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29 Dec, 2023

- The Absolute Worst Political Predictions of 2023

politics

The Absolute Worst Political Predictions of 2023

A lot of people got some things very wrong this year.

Animation and Illustrations by Christa Jarrold for POLITICO

By Zack Stanton

12/29/2023 05:00 AM EST

Zack Stanton is deputy editor of Playbook.

There is, I’ve found, no single word for it — a person who is loudly, consistently wrong in their political predictions.

You can probably think of someone who fits that description. Perhaps it’s your uncle. Maybe it’s a talking head on cable news or sports radio, an overcaffeinated member of the International Brotherhood of Hot Take-Havers. Maybe it’s “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams, who has managed to appear on this annual roundup of the worst predictions in politics more than any other person on the planet.

And yet, even as language fails us, what I’m describing is endemic. The closest thing there is to a surefire prediction about American politics in 2023 is this: Today, inevitably, somebody on the internet will be loudly wrong about something that will happen in the future.

What’s compiled here is a collection of people and statements that were very, very wrong about politics this year. Sometimes, it was the result of hubris. Sometimes, wishcasting. In a few instances, it was an honest-to-God misread of the situation.

What they have in common, though, is that they were wrong. Which means that they were something for which there is a single word: human.

Here, POLITICO Magazine’s annual roundup of some of the worst predictions of 2023 (and a couple from the tail end of 2022).

Civil war will break out in the U.S., and Elon Musk will be elected president

Predicted by: Dmitry Medvedev, Dec. 26, 2022

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ended 2022 by unfurling a Twitter thread predicting, among other outlandish forecasts on world affairs, that in 2023, the UK would rejoin the EU and “war will break out between France and the Fourth Reich.”

It was shitposting masquerading as statecraft. Then he turned his piercing insights to American shores, reminding us all that the wisest course of action is usually to never tweet.

“Civil war will break out in the U.S.,” Medvedev wrote. California and Texas will become “independent states as a result. Texas and Mexico will form an allied state. Elon Musk’ll win the presidential election in a number of states which, after the new Civil War’s end, will have been given to the GOP.”

Barring something truly cataclysmic in the next few days, none of this happened in 2023. There was no American civil war; California and Texas have not seceded; Texas and Mexico, far from being an allied state, are still at odds; Elon Musk has not only not been elected president (seeing as there isn’t a presidential election until 2024), but is ineligible for the office, seeing as he is not a natural-born citizen.

It was a Matryoshka doll of a bad prediction: One bad prediction nested inside of another inside of another inside of yet another.

Donald Trump will not be indicted in Manhattan

Predicted by: Larry Kudlow, March 30, 2023

On March 30, as speculation abounded over the potential legal jeopardy surrounding former President Donald Trump, Larry Kudlow believed he knew what was coming — or wasn’t, as the case may be.

“It looks like Trump will not be indicted,” he told viewers of the Fox Business channel. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg “cannot indict a ham sandwich,” Kudlow said — implying that a case against Trump was extraordinarily thin, given the supposed workaday ease with which prosecutors can issue indictments.

Within an hour of Kudlow’s proclamation, reports broke that a grand jury had indeed voted to indict the former president. On April 4, Bragg’s office announced that the indictment consisted of 34 counts stemming from Trump allegedly “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.”

There will be a recession in 2023

Predicted by: A whole lot of people …

- CNBC, Oct. 10, 2022: “JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon warns U.S. likely to tip into recession in 6 to 9 months”

- Bloomberg, Oct. 17, 2022: “Forecast for US Recession Within Year Hits 100% in Blow to Biden”

- The Economist, Nov. 18, 2022: “Why a global recession is inevitable in 2023”

- Bloomberg, Dec. 6, 2022: “Wall Street Chorus Grows Louder Warning That 2023 Will Be Ugly”

- Wall Street Journal, Jan. 2, 2023: “Big Banks Predict Recession, Fed Pivot in 2023”

- Fox Business, Feb. 6, 2023: “Bank of America ‘still forecasting’ 2023 recession”

- POLITICO, April 4, 2023: “Jamie Dimon warns of new economic storms ahead”

- CNBC on April 12, 2023: “Fed expects banking crisis to cause a recession this year, minutes show”

And so on …

This one sits in a special category: predictions that totally made sense with the information available at the time, but which, in retrospect, were incorrect.

There was no recession in 2023. Far from it, the economy is booming by many measures (third quarter GDP growth was above 5 percent); the Federal Reserve has seemingly engineered a soft landing (the inflation rate has dropped by roughly 6 percentage points since June 2022); and job growth continues to be robust (the unemployment rate was, at its most recent measure, 3.7 percent).

Joe Biden will face a serious primary challenger

Predicted by: Karl Rove, Jan. 4, 2023

Among pundits who are reflexively critical of President Joe Biden, one consistent meme abounds: that he’s the new Jimmy Carter.

That he’s feckless in the face of rampant inflation. That he’s overmatched on the international stage. That his presidency will end after one term; it’s malaise forever.

In this line of thought, Biden, hampered by lagging poll numbers and a base that is ambivalent at best about his renomination, would inevitably face a serious primary — which is exactly what Karl Rove predicted as 2023 began.

“Mr. Biden declares that he’s running for reelection,” Rove imagined. “A significant Democrat realizes the danger this represents and, à la Ted Kennedy 1980, runs.”

It wasn’t a bad prediction, per se. Just a wrong one.

It’s the end of 2023, and even as Biden’s poll numbers are anemic, and Democrats fret about his chances in 2024, no significant Democrat has emerged to challenge him. (Apologies, Dean Phillips.) He isn’t going to face anything like Carter did in 1980, when the youngest Kennedy brother captured nearly 40 percent of the primary vote. (Whether or not that’s a good thing is for others to decide.)

Chris Licht “ain’t even close to done yet”

Predicted by: Michael LaRosa, June 5, 2023

Two days later, the embattled CNN chairman and CEO — and subject of an internet-conquering Tim Alberta profile in The Atlantic — was fired.

Kevin McCarthy won’t be elected speaker; he’ll drop out

Predicted by: Donna Edwards, Jan. 4, 2023

It took a while (15 rounds of voting), but the Bakersfield Republican persisted and was elected speaker of the House in January.

McCarthy’s speakership will last a full two-year term

Predicted by: Kevin McCarthy, Jan. 7, 2023

After being elected, McCarthy was asked how confident he was that he’d have the job for a full two-year term. He exuded optimism. “A thousand percent,” he said.

On Oct. 3, he was ousted as speaker after less than 10 months on the job. He’s resigning from Congress at the end of the year — less than one year after he promised he’d be speaker for two years.

Firing Tucker Carlson will be the end of Fox News

Predicted by: Glenn Beck, April 24, 2023

Reports of Fox News’ death were widely exaggerated. The network continues to thrive even after Tucker Carlson’s firing this spring and the $787 million payout to Dominion. Are primetime ratings down? Yes, somewhat. But they’ve bounced back, and among cable channels, it trails only ESPN in primetime viewership. Carlson’s successor, Jesse Watters, hosts the top two top-rated shows in cable news (“The Five” and “Jesse Watters Primetime”); while he may lack Carlson’s rhetorical firepower, and his show isn’t appointment TV for some Beltway media types the way Tucker’s was, he shares his quasi-hypnotic grip on his Fox viewers.

DeSantis’ campaign launch on Twitter Spaces is ‘genius’

Predicted by: Mick Mulvaney, May 23, 2023

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at long last announced his presidential bid in May, the goal was to make a splash. To drop several political journalism cliches in a row: You only get one chance to make a first impression, the press attention surrounding a campaign announcement is usually a high-water mark for what a campaign can expect to get in terms of positive coverage, and so on.

It stands to reason, then, that Team DeSantis thought they’d engineered a home run of a debut on the national stage: Rather than a staid, boring announcement speech in front of adoring supporters, how about underlining the ostensible future-vs-past argument of his campaign by launching it on Twitter, in a “Space” hosted by the site’s owner (and emerging conservative hero) Elon Musk?

But of course, the danger of moving the launch out of a controlled environment is that the unpredictable is more likely to happen. Though I suppose what did happen was, in another sense, wholly predictable. The launch was beset by technical glitches, which delayed the main event for nearly a half hour as the would-be viewership sank. When it did begin, the audio routinely cut out, and Musk peppered DeSantis’ remarks with asides about, for instance, Dogecoin.

Far from an act of genius, as Mick Mulvaney suggested we might witness, it undercut one of the core rationales of DeSantis’ campaign from the very get go: The notion that he was a no-nonsense leader capable of flawlessly executing his plans.

Nikki Haley’s presidential candidacy will be less viable than Mike Pence’s

Predicted by: Ross Douthat, Feb. 15, 2023

At the start of the year, there was little reason to think that Nikki Haley would be able to outpace the rest of the non-Trump candidates in the Republican herd.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had culture war bona fides, a super PAC capable of raising and spending $200 million and a keen sense of how to excite the online right. Former Vice President Mike Pence had Trumpian policy credentials, sincere and deep-seated conservative Christian beliefs and a low-key Midwestern demeanor. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) had a “happy warrior” bearing and, as the Senate’s sole Black Republican, the promise of being able to appeal to voters who were not traditionally in the GOP coalition. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie married a decidedly Trumpy punchiness with a decidedly anti-Trump message, an “in” with the vanishingly small number of #NeverTrump Republicans.

Then there was Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, whose constituency wasn’t particularly clear. Yes, she was Trump-adjacent, having served as his ambassador to the United Nations, but she was also Trump-critical, having rebuked him immediately after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. And then, of course, she walked back that post-J6 criticism a bit. She was, the thinking went, not Trumpy enough for the MAGA-curious, and too Trump-curious for the #NeverTrumpers.

And yet.

Pence has dropped out of the presidential race. So has Scott. Christie is in fourth place in New Hampshire, and an afterthought most elsewhere. DeSantis’ campaign has been defined by outsized expectations, bizarrely public infighting and a candidate whose personal appeal is often deemed to be lacking. Haley is a strong second place in New Hampshire. More than any non-Trump candidate, she has momentum on her side and the clearest shot of emerging in a one-on-one race against the former president.

Housing and rental prices are going to come down

Predicted by: Joe Biden, March 1, 2023

In a closed-press meeting in March, Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash.) asked President Joe Biden about the nation’s ongoing problems with inflation. Biden’s response included a prediction of good news on the horizon: rent and housing costs could go down soon.

Though inflation has come down substantially from its peak and talk of a feather bed-soft landing for the economy abounds, housing costs show no signs of going down. Indeed, its persistence is driving the overall inflation rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics wrote in a Dec. 12 release that housing costs were the “largest factor in the monthly increase in the [consumer price] index,” excepting food and energy prices.

Wishcasting by Biden? Almost certainly.

Trump will not run for president

Predicted by: Susan del Percio, Dec. 24, 2022

“This time next year, Donald Trump will not be a candidate for President,” the strategist and political analyst predicted during an MSNBC hit on Christmas Eve 2022. “[E]specially with his legal troubles, I think that there’s a potential that he could make a deal, that maybe he pleads down to some other charges … and it keeps him from running for office. It could also be that he knows he’s going to lose.”

He’s running. Not only that, Trump is on a glide path to the Republican presidential nomination, leading handily in every poll publicly available, national or statewide. And not only that, but he’s consistently leading Joe Biden in general election polls, legal troubles or not.

Trump will run … but drop out

Predicted by: Anthony Scaramucci, June 12, 2023

“I know President Trump’s personality reasonably well,” Scaramucci, the financier and (extremely briefly) Trump White House communications director, told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo three days after Trump was indicted on federal charges stemming from his alleged mishandling of classified documents. “He does not like this. He is stressed about it. And I am going to say something contrarian on your show: I think he ends up eventually dropping out of the race.”

While we cannot suggest any insight into Trump’s state of mind or stress level, this much is clear: Trump is still a candidate for president and shows no signs of dropping out.

Trump will run … but drop out for a plea deal

Predicted by: Scott Galloway, July 15, 2023

“I think President Trump is not going to run for president under the auspices of a plea deal,” Galloway told co-host Kara Swisher on their popular “Pivot” podcast in July.

I’ll concede that it’s still possible that this will come true. But he hasn’t yet dropped out, and it seems unlikely that he will, considering that (1) there’s been a minimal political cost to the indictments thus far, (2) running for president is a way he could potentially avoid trial and cancel the federal charges against him, and (3) a plea deal would undercut both his image as a fighter (which is central to his political appeal) and his (false) contention that he’s facing a political prosecution orchestrated by the Biden administration.

Barbie will flop because it’s too woke

Predicted by: Ben Shapiro, July 23, 2023

In a YouTube video titled “Ben Shapiro DESTROYS Barbie for 43 minutes,” the boy king of the conservative podcasting world vented his spleen about the adapted-from-a-toy Warner Bros. film. “It was one of the most woke movies I have ever seen,” he tweeted, ostensibly referencing the film’s repeated and uneuphemized critiques of patriarchy.

That viewpoint, which the film wore on its sleeve, would doom it, he predicted.

Business for “Barbie” is “just absolutely going to fall off a cliff” after its first week in theaters, Shapiro predicted. “The repeat business on this movie is going to be nonexistent.”

Instead, it became the highest-grossing film of 2023, with $636 million in the domestic box office, and $1.4 billion worldwide.

“Barbie” was a global phenomenon. Shapiro? He’s just Ben.

TikTok will be banned in the U.S. by June 2023

Predicted by: Scott Adams, Dec. 9, 2022

Though TikTok has remained a punching bag for politicians eager to take simultaneous aim at China and social media, and though it is banned in the state of Montana, it has not been banned in the U.S.

Jim Jordan will be elected speaker of the House

Predicted by: Adam Kinzinger, Oct. 4, 2023

After House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted in a far-right GOP mutiny, there was no clear path for a would-be successor. The acting speaker, Patrick McHenry, didn’t want the job. The ultimate winner, fourth-term Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson, was hardly a glimmer in anyone’s eye. And so speculation abounded about which party mandarin would end up with the gig.

Initially, eyes fell on two men: Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana.

Adam Kinzinger, the former Republican lawmaker from Illinois, was confident how that fight would play out.

“I think if it was [elected by] secret ballot, Steve Scalise would win overwhelmingly, or anybody but Jim Jordan,” Kinzinger told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “But what you’re going to start seeing, Anderson, is — on the emails, on the fundraising, on other cable news networks — Jim is gonna be now the new litmus test of: Are you a true conservative or not? Steve Scalise won’t be. It’ll be Jim Jordan. And so, there will be a slow acquiescence of everybody to Jim Jordan. That’s my prediction.”

Jim Jordan lost to Steve Scalise the first time around. Then, after Scalise abandoned his bid and Jordan was the Republican nominee for speaker, he lost again.

Steve Scalise will be elected speaker of the House

Predicted by: Neil W. McCabe, Oct. 11, 2023 (“The next Speaker of the House will be Steve Scalise.”); Carmine Sabia, Oct. 3, 2023 and Alyssa Farah Griffin, Oct. 5, 2023

See above.

When Scalise emerged from the wreckage of the motion to vacate Kevin McCarthy, it initially appeared that he might be able to muster enough votes to win the gavel.

“The next Speaker of the House will be Steve Scalise,” said One America News correspondent Neil W. McCabe. “If Rep. Steve Scalise wants to be Speaker he will be,” said conservative online personality Carmine Sabia. Alyssa Farah Griffin, the former Trump White House aide and resident conservative commentator on “The View,” gamed it out: “This goes to conference next week, they realize nobody has the votes, and eventually Scalise and Jordan cut some kind of a deal where Scalise is Speaker, Jordan is majority leader.” Fortunately for Mike Johnson, that didn’t happen.

Prompted by DeSantis’ surge, Dems will dump Biden for Newsom

Predicted by: Tomi Lahren, April 24, 2023

The idea here was that Ron DeSantis had the momentum of a runaway freight train before he even officially joined the presidential race. “[O]nce DeSantis announces, the Dems will throw Biden out and pick Gavin Newsom,” predicted Tomi Lahren of Fox News and Outkick fame.

It’s two predictions in one, and neither came to be. DeSantis’ campaign was revealed to be something of a paper tiger, and never really caught on with voters. And Democrats coalesced (even if reluctantly) around Biden rather than passing the torch to one of the many comparatively young governors waiting in the wings.

A Biden impeachment inquiry will launch by the end of September … with Dem support

Predicted by: Darrell Issa, July 25, 2023

Another 0-2 prediction. The Republican-controlled House ultimately did authorize a Biden impeachment inquiry, but it came in December. And it did so without a single House Democrat supporting it.

Dems will somehow regain control of the House ahead of 2024

Predicted by: Michael Moore, Jan. 5, 2023

“We will not have to wait till 2024 for the Democrats to regain control of the United States House of Representatives,” lefty filmmaker and pundit Michael Moore predicted on MSNBC two days into the House’s new Republican majority.

Even the most charitable possible interpretation would have to concede that the chaos of Kevin McCarthy’s defenestration didn’t amount to Dems retaking control of the House so much as it meant McCarthy had lost control of the House. It was an odd call. And a wrong one: The Republican majority, however narrow, is stable enough to last into 2024.

“Elon Musk will buy Disney”

Predicted by: Tyrus Murdoch, Jan. 2, 2023

Luckily for Disney, it isn’t going the way of X (née Twitter), which has seen its value plummet since Musk purchased the company.

300 million Americans will rise up in protest if Trump is indicted

Predicted by: Kari Lake, June 12, 2023

Initially, Lake said that if prosecutors wanted to get to Donald Trump, they were “going to have to go through me, and 75 million Americans just like me. And most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA.”

It was an audacious enough claim, but one that could be read as simple hyperbolic rhetoric: that, in effect, roughly the number of people who voted for Trump in the 2020 election would object to criminal charges against the former president.

Then, Lake revised her statement during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” show.

“I made a mistake. I said 75 million others just like me. I think it’s more like 300 million others just like me,” Lake said.

For this to happen, you’d first have to assume that literally 90 percent of Americans — that’s 9 in 10 people, not just Republicans, not just adults, but also children — would be furious about the fact Trump was indicted. Then, you’d have to imagine them being so outraged that they are driven to rise up and block the justice system from holding the former president to account.

This year, Trump has been indicted in four separate criminal cases amounting to 91 felony counts — four in Washington, 13 in Georgia, 34 in New York and 40 in Florida. Aside from small and largely benign shows of support by cadres of the MAGA faithful, there has been nothing in the way of rising up en masse to break the wheels of justice.

“Putin will leave office, dead or alive, volitionally or otherwise, before the end of the year”

Predicted by: Michael McKenna, Dec. 31, 2022

There were a few days this year when something like this seemed plausible — that small window of time when Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the mercenary Wagner Group, was on the march and headed for Moscow. Then he stopped — and shortly thereafter was killed in a plane crash.

Though there are technically still a few days left before the end of 2023 for McKenna’s prediction to come true, Russian President/dictator Vladimir Putin remains firmly in control of power in Russia.

Biden will intervene to prevent a UAW strike

Predicted by: Don Beyer, Sept. 5, 2023

Biden’s close ties to General Motors (which include a friendship with CEO Mary Barra and a niece on GM’s staff) did not compel him to step in and stop the United Auto Workers from striking against the Detroit Three. Instead, they struck — and Biden eventually joined them on the picket lines in Michigan.

Karine Jean-Pierre will be out as press secretary ‘within the next couple of months’

Predicted by: Joe Concha, Jan. 20, 2023

Concha, a contributor to Fox News (and now media columnist for The Messenger), suggested in January that John Kirby was on the verge of replacing Karine Jean-Pierre as White House press secretary.

Asked how much longer KJP had in the role, Concha replied: “I would think probably within the next couple of months, we’ll see a pivot to John Kirby as the White House press secretary, particularly if Joe Biden announces he’s running for president. If he does announce, then KJP, Karine Jean-Pierre, has an out.”

Eleven full months have passed since that prediction — during which time, Biden announced his reelection campaign — and Jean-Pierre continues to serve as White House press secretary.

There will be no federal prosecution of Sam Bankman-Fried because he’s a Democratic donor

Predicted by: Elon Musk, Nov. 13, 2022

Admittedly, this one happened in the waning months of 2022. But it’s about events that happened in 2023.

FTX, the crypto-trading empire that Sam Bankman-Fried ruled over, collapsed on Nov. 11, 2022, evaporating many users’ investments/savings/fortunes overnight. Naturally, Tom Fitton, chair of Judicial Watch, a far-right political organization, knew just who to blame: the Biden administration.

“While the Biden gang has been harassing and threatening @ElonMusk and his companies, one of the worst scams in modern finance was being perpetuated under their nose by a regular [White House]/Hill visitor and the second biggest Democratic donor,” Fitton tweeted, referring to SBF.

“SBF was a major Dem donor, so no investigation,” Musk replied.

Except that there was an investigation. And not only that, a prosecution.

SBF was indicted in December 2022 on seven charges of fraud and conspiracy. In October 2023, United States v. Bankman-Fried went to trial in the Southern District of New York. On Nov. 2, the jury took about five hours to find SBF guilty on all seven counts.

Trump made a huge mistake by skipping the first GOP debate

Predicted by: Pedro L. Gonzalez, Aug. 24, 2023

Ahead of the first Republican presidential debate in August, the “will he or won’t he” speculation surrounding Trump reached something of a fever pitch. Would he really skip out on the chance at the free attention, the publicity, the chance to be at center stage? Many doubted that he had that level of restraint.

When Aug. 23 came, Trump was not onstage. And then came a new round of speculation: Will this hurt his campaign?

“Trump skipping the debate was a complete disaster for him,” wrote Pedro L. Gonzalez, a young conservative writer. “Americans got a glimpse of a future without him. They got to see that there can be an alternative to the circus.”

Turns out Republican voters seem to like the circus. Donald Trump has paid no price for skipping the debate — in fact, his poll numbers have gone up, and his lead cemented. Absent Trump, the remaining contenders have largely aimed their fire at one another — further fracturing the field and delaying any chance that the non-Trump GOP electorate will coalesce around a single opponent.

As for the spotlight? Well, even when he’s not onstage, Trump has a way of making himself the center of attention.

28 Dec, 2023

- Opinion | Why Was It So Hard for Nikki Haley to Say ‘Slavery’? History Has the Answer

- The New Republican Governors Chief Explains the Loss in Kentucky and How to Tackle Trump Tweets

HISTORY DEPT.

Opinion | Why Was It So Hard for Nikki Haley to Say ‘Slavery’? History Has the Answer

The presidential candidate’s recent (and swiftly qualified) comments about the Civil War helped spread a myth that has warped American history for over a century.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley declined to say slavery was a cause of the Civil War, instead blaming the role of government — comments she qualified the following day. | Charlie Neibergall/AP

Opinion by Joshua Zeitz

12/28/2023 03:03 PM EST

Joshua Zeitz, a Politico Magazine contributing writer, is the author of Lincoln's God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation (May 2023). Follow him @joshuamzeitz.

In William Faulkner’s novel, Sartoris, someone asks the title character, Colonel John Sartoris, why he had fought for the Confederacy so many decades before. “Damned if I ever did know,” replied the aging veteran, now a pillar of his community in fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.

Of course, we know why Colonel Sartoris raised arms against the United States. So does anyone with a high school diploma — assuming they used up-to-date textbooks. And so did Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, who in 1861 famously asserted that the “cornerstone” of the new Southern nation rested “upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

All of which makes it disappointing, though not surprising, that at this late date — almost 160 years after the Civil War — Nikki Haley, a leading contender for the GOP presidential nomination, shares Colonel Sartoris’ selective amnesia on the topic. When asked a softball question this week about the causes of the Civil War, Haley, a former South Carolina governor, flubbed the answer, calling it a “difficult” question and mumbling on about “basically how government was going to run — the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”

This morning, Haley qualified the comment on a radio show called “The Pulse of New Hampshire,” and followed the clean-up job with a press release, stating: “Of course the Civil War was about slavery. We know that. That’s unquestioned, always the case. We know the Civil War was about slavery. But it was also more than that. It was about the freedoms of every individual. It was about the role of government.”

But as Haley must know — after all, as governor of South Carolina, she presided over the removal of Confederate flags from the Statehouse — many Americans do question the fundamental fact that slavery precipitated the Civil War, and her equivocation played into a long-standing agenda to rewrite American history. Haley was effectively parroting the Lost Cause mythology, a revisionist school of thought born in the war’s immediate aftermath, which whitewashed the Confederacy’s cornerstone interest in raising arms to preserve slavery. Instead, a generation of Lost Cause mythologists chalked the war up to a battle over political abstractions like states’ rights.

With red states doing battle with American history, seeking to erase the legacy of violence and inequality that counterbalance the great good also inherent in our national story, it’s worth revisiting the rise of the Lost Cause, not just to remember how damaging it was, but to confront just how damaging it still is.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, the work of interpreting the rebellion fell to a small group of unreconstructed rebels. The pioneers of Confederate revisionism included wealthy and influential veterans of the Confederacy like Jubal Early, B. T. Johnson, Fitz Lee and W. P. Johnson, who helped formulate the Lost Cause myth that would take hold by the 1880s.

The narrative strains were simple. They painted a picture of Southern chivalry — mint juleps, magnolias and moonlight — that stood in sharp contrast with the North, a region marked by avarice, grinding capitalism and poverty. The rebellion, by this rendering, had been a legal response to the North’s assault on states’ rights — not a violent insurrection to preserve chattel slavery. Even Confederate veterans like Hunter McGuire knew that to admit the war had been about slavery would “hold us degraded rather than worthy of honor … our children, instead of revering their fathers will be secretly, if not openly, ashamed.”

The myth gained steamed by the end of the century, largely because of the work of organizations like the United Confederate Veterans (UCV), the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), groups that offered a compelling story that people could wrap their minds around — including many Northerners, who were eager to put the war behind them. Because the Lost Cause emphasized heroism and honor over slavery, it venerated military figures like Robert E. Lee and swept politicians like Jefferson Davis under the rug. So it was that in May 1890 over 100,000 citizens gathered in Richmond for the dedication of a statue of Lee.

The decade saw hundreds of towns across the former Confederacy raise similar monuments to their heroes and war dead. These marble and steel memorials were often planted in town squares and by county courthouses to help sanitize not only Confederate memory but the new Jim Crow order. After all, if secession had been a noble thing, so was the separation of the races.

The signs of revisionism ranged from subtle to clear. During the war, for instance, Confederate soldiers had keenly embraced the term “reb,” but the new gatekeepers of Southern memory abandoned the term. “Was your father a Rebel and a Traitor?” asked a typical leaflet. “Did he fight in the service of the Confederacy for the purpose of defeating the Union, or was he a Patriot, fighting for the liberties granted him under the Constitution, in defense of his native land, and for a cause he knew to be right?” Equally important was figuring out what to even call the war. It couldn’t be the “Civil War,” which sounded too revolutionary. It couldn’t be “the War of Rebellion” which smacked of treason. In the late 1880s, the UCV and UDC approved resolutions designating the conflict that killed 750,000 Americans the “War Between the States.” The term stuck for generations to come.

It wasn’t just Southerners who suffered willful memory loss in these years. Jaded by the experience of Reconstruction and in the thrall of rising scientific racism, many Northerners were equally eager to remember the war as a brothers’ quarrel over politics rather than a struggle over slavery and Black rights. The jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who began the war as a committed abolitionist, later erased the roots of the conflict and celebrated the battlefield valor of both Union and Confederate troops. “The faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty,” he said, “in a cause which he little understands, in a plan of campaign of which he has little notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use.”

Of course, historians agree that most Union troops did know why they were fighting. So did Holmes. But years after the fact, he was willing to forget. As were tens of thousands of veterans who attended Blue and Gray reunions well into the 20th century, including a massive camp gathering of 25,000 people who gathered at Crawfish Springs, Georgia, in 1889, near the Chickamauga Battlefield, for a picnic and public speeches. These mass spectacles helped Yankees and Confederates rewrite the history of the 1850s and 1860s, ostensibly in the service of national reunion and regeneration, but also in a way that fundamentally reinforced the emerging culture and politics of Jim Crow.

The Lost Cause mythology was more than bad history. It provided the intellectual justification for Jim Crow — not just in the former Confederacy, but everywhere systemic racism denied Black citizens equal citizenship and economic rights. Its dismantling began only in the 1960s when historians inspired by the modern Civil Rights Movement revisited the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, adopting the views of earlier Black scholars like W.E.B. DuBois and John Hope Franklin, who always knew what the war was about and had shined a spotlight on the agency of Black and white actors alike.

That’s why the recent retreat to Lost Cause mythos is troubling. One would think that a Republican candidate for the presidency might be proud of the party’s roots as a firmly antislavery organization that dismantled the “Peculiar Institution” and fomented a critical constitutional revolution during Reconstruction — one that truly made the country more free.

With GOP presidential candidates waffling on the Civil War, rejecting history curricula in their states and launching political fusillades against “woke” culture, it remains for the rest of us to reaffirm the wisdom of Frederick Douglass, who in the last years of his life stated: “Death has no power to change moral qualities. What was bad before the war, and during the war, has not been made good since the war. … Whatever else I may forget, I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery.”

q&a

The New Republican Governors Chief Explains the Loss in Kentucky and How to Tackle Trump Tweets

As the new chair of the Republican Governors Association, Gov. Bill Lee has some advice for his party.

"We have an ever-changing political landscape. We have an ever-changing social landscape. That’s a part of what’s remarkable about this country and unique about it," said RGA Chair Bill Lee. | Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

By Natalie Allison

12/28/2023 10:00 AM EST

Natalie Allison is a national political reporter for POLITICO. She previously worked at The Tennessean in Nashville, where she covered criminal justice and the state Capitol.

For many Republicans, trying to strike a balance between the party’s often-warring factions has been a career-killer.

So far, somehow, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has managed to do just that and avoid calamity.

His conservative bona fides are hardly in dispute; he’s an outspoken evangelical Christian who lives on a cattle farm and spent decades running his family’s HVAC company. He’s kept the GOP’s right flank satisfied with legislation targeting abortion and LGBTQ rights, among other things, and he secured an endorsement from Donald Trump ahead of his successful 2022 reelection.

But over the course of his five years in office, the two-term governor has at times found himself at odds with his state’s GOP supermajority Legislature — sticking his neck out for refugee resettlement, paid family leave for state employees and, most recently, an effort to prevent mass shootings.

Lee’s brand is neither MAGA-fied nor Trump-averse. It’s perhaps a useful trait, as he tackles his next big task: Earlier this month, he was tapped to lead the Republican Governors Association ahead of a contentious election year as the party looks to keep its narrow majority of state executive offices.

In an interview with POLITICO Magazine at the Tennessee governor’s mansion, the new RGA chair said he had his eye on flipping North Carolina and holding on to New Hampshire; he said it’s “too early” to tell whether Washington state will be competitive. And he wasn’t surprised that Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear recently won reelection in Kentucky, but rejected arguments that it was because of support for abortion rights.

Lee also discussed what he makes of the Trump broadsides occasionally directed against his fellow GOP governors (“I don’t think people are afraid”) and the party’s prospects in the 2024 presidential election. It’s a race that he said is winnable for Republicans — as long as the party sticks to the “fundamentals,” a word he returned to again and again and again, even as he rarely mentioned Trump.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

It wasn’t that long ago that another Tennessee governor, Bill Haslam, was named RGA chairman. But a lot has happened in politics since 2017, when Trump began his presidency. Back then, you were driving a tractor around the state drawing attention to your first gubernatorial campaign. Six years later, what is something you think the Republican Party has improved upon? And how has it failed?

When I was driving a tractor around the state, I was saying, in spite of the fact that there were a lot of other issues being talked about in my election, “What really matters to people is that they have a good job and a good school for their kid and a safe neighborhood.” As I’ve repeated that line 1,000 times on the campaign trail, I still think that the fundamentals are what matter. Republicans tend to focus on issues that matter most to their citizenry, issues around the economy, low taxes, low debt.

I would say that what the Republican Party did back then when Gov. Haslam was the chairman of the RGA — and today, for the most part — the party has stayed focused on the fundamentals at its core.

Did the Republican Party get anything wrong during that time?

The mood of the country as a whole has become more divisive and more toxic than it has been in the past. It’s not related to a party. It’s related to our society in general. I don’t necessarily think people disagree more. We’ve always disagreed, and people have passionately disagreed from the time this country was created.

The last six or eight years, we’ve had social media and a 24/7 news cycle and content information rates which have dwarfed what occurred even 10 years ago, and that’s probably elevated a mood in this country that both parties have been a part of.

Republicans in the last year or so have seen losses in several states where these races have come down to abortion. Given all the difficulties Republicans are facing with the issue, how are you going to advise gubernatorial candidates to talk about abortion in some of these competitive races — in places not necessarily like Tennessee — where it could possibly shift the outcome?

You started off by saying the races came down to abortion. That’s yet to be seen, really. What a race comes down to is oftentimes not as it appears. I’ll just say that the more I’ve gotten involved in races and data and spending and issue spends and after-analysis, I’ve realized that there are a lot of things that affect races.

But clearly that issue is one that is broadly talked about and very important in American politics today. It’s one that is very difficult. So my thoughts are, “Know what you believe. Be very clear about it. And then recognize that it’s deeply personal.” This issue is much bigger and much broader than just the termination of a pregnancy. This issue is not just about the life of an unborn child, it’s about a mother, a father, a family, a circumstance. It’s about a lot of very difficult, very deeply personal issues. Families need support around them.

The Republican gubernatorial nominee in Michigan last cycle, Tudor Dixon, maintained during her campaign that there shouldn’t be exceptions for rape. Months after her loss, Dixon has since said that perhaps her message was wrong. Do candidates in difficult races need to change how they talk about it?

I think when people understand how you personally feel about this deeply personal issue, most of them then can decide what they think about you or the issue itself. I go back to: Know what you think, be very clear about it so that there’s no misunderstanding, and recognize that it’s a deeply personal but very important issue.

What happens if the Republican presidential nominee is out there telling voters, as Trump has, that some of these state-level abortion bills were “terrible” and a “mistake” to pass, while some of your candidates are out campaigning on these very types of legislation?

What governors know is that what happens in Washington politics and in presidential politics is all a part of a campaign that we are not running. And I have to stay focused on what the law is in my state and what it is that the people of Tennessee want us to do.

And to confirm, the law in your state now is no abortion, with an exception for the life of the mother but not for rape.

That’s right.

Your neighbor to the north, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, won reelection in Kentucky. Why do you think he won in a state that isn’t particularly blue? And does it have anything to do with abortion?

I don’t think that race was decided on abortion. Andy Beshear outspent Daniel Cameron 5 to 1 in that race. Money alone doesn’t win a campaign, but it has a tremendous impact on it, as anyone who’s involved in elections understands. That election was decided on fundamental issues, and it was argued about on fundamental issues. And at the end of the day the people decided that incumbent Gov. Beshear won on those fundamental issues.

Is there anything you think Republicans could have done differently there, besides spend five times more money?

You had a popular governor who had a lot of name recognition. Another thing that I think that’s interesting, that I’ve observed, is people like stability. They don’t want change unless they really believe that a change is necessary in their particular state, or even in a country.

We have a president who’s got historically low approval ratings, and I think we probably will see a change because people are worried enough, and frankly, it’s affecting their fundamentals in a way that they want change. I don’t think that fundamental effect had happened in the state of Kentucky to the degree that people were willing to make a change.

You’re proposing a new, wider school choice initiative in Tennessee after previously launching a limited program. We’re seeing more of this happen, mostly in Republican leaning states. Do you think the country will get to a place where school choice programs become a fairly mainstream policy with support from blue states?

I do think that there will come a day when that shift happens all across the country. I think that for a few reasons. It’s oftentimes debated very politically, but at the end of the day, it is a policy, generally, that parents like.

Washington, D.C., is a full-choice school district, and they’ve had charter schools there for a long time, and they’ve been effective. Most of these programs were initially focused on minority and low-income children who suffer the most under a status quo educational system. People don’t like change — none of us. But I was in the business world for 35 years, and my thoughts go back to business practices: If you don’t change, you fail.

During and after the 2022 cycle, we heard a lot about the issue of “candidate quality” and it being a reason some Republicans lost otherwise winnable swing state races. Are you concerned about that happening this year, where someone like Kari Lake or Doug Mastriano becomes the nominee?

Candidate quality has always mattered. Oftentimes, we tend to project what the best quality of candidate is in a particular state when the people of that state might view it differently.

Is the RGA going to get involved in any primaries?

The only primaries we have gotten involved in up to today are incumbent governors that we protect. It’s a topic of discussion within RGA, and we’ll evaluate it as it goes along, but we don’t have any plans to get involved at this point.

Speaking of candidate quality, how much does it matter who the Republican nominee for president is in November when people are deciding whether they’ll vote at all, and who they’ll vote for down ballot?

What’s most important to me is that a Republican becomes the president. I’ve already referenced it — and it’s not just my opinion — public opinion has shown that the fundamentals are something Americans are very worried about right now.

When your mortgage doubles in three years, that is a fundamental that profoundly affects people in a real way. Security — people want to feel safe, they want their kids to feel safe. They don’t feel as safe today as they felt five years ago, and that’s a real thing to people. That’s why I think we’ll probably see a change.

In the current GOP field, do you think any of them could win the general election?

I do. I think any of them would bring that recognition of fundamentals back to the office and people would be better off than they are today. And at the end of the day, that’s how people decide: “Am I better off today?” What we’re seeing is people today saying I’m not better off today than I was five years ago. I don’t feel safer. I don’t feel like I have more freedom. I don’t feel like I have more opportunity. I don’t feel like I have more money in my back pocket. I don’t feel better about where my family is today. And that includes how America stands with the world.

So it sounds like you’re not going to endorse in the Republican presidential primary.

As the chairman of the RGA, I have an obligation not to endorse.

Kim Reynolds did!

Well, on her way out. Let’s be clear, she was on her way out as chairman and did not endorse through much of that period of time. [Reynolds, the Iowa governor, served as RGA chair until Lee took over on Dec. 7. She endorsed Ron DeSantis on Nov. 7.]

I think I have a responsibility not to endorse, and primarily because my responsibility is to stay very focused on getting governors elected.

In 2020, Ron DeSantis’ own-the-libs-at-all-costs style of governing was heralded as peak gubernatorial performance. And then in 2021 and 2022, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin was the hot thing, and his more measured approach was seen as the blueprint for how the Republican Party could win new voters. Today, both of their stocks have gone down nationally, and they both seem to have lost some influence in their home states. Is there a cautionary tale here? What do you make of their rise and slight descent?

Both of those guys I have a great deal of respect for. Florida and Virginia are dramatically different states. And I think when we start looking at leaders and how they lead in their individual states, the stories are going to be vastly different. I think that the mistake comes with looking at a moment in time, at a particular set of circumstances, and saying, “This is America.” It’s not. We have an ever-changing political landscape. We have an ever-changing social landscape. That’s a part of what’s remarkable about this country and unique about it.

And I also just think people are intrigued by political leaders. I think they look at Ron DeSantis or Glenn Youngkin, and they see someone who’s leading in the midst of a very difficult circumstance, and they’re intrigued by that. They like it. People are drawn to good leadership.

Something that Republican governors in any state have in common is the risk of Trump firing off social media posts about them. Recently, DeSantis and Reynolds were in his line of fire. Previously it was governors like Brian Kemp, Doug Ducey, Chris Sununu, Larry Hogan and so on. Do you have a word of advice for governors who are concerned about this happening to them?

Every leader has their own style and their own way of leading, and I tend to be a person who lets leaders lead. I just have my own personality, I have my own set of beliefs that inform how I govern and how I lead and what I say publicly and how I communicate with people. And yet, it’s just mine. Everybody has their own, and honestly, I find myself saying you need to do it the way you want to do it.

So are Republican governors not afraid of the Trump tweets, or is this a looming fear?

These are people who are running states. Frankly, I don’t think people are afraid as much as they are just making decisions for themselves that they think are in the best interest of their own career and their own constituents.

You spent a recent weekend touring damage from another deadly tornado in your state. One of my last weeks on the job in Tennessee, I was the pool reporter when you visited a county where 20 people were killed in a flood. Your wife has spent the last year fighting cancer. Your first wife died tragically. You lost a family friend who was murdered in a school shooting this year. This has been a theme, I think, throughout your time in office, that you are a man acquainted with grief. Five years in now, how has that affected your style of governing and how you approach this job?

It’s hard to ever really say I’m glad that I’m a man acquainted with grief, but I have experienced, like most people, seasons of tragedy in my own life that informed the way I view tragedy in other people’s lives. It becomes deeply personal for me to walk up to, as I did Sunday, a man whose neighbor and their child were killed. Whose 16-year-old son was in his home with him when they were completely swept away, and who has lost every material possession, including all of his life savings, in a five-minute period of time.

It’s not about me, but when a governor walks up to your life tragedy and sits beside you, there is a hope that comes with the reality that someone knows about what’s happened to you. Probably the most poignant moments of my career as governor have been those moments.

You did what you believed to be right at a moral level and a policy level when you tried to make sure that someone like the Covenant school shooter couldn’t have access to guns to carry out that kind of an act. Republicans in the Legislature clearly didn’t see it that way and refused to take action on a bill you proposed to establish some modest restrictions. Do you think there’s any chance that today’s Republican Party will enact some of these proposals to try to protect lives?

I am a person who feels very strongly about the Second Amendment and the protection of that right for people to bear arms. I’ve always been that person. I brought constitutional carry legislation to Tennessee, and at the same time I feel like we have an obligation and a responsibility to talk about the issues that are deeply personal and very complicated. And my effort there was to elevate that conversation and say, “Is there more we should be talking about?” That was the right thing to do, to force that conversation.

At the end of the day, the legislature makes a determination of what happens in this state, and that’s the way it should work.

Do you have any plans to pursue higher office after you finish off this term?

This has been the highest honor of my life, and it’s an interesting thought to be in my second term and thinking that it will come to an end. Obviously, there’s a lot of mixed emotions about that, but I don’t have any plans to run for president.

Back to the ranch?

Back to the ranch. Back to my grandkids.

27 Dec, 2023

- The Biden Administration Is Quietly Shifting Its Strategy in Ukraine

Washington and the World

The Biden Administration Is Quietly Shifting Its Strategy in Ukraine

For two years, Biden and Zelenskyy have been focused on driving Russia from Ukraine. Now Washington is discussing a move to a more defensive posture.

President Joe Biden has shifted from promising the U.S. would back Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” to saying the U.S. will provide support “as long as we can” and contending that Ukraine has won “an enormous victory already. | Evan Vucci/AP

By Michael Hirsh

12/27/2023 09:00 AM EST

Michael Hirsh is the former foreign editor and chief diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek, and the former national editor for POLITICO Magazine.

With U.S. and European aid to Ukraine now in serious jeopardy, the Biden administration and European officials are quietly shifting their focus from supporting Ukraine’s goal of total victory over Russia to improving its position in an eventual negotiation to end the war, according to a Biden administration official and a European diplomat based in Washington. Such a negotiation would likely mean giving up parts of Ukraine to Russia.

The White House and Pentagon publicly insist there is no official change in administration policy — that they still support Ukraine’s aim of forcing Russia’s military completely out of the country. But along with the Ukrainians themselves, U.S. and European officials are now discussing the redeployment of Kyiv’s forces away from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s mostly failed counteroffensive into a stronger defensive position against Russian forces in the east, according to the administration official and the European diplomat, and confirmed by a senior administration official. This effort has also involved bolstering air defense systems and building fortifications, razor wire obstructions and anti-tank obstacles and ditches along Ukraine’s northern border with Belarus, these officials say. In addition, the Biden administration is focused on rapidly resurrecting Ukraine’s own defense industry to supply the desperately needed weaponry the U.S. Congress is balking at replacing.

The administration official told POLITICO Magazine this week that much of this strategic shift to defense is aimed at shoring up Ukraine’s position in any future negotiation. “That’s been our theory of the case throughout — the only way this war ends ultimately is through negotiation,” said the official, a White House spokesperson who was given anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on the record. “We want Ukraine to have the strongest hand possible when that comes.” The spokesperson emphasized, however, that no talks are planned yet, and that Ukrainian forces are still on the offensive in places and continue to kill and wound thousands of Russian troops. “We want them to be in a stronger position to hold their territory. It’s not that we’re discouraging them from launching any new offensive,” the spokesperson added.

For Biden, navigating the nearly two-year-old war in the middle of a tough election campaign — with former President Donald Trump and other Republican candidates openly mocking his efforts — will prove tricky at best. As it helps Ukraine shift to a more defensive posture, the Biden administration can’t appear to be handing the advantage to Putin after insisting since the war began in February 2022 that it stands fully behind Zelenskyy’s pledge of victory over Moscow.

“Those discussions [about peace talks] are starting, but [the administration] can’t back down publicly because of the political risk” to Biden, said a congressional official who is familiar with the administration’s thinking and who was granted anonymity to speak freely.

In an interview on Dec. 21, John Kirby, head of strategic communications at the National Security Council, said that with Washington “nearing the end of our ability” to provide military assistance to the Ukrainians because Republicans have blocked Biden’s request for roughly $60 billion more in aid, the Biden administration is “very much focused on helping them on offense and defense.”

“We are having literally daily conversations with the Ukrainians about the battlefield, about what their needs are and their intentions,” Kirby said. But he added: “I’m not going to telegraph to the Russians what the Ukrainian strategy is in the coming months.”

At his year-end news conference in early December, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was preparing new proposals to end the war but he added that he would not alter his insistence that Russia withdraw all forces. Kirby reaffirmed the administration line that “we are not dictating terms to President Zelenskyy.” Instead, he said, the White House is helping Zelenskyy to “operationalize” his own peace proposal “with interlocutors around the world.”

Over the past year — with U.S. military support flagging fast on Capitol Hill and Zelenskyy’s once-vaunted counteroffensive failing since it was launched in June — Biden has shifted from promising the U.S. would back Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” to saying the U.S. will provide support “as long as we can” and contending that Ukraine has won “an enormous victory already. Putin has failed.”

Some analysts believe that is code for: Get ready to declare a partial victory and find a way to at least a truce or ceasefire with Moscow, one that would leave Ukraine partially divided.

“Biden’s victory comment has the virtue of being true,” said George Beebe, a former chief of Russia analysis for the CIA who is now head of strategy for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. But “time has become a stark disadvantage when it comes to Ukraine’s manpower and industrial capacity, and that’s true even if the West continues its support. The longer this goes on the more we’re going to have to concede up front just to get the Russians to the negotiating table.”

A shift to defense could buy Ukraine the time it needs to eventually force Putin into an acceptable compromise. “It’s very likely that going to a defensive posture would allow the Ukrainians to conserve resources while making future Russian progress look unlikely,” said Anthony Pfaff, an intelligence expert at the U.S. Army War College who co-authored a study that anticipated Putin’s Ukraine invasion years before it happened.

The European diplomat based in Washington said that the European Union is also raising the threat of expediting Ukraine’s membership in NATO to “put the Ukrainians in the best situation possible to negotiate” with Moscow.

That is a flashpoint for Putin, who is believed to be mainly interested in a strategic deal with Washington under which Ukraine will not enter NATO. The Biden administration continues to maintain publicly that NATO membership is not being negotiated. “President Biden has been very clear that NATO will be in Ukraine’s future,” said Kirby.

The two militaries remain largely stalemated but Putin may now be signaling that he’s willing to compromise if he’s allowed to keep the approximately 20 percent of Ukrainian territory that he partially controls in the east, The New York Times reported last week. Asked to respond to that report, the administration spokesperson said: “I’m not aware of any serious discussions at this point.”

This is not the only major front on which Biden is trying to end a war — and avoid bad headlines in an election year. In the Mideast, the administration is engaged in a frenzied series of diplomatic visits to Israel — most recently last week by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown — to prevent the Israelis from causing a greater humanitarian disaster in Gaza and escalating into a wider war against Hezbollah, which is becoming a real possibility and could inflame the entire region. Polls show that Biden’s earlier pledge of unlimited support for Israel’s retaliation is costing him support, especially among his progressive Democratic base.

“We don’t want to see a second front” against Hezbollah, said Kirby.

Foreign policy wasn’t expected to play a major role in the 2024 campaign — especially as inflation surged in the first two years of Biden’s term and economists last year predicted a recession. The U.S. economy will still likely be the main issue, polls show, and a new memo says the central theme of Biden’s campaign will be “protecting American democracy.” But with inflation fast retreating — dropping from more than 9.1 percent a year ago to close to the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 percent now — and the economy closer to achieving a highly unusual “soft landing,” the calculus of what could affect voting in 2024 may be changing, says Bruce Jentleson, a scholar of the presidency at Duke University. Biden is still suffering low approval ratings that Gallup has called “the worst of any modern-day president heading into a tough reelection campaign” — and his handling of foreign affairs in general and Israel and Ukraine in particular have recently become factors in that assessment.

As a result, multiplying crises abroad could imperil the president in the voting booth, says Jentleson, a former adviser to Vice President Al Gore. “What often happens is you get a bank shot where voters look at how you do foreign policy. They don’t care about the issues per se but they want to see leadership.”

Trump, the leading Republican contender, is already exploiting the perception that events overseas are spinning out of control. In his uniquely brazen way, the former president quoted the increasingly autocratic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (Trump called him “highly respected”), a Putin sympathizer, as saying that Trump “is the man who can save the Western world.”

Trump touted Orban’s praise at the University of New Hampshire two weeks ago, telling the crowd, “[Orban] said it would have been very different, and there was no way that Russia … would have invaded Ukraine. It would not be possible for Russians to do that if President Trump were president, it wouldn’t have happened. … And you know what else wouldn’t have happened? The attack on Israel wouldn’t have happened.”

Asked to respond to that statement and others recently made by Trump — including one in which he favorably quoted Putin — Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement to POLITICO Magazine: “Voters will face a clear choice in this election between President Biden’s strong leadership on the world stage, including his work to unite our allies and defend democracy at home and abroad, and Donald Trump’s record of praising dictators and terrorists. Americans want a president they can trust, not an erratic extremist — and that’s why they’ll reject Donald Trump once again next November.”

Still, Biden faces political peril if the war goes badly for the Ukrainians. Even if Republicans on the Hill are mainly responsible for holding up military aid, that won’t help Biden much politically if Putin starts to regain the battlefield advantage next year, after the nearly $100 billion Biden’s already put into stopping Russia. For most of the conflict GOP critics have accused Biden of moving too slowly to arm the Ukrainians with the most sophisticated weaponry, such as M1A1 Abrams battle tanks, long-range precision artillery and F-16 fighter jets. In an interview in July Zelenskyy himself said the delays “provided Russia with time to mine all our lands and build several lines of defense.” The ongoing Ukraine crisis also resurrects Trump’s old critique of NATO and the underspending Europeans. According to a NATO report from earlier this year, Europe’s largest economies all fell short of a common goal of spending 2 percent of economic output on defense.

Putin could be helped further in Europe by recent election victories for more of his far-right sympathizers, including Robert Fico in Slovakia and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, both of whom might join Orban in blocking a proposed 50 billion euro ($54.9 billion) aid package.

The Ukrainians themselves are engaged in what is becoming a very public debate about how long they can hold out against Putin. With Ukraine running low on troops as well as weapons, Zelenskyy’s refusal to consider any fresh negotiations with Moscow is looking more and more politically untenable at home. The Ukrainian president, seeking to draft another half million troops, is facing rising domestic opposition from his military commander in chief, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, and the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko.

The senior Biden administration official told POLITICO Magazine that all these factors — the resistance in Congress and Ukraine’s internal politics — were playing into the new discussions with Kyiv about redeploying toward a defensive posture. “The other wild card is how much the weather is going to be a factor. As they decide how they’re going to posture themselves in the next two to three months, it’s going to become physically harder to operate and go on the offensive.”

One problem, of course, is that Putin understands these stakes all too well — especially given the surging poll numbers for Trump, who has suggested both that he’d swiftly cut a deal with Russia over Ukraine and order the U.S. to depart from, or at least downgrade, NATO. Militarily, the biggest concern may be that Putin could go on the offensive in the spring with major air support that he’s avoided until now but could deploy as Ukraine runs low on defensive missiles. Politically, the worry is that Putin won’t go near a negotiation until he sees who the next U.S. president is.

In late September Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defense minister, said the Russians had an “activity plan until 2025,” and the next month Putin declared that Ukraine would have a “week to live” if arms supplies from Western countries were to end.

In the end, said Kirby, it is Putin who must make the first move — and the Russian president hasn’t done anything like that yet. “While we all would like to see this war end immediately,” Kirby said, Putin “has shown no indication of entering into good faith negotiations.”

26 Dec, 2023

- Which 2028 Presidential Wannabe Had the Best Year?

politics

Which 2028 Presidential Wannabe Had the Best Year?

Ambitious politicians spent 2023 jockeying for the presidential race on the horizon.

POLITICO illustration by Emily Scherer/Photos by Getty Images, AP

By Bill Scher

12/26/2023 05:00 AM EST

Bill Scher is a contributing writer to Politico Magazine, the politics editor for the Washington Monthly and co-host of “The DMZ,” an online show and podcast with conservative writer Matt Lewis.

Donald Trump’s road to victory in the 2016 presidential election began in March 2011, when he first publicly questioned the origin of Barack Obama’s birth. He soon became the leading voice of the racist “birther” conspiracy theory, forging an unbreakable bond with a large portion of the Republican base that would later propel him to the presidency.

Then-Illinois state Senator Barack Obama may not have known it at the time, but his 2002 speech at a Chicago rally opposing an invasion of Iraq set his course to the presidency. Six years later, Obama won his party’s nomination over more experienced Democratic competitors who had voted for the war, and then he bested a Republican military hero in the general election.

So, who took the pivotal steps in 2023 that set them on the path to the presidency in 2028?

It’s not too soon to ask, though that doesn’t make the exercise easy. What appears meaningful can end up forgotten; what seems out-of-step today may look ahead-of-its-time tomorrow. Regardless, what happens five years or more before a presidential election has the potential to set determinative events into motion.

With the 2024 matchup all but set, we’re looking ahead. There’s a large pool of ambitious presidential wannabes out there, and they all spent this year in ways that could, just maybe, place them at the top of the ticket in 2028.

THE DEMOCRATS

Kamala Harris’ Battle Against Florida’s Slavery Curriculum

On July 20, the national media seized on news that Florida’s Board of Education approved standards that directed teachers to discuss how, in antebellum America, “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

The very next day, Vice President Kamala Harris rushed to Jacksonville and thundered, “They want to replace history with lies.” Slavery,” she added, “involved rape. It involved torture. It involved taking a baby from their mother.”

Florida Governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis shot back and fueled days of controversy, clearly hoping a protracted tangle with the polarizing vice president would raise his stock with GOP primary voters. He proposed a debate with Harris. She returned to Florida and dismissed the offer, saying, “There is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact.” DeSantis took a beating in the press.

Before the slavery controversy, DeSantis was polling above 20 percent in most national primary surveys. Afterward, he never reached 20 percent again in any national poll.

Harris has suffered another year of pundits opining about Joe Biden’s “Kamala Harris problem,” with some suggesting she should be bounced from the ticket. Conservative media operations continue to push out-of-context video clips, claiming Harris is spouting cringe-inducing “word salad.” But her drubbing of DeSantis showed she hasn’t lost the ability to rally elements of the Democratic base and wage effective rhetorical combat against Republicans.

In 2023, Gretchen Whitmer could boast that she moved state policy from conservative to liberal farther and faster than any other sitting governor in the country. | Ryan Garza/Detroit Free Press via AP

Gretchen Whitmer’s Policy Blitz

Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer notched a slew of impressive victories in her first year as governor with a Democratic-controlled legislature, signing progressive legislation on abortion rights, worker rights, voter rights, gun safety, health care and the environment. In 2023, Whitmer could boast that she moved state policy from conservative to liberal farther and faster than any other sitting governor in the country.

And she started going national, launching a new “Fight Like Hell” political action committee to fund Democratic candidates in the 2024 election. The first set of endorsements went to eight House incumbents, including Rep. Steven Horsford from the early primary state of Nevada.

Next year, Joe Biden will be visiting Michigan frequently, touting his partnership with Whitmer to help the auto industry benefit from the electric vehicle transition — a priority for both, but one that is not without political risk. Pressure will be on Whitmer, the only 2028 prospect serving as national co-chair of the Biden-Harris campaign, to keep the state blue.

Andy Beshear’s and Roy Cooper’s Survival Skills

Democratic governors with Republican legislatures can’t sign nearly as much progressive legislation, but mere survival provides cache. Andy Beshear punched his ticket to the 2028 bracket by winning reelection in deep red Kentucky, particularly with the help of a successful abortion rights message.

North Carolina’s two-term Gov. Roy Cooper had a rough year, after a Democratic state House member defected in April and gave Republicans a supermajority to override Cooper’s veto of a 12-week abortion ban. However, just before that happened, following years of battling resistant Republicans, Cooper finally wrangled a bipartisan Medicaid expansion bill, extending health insurance coverage to an estimated 600,000 people — not a bad capstone as he wraps his final year in office in 2024.

Wes Moore’s and Josh Shapiro’s Fast Start

Two new Democratic governors were able to quickly plant seeds for a future presidential bid in 2023. Maryland’s Wes Moore, only the third African American in U.S. history to be elected governor, may be the only 2028 prospect who already has crafted a signature slogan: “Service Will Save Us.” On the power of that message, Moore swiftly enacted the first state-run public service year program for recent high school graduates, who can get paid for a year of community service before enrolling in college or pursuing other work.

In Pennsylvania, the Republican-controlled state Senate somewhat slowed Josh Shapiro’s roll though he still found ways to make waves. By executive order, he implemented a form of automatic voter registration, cheering voter rights advocates. He won national praise for the speedy repair of the collapsed bridge on Interstate 95. And his denouncement of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill’s congressional testimony on antisemitism intensified pressure on her to resign, a move which may alienate some Democrats but endear him to others.

Gavin Newsom’s and J.B. Pritzker’s PAC Attacks

California Gov. Gavin Newsom attracted the most attention of any 2028 Democratic prospect, having seized the unofficial post of chief surrogate for the Biden-Harris reelection campaign. Through his many media appearances, including his November Fox News debate with DeSantis, Newsom has burnished a reputation in the past year for punchy, data-laden responses to tough charges against the Biden record.

Moreover, he has built a national political action committee, Campaign for Democracy, with a focus on funding Democratic candidates and party machinery in red states.

Yet Newsom also said something this year that could end any 2028 campaign before it begins. During a September appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, Chuck Todd asked him about his fellow northern Californian Kamala Harris, “You can’t imagine ever having to run against each other?” Newsom replied without equivocation, “Of course not. By definition. Won’t happen.”

Newsom appears to grasp that competing with Harris for Bay Area donors and mansplaining to Democratic voters why they pick him over the first woman of color vice president would make for a decidedly unpleasant primary. But his quasi-Shermanesque statement leaves Newsom with two unpalatable options for running in 2028: Break his word, or cajole Harris out of the race.

Another big blue state governor with a newly minted national political action committee is Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker. Think Big America, which appears to be solely funded by the billionaire governor, is designed to help Pritzker position himself as an effective advocate for abortion rights following the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Through the PAC and his own bank account, Pritzker spent heavily on Ohio’s constitutional amendment referendum, Virginia’s state legislative elections and a pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court election — all successful efforts to directly or indirectly help protect and restore reproductive freedoms. He also gave $1 million to a Nevada operation working to put an abortion rights constitutional amendment on the 2024 state ballot.

John Fetterman’s “Reverse Bulworth”

After winning office while recovering from a severe stroke and beginning his first term hospitalized for severe depression, Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman returned to the Senate this year and pulled a “Bulworth” — or perhaps more accurately, a reverse Bulworth. In the 1998 cult classic movie starring Warren Beatty, fed-up California senator Jay Bulworth hires an assassin to kill himself. With nothing left to lose, he throws away the canned speeches, awkwardly raps about how corporations buy off politicians and the media, and dares to praise socialism.

Fetterman, in contrast, appears to be loving life — gleefully speaking his mind and mocking political conventions, even when it upsets his supporters on the left.

He squarely sided with Israel following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and is encouraging Democrats to accept a compromise on border security. He’s the loudest advocate, in either party, for expelling fellow Democrat Bob Menendez from the Senate for allegedly acting as an agent for Egypt. In a December interview with The New York Times, he brusquely distanced himself from his reputation as a progressive, saying, “I don’t feel like I’ve left the label; it’s just more that it’s left me.”

The flak he’s taken from some progressives has only helped Fetterman establish a reputation for independence and straight talk. And the often cheeky politician remains a draw on the Democratic campaign circuit. In November, he spoke to a sold-out crowd at an annual Iowa Democratic Party fundraiser in Altoona, where he made a forceful case for Biden’s reelection.

Fetterman still has choppy speech patterns following his stroke, and Democrats might be reluctant to nominate someone with noticeable health issues after rolling the dice in 2024 with the octogenarian Biden. But by 2028, the burly swing stater is likely to be one of the nation’s most recognizable Democrats.

After winning his second tight Senate race in 2022, two years after his first, Raphael Warnock stuck to his workhorse approach of finding Republican co-sponsors for bread-and-butter bills. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

Raphael Warnock’s Legislative Small Ball

Flying farther below the radar than Fetterman — but no less notable — is his Senate colleague from Georgia, Raphael Warnock.

After winning his second tight Senate race in 2022, two years after his first, Warnock stuck to his workhorse approach of finding Republican co-sponsors for bread-and-butter bills. He’s working with Louisiana’s John Kennedy to extend Biden’s $35 monthly cap on insulin costs beyond Medicare to private insurers, with North Carolina’s Thom Tillis to help more orchard owners receive federal relief when trees are damaged in natural disasters, and with Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski to fully fund housing costs for military families.

Winning the Democratic presidential nomination practically requires support from African Americans in the early primary state of South Carolina, and Harris, as the first woman of color vice president, would appear to have the inside track. But Warnock, an African American from a neighboring state, is also well positioned to compete down South. To overcome Harris will likely require a strong electability argument. And, as Biden proved in 2020, a record of working across the aisle can help make that case.

Pete Buttigieg’s Soft Landing

Pete Buttigieg learned the hard way early in 2023 that being transportation secretary isn’t just traveling to ribbon-cutting ceremonies and handing out road funding grants. He began the year under fire for mass cancellations by Southwest Airlines and an FAA safety system failure. Then in February came the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment, after which Buttigieg was compelled to apologize for not visiting the crash site quickly enough.

In part because Buttigieg is viewed as a possible presidential contender, knives from his left and his right were quickly unsheathed. Some congressional Republicans even called for his resignation.

But Buttigieg is ending 2023 on a calmer note. Ahead of Thanksgiving, Buttigieg touted the FAA’s work to improve air travel, including the hiring of 1,500 air traffic controllers, the addition of 169 East Coast routes and $2.5 billion in refunds to passengers hit with cancellations or long delays. Following a Thanksgiving without significant travel disruptions, Buttigieg slapped a $140 million fine on Southwest for last year’s meltdown. While good news never gets the same attention as bad, the improvement gives Buttigieg a new notch on his executive experience belt.

THE REPUBLICANS

Nikki Haley’s Not Completely Humiliating Presidential Campaign

Running for president is often assumed to be, win or lose, a profile-enhancer, when in fact for many it is a humiliating express train to career obscurity, or worse. For every Howard Dean, there’s a Julian Castro. For every Al Sharpton, there’s a John Edwards. For every Mitt Romney, there’s a Bobby Jindal.

With polls indicating Donald Trump is going to run the table of presidential primary contests, this year’s crop of Republican candidates appears to be full of soon-to-be-forgotten Bobby Jindals.

The lone exception, at this juncture, is former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. She is the only Republican candidate, outside of the front-runner, with national poll numbers that steadily rose over the past four months — clear evidence of reputational enhancement.

We should be careful not to overstate the case. In national polling since August Haley has moved from about 3 to 11 percent — not exactly a “surge” that threatens Trump, but a partial consolidation of the minority anti-Trump faction in the GOP.

Haley has been able to become the vessel for the anti-Trump dreamers because in her debate performances, she shed her tendency to incoherently pander to everyone. Instead she took a side in the intraparty divide over foreign policy, forcefully rejected the neo-isolationist vision articulated on the debate stage by Vivek Ramaswamy and elsewhere by Trump. But her future viability depends on whether the GOP in 2028 turns away from such Trumpian views, which is hardly a given.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ Policy Blitz

Perhaps the person best positioned to claim the Trump mantle in 2028 is Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the only person who served in the Trump White House and now holds statewide elected office.

She started her first year as governor signing into law a slew of far-right legislation, including: a ban on transgender students using school restrooms that align with their gender identity, looser rules for hiring 14- and 15-year-olds, a ban on “obscene” material in public libraries with potential felony charges for librarians, vouchers for private and charter schools, and a ban on teachers discussing “gender identity, sexual orientation and sexual reproduction” in school before fifth grade.

Sanders also managed to survive delivering the Republican response to Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address, an often thankless task that has doused the hopes of past presidential aspirants.

And even though she hesitated to endorse Trump at the start of the year — reportedly provoking the former president’s ire — in November she traveled to DeSantis’ home state and endorsed her former boss, avoiding a deep rift.

Greg Abbott spent 2023 pushing the constitutional envelope, asserting the power of state governments to enforce their own border policies. | Eric Gay/AP

Greg Abbott’s Border War

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also endorsed Trump in November, capping off a reversal of fortune in his long-running cold war with DeSantis.

Abbott had hoped to be the face of opposition to Biden’s border policies by, since the spring of 2022, busing thousands of migrants from the Rio Grande Valley to northern Democratic cities — even to Harris’ vice presidential home. But in September 2022, DeSantis grabbed vastly more attention for spending Florida taxpayer money to duplicitously lure a few dozen migrants in Texas onto charter planes and drop them on Martha’s Vineyard. DeSantis had already been throwing shade at Abbott for not doing enough to repel migrants, complaining that “Texas should just send them back across the border.”

By the end of 2022, the pugnacious DeSantis had eclipsed the lower-key Abbott. DeSantis ran for president. Abbott stayed out.

Now, DeSantis’ campaign for president has sputtered, while Abbott has kept busing migrants north, straining shelter capacity in New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. Abbott also spent 2023 pushing the constitutional envelope, asserting the power of state governments to enforce their own border policies. His decision to install a barrier of buoys in the Rio Grande instigated a federal lawsuit and charges from the Mexican government of violating sovereignty. And he finished the year by signing constitutionally questionable legislation empowering state police officers to arrest undocumented immigrants and state judges to order their deportation.

A recent analysis by NBC News’ Natasha Korecki credits Abbott, not DeSantis, for “creating a wedge” that has pitted Democratic city officials against the White House and each other.

Capping the year by endorsing Trump sure looks like Abbott’s final revenge on DeSantis and a way to position himself for 2028.

Brian Kemp’s Home Run

But if Republicans four years from now want a conservative battleground state governor without tight ties to Trump, Georgia’s Brian Kemp firmed up his position. That’s especially true after Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin ruined his rep as a blue state whisperer by pushing a 15-week abortion ban en route to losing GOP control of the House of Delegates in November.

Kemp has been a target of Trump’s fury for defending the integrity of Biden’s Peach State victory in 2020, yet he proved he didn’t need Trump’s help to lead his party and win reelection in 2022.

Kemp was also attacked from the left for Georgia’s 2021 election reform law, accused of trying to suppress the Black vote and engineer a partisan takeover of the Fulton County election board. But the Black vote carried Warnock to victory in 2022, just as it had in 2020. And in 2023, the state election board’s investigation into Fulton County found no wrongdoing in 2020 and no cause for replacing the county board under the new law.

Moreover, Kemp rejected calls from Trump loyalists to call the state legislature into special session and impeach Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for indicting Trump over his effort to overturn the election in Georgia.

Back in 2021, Major League Baseball responded to widespread outcry over Georgia’s election law by moving the All-Star Game from Atlanta’s Truist Park. But in November 2023, with democracy in Georgia clearly not dead, the league announced the 2025 All-Star Game will be held in Atlanta. Kemp crowed, “Georgia’s voting laws haven’t changed, but it’s good to see the MLB’s misguided understanding of them has.”

Matt Gaetz’s Coup

Of course, sober governance may not be what sells in the Republican Party, today or tomorrow. In turn, several ambitious Republicans in Congress are trying to follow the Trump path to prominence: Expend energy causing controversy, not fiddling with policy.

Rep. Matt Gaetz drew the most blood of any Republican in Washington, orchestrating the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Along the way, he tightened his relationship with Trump-world figure and podcaster Steve Bannon, with whom he strategized on- and off-air.

The House is a notoriously awful launch pad for presidential candidates, with no sitting House member winning the White House, or even a presidential nomination, since James Garfield in 1880. But Gaetz is reportedly considering a run for Florida governor in 2026. And so long as policy achievements are not the currency of the Republican primary realm, Gaetz wouldn’t have to stay in that job long before pivoting toward a presidential bid.

Byron Donalds’ Speaker Bids

However, the Florida governor-to-the-White House path may get a little crowded. Rep. Byron Donalds has made some coy statements suggesting he’s also considering a gubernatorial bid.

Republicans are still in the market for a conservative African American leader who could help siphon off crucial components of the Democratic Party’s multiracial base, after Sen. Tim Scott’s genial yet slightly goofy persona didn’t catch fire in the 2024 GOP presidential primary.

Enter Donalds — more crisp, more combative, more rizz. He raised his profile in 2023 with longshot bids for House speaker in the chaotic elections of January and October. And, after endorsing Trump for president, he managed to criticize DeSantis for Florida’s new educational guidelines on teaching slavery without suffering backlash from the right.

In the process, the 45-year-old two-term House member quickly became a regular talking head in conservative media outlets. And unlike other far-right figures such as Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donalds has retained his MAGA cred without getting deeply mired in any of MAGA-world’s petty squabbles.

Elise Stefanik’s Viral Video

Rep. Elise Stefanik has been knocked for opportunistically transitioning from establishment Republican to hard-core Trumper. But the fourth-ranking member of the House GOP leadership reaped national attention after her public harangue of three university presidents led to one’s resignation.

Stefanik asked during a House hearing if “calling for the genocide of Jews” violated campus harassment rules and received equivocal, legalistic responses. Her incredulous reaction helped video of the exchange go viral, soon leading to the resignation of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill. Stefanik quickly rammed through the House a resolution calling for the resignations of the leaders from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (though the two are expected to remain in their posts) and now is pushing measures to deprive universities of federal funds if they don’t crack down on antisemitism.

Her turn in the spotlight is not without downside. Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin charged her with hypocrisy for not denouncing Donald Trump for his various brushes with antisemitism.

Unlike Gaetz and Donalds, Stefanik hails from deep-blue New York and probably cannot use statewide office as a stepping stone. The track record of sitting House members running for president is extremely poor. To defy history, Stefanik needs breakout moments to build a national reputation beyond her upstate district. She got one this year.

J.D. Vance’s Dichotomy

Ohio’s new senator J.D. Vance made a strong play for eventual inheritor of the Trump mantle with his mix of far-right authoritarianism, Russia-friendly isolationism and economic populism.

In September, The New York Times’ Michelle Cottle dubbed him a “Pragmatic bipartisan MAGA troll.” That relatively gentle moniker came before Vance disturbingly wrote Attorney General Merrick Garland and asked if the Justice Department would “open an investigation” into a Washington Post columnist who argued Trump would bring about a dictatorship if elected president again.

Vance sent that letter one day after Kash Patel, a Trump adviser, publicly threatened “people in the media — who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”

Before Vance suggested he would abet such suppression of free speech, he was partnering with Senate Democrats such as Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin on legislation to strengthen rail safety, recoup compensation from executives of failed banks and protect American taxpayer-funded technological breakthroughs from aiding foreign manufacturers. None of those proposals have become law, but they have helped Vance soften his persona.

The more Vance associates himself with Trump’s authoritarian impulses, the harder it may be to maintain reputation-enhancing working relationships across the aisle. But if his eventual goal is the White House, he may not be that concerned.

Josh Hawley vs. AI

Competing with Vance for the title of the Senate’s leading MAGA intellectual is Missouri’s Josh Hawley. Both Hawley and Vance oppose aid to Ukraine and cast a wary eye toward Big Tech. Vance spoke of a “crisis of masculinity” in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy. In 2023, Hawley published Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs. (Book reviewers savaged the slim Hawley volume as “ incoherent” and an “epic disaster.” It sold only 14,000 copies after two months on the shelves.)

Also in 2023, Hawley staked out his own position on an issue that quickly began dominating the conversation: artificial intelligence. In September, Hawley teamed up with Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal and proposed a regulatory framework for the fast-growing technology, including requirements for licensing, auditing, data transparency and safety, all overseen by a new independent federal agency.

The proposal isn’t going to become law any time soon; Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other senators argue the technology is too new for politicians to aggressively regulate. But Hawley has positioned himself to play a significant role on a matter that may soon affect everyone’s future.

Katie Britt’s Hawk(-ish) Moves

If the Republican Party in 2028 wants a fresh face with an old-fashioned hawkish attitude, then 41-year-old Sen. Katie Britt from Alabama will be a hot commodity. 2023 marked her first year as a senator (though she previously worked as a Senate aide), and she used the year efficiently.

In June Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell named her to his team of advisers. She sided with McConnell on the importance of backing Ukraine, arguing that “stopping Putin dead in his tracks is exactly what we need because an emboldened Russia is an emboldened China and Iran.”

However, mindful of the “America First” strain in the party, Britt has also complained about American dollars “funding pensions for the Ukrainian government,” which past aid has helped cover since defense costs have strained the Ukrainian budget. And she was one of only 13 senators who voted for an amendment severely restricting Ukraine aid until NATO countries contribute more money to their own defense.

Britt also endeared herself to Republican hawks by helping convince her Alabama colleague Tommy Tuberville to end his protracted blockade of military promotions in protest of the Biden administration policy covering the travel costs of soldiers who obtain abortions. In doing so, she bridged the MAGA-military divide in the GOP, which she may have to do on a larger scale to be the 2028 Republican Party nominee.

25 Dec, 2023

- What I Saw on the Dreary Road to 2024

- 23 Wild Stories That Explain Politics in 2023

Optics | Road Trip

What I Saw on the Dreary Road to 2024

For the past year, Politics Editor David Siders has been traveling across the country to chronicle how American politics is shifting. Here are some of the people and places he visited.

Photos by David Siders/POLITICO

By David Siders

12/25/2023 07:00 AM EST

David Siders is POLITICO's Politics editor.

The battle to redefine America's political parties is underway — far from Washington. David Siders reports from the road.

When I began reporting my “Road Trip” series earlier this year, the idea was to explore how Americans’ stew of anxiety and fervor about our nation’s politics was reshaping the two political parties, not in Washington, but at ground level — at local board meetings, or small gatherings of party officials. In churches, at polling places and radio stations. In the living rooms of people’s homes.

In 2023, the country was coming back from a pandemic. Inflation was easing and, by most accounts, the economy was in pretty good shape. But if there were reasons to be optimistic, they weren’t registering in polls. And they definitely weren’t registering with the people I met.

It didn’t matter if they were Democrats or Republicans or independents. If they were young or old or Black or white. Nearly everyone I spoke with is talking about politics — and framing their motivations for the next election year — around a feeling of loss, and distress about what they’re going to lose next.

For the Republicans I spoke with, the sense of loss was often inward looking — not just about the economy or the Democratic president or the “radical left,” but about what their own party is becoming. In Arizona, where Republicans were still cheering Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, I watched the state Republican Party fill a megachurch where a combat Vietnam veteran suggested censuring insufficiently faithful Republicans by duct taping them to trees in a dog park “ so the dogs can pee on them.” At a meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans, a retired teacher told me, “I think we’re getting closer to the end times.” And in Michigan, where a group of hard-line Republicans seized control of a county board, a local party official said he felt, for the first time in his life, that “it is like a good versus evil fight that’s going on in the world right now.”

Democrats’ uneasiness is no less real. When the election cycle began, Democrats weren’t exactly pining for President Joe Biden to run for a second term, and they’ve been shaken by polling suggesting Trump could beat Biden next year. From New Hampshire to California and everywhere in between, I ran into Democrats who felt overlooked by the Democratic Party, especially progressive Democrats, who are preparing to choke down another presidential election next year. They agonized over what was happening in the broader culture — “ To a certain extent, we live in a land of idiots,” Tommy Hoyt, a Democratic lawmaker from New Hampshire, told me — and they worry intensely about the loyalty even of some of Biden’s most reliable voting blocs.

These are some of the ground forces that are shaping party politics before they reach the national level. But they aren’t abstractions — they are people. And one by one, the thoughts and emotions that drive them will determine what the country looks like after our national elections in 2024.

There’s little reason to think Americans’ outlook will become less grim in the coming months. Few people, polls suggest, are looking forward to the likely rematch between Biden and Trump. And the way the race is shaping up, the throughlines will be dark. Trump, indicted on charges of trying to subvert the last election, is calling his opponents “ vermin” and promising not to be a “ dictator … other than Day One.” Biden is casting the race as a contest against a former president “determined to destroy American democracy,” and his campaign has begun to compare him to Adolf Hitler.

Next year, people won’t just be airing grievances, they’ll be forced into a conscious trade-off between what they want and what’s available. The decisions they make will have enormous consequences for government. But they’ll also chart a course for the parties that we still organize our politics around, refining what it means to be a Republican or Democrat or, as a growing number of Americans are deciding, to leave the party structure altogether.

As this series heads into 2024, here’s a visual look back at some of the places and some of the people I met over the past year.

Ottawa County, MI

Population: 300,873

Roger Bergman, a Republican member of the Ottawa County, Mich., Board of Commissioners: “Oh, my God … It’s becoming more and more evident that these people are Christian nationalists.”

San Francisco, Calif.

Population: 808,437

Jenny Lynn, chair of the progressive group Feel the Bern OC: “The establishment in California is fighting tooth-and-nail to make sure we don’t exist.”

Konstantine Anthony, the progressive mayor of Burbank, Calif.: “Our memories have gotten longer, and I feel like it’s to our detriment. We haven’t evolved to the point where we can forgive people.”

Phoenix, Ariz.

Population: 1,644,409

Bill Gates, a Republican Maricopa County supervisor who gained national attention for pushing back against election disinformation: “I thought after losing all these races, we would have a reckoning. But it’s going in the opposite direction.”

Sally Kizer, who, with her husband, Carl, started a tea party group in Yuma County: “[Kari Lake] was robbed.”

New Orleans, La.

Population: 369,749

Tim Wilder, the pastor at a church in Osceola County, Fla., near Disney World: “Things have changed in America ... I believe we’re in an anti-Christian nation.”

Angela Murphy, a retired high school history and English teacher from Murphy, Texas: “I think we’re getting closer to the end times.”

Waterloo, Iowa

Population: 66,562

Dave Nagle, a former Democratic congressman from Iowa: The national party, Nagle said, was abandoning the Midwest, acting as if “rural America’s gone.”

Scott Brennan, a member of the Democratic National Committee and former chair of the Iowa state party: “They’ve turned a vast swath of the nation into flyover country.”

Ripon, Wis.

Population: 7,772

Timothy Bachleitner, chair of the Fond du Lac County GOP: “It kind of looks like a circus show now. You might as well put the world’s largest yarn ball next to it, or cheese curd.”

Rohn Bishop, the Republican mayor of Waupun, Wis.: “We got our butts kicked … What the Republican base demands and what independent voters will accept are growing further apart.”

Duluth, Minn.

Population: 86,619

Jenna Yeakle, a progressive Democrat from Duluth, Minn.: I will vote for Biden. I hate that I have to say that.”

Simi Valley, Calif.

Population: 124,398

Jessie M. Stone, a retired chemist from California: “Trump is his own party.”

James Greenfield, a Republican from California: “[They’re] tainting the legacy of Reagan at this very institution … when you see the RINOs being invited to speak here.”

Concord, N.H.

Population: 44,503

Arnie Arnesen, a liberal radio host and former New Hampshire state legislator: “It’s really a cultural problem. The problem is us.”

Tommy Hoyt, a Democratic lawmaker from Campton, N.H.: “To a certain extent, we live in a land of idiots.”

Randolph ‘Rip’ Holden, a former Republican lawmaker from New Hampshire: “It used to be that they were grounded. Now, … it’s sad. It’s sad.”

Columbia, S.C.

Population: 137,541

McKenzie Watson, a political strategist who does advocacy work for people with disabilities: “We have people that are struggling to have food on the table for their kids, to buy a house … I support Ukraine and my heart goes out to the people of Ukraine. But it’s kind of like you need to fix your home. Your people here are suffering here as well.”

Marcurius Byrd, a Democratic strategist who founded the Young Democrats of the Central Midlands: “We’re treating [Black people] like their only issue is racial issues, and not all of us, but to some extent some of us have moved past that.”

El Paso, TX

Population: 677,456

Rev. Rafael Garcia “The fact that someone like Donald Trump is still the frontrunner,” he said, “it’s almost like they want a dictator. It doesn’t matter if he follows democratic processes … There’s a certain kind of dictatorship mentality that’s developing, which is happening in other countries, as well.”

Politics

23 Wild Stories That Explain Politics in 2023

Donald Trump and Taylor Swift, the broken House GOP, an oral history of the Ukraine war and much more from POLITICO Magazine’s year in review.

Clockwise from top left: Nazario Graziano for POLITICO; Mark Ostow for POLITICO; Sol Cotti for POLITICO; Roger Kisby for POLITICO

By POLITICO MAGAZINE

12/25/2023 07:00 AM EST

We may have spent the last 12 months in 2023, but there’s only been one date on everyone’s mind: Nov. 5, 2024.

Yet even if we end up with a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, as seems likely, it won’t be the same election as before. Trump is facing a series of indictments; Biden is wrestling with wars in Ukraine and Gaza; and a slew of third-party candidates threaten to siphon votes from both contenders. Hovering over the political landscape is what exactly a Trump 2.0 presidency would mean.

These are some of the issues that defined 2023 — and understanding them is the only way to be prepared for 2024. Check out these 23 POLITICO Magazine stories, many of them among our top reads of the year, to make sense of the year we just lived through and what to expect next.

Shira Inbar for POLITICO

‘This Is a Really Big Deal’: How College Towns Are Decimating the GOP

Growing population in America’s highly educated enclaves has led to huge gains for the Democratic Party. And Republicans are scrambling for answers.

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24 Dec, 2023

- The George Santos Saga, Kevin McCarthy Implosion and Marjorie Taylor Greene Circus

Congress

The George Santos Saga, Kevin McCarthy Implosion and Marjorie Taylor Greene Circus

Here are the 10 most bizarre moments in Congress this year.

POLITICO illustration/Photos by Getty Images, AP

By JC Whittington and Daniella Diaz

12/24/2023 07:00 AM EST

Unprecedented times in Congress abounded in 2023, from booting a speaker for the first time in history to near fist fights in the Capitol halls to senior lawmakers’ personal health issues becoming incredibly public.

The House GOP had a particularly wild year. It wasn’t just the ousting of a speaker; don’t forget the expulsion of now-former Rep. George Santos from Congress — the sixth member to ever earn that black mark. Democrats had their own fair share of memorable moments, too, including a certain congressman pulling the Cannon House Office Building fire alarm.

As we reach the halfway point of the 118th Congress, it’s worth looking back at the most jaw-dropping and newsiest moments of the year on Capitol Hill.

10.

Tuberville gets ripped by his own party

Senators from the same party tend to stick together. But Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) had really pissed off his fellow Republicans.

For months, Tuberville had been holding up hundreds of military nominations over the Pentagon’s abortion policy. Finally, a handful of Senate Republicans took to the floor and publicly lambasted his effort until nearly 4 a.m.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) led the group on that November night, which included Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Todd Young (R-Ind.). They held the floor for hours, where they ripped Tuberville’s blockade and brought up one nominee after another, only to have the Alabama Republican block each one.

It was an extraordinary rebuke from his own party. Tuberville ultimately dropped the vast majority of his military holds earlier this month, despite no shift from the Biden administration, essentially throwing in the towel after 10 months of pressure.

9.

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, .... Boebert?

A date night for Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) took an odd turn when she was asked to leave a Beetlejuice performance at Denver’s Buell Theater after she allegedly engaged in inappropriate behavior with her then-boyfriend, Quinn Gallagher.

Surveillance video shared by the AP purports to show Boebert vaping, singing, dancing and being fondled by her date while seated in the audience, which included families with children. The Denver Post reported that the couple was issued a warning at intermission before being escorted out. Boebert is seen on video giving staff the middle finger on her way out the door.

Boebert said later that she and Gallagher are no longer dating — because he is a Democrat.

8.

Bowman pulls the fire alarm

During a vote to avert a government shutdown in September, POLITICO reported that Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) pulled a fire alarm in a House office building.

The incident sent the Capitol campus into disarray during an already dramatic Saturday, as then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy pushed forward on a stopgap spending bill that would eventually help cost him the top job.

Bowman later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for pulling the fire alarm and agreed to pay the maximum fine, though he denied doing it on purpose. He was also censured by his House colleagues for the incident after the House Ethics Committee said it would not launch an investigation.

7.

MTG calls Boebert a ‘little bitch’

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Boebert’s tense relationship reached an all-time low in June when Greene called Boebert “a little bitch” on the House floor.

The incident came after Boebert introduced a measure to impeach President Joe Biden, which Greene claimed copied her own proposal to do just that.

The public fallout underscored the long-building rift between the two conservative lawmakers, who were once allies, and highlighted the growing internal discord within the House GOP.

Shortly after the incident, Greene was kicked out of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Members suggested that her comment to Boebert played a role, though Greene’s ties to McCarthy likely hurt her as well.

6.

A violent day on the Hill

Two physical fights, one in the House and one in the Senate, almost broke out on the same November day.

A Senate HELP Committee hearing nearly devolved into a schoolyard brawl between Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) and Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The two had been feuding for months, and the clash escalated when Mullin referenced a social media post where O’Brien challenged the Republican senator to a confrontation. One such post from O’Brien read: “Quit the tough guy act. ... Anyplace, Anytime cowboy.”

Mullin responded by telling O’Brien, who was testifying as a witness, that they could throw down during the hearing.

“This is a time, this is a place to run your mouth. We can be two consenting adults, we can finish it here,” Mullin said. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the committee chair, had to intervene to stop the two from coming to blows.

That same day, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), one of the eight House Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy from the speakership, accused the Californian of elbowing him in a Capitol hallway, calling it a “clean shot to the kidneys.” McCarthy denied the allegation, claiming it was just a “tight hallway.”

5.

NSFW evidence at Hunter Biden’s hearing

Greene displayed what appeared to be nude images of Hunter Biden on a poster board during a July House Oversight Committee hearing focused on testimony from IRS whistleblowers and a federal investigation into the president’s son.

The explicit images drew swift criticism from fellow lawmakers, who said it wasn’t appropriate content for a congressional hearing.

In response to the incident, Hunter Biden’s legal team filed a complaint, arguing that Greene’s actions not only breached the norms of congressional decorum but also violated his privacy and dignity.

4.

McCarthy’s 15 rounds of chaos

It took five days and 15 rounds of votes, but McCarthy finally, eventually — and, we’d later learn, temporarily — secured the speakership. It was an intense and uncertain saga for the House as McCarthy tried to overcome stubborn conservative resistance.

Tensions arguably reached a boiling point on the House floor during the 14th ballot, as Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) lunged at Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and had to be physically restrained. McCarthy ultimately struck a deal with conservatives to attain the gavel, only to watch it all come crashing down nine months later, again at the hands of Gaetz and a few fellow hardliners. Earlier this month, the former speaker announced he would leave Congress at the end of the year.

3.

McConnell freezes twice

When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took the podium for his weekly press briefing back in July, something weird happened: He froze mid-sentence.

Then it happened again a few weeks later, while the Kentucky Republican was speaking to local reporters in his home state.

The moments triggered widespread speculation on whether McConnell was hiding a larger health issue, prompting calls for transparency about the senator’s well-being.

McConnell’s office said he was just “lightheaded” and released a report from the Capitol physician that said the GOP leader was in good health. But questions about his political future remain, particularly after conservatives in the Senate challenged McConnell’s position as minority leader last year.

The harsh spotlight on an aging Senate also fell on the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein this year. She will go down in history as a trailblazing California senator, but her final months on the Hill were characterized by concern about the 90-year-old’s declining health and headlines suggesting public moments of confusion.

2.

The Santos Circus — going, going, gone

George Santos’ very short tenure on Capitol Hill will go down in history — but not for any good reasons.

The New York Republican was eventually expelled from Congress after the House Ethics Committee released a report on his scandalous conduct, which included dishonest representations of his background and the misuse of campaign funds on OnlyFans, makeup, luxury bags and more. It was the first time the House expelled a member without a criminal conviction since the Civil War.

Santos regularly went viral — and he seemed to relish the attention — for some of the strangest episodes. Remember when he was caught holding an anonymous baby during the speaker’s race? Meanwhile, he faces a litany of federal charges, including alleged wire fraud and money laundering, with a trial scheduled for next year. He’s pleaded not guilty.

1.

McCarthy’s ouster and a headless House

Kevin McCarthy tried to attain the speakership for years. Once he got it, he lasted nine months.

For the first time ever, the House kicked out its chief in the middle of the session through a powerful procedural tool known as the “motion to vacate.” McCarthy had never truly won over his hard-right flank, and after he worked to avert a government shutdown, the coup came. Eight Republicans, led by Gaetz, and all Democrats voted to boot McCarthy in an unprecedented move that sent shockwaves through Washington.

As House Republicans navigated the tumultuous process of finding McCarthy’s replacement, three prominent figures emerged as frontrunners: Reps. Steve Scalise (R-La.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Tom Emmer (R-Minn.). But none of them were able to get enough support to get the gavel.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) temporarily assumed the role of speaker pro tempore, but refused to steer the conference through anything but the gavel election without being elected to the speakership. After three agonizing weeks, the GOP ultimately picked the relatively unknown Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson to lead them.

The new speaker vowed to restore unity, but that promise hasn’t panned out, as House conservatives have continued to engage in the same tactics they used under McCarthy, including tanking legislation on the floor and publicly criticizing their leader.

23 Dec, 2023

- She Immigrated Legally. She Married a U.S. Citizen. But She Was Denied Citizenship for Working in Legal Cannabis.

- Advice from a Democratic Unicorn

investigation

She Immigrated Legally. She Married a U.S. Citizen. But She Was Denied Citizenship for Working in Legal Cannabis.

Federal officials consider immigrants “drug traffickers” even in states where cannabis has been legalized.

POLITICO illustration by Emily Scherer/Photo by iStock

By Kaylee Tornay

12/23/2023 07:00 AM EST

Kaylee Tornay is an investigative reporter for InvestigateWest.

As an immigrant, Maria Reimers tried to do everything by the book. She entered the U.S. legally, married an American citizen and secured a green card to work. Together, she and her husband managed to open a small storefront in Ephrata, a dot of a town in Washington state.

But when Reimers tried to become a U.S. citizen in 2017, she was denied for lack of “good moral character.” Federal immigration officials deemed her work “illicit drug trafficking,” because the couple’s business in Ephrata sells state-regulated cannabis. Though it is legal in Washington state, their retail shop has put Reimers’ dream of citizenship in jeopardy. She gets to keep her green card, but her attorney recommended that she not visit her family in El Salvador because of the possibility that she’d be detained at the border when she returned.

“We didn’t think about the consequences of getting involved, or how the federal law was going to affect us,” Reimers said. “I’ve been in this country 20 years. I am contributing to the country, but I don’t have the moral character to become a citizen? Do you think it is fair?”

Immigrants across the country in states where cannabis has been legalized share Reimers’ frustration. The federal government still considers cannabis illegal, but since states began to legalize sales in 2014, it has largely looked the other way when U.S. citizens get involved in the burgeoning industry. Immigrants, however, still face a litany of consequences — including denial of citizenship, lifetime bans from lawful permanent residency and even deportation.

It’s difficult to estimate the number of legal immigrants who could be impacted by the policy. The federal government doesn’t track employment in the cannabis industry, and the companies that do don’t collect any data on how many immigrants are participating in the workforce. Foreign-born workers make up about 18 percent of the U.S. workforce, according to a 2022 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While noncitizen workers are only a subset of that group, the number of immigrants like Reimers who could be vulnerable to immigration consequences for their work is likely in the thousands.

Meanwhile, advocates and U.S. senators in states where cannabis is legal have asked for help from President Joe Biden, who at times has shown a more tolerant attitude toward cannabis. In an executive order in October 2022, Biden offered pardons to citizens with federal convictions for simple possession of cannabis, and directed agencies to review how cannabis should be classified. In August, the Department of Health and Human Services recommended that it be moved from Schedule I, classified as a highly addictive drug with no medical usefulness, to Schedule III, a category with less potential for misuse. Now it’s up to the Drug Enforcement Administration to make the final call, and there’s no announced timeline for when that will happen.

But under the Biden administration, the Department of Homeland Security has not changed how immigration proceedings judge cannabis work, leaving vulnerable workers like Reimers unable to naturalize or secure green cards and afraid that they could be expelled from the country over their livelihoods.

Denying citizenship or lawful permanent residency for legal marijuana work is “just an interpretation (of the law),” said Kathy Brady, director of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a California-based nonprofit. “What the administration could do would be to change their interpretation, at least for the people working in the legal industry,” she said. “I talk with so many people who are getting really screwed by this.”

That interpretation sets up a stark disparity: Their bosses and American co-workers are part of a booming industry, while immigrants are labeled criminals.

“No civil or criminal penalties for ‘drug trafficking’ fall on the executives of these [cannabis] corporations, or even any of the U.S. citizen employees; the only enforcement targets are immigrant workers,” wrote the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in an October 2022 call to action responding to Biden’s pardons. (The White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)

The Reimers, meanwhile, have sued U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services over Maria’s denial. They lost one appeal in 2022, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the denial again in July. In October, they filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. So far, the court has not agreed to hear the case.

The couple has argued that Reimers is not receiving the same equal protection from federal enforcement of cannabis laws that citizens enjoy. But the courts have maintained that the federal government is treating the Reimers exactly how current law and policy dictates for anyone who isn’t a citizen.

The broad impact those policies are having on immigrants has attracted the attention of the senior U.S. senators from Oregon and Washington, who called for Biden to soften them.

“Individuals legally using cannabis under state law or working in state-licensed cannabis businesses should not face immigration penalties that treat them as criminals,” said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon. “I support calls for the administration to address these inequities administratively, and I will continue to push to enact legislation to permanently reform our archaic federal drug policy.”

When President Biden took office, Brady thought his administration might change the rules so that immigrants wouldn’t be exposed to harsh penalties for state-regulated cannabis work. But so far, it hasn’t happened.

The Immigrant Legal Resource Center has for years called on the DHS to exclude legalized cannabis from its definition of “illicit drug trafficking,” which is a basis to deny both citizenship and permanent residency applications. (CIS and the DHS declined an interview request for this story.)

As a precedent for that type of administrative change, Erin McKee, co-director of the Oregon Justice Resource Center’s immigrant rights project pointed to steps that the DHS took in 2014 to reduce family separations. Then-Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson directed the agency to clarify its definition of “extreme hardship” to allow more undocumented immigrants to remain stateside for longer while applying for residency.

With cannabis, however, CIS has maintained its policy, making explicit in a 2019 memo that immigrants involved with the cannabis industry cannot satisfy the “good moral character” standard required to receive citizenship.

Legislators pushed back on the memo, asking the DHS and the Justice Department in a letter not to allow the policy to be continue. Wyden and Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) were among the signatories. Democratic Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle introduced a bill in 2021 that would have undone the policy change, but it failed to get out of committee.

In separate statements, Wyden and Murray said they still want to see immigrants find relief from consequences for their work in state-regulated cannabis.

“Immigrants who are going through the naturalization process should not be penalized for gaps in state and federal policy when it comes to cannabis,” Murray said. “There is absolutely nothing wrong, for example, with doing state-legal work in a cannabis business in a state like Washington or Oregon, and no reason it should be held against someone seeking citizenship.”

Murray and others point to this issue as one of many reasons to legalize cannabis at the federal level. Bills to do so, however, have made little headway; instead, federal agencies including the Drug Enforcement Agency have been studying the possibility of downgrading cannabis from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug, which could ease the consequences for medical cannabis work and use.

The status quo, meanwhile, has cast likely tens of thousands of immigrants into legal limbo — or, for some, out of the country.

McKee said one of her clients is permanently barred from receiving a green card after disclosing she worked at a dispensary. The woman received federal work authorization through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created by President Barack Obama in 2014. She has no criminal record and is married to a U.S. citizen.

“She is exactly the almost unheard-of easy case that should have been an easy approval for a green card,” McKee said. “Except for the fact that she had worked at a legal cannabis dispensary, with work authorization by the government.” (The woman declined to provide comment directly out of concern it could affect her future immigration prospects.)

“It affects so many people who think just like she did, that she was doing everything right, everything by the book,” McKee said. “She had no clue this would have such severe and devastating consequences for her.”

Several attorneys said they simply discourage prospective clients from applying for green cards or citizenship if they have cannabis work in their history. They said the 9th Circuit Court ruling in Reimers case further serves as a warning, though the ruling itself was unpublished, meaning it can’t be considered as precedent in other court cases.

Alycia Moss, the Reimers’ attorney, said they face a tough battle in their appeal to the Supreme Court. To show that Reimers faced undue harm, the appellate court ruled that she would need to provide an example of a foreign-born worker in legal cannabis gaining citizenship to show why her denial should be overturned.

Four immigration attorneys not involved with the Reimers case said they knew of no such example. And even if an immigrant did receive citizenship despite having worked in cannabis, Moss said she doesn’t believe that person would be eager to step forward.

“Who’s going to want to come forward and say, ‘Hey, I got mine?’” Moss said. “That is an impossible thing to prove.”

Even in some of the first states to legalize cannabis, the potential ramifications for immigrants aren’t widely known, even among state regulators.

“They could have warned us that anyone who was not a citizen already … would have had problems if we were going to get involved,” Reimers said. “I think they kind of failed these people, including me.”

Some states make it easier to find such information. After Denver’s mayor in 2019 publicly appealed to the Trump administration for relief for two workers who were denied citizenship just like Reimers, Colorado changed its laws to require its licensing authority to warn applicants of the immigration risks. It maintains a detailed webpage about the federal implications of cannabis involvement — not just in terms of immigration, but federal student aid and federally subsidized housing.

But in Washington state, where cannabis has been legal just as long, the Liquor and Cannabis Board had no information published on its website about the immigration ramifications of cannabis work. Oregon, which legalized cannabis in 2014, doesn’t either.

The Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board alerts new cannabis business owners that they may face restrictions around gun ownership and banking because of the divide between state and federal law. But the risk to immigrants “has not been something that has come before” the board, said spokesperson Brian Smith. Only after our inquiry did Washington’s cannabis board add a disclaimer to its licensing webpage stating that work in legal cannabis could have “adverse immigration consequences.” Mark Pettinger, spokesperson for the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, said the agency would discuss doing the same.

Others feel that doesn’t go far enough. Democratic Washington state Rep. Sharon Wylie, who co-chairs the House Regulated Substances and Gaming Committee, said she wants to explore how to establish requirements for all cannabis businesses to provide information to any prospective employees about immigration consequences.

“I talked to my co-chair, and we’re both interested in raising the issue with the committee and have put it on staff radar to see what would be the most practical way to protect people that are living in our state,” Wylie said. “I like the idea of basically asking that vendors or people that have the grows and retail stores make sure that people they hire know that there’s a risk.”

The Reimers wish they’d never gotten involved in the industry. They have been trying to sell their business for a few years without any luck. While waiting to see how their Supreme Court appeal unfolds, they are considering all their options.

Reimers could choose to stop working at the business, which could help her gain citizenship in the future. Unlike the admissibility standards for a green card, the “good moral character” standard for citizenship generally looks only at an applicant’s past five years.

But now that immigration officials are aware of her connections to cannabis, she’s scrapped her plans to see her family in El Salvador.

“I was hoping I could go visit my grandmother. I thought if I become a citizen, maybe I could help my mother. But I am incapacitated,” she said. “I’ve been cut off. I can’t really do much.”

She paused.

“I can keep paying taxes, though.”

InvestigateWest is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Reach reporter Kaylee Tornay at [email protected].

Column | On Politics

Advice from a Democratic Unicorn

In a state that twice backed Trump, John Bel Edwards made himself the placid alternative to hair-on-fire populism and won two terms in the governor’s mansion — can he do it again?

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has won twice in a state where the last two Democratic presidential candidates didn’t reach 40 percent. | Matthew Hinton/AP

By Jonathan Martin

12/23/2023 07:00 AM EST

Jonathan Martin is POLITICO’s senior political columnist and politics bureau chief. He’s covered elections in every corner of America and co-authored a best-selling book about Donald Trump and Joe Biden. His reported column chronicles the inside conversations and major trends shaping U.S. politics.

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — He won’t make any lists of 2028 Democratic presidential hopefuls, but both parties would do well to learn from the example of outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.

Winning twice in a state where the last two Democratic presidential candidates didn’t reach 40 percent, Edwards forged alliances across racial and partisan lines to rebuild Louisiana’s finances and leave the state with a budget surplus and its lowest-ever unemployment rate, 3.3 percent. And while states to the east and west, Mississippi and Texas, have been battered by the closures of rural hospitals, not one such facility here has closed on Edwards’ watch because he did what his neighboring governors refused and accepted the federal dollars to expand Medicaid.

Perhaps more remarkable at a moment of extreme polarization is that he won at all. The only Deep South Democratic governor, Edwards won in 2015 against a sitting senator (if a scandal-plagued one) and then again in 2019 in the face of multiple visits to the state by then-President Donald Trump for the governor’s GOP rival.

Much has been made in the political world of the governor’s heterodox views on guns and abortion. (He supports gun rights and opposes abortion rights.) These positions make him a non-starter in any Democratic presidential primary.

But there is more to life than White House viability. And I think there was more to Edwards’ appeal than his defying the national party line on culture-war issues.

“The majority of people in our state appreciated a civil political discourse,” the governor told me earlier this week, sitting in a governor’s mansion bedecked with both holiday decorations and moving boxes. “They appreciate that I was really working hard with Republicans to make progress on key issues and that I compromised and that they compromised. We didn’t just dig our heels in.”

In his low-key manner Edwards offered this as parting wisdom: “To the extent that might motivate some people nationally to change the way they speak about their adversaries, we’re not enemies.”

But hold on, this is no mere high-fiber paean to civility. There’s politics here. (And not just the possibility that Edwards may try to run again for governor, more on that below.)

When disasters repeatedly ravaged Louisiana, as is happening more often with climate change imperiling the state’s coast line, the governor demonstrated competence and worked with Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden to mitigate the damage.

“It was a no brainer for me to be the best possible partner I could be to Barack Obama, to work well with Donald Trump and do the same thing with Joe Biden,” said Edwards. “Because you never want to have a bad relationship because any time you need something from Washington the answer can always be no.”

And for all the talk about his small-town roots in Amite, Louisiana, Edwards found political success in the same fashion as most modern Democrats: By building a coalition of racial minorities and moderate whites in cities and suburbs. In a state infamous for its corruption, a West Pointer with a duty-honor-country bearing was as appealing to Black voters in Shreveport as he was to whites in Uptown New Orleans, even if his manner was more vanilla than Tabasco.

Which is to say that at a moment voters keep enabling hair-on-fire provocation, Edwards’ success demonstrated there’s a parallel incentive structure that rewards competence, biography and normalcy.

Call it the vibes political economy. With local media decimated and politics increasingly nationalized and tribal, the electorate is mostly gleaning information about public affairs from a motley mix of social media, push alerts and whatever corner-of-the-eye television and print coverage they take in each day.

With partisan voters, and especially in primaries, this redounds to the benefit of figures such as Trump and his imitators in Congress, who know the way to command attention in this new world is with undistilled bombast.

However, with the broader electorate, the considerable political center, I think playing against that type can carry its own benefits. Exhausted and confused voters will default to boring if it seems normal. The 2020 presidential results are the best evidence.

Yet equally compelling is the success of the governors who’ve managed to prevail in forbidding states. Perceptions can be paramount.

Consider Edwards but also Kentucky’s Gov. Andy Beshear, who won a larger-than-expected reelection last month because of his own competence on disaster relief and the just-Andy familiarity he built up with voters during the pandemic.

Or look further north, to Republican governors who’ve managed to win in blue states. Vermont’s Phil Scott, Maryland’s Larry Hogan and Massachusetts’ Charlie Baker were elected and reelected because, with aptitude and that same guy-next-door familiarity, they established their own identities separate from their national party. Similarly, the only governor to defeat an incumbent last year, Nevada’s Joe Lombardo, won in part because his biography as a former Las Vegas police officer let him craft his own image apart from his party in a year when the GOP Senate nominee in the state fell short.

Yet all of these governors had fairly lonely victories and were, or are, confronted with legislatures dominated by the opposition party.

Edwards, for his part, leaves at a moment Louisiana Democrats are at a modern nadir. After holding back the tide of realignment, this state now looks much like its neighbors, with Republicans commanding supermajorities and Democrats increasingly confined to Black or urban white precincts.

Edwards is mildly defensive when I raise the topic about his role as party leader — “it’s not like I’ve been totally absent and uninvolved” — but makes no apologies.

“I decided to pursue bipartisan successes, put the focus on governor as opposed to the word Democrat, and I believe that had I not done that my exit interview would’ve been four years ago,” he told me.

Yes, it is considerably easier for governors, who are inherently dealing with matters less national and polarizing than members of Congress, to overcome metastasizing red-and-blue politics, in which states vote their presidential preference in statewide elections.

But Edwards thinks that for Democrats to better compete on more hostile terrain between the coasts they must step closer toward the political center — and not just on messaging.

“We typically say we think we just need to communicate better — that’s sort of a foolish answer,” he said. “Because that means you don’t really have to evolve on your positions.”

One issue Edwards believes his party must better accommodate the electorate is toughening border security.

“Joe Biden ought to be cutting the best deal he can cut on immigration right now,” said the governor. “Get the money for Ukraine and Israel and he will stop bleeding on that issue.”

Edwards’ advice: “Go to the center, get a good compromise — and do that more often.”

The governor said he has a strong relationship with the president, his fellow Roman Catholic. And when I half-jokingly floated the idea that Edwards could become U.S. Ambassador at the Vatican in a Biden second term — an appointment oft mentioned in the Baton Rouge rumor mill since Biden’s election — he took it quite seriously.

“On that particular job, I can tell you that’s one that would be extremely difficult for me to turn down,” Edwards said, citing the faith he shares with his wife, Donna.

He insisted, however, that he has little interest in Washington and certainly not the Senate (Chuck Schumer, if you’re listening …)

More remarkable to me was that Edwards said that, in the two months since Louisiana’s Mike Johnson became House speaker, he’s not heard once from the lawmaker about ways they could work for Louisiana.

Were past Louisiana titans such as Billy Tauzin or John Breaux or Bob Livingston to have had such clout they would have sent everything back from Washington to Louisiana that wasn’t nailed down in the Capitol.

“I would feel better about Mike Johnson being speaker of the House if I felt he was someone who really believed in making government work,” said Edwards, adding: “But if you don’t believe in earmarks, if you don’t believe in making government work, if you’re not willing to use the weight of your office to benefit your state then there’s very little upside.”

Still, ever wanting to project bipartisanship, Edwards did allow that he was a lame duck and, well, Johnson has been a little busy since taking his new job.

In any event, the governor is more focused on the man who’s taking his job: Gov.-elect Jeff Landry, a Republican.

A former congressman turned state attorney general, Landry represents a familiar archetype here (Cajun Country wheeler-dealer) updated for the times (MAGA!).

Edwards was skeptical that Landry would dare repeal the Medicaid expansion and warned his successor against backing away from the state’s efforts to lure clean-energy companies. Louisiana’s economic gains have come in part from “investments in low carbon and no carbon energy,” Edwards said, and Landry will want those jobs.

“I just believe he is going to be good in this space, although I wish he would talk about it differently,” said the governor, a polite way of stating he wished Landry would stop calling climate change “a hoax.”

That Edwards is being succeeded by a Trump-allied Republican — and one who prevailed without a runoff in Louisiana’s all-party primary — illustrates what a bare political cupboard the governor is leaving behind for his party.

In fairness, the only way to have blocked Landry may have been with a center-right Republican who could have eked into the runoff and then cobbled together bipartisan support. The moment that Republican Rep. Garret Graves declined to run for governor likely extinguished those hopes.

Edwards acknowledged speaking to Graves about running, something that has been rumored in Louisiana and Washington for months.

“I did not necessarily encourage him to do it,” the governor told me before conceding a bit.

“I told him it was a wonderful job, that we need good public servants at the highest level and I did tell him that it’s something that he should really consider,” Edwards said.

Graves now may wish he had run because nobody’s political fortunes this side of Kevin McCarthy have changed so dramatically of late. After McCarthy convinced Graves to stay by making him the de facto deputy speaker — layering the actual second-in-command, Louisianan Steve Scalise — Graves helped negotiate the debt ceiling deal with the White House this spring.

He also pushed an ally at home, Stephen Waguespack, into the governor’s race in a failed attempt to block Landry. Well, now McCarthy has been ousted and is resigning from Congress at the end of the month, Landry is about to be sworn in as governor and, wouldn’t you know it, the federal courts are requiring Louisiana to redraw their congressional boundaries to add a second Black-majority district.

Landry has already called for a special session next month to craft the new district and, well, House Republicans should count on being minus-one in Louisiana after the next election because the new governor will be happy to use a court order to exact political revenge by drawing Graves out of his seat.

The most likely Democrat to claim the seat is state senator Cleo Fields, a Baton Rouge Democrat who served two terms in Congress in the 1990s. In Louisiana lore, Fields is known for being caught on an FBI tape taking a stack of $25,000 in cash from former Governor Edwin Edwards, who instructed Fields to be sure “everyone is careful how that’s handed out.” (Fields, unlike Edwin Edwards, was never charged with a crime.)

Oh, and did I mention that New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell is apparently under federal scrutiny, with FBI agents interviewing her donors and the mayor notably declining to say at a recent press conference if she had received a target letter from prosecutors?

If it all sounds like a return to form — proof that Louisiana’s enduring pastimes remain football, eating and politicians getting their beaks wet — well wait until you hear that Landry just appointed the 26-year-old executive director of the South Dakota GOP to head Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. (Landry and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem share a political counselor: former Trump lieutenant Corey Lewandowski.)

“Anybody who thinks we’re going to be some boring-ass place where everything functions is going to have to move somewhere else,” threatened, or maybe promised, Mary-Patricia Wray, a lobbyist who is serving on Landry’s transition team. Wray praised Landry as “transactional.”

This all relates to the legacy of Edwards, and viability of Democrats in red states, because the only job the governor may covet more than the Holy See is the one he’s about to give up.

Before I sat down with him, Edwards conducted his last news conference with the state press corps. Surrounded by his cabinet and joined by his wife, the governor stood before a ceiling-scraping Christmas tree and used the session to mostly take a final political victory lap.

Except at the end of his remarks.

“I’ve loved the job I’ve been doing,” Edwards said, before noting that the state constitution bars him from serving more than two terms “at least not without a break.”

Then he said “I don’t say never” and “I’m not going anywhere” and “I love our state too much, love our people too much, to see them suffer needlessly and so while I have no expectation, no intention, of running again, I can see that, should my wife bless it and the circumstances warrant it, that I would do that.”

Okay, governor, we got the hint.

There is a precedent. The other Gov. Edwards — he of FBI tapes, prison time and wizard-under-the- sheets quips — reclaimed the office after he served back to back terms. Actually, he won two more, non-consecutive terms, the second time most famously when Louisiana chose the crook over the Klansman, David Duke, in 1991.

It’s easy to see this Gov. Edwards attempting a comeback with a call for, yes, competence and normalcy.

Louisiana, he told me, is “right of center but not right of right.”

Then he gestured out of his office, back toward the residential section of the mansion where the gubernatorial portraits hang on the wall.

“You can look in that stairwell over there: Since 1972 every Democratic governor has been replaced by a Republican who has been replaced by a Democrat who has been replaced by a Republican,” he said. “That’s the trend line we’ve been on for a long time.”

22 Dec, 2023

- Why Washington’s Elites Are So Miserable

q&a

Why Washington’s Elites Are So Miserable

Arthur Brooks went from conservative think tanker to happiness scholar. Now he’s got some advice for Washingtonians who want to gain power without sacrificing their personal well-being.

Arthur Brooks discusses the new book he co-authored Sept. 12, 2023 in New York City. | Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

By Ryan Lizza and Alex Keeney

12/22/2023 11:31 AM EST

Ryan Lizza is a Playbook Co-Author and the Chief Washington Correspondent for POLITICO

Alex Keeney is the senior producer of Playbook Deep Dive.

Washingtonians know how success is measured. Walk into their offices, and you’ll see its artifacts hanging on their walls: photographs of handshakes with senators, gifts from prominent constituents or lobbying clients, and framed newspaper clippings with their names in them.

That used to be Arthur Brooks, the longtime head of the American Enterprise Institute. In 2019, he left his role at the top of the center-right think tank to study happiness at Harvard. And his research suggests why the traditional formula for success in Washington is leaving the city’s high achievers unhappy and unfulfilled.

According to Brooks, who recently co-authored Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier with Oprah Winfrey, the relationship between success and happiness is exactly the opposite of what many are trained to expect.

“The success that you’re impelled toward will not actually bring you greater happiness,” he told Ryan Lizza on a new episode of the Playbook Deep Dive podcast. “If you’re coming to Washington, D.C., as a super-striver and you’re trying to depend for your human flourishing on the quality of your connections and the depth of your Rolodex, you’re going to be a very lonely person.”

Fortunately, Brooks argues, it’s possible to achieve both happiness and success, even in a culture as competitive and cut-throat as Washington.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

So, Arthur, let’s start with something you’ve written about before. What was the revelation you had when you turned 40?

I wrote my bucket list when I was 40 and I found it when I was 50, and I’d hit everything on that list. And I was less happy. And I thought to myself, “Well, that’s not what I expected.”

Now, I know as a social scientist that your heart’s desire is going to come to you. The problem is that you usually find that your heart’s desire was the wrong desire.

So what was the shift in thinking?

There was nothing wrong with what was on my 40-year-old bucket list. The problem was that I was attached to those accomplishments, and I didn’t recognize that until I was 50. But I was hanging my well-being on the accomplishment of worldly tasks, and that’s inherently empty.

So in the meantime, I started doing research on exactly the problem with that, and I found this negative result. I did all the things that were supposed to make me happy: get successful, be happy. And I found that I had gotten at least my own metrics of success and hadn’t gotten happier. On the contrary, I recognized that I needed a different approach and started to do the work and found that actually I needed to stand up to Mother Nature’s imperatives. Mother Nature says money, power, pleasure and fame are going to make you happy, at least in some measure.

Those are the measures of kind of a good life in earthly terms. And the problem with that — there’s nothing wrong with those things per se — the problem is when you assume that you’ll be happy when you get those things, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. And so the result is, I recognized that the problem was not attaining the things on my 40-year-old bucket list; it was being attached to those things on my 40-year-old bucket list.

I needed to detach myself from those accomplishments. I needed intention toward goals without attachment to the result. And so I made a reverse bucket list where I was going to make a list of all of the ambitions and desires. And then I was going to cross out those things, not because I wasn’t going to get them, but because easy come, easy go. I am not going to tie my happiness to the accomplishment of an earthly reward. And that has changed my life.

Another big part of success and happiness that you talk a lot about is your relationships. They’re definitely a big part of business in this town. You have this great phrase, “real friends” and “deal friends.” What is the balance here?

So this really gets back to Aristotle, who if you read one person on friendship, Aristotle is the one to read.

So in the Nicomachean Ethics, he talks about the levels of friendship. And at the bottom is kind of these friendships of convenience or transaction. And look, the world goes round because we get along. You work with people, you do business with people, you transact with people. There’s nothing wrong with that but that’s not enough for your happiness. That’s not enough for your flourishing.

He says, above that are these friendships of basically admiration, where you admire somebody’s characteristics — and that’s better.

But it’s not really at the highest level, which he thinks of as the virtuous friendship, or the perfect friendship, which he calls the atelic friendship. “Atelic” means it doesn’t have a telos. It doesn’t have a usefulness to it.

And basically what this means is that your transactional friendships are useful — those are deal friends. At the top, which you need for happiness, according to Aristotle, and by the way, all modern social psychologists and common sense and your grandma — they will tell you that you need people who are useless to you, that you just love.

And if everybody’s useful to you, you’re going to be lonely. There’s nobody there to take your 3:00 a.m. phone call. That’s just a fact.

So what’s your advice for your average D.C. striver who comes to town and sees their decades of career development as a collection of deal friends? How does someone like that have more useless friends?

Well, if these are your only friends, you’re going to be lonely. And that’s actually one of the reasons that loneliness has been increasing. We have a great surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, and he writes about loneliness. He told me in an interview that loneliness is our greatest public health threat, more than coronavirus, more than gun violence or opioid mortality. It’s loneliness.

That explains the rise in deaths of despair, of suicide and alcoholism and drug addiction?

Yeah. And you can actually find the people who have overcome really adverse circumstances in their life if they have a lot of oxytocin in their life, which is the neuropeptide of human connection, which only comes from eye contact and touch. And you only have deep eye contact and touch with your useless friends, quite frankly. You don’t look deeply into the eyes of your business partner unless you’re trying to freak them out.

The truth is that you try to look into the soul of somebody whose soul you’re interested in. And, you know, oxytocin, which is once again, biology is psychology and psychology is biology — and it’s a perfect example of this. And there’s just less and less.

If you’re coming to Washington, D.C., as a super striver and you’re trying to depend for your human flourishing on the quality of your connections and the depth of your Rolodex, you’re going to be a very lonely person.

You need to actually do the work to have real friendships as well. And those are the people who don’t really care how connected you are on the Hill.

You don’t get that eye contact when you’re at the holiday party looking over their shoulder to see if someone more important is coming by, right?

Man, I love that about D.C. And you know, it’s a cliche and it’s absolutely true.

You’ve had a series of mini careers — AEI, academia, a professional musician — and you’ve talked about the different career models that one can have. What are they?

So most of the world, especially for the striver, tells you that you have a linear career path, and that means work hard, play by the rules, achieve and don’t make any big changes in your career unless it’s the next step up in the line.

That’s a pretty classic model in D.C., right?

Oh, yeah. Now, interestingly, that’s the model that we tend to impose on our students, but it’s not the actual career model for all of our students.

Another career model that’s actually been quite, quite common in the past — so probably your grandfather, probably my father — was called the expert career model. And that’s the one in which you don’t make very many changes at all. You’re looking for a career that gives you the ability to excel, to be good at what you do, but it doesn’t take over your life so that you can have a life. It has a lot of security, there’s a lot of appreciation, and it’s just kind of a slow-moving thing. My father was a professor at the same university for 40 years. That’s working at the Post Office, that’s doing the one thing, the one-and-done kind of career.

The third career model is called the transitory career model, which is a career that’s entirely based on serving your lifestyle. So in other words, you don’t live to work. You work to live.

This is what everybody’s parents are worried you’re going to do, which is that you don’t have very much ambition. Now you’re a barista in Portland, Maine; and then you’re going to do a little stint as a long haul trucker out of Baton Rouge; and then you fall in love with somebody in San Diego. You basically do this work. It pays the bills, but you’re just trying to live. Those are three different career models.

Here’s the one that characterizes a lot more people than they think — and it really characterizes me — which is called the spiral career model.

The spiral career model is when you have a series of mini careers of your own design, because there’s a pattern inside your head of what you’re trying to achieve as a human being.

Now, it might not seem like it has rhyme or reason, and it might seem weird to outsiders, but it really makes sense to you if you’re properly going through the ancient, philosophical experience of discernment.

The whole point is that you’re trying to figure out what the point of your life is — the why of your life. It follows different contours on the basis of that, and sometimes you make more money and sometimes less. Sometimes you’re in the for-profit sector, sometimes in the government or non-profit sector. Maybe you take seven years off to raise your kids and come back into working part time. But the coherence of it is what you’re trying to do to shape your mission.

How does your age influence this? You’ve written about the differences between fluid intelligence, which we have when we’re younger, and crystallized intelligence, which comes in later. Is there a lesson here for Washington’s strivers?

I mean, it’s the idea of the Hindu ashramas. It maps on perfectly to the different kinds of intelligence that were first discovered and explicated by Raymond Cattell, the great British social psychologist in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Cattell noticed that people have a wellspring of working memory, of innovative capacity and very clear focus, in their twenties and thirties. That’s what makes people really good at what they do individually. That fluid intelligence increases with your knowledge all the way through your twenties and thirties. It tends to peak at about age 39 or 40.

Then your working memory starts to falter. It’s not horrible and it’s not structurally a problem. It’s not like something’s wrong with your brain. It’s basically a memory filing problem where there’s too many files. That’s what it comes down to. But also our innovative capacity isn’t as good. You inevitably find that early Rolling Stones was better than later Rolling Stones. I was writing papers in my early thirties that were so mathematically sophisticated that I can’t read them today.

So after this, is that when crystalized intelligence kicks in?

Later in life, when fluid intelligence is decreasing, there’s a second kind of intelligence that comes in called crystallized intelligence that doesn’t require working memory. It doesn’t require this indefatigable focus or innovative capacity. What it requires is wisdom, teaching ability, use of metaphor, use of language, pattern recognition. What it requires is you being able to use the vast library in your head to teach other people. You go from your innovator curve to your instructor curve. That crystallized intelligence makes it much easier for you to teach, for you to lead teams, for you to be a mentor, for you to explain things.

And young people will come in right out of graduate school at my university and they’ll say, “What’s the secret to getting great teaching evaluations?” And the answer is, get old because you’re a naturally better teacher under the circumstances.

You’re a better teacher now?

Oh, yeah. And the reason is because I’m 59, not 29, which is better when it comes to being able to explain things. That increases through your forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies and stays high in your eighties and nineties.

The ultimate crystallized intelligence profession is historian because you have to explain a lot, you’ve got to know a lot, and you’ve got to be clear and rich in your language. Historians are a pure crystallized intelligence profession. The average historian does half of her or his work after the age of 67, and the better half is the second half. So if you’re a historian, take care of your health because your best books are coming in your eighties.

You were the head of AEI. Have any of your political views changed since you left D.C. and have just immersed yourself in happiness studies?

I’m not sure my political views have changed, but I think my approach probably has.

Here’s the thing, Ryan, that I probably changed over the last few years. And maybe it’s because I left Washington, and maybe it’s because I study happiness, and maybe it’s just because I’m getting old: I’m not right. I’m actually wrong — I just don’t know on what.

It’s statistically impossible that I’m right on everything that I think. I’m wrong on a bunch of stuff and the only way I’m going to figure that out is by surrounding myself with and having loving conversations where I listen to people with whom I disagree. That’s something that’s really changed a lot.

I’m a lot less defensive about my views and I’m a lot less attached to my views.

I was writing the obituary for Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Vietnamese Buddhist monk, in the Washington Post. And I remember thinking about this really important idea that he had, which is our greatest attachment tends to be to our opinions. We clutch on them as if they were jewels. It’s almost as if you had a right to kill somebody in self-defense if they contradict you. That’s certainly true on college campuses. That’s certainly true in the 5 percent political fringes on the right and left in America.

And as I was writing his obituary, I asked myself, “What is my attachment to my own political views?” So I’m on my reverse bucket list, which I put together on my birthday. This last year, I listed half of my political opinions and I crossed them out. Not because I don’t hold them, but because I’m not going to be attached to them. If you disagree with me, come sit down next to me because I want to hear what you have to say. And you probably are going to make some pretty good points.

Table of Contents

POLITICO Magazine: 29 Dec, 2023

29 Dec, 2023

The Absolute Worst Political Predictions of 2023

28 Dec, 2023

Opinion | Why Was It So Hard for Nikki Haley to Say ‘Slavery’? History Has the Answer

The New Republican Governors Chief Explains the Loss in Kentucky and How to Tackle Trump Tweets

27 Dec, 2023

The Biden Administration Is Quietly Shifting Its Strategy in Ukraine

26 Dec, 2023

Which 2028 Presidential Wannabe Had the Best Year?

25 Dec, 2023

What I Saw on the Dreary Road to 2024

23 Wild Stories That Explain Politics in 2023

24 Dec, 2023

The George Santos Saga, Kevin McCarthy Implosion and Marjorie Taylor Greene Circus

23 Dec, 2023

She Immigrated Legally. She Married a U.S. Citizen. But She Was Denied Citizenship for Working in Legal Cannabis.

Advice from a Democratic Unicorn

22 Dec, 2023

Why Washington’s Elites Are So Miserable