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Who can handle "the pressure?"
The new film "Pressure" is an accurate retelling of the fateful days leading up to the Allies’ invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. The success of the D-Day landings were far from a forgone conclusion either as to the date of their launch or its chances of success.
Then General Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower had to make the decision to "go-no go" in the early days of June 82 years ago, and the pressure on "Ike" was enormous and unrelenting. Tens of thousands of soldiers’ lives hung in the balance, as did the fate of millions under Hitler’s evil rule. The film provides a superb lesson on such moments and Ike’s (played by Brendan Fraser) willingness to make the final decision amidst the uncertainties of weather and Wermacht deployments is a testament to the granite from which he was made.
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Ideally, American voters would look for Ike’s qualities in every presidential election — for the ability to make the best decisions on the most important choices — but that’s not how it turns out. Rarely do voters think about the biggest decisions and who ought to make them. Usually, voters are carried along by their own sense of their own well-being as well as cross-currents in the culture that are driving deep divides across the country’s vast electorate.
If there is an incumbent in the Oval Office seeking re-election, it is almost always a "referendum election" on how he has done in the job.
But when there is no incumbent, American voters use entirely different calculations.
One theory of how Americans actually pick presidents when "change" dominates the country’s political atmosphere and there is no incumbent: Voters choose the candidate with the personality type most different from the incumbent when the incumbent isn’t running. This grand theory of presidential politics is often associated with David Axelrod, longtime advisor to former President Barack Obama and the Democrat’s answer to Karl Rove when it comes to a grasp of the big and the small details of American politics.
A second "grand theory" is the "capital versus the countryside." One of America’s sharpest analysts of politics over the past half century is Michael Barone. A decade ago, the American Enterprise Institute scholar observed "The capital versus the countryside: that’s the new political divide, visible in multiple surprise election results over the past eleven months. It cuts across old partisan lines and replaces old divisions — labor versus management, North versus South, Catholic versus Protestant — that traditionally divided voters." Another way of putting this divide is coastal elites v. "fly-over" country.
Combine both approaches and you get the classic four square box. A candidate of either party has a general personality either like or not like the incumbent, and a candidate represents the Beltway or the anti-Beltway sentiments.
Two candidates who embodied change from the termed-out incumbent as well as being anti-Beltway were Presidents Obama and Trump. Joe Biden was very much a creature of the Beltway and the elites who despised Trump, and when Trump roared back with the greatest political comeback in American history it was very much countryside v. capital at work.
The 2028 cycle unofficially kicked off with first big, splashy profile of an almost-certain candidate in the form of a lengthy Wall Street Journal profile of former Ambassador to Japan, Mayor of Chicago, Chief of Staff to Obama and Deputy Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton as well as former Congressman and investment banker Rahm Emanuel.
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Emanuel is as close to the complete Beltway insider as Democrats will come in the 2028 cycle. He’s also very smart, exceptionally skilled in the dark arts of politics, and a traditional center-left Democrat. While as combative as Trump, Emanuel is sheep-dipped in the language of legacy media and very much an intellectual and master of the details.
He is also Jewish and his middle name is Israel. Can such former qualifications among Democrats be turned again from the disabilities they now represent in a party deeply infected with antisemitism.
"Outsiders" likely to be opposite Emanuel on debate stages in early 2027 — let the games begin! — are California Governor Gavin Newsom, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Members of Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ro Khanna. All four and probably more will want to run against both Trump and the Beltway.
Expect from Emanuel some obligatory critiques of Trump — "the most corrupt White House in history, one run like EBay" has been penciled in on Democratic talking points — but mostly a focus on education and the reality of an eroding middle class. Emanuel will have to find his way through a Democratic Party poisoned with anti-Israel and indeed antisemitic tropes, but his is the candidacy most likely to keep Republicans awake at night. Emanuel could awaken the long dormant Henry "Scoop" Jackson/Sam Nunn pulse in the Democratic Party. His four years as Biden’s Ambassador to China polished his foreign policy credentials and gave him an appreciation for the menace of Xi Jinping.
The GOP field is also beginning to emerge. As with the Democrats, there’s a divide within it, one certain to appear in the debates of 2027 and the primaries of 2028.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show" heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
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