The Former Guy Has Become the New Old Guy
Last year, I wrote about a TikTok trend in which women asked men how often they thought about the Roman Empire. Since learning of this phenomenon, I’ve been surprised by how often I find myself referencing the fallen empire. The most recent example occurred when President Joe Biden announced that he would step away from his presidential campaign.
A Legacy in split-screen
History tells us that when the Aequians threatened an invasion of Ancient Rome, the country’s Senate granted unlimited dictatorial powers to Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a retired general. Once the attack was quelled, rather than hold on to power, Cincinnatus did something no one anticipated: he relinquished his control of the government.
Similarly, when General George Washington returned to civilian life after the Revolutionary War, rather than using the military to seize power, observers likened his actions to the example set by Cincinnatus:
The parallels with General George Washington [and Cincinnatus] were not lost on his contemporaries. Called up from his retirement at Mount Vernon to lead the Continental Army, Washington dramatically resigned his commission and returned to his farm once the war had been won. In emulating Cincinnatus, Washington allayed real fears that he might use his position as a successful general to retain power as a military dictator. In the process, Washington illustrated that he placed public service above personal gain.
To be fair, Biden’s decision to step aside results from circumstances separate from those of Washington or Cincinnatus. That said, his selflessness cuts against everything we have come to expect from those who hold immense power, especially given the events of the past decade.
Biden’s decision falls in stark contrast to the behavior of his former opponent, who sought to stay in office by any means necessary. To this day, Donald Trump insists he won the 2020 election and refuses to commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election should he lose.
Biden’s recent multi-nation prisoner swap with Russia—a masterpiece of statecraft and diplomacy—was juxtaposed with the revelation that, in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, Trump may have received an illegal contribution of $10 million in cash from the Egyptian government, providing yet another example of his repeated proximity to criminality.
From this perspective, history will almost certainly place Biden’s choice to put the country’s interests above his ambition alongside those of Washington and Cincinnatus.
Script flipped
After the Republican Party's New Hampshire primary last January, former ambassador Nikki Haley made the following prediction:
“Most Americans do not want a rematch between Biden and Trump. The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the one who wins this election.”
True to form, Haley has since morphed into an ardent Trump supporter. The endorsement cost Haley her last bit of integrity, still, her prophecy was prescient.
The Trump campaign’s entire argument was that Biden’s advanced age and perceived mental ineptitude made him unfit for a second term as president. Strange as it may seem, this strategy took the focus away from Trump, who at 78, would also be one of the oldest candidates ever elected. Until a few weeks ago, this was working.
As The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta recently noted, even before Biden’s debate collapse, members of the campaign believed Trump would win in a landslide. But the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is almost twenty years his junior, has put Trump‘s fitness and mental capacity under the microscope.
Throughout his presidency, Trump had difficulty pronouncing simple words. He frequently mixed up the names of White House visitors, famously referring to Apple CEO Tim Cook as “Tim Apple.” During the Republican primary, Trump spoke of offering federal troops to Nikki Haley on January 6th, rather than Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House during the January 6th insurrection. (As is often the case with much of what Trump says, there is no evidence this incident occurred.) On at least eight occasions, Trump has mentioned running against Barack Obama, even though Obama left office before he entered politics.
Mixing his Browns and Blacks
The most glaring example of Trump’s inability to develop to blunt Harris’s momentum occurred during last week’s rambling press event at Mar-a-Lago. In addition to his usual torrent of lies and misstatements, Trump described a near-fatal helicopter ride he experienced with the former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown. Brown, who is Black, briefly dated Harris decades ago.
The objective of the implausible tale was to besmirch Harris’s reputation, but almost immediately, the attempt backfired. According to POLITICO, Trump appears to have conflated two different helicopter trips, one with California governor Jerry Brown, who is white, and a trip that occurred in the 1990s with then-Los Angeles city councilman Nate Holden, who happens to be Black:
The man who almost crashed in a helicopter with Donald Trump told POLITICO Trump confused him with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown — despite the former president’s repeated insistence it was Brown.
It was Nate Holden, a former city councilmember and state senator from Los Angeles, who said in an exclusive interview late Friday that he remembers the near-death experience well. He and others believe it happened sometime in 1990.
“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden said. “I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.”
“I guess we all look alike,” Holden told POLITICO, letting out a loud laugh.
Given his years spent questioning Biden’s mental stability, Trump’s confusion over two events occurring decades apart is certainly a bad look. But to put a finer point on it, the story’s collapse also means the disparaging remarks toward Harris he attributed to Willie Brown were a total fabrication.
“What's past is prologue.”
The helicopter story is of a piece with the Trump campaign’s dilemma: for all its experienced operatives, it is stuck with a candidate who refuses to change. As the polls swing in Harris’s direction, Trump’s fallback strategy is one of grievance and thinly veiled racism, as evidenced earlier this month during a fundraiser at the Bridgehampton, New York home of Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street investment bank, according to The New York Times:
Some guests hoped Mr. Trump would signal that he was recalibrating after a series of damaging mistakes. He did not.
Before the dinner, answering a question that voiced concerns about the upcoming election during a small round-table discussion inside Mr. Lutnick’s house, Mr. Trump said, “We’ve got to stop the steal,” reviving yet again his false claims about the 2020 election — claims that his advisers have urged him to drop because they don’t help him with swing voters.
According to two people present, Mr. Trump himself also brought up his remark, made two days earlier at a gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists, in which he had questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’s racial identity.
It had been a display of flagrant race-baiting that was egregious even by Mr. Trump’s standards, and it instantly reprogrammed America’s TV news chyrons: He falsely claimed that Ms. Harris had only recently decided to identify as Black for political purposes.
But Mr. Trump showed no regret. “I think I was right,” he told the rattled donors that Friday night.
(Full disclosure, I managed equity trading for an affiliate of Cantor Fitzgerald for several years.)
While nicknames and insults worked a decade ago, recycled rhetoric falls flat alongside the Harris-Walz campaign’s forward-looking message. Trump’s stream-of-consciousness screeds, once manna for content-hungry cable news networks, now play like reruns from a show no one is interested in watching.
Ironically, Donald Trump has fallen headfirst into the trap he spent years setting for Joe Biden. Making matters worse, he has responded to the challenge with racism and misogyny, even referring to Harris as a “bitch” privately.
The more we see of Donald Trump, the more he seems like a has-been, an aged performer who hopes the routine that once mesmerized his audiences will do so one last time.
Fortunately for Kamala Harris, and most of the country, this time almost no one cares.
Thank you, Mr Weems. This February, I visited the Maryland state house for the first time and stood in “the room where it happened,” commemorating Washington resigning his commission. I had forgotten that bit of history but have been thinking about it a lot, and agree that Joe Biden’s decision deserves equivalent respect, honor and gratitude. You’re one of only 2-3 that I’ve seen making this connection. I appreciate you :)