In her first interview since formally winning the Democratic nomination, Harris said that, if elected, will appoint to the government un Republican Party representative to “ensure diversity of opinion” within her administration and as a demonstration of her desire to be “the president of all Americans.”
Moderate Republicans' vote in focus
Her declaration it is, in reality, mainly the result of a strategy aimed at snatching Donald Trump il moderate republican vote to win the elections. Nonetheless, Harris's words seemed like a breath of fresh air in a context that in recent years has been characterized by a substantial lack of dialogue as well as a clear and apparently irreconcilable opposition between the Democratic and Republican parties, especially after the latter was dominated by Trump.
Not for nothing, in his role as instigator as well as beneficiary in the past of frontal party clashes and of the logic of head-on confrontation, Trump it was even said soon, should he win a second term, dismiss all federal officials who did not show absolute loyalty towards him, even those hired through public competitions and not recruited by his democratic predecessors, who could not be legally fired without just cause, that is, for reasons of an exclusively political nature.
THEHarris's intention is, however, less disruptive and innovative than it may appear. If it were implemented, in fact, it wouldn't be the first time in which the federal government would have a member of a party other than the president.
Thomas Jefferson in the Administration of John Adams
Il the first case It occurred near the dawn of the existence of the United States as a sovereign nation.
During his term as president between 1797 and 1801, Federalist John Adams he found himself with the Democratic-Republican as his vice president Thomas Jefferson, not by choice, but by constitutional constraint.
At the time, in fact, the candidacies for the presidency and vice-presidency were not distinct and the position of vice-president was assigned to the first of those not elected to the presidency.the outcome of the cohabitation was disastrous. Rather than cooperate with Adams, who had defeated him in the 1796 election, Jefferson concentrated on preparing the ground for his revenge and defeat of his rival in 1800, seeking in particular to sabotage the government's pro-British foreign policy.
This experience was so devastating that the Constitution was amended to separate the election of the president and vice president, to prevent members of different parties from holding the two offices in the future.
Abraham Lincoln's Choice of Andrew Johnson
The most serious national emergency in U.S. history, the civil war which tore the country apart between 1861 and 1865, produced the second example relevant government with bipartisan aspects. In view of the 1864 elections, the Republican president Abraham Lincoln, in power in the North, tried to give a signal of willingness to reconcile with the rebellious South, which was on the brink of defeat on the battlefield, also with the aim of hastening the timing of its military surrender.
To demonstrate that he would not impose a punitive peace and would take into account the positions of the Confederates, Lincoln he wanted his deputy to be a democratic politician of a southern and secessionist state, the former senator from Tennessee Andrew Johnson. Even in this case, however, the operation did not prove politically productive.
After Lincoln's assassination, Johnson succeeded him as president and clashed throughout his term with the members of his cabinet, all of whom were Republicans. main reason for conflict was the policy towards African-American slaves who had been freed with the abolition of slavery at the end of the Civil War.
Republicans pushed for measures to hasten their integration into society, while Johnson favored keeping them on the margins, endorsing racial segregation. The clash culminated when Johnson removed the secretary of the War Department, Edwin Stanton, and the Republican Party responded by opening impeachment proceedings against the president, although it failed to gather the votes necessary to remove him from the White House.
David M. Key in the Cabinet of Rutherford B. Hayes
In a other case, instead, the formation of a government with a member of a party different from that of the president it actually served to ease tensions and to promote national reconciliation.
THEoutcome of the 1876 elections for the White House, who had seen the success of the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, was harshly contested by his democratic opponent, Samuel J. Tilden, who accused the winner of having resorted to extensive fraud to conquer some Southern states.
The certification of Hayes' election was stalled for weeks, and there were even fears of a new civil war. Eventually, an agreement was reached whereby Tilden acknowledged defeat in exchange for some concessions from Hayes, including the appointment of a Southern Democrat to his cabinet.
The chosen one was David M. Key, who was assigned the Postal Department, a ministry of very little weight from which he managed to tone down the conflict between the parties, but was unable to significantly influence government policy.
Henry L. Stimson and Frank Knox in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration
A subsequent national emergency led to a further experiment in bipartisan administration. In July 1940 the Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed two Republicans to his cabinet: Henry L. Stimson to the Department of War and Frank Knox to that of the Navy. The first had been Secretary of State under Herbert Hoover, whom Roosevelt had defeated in the 1932 election.
The latter had been the Republican vice-presidential candidate in the 1936 elections, which had seen a second victory for Roosevelt. A few weeks before Stimson and Knox were inaugurated, France had surrendered to Germany in World War II.
While the United States was still neutral in the conflict, Roosevelt needed to overcome the isolationist orientation of part of the American public opinion. The assignment of two important war departments to internationalist Republican exponents served to to create a bipartisan consensus on its national rearmament policy and sending military aid to the United Kingdom, which at the time was the only country left to face Nazism on the battlefield.
This time the inclusion of politicians from the other party in the government it worked perfectly, both in the remaining year and a half or so of American neutrality and after the United States entered the war. After all, a few days after the outbreak of World War II, it was Knox himself, in an editorial published in the “Chicago Daily News” on September 12, 1939, who invited Roosevelt to form a “government of national unity” to address the war emergency in a climate of political harmony, appointing some authoritative Republicans to the cabinet.
John B. Connally Vote-Breaker for Richard M. Nixon
Other experiences of administrations with bipartisan traits had openly electoral motivations.
For example, in 1971 Republican Richard M. Nixon he named as Treasury Secretary the former Democratic governor of Texas John B. Connally (the man who sat next to John F. Kennedy and was seriously injured in the assassination attempt that killed the president on November 22, 1963) to win the support of conservative Democrats for his campaign for a second term in 1972.
On that occasion, Connally took the lead of a committee called “Democrats for Nixon” and fully fulfilled his role as a vote-switcher from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. Nixon, in fact, was re-elected by a wide margin, collecting 60,7% of the popular vote and a majority in 49 of the 50 states of the Union.
William Cohen Secretary of Defense with Bill Clinton
Il Democrat Bill Clinton, instead, returned to making a nomination linked to political strategy considerations, rather than an attempt to broaden his electoral base. After having obtained confirmation to the White House in 1996, when any consideration on the vote in 2000 had become superfluous because the constitutional limit of two terms prevented him from a third candidacy, Clinton entrusted the position of Secretary of Defense in his second administration to Republican William Cohen, who had just concluded eighteen years in the Federal Senate as a member of the Committee on the Armed Forces.
Criticized by Republicans for his alleged lack of a clear strategic vision in Bosnia after the bombing of the Serb faction that ended the civil war in 1995, Clinton he wanted to build bipartisan support for possible new military initiatives, such as the so-called “humanitarian” war for Kosovo in 1999, to reduce the number of US armed forces and close some military bases in order to contain federal spending, for a first enlargement of NATO to the East – which would have led to the accession of the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary to the Atlantic Pact in 1999 – and to relaunch negotiations with Russia on the reduction of intercontinental missiles and nuclear warheads.
While these negotiations did not produce a new strategic arms treaty with Moscow, the failure was attributed to differences with Russian President Boris Yeltsin rather than opposition from the Republicans.
Cohen, in fact, was able to extend consensus for Clinton's defense policy outside the Democratic Party, while at times expressing his skepticism regarding the continuation of the president's humanitarian missions abroad.
Harris's outlook
In light of these precedents, theHarris' announcement constitutes a marriage between Lincoln's and Nixon's strategies, as he appears to want to combine the need for national political reconciliation, to overcome the partisan polarization fomented by Trump, with the need to obtain the vote of the less extremist Republicans to conquer the White House.
If Harris manages to achieve the second objective, the achievement of the first will depend greatly on the figure he chooses. Among the names that are circulating there are those of former members of the House of Representatives Adam kinzinger e liz cheney, two of ten Republicans to vote in favor of impeaching Trump for inciting the storming of Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021.
Both, however, some features are missing to accommodate Harris's needs. On the one hand, in fact, they were so disliked by their own party that they were formally expelled and, therefore, the presence of one of the two in a hypothetical Harris administration would hardly be able to restore harmony between Democrats and Republicans.
On the other hand, it is still a question of hyperconservatives who are unlikely to work constructively with a Democratic presidency. For example, while Kinzinger disputes Trump's personal behavior, when he was in Congress, he supported about 90 percent of the bills introduced by the then president.
The case of the Utah senator would be different. My Romney, who ran for president against Barack Obama in 2012. In addition to being the only Republican to vote to remove Trump due to the so-called Ukrainegate, Romney sided with the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 during the protests over the killing of George Floyd by a police officer, is in favor of limiting the spread of guns and recently praised Joe Biden for his decision to give up his candidacy for a second term.
Romney, however, does not seem to want to continue to be involved in politics and, in fact, has announced that he will retire from the Senate at the end of the current legislature.
However, the moderate turn taken by Harris at the Chicago convention (promise to protect border security against irregular immigration, commitment to strengthen US global military primacy, abandonment of opposition to fracking) could entice other Republicans to join his administration.
. . .
Stefano Luconi teaches History of the United States of America in the Department of Historical, Geographical and Antiquity Sciences at the University of Padua. His publications include The “indispensable nation”. History of the United States from its origins to Trump (2020) US institutions from the drafting of the Constitution to Biden, 1787–2022 (2022) and Lthe black soul of the United States. African Americans and the difficult path to equality, 1619–2023 (2023)
Books:
Stefano Luconi, The race for the White House 2024. The election of the president of the United States from the primaries to beyond the vote on November 5, goWare, 2023, pp. 162, €14,25 paper edition, €6,99 Kindle edition
Stefano Luconi, US institutions from the drafting of the Constitution to Biden, 1787–2022, goWare, 2022, pp. 182, €12,35 paper edition, €6,99 Kindle edition
