On Election Day, November 6, 1860, a Springfield, Illinois, lawyer who 11 years earlier had served one term in Congress and was soon to become president, said the election was “like a 'great swelling,' which causes great pain before it surfaces, but after it is over the body is healthier than it was before.”The quote comes from Eric Larson's recently published book, “The Demon of Anxiety,” about the coming of the Civil War that kept the political system in place.
One certainty is that when the dust settles from this year's election, one deeply unpopular candidate will be eliminated from the political establishment. But another will be elected. Many voters are thinking about this year's choice in a way similar to how many voters thought about the candidates in the previous presidential rematch, between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland in 1892: “One of them had no friends, the other only enemies.”
President Biden's most notable achievement is the creation of “Trump nostalgia.” Analyst Charlie Cook points out that when Donald Trump left Washington 14 days after his January 6, 2021 fiasco, 55% of people in a CNN poll considered his presidency a failure. Trump is the only president in more than 70 years of modern Gallup polling to have an approval rating below 50% while in office, and 55% now rate his presidency as a success.
In September 2021, since Biden’s late-August withdrawal from Afghanistan diluted his main claim to status (valuable experience, a supposed vestige of unremarkable longevity), his approval rating in Gallup polls ranges from ominous (44%) to miserable (37%). Matthew Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute points out that Bill Clinton was the most recent president to leave office with an approval rating above 50%. Not since 2004 has a majority said the country is heading in the right direction. And the 2008 presidential election (John McCain vs. Barack Obama) was the most recent election in which both candidates received positive favorability ratings.
Continetti reminds us of the disconcerting challenge Biden issued (to Time magazine in May): “Name me one president who has accomplished as much as I've accomplished in my first three and a half years in office.”
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Thomas Jefferson doubled the size of the country (Louisiana Purchase). Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, which helped repopulate the Prairie and West, and the Morrill Act, which created land-grant universities, and fast-tracked the financing of the military victories at Antietam, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg. More recently, we have Franklin D. Roosevelt (Social Security, National Labor Relations Act, Civilian Conservation Corps, Tennessee Valley Authority, etc.), Lyndon B. Johnson (Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.), and Ronald Reagan (who suppressed inflation, promoted growth, and promoted a defense buildup that ended the Cold War).
Unlike Biden, Franklin Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan won landslide election victories that allowed them to claim support for ambitious policies (Johnson after 1964). Biden's legacy will not be defined by the worst inflation in 40 years. The bad news is that this and everything else will be overshadowed by the shocking selfishness of seeking a second term amid clearly accelerating decline.
And what about his opponents? Since 2016, Trump has specialized in policy announcements that are little more than noise. Remember his pledge to have Mexico pay for the border wall? And his promise to eliminate the national debt in eight years (not the annual budget deficit, which is highly unlikely in itself)? (In his four years in office, he's added nearly $8 trillion to the debt.) His low-key tone in response to a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office that debt payments this fiscal year will exceed defense and Medicare spending was an understandable response, if not his default stance.
Americans, in reaction to this year's political absurdist theater (hang on to the glory, Samuel Beckett), have believed the absurd. In a May Harris Poll, 55% said the economy is shrinking. (Gross domestic product has been growing for four years.) 49% think the S&P 500 has fallen this year. (It's up 24% in 2023, then up 14.2% after hitting a record high last week.) And 49% think the unemployment rate is at a 50-year high. (Unemployment is below 4%, near a 50-year low.)
Is it any wonder that people who hear strange things from their candidates will believe strange things? Biden's longevity and Trump's resilience suggest that a soufflé that's mostly air can actually rise again and again. This is strange.
