Our Vulnerable Presidents

The Perils and Messes of Modern Politics

Harder than it looks.

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Consider the fates of these men:

John F. Kennedy — Assassinated.

Lyndon B. Johnson — Broken in spirit by Vietnam.

Richard Nixon — Resigned rather than be impeached.

Gerald Ford — Never elected.

Jimmy Carter — Defeated after one term.

Ronald Reagan — Badly wounded in an attempted assasination at the outset. Key aides considered removal via the Twenty-fifth Amendment at the end.

George H. W. Bush — Defeated after one term.

Bill Clinton — Impeached.

George W. Bush — Left behind two wars, one of choice.

Barack Obama — Promise unfulfilled. Rolled by the GOP.

Donald J. Trump — Chaotic, impeached, and defeated.

Joe Biden — Defeated and humiliated.

Donald J. Trump — To be determined.

There are a great many reasons for this pattern which historians and political savants will be pondering as they consider how Trump has so far defied every challenge to his ascendancy and power.

Here’s an explanation to debate: The principles that frame our politics — ideologies and beliefs — have come undone, replaced by messes of confusion, corruption, and a debilitating crisis of leadership.

The Grand Old Party is in thrall to Donald Trump’s brand of self-serving nationalism, which uses tariffs, taxpayer money, and the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security to violate the rights of Americans, from the once powerful to those least able to defend themselves.

The Heritage Foundation, where the blueprint for Trump’s second term, Project 2025, was developed, is now in turmoil, unwilling or unable to distance itself from Nick Fuentes, an avowed antisemite whose interview on Tucker Carlson’s podcast was heard by millions.

Two thirds of New York City’s Jewish voters, long the bastion of Democrats voted against Zorhan Mamdani in his successful race for Mayor in large part because he has reviled Israel. The Gaza war -- and the resulting surge in antisemitism — has split American Jews so profoundly it is hard to fathom how they can be reconciled in support for the Jewish state..

The Democratic Party of the working class is now the home of coastal elites. Our former presidents have done remarkably well in their retirements. The Clintons summer in the Hamptons and the Obamas have estates in Martha’s Vineyard and Hawaii.

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I have just read The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer by Daniel J. Flynn, after having heard the author’s fascinating interview on Brian Lamb’s podcast Booknotes+. Meyer went from youthful Communist Party membership to “naming names” of his former comrades, and becoming one of the mainstays of William F. Buckley’s magazine National Review.

The biography of Meyer and Sam Tanenhaus’s massive new biography of Buckley describe in detail how the conservative political movement came together around anti-communism and limiting the role of government in social and economic policy. There was a philosophical basis for that strategy, avowedly opposed to the precepts known as socialism.

Suffice to say that Donald Trump’s MAGA movement is not conservative by any accepted use of the term, as defined by Buckley and Meyer.

It is absurd to call Mamdani a “communist,” as Trump has done, especially when today’s ruler in the Kremlin is Vladimir Putin, whose tenure shows that Karl Marx’s vision for the triumph of popular will failed completely in reality.

Mamdani’s “socialism” is better framed as idealism, a renewed effort to improve the lives and lot of the urban citizenry, where minorities once discriminated against are now increasingly in charge.

Here’s an upside comment. The resounding gubernatorial victories of Abigail Spanberger, formerly of the CIA, in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill, retired military, in New Jersey demonstrate that success for women in politics is (almost) complete.

Spanberger defeated Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, a Republican who is Black. Coincidentally the election took place in the same week that former Vice President Dick Cheney died. Cheney, the GOP stalwart, was the architect of the Bush-era War on Terror who, in his last vote, chose Kamala Harris, a woman of color, for president over the Republican standard-bearer.

Liz Cheney, his daughter, is a Republican apostate for her stance against Trump and received the John F. Kennedy Library’s Profile in Courage award in 2022. This year the award was given to former Vice President Mike Pence, in recognition of his actions on January 6, 2021. A Kennedy who was not present at the ceremony was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services at Trump’s right hand.

Right. Left. Liberal. Conservative. Progressive. Reactionary, Fascist. Communist. What do all these labels actually mean now?

The longtime goal of the country’s two parties was to maintain a “Big Tent,” which in the past meant that Democrats included segregationists from the Solid South and at the same time labor and social activists from the northern cities. Republicans, the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, as recently as the 1980s was the home of iconic liberals like Senator Jacob Javits of New York and Senator Charles Mathias of Maryland.

That American presidents are as vulnerable to the vagaries of circumstance as the record shows, is not just because our principles and politics have gotten so messy. But when the parameters of American life are polarized and in so many ways contradictory, it turns out that to be a leader carries exceptional risks which -- as has happened repeatedly — overwhelms their power.