Tag: second term
James Fallows: Jimmy Carter Was a Lucky Man
Life is unfair, as a Democratic president once put it. That was John F. Kennedy, at a press conference early in his term.
Jimmy Carter did not go through as extreme a range of the blessings and cruelties of fate as did Kennedy and his family. But I think Carter’s long years in the public eye highlighted a theme of most lives, public and private: the tension between what we plan and what happens. Between the luck that people can
19 Readers on Donald Trump’s Legal Future
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week, I asked readers about Donald Trump’s legal problems, noting that some observers worry about prosecuting a former president while others insist that no one is above the law in America. Both perspectives resonate with me, but most of
20 Reader Ideas for Who Could Replace Biden
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week I asked, “Should Joe Biden run for reelection? If not, who would you choose to replace him on the Democratic ticket?” If Up for Debate correspondents were representative of the American electorate, Biden would be in trouble––the overwhelming
Gavin Newsom’s Case for a More Aggressive Democratic Party
On May 4, two days after Politico rocked Washington by revealing the draft of a Supreme Court decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, California Governor Gavin Newsom delivered remarks at a Los Angeles Planned Parenthood office—and triggered a small earthquake of his own.
Newsom pledged that, however the Court ruled, California would ensure legal access to abortion. But it was something else he said that really stood out: Republican-controlled states are moving not only to restrict or
Biden Can Still Turn His Presidency Around
Ronald Reagan did it. So did Bill Clinton. Barack Obama did as well.
Can Joe Biden do it too?
After a difficult first two years in the White House, Reagan, Clinton, and Obama each rebuilt enough public support to win a second term—not long after many observers had labeled them fatally damaged by their early setbacks.
Although the specific environment and challenges confronting those three presidents diverged in many ways, the trajectory of each man’s first term followed the same