David M. Shribman: Our country's present obscures its future

The future is another country, glimpsed only faintly in the distance, its contours difficult to discern, its political landscape hard to imagine ― especially at a time when the nation is consumed with a war in the Middle East, inflation in economic affairs and quickly changing domestic circumstances.

Those rapid transformations are affecting the politics of the future in profound ways, some of which couldn't have been anticipated even a year ago. The factors shaping this swiftly changing country are beginning to come into focus. Here are some of them:

― Chocolate and butter. In the 1930s, when communist forces were deeply involved in the Spanish Civil War, there were complaints (quietly) lodged against Josef Stalin that residents of the Soviet Union were deprived of, among many others, these two domestic goods while funds and resources were diverted to loyalist combatants on the Iberian Peninsula.

There's no shortage of chocolate or butter in the United States. But the Iran War-inspired chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz has sent gasoline prices soaring, causing pain at the pump; every time a motorist passes a service station and sees a sign displaying fuel prices, there's peril for Donald Trump and the Republicans. The war also is boosting the cost of fertilizer, much of which cannot traverse the Strait, affecting costs in the farm belt, a Republican political redoubt, and meaning ever-higher grocery prices.

The war in Iran isn't popular for reasons beyond its inflationary effect; the president has failed to make the case for putting American military personnel in danger. But rising prices, combined with sluggish support for Trump, are stirring a Republican crisis. Current predictions of GOP losses in November's midterm congressional elections range from 10 seats in the House of Representatives to 60, with a handoff of power to the Democrats increasingly likely.

― Play it again, Sam (or Samantha). Several also-rans are considering 2028 presidential campaigns. The history isn't encouraging.

Yes, Thomas Jefferson, William Henry Harrison, Richard Nixon and, of course, the two figures who served nonconsecutive White House terms, Grover Cleveland and Trump, did win the presidency after winning earlier presidential nominations but losing the general election.

But many who won a presidential nomination, and then another one, did not prevail in the end. Today, Gov. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois is nearly forgotten, but he was the Democratic nominee (1952, 1956) only to lose both times. The same occurred with Gov. Thomas Dewey of New York (1944, 1948). William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska did even worse and was a three-time loser (1896, 1900, 1908). So was Henry Clay of Kentucky, whose trifecta of defeat included three nominations from three different parties (1824, 1832, 1844).

It is true that some White House aspirants have lost a nomination fight only to win another one later and finally become winners; think Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Joe Biden. But many of them still didn't become president. This group includes John McCain (he lost to Barack Obama, 2008), Mitt Romney (he also lost to Obama, 2012) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (she lost to Trump, 2016).

Overall, this brisk walk through history might be sobering for some onetime losers ― Sen. Ted Cruz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former Vice President Kamala Harris ― who still may have White House ambitions.

― Kinder, gentler. When George H.W. Bush was inaugurated, he looked ahead to a country that was "kinder, gentler." That prompted Nancy Reagan to sneer, "Kinder, gentler than whom?" Her husband was, in fact, a kind and gentle man. Even his most ardent admirers acknowledge that Trump is not.

Which provides a conundrum for the next Republican nominee.

Trump's celebration of the death of former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who as the special counsel investigating Russia's role in the 2016 election became the president's principal first-term tormentor, was a low point in presidential character; none of Trump's predecessors ever said of the death of an opponent, "Good, I'm glad he's dead." Bill Clinton, who spent his college and law school years opposing Nixon's policies, sometimes bitterly, nonetheless eulogized the 37th president at his funeral.

No one is president forever, though Franklin Delano Roosevelt might be considered to have shadowed several presidencies after he died: Democrats Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson at the very least. In a way, he shaped the presidencies of Dwight Eisenhower (whom Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona dismissed as a proponent of what he called a "dime-store New Deal") and Nixon (who in his first term contemplated a New Deal-style income guarantee).

The candidates for the next Republican nomination ― even if the winner is JD Vance, or especially if, following the Bush precedent and success, it's Vance ― needs to carve a separate identity. It very likely will need to be a kinder, gentler profile; a reprise of Trump-style resentment, grievance and cruel commentary will seem faint and repetitive at best, derivative and forced at worst.

The next presidential election may seem far off, but the jockeying began in earnest this month when Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky lit into Vance, calling the vice president's best-selling "Hillbilly Elegy" "hillbilly hate" and saying the book that propelled his potential rival into prominence was "poverty tourism, because he ain't from Appalachia."

― Lucky Lindy redux. Tucker Carlson is in danger of being this generation's Charles Lindbergh, a hero (to some) transformed into a hater (of others).

The legacy of the man in the cockpit of the Spirit of St. Louis high-wing single-engine monoplane is rooted in two separate places: Le Bourget (the airport in Paris where he landed after his landmark 1927 transatlantic flight) and Des Moines Coliseum (where he made one of the most deplorable speeches in American history).

It was there that, in a speech titled "Who Are the War Agitators?" he told an America First group that war fever was being stoked by "the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration." He swiftly was condemned for antisemitism, with the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr saying that the group seeking to keep the U.S. from entering World War II must "clean its ranks of those who would incite usual and religious strife."

That is the precise demand that Carlson, who has consorted with figures who have promoted white supremacy and antisemitic theories and language, has resisted.

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David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.