Boston: Harris and Trump should have learned from history [ Dallas Morning News ]

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, right, and running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz are pictured at a campaign rally, Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)(Julia Nikhinson / AP)

As we await the Democratic National Convention this week, Americans already know both major parties’ nominees have chosen vice-presidential candidates that put the nation on a course toward even greater division.

Far-left Kamala Harris and MAGA right Donald Trump have chosen ideological clones as running mates, which means neither ticket includes someone who possesses a middle-way perspective.

But according to the August 10 Wall Street Journal poll, 15% of Americans have still not decided for whom to vote in November. Given the essentially equal number of electoral votes in the red and blue states, the race will surely go down to the wire and be decided by the currently undecided voters in the six swing states of Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

In a recent column in the Wall Street Journal, straight-shooter Peggy Noonan explained why such intra-ticket hegemony is bad for the nation: “When you need voters who aren’t in your tent, you moderate. When you stick with your side, and it’s all or nothing, you go on, if you win, to operate in an all or nothing style, which in a 50/50 country causes more tension, anger and division.”

Harris passed over moderate Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and moderate Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, who both have proven track records of attracting Republican voters. Trump didn’t choose former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who would have had crossover appeal to both Republican and Democratic moderates.

Had such choices for middle-way nominees been made, Harris and Trump would have been in much better positions to attract large quantities of independents without losing a single vote from devoted soldiers in the far left and MAGA right regiments.

Unlike Harris and Trump, our greatest presidents chose for their running mates people who provided balance to their tickets.

Our first two stellar leaders, Washington and Jefferson, did not pick their own vice presidents because of the way the federal government worked in its early years.

Abraham Lincoln’s Republican convention chose Sen. Andrew Johnson from Tennessee in 1864, as the Civil War neared its end and the nation aspired to reunite. The choice demonstrated Lincoln’s willingness to bring a Southerner into a position of national leadership as the first step toward postwar reconciliation, and the strategy produced an electoral victory of over 90% for the Lincoln-Johnson ticket.

Theodore Roosevelt believed that as president, he had the right to do anything he wanted, as long as the Constitution and other federal laws did not expressly prohibit his doing so. He chose William Howard Taft for his running mate, who held the opposite view — that a president had the power to do only what the Constitution and other laws expressly permitted. They agreed to disagree on constitutional interpretations, and their running together resulted in a sizable victory for the Republicans in 1904, winning over 70% of the electoral votes.

Liberal New York Democrat Franklin Roosevelt chose conservative Texas Democrat and Speaker of the House John Nance Garner (who had opposed FDR in seeking the Democratic nomination) as his vice president for his first two terms in an effort to broaden the party’s base. The balanced combination produced landslide victories in 1932 and 1936, winning over 80% of the electoral votes in both elections.

Dwight Eisenhower chose Richard Nixon as his running mate in 1952, knowing that much of the country was impressed by those who aggressively tried to ferret out and punish communists during the “red scare” McCarthy era. Ike despised Joseph McCarthy and his witch hunts, but recognized that there was at least some basis for concern about the influence of communist infiltration in the government, so he selected Nixon, who from 1948 to 1950 had gained favorable national attention for his successful pursuit of State Department official Alger Hiss. Together, the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket carried over 80% of the electoral votes.

John F. Kennedy knew he was in a tight race in 1960, and to win he would have to carry Texas. So he chose his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination that year, Senate Majority leader Lyndon B. Johnson, as his running mate. Their backgrounds and pre-1960 legislative records were different. There is no evidence that they even liked each other. Yet because JFK and LBJ brought different blocs of voters to the Democratic ticket, they beat Nixon in a squeaker, with narrow wins in Illinois and Texas.

Finally, our most recent great president, Ronald Reagan, widely perceived as a staunch conservative, chose moderate George H.W. Bush as his running mate, though they had battled against each other throughout the Republican primaries and Bush had labeled Reagan’s policy of supply-side economics as “voodoo economics.” Upon settling their differences and locking arms on the ticket, they trounced incumbent President Jimmy Carter, winning over 90% of the electoral vote.

These top presidents — Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Reagan — might have won their elections had they chosen running mates who mirrored their own views, as Harris and Trump have done. Lincoln and the other great ones, though, thought “Why risk it?” knowing that a balanced ticket made up of two people with differing views from different parts of the country would surely grow their base, make them more appealing to undecided voters, and improve their chances of achieving victory in November. The election results confirmed the soundness of their strategy.

Unfortunately, in 2024, we have presidential nominees who are obviously not students of history and, therefore have missed this crucial political strategy point that has been proven time and time again by our leading presidential performers.

Harris and Trump are now compelled to run campaigns toward a dead-heat election, destined to be decided by the narrowest of margins. To have achieved this undesirable high anxiety result, they have no one to blame but themselves.