The Patriot Post® · In Search of Our Next CEO

We’re now all members of the executive search committee, charged with finding our next CEO (i.e., president of the United States).

The 2024 presidential election is still more than three years away, but the nation’s leadership vacuum is already painfully obvious. Both political parties are in turmoil, with sharp internal divisions. Although Democrats are nominally in charge, Congress is split right down the middle, 50/50 in the Senate and with a single-digit Democrat margin in the House.

Although it has neither an electoral mandate nor internal consensus among Democrats, the Biden administration stubbornly continues to drag the country hard left, far away from mainstream America’s ideological center of gravity. It’s no longer even pretending to achieve unity. Clearly, we need a president who will lead the whole country.

I’m not sure who that will be, but it’s not Joe Biden. And it’s not Donald Trump.

Biden first. In just nine months, President Biden finds himself (and the rest of us) in a deep hole, and he keeps on digging. On every critical issue — immigration, COVID, Afghanistan, inflation, spending — he’s underwater.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Joe Biden is just doing what he’s always done. He’s a lifetime politician with no internal compass, forever chasing the popular trend of the moment — then abandoning it as soon as the crowd moves in another direction. He’s not leading; he’s following.

And while we’re thinking about Democrat presidential candidates, we should at least consider Biden’s #2, Kamala Harris. But she’s missing in action, doing her best to distance herself from her boss’s worst problems. Biden’s selection of Harris as his running mate was a political nod to diversity, not the deliberative choice of the best candidate to serve as backup to the oldest American president to ever take office.

So, for 2024, the Biden/Harris team is not the answer. But, in my view, neither is Donald J. Trump.

That’s not to say that Trump wouldn’t be an effective president. Behind all the bluster, and in the face of four years of headwinds, Trump’s presidency was remarkably successful. The differences between Trump and his successor, in both executive capability and public policy direction, has become clearer by the day. Many of his faithful pine for his return.

But a 2024 Trump candidacy would be a dire mistake for himself, for his party, and for the nation. He desperately wants the job, but for the wrong reason. And he won’t win.

Trump’s thirst for redemption is understandable. His supposed “big lie” about the 2020 election pales in comparison with the Democrats’ Russia collusion hoax in 2016 — fabricated and financed by the Clinton campaign, and later turned into a concerted two-year in-house effort to undo his presidency. He was impeached twice (in 240 years of American history there had been only one presidential impeachment) — the second a gratuitous parting shot, delivered by the Democrat House after just one day of debate, in Trump’s last full week in office. We’ve never seen anything like it.

But presidential elections are not about settling old scores. They’re about what’s ahead, not what’s behind.

Like most presidential elections, the 2024 race will be determined by the moderates on both sides (who are ideologically closer to each other than they are to the extremists in their own parties) along with independent swing voters. In 2020, all three factions were motivated more by Trump fatigue than by enthusiasm about Biden.

Nevertheless, Trump has effectively joined the race already, acting like a president-in-exile waiting to be restored to the throne. He’s sniping from the sidelines, holding rallies, hand-picking midterm candidates. It’s a discomforting preview of what an ego-driven Trump campaign would look like.

He would be a wrecking ball, smashing a wedge between his diehard supporters and others who are ready to move on. His candidacy would make the 2024 election all about Trump — fine with him, perhaps, and great for Democrats, but wrong for the nation. If Republicans are serious about putting America back on a healthy course, they must find a way to do it without Trump.

And the same is true for Democrats who bought into the Biden/Harris mirage. It’s not working. They need a better team.

In the past five years, America has been down two deeply unsatisfying tracks — a sensible path led by a wild man, and a senseless path led by Mr. Nice Guy. Now it’s time for steady, solid leadership, on a track that serves the whole USA.

Who will that be? We — the executive search committee — had better get to work.