In March 2017, just two months after Donald Trump entered the Oval Office, author John Michael Chambers published his book “Trump and the Resurrection of America: Leading America’s Second Revolution.” According to Chambers’ book, however, the globalists trembled as Trump and this movement threatened their totalitarian world government. American resurrection, eh? Extreme optimism, one could say.
Forget about concerns like climate and nuclear war threats; it is commonly believed that Trump’s four years at the helm of America not only helped to bring about a post-truth era more vividly, but that his administration also, maybe, made the United States more divided. However, one thing is certain: even after his exit, Trump was never written off, and he has undoubtedly been revived recently, as a rematch with Joe Biden will occur in the November 5 presidential elections. Eight months is a long enough period in politics, but as of now, most of the credible polls conducted since January indicate that either Trump is leading the contest or it’s too close a race.
Recently, a New York Times poll garnered a great deal of media attention; it showed Trump leading by five points, 48-43 per cent, as of the beginning of March. With a 38 per cent approval rating, Biden’s unpopularity has reached new heights. Many voters are tilting towards Trump, particularly among the demographics that Biden led in 2020. They include women and black voters. Maybe primarily for this reason, Biden currently appears to be losing in the key swing states. As it is well known, a few such swing states essentially determine the outcome of US presidential elections.
According to a recent article by Osita Nwanevu in The Guardian, Biden and the Democrats are sleepwalking towards a Trump victory. Maybe. Maybe not. But if Trump is elected to a second term, will it be the biggest political resurrection in history? It’s not so simple to assess. There have been incredible political resurrections of Lenin, Churchill, and Charles De Gaulle, in addition to the spectacular political comebacks of Deng Xiaoping, Napoleon Bonaparte, Silvio Berlusconi, or Robert the Bruce at various moments in history.
Lenin’s may be the greatest comeback of all; having been exiled to Siberia for sedition, spending ten years in Western Europe observing Russian politics from a distance, winning a civil war, having the entire royal family shot, and founding one of the two superpowers that defined the 20th century and fundamentally altered the course of history. Before World War II, Churchill’s disagreements with his Conservative party prevented him from holding office for ten years. However, in 1939, when Adolf Hitler invaded Poland, embattled Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain brought his opponent into the Cabinet.
Churchill soon succeeded Chamberlain as prime minister and went on to become one of the most recognisable figures in British history, spearheading the counteroffensive against Hitler’s Nazis. After commanding the French government in exile during World War II, Charles De Gaulle returned to lead the provisional government after liberation in 1945; therefore, his first time in office already marked a comeback. After stepping down in January 1946, De Gaulle was out of office for the next twelve years. After a failed military coup in French Algeria in 1958, he was called back to power.
And he established the Fifth Republic, became the first French president to be elected by direct universal suffrage the following year, and held the office of president of France until 1969. Furthermore, an American president who held office for two non-consecutive terms existed more than a century ago. He was Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, but, like Trump, a native of New York as well. Cleveland first won the presidential race in 1884 and lost to Benjamin Harrison in 1888. Frances Cleveland, his wife, instructed the staff to remember their preferences and take care of everything as they were leaving the White House, saying, “We are coming back four years from today.” Indeed, they were. Cleveland defeated Harrison in a rematch four years later, in 1892.
I’m not sure whether anyone in the Trump family mentioned anything to any White House employees in January 2021. However, in his last hours as president, Trump said to his followers, “So just a goodbye. We love you. We will be back in some form,” perhaps in the vein of the Frank Sinatra classic “My Way.” However, Trump, who was twice impeached, faces significant obstacles in his quest for president. Right now, there are numerous court proceedings brought against him. Fraud, defamation, Sexual Assault, Hush money, Election subversion, the Mar-a-Lago documents… Trump is accused of 91 felonies in all, which are being heard by two state courts and two different federal districts.
Any of the charges might result in his serving a jail term. Many observers thought that Nikky Haley’s prolonged pursuit of a Republican nomination was due to her waiting for a certain resolution in any of the ongoing judicial proceedings. Cases concerning whether Trump ought to be removed from the ballot in 2024 due to a novel legal argument involving the Fourteenth Amendment have been filed in more than thirty states. While the trial concerning his attempted coup in 2020 has now been postponed by the Supreme Court, the timelines of the other cases are still uncertain. It was almost unimaginable not too long ago that a former president or a presidential nominee of a major party would seriously be in legal peril. But “Today, merely keeping track of the many cases against Donald Trump requires a law degree, a great deal of attention, or both,” as per David A. Graham’s recent opinion in The Atlantic.
However, as several credible polls indicate, Biden faces an uphill task to defeat Trump. Though US policy could have remained the same had a Republican president taken office, Biden’s standing on the Israel-Hamas conflict may have hurt his support base, especially with some devoted Democratic voters. And, over immigration, which remains a top concern for numerous people, Biden has effectively acknowledged that Trump is correct over the state of the border. American voters are also very much concerned about Biden’s age, especially in light of his public displays of awkward memory lapses, such as forgetting the name of Hamas, mixing the president of Egypt for the president of Mexico, and French president Emmanuel Macron for the late president François Mitterrand.
It’s possible that Republican special counsel Robert Hur, who was investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents, carried out a “political hit job.” Hur’s report made special mention of Joe Biden’s “significantly limited” memory, alleging that the 81-year-old had trouble recalling, among other things, the years he was vice president and the exact day his son Beau had died. But Trump is also not a young man – he is merely three years younger than Biden. And there are plenty of examples of Trump’s awkward memory lapses, even as the American president. Nonetheless, public opinion counts during an election.
And American voters appear to be more concerned about Biden’s age and memory than they are about Trump. Overall, the results of the elections in November are still up in the air. Yes, it might be one of the biggest political resurrections in history if Trump wins. But given his disgraceful exit in 2021, even Trump’s candidature against Biden four years later represents a significant political comeback in contemporary history.
(The writer is Professor of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.)