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For a National Unity Ticket in 2020
It should be clear to most people after the fiasco in Helsinki earlier this week, that Donald Trump shouldn’t be President. I don’t know how you can look at that press conference and say, “Yes, that man should be President. America made a good choice.” At the same time, no one reading this wants to turn the government over to the Democratic Party, which is currently at war with itself over whether it wants to be moderately progressive or fully embrace democratic socialism.
We’re approaching a point where the divisiveness of our politics could cause serious long-term damage, or worse still, take a violent turn. Political violence is an aberration in our system, but if the situation continues to deteriorate, it could come to blood.
With an unfit Republican president on the one hand and a scary Democratic Party on the other hand, where does that leave us for 2020? There is a clear need for national healing, how do we bring it about?
I’d like to suggest an option: a bipartisan unity ticket in 2020.
The idea is that the Democrats would nominate an elder statesman. Someone who is not a fire-breathing socialist, with extensive experience in government, who is at the end of their political career. In my mind, I picture Joe Biden for the role. He would then, in turn, pick an anti-Trump Republican, someone like Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse, or John Kasich. (Mitt Romney or James Mattis, being elder statesmen types, might also work.) The ticket would then pledge to only serve one term and not seek reelection.
To continue the idea, the cabinet and other appointments would be roughly split 50/50 (this isn’t outlandish, cabinets are often bipartisan), judicial nominations would focus on consensus choices, or the President and VP would take turns picking, and Supreme Court picks would be of people over 60. The idea, overall, would be to focus on consensus building in governing, with the end of national healing. Or, in the words of President Harding, “a return to normalcy.”
Before you condemn this plan as a fantasy, I hasten to note there has been a unity ticket before in American history. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln ran with Andrew Johnson, a Democrat. Those were extraordinary circumstances to be sure, but there is precedent.
Are there problems with this plan? Difficulties? Objections? Practical points that would need to be worked out? Sure. The biggest obstacle would be the need for an elder statesman to step forward and be willing to prioritize healing the nation over their own personal ambition. In fact, it would require a whole cadre of people willing to prioritize national healing over temporary political experience. But it could be done if someone chose to step forward and be a leader.
Published in General
No.
The proposal you have would be far better than Trump and far better than the crazy leftists in the Democratic Party. I fear that it will not work. But under the circumstances…
Nyet ;)
What fiasco happened in Helsinki? Did Trump negotiate away 20 percent of our uranium supply? Or did he say mean things about the “slam-dunk” accuracy of our intelligence community?
Why would the Democrats, a party that, in your words, “is currently at war with itself over whether it wants to be moderately progressive or fully embrace democratic socialism,” do that? Seems to me they will nominate the furthest-left person they think can beat Trump.
Actually, watching Trump at the Press conference I would say that he diplomatically handled the provocative question, given that Putin was standing next to him while the reporter accused Russia of election meddling. He may not have handled the question adroitly, but it’s a far cry from the faux pas where Obama accidentally let the world know that the policy he was outlining for NATO missile defense (the policy he was telling the American people) was not the policy he intended to implement after he got re-elected. If Obama could survive that inadvertent admission, then Trump has nothing to worry about for his on-the-record remarks.
Supposedly, Trump disrespected our intelligence services in front of the Russian President. Perhaps. But he should get credit for his clumsy diplomatic answer – not vilified for it (and if his name were Barack, he would). Perhaps the Press would have preferred bellicosity, but they would have turned bellicose remarks against him as well.
If the intelligence services are so smart and cocksure, then why did they not examine the DNC servers immediately. That way, they would have legitimate forensic evidence to back up their claim of Russian meddling. But they never did that. The DNC would not (or did not) let them. They declined to let the FBI or any other agency examine their server. So all the indictments that Mueller fruitlessly announced on the eve of the Trump/Putin summit are based on hearsay and cannot be independently verified.
The intelligence services already played the “Trust Us” card when they started the whole fiasco of investigating Trump collusion with Russia. We have since learned that the bulk of the evidence justifying that counter-intelligence investigation is either completely uncorroborated or tissue-thin. They have refused to publicly explain the genesis of that probe despite months and months of Congressional inquiry.
Hence, there is no reason to trust that they have secret evidence against the Russians. They must show it. It proves nothing to indict people who will likely never see the inside of a US courtroom given the near certainty that the evidence against them to will never come to light.
The intelligence services undermined their own argument against the Russians by not obtaining firsthand evidence and Trump is right to point that out. Actually, Trump has stated correctly that (a) Putin denied involvement – acknowledging this is not the same as agreeing with it and (b) The FBI did not forensically examine the DNC server.
Also, there is credible testimony and evidence of a connection between the Clinton Foundation and Russians – more than between Trump and the Russians. Trump is correct to point this out: Perhaps the wrong people are being investigated for colluding with Russia.
And given the way the intelligence agencies treated Trump before and after the election and even after he became President, who could blame Trump for knocking them down a peg.
That sounds like a terrible idea. There is little unity even between Anti-Trump Republicans and Moderate Democrats. Joe Biden isn’t centrist – he’s pretty damn leftist. Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse have little in common with even the mildest Democrat today – they are pretty staunchly conservative on any issue, they simply refuse to kowtow to one man.
Joe Biden is an elder statesman to step forward and be willing to prioritize healing the nation? I guess you never watched the Clarence Thomas hearing.
Sorry, at first I did not understand that you meant this post to be sarcastic, but the idea of Biden as a non-partisan statesman is laughable. So you must have been kidding.
Correct. The center right has more in common with the extreme right than the center left and visa versa. No one is incentivized to take up the plan Fred is floating, even if he had named a better list of moderate candidates.
Biden as elder stateman: They’re going to put y’all back in chains.
And how did that work out for Mr. Lincoln’s second term? If your fear is that we’re nearing bloodshed, proposing a solution that gives one nutjob with good aim the capability to flip the White House in an instant is not the way to do it.
This is fantasyland thinking. Gee, if we could just go back to the pre-Trump status quo then everything would be OK. Except, of course, addressing that part of the political situation that gave rise to Trump in the first place. If you hadn’t noticed people had plenty of opportunity to pick the status quo and they didn’t want it.
The basic idea isn’t bad, Fred. But Joe Biden? I thought you were against Big Government??!
As bad as Donald Trump is, I think these sorts of remedies will create their own, unforeseen, problems. I am afraid the best course of action may be to wait Trump out. Other “solutions” are just too fraught with questions we can’t answer, in my judgement.
While I think this is a terrible idea, it’s at least fodder for an interesting discussion.
As wildly speculative fantasizing goes, it has some merit. But it fails the basic “is this even remotely possible?” test. (I don’t think it’s desirable, either, but that’s a moot point.) Among other things, it would be seen — correctly — as a betrayal by millions of Trump supporters.
The counter-argument is that Trump is doing a pretty good job, and we should support him for one more term and get as much done as possible. That’s the argument I’ll make, unless he does something in the next two years to change my mind.
No way Jose. Surely you jest.
Any attempt to dump Trump by Republicans is just red meat to Democrats who are more radical than ever. There is no such thing as a unity candidate with these Democrats. Why is that not obvious? We’ve been fighting off efforts and probes to over throw elected Republicans since the Nixon coup. Why are you not calling for a unity candidate in the Democrat party, they’ve become neo marxists and neo fascists, and more progressive than during the progressive era and are destroying our two party system. Trump isn’t destroying the Republican party. Those with comfortable perches are fighting him, but he’s winning. I say neo marxists and fascists because most Democrats don’t even know where their ideas and tactics came from. This is a Peace in our Time gesture and will have the same effect on the Democrats.
You don’t like Trump because he’s crude, inarticulate and un pc, but he’s been doing very good stuff. Would a “unity” candidate pick the right judges at all levels? No, he’d pick unity judges. Everything else is gravy. I can’t think of a worse idea, one less grounded in political or historical understanding. You are being stampeded by Democrat hysteria because you lean that way in the first place, but it’s still a panic induced stampede. It wasn’t lightening that startled the herd, it was rustlers.
The Nixon coup?
I was an adult then. It was not a coup, but a politician being held to account.
Agree.
Having watched Trumps comments on the EU and Russia over the last week, something unthinkable has occurred. I find myself drawn inexorably to accept @fredcole ‘s premise, if not his remedy.
I expect that the Democrats will enter the 2020 campaign season assured that whatever harebrained Stalinist corruptocrat they put forward will easily prevail against his orangeness. Immune to the observation that they are repeating history.
And there is much good that Trump has accomplished that would not have been accomplished by any other candidate, regulatory reform and judicial nominations come immediately to mind. And he is absolutely right that Germany and several other EU states have made themselves captive to Russia while failing in their duties under the NATO alliance. American attempts to create a market in Europe for liquefied natural gas to improve European energy security appear to be moving slowly, though I found a European Commission white paper that at least shows recognition of the issue.
But French kissing Putin is repellent, as is declaring allies enemies. There is a world of difference between a lukewarm alliance and a belligerent enemy.
My first choice would be that Trump actually learns from his mistakes. He needs to realize that just because his hostile intelligence and diplomatic apparatus offers a position does not make that position wrong or bad in itself. The politicization of the apparatus has rendered Washington blind, deaf, and stupid. Even more so than usual. Trump cannot fix that by himself, and appears just as dedicated to establishing an echo chamber of whatever uniformed nonsense might stumble from his lips in any event. His predecessor was no different.
His detractors aside, President Trump has shown the capacity to learn and delegate in fits and spurts. His trust issues with regard to the Deep State are more than justified, but without prior experience as a statesman missteps are inevitable.
He must evolve to win in 2020, and his fetish for tyrants must be curtailed.
Fred,
Why yes, Lincoln chose Andrew Johnson as his running mate. First, who knows what diabolical thoughts that this may have produced in John Wilkes Booth so the choice may have cost Lincoln his life. Meanwhile, “National Unity” was already being carried out by William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman had already conquered and burnt Atlanta slicing the South in two. Next, he would start his March to the Sea and gut the South like a fish. When Tecumseh reached about 75 miles south of Richmond, Robert E. Lee surrendered and thus “National Unity” was achieved.
“No Fantasy Tecumseh”, I think he was called.
Regards,
Jim
PS – I’m already in favor of the next war.
I’ve seen a couple attempts at Unity tickets in recent years, and they aren’t terribly popular. The last one needed ten thousand nominations by their convention deadline, and they fell short, with Ron Paul coming closest.
I’m all for finding solutions for preventing a looming war in America. A large part of the problem is people trying to solve all their problems by seizing the executive branch, so wistfully saying that all our problems would be fixed if the right unity ticket seized the executive is counter-productive.
All the Democrats have to do to win elections is not be insane. Yet every day we see more evidence they just can’t #Resist.
Maybe 10 years ago there was an elder Democrat statesman who might fit the bill. But not anymore. The party is having a slobbery love affair with socialists like Kamela Harris and Castro’s god-daughter in New York.
This all stems from a flawed premise – that the divisiveness in American politics is a result of our “leadership” (for lack of a better term).
But it’s not – the divisiveness in American politics is because you have a very closely divided population with two very different views of how the country should look in the next 20 years or so.
Until one side or another becomes dominant, the divide will continue.
The problem for me is that I just don’t trust the other side.
Also, why does Creepy Joe get the Big Seat? Why wouldn’t it be an elder statesman from our side?
I think any attempt to pitch Trump out will end in disaster.
We tried a centrist ticket in 2012 – it didn’t win.
You’re talking about the Presidency. So, *hahahhahahahahaha!!!!!!*
Credibility as a political thinker damaged beyond repair on this one.
It was a coup. Seen as a coup and demonstrated just how easily the media and democrat mob could send Republicans into a panic. That Nixon handled it as badly as anyone could have imagined is not the point. I think both Kennedy and Johnson did things far worse but didn’t go into a panic because the media liked Kennedy and Johnson could just decide not to run again. Use a different word if you choose, they got him to resign and they’ve been smelling blood ever since, which is my point. I shouldn’t use such a charged word even if I think it’s relatively accurate.
Baloney. Trump knows what he’s doing, and people on both sides can’t think that maybe he’s doing the right thing.
Your “bipartisan unity ticket” is a horrific idea. Modern Democrats are not about unity, and they sure as hell are not about making this country great. They would destroy all the greatness the U.S. still possesses, and put the thorny yoke of socialism around our necks so fast, you’d wonder, “Why am I bleeding?” Your idea would “Make Democrats Great Again”. Sorry, I can’t agree to your proposal . . .
No. The modern Democrat party is still the party of slavery, and it needs to be destroyed once and for all. It should be replaced by a RINO party of left-leaning Republicans who think government is still the answer. At least they love America . . .
Maybe you’ll vote for Lindsey Graham as our President, but I won’t . . .