As former President Donald Trump attempts to reclaim the White House after four years out of office, comparisons to Grover Cleveland abound. In fact, it might not be necessary to look that far back.
The political situation in 1967 maps fairly closely onto 2023. Like Lyndon Baines Johnson, President Joe Biden is underwater on job approval and distrusted by his own party’s progressives. Both LBJ and JRB were expected to run again, but just in case they didn’t, younger Democrats were laying the groundwork for a presidential bid — Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy in Johnson’s case, Gavin Newsom in Biden’s. (Ironically, Biden now faces a primary challenge from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.).
The two incumbents were also alike in their commitment of U.S. resources to an increasingly unpopular foreign war that had its roots in shady American intelligence operations. Of course, Ukraine, which is fairly cheap all things considered, is unlikely to prove the same sort of albatross to Biden that Vietnam, which claimed the lives of over 11,000 American troops in 1967, did to Johnson.
On the Republican side, the main story was the emerging rivalry between an up-and-coming conservative governor and a former officeholder who some pundits feared was past his prime. Richard Nixon started his career on a winning streak, with two terms in the House, a successful run for U.S. Senate and a spot on Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidential ticket. (RELATED: PIPES: How Richard Nixon Changed The Post-Presidency)
Former President Donald Trump had an even swifter and more dramatic rise, winning the presidency in 2016 with no prior political experience and against the predictions of nearly every pollster.
Then their luck seemed to run out.
The Biden administration has announced an additional $325 million worth of military aid for Ukraine, the 36th such Presidential Drawdown since the war began @DailyCaller https://t.co/DZWASv3jdy
— Dylan Housman (@Dylan_Housman) April 19, 2023
With the president in poor health, the burden of midterm campaigning fell on Nixon, and he made a hash of it. In 1954, Republicans lost the Senate and the House (and wouldn’t win them back until 1980 and 1994, respectively). In 1956, Democrats picked up two House seats and two governor’s mansions, despite Eisenhower’s resounding victory in the presidential race. Then, in 1958, the biggest disaster yet. Republicans lost 13 Senate seats and 48 House seats, partly due to Nixon’s misguided decision to campaign on unpopular anti-union right-to-work laws.
And things just kept getting worse. In 1960, he lost the presidency by a razor-thin margin in a race that was quite possibly stolen. The Kennedys played dirty. So, for that matter, did Johnson, whose 1948 Senate win in Texas was just plain stolen, no “quite possibly” necessary.
Then, the ultimate humiliation. In 1962, Nixon lost a race for governor of California and made a highly undignified exit from the political stage. “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference,” he told the assembled reporters in his concession speech.
Trump, for his part, lost the House in the 2018 midterms. In 2020, he lost the presidency. Unlike Nixon, though, Trump wasn’t content with making a passive-aggressive dig at the media. “Aggressive-aggressive” was more Trump’s style, and he promptly tanked his approval rating by listening to quacks like Sidney Powell and stoking the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot. Then, in 2021, his stolen election claims cost Republicans the Senate too.
And yet, despite these setbacks, both re-emerged as the Republican frontrunners for the presidential nomination. But both had a rival to contend with. For Nixon, it was California Gov. Ronald Reagan. For Trump, it’s Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. (RELATED: Over 350 Goats Protect Reagan Library From Fires)
Of course, the parallels aren’t perfect. Reagan, like DeSantis, came out of the midterms looking like the party’s glistening future, winning the governorship in a landslide by jamming his thumb onto the raw nerve of the day’s most sensitive culture war issues, like riots and woke universities. Both could claim to have succeeded where their more experienced rival had failed. Reagan defeated Gov. Pat Brown, who had beaten Nixon in 1962, while DeSantis could take credit for flipping the House of Representatives after Republicans — especially Trump-backed Republicans — underperformed in most other states.
But unlike Trump in 2022, Nixon came out of the 1966 midterms in a fairly strong position. Trump waded into several competitive GOP primaries, only to see his hand-picked candidates — Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker, Don Bolduc, Blake Masters, Kari Lake — crushed in one winnable race after another.
Nixon played things smarter. He did most of his campaigning in red congressional districts that had temporarily flipped blue on Johnson’s coattails when he trounced Barry Goldwater in 1964. That way, Nixon could credibly claim a high win percentage when he campaigned for president in ’68. He also didn’t insist on ideological purity. Nixon was a party man and campaigned loyally for Republicans who ran the gamut from liberal civil rights champions to right-wing firebrands. (RELATED: Trump Reacts To Midterm Results)
So far, Trump has devoted more energy to attacking DeSantis than he has to any other GOP challenger or even to Biden himself. Nixon likewise understood that Reagan was the greatest threat to his presidential ambitions, but again, he was more subtle. Even before Reagan won his governor’s race, Nixon was encouraging his allies to encourage the movie-star-turned-politician to commit to serving a full term as governor. Later, he had his cronies encourage as many Republicans as possible to jump into the race in order to dilute support for Reagan or any other serious challenger.
Not much home state loyalty here https://t.co/yIxIH8kYHk
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 19, 2023
It’s possible Trump’s up to something similar. As rumors swirled that former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley planned to announce a presidential bid, Trump told reporters he’d urged his former UN ambassador to “go by your heart if you want to run.” Later, Trump posted on Truth Social that she “should definitely run.” A Trump operative even admitted that the former president’s team was “praying” for Haley to join the race and siphon off support for DeSantis.
Ultimately, Nixon’s strategy worked. Despite Reagan’s victory in the California primary, Nixon was able to cobble together enough delegates for a first-ballot victory at the convention. He then prevailed in three-way general election race and went on to win a second term by a massive margin, taking 520 of 537 electoral votes and more than 60 percent of the popular vote. (That term was, of course, cut short by a Deep State coup, though that’s another story).
But Reagan’s career wasn’t over either. After again failing to secure the nomination in 1976, he went on to topple incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980 and then won his own 49-state landslide in 1984. DeSantis will have a hard time denying Trump the nomination in 2024, but even if he falls short, he could still end up in the Oval Office someday.
(For this column, I relied heavily on historian Rick Pearlstein’s 2008 book “Nixonland”)
Grayson Quay is an editor at the Daily Caller.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.