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      Trump’s Indictment Puts Us Into Uncharted Waters

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      Former President Donald Trump finds himself once again facing indictment, this time in federal court, after an investigation into his handling of classified documents after departing the White House. The prospect of putting Mr. Trump on trial for serious crimes and sending him to prison has many Americans feeling giddy: Finally, justice might be done.Such reactions are understandable, but news of Mr. Trump’s legal jeopardy shouldn’t blind us to the political jeopardy that now confronts the nation.Other countries have tried, convicted and imprisoned former presidents, but the United States never has. We’ve been fortunate in this regard. Legal processes establish and maintain legitimacy by the appearance of impartiality. But when a public figure associated with one political party is prosecuted by officials associated with another, such appearances can become impossible to uphold. This is especially so when the public figure is a populist adept at exposing (and accusing opponents of concealing) base and self-interested motives behind righteous rhetoric about the rule of law.This corrosive dynamic is even more pronounced when the public figure is not only a former official but also a potential future one. Mr. Trump is running for president against President Biden, whose attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed the special counsel Jack Smith. That’s a scenario seemingly tailor-made to confirm and vindicate Mr. Trump’s longstanding claim that he’s the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt.We don’t have to speculate about the immediate political consequences. Public-spirited and law-abiding Americans believe the appropriate response of voters to news that their favored candidate faces indictment is to turn on him and run the other way. But the populist politics that are Mr. Trump’s specialty operate according to an inverse logic. Before the end of March, polls of the Republican primary electorate showed him hovering in the mid-40s and leading his nearest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by about 15 points. By the end of May, Mr. Trump was in the mid-50s and leading Mr. DeSantis by roughly 30 points.What happened at the end of March to elevate Mr. Trump’s standing? He was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.Hard as it may be for some of us to believe, Mr. Trump’s indictment by the special counsel on federal charges could well boost him further, placing him in a position of even greater advantage against his rivals for the Republican nomination.That possibility typically prompts one of two responses from Democrats: one narrowly political (not to say cynical), the other more high-minded and focused on the law and public morals.The political response sees Mr. Trump benefiting in the G.O.P. primaries from indictment as a good thing, because the former president appears to be the most beatable alternative for Mr. Biden to face in the fall of 2024, and that will be even truer when Mr. Trump is embroiled in a federal trial on major charges and facing possible prison time. What’s good for Mr. Trump in the primaries, in other words, will be terrible for him in the general election.This may well be true, but not necessarily. Anyone who becomes one of two major party nominees has a shot at winning the White House. That’s especially true in our era of stark partisan polarization and intense negative partisanship. That Mr. Trump would be running against an opponent with persistently low approval ratings who will be 81 years old on Election Day 2024 only makes a Biden-Trump matchup more uncertain.The other response dismisses such concerns entirely. Let justice be done, we are told, though the heavens fall. To weigh political considerations in determining whether someone, even a former and possibly future president, should be prosecuted is to supposedly commit a grievous offense against the rule of law, because no one is above the law and the consequences of holding him or her to account shouldn’t matter.This is a powerful argument and one seemingly vindicated in the case of Mr. Trump, who has now managed to get himself ensnared in legal trouble in multiple jurisdictions dealing with a wide range of possible crimes. At a certain point, the logic of the law applying to everyone equally demands that the process be seen through.But that doesn’t mean we should deny the gravity of the potential consequences. Mr. Trump is not a standard-issue politician who happened to run afoul of corruption statutes. He’s a man who rose once to the presidency and seeks to return to it by mobilizing and enhancing mass suspicion of public institutions and officials. That’s why one of the first things he said after announcing the indictment on Thursday night was to proclaim it was “a DARK DAY for the United States of America.” It’s why die-hard supporters like Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio tweeted: “Sad day for America. God Bless President Trump.” It’s likely that tens of millions of our fellow citizens agree with the sentiment.To most Americans, such a reaction to news of Mr. Trump’s indictment seems unimaginable. But it’s clearly something sincerely felt by many. Our country has a history of lionizing outlaws — folk heroes who defy authority, especially when they claim to speak for, channel and champion the grievances and resentments of ordinary people against those in positions of power and influence. From the beginning of his 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump has portrayed himself as just such a man of defiance, eager to serve as a tribune for those who feel left behind, denigrated and humiliated by members of the establishment.That’s why the more concerted opposition Mr. Trump has faced from law enforcement, the mainstream media, Congress and other prominent people in our country and culture, the more popular he has become within his party. Efforts to rein him in — to defeat him politically and legally — have often backfired, vindicating him and his struggle in the eyes of his supporters.There’s no reason at all to suppose the prospect of Mr. Trump’s ending up a convicted criminal would disrupt this dynamic. On the contrary, it’s far more likely to transform him into something resembling a martyr to millions of Americans — and in the process to wrest those devoted supporters free from attachment to the rule of law altogether.How politically radical could the base of the Republican Party become over the 17 months between now and the 2024 presidential election? There’s really no way to know. We are heading into uncharted and turbulent waters.Damon Linker, a former columnist at The Week, writes the newsletter Notes From the Middleground and is a senior fellow in the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center.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

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      Los retos de la edad de Joe Biden y su reelección

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      En algún momento del invierno pasado, durante un viaje a Asia, despertaron al presidente Joe Biden a las 3 a. m. para decirle que un misil había impactado en Polonia, lo que desató el temor de que Rusia hubiera extendido la guerra de Ucrania a un aliado de la OTAN. En cuestión de horas, en medio de la noche, Biden consultó a sus altos asesores, llamó al presidente de Polonia y al secretario general de la OTAN y reunió a otros líderes mundiales para enfrentar la crisis.Y luego, hace unas cuantas semanas, cuando Biden era el anfitrión de algunos niños en el Día de Llevar a Tu Hijo al Trabajo, se confundió cuando intentó enumerar a sus nietos. “Pues déjenme ver. Tengo uno en Nueva York, dos en Filadelfia, ¿o tres? No, tres porque tengo una nieta que es… ya no sé. Me están confundiendo”. También se quedó en blanco cuando le preguntaron cuál era el último país que había visitado y el nombre de su película favorita.Estos dos Joe Biden coexisten en el mismo presidente octogenario: sagaz e inteligente en momentos cruciales como resultado de décadas de experiencia, capaz de estar a la altura de las circunstancias para hacer frente a un mundo peligroso, incluso en la quietud de la noche. Pero un poco más lento, más blando, con más dificultades auditivas, más vacilante en su andar y un poco más proclive a fallas ocasionales de memoria que pueden resultar habituales para alguien que ha llegado a la novena década de su vida o que tiene algún progenitor que haya alcanzado esa edad.La difícil realidad del presidente más viejo de Estados Unidos fue resumida el jueves cuando el Congreso aprobó un acuerdo bipartidista que él negoció para evitar un incumplimiento del pago de la deuda nacional. Incluso el presidente de la Cámara Baja, el representante republicano por California, Kevin McCarthy, declaró que Biden había sido “muy profesional, inteligente y duro” durante las conversaciones. Pero justo antes de que se pusieran en marcha las votaciones, Biden se tropezó con un saco de arena en la graduación de la Academia de la Fuerza Aérea y cayó al suelo. El video se hizo viral, sus partidarios se abochornaron y sus detractores arremetieron.Cualquiera puede tropezarse a cualquier edad, pero es inevitable que si le ocurre a un presidente de 80 años haya preguntas incómodas. Si fuera cualquier otra persona, tal vez no serían notorios los signos de la edad, pero Biden es el jefe del país más poderoso del mundo y se acaba de lanzar a una campaña para que los electores lo mantengan en la Casa Blanca hasta que cumpla 86 años, lo cual atrae una mayor atención a un problema que, según las encuestas, preocupa a la mayoría de los estadounidenses y es motivo de gran zozobra entre los líderes del partido.“¿Ustedes dicen que soy viejo?”, dijo en una cena de la Asociación de Corresponsales de la Casa Blanca en abril. “Yo digo que soy sabio”.Yuri Gripas para The New York TimesLa imagen que surge de las entrevistas realizadas durante varios meses con decenas de funcionarios y exfuncionarios, y con otras personas que han pasado algún tiempo con el presidente, es una mezcla entre la caricatura de un anciano aturullado y fácilmente manipulable promovida por los republicanos y la imagen que difunde su personal de un presidente con gafas de aviador que dirige la escena mundial y gobierna con brío.Es la de un hombre disminuido por la edad de maneras más marcadas que solo el encanecimiento del cabello que ha sido común entre los presidentes más recientes durante sus mandatos. En ocasiones, Biden confunde las palabras y parece mayor que antes por su modo de andar torpe y su voz débil.No obstante, las personas que habitualmente tratan con él, incluso algunos de sus adversarios, afirman que sigue siendo sagaz e imponente en las reuniones privadas. Los diplomáticos comparten anécdotas de viajes a sitios como Ucrania, Japón, Egipto, Camboya e Indonesia, en donde casi siempre tiene más resistencia que sus colegas más jóvenes. Los legisladores demócratas destacan una larga lista de logros como prueba de que sigue haciendo bien su trabajo.Sus amigos señalan que sus desaciertos verbales no son nada nuevo; toda su vida ha tenido problemas de tartamudez y, en sus propias palabras, era una “máquina de desatinos”, mucho antes de tener acceso a las prestaciones de jubilación. Sus asesores afirman que su criterio sigue siendo tan bueno como siempre. Así que muchos usan la frase “afilado como una hacha” para describirlo, lo que se ha convertido en una especie de mantra.Biden dice que la edad es un tema válido, pero sostiene que su longevidad es una ventaja y no una desventaja. “¿Ustedes dicen que soy anciano?”, dijo en una cena de la Asociación de Corresponsales de la Casa Blanca en abril. “Yo digo que soy sabio”.Sin embargo, pocas personas dejan de notar los cambios en una de las personas más públicas de la nación. Hace una decena de años, cuando era vicepresidente, Biden se enzarzaba cada verano en enérgicas batallas con pistolas de agua con los hijos de sus colaboradores y los periodistas. Más de una década después, cruzó con paso rígido el puente Edmund Pettus de Selma, Alabama, para conmemorar el aniversario del Domingo Sangriento.Las encuestas indican que a los estadounidenses, incluso a los demócratas, les preocupa muchísimo la edad de Biden. En un grupo de debate reciente organizado por The New York Times, varios electores que apoyaron a Biden en 2020 manifestaron su preocupación y uno afirmó: “He visto a veces esa mirada ausente cuando está pronunciando algún discurso o dirigiéndose a la multitud. Parece como si perdiera la línea de pensamiento”.En los círculos demócratas, el malestar por la edad de Biden es generalizado. Un destacado demócrata de Wall Street, que como otras personas habló con la condición de mantener su anonimato para no ofender a la Casa Blanca, señaló que entre los donantes del partido no se hablaba de otra cosa. En una pequeña cena celebrada a principios de este año con antiguos senadores y gobernadores demócratas, todos de la generación de Biden, los asistentes coincidieron en que era demasiado mayor para volver a postularse. Los líderes locales llaman a menudo a la Casa Blanca para preguntar por su salud.En privado, los funcionarios reconocen que hacen lo que consideran que son ajustes razonables para no exigirle mucho físicamente a un presidente que envejece. Su personal programa la mayor parte de sus presentaciones en público entre el mediodía y las 4 p. m. y lo deja descansar los fines de semana tanto como es posible. Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, jefa adjunta de gabinete de la Casa Blanca, insistió en que su edad no ha obligado a modificar su agenda. “Nada más allá de lo que se hace para cualquier presidente, independientemente de su edad”, dijo.Un análisis de los horarios de Biden con base en la información recabada por Axios y ampliada por el Times reveló que el mandatario tiene un ritmo de trabajo matutino parecido al del presidente para el que trabajó, Barack Obama, quien tampoco tenía muchos eventos públicos antes de las 10 a. m.: solo el 4 por ciento durante su último año en el cargo en comparación con el 5 por ciento en los primeros dos años y medio de Biden en la presidencia. Pero la verdadera diferencia se ve en la noche. Obama tenía casi el doble de probabilidades que Biden de acudir a eventos públicos después de las 6 p. m., el 17 contra el 9 por ciento.Los asesores evitan exponer a Biden a entrevistas con los medios cuando es posible que cometa algún error que lo perjudique políticamente. Biden solo ha brindado una cuarta parte de las entrevistas que dio Donald Trump en el mismo periodo y una quinta parte de las que concedió Obama, pero ninguna a los reporteros de algún diario importante. Biden no ha concedido entrevistas al departamento de noticias del Times, a diferencia de todos los presidentes desde por lo menos Franklin D. Roosevelt además de Dwight D. Eisenhower. Y en los últimos 100 años, solo Ronald Reagan y Richard Nixon dieron tan pocas conferencias de prensa.A diferencia de otros presidentes, los funcionarios de la Casa Blanca no han autorizado al médico de Biden para que conceda entrevistas. En febrero, Kevin C. O’Connor, el médico de la Casa Blanca, emitió una carta de cinco páginas en la que afirmaba que el mandatario está “apto para el servicio y ejecuta plenamente todas sus responsabilidades sin exenciones ni adaptaciones”.Pero también escribió que la tendencia del presidente a caminar rígido es “de hecho el resultado de cambios degenerativos (‘desgaste’)” en su columna vertebral, y en parte el resultado de “isquiotibiales y pantorrillas más tensas”. La carta decía que “no había hallazgos que fueran consistentes con” un trastorno neurológico como un derrame cerebral, esclerosis múltiple o enfermedad de Parkinson. Toma medicamentos para la fibrilación auricular, el colesterol, el ardor de estómago, el asma y las alergias.Al igual que muchas personas de su edad, Biden repite las frases y vuelve a contar una y otra vez las mismas anécdotas viejas que a menudo son de veracidad cuestionable. También puede ser estrafalario; cuando lo visitan los niños, es posible que saque al azar un libro de William Butler Yeats de su escritorio y comience a leerles poesía irlandesa.Al mismo tiempo, es elegante y está en forma, hace ejercicio cinco veces a la semana y no bebe. En algunas ocasiones, ha mostrado una resistencia asombrosa, como cuando fue a Polonia y luego emprendió un viaje de nueve horas en tren para hacer una visita secreta a Kiev, la capital de Ucrania, donde estuvo varias horas en tierra. Luego soportó otras nueve horas en tren y tomó un vuelo a Varsovia. Un análisis de su horario proporcionado por sus colaboradores muestra que en los primeros meses de su tercer año en la presidencia viajó un poco más que Obama en ese mismo periodo.El viaje de Biden a Kiev, en el que se reunió con el presidente de Ucrania, Volodímir Zelenski, requirió una agenda ininterrumpida.Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times“¿Que divaga? Así es”, señaló el gobernador de Nueva Jersey, Phil Murphy, un demócrata que rechaza categóricamente la idea de que Biden sea demasiado mayor para ser presidente. “¿Siempre ha divagado? Sí, así es. En público y en privado. Siempre es el mismo. Literalmente —y no lo digo a la ligera— en mi vida no he conocido a nadie más que sea tanto la misma persona en público como en privado”.El hecho de que se le preste tanta atención a su edad es algo que les molesta a algunos de sus amigos. “Creo que la razón por la que esto es un problema es principalmente porque los medios de comunicación hablan de ello constantemente”, dijo Ted Kaufman, exsenador por Delaware que desde hace mucho tiempo es asesor de Biden. “En mi trato con él no veo nada que demuestre que la edad sea un problema. Ha hecho más de lo que ningún presidente ha podido hacer en toda mi vida”.Andrew Bates, portavoz de la Casa Blanca, señaló que los republicanos de línea dura se quejaban de que Biden había derrotado a McCarthy en el acuerdo fiscal. “Es revelador que los mismos congresistas extremistas que han estado hablando de su edad se quejaran esta semana de que fue más listo que ellos en el acuerdo presupuestario”, dijo Bates.Desde luego que el tema de la edad de Biden no viene aislado. Trump, su contrincante republicano más probable, solo es cuatro años menor y era el presidente más viejo de la historia antes de que Biden lo sucediera. Si Trump gana el próximo año, tendría 82 años al finalizar su presidencia, mayor de lo que será Biden al final de este mandato.Mientras estuvo en el cargo, Trump generó preocupación acerca de su agudeza mental y su condición física. No hacía ejercicio, su dieta consistía principalmente en hamburguesas con queso y carne, y oficialmente pesaba 110 kilos, peso que, para su estatura, ya se considera obesidad.Después de quejarse de que tenía demasiadas reuniones en las mañanas, Trump dejó de llegar al Despacho Oval antes de las 11 u 11:30 a. m. todos los días para quedarse en su residencia a ver la televisión, hacer llamadas telefónicas o enviar tuits iracundos. Durante una presentación en la Academia Militar de Estados Unidos en West Point, tuvo problemas para levantar un vaso de agua y parece que le costó trabajo bajar por una sencilla rampa.Más sorprendente era el rendimiento cognitivo de Trump. Era errático y tendía a divagar; los expertos constataron que había perdido elocuencia y que su vocabulario se había reducido desde su juventud. En privado, sus colaboradores decían que Trump tenía problemas para procesar la información y distinguir la realidad de la ficción. Su segundo jefe de gabinete, John F. Kelly, compró un libro que analizaba la salud psicológica de Trump para entenderle mejor, y varios secretarios del gabinete, preocupados por su posible incapacidad mental, se plantearon invocar la Enmienda 25 para destituirlo.En la opinión pública, los problemas cognitivos del expresidente Donald Trump no se asocian tan a menudo con la edad como los de Biden, quizá porque el estilo ampuloso de Trump proyecta energía.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPero quizá porque su estilo ampuloso transmite energía, los problemas de Trump no se asocian tanto con la edad, en la mente del público, como los de Biden. En una encuesta reciente de Reuters/Ipsos, el 73 por ciento dijo que Biden es demasiado mayor para ser presidente, frente al 51 por ciento que dijo lo mismo de Trump.Biden gestiona su jornada con más disciplina que su predecesor. Jill Biden, que da clases en el Northern Virginia Community College, se levanta alrededor de las 6 a. m., mientras que el presidente se despierta una hora más tarde, según lo que suele decir. Biden le ha dicho a sus colaboradores que, a veces, su gato lo despierta en mitad de la noche cuando camina sobre su cara.A las 7:20 a. m. la primera dama se va a trabajar. El mandatario hace ejercicio a las 8 a. m.; tiene una bicicleta Peloton en la residencia y es conocido por ver programas como Morning Joe en MSNBC. Llega al Despacho Oval a las 9 a. m. para tener una mañana por lo general repleta de reuniones. Para comer, alterna entre ensaladas, sopas y sándwiches.Biden hace ejercicio cinco días a la semana y no bebe.Al Drago para The New York TimesTras los eventos de la tarde, el presidente regresa a la residencia a eso de las 6:45 p. m. Para cenar, su platillo favorito es la pasta. De hecho, según un antiguo funcionario, siempre que viaja, sus ayudantes se aseguran de que haya salsa roja a mano para la pasta con la que termina el día, incluso cuando suele rechazar el salmón que su esposa insiste en que coma.A partir de las 8:00 p. m., los Biden suelen leer juntos sus libros e informes en el salón de la residencia. La primera dama suele acostarse a las 10:30 p. m. y el presidente media hora más tarde.Sus colaboradores dicen que, por las preguntas que hace después, está claro que él lee los informes. “No hay nadie mejor a la hora de hacer preguntas para llegar al fondo de un asunto, para detectar una vaguedad o hacer preguntas difíciles”, dijo Stefanie Feldman, secretaria de personal de la Casa Blanca. “Hace preguntas igual de difíciles que hace 10 años”.Algunos de los que le acompañan en el extranjero expresan su asombro por su capacidad para mantener el ritmo. Cuando la nueva líder de Italia presionó para que se celebrara una reunión mientras el presidente estaba en Polonia, éste accedió de buena gana y la añadió a su agenda que estaba repleta. Durante un viaje a Irlanda, las personas que le acompañaban dijeron que estaba lleno de energía y que quería hablar largo y tendido en el Air Force One en vez de descansar.Sin embargo, tras agotadoras jornadas en sus viajes, faltó a cenas con líderes mundiales en Indonesia el año pasado y de nuevo en Japón cuando fue de visita en mayo. Algunas personas que lo conocen desde hace años dicen en privado que han notado pequeños cambios. Según un exfuncionario, cuando se sienta suele apoyar una mano en el escritorio para sostener su peso y rara vez vuelve a levantarse con su antigua energía.El personal de Biden programa la mayoría de sus apariciones públicas entre el mediodía y las 4  p. m. y, en la medida de lo posible, le libera los fines de semana.Doug Mills/The New York TimesHabla tan bajo que resulta difícil oírle. Para los discursos, sus ayudantes le dan un micrófono de mano que se acerca a la boca para amplificar su voz, incluso cuando está ante un atril con micrófonos.Biden y Jill Biden, su esposa, suelen tener un horario similar.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSin embargo, sus colaboradores dicen que, aunque puede olvidar momentáneamente un nombre o un hecho, conserva una formidable memoria para los detalles. Cuando se disponía a viajar a Shanksville, Pensilvania, en el vigésimo aniversario de los atentados del 11 de septiembre de 2001, se sintió frustrado porque los funcionarios le habían dado un plan equivocado para sus desplazamientos. Ya había estado en el monumento conmemorativo y sabía que el plan no tenía sentido porque recordaba la disposición del terreno.Funcionarios de la Casa Blanca se quejan de que la preocupación por la edad se ve exagerada por las fotos de internet, que a veces son falsas o están muy distorsionadas. Cada semana, los estrategas realizan un análisis de la nube de palabras con un panel de votantes preguntándoles qué habían oído sobre el presidente, bueno o malo. Después de que el año pasado se le enganchara el pie en el pedal de la bicicleta y diera una voltereta, durante semanas las palabras de la nube fueron “caída de la bicicleta”, lo que resultaba aún más frustrante para los asesores que señalaban que Trump apenas parecía capaz de montar en bicicleta.Últimamente, Biden ha recurrido al humor autocrítico para atenuar el asunto, al igual que lo hizo Reagan en su reelección de 1984, la cual ganó a los 73 años gracias, en parte, a una oportuna broma durante el debate acerca de no aprovecharse de “la juventud e inexperiencia del oponente”.Algunos de los que le acompañan en el extranjero expresan su asombro por su capacidad para mantener el ritmo. Sin embargo, tras agotadoras jornadas en sus viajes del año pasado, faltó a cenas con líderes mundiales en Indonesia y eso también le pasó cuando estuvo en Japón en mayo.Doug Mills/The New York TimesEn la cena de los corresponsales, Biden aseguró al público que respaldaba la primera enmienda y “no solo porque la redactó mi buen amigo Jimmy Madison”, en referencia al político del siglo XIX. Durante el evento del Día de Llevar a Tu Hijo al Trabajo, reflexionó acerca de “cuando yo era más joven, hace como unos 120 años”.Asimismo, hace algunos días, en la Academia de la Fuerza Aérea, Biden bromeó al decir “cuando iba a graduarme del bachillerato hace 300 años, hice mi solicitud para entrar a la Academia Naval”. Después de tropezar con el saco de arena, también trató de tomárselo a broma. “Me metieron el pie”, dijo.Peter Baker es el corresponsal jefe de la Casa Blanca y ha cubierto a los últimos cinco presidentes para el Times y The Washington Post. Es autor de siete libros, el más reciente The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, con Susan Glasser. @peterbakernyt • FacebookMichael D. Shear es un corresponsal experimentado de la Casa Blanca y dos veces ganador del Premio Pulitzer que también formó parte del equipo que ganó la Medalla de Servicio Público por la cobertura de la COVID-19 en 2020. Es coautor de Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration. @shearmKatie Rogers es corresponsal de la Casa Blanca y cubre la administración Biden, la cultura de Washington y la política interna. Se unió al Times en 2014. @katierogersZolan Kanno-Youngs es corresponsal en la Casa Blanca y cubre una variedad de temas nacionales e internacionales en la gestión de Biden, incluida la seguridad nacional y el extremismo. Se unió al Times en 2019 como corresponsal de seguridad nacional. @KannoYoungs More

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      in Elections

      Mike Pence’s Campaign Against Donald Trump Has Already Made History

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      In running for the Republican nomination against Donald J. Trump, Mike Pence will be the first vice president to directly challenge the president who originally put him on the ticket.He may not make it to the Oval Office. But he will make it into the history books, at least as an asterisk.As Mike Pence formally kicks off his underdog campaign for the White House on Wednesday, he will become something almost unheard-of since the founding of the republic — a former vice president running against the president who originally put him on the ticket.While it is not unusual for tension and even enmity to develop between presidents and vice presidents, never before has a No. 2 mounted a direct challenge to a onetime running mate in the way that Mr. Pence is taking on former President Donald J. Trump for the Republican nomination next year.Vice presidents, after all, typically owe their national stature to the presidents who chose them, and even if they are not especially grateful, they rarely find it politically feasible to compete with their patrons. But Mr. Pence is gambling that Republican primary voters may eventually grow weary of Mr. Trump and turn to the other member of their party’s 2016 and 2020 tickets.“Having a former vice president contest the president he served for their party’s nomination in contested primaries is like a 234-year flood,” said Joel K. Goldstein, a specialist on the vice presidency at the St. Louis University School of Law. “It doesn’t happen.”“Defeated presidents don’t run again in modern times,” he added, “and vice presidents tend to inherit support from their administration’s supporters, not become pariahs to them” as Mr. Pence has since defying Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The broken relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence is itself a historical anomaly, of course. Mr. Trump sought to pressure Mr. Pence to claim the power to effectively reject Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the Electoral College, a power the vice president said he did not have. Mr. Trump was so angry that he publicly excoriated his own vice president, prompting a mob to hunt for him while chanting “hang Mike Pence” on Jan. 6, 2021. According to testimony, Mr. Trump suggested to aides that maybe his supporters were right.“The reason why no other vice president appears to have run against his president is that he was selected by the president, and there is almost always a personal bond stemming from a sense of loyalty and gratitude,” said Richard Moe, who was the chief of staff to Vice President Walter F. Mondale. “I can’t think of another vice president who was treated more disrespectfully than Pence was by Trump.”There are no precise parallels to the current situation. In 1800, Vice President Thomas Jefferson challenged President John Adams, defeating the incumbent’s bid for a second term. In those early days of the republic, however, the vice president was not the president’s running mate, but the second-highest vote recipient in the previous election. Adams and Jefferson had run against each other in 1796, with Adams prevailing and Jefferson becoming vice president because he was the runner-up.The 12th Amendment ratified in 1804 changed that system so that the vice president was chosen in tandem with the president as part of the same ticket. That did not mean they were always on the same team. Many tickets have been forged between rivals who had just run against each other for the nomination, including John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1960, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in 1980 and Barack Obama and Mr. Biden in 2008.The broken relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence is a historical anomaly. Doug Mills/The New York TimesSome vice presidents grew hostile to the presidents they served under, as when John C. Calhoun openly opposed Andrew Jackson during the nullification crisis pitting South Carolina against Washington over a tariff. After being dumped from the re-election ticket in 1832, Calhoun resigned the vice presidency to take a seat in the Senate to resist his former ticket mate’s agenda. Still, Calhoun never challenged Jackson as a candidate.In 1916, former President Theodore Roosevelt and his onetime vice president Charles W. Fairbanks both drew support on the opening ballots at the Republican convention but were not actively campaigning against each other. Hubert Humphrey and his 1968 running mate Edmund Muskie both ran in 1972 for the Democratic nomination, neither successfully. In 2000, former Vice President Dan Quayle ran against George W. Bush, the son of the man who put Mr. Quayle on the 1988 and 1992 tickets.But the closest the country has previously come to a direct contest between running mates was in 1940 when Vice President John Nance Garner, a conservative Texan known as Cactus Jack and no fan of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, waged a campaign for the White House.Garner was known for his love of whiskey, once noting that “I don’t get drunk but once a day.” He is most famous today for his sour assessment of the vice presidency, which he declared not “worth a bucket of warm spit,” or some variation of that.Since no president to that point had run for a third consecutive term owing to the precedent set by George Washington, it was not entirely clear that Roosevelt would be a candidate in 1940, and he made no move to stop Garner or other associates from running. Still, there was no love lost between the two. “I see that the vice president has thrown his bottle — I mean his hat — into the ring,” Roosevelt quipped to his cabinet.Garner, a traditionalist, had fallen out with F.D.R. over the president’s effort to pack the Supreme Court and opposed breaking Washington’s precedent. “As retribution, he declared that he would run for the 1940 presidential nomination, but he never put his heart into it, and no one took his candidacy seriously,” said Mr. Moe, who wrote “Roosevelt’s Second Act,” a book about the 1940 race.Roosevelt played coy all the way up to the Democratic convention, when he finally arranged to be “drafted” to run again. Roosevelt swept to the nomination with 946 delegates. Garner finished third with 61.That election ushered in another change. Until that point, the parties generally chose the vice-presidential candidates, but from then on the nominees effectively took over that decision. Roosevelt picked Henry A. Wallace, leaving Garner to retire to his Texas ranch.At this point, Mr. Trump may regret the choice he made in 2016. But it is not clear that Mr. Pence will do any better than Cactus Jack did. More

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      Trump Is Back, to Tear Our Families Apart Once More

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      My cousin back in rural Illinois, where I grew up and where most of my family still lives, sent me a nice note over Facebook the other day. She saw I had a novel coming out and told me she was proud of me and couldn’t wait to read it. I thanked her and said I’d love to catch lunch the next time I’m in town. She said that would be nice.Then she added: “And no politics … I promise!”I promised as well. We’re going to do our best to honor that promise. But it’s getting harder. Again.Families across America that were so divided by the Trump era have only started to heal in the last couple of years — and now we’re facing the real possibility of a sequel.I’m dreading, and I sense that she and many other Americans are dreading, having to go through this gantlet so soon again. Politics have divided families in ugly ways, and I do sense that the Biden era, for many, has been a chance to try to heal. But the wounds may be about to be reopened.One of the implicit, but central, selling points of a Joe Biden presidency was that, if he did his job right, the average American wouldn’t have to pay much attention to him. The “normalcy” Mr. Biden vowed to return us to was partly about making the executive branch a functioning arm of government again, and about no longer being the (very scary) joke that the country had become globally during the Donald Trump presidency.But at home, for many Americans, it was about something simpler than that: It was about returning to a world where we did not have to talk and fight about politics all the time. It was about being in your own home, among your own family and being able to forget, if just for a little while, that politics were happening at all — or at least assume that reasonable people were taking care of it.The Trump years made this impossible, and the ubiquitousness of politics, the sense that you had to be screaming about the state of the world at all times, fractured families across the country. What had once been merely some awkward moments at Thanksgiving became constant fissures pitting kids against parents, siblings against siblings, generation against generation.Some of these fissures became ruptures, or even chasms: I have one friend who clashed with his in-laws over Mr. Trump so dramatically that they still haven’t met their 3-year-old granddaughter. The constant and inescapable political discourse of 2015 to 2021 frayed every bond of American society, perhaps family most of all.But there has been a quiet change the last couple of years. These disagreements have not gone away: The world is as perilous and fraught as it has always been. But since Mr. Trump left office, you’ve been able to find moments of escape and respite, and even, yes, normalcy. There have not been constant presidential tweets; there has not been a ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries; whatever verbal gaffes Mr. Biden might make, you have felt fairly confident he’d never refer to another country with a scatological vulgarity.Things have not been perfect, and there are still people desperately trying to fight about everything — there’s always that relative who insists on making sure you saw his “Let’s Go Brandon” hat. But with the easing of a pandemic that scrambled the planet, you have been able to walk around in the world for at least a few minutes at a time without worrying that it would explode. Maybe you even mended some fences with the people who, no matter how much you may disagree with them, you love. (My friend’s daughter finally has a meeting with her grandparents planned for this summer.)You could take those first steps, because, for the first time in a long time, politics hasn’t been the center of American life. But the recent CNN town hall with Mr. Trump was a reminder of storm clouds on the horizon — and these clouds look very familiar.A majority of Americans do not want to see another matchup between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. There are many reasons for this, yet I wonder if a big one for many people is the fear that those tumultuous times that we just went through and unceasing torrent of political battles that invaded our holiday dinner table are about to return. Trump versus Biden? This is what we just went through. We have to go through that again?And what if Ron DeSantis gets the Republican nomination over Mr. Trump? Maybe that will just lead to entirely new fights. Though considering how bruising any nomination battle that Mr. Trump loses would be — if such a battle ends at all — I suspect it won’t leave the country in a healing mood, either.My cousin and I disagree on many things, and there have been times — as when I saw her on Facebook cheering on the buses of “patriots” on their way to Washington on Jan. 5, 2021 — when I thought our relationship was essentially over. This was not long after she, someone who detasseled corn in the vast Illinois fields alongside me when we were both children, called me an “elitist deep stater.” It was difficult to wrap my mind around how much had changed: I had gone from affably disagreeing with her about Mitt Romney to wondering if she’d lost touch with reality entirely.But the fact remains: I love my cousin, and my cousin loves me. It is impossible to imagine my life, who I would be, without her place in it, and I’m sure she feels the same way. She has known me forever in a way so few people have. I’ve enjoyed reconnecting and have even thought, “If our relationship can survive 2020, it can survive anything.” But can it survive that twice? I am not sure. I suspect many families across the country are wondering the same thing.We can avoid talking about it, but it’s coming. It lurks, waiting to blast us all apart again. If you want to know why millions of Americans are so wary of a Trump-Biden sequel, that gathering storm is a big part of the answer.Will Leitch is the author, most recently, of the novel “The Time Has Come,” and is a contributing editor at New York magazine.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

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      The Long Career Arc of Joe Biden

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      President Biden’s political career began with tragedy: the death of his wife, Neilia, pictured here, and baby, Naomi, in a car crash in 1972, the month after he was elected to the Senate.

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      Mr. Biden’s sons, Beau and Hunter, were injured in the crash. He was sworn into the Senate by their hospital bedside in Delaware on Jan. 5, 1973.

      Bettmann, Getty Images

      More than three decades before he would be elected president, Mr. Biden began his first presidential campaign in June 1987 alongside his second wife, Jill, and children, Hunter, Ashley and Beau.

      Keith Meyers/The New York Times

      But just three months after declaring his first presidential run, Mr. Biden withdrew from the race, felled by accusations of plagiarizing speeches and law school work.

      Jose R. Lopez/The New York Times

      At the same time he ended his presidential campaign, Mr. Biden was, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presiding over the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Robert Bork.

      John Duricka/AP Photo

      By persuading several Republicans to vote against Judge Bork, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan, he helped sink a nomination that would have shifted the court significantly to the right.

      Jose R. Lopez/The New York Times

      Four years later, Mr. Biden presided over Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, leading an aggressive interrogation of the law professor Anita Hill that would haunt both of them.

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      Mr. Biden ended the hearings without calling witnesses willing to back up Ms. Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment by Mr. Thomas. He was confirmed and remains a Supreme Court justice.

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      The year 1994 brought two of Mr. Biden’s biggest legislative accomplishments, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act, both of which he sponsored.

      John Duricka/AP Photo

      The Violence Against Women Act has been renewed several times, though not without fights. The crime bill helped open the era of mass incarceration of Black people, and Mr. Biden said in 2020 that it had been a “mistake.”

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      As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Biden was deeply involved in negotiations to authorize the invasion of Iraq. He later said he had been wrong to think President George W. Bush “would use the authority we gave him properly.”

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      By the mid-2000s, Mr. Biden — who has traveled to Iraq multiple times — had disavowed his vote for the war and was a vocal critic of its handling.

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      Mr. Biden’s second presidential campaign, 20 years after his first, went little better: The 2008 Democratic primary quickly narrowed to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, leaving Mr. Biden in the cold.

      Josh Haner/The New York Times

      Mr. Biden dropped out after winning less than 1 percent of the vote in Iowa, and Mr. Obama chose him as his running mate that summer.

      Doug Mills/The New York Times

      Mr. Biden finally made it to the White House in 2009, albeit not in the role he had imagined, but as vice president.

      Doug Mills/The New York Times

      He oversaw the administration of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, led negotiations with Congress over fiscal standoffs and was in the Situation Room during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

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      In 2020, as Mr. Biden homed in on his lifelong goal of becoming president, the coronavirus shut down the country. With in-person campaigning suspended, he appeared mostly virtually from his home.

      Erin Schaff/The New York Times

      But the third time was the charm for Mr. Biden, who became one of only a handful of candidates to oust an incumbent president with his defeat of Donald J. Trump.

      Erin Schaff/The New York Times

      Forty-eight years after he was sworn into the Senate by his sons’ hospital bed, Mr. Biden once again took an oath of office in the wake of disaster.

      Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

      Two weeks after the storming of the Capitol, which took U.S. democracy to the brink and led to multiple deaths, he said, “At this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.”

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      Biden Announces Re-election Bid, Defying Trump and History

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      WASHINGTON — President Biden formally announced on Tuesday that he would seek a second term, arguing that American democracy still faces a profound threat from former President Donald J. Trump as he set up the possibility of a climactic rematch between the two next year.In a video that opens with images of a mob of Trump supporters storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the president said that the “fight for our democracy” has “been the work of my first term” but is incomplete while his predecessor mounts a comeback campaign for his old office that Mr. Biden suggested would endanger fundamental rights.“Around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take on those bedrock freedoms,” Mr. Biden said, using Mr. Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan to describe the former president’s allies. “Cutting Social Security that you’ve paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy. Dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books and telling people who they can love. All while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.“When I ran for president four years ago,” he added, “I said we were in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are.”The official declaration finally ended any lingering suspense over Mr. Biden’s intentions and effectively cleared the way to another nomination for the president, barring unforeseen developments. While he had repeatedly and consistently said he intended to run, Mr. Biden stoked renewed speculation by delaying his kickoff for months. Now his team can assemble the formal structure of a campaign organization and raise money to finance it.Mr. Biden tapped Julie Chávez Rodríguez, a senior White House adviser and granddaughter of the iconic labor leader Cesar Chávez, as his campaign manager. Quentin Fulks, a Democratic operative who most recently ran Senator Raphael Warnock’s 2022 re-election campaign in Georgia, will serve as her principal deputy. But the operation is expected to be overseen from the White House by top presidential aides.Although he described himself as “a bridge” to the next generation during his 2020 campaign, a comment that some interpreted as a hint that he would serve only one term, Mr. Biden concluded that he was not in fact ready to hand over the torch yet. His decision was fueled in part, aides said, by his antipathy for Mr. Trump and his belief that he is the Democrat best positioned to keep the criminally indicted and twice-impeached former president from recapturing the White House.In offering himself as a candidate again, Mr. Biden is asking Americans to trust him with the powers of the commander in chief well into his ninth decade. At age 80, Mr. Biden is already the oldest president in American history, and, if he were to win, he would be 86 at the end of a second term, nearly nine years older than Ronald Reagan was when he left the White House in 1989. Mr. Trump, no youngster at 76, would himself outlast every president by age other than Mr. Biden if he were restored to the Oval Office and finished his new term at 82.As Mr. Biden formally kicked off his campaign, he appeared at this point to be a virtual lock to win his party’s nomination. While many Democrats had hoped he would cede to a younger candidate, no formidable challenger for the nomination has emerged. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a son of the iconic assassinated senator and a vocal critic of vaccines, and Marianne Williamson, the self-help author whose 2020 campaign fizzled before the first votes were cast, have announced long-shot bids but pose little evident threat to the incumbent president.If Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump square off again next year, it would be the first time that the same nominees faced each other in consecutive presidential elections since 1956, when Dwight D. Eisenhower beat Adlai Stevenson for the second time. It would also be the first time a president was challenged by his predecessor since Theodore Roosevelt attempted a comeback in 1912 against his handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, in a three-way campaign won by Woodrow Wilson.While Mr. Biden presides over a more unified party than his potential challenger does, many Democrats privately worry that the president may not be up to another campaign. His overall approval rating remains mired at just over 42 percent, according to an aggregation of polls by the political website FiveThirtyEight, lower than 10 of the last 13 presidents at this point in their terms.While polls show that most Democrats have favorable opinions about Mr. Biden, a majority of them would still rather he not run again. In a survey by NBC News released this week, 70 percent of Americans, including 51 percent of Democrats, said he should not seek a second term. Seven out of 10 of those who did not want him to serve four more years cited his age as a factor.Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump face a strikingly competitive race, with recent polls by Yahoo News, The Wall Street Journal and Morning Consult showing the president slightly ahead while surveys by The Economist and the Harvard University Center for American Political Studies find him trailing by several points. Mr. Biden faces similarly mixed results against Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the strongest challenger to Mr. Trump for the Republican nomination.Mr. Trump did not even wait for Mr. Biden’s video to be posted to attack the president’s re-election announcement, castigating him in a statement on Monday night for high inflation, gas prices and illegal immigration. “You could take the five worst presidents in American history, and put them together, and they would not have done the damage Joe Biden has done to our nation in just a few short years,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. “Not even close.”Mr. Biden’s announcement represented the latest improbable chapter in a long life in public office, the fourth time he has thrown his hat in the presidential ring and presumably the last campaign of a half-century-plus career that began with his election to the New Castle County Council in 1970.Over the course of 36 years in the Senate, eight years as vice president and campaigns for the White House in 1988, 2008 and 2020, Mr. Biden has become one of the most familiar faces in American life, known for his resilience in adversity as well as his habitual gaffes. And yet the avuncular, backslapping, work-across-the-aisle deal maker has struggled to translate decades of good will into the unifying presidency he promised.Working with the narrowest of partisan margins in Congress, Mr. Biden in his first two years scored some of the most ambitious legislative victories of any modern president, including a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package; a $1 trillion program to rebuild the nation’s roads, highways, airports and other infrastructure; and major investments to combat climate change, lower prescription drug costs for seniors, treat veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and build up the nation’s semiconductor industry. Some of those bills passed with Republican votes.Along the way, he has revitalized international alliances that had frayed under Mr. Trump, rallying NATO and other partners around the world to stand against Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. With bipartisan support, he has committed more than $100 billion to arm Ukraine’s military and help its government and people survive the Russian onslaught.Yet his decision to withdraw forces from Afghanistan after 20 years in keeping with an agreement with the Taliban struck by Mr. Trump led to a debacle in 2021 in which the radical militants took over the country, fleeing Afghans swarmed American airplanes taking off from Kabul and a suicide bomber killed 13 American troops and 170 Afghans during the withdrawal.Mr. Biden has also struggled to secure the southwestern U.S. border, where illegal migration has soared, and he has had mixed success in stabilizing the post-pandemic economy, which saw inflation rise to its highest level in four decades and gas prices shoot up to record levels. While both have begun to come back down and unemployment is near historic lows, many Americans remain unsettled by economic anxiety.Perhaps most frustrating to Mr. Biden, his hopes to heal the rifts that widened under Mr. Trump have so far been dashed, with American society still deeply polarized and his predecessor still a potent force in stirring the forces of division and emboldening white supremacists and anti-Semites.The president’s critics say that Mr. Biden is the one who is divisive because of his attacks on Mr. Trump’s “ultra-MAGA Republicans,” and they portray him as a socialist bent on destroying the country. Regardless of whom they nominate, Republicans expect to challenge Mr. Biden next year by linking him to the nation’s economic troubles and depicting him as a feckless leader held captive by his party’s activist left.Even as Mr. Biden put off a formal kickoff to his re-election bid, his team had been quietly making plans for the coming campaign. Top advisers such as Anita Dunn, Steven J. Ricchetti and Jennifer O’Malley Dillon will oversee the campaign from the White House even though the operation’s formal headquarters will almost certainly be in Wilmington, Del., under Ms. Chavez Rodriguez’s direction.But it will be much different than any campaign in which Mr. Biden has ever run. His first two bids for the White House each collapsed by the end of the first caucus, in an era long before the ubiquitous presence of social media and modern technological techniques, and his 2020 campaign was warped by the Covid-19 pandemic, which kept him largely isolated at his home in Delaware.This time aides said he planned a vigorous campaign travel schedule but would lean heavily on digital communications that bypass the traditional news media. The emerging contest will be complicated by the fact that his opponent is under criminal indictment by a local Democratic prosecutor in New York on charges of covering up hush money paid to a porn star and is being investigated by Mr. Biden’s own Justice Department for instigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and illegally refusing to turn over classified documents.Although Mr. Biden has remained publicly silent on Mr. Trump’s legal troubles, the former president has tried to blame the incumbent, accusing him of wielding the justice system against him out of partisan animus. No evidence of that has surfaced, but Mr. Biden’s own handling of classified documents is being investigated by a special counsel and his son Hunter Biden is being investigated by another federal prosecutor.Mr. Biden’s strategists recognize that he starts off the campaign with significant vulnerabilities but are banking on the idea that however ambivalent swing voters may be about him, they are dead set against putting Mr. Trump back in the White House. If they face another Republican, they plan to argue that anyone who wins that party’s nomination will have to adopt the same radical positions as Mr. Trump. More

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      We Were Wrong About President Biden

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      When I saw President George W. Bush aboard Air Force One during his first year in office, I finally fully got it — why an erstwhile cutup and goofball so strangely suited to the ordeal of a presidential campaign had put himself through one, losing sleep, tempting heartache, risking humiliation. On this airborne ego trip, he had a bed, and I don’t mean a seat that flattened into one. He had an office, with a desk bigger than those of some earthbound executives. Aides carried papers to him. Aides ferried papers away. They called him “Mr. President.” He’d upgraded from his old surname, as illustrious as it was, to a kind of divinity.There was no doubt that he’d seek a second term of that, though he chafed at certain obligations of the presidency and palpably yearned for his Crawford, Tex., ranch.I never flew with President Barack Obama. But I visited him in the White House several times. I went once with more than a dozen other well-known journalists, including the MSNBC superstar Rachel Maddow; I went another time with a half dozen fellow columnists, including my Pulitzer Prize-winning colleague Maureen Dowd. Our stature didn’t change the quickness with which we snapped to attention when he walked into the Roosevelt Room, the raptness with which we hung on his every syllable. His every syllable mattered: He was the leader of the free world, with more authority than anyone else in the richest and most powerful nation of them all. He could see awe in almost every face that turned toward him, as almost every face did.There was no question that he’d try to hold on to that for eight years, despite signs and chatter that he and Michelle Obama disliked much about the gilded goldfish bowl of White House life.And there should never have been much mystery about what President Joe Biden, who released a video announcing his re-election campaign early Tuesday, would decide. A person doesn’t just saunter away from adulation and affirmation on a scale this monumental — at least not the kind of person who wanted them enough to pursue the presidency in the first place.Over the past six months, many of us commentators have weighed in on whether Biden, who, at 80, is older than anyone at the Resolute Desk before him, should seek the Democratic presidential nomination again. We weren’t so much putting odds on his course of action as we were assessing his energy, his acuity, Democratic voters’ preference for an alternative and the party’s smartest strategy for keeping Donald Trump and the MAGA conspiracists at the gate.But that discussion made sense only if there were an actual possibility that Biden would step aside, so we were implying as much. And we were fools.Maybe that’s too harsh: By dint of his age, we had reason to wonder if he’d be battling health-related challenges that would make his circumstances and calculations fundamentally different from Bush’s, Obama’s or those of many of his other predecessors over the past half-century.But the idea that he’d coolly examine his favorability ratings (“Dammit, Jill, I just can’t seem to crack 50 percent!”), despair of Republicans’ ceaseless torture of him and his kin (“It’s malarkey!”), glance around at younger Democratic politicians itching for their day and decide to call it quits: That’s laughable. That’s malarkey. It contradicts the very appeal of the job. It disregards the nature of those who find it so very appealing.The people willing to accept the invasive scrutiny and exhausting odyssey en route to the White House believe at some level that they belong there or keenly crave reassurance of that. They’re not sated by the next best thing. They’re after peak recognition, the apex job and the view of the world from that summit — a world now at their feet.“Most of them had this ambition from grade school,” Timothy Naftali, a New York University historian, told me. “Others have appetites that grew with the eating. Regardless, there is something extraordinary — not normal — about desiring this much power.”I’d bet a great deal that the rush of that power — more than safety from criminal prosecution, more than the opportunity to use the White House as a profit center — is Donald Trump’s greatest motivator as he makes another run at the office. There’s no magnitude of personal wealth, no amplitude of fame, that confers the sort of bragging rights that the presidency does.The only presidents over the past century who could have run for re-election and chose not to — Calvin Coolidge in 1928, Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968 — had served more than one term already, because they’d begun their presidencies by finishing out the terms of predecessors who had died in office. There’s a reason for that, and it’s a precedent that every modern president is aware of.“History is such that it would be taken as an admission of failure if you didn’t run again,” Stuart Stevens, a Republican strategist who was a senior adviser on presidential campaigns for George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, told me. “Either you think you succeeded in the first term and you deserve a second one or you think you failed in the first term and you want to do better.”In which category does Biden belong? “I think he thinks he’s been a great success,” Stevens said. “I agree.” Regardless, Stevens said, the presidency is difficult to surrender. “Being able to change history is intoxicating.”Bush was proving the doubters, including his own parents, wrong. Obama was living the kind of dream that was out of reach for his father. Bill Clinton was a glutton for approval, forever supping at the nearest and largest buffet. Trump was — is — Trump, who judges every day, every hour, by some cosmic analogue to Nielsen ratings. The presidency is always the most watched program.And Biden? The unlacquered oratory, “Scranton Joe” moniker and daily Amtrak schlep to the Capitol that he made during his decades in the Senate give him the unpretentious aspect of a journeyman toiling humbly in our service, unattached to and unimpressed by all the pomp of the office.But we lose track: He announced his first campaign for the presidency in 1987, when he was just 44, apparently confident even then that he could lead the United States of America as well as anyone else. While that bid ended early and disastrously, amid allegations and then an admission of plagiarism, he ran for the presidency again two decades later, when Obama ended up prevailing and choosing him as a wingman.We forget about the sting of rejection that Biden must have felt when, after serving loyally as Obama’s vice president, Obama essentially tagged Hillary Clinton to succeed him. We forget about how Biden pressed on after humiliating finishes in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary in early 2020. That determination suggests a robust self-regard and potent yearning.And when we dwell on his age, we focus on what it may or may not mean for the vigor he brings to the job and for the degree of confidence in him that voters will feel. But there’s another facet of it: He waited for the presidency longer than anyone else. That must make his time in office all the sweeter.Biden is also propelled by his obvious — and correct — conviction that the moral corruption of the Republican Party makes the stakes of continued Democratic control of the White House as high as can be. He surely sees himself as the party’s best hope for that. A part of him is indeed doing this for us.But he’s doing this for himself, too — for a validation without rival, an exhilaration without peer. There are people to whom those feelings wouldn’t matter. They’re not the people who go around pleading for votes.(This article was updated to reflect news events.)I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter (@FrankBruni).Source images by Drew Angerer/Getty Images and Getty Images Europe, via Irish Government, via Getty Images. More

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      What Are Biden’s 2024 Chances? I Asked These Democratic Campaign Veterans.

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      On Monday, when the “Today” show’s Al Roker asked President Biden about seeking a second term, Biden replied, “I plan on running, Al, but we’re not prepared to announce it yet.”That answer strikes me as another in a series of soft launches and quasi-commitments meant to manage expectations, but the president and those around him have been signaling that he intends to seek re-election. When it comes, an official declaration will be just a formality, a campaign mechanism to concentrate attention and coverage.Biden is running now.And in anticipation of the inevitable, in recent weeks I talked to several political advisers who’ve run campaigns for Democratic presidents to get their assessments of Biden’s advantages and challenges.The list includes Timothy Kraft, who ran Jimmy Carter’s re-election campaign in 1980 until just before the election, and Les Francis, who stepped in to run day-to-day operations in Kraft’s wake. It also includes James Carville, who ran Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, and David Plouffe, who ran Barack Obama’s in 2008.I wasn’t interested in predictions, which are mostly worthless this far from Election Day. I wasn’t asking how the race would look at the end, but how it looked at the beginning.To start, there was general agreement that Biden’s policy record was strong: The economy, a mixed bag with low unemployment and high inflation, may be a net positive for Biden right now, but some said that how voters feel about it nearer the election is what will matter most. As Plouffe said, “People have one life, and they are living it right now.” It’s about how people feel about that life at the moment they vote, regardless of what the data say or the future holds.Most of these political pros agreed that Biden’s age will be a significant issue to overcome — one reason they’d prefer a rematch with Donald Trump rather than a contest against a younger, first-time Republican presidential candidate who’d be able to draw a more stark generational contrast. It’s unclear how the age issue will play out, but as Kraft put it, the Republicans “are going to do this ‘Sleepy Joe’ thing to the fare-thee-well.”The other reason Trump is the preferred opponent is that, as Francis observed, “he is damaged goods, and he’s going to be more damaged.” The consensus was that Trump’s legal problems will help him in the primaries but weaken him in the general. The consideration is simple: Among those who voted against Trump-created chaos in 2020, who would vote for Trump in 2024 after he’s sown even more chaos?Several of the consultants were conscious of, and concerned about, the country’s growing partisan divide and the dwindling pool of swing voters and swing districts — the shrinking number of minds to change and hearts to woo. An untold number of people in the United States “have probably never met anyone from the other party,” Carville said.He raised perhaps the most interesting concern, one I wasn’t expecting: “The biggest story in my mind out of 2022 is abysmally low Black turnout.” Specifically, he said, “it’s a problem with younger Black voters.”In the most recent midterm elections, even in places where Democrats fielded strong Black candidates against flawed Republican opponents, Carville considered Black turnout underwhelming. But he isn’t sure what’s causing this problem, or how to fix it.I talked to Terrance Woodbury, a founding partner at the consultancy HIT Strategies, which researches Black voter sentiment. A January survey found that three-quarters of Black voters don’t believe their lives have improved since Biden became president, despite his administration’s “initiating or completing” a majority of the Black agenda, Woodbury said.Woodbury underscored what can only be described as a glaring communications failure, particularly when it comes to young people. As he said, “It’s not that we haven’t made progress,” it’s that younger Black voters “don’t know about the progress.”Now, people can chafe at Woodbury’s characterization and criticize voters for not staying abreast of political news‌, but it’s not a winning strategy to place blam‌e on the voters you’re trying to court‌.Kraft echoed the concern, and said it went beyond outreach to Black voters: “The D.N.C. chairman should be on those Sunday talk shows or should have more guest columns, op-ed pieces, anything.”Carville is also worried about Republican weaponization of the term, and idea of, “wokeness.” If being woke “means that people, particularly Black people, should be aware of interactions they have with white power, it’s a totally legitimate word,” he said. “But if it means the triumph of identity over ideology, you lose me, and I think you lose a lot of people.”He went further in his attempt to insulate Biden from the concept, saying, “The most non-woke person is Joe Biden,” even as he’s “become the greatest president for Black America maybe we ever had.”I think that’s a stretch, and his framing could do more harm than good in trying to attract young Black voters, but it could work in attracting another demographic that Democrats are worried about: the non-college-educated. In fact, one of Carville’s central complaints about wokeness is his belief that it was appropriated by white intellectuals.This all bleeds into an issue Plouffe calls “the biggest question in American politics today”: whether Republicans continue to make gains with non-college-educated voters of color in an era in which the “education fault lines are much more severe than they were in 2008 or 2012,” with Democrats attracting more college graduates and Republicans strengthening their position among those who didn’t graduate.My takeaway from these conversations was that, at least at the beginning of his campaign, Biden has obvious advantages but also faces significant obstacles. Often, late in campaigns, Democratic candidates to try to use fear of the opponent as voter motivation. But that can backfire.As Woodbury told me, his firm saw a significant erosion in turnout and Democratic support in 2022 among Black men because they “do not respond to messages of fear and loss.” Instead, he said, “they need a message of what they have gained, not what they will gain.” They respond to a message of being empowered rather than being endangered.This messaging, which should already have been a more central part of Democrats’ overall pitch, has to start now.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More