Nixon Can Teach Trump About The Pitfalls Of Revenge Politics

As I have noted at The Federalist, history can provide useful and illuminating analogies for the present, and the results of the 2024 presidential election bring to mind another historical tale that yields lessons for both political parties.

The lesson comes in the form of a quote from an individual whose political resurrection closely resembles that of Donald Trump, former President Richard Nixon: 

Always give your best; never get discouraged; never be petty. Always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

The quote goes a long way toward explaining why Democrats lost the election and why Trump and other Republicans should tread cautiously in the way they approach their opponents going forward.

Nixon’s Undoing — and Democrats’

The story behind the Nixon quote provides the irony, and the tragedy, of the lesson. The former president used those words at the end of a speech 50 years ago this past summer, while giving farewell remarks to the White House staff.

Nixon, of course, helped bring himself low by focusing on his enemies, real and perceived. In 1972, he won a stunning landslide reelection over Sen. George McGovern, D-S.D., winning 49 states and over 60 percent of the national popular vote — the largest percentage of the vote ever captured by a Republican presidential candidate. Yet the Watergate scandal would prompt him to resign from office instead of impeachment and removal less than two years later.

The tragedy behind Nixon is that he didn’t need the Watergate scandal to defeat McGovern; he could have won that election handily without any type of “dirty tricks” campaign. Yet in focusing on his enemies, and then helping to cover up his campaign’s misdeeds, Nixon laid the seeds for his eventual downfall.

Half a century later, the lessons for Democrats seem obvious, even as they have gone unheeded. The party spent the better part of the last eight years focusing on various ways to “get” Donald Trump, from insidious insinuations about “collusion” to two impeachments to dubious prosecutions. And over the course of this year’s campaign, first Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris continued beating the drum, tagging Trump as a fascist in ever more heated and ludicrous rhetoric.

The American people delivered their verdict on Nov. 5, which under the best of circumstances can be described as a collective “Meh.” Facing crippling “Bidenflation” and observing lawlessness at the southern border, with its downstream effects in their own communities, the American people gave a shrug to Democrats’ bill of charges against Trump, deciding that they preferred economic and border security to Democrats’ record over the past four years.

Cautionary Tale for Republicans

Now that Republicans have taken control of the elected branches of government, they should view voters’ repudiation of the Democrat Trump obsession with caution. For the same types of angry diversions that consumed Democrats over the past eight years could easily undo Republican governance.

Even his supporters will note that Trump sometimes focuses too much on feuds with his opponents. Sometimes he expresses these sentiments in humorous ways (“Happy New Year to everyone, including the haters and the Fake News media!”), sometimes not.

But the American people fired Democrats because they didn’t deliver results on the issues that matter to them. They could certainly do the same to Republicans in two and four years’ time if they appear similarly obsessed with revenge.

After his first election in 2016, Donald Trump made no attempt to sic federal prosecutors on Hillary Clinton; he should act smartly by showing the same degree of restraint now. Similarly, with Americans facing a major tax increase at the end of 2025 absent a change in the law, some would view lawmakers’ continued investigations into the influence-peddling of the outgoing president’s family as not the best use of Congress’s time and energy.

Nixon’s August 1974 quote exposed not only the truth behind his own undoing but a larger truth all public officials should recognize: The American people elected you to address their problems and concerns, not your own. The 2024 election results reinforced that message loudly and clearly. Lawmakers in both parties should listen.