Episode 19B - End of 2024 Special

In this bonus episode, we look back on the year 2024, providing historical context for its dramatic events. We compare and contrast the various US presidents who have faced an impeachment, and examine its impact upon their subsequent political careers. We consider Grover Cleveland and Donald Trump as the only two presidents in American history to be elected to non-consecutive terms. We review some historic aspects of the 2024 presidential campaign, which featured an incumbent president stepping down as his party's nominee, and two assassination attempts against his challenger. Finally, we briefly consider the current domestic and foreign policy challenges that the US government will face during 2025.

Transcript

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From Boomers to Millennials is a modern U.S. history podcast providing a fresh look at 20th century America. Welcome to Episode 19B, the End of 2024 Special. As I discussed during my interview with my co-producer Erin during our last episode, released back in November, we are striving to get the podcast back on track by putting out episodes more frequently than during the last couple of years. Unfortunately, the long-awaited episode 20 about 1962 will not be ready until January 2025. In the meantime, I really wanted to check in with my listeners and release some new scripted content before the end of the year 2024. For this reason, I've written up a few brief thoughts to share with you about how we might view the events of 2024 within the broader scope of modern U.S. history. Because upon reflection, it's been a quite historic and dramatic year. Let me preface my comments here by saying that I respect the fact that members of my audience have a diversity of views and opinions about current events. For that reason, I intend to focus my analysis not through the lens of my own personal beliefs about how policies should have been different or about what I believe ought to happen in the future in order to address various problems. Instead, I want to focus on how future historians will likely view the significance of the events of the past year. So, for a moment, let's try to set aside whatever emotional baggage we may have about the exhausting year 2024 and just put its often unprecedented events in a historical context. The first proverbial elephant in the room that needs to be addressed is is American voters' decision to elect Republican candidate Donald J. Trump to a second term in this year's presidential election. Trump will become only the second president in U.S. history to serve non-consecutive terms in office, following a trail blazed by Grover Cleveland, who is not exactly a household name in the 21st century. Cleveland was the Democratic governor of New York State when he was first elected to the White House in the United States presidential election of 1884. At the end of his first term, incumbent President Cleveland won the nation's popular vote again during the election of November 1888, but he was narrowly defeated by Republican Benjamin Harrison in the Electoral College, so he was out of the White House. But Grover Cleveland then experienced a political comeback in 1892, when he was once again nominated by the Democratic Party and went on to defeat President Harrison in the November election. Cleveland only captured 46% of the overall 1892 popular vote, a plurality rather than an outright majority, but the incumbent Harrison's share of the vote dropped to only 43%. The Republican had won 48% back in 1888, and Harrison also fell short in the Electoral College this time. The reason that neither major party candidate captured an outright majority in 1892 is that almost 9% of the nation's votes, and the electoral votes of five states, went to a third party candidate, James Weaver of the Populist Party. Interesting movement, by the way, but we don't have time to get into it. So anyway, Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms, and he is considered to have been the 22nd and the 24th President of the United States. Trump was the 45th President, and he will also become the 47th U.S. President when he is inaugurated in a few weeks. Ironically, Cleveland recaptured the White House in 1892 by campaigning for lower tariffs. During 2024, Trump won re-election while promising to significantly increase tariffs on most foreign goods. Donald Trump will not only be the second president to serve non-consecutive terms, he will also be the first ever president who has faced an impeachment vote and then was re-elected as chief executive. The first president ever to face impeachment was Andrew Johnson, a VP who became president in 1865 following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was a Democrat who had been included on a victorious unity ticket with Republican incumbent President Lincoln in 1864. During his administration, President Andrew Johnson clashed with radical Republicans in Congress, who felt he was being too soft on former Confederates, and in 1868 he was impeached for violating something called the Tenure of Office Act. Congress fell just short of convicting Johnson of high crimes and misdemeanors, and thus removing him from office. Still, when his term ended, the Democratic Party declined to renominate Andrew Johnson in 1868, perhaps because he is widely considered to be one of the least effective American presidents ever. After his presidency, Johnson returned to his home state of Tennessee and unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in 1870. He then lost a race for a seat in the House of Representatives in 1872. Former President Andrew Johnson finally returned to elected office in 1875, becoming a U.S. Senator after winning a special election, but he died of a stroke just a few months later. In 1974, the U.S. Congress threatened Republican President Richard M. Nixon with impeachment, following the many troubling revelations about his conduct in office that came to light during investigations of the Watergate scandal. Nixon chose to resign in April 1974 to avoid being removed from office. And, spoiler alert, that was effectively the end of his political career. Then Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998, facing charges of lying under oath and obstruction of justice related to the Whitewater financial investigation and his admitted affair with intern Monica Lewinsky. However, after the House of Representatives voted to impeach, the Senate acquitted Clinton and he remained in office. Clinton was already in his second presidential term when he faced impeachment, so he was ineligible to run for president again due to the 22nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Bill Clinton remained an influential figure in the Democratic Party, but his political career effectively ended when he left office, although his wife Hillary's career, of course, was just getting started. In December 2019, the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump. He was accused of improper conduct in office because he'd threatened to withhold military aid from Ukraine unless that country's president dug up dirt against his political rival Joe Biden, who Trump viewed as his most formidable potential opponent in the November 2020 presidential election. In February of 2020, the U.S. Senate acquitted Trump of the impeachment charges. Remarkably, Trump then faced a second impeachment vote just a year later. This one occurred in the immediate aftermath of an angry mob attacking the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021. The insurrectionists sought to prevent the certification of Democrat Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election. President Trump was charged by Congress with inciting the insurrection because he had claimed the election had been fraudulently stolen from him, and he had urged all of his supporters to gather at the Capitol on January 6th in order to pressure Congress members and Vice President Pence into challenging the Electoral College results that showed Biden as the winner. The rioters' efforts to prevent congressional certification of Biden's victory were unsuccessful, but the Capitol building was seriously damaged and hundreds of Capitol police were severely injured. On January 20, 2021, President Biden was sworn into office. On February 13th, the Senate acquitted Trump of the impeachment charges, falling 10 votes short of the two-thirds threshold needed for a conviction that would have barred Trump from running for federal office again. So, President Trump's re-election victory in 2024 makes him by far the most politically successful formerly impeached president in American history. Trump also won in spite of various other legal challenges since his 2020 departure from the White House. In March 2023, a civil jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation of journalist E. Jean Carroll. In February 2024, another civil court held Trump liable for business fraud. Finally, in April 2024, a criminal jury found the former president guilty of violating federal campaign finance laws. All three of these guilty verdicts occurred in Trump's former home state of New York. His defenders alleged these convictions were politically motivated. While he was running for president during 2024, Trump also faced pending federal charges for fomenting the January 6th insurrection and for mishandling classified documents. Despite all this legal baggage, the American electorate apparently still found Trump preferable to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race. The circumstances surrounding Harris' nomination constituted yet another historic event of the past year. Incumbent President Joe Biden chose to run for re-election. He did not face serious challengers in the party primary, and he had secured enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination by June 2024. However, later that month, he had a disastrous performance in a debate against Trump, which raised serious questions about the elderly president's capacity to successfully campaign for and complete a second term in office. After the debate, President Biden fell behind in the polls and faced major pressure within his party to withdraw his candidacy for re-election. Biden did just that on July 21, 2024, endorsing Harris, the sitting vice president, for the Democratic Party nomination. Biden thus became the first sitting president to withdraw from a re-election bid since Lyndon B. Johnson, of no relation to Andrew Johnson, did so back in March 1968. In August 2024, the Democratic Party Convention certified Kamala Harris as its new nominee for president. Some analysts have argued that the limited amount of time Harris had to campaign as the nominee played a key role in her defeat, while other pundits suggest different factors were decisive in the Democratic ticket's failure to defeat Trump. Other historic events during the recent presidential race include the two assassination attempts against Donald Trump in the months leading up to the election. In July 2024, an armed 20-year-old man named Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at Trump during a Pennsylvania campaign rally. Trump was bloodied, but he was not seriously injured. One of Crooks' bullets fatally wounded another audience member. The Secret Service spotted and killed Crooks in the moments after he fired toward the rally stage. However, the agency faced serious criticism for not preventing the assassination attempt in the first place. It appears that Crooks was a lone wolf motivated by a desire for notoriety, and that he did not attempt the assassination due to ideological anger toward Trump. Of course, this did not stop conspiracy theorists from claiming otherwise. The July shooting was the most serious assassination attempt against a current or former U.S. president since President Ronald Reagan was gravely wounded by an assassin's bullet in March 1981. In September 2024, Ryan Wesley Ruth, a troubled 54-year-old from North Carolina, was caught at Trump's golf course in Florida, aiming a rifle at the president's security detail. He was apprehended before he was able to fire at anyone, but it appears that Ruth intended to assassinate Trump. Unlike Crooks, Ruth appears to have been motivated by political opposition to the Republican candidate. Ruth also acted alone. He seemed especially agitated by Trump's pro-Russian views and what they might mean for Ukraine's war against the Russian invasion forces that have occupied part of that country since early 2022. Anyway, US politicians across the political spectrum condemned both of these assassination attempts. There was much speculation that sympathy toward Trump following these attempts on his life would decide the election. But by election day, other controversies caused these plots to fade a bit from public memory. To date, it is unclear whether these attempts at political violence played a major role in the election outcome. It is also uncertain what a second Trump term will mean for the United States and the rest of the world. Many powerful conservatives supporting Trump wrote a document called Project 2025, outlining major changes to the United States federal government, including plans to remove many federal employees and replace them with people loyal to Trump's political agenda. Donald Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 after Democrats and media pundits had expressed concern about some of its radical policy recommendations regarding social issues. Trump openly campaigned in favor of the mass deportation of immigrants and stated he would raise tariffs on imported goods. If fully executed, these policies would have major disruptive effects, not only for foreign residents, but also upon the entire U.S. economy. Yet it remains to be seen whether these plans will be successfully implemented. Under the Constitution, the nation's legislative bodies and courts have the power to shape and to limit the president's plans. However, it remains to be seen if they will choose to wield that power, because both the Supreme Court and the U.S. Congress are currently controlled by conservatives sympathetic to much of Trump's agenda. In the realm of foreign policy, Trump has promised to bring an end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. His opponents are concerned that his administration will stop U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine and will bring about an armistice that requires major Ukrainian territorial concessions, which could further embolden dictator Vladimir Putin. Defenders argue that the first major proxy conflict between the USA and the Russians since the end of the Cold War has dragged on for dangerously long, and they say it needs to be resolved or it could spiral into a wider war involving NATO. China policy is another major question. The Biden administration generally took a harder line toward the Chinese regime than past democratic presidents. For instance, Biden promised to defend Taiwan from a potential invasion by the People's Republic of China. But Trump also has used a considerable amount of anti-Chinese rhetoric, and he seems poised to foment a trade war with China. Then again, Trump's tendency to get along with Chinese allied dictators in Russia and North Korea may indicate openness to working with Xi Jinping instead of taking a warlike approach. Yet the most consequential international developments of 2024 could be those surrounding the continuing instability in the Middle East. the Islamist militant group Hamas came to power in the Palestinian territory known as the Gaza Strip. There has been sporadic violence between Israel and Hamas in the decades that have followed. In October 2023, Hamas fighters breached the border of the Gaza Strip and attacked Israel, killing around 1,200 people. Over 800 of the victims were Israeli civilians, and dozens of Israelis were also taken as hostages by Hamas. The State of Israel responded to this attack by waging a devastating war against Hamas, with very little regard for Gaza's civilian population. At least 45,000 residents of Gaza have been killed, the majority of them women and children. The Israeli government and the Hezbollah militant group also spent months exchanging rocket fire. In October 2024, Israel invaded southern Lebanon to attack Hezbollah. The government of Iran funds Hezbollah, and during this year the Israelis and the Iranians exchanged military strikes, although we are yet to see a full-scale war between Israel and Iran. Given the U.S. government's close backing of Israel and its hostile relationship with Iran, such a conflict could provoke American military involvement. Most recently, the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was ousted by various rebel factions led by an Islamist group. Many people in Syria celebrated the downfall of Assad's brutal regime, but the future of that country is quite uncertain. There is more turmoil now in Middle Eastern politics than there has been at any time since the Arab Spring rebellions of the early 2010s. President Joe Biden's backing of Israel's war on Gaza received major criticism from Arab Americans and progressive groups. President-elect Trump has indicated he wants to see the conflict come to an end, but he also has close political ties with right-wing factions in Israel. One of Trump's largest donors, Miriam Adelson, has urged him to help the Israeli government to annex the occupied West Bank, which could effectively end any hope for a Palestinian state. The announcement that the Trump administration plans to nominate former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who is an evangelical Christian Zionist, as its next ambassador to Israel, does not bode well for those who hope for a more even-handed US approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict. In May 2024, the International Criminal Court, or ICC, indicated it was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, among other figures. This did not stop leaders of both major American political parties from inviting Netanyahu to give a speech to a joint session of Congress in July 2024. The Biden administration has expressed concern about some Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip, such as the blocking of humanitarian aid intended for Gaza's suffering population. However, the American government has continued to provide US weapons and intelligence support to the Israeli military throughout the entire duration of its operations in Gaza. In November 2024, the ICC officially issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu, who faces charges related to war crimes and crimes against humanity. For the record, Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials dispute these charges and claim they have tried to avoid civilian casualties during their war to destroy the Hamas organization. Nevertheless, in December 2024, the nonprofit group Human Rights Watch issued a report concluding that Israel's government is committing genocide through military attacks and by intentionally depriving the Palestinians in Gaza of access to food, water, medical supplies, and basic sanitation. Amnesty International Another highly regarded human rights group has also recently used the term genocide to describe Israel's actions since October 2023. The Biden administration and the upcoming Trump administration will likely face critical scrutiny from future generations of historians to the extent that these presidents can be shown to have aided and abetted their allies' serious human rights violations. Finally, it remains to be seen whether the next presidential administration can successfully address domestic anger over a cost-of-living crisis in the United States. The recent inflation of grocery store prices is only a component of a longer-lasting, continued problem regarding the difficulties 21st century Americans have been experiencing in terms of accessing affordable housing, education, and health care. Recent online outpouring Thank you for watching. The president-elect's current alliance with Elon Musk and other powerful billionaires raises questions regarding the next administration's ability to meet the anti-establishment moment. If Donald Trump fails to address populist concerns regarding economic issues and social policies, his government may face widespread protests and other political backlash. Given Trump's reported past support of using the military against protesters, such civil unrest could get very ugly. On the other hand, if the Trump administration is able to assuage public concerns about the direction of the country, the MAGA movement may be able to consolidate its power and continue as the dominant political force in the country through 2028 and beyond, with potential baleful consequences for Trump's dissenting critics and ideological That's just how I see the current national situation as a historically informed observer here at the end of 2024. I know there's a lot more that could be said about the next administration's implications for abortion rights, race relations, antitrust policy, tax rates, and other significant issues. But I did not want to engage in excessive speculation during this episode beyond spotlighting a few of the many major issues facing the country in light of recent events. This has just been an extra end of the year holiday bonus for my listeners. If you loved or hated this current events related episode, or if you want to share a more nuanced reaction to it, please by all means contact the podcast by sending an email to boomer2millennial.com In January 2025, we will finally return to our regularly scheduled podcasting and wrap up the story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Until then, we wish you happy holidays, happy new year, and as always, thank you for listening.