Why Biden Should Double Down
After his worst week, Biden should announce for re-election
I got to admit, I didn’t agree with Jack Hughes’ assertion that Joe Biden should announce for re-election now, but the more I read, the more I saw the possible parallels with Harry Truman’s unlikely re-election campaign. Give it a read and let me know what you think.
by Jack Hughes
Joe Biden has just experienced the worst week of both his short presidency and his long political career. The attack at the Kabul airport which killed and injured U.S. soldiers and Afghan civilians compounded a crisis with a catastrophe. Biden had defended his shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan on the basis his actions would ensure that no more American lives would be lost. He was proven disastrously wrong.
As Biden’s approval ratings have now fallen to historic lows, one might think that the ongoing debacle would be a death-knell for any thoughts he might’ve harbored about running for re-election in 2024. The opposite is true. The crisis in Afghanistan increases the likelihood that Biden will seek a second term. In fact, we can go further and say that whatever his intentions had been he now has no choice but to run again.
The rationale is deceptively simple – as Biden’s approval ratings have plummeted so too has his political capital. If he doesn’t make clear that he intends to run for a second term, and soon, he will become a lame duck and lose any remaining chance he has of achieving his administration’s policy priorities. Put another way, Biden’s presidency is on life support. Not running again is tantamount to pulling the plug.
None of this is to suggest Biden’s chances of securing a second term are strong. The crisis of the past few weeks, a crisis that will continue for weeks to come, have dealt a crippling blow to his electoral prospects and those of the Democratic Party in next year’s mid-terms. But as others note Biden’s Afghan atrocities are unlike Jimmy Carter’s Iran hostage horrors insofar as it didn’t occur in a presidential election year.
As of this writing, Biden’s approval rating has fallen to 41% – and that was based on the USA Today/Suffolk University poll taken before the Kabul airport terrorist attack. Other presidents have come back from lower numbers, Bill Clinton went as low as 36% in mid-1993 before being re-elected in 1996, but the historical precedent closest to Biden is Harry Truman, who had a 40% approval rating before his ’48 win.
Truman, like Biden, was vice president to a far more charismatic leader.
Truman, like Biden, was vice president to a far more charismatic leader. He came to that office having made his name, such as it was, in the U.S. Senate. Truman’s blunt “give ’em Hell” Harry persona seems eerily similar to Biden’s “Here’s the Deal” dynamic. Both men were known for their missteps and malapropisms, which the led to the clever expression “To err is Truman,” but it’s another saying that binds them.
When Biden first made remarks on the situation in Afghanistan, back on August 16th, he said “I am the President of the United States of America, and the buck stops with me.” The line drew a direct connection from Biden to Truman who famously had on his desk in the Oval Office a sign which said “The Buck Stops Here.” It’s impossible that Biden, also a former vice president and senator, was unaware of the connotation.
Harry Truman was president from 1945 until 1953, a period during which a young Joey Biden would have been aged 3 to 11. In Biden’s own memoir, he recounts how Truman was admired as a straight-shooter by his family and their friends. The former president remained an active and influential member of the Democratic Party until his passing in December 1972 – just one month after Biden was first elected senator.
If Truman’s passing was a passing of the torch, there are those who argue that Biden has revived the Truman Doctrine as the inspiration for his administration’s foreign policy. That said, it’s unclear – perhaps unlikely – Truman would have handled the Afghanistan withdrawal in the same way as Biden did. After all, Truman kept U.S. forces in Germany and Japan after the war, which is not even to mention South Korea.
The true comparison between Truman and Biden comes not in the area of foreign policy but of domestic politics. In his memoirs, Truman wrote that he had no choice but to run for re-election: “I had to enter the 1948 campaign for the presidency.” He viewed the United States as being at a crucial turning point when reactionary forces on the right and the left couldn’t be trusted to safeguard the country’s best interests.
Much as Biden now finds himself caught between southern conservative senator Joe Manchin and progressive liberal senator Bernie Sanders Truman was flanked by the southern conservative Governor Strom Thurmond (still a Democrat) as well as his progressive pacifist predecessor Vice President Henry Wallace. In the end, Truman saw himself as the only candidate who could keep the Democratic coalition together.
The deep divisions in the Democratic Party, which saw both Thurmond and Wallace run as third-party candidates against Truman in 1948, made Truman a longshot to secure a second term. His upset victory on election night caught so many by surprise that the Chicago Tribune ran what is widely regarded as the most infamous and inaccurate headline of the 20th century (if not of all time): “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
Full-length academic tomes have been devoted to the incredible campaign waged by Truman in ’48, but among the factors that helped him to clinch his win was that he campaigned hard against the so-called ‘Do Nothing Congress.’ The Republican Party had seized majorities in both the House and Senate in the 1946 mid-terms but had spent much of its term obstructing most of Truman’s Fair Deal domestic agenda.
As Truman wrote in his memoirs: “The only possible argument the opposition could advance was…a desire for a change after fifteen years…But the voters’ actions in 1946 had put a Republican Congress in legislative control, and in my coming campaign to persuade voters the time for a change had not yet come, it was obvious that the Eightieth Congress would stick out like a sore thumb. It was my Exhibit A.”
Biden did ‘cut and run’ in Afghanistan; he must now cut to the chase and say he’s running.
If Joe Biden remains as unpopular as he is today heading into the 2022 mid-terms, it’s possible – even plausible – Republicans could hold their majority in the Senate and take the House. If they do, it’s equally plausible – even probable – the hundred and eighteenth Congress would continue to obstruct Biden’s agenda creating the same kind of ‘Do Nothing’ target Truman used to great effect in his re-election bid.
Biden may soon say, to paraphrase Truman, “I had to enter the 2024 campaign for the presidency” – not only to safeguard the policies he had prioritized over twelve years with Barack Obama but also to ensure the next three and half years of his presidency aren’t an inexorable drift towards irrelevancy and impotence. Yes, Biden did ‘cut and run’ in Afghanistan; he must now cut to the chase and say he’s running.
Jack Hughes is a communications consultant based in Canada. His previous contributions to The Experiment include “Same of Thrones,” “Tippecanoe and Agnew Anew,” “Harris / Shuri 2020,” “Bidenfeld,” “Firth and Firthiness,” “The Ballot of Bill McKay,” and “The World Wants ‘The West Wing,’” among others. His inexplicably extensive writings on Dan Quayle are “The Unusual Suspect,” “The Unusual Suspect II,” “The GOPfather,” “Porqua, CoQau?” and “Quayle’s Hunting Season.” Connect with him on LinkedIn here.
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