Within the Margin

…that headline being the closest those items (Icahn and the American left) will likely ever come to each other.

In the midst of reading (here and here, for example) about the various travails of Trump advisor Carl Icahn, my mind wandered into consideration of the American left’s prior failures to deny its bête noir presidents a second term. Icahn has now served twice as the illustration of America’s descent into clientelism under the present administration; one of the most obvious fears of what Trump’s election would wrought seems to be coming to pass.

This got me pondering the last few decades of American presidential elections. Nixon’s reelection was dreaded on the left and managed to shock any number of people – from Hunter S. Thompson to John and Yoko – despite his comfortable polling leads. Reagan got slapped around in midterms but as 1984 dawned, his second victory seemed almost assured, even as the left saw him as a smiling but sinister threat to labor, global peace, and domestic race relations. George W. Bush engendered abject hatred and cries of fascism, and his quest for reelection offered far more suspense than the other two, but he survived. The only Republican president of the last 50 years to be denied a second term was the one who provoked the least hostility among his foes – George H.W. Bush.

Yet each of those three triumphantly-ratified presidents would see their political fortunes evaporate soon enough. Watergate began to unravel Nixon at the outset of his second term; he would resign the August before midterms and his party went on to lose 49 House seats – on top of the five lost in special elections as the scandal unfolded. Iran-Contra didn’t end the Reagan presidency, but it consumed several years and weakened his standing. Democrats retook the Senate in midterms with a net gain of eight seats. Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq War, and a foolish ploy to privatize Social Security sent Bush into freefall in his first year after reelection. Nothing improved for him the second year, and his toxicity combined with an assortment of Congressional scandals to lose his party both the House and Senate in 2006.

In all three cases, the president’s second term was at best a struggle (Reagan) and at worst an outright disaster (Nixon and Bush). In all three cases, the president and his party suffered heavy political defeats. To a certain degree, that is to be expected for most presidencies, as the public grows restless for change by the time the second midterm rolls around. What seems notable in these three cases is the rapid, steep decline following so soon after voters put their imprimatur on the administration’s work to date.

Is the left skilled, then, at sowing the seeds of political defeat, but cannot reap them in timely fashion? Is there something intrinsic to how the left prosecutes its case against these presidents? I find myself wondering if the intensity and assured nature of its argumentation is taken for granted by the so-called swing voters, who dismiss it as simply being the way of things: “Ah, yes, my liberal friends are once again foretelling the downfall of civilization. Once again, they think all is not well in the kingdom! Such alarmists.” And then Watergate, or Iran-Contra, or Iraq/Katrina happen, and all is confirmed. It seems safe to argue that the intellectual left is quite well known for being loud and abstract, and only when events prove loud enough and tangible enough to match do the political winds actually change.

How will it be with Trump, then? He started with less political capital than these others, and soon began losing ground. He is said to be “rebounding” when he occasionally manages to hit 40% in an approval poll (Gallup currently puts him at 39%). His party trails badly in generic Congressional ballot polls. More importantly, though, his administration has been beset with scandal almost immediately. He hasn’t faced and failed crises like Bush did, but the worst fears of his opposition with respect to ethics and corruption have been confirmed through various dramas and departures from the norm. Have events proven loud enough and tangible enough for the left’s arguments to be heard? Will they be forgotten if things smooth out somewhat before 2020, and the new norms – exemplified by Carl Icahn and his ilk – are fully entrenched?