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Charles Kesler: Our political stalemate


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charles-kesler-our-political-stalemate.php

Scott Johnson

Dec. 10 2019

Charles Kesler is the Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government at Claremont-McKenna College and editor of the Claremont Review of Books. We hope to preview the forthcoming issue of the magazine over the rest of this week. This column appears as the Editor’s Note in the issue and is reprinted with permission. Professor Kesler writes:

Despite his reputation as a disrupter, Donald Trump has not been able to break the political stalemate afflicting America for half a century.

Since 1968, neither major political party has been able to command an enduring electoral majority. Such stasis is unusual in American politics, if one can call unusual something that has been happening for 50 years. Still, the older pattern, now almost forgotten though still longed for by strategists of each party, was quite different. To draw the most striking contrast, in the 72 years between Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 and Herbert Hoover’s crushing loss in 1932, the Republican Party controlled the presidency for all but 16 years. Only Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson interrupted the GOP’s electoral serenity.

In turn, the Democrats began their own reign, holding the presidency from 1932 to 1968, with the exception of Dwight Eisenhower’s two terms in the 1950s. That’s eight years of a Republican chief executive to 28 for the Democrats. But Ike had been courted by the Democrats before he agreed to run on the GOP ticket, and his agenda of “Modern Republicanism” stressed its continuity with New Deal foreign and domestic policy. So the era seemed even more un- relievedly Democratic than the presidential numbers would suggest.

(Snip)

Even in facing impeachment, he confirms another disturbing trend of modern politics. In the first 185 or so years of the republic (until 1974), Americans impeached one president. In the past 45 years (since 1974), we have impeached or come close to impeaching three (Nixon, Clinton, Trump).

Despite what his detractors and even some of his admirers say, Donald Trump is a normal president for our times. And so far, at least, the times are not a-changin’.

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