin, more feuds with insufficiently sniveling Republicans, more cowbell. His fans love it, no doubt. But we know from 2020 that he turns more people off than on. The uneven performance of his endorsed candidates in Republican primaries is further evidence of Trump’s “low ceiling” as political practitioners call the upper limit on a likely loser’s prospects.
Many Republicans dread the dead end of another Trump candidacy. Some, such as former vice president Mike Pence, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are eager for an open nomination battle if and when enough toxic gas leaks from Trump’s balloon to make him vulnerable.
In both parties, presidential politics is long overdue for new stars.
David Von Drehle writes a twice-weekly column for The Post. He was previously an editor-at-large for Time Magazine, and is the author of four books, including “Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America’s Most Perilous Year” and “Triangle: The Fire That Changed America.”