A new poll from NBC News tells us the American people overwhelmingly do not want to face another Joe Biden-Donald Trump presidential choice. So, naturally, that's what they'll most likely get from a political system that simply doesn't work.
Can it ever work again? Probably. We can hope.
What we need, but don't currently have, are better candidates than one tired and a little bumbling and the other the worst person ever. Maybe they can break through, though it won't be soon enough for 2024 and the horrid four years after.
Political parties don't create presidents. All they're good for is raising money to beat the hated other side at levels below the presidential. So, they're important--irrelevant presidentially, but important in the sense that our government has no other foundation currently.
They rely in their irrelevant importance on their most rich and passionate supporters and, in turn, impose such ever-intensifying polarization that Congress can't function.
When it comes to the presidency, parties have no training grounds or farm clubs. They get the White House only when they get lucky in spite of themselves--when an individual talent comes along that can win in spite of them, or in direct conflict with them, or, as in Biden's exception, by default because the other guy is so horrible.
Democrats won in 1960 because of JFK's vigor. They won in 1976 because an unlikely outsider, Jimmy Carter, ran with a fresh post-Watergate, anti- politics image and message. They won in 1992 when Bill Clinton proclaimed himself a "new Democrat" with a "third way." They won in 2008 when Barack Obama came along with a new image, energy and message that could beat Hillary Clinton even as the national party was fully merged with her personal campaign.
For a while Republicans practiced a party-centric and doomed presidential candidate-selection process by running the guy whose turn it seemed to be. Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney. With George W. Bush as a curious eight-year exception, Republicans won only when a madman descended an escalator with an ability to connect and fire up primitives in a direct party-defying way as party regulars tried desperately until relenting to figure out how to stop him.
Trump revealed himself a presidential-level player when, in an early GOP debate in 2016, he alone raised his hand when the candidates were asked to say if they were unwilling to promise to support the eventual nominee. He was saying three things--to heck with the silly party, that he was bigger than the party and running by and for himself, and that everyone surely knew but wouldn't say that the characters around him on that stage--Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Jeb Bush--were pitiable.
This new and independent- seeming talent on the Democratic side--JFK, Clinton, Obama--governed cautiously when elected, overpowering the philosophically devout. JFK wanted to go slow on civil rights to stay competitive in the South. Clinton wanted to go slow on gay rights and wound up with "don't-ask-don't tell." Obama was four-square for something called civil unions until a movement--not a party--forced him to follow and say he'd evolved into support for same-sex marriage.
So, you win the presidency with talent in a fresh face with new messages, then keep it by being powerful and deft enough to keep your base in check.
Trump had the talent to win, but no remote version of deftness. He was the crazy base himself. And he lost. But he so stoked the polarizing passions that they now hold American politics hostage and make him still relevant and conceivably a threat to return, indictment and all.
Ron DeSantis threatened to be a new face for the Republicans, but he doesn't at the moment appear to be holding up well to closer examination. Mike Pence is old-fashioned smarmy. Things are so desperate for Republicans that their most interesting new face might be one that is 72 years old--that of Asa Hutchinson, plodding through Arkansas and national politics for only 40-plus years and now proposing as fresh a hasty retreat to the 1980s.
Pete Buttigieg threatened to be a new face for Democrats, but now he's just a big shot from Washington dropping in for a couple of minutes at your airport to tout increased spending for concrete. Kamala Harris can't seem to cut even the vice presidency. The freshest face with the highest level of personal political talent is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and her excuse for a new idea is European-styled Democratic socialism, which American swing states are disinclined to advance.
I'm desperately seeking a savior, or at least an individual offering performance skill, a clever new synthesizing message, deftness, personality and--most importantly--the strength to plow through the raging dysfunction.
She's out there somewhere.
Will she need to be a Democrat? Probably. The Republicans have gone crazier, and a dreadful party primary must be endured and successfully negotiated, its eventual irrelevancy aside.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.