2016 will forever be the year that America chose a mystery box as its president.
Outside of nineteenth century Kentucky politician and perpetual
presidential candidate Henry Clay, perhaps no political figure has been in the
public eye longer or is more well-known than Hillary Clinton. Voters knew what
they were getting: continuation of Obamacare, liberal justices to the Supreme Court,
new gun laws, a possible push to decrease the “wage gap” between men and women,
and lastly, the return of longtime Clinton allies to the halls of the White
House.
Yet on Tuesday, 60 million voters and a majority of the
Electoral College selected Donald Trump, a real-estate billionaire with a history of bankruptcy,
no political experience outside of donating millions of dollars to political
figures and who had considered himself a Democrat just a few years ago.
The media could be forgiven for believing up until the late
hours of Election Night that Trump would lose. After all, despite Hillary’s
problems—her perception as a stiff and unfriendly individual with a need for
power and personal legacy, ongoing questions about her handling of the
overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and the growing threat of ISIS, major
concerns about whether foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation seemingly
for political favors crossed the line, and the FBI’s investigation of her
personal e-mail server and the classified material on it—none of this compared
to the apparently insurmountable problems in Trump’s campaign.
Trump seemed bent on alienating every voter he could. From the first day, he singled out illegal
immigrants, calling them “rapists and murders,” and even questioned whether an
American born judge of Mexican descent could be impartial in adjudicating a
legal case. He criticized the Bushes for their mistakes in power, called Mitt
Romney a weak presidential candidate, attacked John McCain for allowing himself
to be captured in Vietnam and made fun of a disabled reporter, not to mention the
things he said, and allegedly did, to scores of women.
Like millions of Americans, I spent hours listening to the
radio on Tuesday as the first returns came in, fully expecting Trump to be
defeated and the Republican Party to lose its majority in the Senate.
But when Florida and North Carolina were both called for Trump, I sat up and my
jaw started to slowly drop. Then when Ohio was placed into the Trump column and
he continued to hold onto narrow leads in Wisconsin and Michigan, two traditionally
blue states, I began to believe that he might just pull it off and stayed glued
to the TV until the early hours of November 9, when he was declared the winner.
How on Earth could this have happened?
The results still have to be broken down and may take years
to fully analyze, but it appears that Trump was able to tap into a well of disillusionment
among both middle and lower class voters from not only the traditional red
states of the Midwest and South but also the “blue wall” of democratic states
like Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. He won among whites overwhelmingly, and
while Clinton did get more Hispanic and black voters, her advantage was much
smaller than Obama’s in both 2008 and 2012. Trump appears to have done better
with these groups than Romney did in 2012 and to have garnered about the same
number of votes from women, a real
shocker. Conversely, it appears that many other traditional Democrats, for one
reason or another, stayed home or inexplicably voted Republican, and
Republicans saw a resurrection of a surprising number of voters who had not
voted at all for years.
With all the comments I have been hearing and reading from
Trump voters, I have realized a few things. Even though Trump lives in his own
Manhattan tower, is a child of privilege and has never wanted for anything, he
was able to somehow make a personal connection with under educated, blue collar,
struggling middle class citizens who felt that they had been left behind as attention
was focused on minorities, and who had seen their own lives critically affected
by a slower economy while no one appears to care. While there does appear to
have been an element of racism to Trump’s base, it would be unfair to label all
his voters as backward, prejudiced rednecks. Many of these voters appear to
care little for social issues and simply want the government to stop regulating
them. Others are tired of hearing that if they did not vote for Hillary they
were sexist, if they did not support Black Lives Matter they were racist, and
if they had personal doubts about gay marriage they must be homophobes.
While it is equally true that not all Democrats, or even the
majority, expressed this line of thinking, the people who did seemed to always
attract a lot of media attention conservative voters were simply weary of being
shamed.
In many ways, this is similar to what happened in 1968. That
year, Republicans nominated Richard Nixon while Democrats eventually pinned
their hopes on Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Nixon portrayed himself as a
champion of the working class and spokesman for the “silent majority,” a block
of voters who were not among those in the streets protesting at that time and who
had grown fiercely impatient with constant social upheaval. As liberal writer
EJ Dionne points out, “Richard Nixon was only too happy to rescue the working
class from [the] dustbin and harvest its ballots.” Much like Trump would do
almost fifty years later, Nixon largely avoided policy specifics, saying he had
a “secret” plan that would end the war in Vietnam, would fix the economy and fight the
communists who had infiltrated the liberal left.
While I sorted through my own feelings on Election Night,
social media sites lit up with memes declaring that America had elected a racist,
sexist, homophobic hate monger who now—gasp—would have his finger on the
nuclear button. So why do I find myself being cautiously optimistic?
Here why.
In 1880, James Garfield, a popular Republican Congressman
received the party’s nomination after a wild convention in which he had been
everyone’s second choice. Party leaders then saw to it that Chester A. Arthur
was chosen as Garfield’s vice president as a sop to a corrupt New York
Republican Party machine, which had carefully groomed Arthur. In the first days
of his term, Garfield surprisingly fired bureaucrats he thought corrupt and
seemed to be on the verge of a major effort at civil service reform when he was
shot and later died.
Nervous reformers now looked to Arthur and believed that any
chance at political change would not come from a man who had been indisputably tainted,
enjoyed living the high life and personally thought of himself as a “dandy”. He
never worked hard and loved a good party.
To the reformers’ great surprise, upon taking office, Arthur
turned away from his old New York friends and immediately became serious about
pushing through a civil service reform bill. He vetoed the Rivers and Harbor Bill,
which was portrayed as an internal improvements measure but which he recognized
as a thinly veiled pork barrel package. Next, Arthur signed the Pendleton Civil
Reform Act, which set up a commission to award political positions only to qualified
individuals. Some have suggested that these measures were because he did not
want to be anyone’s puppet and genuinely wanted to leave a good legacy. As one
person who saw the change in Arthur put it, “"He is no longer Chet Arthur,
he is the president."
In 1884, the American voters were offered a seemingly no win
choice. Rather than nominate Arthur, Republicans instead chose James G. Blaine,
a powerful party leader and Senator from Maine. Blaine was a good speaker, had a
devoted party following and was a veteran of backroom arm twisting. However,
many Republicans, like a young Theodore Roosevelt, were disgusted by rumors
that Blaine had profited from dealing with railroad barons and was more the friend
of big business than of the people. In fact, when Blaine was nominated,
Roosevelt and several others famously stomped out of the convention hall.
In response to Blaine, the Democrats nominated an outsider
from New York named Grover Cleveland, who had never even held political office
until 1881 when he had been elected mayor of Buffalo. Just one year later, he
was elected Governor of New York and developed a reputation for working with
members of both parties to clean up state government.
This should have meant that Cleveland would coast to the White
House, especially after a series of letters Blaine had written in the 1870s (think
e-mails in 2016), which resurfaced showing that he did have dealings with corrupt
businesses. However, it soon came out that Cleveland had fathered a child out
of wedlock, an unspeakable social crime during the nineteenth century. Under
pressure, Cleveland came out and said that while he did not know if the child
were his, he would take care of it and asked the voters’ forgiveness. The
election was no longer about government issues, but about destroying the
personal reputation of the other candidate. As the election, dominated by
attacks, came to end, Blaine lost support after he met privately with business
leaders, reinforcing the belief that he was a corrupt stoodge. Then, much like
later e-mails by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, seeking to divide the
Catholic vote, a Blaine advisor was caught saying, "We are Republicans,
and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party
whose antecedents have been rum, Romanism, and rebellion." This alienated
Blaine’s important Irish voting block and led many to cross over to Cleveland,
helping him win the election.
Like Arthur before him, Cleveland, for all his inexperience,
proved a fairly decent president. He fought hard to continue the reform of the
federal government and after some bruising fights, expanded the number of
government employees which would have to go through board examinations before
taking office. Far from a visionary on how to lead the country, Cleveland acted
more like a night watchman taking on corruption and other issues where he could.
He successfully pushed for regulation of the railroads engaging in rate manipulation
and famously vetoed more spending measures—over four hundred—more than any
president up to that point. He even pushed to reverse federal policy and lower
tariffs to make trade easier and took on the most powerful lobbying group of
the day, the Grand Army of the Republic, a group of Union veterans of the Civil
War.
While many of these battles, especially the last two,
convinced voters to throw Cleveland out of office, he made a political comeback,
winning the presidency a second time in 1892, only to have the worst economic
depression in the country’s history cripple him politically a year later.
My point here is that neither Arthur nor Cleveland were expected
to do well as president. Both shared traits that Trump himself has—Arthur’s
poor work ethic and Cleveland’s lack of political principal outside of just controlling
spending.
Because of these historic examples, I am hopeful that Trump
himself can be a passable, if not good, administrator. I am also drawn to other
historical comparisons, to men like Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, both who
made decisions based on their gut and who had private tempers that would flare
up when pushed.
My main hope is that actually winning the presidency has
some humbling effect on a man who has never shown that quality. In the past few
days, Trump has done everything right. He has given a good victory speech and
did not gloat, he has refrained from any further criticism of Obama, and in his
first interview since the election, a very subdued president-elect promised
that he would not repeal popular parts of Obamacare, like preexisting
conditions.
Max Boot in Foreign Policy also points out that Trump early on announced he would
quickly deport all 11 million illegal aliens, but now seems to be rapidly reevaluating
his options. He also said that he would close all immigration from Muslim
countries but now is simply calling for a new more detailed form of “vetting.”
Finally, while Trump said he would “bomb the hell out of Isis” he now says that
he will listen to his generals.
As we have seen time and again, Trump himself is the biggest
wildcard in all of this. For this reason, he needs a good core group of
advisors around him. They need to sit Trump down in his first days of office
and say something like, “Donald, you are the president and your party has
control of Congress, it is imperative you do not blow this for us. Don’t say
anything stupid, don’t fondle female staffers and be willing to listen to our advice.”
I think he has the capacity to do this, because like Arthur, and Clinton for
that matter, Trump is a man obsessed with his own image, who fears, more than
anything, looking like a “loser.”
So let's relax and see what this mystery box can do.
