OPINION
Is It Election or Rejection '24?
What we have coming up on Nov. 5 — while billed by our media as a thoughtful, issue-driven national election for our next president — is really a silly and hugely overblown exercise, and has been mostly that for at least since Nixon in 1968.
But our media — who really has nothing else to do during the election season — tries to convince us that there are many esoteric political issues at stake.
But this pitch is mainly so we will watch and listen to them — and they make some money from advertisers.
And "big media" also pushes for televised debates, which are primarily "show business" for our bigger "media stars" from the major networks.
These men and women make their millions by reading questions — mostly written by kid staffers — to the candidates. And then the candidates read their answers — also written by kid staffers.
Ho hum.
So, if you were from another planet and watching our major network evening news, you would think our presidential election process is very sophisticated — dealing with hundreds of intricate issues — and that our voters engage in a complex analysis before deciding how to vote and who to vote for.
Not!
Rather — it is — with a historical exception or two, mostly a very simple process of rejecting the incumbent for another term, and usually because of a rather basic issue or two.
The "winner" is then the candidate not rejected - and that is how we most often determine who our next President will be.
And as of right now, the polling looks like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, will be rejected. The main reasons are Biden’s age and competency — and the very real possibility of Harris becoming president!
Here are some historical examples of the "rejection theory."
1968: Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) pulls out (on March 31) as he knows he will lose because of the protracted and very unpopular Vietnam War, especially the disastrous Tet offensive in January of that more than pivotal year. Also, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4. With Bobby Kennedy's assassination on June 5, 1968, the subsequent Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey is rejected, also because of the Vietnam war. It's how we wound up with Richard M. Nixon. (Eugene McCarthy was never achieved Kennedy's popularity.)
Fast-forward to 1972: Nixon is re-elected as he and Henry Kissinger are extracting us from Vietnam, but then Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns, as a result of a kickback scandal (and Nixon appoints Gerald Ford as vice president) but then Nixon later resigns because of Watergate.
1976: Ford is rejected — because of Watergate, the Agnew scandal, and his pardoning of Nixon. We get Jimmy Carter from Georgia. Who is he? We don’t know and ultimately don’t care.
1980: Carter is quickly rejected because of Iran, specifically due to his failures over the Iran Hostage Crisis. Ronald Reagan is elected because of Iran and other pressing national security matters for which Carter appears clueless. Another significant factor in Reagan’s vicotry - the economy. Carter goes back to Georgia.
1984: An exception to rejection, Reagan is re-elected for his successes with Cold-War national security matters and dealing with the Soviet Union and Gorbachev.
1988: Another exception as George Herbert Walker Bush is elected — mostly because of his perceived continuation of Reagan’s successes.
1992: George H.W. Bush (Bush 41) is rejected, mainly because of the "Read My Lips, No New Taxes" issue and third-party candidate Ross Perot, who took 20 million votes away from the GOP. Bill Clinton is elected, by default. Who is he? Is he like Carter?
1996: Not like Carter, Clinton is re-elected mainly because of a nice period of post-Cold-War prosperity — thanks again to Ronald Reagan.
2000: George W. Bush is elected, largely because of Clinton’s sex scandals and his second term impeachment for lying about it. Al Gore was Clinton’s vice president, and that didn’t help.
2004: "W," (or Bush 43) is re-elected because we’re in the middle of a large and hugely expensive ground war in Iraq, beginning in 2003.
2008: Barack Obama is elected – mostly because of the expensive and then protracted Iraq War. GOP candidate John McCain is rejected for same reason. Obama retracts us from various other Middle East engagements.
2012: Obama re-elected, continues and initiates hugely expensive social welfare — "free stuff" — programs. He makes a deal with Iran on nuclear material production: the Joint Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran Nuclear Deal on July 14, 2015.
2016: Donald Trump is elected. He opposed Obama’s hugely expensive social welfare programs and Iran deal. Hillary Clinton is rejected, largely because of the prospect of husband Bill back in the White House. The fact that Hillary referred to Trump supporters as "A Basket of Deplorables," didn't help her cause much either.
2020: Trump is rejected because of COVID-19, impeachments and his separation from traditional Washington D.C. Republican politics. Result: Joe Biden and who?
2024: Are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris rejected? If so — and it looks that way now — it will clearly be by the operation of "rejection politics."
In reviewing these key moments in presidential history, we readily see that, with a couple of significant exceptions, we usually wind up rejecting incumbent presidential candidates because of their behaviors and/or failures.
In so doing, we also confirm our historical and traditional distrust of overly powerful national and central government — which has proven to be a general trend over the longer term.
Daniel Gallington represented the Secretary of Defense in multilateral and bilateral arms control negotiations, served as Deputy Counsel for Intelligence Policy at the Department of Justice, bipartisan General Counsel for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Territorial Security.
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