Subterms
Now we’ll look forward to the new year, and inspiration from people like Republican Kevin McCarthy, the very-probably-soon-to-be House speaker.You may remember that after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters, McCarthy told his colleagues, “We cannot just sweep this under the rug.” Then when a special House committee was convened to investigate it, McCarthy … More
The candidate, Abe Hamadeh, alleged that local and state officials had mismanaged the Nov. 8 election.Abe Hamadeh, the Arizona Republican locked in a tight race to become the state’s next attorney general, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday contesting the preliminary results of an election that had already been headed to an automatic recount.The state’s final tally from the Nov. 8 election, which was set to be certified by counties by next week, has Mr. Hamadeh just 510 votes behind the Democratic candidate, Kris Mayes — 1,254,102 for Mr. Hamadeh and 1,254,612 for Ms. Mayes. That difference was within the margin needed to force an automatic recount under state law.Mr. Hamadeh’s lawsuit, filed in State Superior Court in Maricopa County, names as defendants Arizona’s secretary of state — Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who won the governor’s race — as well as the county recorders and boards of supervisors in the state’s 15 counties. The Republican National Committee joined Mr. Hamadeh in the suit as a plaintiff.Mr. Hamadeh and the R.N.C., in their complaint, ask the court to issue an injunction prohibiting the secretary of state from certifying Ms. Mayes as the winner and an order declaring Mr. Hamadeh the winner. The suit argues that equipment failures and errors in the management of polling places and in ballot tabulation led to an incorrect final vote count. It says there was no “fraud, manipulation or other intentional wrongdoing,” but it claims there were mistakes that affected the final tally, given the contest’s narrow margin.The suit asks the court to allow additional votes to be counted, including 146 provisional ballots and 273 mail-in ballots that were segregated because the election system showed they came from voters who had already cast in-person ballots. It does not seek a rerun of the election, though it does claim that Mr. Hamadeh should be declared the winner. By state law, Arizona’s secretary of state is required to certify the results of the election by Dec. 5.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More
The 2022 midterm election revealed dangerous cracks in the Democratic coalition, despite the fact that the party held the Senate and kept House losses to a minimum.Turnout fell in a number of key Democratic cities. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the city’s “vote count dropped 33 percent from 2020, more than any other county and the statewide average of 22 percent. It’s not just a 2020 comparison: This year saw a stark divergence between Philly turnout and the rest of the state compared to every federal election since at least 2000.”The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners reported that turnout of registered voters in 2022 was 46.1 percent, down from 60.67 percent in the previous 2018 midterm.According to the Board of Elections in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, turnout fell from 54.5 percent in 2018 to 46.1 percent in 2022.The Gotham Gazette reported that from 2018 to 2022, turnout fell from 41 to 33 percent in New York City.The drop in turnout was disturbing to Democratic strategists, but so too was the change in sentiment of many of the voters who did show up, as support for the party’s nominees continued to erode among Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters. As The Washington Post reported:While more than 8 in 10 Black voters supported Democrats for Congress, their level of support fell between four and seven percentage points during the 2022 midterms compared with 2018, according to network exit polling and the AP VoteCast poll, respectively. Among Latinos, support for Democrats declined between nine and 10 percentage points, with between 56 percent and 60 percent backing Democrats.In the 2018 midterms, 77 percent of Asians voted for House Democratic candidates, according to network exit polls, compared with 58 percent this year — although data from AP VoteCast showed a smaller decline in Asian American support for Democrats from 2018 to 2022: 71 percent to 64 percent.Perhaps most important, the 2022 results revealed that voters did not fully turn against the Republican Party; in fact, Republican House candidates got 3.5 million more votes nationwide than Democrats did, 53.9 million, or 51.7 percent of the two-party vote to the Democrats’ 50.4 million, or 48.3 percent. This represents just over a six-point swing in favor of Republicans this year compared with the 2020 House results.Instead, voters, in the main, turned against the specific candidates endorsed by Donald Trump — candidates who in competitive races backed Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen.“Candidate quality and the toxicity of former President Trump and the MAGA movement hurt certain Republicans where it mattered most,” wrote Charlie Cook, founder of the Cook Political Report, in “GOP Won the Votes, but Not the Seats,” a Nov. 17 analysis. “Some of these ‘nontraditional’ candidates managed to win over the support of G.O.P. primary voters but were unable to appeal to that narrow slice of voters in the middle of the broader November electorate.”Two days after the election, Karl Rove, who was the chief political strategist during the administration of George W. Bush, wrote in The Wall Street Journal:The losers Tuesday were often the candidates who closely followed the former president’s rally-speech scripts — campaigning on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump by fraud on a massive scale. Of the Republican candidates for secretary of state or attorney general who based their campaign on this falsehood, only one has pulled through, and he was in deep red territory.What then are the odds that Republican voters will still nominate Trump?If they do, Democrats’ chances of keeping the presidency, retaking the House and holding losses in the Senate to a minimum all improve. If the Republicans nominate Ron DeSantis, Glenn Youngkin, Nikki Haley or a dark horse, chances are Democrats will face a tough fight on all fronts in 2024.While there is general agreement that midterm returns are not reliable predictors of the next presidential election, the 2022 results do not uniformly suggest a weakened national Republican Party.“Overall, it’s a strange election,” wrote Sean Trende, senior elections analyst at RealClearPolitics, in “What Happened.” “Had you showed any major analyst these results, along with exit poll findings that Biden would be at 44 percent job approval, no one would have expected this outcome.”Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State, noted in an email:The negative Trump effect seems even more clear now. Trump-endorsed candidates fared worse, often on the same ballot with Republicans who separated themselves from Trump and performed better. So I see it as more of the same warning to Republicans: tying themselves to Trump is not a winning general election strategy.Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist, made a similar case by email. “Swing voters in swing states and districts didn’t marry the Democrats; they just dumped the Republicans,” he wrote. “In the post-Dobbs environment, extremism is not a theoretical concern anymore. The two most valuable players of this cycle for the Democrats are Sam Alito and Donald Trump. Democrats should send them each a fruit basket.”“I cannot think of a worse way for the House G.O.P. to introduce themselves as a governing party than braying about investigations into Hunter Biden and Anthony Fauci,” Begala argued. “Their candidates won by promising action on inflation, crime and borders.”To counter the House Republican agenda, Begala wrote,Biden needs to say, “They’re obsessed with my family’s past; I’m obsessed with your family’s future.” At every hearing in which the Republicans are tormenting Hunter Biden or Dr. Fauci, I would have Democratic members ask, “How will this hearing lower the price of gas at the pump? How will it reduce crime? How will it secure the border?”Data pointing to the vulnerability of the Trump-endorsed Republicans running for federal and state offices raises an interesting question: Should Democrats repeat a tactic used successfully this year to lift the chances that Republicans nominate their weakest general election candidate?Last September, Annie Linskey reported in The Washington Post that Democratic candidates and committees “have spent nearly $19 million across eight states in primaries this year amplifying far-right Republican candidates.” A postelection analysis by Ellen Ioanes of Vox concluded that the strategy “appears to have paid off in the midterm. Six Democratic challengers in races where Democratic organizations donated to extremist Republican candidates have so far won their contests.”A number of Democratic strategists and scholars, however, firmly rejected continuing the strategy of purposely investing during the Republican primaries in advertising promoting Trump to Republican voters premised on the calculation that Trump would be the easiest to beat of the most likely Republican nominees in the general election.Both Begala and Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, stood firmly opposed. “We should leave this to Republicans to nominate their own Trump,” Lake said by email.Begala gave three reasons for his opposition. First, “it undermines President Biden’s powerful message that Trump leads a mega-MAGA fanatical fringe that is a clear and present danger to our democracy.” Second, “Trump is still a massive, major force in American politics — especially in the Republican Party. I don’t want Trump anywhere near the White House.” Third, “while I respect the political success of governors like DeSantis, Youngkin, Hogan and Christie, if the Democrats can’t beat them, we don’t deserve the White House.”Daniel Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, was adamant in his opposition to the tactic:If Democrats truly worry about the fragility of American democracy, they should not take any steps that would facilitate Trump’s return to office, even if that means a higher chance that they lose the presidency. The slightly higher probability of holding the presidency with Trump as the G.O.P. nominee is surely outweighed by concerns about the threats to democracy should he win election.In an email, Hopkins suggested that Democrats should not view the outcome of the 2022 election as a clear victory:Republicans are likely to have won significantly more votes for their U.S. House candidates than Democrats, but the Democrats benefited from the geographic distribution of their support and the strength of several of their House incumbents in hard-fought races. Turnout in cities like Philadelphia was down relative to elsewhere, and the Democrats have not returned their strong showings with Latino voters from 2012 and 2016. The Republicans’ strength in Florida as well as New York was remarkable — and those are two of the largest states in the country. So absolutely, both parties have outcomes to celebrate and liabilities to watch.One of Hopkins’s political science colleagues, Matthew Levendusky, noted in an email:There is not one narrative to come out of this election. While we usually think about nationalization, in this election, we saw quite significant differences across states. Pennsylvania and Michigan — and even Wisconsin and Arizona — ended up somewhat better than the pre-election polls suggested (in some cases, quite a bit better). From this perspective, Democrats should be happy. But they did much worse than expected in Florida and New York. So which lesson is the right one?Levendusky pointed out that there “seem to be two trends that might be working against Republicans’ recent advantage in translating votes into seats”:If Republicans are doing better (at least in some areas) with Black and Latino voters, that erodes Democrats’ edge in urban districts, but not nearly enough to put those seats into jeopardy. But if they’re also strengthening their support with rural white voters, then that means they’re “wasting” more votes in those districts (shifting heavily rural parts of the country from R+20 to R+30 does not help them win more seats). So shifting demographic and geographic patterns might now make Republicans (just like Democrats) somewhat less well distributed.Sean Trende makes essentially the same point, writing that “Republicans made gains among African Americans, and significant gains among Hispanics” but, with a few exceptions, “these extra votes did not translate to seats. Because the Voting Rights Act requires that these voters be placed into heavily Hispanic/Black districts, which become overwhelmingly Democratic districts, it takes huge shifts in vote performance among these voters to win a district outright, and Republicans aren’t there right now.”Conversely, “Republicans may be suffering a representational penalty in rural areas similar to the penalty Democrats have suffered in urban districts,” Trende wrote, noting thatthe G.O.P. puts up stunning vote percentages in rural America, margins that would not have been deemed possible a decade ago, to say nothing of three decades ago. But this means that a large number of those votes are effectively wasted. As the suburbs become more competitive for Democrats and the cities become somewhat less competitive (but not enough to lose seats) as the minority vote percentage moves, Democrats lose the penalty they’ve suffered for running up overwhelming vote shares in urban districts in the past.Julie Wronski, a political scientist at the University of Mississippi, wrote by email that the election in many respectsmoved in ways predicted by the fundamentals — a Republican shift with a Democratic president who has low approval ratings and governs during poor economic indicators. However, in a few keys states and races Democratic candidates outperformed those indicators. The story seems like Republicans defeated themselves relative to the fundamentals by running low-quality candidates in some key races.For Republicans, Wronski wrote, “appealing to Trump voters without Trump on the ballot may not be a winning strategy. The types of voters who are enthusiastic for Trump do not seem equally enthusiastic for his endorsees.”In other words, it isn’t just that moderates and independents were scared off by extremist candidates; MAGA voters themselves were not fully animated by their own candidates. The candidate they want is Trump, not a Don Bolduc or a Kari Lake or a Mehmet Oz.In addition, Wronski argued:Not all Republicans want or positively respond to Trump’s preferences or persona. Trump endorsees trying to follow this playbook were not as successful as more mainstream Republican candidates. A prime example of this is the difference between the Georgia Senate and governor races.Neither party, in Wronski’s view,should take comfort in their prospects or feel in good shape nationally. The national electorate is polarized with close elections. Ultimately, I believe turnout is going to matter more than persuasion.Chris Tausanovitch, a political scientist at U.C.L.A., downplayed the success of the Democrats:This was in many ways an expected result. The polls and models performed well. The Democrats overperformed expectations slightly, but as others have pointed out, their performance is better in seats than in votes.The parties, Tausanovitch continued, “are very evenly matched and this doesn’t look like it is on a path to change quickly. This election was close. I expect the next presidential election to be close as well.” Trump-endorsed candidates, he acknowledged,did poorly, but this does not mean that a Trump-centric Republican Party cannot win or that Trump himself cannot win. He almost did in 2020. If he is the nominee, I still expect the election to be close in 2024.Republican Party elites are, in turn, increasingly voicing their concerns over the prospect of a 2024 Trump bid. I asked Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster, what would happen if Trump is the nominee, and he replied by email: “Assuming that the economy is out of the ditch by the end of ’23, I would have to believe a Trump nomination would be devastating.”In a clear slap at Trump, Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire — the Republican who handily won re-election while Maggie Hassan, the Democratic senator, beat the Trump protégé Don Bolduc, her Republican challenger — told a Nov. 18 meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition: “I have a great policy for the Republican Party. Let’s stop supporting crazy, unelectable candidates in our primaries and start getting behind winners that can close the deal in November.”At the same gathering, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared: “It is time to stop whispering. It is time to stop being afraid of any one person. It is time to stand up for the principles and the beliefs that we have founded this party on and this country on.”For two successive presidential elections, Trump has stymied the most ambitious members of his party, and now this group is becoming increasingly assertive. DeSantis, Youngkin, Haley, Mike Pompeo, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Mike Pence are engaged in the process of challenging the current occupant of the throne — making national appearances, courting donors, wooing party loyalists and generating media coverage, all with an eye on drawing blood. The question is, how vulnerable is Trump?Earlier this month, Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Michael Scherer reported in The Washington Post, “In private conversations among donors, operatives and other 2024 presidential hopefuls, a growing number of Republicans are trying to seize what they believe may be their best opportunity to sideline Trump and usher in a new generation of party leaders.”Republicans might be playing with fire.Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, told The Washington Post that there are now three key constituencies in the Republican electorate:A small group, roughly 10 percent, are “Never Trumpers,” Republicans who have long and vocally opposed Trump. A far larger group, about 40 percent, are “Always Trumpers,” his hard-core base that will be reluctant to abandon him. The remaining 50 percent or so are “Maybe Trumpers” — Republicans who voted for him twice, who generally like his policies but who are now eager to escape the chaos that accompanies him.If Trump faces two or more serious challengers in the primaries, his 40 percent core support plus whatever he can pick up from the “Maybe Trumpers” would prove to be a major asset, especially in the early contests, which often provide crucial momentum to the front-runner, setting up the scenario sought by Democrats: a Republican presidential nominee whom they believe may have some chance of prevailing in the primaries, but who has little chance of winning in November.“One of the reasons Trump’s base adores him is that he overcame overwhelming odds — including both party establishments — to win,” Nate Hochman, a staff writer for National Review, tweeted on Nov. 19. “The more Republican elites consolidate against him, the more otherwise persuadable Trump voters are going to remember why they loved him in the first place.”Democrats could not hope for more.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More
Americans support marijuana legalization, but many of their political leaders do not.A decade ago, no American lived in a state where marijuana was legal to smoke, vape or eat recreationally. Today, nearly half of Americans do or will soon: Voters approved legalization ballot measures this month in Maryland and Missouri, bringing the number of states allowing any adult use to 21.Legalization may not make major news often anymore, but it’s a big deal. It amounts to America’s largest change to its drug policy in decades. By aligning marijuana with alcohol and tobacco, rather than harder drugs, the policy change is giving birth to a new industry. And, over time, it could reduce the hundreds of thousands of marijuana arrests made in the U.S. every year, freeing up police resources.The change came about largely because of the support of voters, not politicians or lawmakers. While the public backs legalization, some prominent political leaders do not: President Biden has said he’s opposed. Donald Trump has characterized legalization as an issue for states to decide, but his 2020 presidential campaign said marijuana should remain illegal.Voter supportA key reason for marijuana legalization’s success: It’s popular. About 68 percent of adults in the U.S. support legalization, a Gallup survey found last week. Even a majority of Republicans, who are typically more conservative on the issue, have told Gallup that they support legalization.Around two decades ago, public opinion was essentially the reverse: About 64 percent of U.S. adults said marijuana should not be legal.The shift toward support empowered legalization campaigns around the U.S. The 21 states that have legalized it have done so only since 2012, starting with Colorado and Washington. Three of those states reliably vote Republican: Alaska, Montana and Missouri.Why have voters come around to legalization? Advocates credit several issues. Much of the public now sees the broader war on drugs as a costly failure — and marijuana, widely viewed as less dangerous than alcohol, is an accessible target for policy changes. States’ experiments with medical marijuana, starting in the 1990s, helped make Americans more comfortable with loosening access. And the internet has made it easier for a grass-roots legalization movement to spread.Political oppositionSome leading lawmakers have not followed the shift in public opinion. Biden has said he opposes jailing marijuana users and pardoned thousands of people convicted of marijuana possession under federal law. But he also opposes legalization, putting him at odds with more than 80 percent of self-identified Democrats.Lawmakers’ opposition has led activists to rely largely on voter support to enact legalization. Of the 21 states where recreational marijuana is or will soon be legal, 14 approved the change through ballot measures.But there are limits to the ballot process. Not every state allows such initiatives. And the drug remains illegal at the federal level, stopping most big banks from working with marijuana businesses and raising the businesses’ tax bills.Even in states where voters approve legalization, marijuana may remain illegal. South Dakotans voted to legalize marijuana in 2020, but Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, took the measure to court and won. This month, South Dakotan voters rejected another legalization initiative.Some of the political resistance is easing. Congress passed its first stand-alone marijuana reform bill last week, which will allow for more research into medical uses if Biden signs it into law, as expected. Several state legislatures, including Vermont’s and Virginia’s, have legalized marijuana for recreational purposes. Some prominent Democrats, like Senator Bernie Sanders and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, have voiced support for legalization.The shift is coming slowly, but perhaps typically: Whether they are considering action on prescription drugs or same-sex marriage, lawmakers often move well after voter support for an issue has solidified.For moreUnlicensed weed shops have exploded in popularity in New York City since the state legalized recreational marijuana last year.The state approved its first licenses for recreational marijuana retailers this week.THE LATEST NEWSMass ShootingsAn attacker opened fire at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Va., leaving at least six people dead. The shooter was also found dead at the store, the police said.Colorado Springs is questioning its progress on gay rights after the deadly shooting at an L.G.B.T.Q. nightclub there last weekend.PoliticsThe Supreme Court cleared the way for House Democrats to obtain Donald Trump’s tax returns.The Biden administration extended its pause on federal student loan payments.Senator Lindsey Graham testified in a Georgia investigation into 2020 election interference by Trump, after fighting to avoid answering questions.Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader campaigning to become House speaker, visited the southwestern border and demanded the Homeland Security secretary resign.The VirusDr. Anthony Fauci at what was likely his last White House briefing.Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesU.S. officials say they see a reduced Covid threat this winter, but urged people to get updated booster shots.Chinese officials have ordered businesses and schools in Beijing to close and locked down much of a major northern city as cases rise.Other Big StoriesTwo blasts during rush hour in Jerusalem killed one person and wounded at least 18 others. They were believed to be the first bomb attacks on Israeli civilians in years.After retaking the city of Kherson, Ukraine’s forces are trying to push Russian troops out of a strategic strip of land in the Black Sea. Follow updates.“Bregret”: Facing a grave economic slump, some British people are rethinking Brexit.OpinionsElon Musk might long for a bygone era of bro-boss workplaces, but most workers have moved on, Jessica Bennett writes.From Al Gore’s 2000 concession speech to Liz Cheney at the first Jan. 6 hearing, Thomas Friedman offers Thanksgiving readings to celebrate American democracy.The “momfluencer” industry has heightened already unrealistic expectations for American mothers, Jessica Grose says.MORNING READSDijon at the decks at Moogfest 2018.Jeremy M. Lange for The New York TimesUp from underground: The dance D.J. Honey Dijon is now everywhere.Mind farm: Researchers are investigating the inner lives of cows, pigs and chickens.Family treasures: A colander. A wooden Snoopy. Times readers shared their heirlooms.Advice from Wirecutter: Save money on heat and hot water.Lives Lived: Hebe de Bonafini helped build the protest movement the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo after her sons disappeared under Argentina’s military dictatorship. She died at 93.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICRankings: L.S.U. moved up to No. 5 in this week’s College Football Playoff rankings, surprisingly one spot ahead of U.S.C. Preview: Here’s what to watch for in the N.F.L.’s Thanksgiving tripleheader.WORLD CUPPlayers for Saudi Arabia celebrate after a goal.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesShock victory: Saudi Arabia beat the heavily favored Argentina, 2-1, one of the biggest upsets in World Cup history. (These were some of the others.)A closer look: The loss invited scrutiny of a deal that the Argentine great Lionel Messi has signed to promote Saudi Arabia.“We got here six beers ago”: After Qatar banned the sale of beer in and around stadiums, British fans found a solution.Elsewhere in soccer: Cristiano Ronaldo will immediately leave his English Premier League team, Manchester United.Today’s matchups: Germany plays Japan this morning, and Canada faces Belgium this afternoon. Follow all of today’s matches.ARTS AND IDEAS Rozalina Burkova for The New York TimesThe year in booksLooking for a good holiday read? The Times Book Review has published its annual 100 Notable Books, a survey of the best books of the year in fiction, nonfiction and poetry.“I’m still pretty new to the Book Review,” Gilbert Cruz, who took over as editor this year, told us. “But I’ve been reading it forever, and this is possibly the most vibrant and wide-ranging Notables list that we’ve ever had — historical fiction, mysteries, thrillers, horror, translated literature, an exceptional crop of short-story collections, a fantastic graphic memoir. It really feels like there’s something for almost anyone.”Browse the full list.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChristopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist:Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Christina Lane.This cheesecake can customize however you want.One Day to ThanksgivingForgetting the salad is a common Thanksgiving faux pas. Here are three recipes that will balance out the richer dishes.Where to GoThe remote Andaman Islands offers Indian culture and spectacular beaches.Late NightThe hosts joked about Trump’s tax returns.Now Time to PlayThe pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were blanked and kneadable. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Colorado ski resort (five letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — GermanP.S. Diplomats from China accused “one or two superpowers” of “aggression” at a U.N. Security Council meeting 51 years ago today.Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about cooking the perfect turkey.Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More
In recent years, as I finished writing a biography of J. Edgar Hoover, director of the F.B.I. for nearly half a century, liberal-minded friends often came to me with a confession. They were, they whispered, cheering for the F.B.I. During the Trump era, they began to see the bureau as the last best hope of the Republic, after a lifetime of viewing it as a bastion of political repression.Public opinion polls bear out this shift in opinion. In 2003, Republicans liked the F.B.I. far better than Democrats did, by a margin of 19 points, at 63 percent to 44 percent. Today, nearly 20 years later, that equation has flipped and then some. According to a recent Rasmussen survey, 75 percent of Democrats now have a favorable view of the F.B.I., in contrast to 30 percent of Republicans. Gallup puts the numbers further apart, with 79 percent of Democrats expressing approval and 29 percent of Republicans disapproval.From James Comey’s firing in May 2017 through the Mueller report, the Jan. 6 investigation and the Mar-a-Lago raid, the F.B.I. has not always delivered on Democratic hopes. But its showdowns with Donald Trump have fundamentally changed its public image.To some degree this switch simply reflects our hyperpartisan times. But the F.B.I.’s surge in popularity among Democrats also reflects a forgotten political tradition.Since the 1960s, liberals have tended to associate the bureau with its misdeeds against the left, including its outrageous efforts to discredit the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and other civil rights activists. Before those activities were exposed, though, liberals often admired and embraced the F.B.I., especially when it seemed to be a hedge against demagogy and abuses of power elsewhere in government.They pointed to the bureau’s role as an objective, nonpartisan investigative force seeking to ferret out the truth amid an often complicated and depressing political morass. And they viewed Hoover as one the greatest embodiments of that ethic: a long-serving and long-suffering federal civil servant who managed to win the respect of both Republicans and Democrats.The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leaving the office of J. Edgar Hoover in 1964. The F.B.I. conducted extensive surveillance of Dr. King’s private life.Bettmann/Getty ImagesWe now know that much of that admiration rested on wishful thinking — and today’s liberals would be wise to remember Hoover’s cautionary example. But for all his failings, all his abuses of power, he also promoted a vision of F.B.I. integrity and professionalism that still has resonance.J. Edgar Hoover was a lifelong conservative, outspoken on matters ranging from crime to Communism to the urgent need for all Americans to attend church. He also knew how to get along with liberals. Indeed, he could not have survived in government as long as he did without this essential skill. First appointed bureau director in 1924, Hoover stayed in that job until his death in 1972, an astonishing 48 years. He served under eight presidents, four Republicans and four Democrats.It has often been said that Hoover remained in power for so many decades because politicians feared him — and there is much truth to that view, especially in his later years. But Hoover’s late-in-life strong-arm tactics do not explain much about how he rose so fast through the government ranks, or why so many presidents — including Franklin Roosevelt, the great liberal titan of the 20th century — thought it was a good idea to give him so much power.Hoover spent his first decade as director establishing his good-government bona fides; he championed professionalism, efficiency, high standards and scientific methods. So in the 1930s, Roosevelt saw Hoover not as a far-right reactionary but as an up-and-coming administrator thoroughly steeped in the values of the modern state — a bureaucrat par excellence.Roosevelt did more than any other president to expand the F.B.I.’s power: first, by inviting Hoover to take a more active role in crime fighting, then by licensing him to become the nation’s domestic intelligence chief. Hoover’s agents became known as G-men, or government men, the avenging angels of the New Deal state.Hoover, center, taking aim while giving the Broadway actors flanking him, William Gaxton and Vincent Moore, a tour of F.B.I. headquarters in 1935.Underwood and UnderwoodToday’s F.B.I. still bears the stamp of the decisions Roosevelt made nearly a century ago. A hybrid institution, the F.B.I. remains one part law-enforcement agency, one part domestic-intelligence force — an awkward combination, if one that we now take for granted.It also retains Hoover’s dual political identity, with a conservative internal culture but also a powerful commitment to professional nonpartisan government service. This combination of attributes has helped to produce the F.B.I.’s inconsistent and sometimes contradictory reputation, as different groups pick and choose which aspects to embrace and which to condemn.Hoover went on to do outrageous things with the power granted him during the Roosevelt years, emerging as the 20th century’s single most effective foe of the American left. But many Washington liberals and civil libertarians did not see those abuses coming, because Hoover continued to reflect some of their values as well. During World War II, he distinguished himself as one of the few federal officials opposed to mass Japanese internment, labeling the policy “extremely unfortunate” and unnecessary for national security.After the war, despite his deep-seated racism, he stepped up the F.B.I.’s campaign against lynching in the South. “The great American crime is toleration of conditions which permit and promote prejudice, bigotry, injustice, terror and hate,” he told a civil rights committee convened by President Harry Truman in 1947. He framed white supremacist violence not only as a moral wrong but also as an acute challenge to federal authority.By contrast, he promoted himself as the embodiment of professional law enforcement, the polar opposite of the Ku Klux Klan’s vigilantes or the conspiracists of the John Birch Society. Many liberals embraced that message, despite Hoover’s well-known conservatism. “If a liberal came in, the liberal would leave thinking that, ‘My God, Hoover is a real liberal!” William Sullivan, an F.B.I. official, recalled. “If a John Bircher came in an hour later, he’d go out saying, ‘I’m convinced that Hoover is a member of the John Birch Society at heart.’ ”The height of Hoover’s popularity came during the Red Scare of the 1950s, when he emerged as both a hero of the anti-Communist right and the thinking man’s alternative to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Today, we tend to view Hoover and McCarthy as interchangeable figures, zealots who ran roughshod over civil liberties. At the time, though, many liberals viewed them as very different men.Truman feared the F.B.I.’s “Gestapo” tendencies, but far preferred Hoover to a partisan brawler and obvious fabricator like McCarthy. President Dwight Eisenhower heaped lavish praise on Hoover as the nation’s responsible, respectable anti-Communist, in contrast to McCarthy the demagogue. Both presidents cast the story in terms that might be familiar to any 21st-century liberal, with Hoover as the protector of truth, objectivity and the law, and McCarthy as those principles’ most potent enemy.One irony of the liberals’ stance is that it was actually Hoover, not McCarthy, who did the most to promote and sustain the Red Scare. Long before McCarthy burst on the scene, Hoover had been collaborating with congressional committees to target Communists and their sympathizers, conducting elaborate campaigns of infiltration and surveillance. And he long outlasted McCarthy, who was censured by his fellow senators in 1954. Hoover’s popularity grew as McCarthy’s fell. A Gallup poll in late 1953, the peak of the Red Scare, noted that a mere 2 percent of Americans expressed an unfavorable view of Hoover, a result “phenomenal in surveys that have dealt with men in public life.”Hoover with President Richard Nixon in 1969.Bettmann Archive, via Getty ImagesAnd with President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965.Associated PressThat consensus finally began to crack in the 1960s. Hoover’s current reputation stems largely from this late-career period, when the F.B.I.’s shocking campaigns against the civil rights, antiwar and New Left movements began to erode earlier conceptions of Hoover as a man of restraint.Its most notorious initiative, the bureau’s COINTELPRO (short for Counterintelligence Program), deployed manipulative news coverage, anonymous mailings and police harassment to disrupt these movements. In 1964, in one of the lowest points of Hoover’s regime, the F.B.I. faked a degrading anonymous letter implicitly urging Dr. King to commit suicide. Agents mailed it to him along with recordings of his extramarital sexual activities, captured on F.B.I. microphones planted in his hotel rooms.Even then, though, key liberal figures continued to champion Hoover and the F.B.I. President Lyndon Johnson, a friend and neighbor of Hoover’s, proved second only to Roosevelt in his enthusiasm for the director. And he urged his successor, Richard Nixon, to follow suit. “Dick, you will come to depend on Edgar,” he told Nixon in the Oval Office in late 1968. “He’s the only one you can put your complete trust in.”Despite such official support, by the early 1970s polls were starting to note that Hoover’s reputation among liberals and Democrats seemed to be in swift decline, thanks to his advancing age, aggressive tactics and conservative social views. “Now the case of J. Edgar Hoover has been added to the list of issues — ranging from the war in Vietnam, to race relations, welfare and the plight of the cities — which are the source of deep division across America today,” the pollster Louis Harris wrote in 1971.While conservatives still expressed widespread admiration for the F.B.I. director, liberals increasingly described him as a danger to the nation. The decline was especially precipitous among coastal elites and university-educated young people. By contrast, working-class white Americans in the Midwest and South expressed support.Today, those sentiments are reversed. According to Rasmussen, the F.B.I. is now most popular among Americans making more than $200,000 per year. Young voters like the F.B.I. better than older voters do. This division is being driven by national politics: When Mr. Trump attacks the F.B.I. as part of an overweening “deep state,” his supporters follow while his critics run the other way.But it also reflects a larger clash of values. Mr. Trump has long scored political points by attacking the administrative state and its legions of career government servants, whether at the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the State Department or, improbably, the National Archives. In response, Democrats have been forced to reaffirm what once seemed to be settled notions: that expertise and professionalism matter in government, that the rule of law applies to every American, that it’s worth employing skilled, nonpartisan investigators who can determine the facts.Hoover failed to live up to those principles — often spectacularly so. And today’s F.B.I. has made its own questionable choices, from surveillance of Black Lives Matter protesters to mismanagement of delicate political inquiries. But its history of professional federal service, of loyalty to the facts and the law, is still worth championing, especially in an era when suspicion of government, rather than faith in its possibilities, so often dominates our discourse. Whatever else we may think of Hoover’s legacy, that tradition is the best part of the institution he built.Beverly Gage (@beverlygage) is a professor of American history at Yale and the author of “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More
