If President Trump fails to win a second term, Republicans in the House and Senate won’t be too upset. Presidents, often puffed up after winning four more years, rarely do wonders in a second four years. They’re hard to live with. They expect Washington to kowtow to their whims. They also tend to get in trouble. Even Ronald Reagan did.
Trump, were he reelected, wouldn’t likely escape this trend. His first term was successful. As a rookie, he produced a big tax cut, populated the Supreme Court and the federal appeals courts with judges, and boldly advanced peace in the Middle East. A pretty impressive record, I’d say.
But repeat it? Trump shouldn’t get his hopes up. There are many reasons for this. The best White House aides and advisers leave after the end of term one, if not sooner. And presidents aren’t as strenuous in making sure to please the public. They take more and more days off for vacations and idle time. The list of time spent on nonofficial business grows. Soon, there are murmurs in Washington about the president’s waning political appeal.
This brings us to the subject of House members and senators. They don’t relax. Many in the House work overtime to move up to the Senate. Senators want to be president. At some point, sensing they’ve reached their peak, they ease up. It’s impressive, though, how hard many of them continue to work diligently. Washington is full of such drones.
Their fate in the Nov. 3 election is more interesting than Trump’s or Joe Biden’s. House Republicans were predicted to be in serious trouble in the election, especially with Trump at the top of the ballot. But many of them didn’t believe this. The election proved they were right.
Two Republicans won upsets in New Jersey races for the House. Up the Hudson River in New York, three Republicans won. This isn’t conservative territory. In the city, Staten Island is known as the home of mobsters. A Democrat, Max Rose, who won the seat two years ago, was crushed by a GOP challenger.
Republicans netted seven new seats, not a landslide but enough to show they mean business. In Miami, two Hispanic Republicans challenged Democrats whose seats were thought to be safe. They weren’t. One loser was Donna Shalala, a former White House adviser of President Bill Clinton.
Guess the publication in which this headline appeared: “Surprising Strength For G.O.P. Candidates In Suburban Areas.” It was the New York Times. Suburbia has been cited by the media as a prime area of Republican decline. Not in 2020, it turns out.
There are follow-up comments on how strong the Republican base of House candidates was. One was how issue-savvy they were. Another was the fact they are warriors — an army that will take on the Democratic majority in the House in 2022, perhaps the second year in a Biden presidency. That’s traditionally the toughest year for House members in the president’s party.
Still, another major role the House Republicans are likely to play involves the vast social spending programs proposed by Democrats. What’s interesting is Biden’s position if he’s president. He’s not an ardent left-wing Democrat of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez school. So he might secretly encourage Republicans to oppose her programs.
Back to Trump, who faces a significant problem if he’s still residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. It’s his lack of an agenda. You know, highways, schools, airports. Trump has talked frequently as president as if he were on the brink of announcing, at long last, an ambitious infrastructure project. But he never got around to proposing one.
If nothing else, an empty agenda without big, expensive plans is a signal of trouble ahead. And a hollow space for big ideas and appealing plans will be filled by someone. And in this case, it’s obvious who that would be: the entire Democratic Party. It would love to spend 2022 talking about infrastructure.
Fred Barnes is a Washington Examiner senior columnist.
