[ad_1]
What about a viable Biden opponent in the Democratic primaries? “There has to be one good Challenger X out there from the party’s supposed ‘deep bench,’ right?” wrote Leibovich in The Atlantic. “Someone who is compelling, formidable, and younger than, say, 65.” That person, he argued, should “make a refreshing nuisance of themselves” and fight Biden for the nomination.
But that is a political death wish for the Democrats. History is littered with the bleached bones of incumbent presidents who faced serious primary challengers. Think back to Gerald Ford, who battled California governor Ronald Reagan in the Republican primaries of 1976, and ended up narrowly losing the general election to Democrat Jimmy Carter. Four years later, Carter, weakened by a bitter, rear-guard battle against Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy that lasted all the way to the convention, was routed by none other than Ronald Reagan.
And then there was George H.W. Bush. In 1991, after leading the Gulf War coalition that drove Iraq’s Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, Bush enjoyed an 89% approval rating. A year later he was thrown out of office by the Democratic governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton. A sputtering economy and a third-party candidate, Ross Perot, were factors. But an ugly primary challenge by right-wing populist Pat Buchanan also helped seal Bush’s fate.
Those were my thoughts as I cooled my heels before my lunch. That is, until my reverie was interrupted by Zients’s assistant, who escorted me upstairs to the West Wing reception room. Moments later, Biden’s chief of staff appeared. An entrepreneur who made a fortune in the private sector—and cofounded the Washington, DC, bagel shop chain, Call Your Mother—Zients is known for making government work; before becoming Biden’s first coronavirus response coordinator, he fixed Barack Obama’s glitch-plagued Affordable Care Act website, HealthCare.gov.
Biden’s chief was affable and relaxed as we walked back to his office. Zients, who replaced Ron Klain in February, comes across as almost preternaturally serene—unruffled despite the demands of the second most difficult job in government. (After reading The Gatekeepers just before her husband took the post, Zients’s wife asked him, “Are you sure about this?”)
Sitting at the table in the chief’s corner office, dining on braised chicken from the Navy Mess, Zients talked about his priorities. Our conversation was off the record. But the subjects included the emergency evacuation of Americans from war-wracked Sudan; a looming crisis at the southern border due to the upcoming expiration of Title 42; the pending debt limit discussions. And then there was the widening fissure in US diplomatic relations with China, as well as the ongoing war in Ukraine. And that was all before dessert.
I asked Zients if the president had ever talked about not running for reelection. Biden’s chief agreed later to put this much on the record: “I think his fundamental calculus is that he’s made real progress. There’s a lot more work to do.”
There’s been speculation that Zients, who lacks Klain’s political experience, will concentrate on running the White House—while close Biden advisers Anita Dunn and Jen O’Malley Dillon will call the shots on the reelection. (The campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodriguez, granddaughter of the legendary labor leader César Chávez, will be based in Wilmington, Delaware.) But Zients can’t avoid being immersed in the campaign. One of the chief of staff’s principal challenges will be managing the tension between campaigning and governing. There will be times when Rodriguez—or Dunn or O’Malley Dillion—may tell the president, for example, that he has to be in Michigan the following week for a critical campaign appearance. But when a political trip conflicts with governing, it will be Zients’s job to say, “No way.”
No one, in my estimation, is more surprised than Biden about a possible rematch with Trump. As I learned while writing The Fight of His Life, my book on the Biden White House, the thing that shocked Biden more than anything else as president was the lasting power of the MAGA movement. He thought it would be in the rearview mirror by now. In 2020, Biden had won by 7 million votes—what used to be called a mandate. Determined to unite the country, the president barely mentioned “the former guy” during his first year.
But Biden gradually realized that Trumpism wasn’t going away. It had to be called out and confronted. On the first anniversary of the January 6 assault on the US Capitol, Biden, standing in the Rotunda, threw down the gauntlet with a fiery speech defending democratic values. And in the 2022 midterm elections, running in opposition to the attack on women’s reproductive rights unleashed by a Trump-appointed Supreme Court majority—and the threat to democracy represented by MAGA extremists—the Democrats scored the best midterm performance (for the party of a sitting president) since FDR’s era.
[ad_2]
Source link