In most elections, American voters choose between two candidates, who represent a pair of alternatives within the same political model. The candidates bundle together a set of policies and pitch themselves as the nation’s most plausible leader.
The upcoming election presents a different choice. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the Republican and Democratic candidates for the presidency, respectively, represent not only two alternatives on policy but also two entirely different political models.
We might call these models the Prince and the Party. Trump represents the Prince, or, the politics of the man; Harris represents the Party, or, the politics of the machine. Each model has something to be said for and against it.
Consider two recent events that illustrate the difference: the attempted assassination of President Trump and the succession of Kamala Harris as presidential nominee.
The most important lesson of the Trump assassination attempt was counterfactual: had the assassin been successful, it would have meant an end to the populist-conservative movement and total disarray for the Republican Party, which would be forced to find a suitable successor to Trump or revert to the party’s status quo ante.
Trump is, in the metaphorical sense, a Prince. He entered politics as an outsider and orchestrated a hostile takeover of the GOP, radically changing the policies and priorities of a major political party. He shaped them; they did not shape him.
Trump managed the White House in much the same manner, running the government on his instincts and social media account. He tried to do what machine politicians could not even conceptualize, much less execute. What victories he achieved were, in part, due to this arrangement.
There are advantages to this approach. Prior to Trump, the Republican Party had for many voters become moribund, offering a political formula that had grown stale and failed to speak to the interests of millions of disaffected Americans. It took a powerful outsider to break through the old consensus and expand the ideological terrain.
The disadvantages are obvious: the political formula of the Prince, in the literal or metaphorical sense, depends on one man, magnifying both his strengths and his weaknesses. And, as we saw nearly happen in the fields of Butler, Pennsylvania, all of it can end in a moment.
Compare this state of affairs with the successful removal campaign—or, as some have called it, “palace coup”—against President Biden, who was, a week after the attempted assassination, unceremoniously replaced with Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.
This replacement was executed free of debate, conflict, or delay. It simply happened. Why? Because, within the Party model, both Biden and Harris are figureheads. They follow wherever the Party directs them. Tough, then soft, on crime; strong, then weak, on the border. The Party provides the political formula; they are the vessels for communicating it to the public and advancing it in the White House.
There is an advantage to this method. The Party is durable, decentralized, and adaptable. If, God forbid, something were to happen to Vice President Harris, the Party could readily find a substitute and seek to manufacture enthusiasm through its media apparatus, as it did with Harris, who, before her elevation to nominee, had been historically unpopular.
The disadvantage is less obvious. Though the Party currently enjoys hegemony over nearly all the American institutions that matter, it will gradually lose the capacity for creativity and fall prey to the whims—and stupidity—of the crowd. Genius is an individual phenomenon; a party that governs on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” will produce loyal mediocrities, with all the pitfalls that this entails.
We are hurtling into the final stretch of the presidential campaign, which provides a choice for voters: Trump versus Harris; Prince versus Party. That our two most recent presidential elections have been so close makes clear that for the American electorate writ large, it is a choice that remains very much in play.
Photos: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images (left) / Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images (right)