We are now less than a week away from the Iowa Presidential Caucuses; the event that traditionally marks the real beginning of the presidential primary season. On the Democratic side, frontrunner Hillary Clinton is trying to run out the clock on the insurgent candidacy of Bernie Sanders (in other words, she is desperately hoping to avoid a repeat of 2008 when Barack Obama pulled off a political upset for the ages against her). The Republican side, however, is much more interesting with a dozen candidates still vying for the nomination. The most sober analysis of the GOP race, however, would admit that it is a three man race between Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Marco Rubio. Once the dust clears from Iowa, New Hampshire, and perhaps even Super Tuesday, those three will likely be the last ones standing. As such, Senator Ted Cruz has a legitimate shot at the White House.
Senator Cruz’s candidacy has been unorthodox, to say the least, even before it officially began. Quite frankly, his campaign for the White House began the instant he defeated Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the 2012 Texas Senate primary; a political upset that shot him into national stardom with Tea Party and other conservative factions of the Republican Party. He carried this momentum into the Senate, where he quickly made a name for himself as a man willing to fire shots at his own party and risk monumental political defeats for the sake of his ideology. No event better illustrates this than the government shutdown he initiated in 2013, ostensibly to force Democrats to abandon Obamacare. Needless to say, this strategy failed big time (at least as far as ending Obamacare was concerned) and was a monumental public relations defeat for the Republican Party. From that moment on, it was Cruz against the “Washington Cartel,” (the cabal of Republican and Democratic elites Cruz believes conspire to make sure they do not lose power) and a presidential campaign was all, but inevitable.
Cruz announced his campaign last March, the first major candidate of either party to do so. From his first announcement at Liberty University, the bastion of social conservatism created by Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, Cruz has staked his candidacy on appealing to the far right, specifically conservatives who he believes did not show up to vote for Mitt Romney in 2012 because they believed Romney to be too centrist. Whether or not such a large electorate even exists is unclear, but for Cruz’s sake, he had better hope that they are, since he has completely alienated the traditional party power brokers and derided the “mushy middle” of American politics. If Cruz is to be the nominee, it will be the first successful coup against traditional Republican kingmakers since the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964, and the first of any consequence since Ronald Reagan in 1976.
The uniquely anti-party nature of Cruz’s campaign lead me to wonder how many American presidents were hostile to the leaders of the party that elected them and how successful they were in the Oval office. In American history, I can think of four such presidents: Jimmy Carter, Teddy Roosevelt, Andrew Johnson, and John Tyler. Three of these figures ascended to the presidency as Vice President, so Carter was the only one who was truly elected as the kind of “outsider” that Cruz claims to be. Unfortunately, only one of these four figures is universally recognized as a truly successful president- Theodore Roosevelt. TR belongs in this list because Senator Platt of New York and other party powerbrokers sought to constrain him by appointing him to the oft-meaningless position of Vice President. This plan backfired when Leon Czolgosz assassinated President McKinley a few months into McKinley’s second term, elevating Roosevelt to the Oval Office. The energetic Roosevelt seized control of the party agenda and was quite willing to use his executive power to effect change when Congress did not act quickly enough for him. His trust-busting, conservation, and foreign policy victories have given Roosevelt a uniformly positive reputation among historians.
The story is not so rosy for the other three presidents, however. John Tyler, while successfully leaving his mark on the presidency by asserting the Vice President’s right to become president upon the death of his predecessor, was nonetheless disastrously at odds with the national Whig leadership. He vetoed many key Whig initiatives, lost the support of the Cabinet he inherited, and was eventually expelled from the party for his many battles with the Whig Party. Andrew Johnson was never actually a Republican, despite being Abraham Lincoln’s running mate on a wartime national unity ticket. Johnson, the lone southern officeholder to support Lincoln and the Union from the beginning of the Civil War, was nonetheless a southerner at heart. As such, his vision for Reconstruction and bring the South back into the Union was drastically at odds with the Radical Republicans who wanted harsher punitive measures and far more liberal civil rights measures than Johnson supported. Johnson’s battles against the leadership eventually morphed into a series of demagogic crusades that resulted in impeachment by the House and almost conviction by the Senate (one vote short). Finally, Jimmy Carter’s presidency is generally regarded as an unmitigated disaster. Between the Malaise Speech, the Iranian Hostage Crisis, and stagflation, Carter experienced dramatic failures in every realm of policy (although, to be fair, the Camp David Accords was a shining accomplishment on his part). Certainly on domestic matters, much of Carter’s failure can be attributed to his inability to work with Congress, especially a highly influential senator named Ted Kennedy. Carter brought in many of his own people and tried to get too many things accomplished his own way, without consulting the powerbrokers on the Hill who could help him pass such ambitious agenda items as health care and increasing social programs. In the end, Carter could only stand there helpless as the country’s economy collapsed around him.
So, which of these presidents would Cruz most likely mirror? Given the exhaustive list of things Cruz is aiming to destroy or repeal, it is hard not to see a conservative version of Jimmy Carter in the future. President Cruz would be far more interested in vilifying Mitch McConnell than actually working with him to pass a conservative agenda, he would let his vision get in the way of what he could actually accomplish (it has happened before). Cruz’s senatorial record is the reason why I lean towards Carter, as opposed to TR. Had Cruz successfully carried out any of his policy goals as a senator, I would be inclined to think that he could lead in the way that Roosevelt did. Instead, he has yet to accomplish anything meaningful as a senator and instead has made enemies out of leaders in Congress, especially those of his own party. Depending on how Obama’s executive actions hold up in courts, Cruz may be empowered enough to be as energetic and active as Roosevelt, but if the courts strike down these “executive actions,” he could find himself perpetually fighting Congress like Andrew Johnson in a demagogic style. No matter what, if he wins the White House this year (a rather slim chance), Cruz will have to prepare himself for a series of long, drawn-out battles even among his fellow Republicans.
RSS Feed
