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In this week’s newsletter:

• 🗳️ How to leave the political stage

• 🪧 Will on-campus turmoil come to an end?

• 💯 Trivia: Fourth of July prominent figures

Why is it so hard to quit politics?

By Scot Lehigh

Unpopularity or fear of losing may be the real reason, but it is seldom the explanation offered when an elected official calls it quits. Even when the truth is obvious, big egos need a face-saving cover story when they beat a retreat.

In what context does The Primary Source offer these observations about homo politicus? That of President Biden and whether, after last week’s debate debacle, he will come to realize that his party’s prospects in November would be better served if he were to stand aside and let the Democratic National Convention in August choose a new nominee.

If he does, how could he explain such a move? History presents a menu of possibilities.

The Johnson Swan Song

After suffering a demoralizingly narrow (50 percent to 42 percent ) win over intra-party challenger Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 New Hampshire primary, Lyndon Baines Johnson realized that, given the unpopularity of the Vietnam War, an exceedingly rocky road lay ahead, both to his party’s nomination and to victory in November.

LBJ, however, didn’t say that when he bailed out just a few weeks later. He couched things this way: “With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes, or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office — the presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

Did LBJ fool anyone? Not really. But his focus-on-Vietnam rationale gave him a face-saving reason to step aside. Interestingly, that decision didn’t help his party. Back in the day when there were real power brokers and actual smoke-filled rooms rather than pledged delegates and no-smoking-anywhere arenas, party panjandrums then bestowed the nomination on Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey, who hadn’t entered a single primary. Adding to the atrocious optics: They did so while the Chicago police were busting the skulls of antiwar-protestors outside Chicago’s International Amphitheatre.

HHH never managed to put the Democratic Party fully back together, and with George Wallace running as that year’s southern resentment candidate, Republican Richard Nixon won in November.

President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election on March 31, 1968. (COURTESY LBJ LIBRARY/C-SPAN)

The Tsongas Sidestep

Former US Senator Paul Tsongas left New Hampshire on the wings of victory in 1992, having scored a next-door-neighbor primary victory over one-time frontrunner Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas who had been beset by — imagine! — controversy. But Tsongas, running on a platform of fiscal discipline and inter-generational responsibility, did not fare well when the nominating contests moved to the South and then the Midwest. Meanwhile, campaign money man Nick Rizzo had siphoned off a million or more in much-needed contributions.

Facing drained coffers and fading prospects, Tsongas concocted an inventive rationale for leaving the race: If he stayed in, his intergenerational exhortations would somehow be bruised and battered beyond recognition in campaign conflict.

“My message would have been wounded, and all that we worked for, for this past year, would have been put at risk,” he said. “The message must endure.”

Tsongas and former senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire then formed the Concord Coalition, which still plays a role in advocating for fiscal discipline and against loading debt onto future voters.

The Mittski Quitski

When he decided not to seek what would have been a tough re-election as a US senator from Utah, Mitt Romney, the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee, put a pass-the-torch spin on his announced exit.

“At the end of another term, I’d be in my mid-80s,” Romney said last September. “Frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders. They’re the ones that need to make the decisions that will shape the world they will be living in.”

This approach has a noble, self-effacing aspect about it. It’s one that others of Romney’s vintage should consider. But will they? Probably not. After all, it runs afoul of the linger-long-at-the-political-party ethos of the baby boomers, whose motto seems to be:  We’ll go when we’re damn good and ready — or dead.

Crotchety Crockett and Tricky Dick

Some politicians have abandoned politics, or seemingly done so, with a curmudgeonly swipe at their enemies.

Having suffered a dispiriting loss of a Tennessee US House seat, ending an in-and-out-of-office congressional career that stretched from the mid-1820s to the mid-1830s, Davy Crockett exited the Volunteer State political stage with this farewell to his former constituents: “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.” As those who remember the Alamo know, that decision came with problems all its own.

After Richard Nixon lost the presidency in 1960 and then a 1962 race for governor of California, he proclaimed that he was calling it quits with a swipe at the press.

“You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference,” he declared.

Nixon may have meant that at the time, but the siren’s call of politics proved too strong. After lying low through the next presidential cycle, Nixon emerged as the party’s nominee in 1968, defeated Hubert Humphrey for the presidency, and won re-election in 1972. Then the Watergate scandal broke, giving him an opportunity to leave politics yet again, this time for good.

President Richard Nixon after his resignation on August 9, 1974. (THE NEW YORK TIMES)

Family ties and alibis

Many an embattled politician or political appointee has opted out of a tenuous situation by citing obligations of family. This often seems neither sincere nor plausible, particularly when offered by a man engaged in a controversy occasioned by his cavalier attitude toward his family-making partner.

That said, it would work well for Biden. Known as a genuine family man, he is sincerely worried about his son Hunter, who has had drug and alcohol problems and has now been found guilty of federal felony gun charges. Add in this advantage: If he were no longer a candidate for re-election, Biden could pardon Hunter on his way out the White House door.

Verily and forsooth, what about the truth?

As this tour of the ta-ta horizon shows, if there are 50 ways to leave your lover, there are many ways to depart the stage. One could even be honest and say: “At 81, I’ve lost a step or two – and in today’s world, you need a younger, more vigorous president, one who can keep pace.”

People would admire the president for his frankness, my word as a Biden watcher, they would. Plus, that would have the twin virtues of being true and self-aware.

Translation: Don’t look for it to happen.

To Biden or not to Biden

(Christopher Weyant)

Rumor Roundup

Are pregnancy crisis centers “anti-abortion centers”?

​​In 2023, Massachusetts ranked 15th in the nation for the number of abortions performed. Massachusetts law requires that private insurance cover abortions and related care without cost sharing. And as of 2017, 87 percent of Massachusetts women live in counties with at least one abortion provider. So count me skeptical of the state legislature’s latest use of $1 million dollars to discredit the state's pregnancy crisis centers which they call “anti-abortion centers” but which supporters say provide critical resources for women during pregnancy. In a July ad the Massachusetts Department of Public Health claimed that the centers pose health risks and “don't offer abortion care.” A similar initiative was vetoed under Baker, but the current effort has been championed by the Healey administration. Has the governor ever considered that there are pregnant women who actually don't want an abortion, and are just looking for support? Healey is accusing pregnancy crisis centers of narrowing women's options — but she's the only one at fault for as much, and all at the taxpayers' expense. [Carine Hajjar]

The fall semester might not be quieter on campus

School’s out, and college students have gone home. Will that solve the Gaza-related turmoil riling campuses? Kenneth Marcus, chair of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which is dedicated to combating antisemitism, predicts that if Israel is peaceful by the time students return, the campus climate will be better than if the conflict continues. But overall, Marcus told me, “There’s little reason for optimism.” Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Marcus said there is more antisemitic activity online, which will continue to spread through the summer. In addition, he worries that with more antisemitism in US high schools, more incoming freshmen may have been involved in bias incidents. And, he said, rising antisemitism is a trend, domestically and internationally. Marcus suggests college administrators use the summer to revisit policies on topics like protests and harassment, while asking why campuses are having these problems and what they can do better.

[Shira Schoenberg]

A true grass-roots effort?

The Massachusetts Teachers Association likes to portray the signature-gathering for its ballot question to nix the MCAS graduation test as an effort powered by the joyous energy of its anti-MCAS members and the public’s enthusiasm for the cause. Why, to hear the MTA tell it, signatures leapt onto the petitions almost of their own accord, the way carp do into fishermen’s boats in certain Midwestern rivers.

To which one can only say: Hmmm. Why? Because knowledgeable sources report that the MTA has engaged the services of SignatureDrive.com, which has been involved with the MTA’s ballot campaign since last year. That company, headed by long-time Massachusetts politico Harold Hubschman, is one of the best in the country at conducting signature drives. What’s more, Hubschman himself was spotted delivering batches of signatures to the secretary of state’s office last week. [Scot Lehigh]

Taking note

SHIRA SCHOENBERG

Does the rise of the far-right National Rally party in France have implications for US elections? Washington Post analyst Dan Balz compares President Biden’s political strategy of warning voters of the peril of a second Donald Trump administration to French President Emmanuel Macron’s dire warnings about National Rally, and suggests a negative campaign alone will not be sufficient to win an election. In The New York Times, opinion columnist Paul Krugman also compares the French far-right to the pro-Trump movement: voters disgruntled about their country and its economy seeking to blame immigrants and others, but supporting policies that ultimately will  probably help only a certain group of people – in Trump’s case, the rich.

JOAN VENNOCHI

A mention on X about “What It Takes,” the epic tome about the 1988 presidential campaign by Richard Ben Cramer, got me riffling once again through the pages of a book that provides much insight into Joe Biden and his family, especially in the face of adversity. In the book, Cramer, who died in 2013, goes into great detail about what it took to convince the then presidential candidate to withdraw from the primary race after disclosures that he had borrowed lines from a speech given by a British politician without attribution. “I’ve never been a quitter … never quit anything in my life,” Biden is quoted as saying. When Biden finally decided he had no choice, he walked to a press conference with Jill Biden at his side, and as Cramer described it: “She stared straight ahead at the wall of cameras, the pack … They were destroying what Joe worked for … It was just another story for them. They were excited: the crowd at a hanging.” And later in the book, Cramer wrote this about Jill Biden: “Standing at that press conference, she’d thought — well, at least it’s over. But she hadn’t counted on this feeling, the emptiness: the death of a dream she didn’t know she had.”

SCOT LEHIGH

As Democrats contemplate possible ways forward after a debate that raised big doubts about whether 81-year-old President Biden is really up to serving a second term, AP, Reuters, and NBC News are among the news outlets exploring various scenarios. To summarize: If Biden were to stand down, it would be chaotic but doable. If he refuses to go quietly, the difficulty factor increases tenfold.

JIM DAO

Nick Catoggio, a consistently incisive anti-Trump conservative with The Dispatch, argues that the presidential race is mainly about three “i’s”: inflation, immigration, and infirmity. Against a deeply flawed candidate like Donald Trump, President Biden might survive if “weighed down” by two of the three. “Voters dislike Trump enough that they might have accepted a 90-minute simulacrum of vigor by the president as proof that he’s not as infirm as he sometimes appears.” But that’s not what they got last Thursday. And so, Catoggio argues, “He can’t win anymore. Not even against Trump.” On the other side of the coin, read our own Kimberly Atkins Stohr’s explanation for why replacing Biden would be a risk not worth taking.