The recriminations and agonies among the defeated have begun, and they are enough to break your heart. Hillary Clinton, who has been in the political world her entire adult life, is treated as a tragic figure by some. Jonathan Alter writes in the Daily Beast that
It occurs to one that Dwight Eisenhower was pretty well prepared for the responsibilities that come with being president of the United States and commanded a fair amount of respect and admiration. He had, after all, invaded Europe, and not many candidates have that on their résumés. George H. W. Bush had checked more boxes than Mrs. Clinton, though to be fair, he had not served as first spouse. He had been a member of Congress, director of the CIA, and vice president for eight years. And long ago, it was believed that nobody had ever been so suitably prepared to become president as had Herbert Hoover. We all know how that one worked out.
On the other hand, maybe Hillary Clinton was just a lousy candidate who believed she could coast to victory on her money and her name. She did not, for instance, deign to visit Wisconsin, and the state returned the favor.
In the days that followed her defeat, some have wept bitter tears while others have rampaged through the streets. As Adam Kredo writes at the Washington Free Beacon:
Mixed in with the despair has been a lot of dark talk about the last days of not only the Democratic party but of the republic itself. Andrew Sullivan, for instance, has visions that fall just this side of Hieronymus Bosch in their awfulness.
If the people spinning these grim prophecies actually believe them, they might want to turn to recent history for consolation and instruction.
First the consolations: Consider the election of 1964 and how in the days following Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory, it appeared that the conservative cause, if not the Republican party, was now extinct in American politics. The liberal vision of paradise would be made manifest on earth with the creation of something called the Great Society. And for a while, Congress couldn’t write legislation, or spend money, fast enough, with the few Republicans left in captivity rushing to join their Democratic colleagues in passing just about every bill that Johnson sent them.
And then, the deluge. Johnson tried to have a war he had promised he wouldn’t send American boys “nine or ten thousand miles away” to fight—and he tried to have it on the cheap. By the end of his first term, the nation’s cities were in flames, and he was limiting his appearances to military bases. Johnson could not run for reelection. Nor could he attend his party’s disastrous convention in Chicago. He finished out his term and went home to Texas to die. Largely unmourned.
Most of recent American political history is, in fact, a case study in the worthless assumptions made in the wake of presidential elections. Consider: Donald Trump is not old enough to have voted in 1960. But he surely remembers the election of John F. Kennedy and the shock of his assassination. It changed everything, of course, and you could argue that the nation still hasn’t gotten over it. Nobody, of course, saw it coming.
After the catastrophic failure of Johnson (despite his landslide election) came the rise of Richard Nixon, who of course had been written off for dead in 1962. He was reelected in one of the great landslides of American history in 1972, and the Democratic party in turn was written off for dead, as “the party of McGovern.” We, briefly, had ourselves an “emerging Republican majority.”
It just as quickly un-emerged, when Nixon became the first president to resign the office. He did this to avoid being impeached, convicted, and forced from office. He was pardoned by his unelected successor, who then lost when he actually needed the support of voters to retain the office.
Ford’s successor came and went without leaving footprints. Ronald Reagan, whom none would have ever called “inevitable,” was elected and then reelected, in one of those landslides that are supposed to forever change the landscape of American politics. He was even able to get his vice president elected to succeed him, for a rare three-term win of the White House by the same party.
The aforementioned George H. W. Bush got up to 89 percent in the polls at one point before sinking below 40 percent and being shown the door.
Bill Clinton actually did manage to get himself impeached. Something that had not happened in over a century and for which he will be forever remembered. Especially by his wife, whose ambitions were hobbled by her husband’s actions, which didn’t really seem worthy of being described as “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
And then, it was another Bush. This one did manage to get himself reelected, whereupon he sank to the sort of numbers that had doomed his father. The slow fade of the second Bush and his party’s fortunes was followed by the election of a candidate who would, we were told, truly change American politics and, perhaps, put the Republican party out of its misery once and for all. Barack Obama would assemble a permanent and expanding Democratic majority. The Republicans would become the party of aging white men—or, if you preferred more colorful locutions, “bitter clingers” and “deplorables.”
But somehow, things did not work out that way. They seldom do. So those in need of counseling and comforting to help them over the trauma might want to look instead to the all-purpose quotation from Lord Melbourne, regarding some long-forgotten event:
“What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.” That’s pretty much how it always rolls. ¨
Geoffrey Norman, a writer in Vermont, is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard.
