What the search for a Trump alternative is really about
In the fall of 2011, when I was working on a long magazine piece about the imperiled Republican establishment, I went over to see Bill Kristol. Here’s what he said about the grassroots fury in his party:
“I get annoyed with all the establishment types here who speak as if they’re supposed to be controlling everything, who sound like they’re annoyed when things happen that they don’t expect. Welcome to the world.”
And here is what Kristol, founder and editor of the Weekly Standard, said in his mostrecent editorial about our choices in November:
“What is to be done? Resist. Resist the decline of America. Resist an Argentinian future. Resistance can mean a lot of things over the next few years. But in the here and now, resistance means finding a serious and credible independent candidate.”
Should I say it, or should you? Oh, hell, it’s my column.
Welcome to the world, Bill.
Over the holiday weekend, while you were watching video clips of a rampaging gorilla, Kristol was tweeting tantalizing news of his evolving rebellion: “There will be an independent candidate — an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance.”
Which might have struck me as very consequential news, if it hadn’t sounded so much like something I once read in a fortune cookie. THERE WILL BE AN IMPRESSIVE CANDIDATE WITH A STRONG TEAM AND A REAL CHANCE. YOUR LUCKY NUMBERS ARE 7, 14 and 83.
So who is this mystery candidate? Well, Kristol is still holding out hope for a Mitt Romney or a Jeb Bush, or even a Joe Lieberman, or really anyone else you might actually have heard of.
But if you believe breathless reports by the intrepid team at Bloomberg Politics — or, you know, if you bother to read halfway through Kristol’s editorial, where he basically says it himself — the more likely candidate he has in mind is a guy named David French, who is a constitutional lawyer, author and Iraq War veteran.
To assess the threat this poses to the two-party system in America, let’s first consider the most obvious reasons that this gambit would not, in fact, have any real chance of success — at least if we’re talking about winning, which I don’t really think we are.
For one thing, the logistical hurdles to an independent campaign, no matter who lends his name to it, are probably insurmountable at this point, as deadlines for getting on the ballot in each state start to pile up quickly. If Kristol’s new party (maybe he’ll call it the French Resistance) were to announce itself in, say, a few weeks’ time, it would already be assured of missing out on ballot spots in California, North Carolina and Illinois.
There is, of course, a right-leaning alternative who already has access to ballot lines virtually everywhere, and that’s Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party nominee. But Republicans consider Johnson something of a kook, partly because as governor of New Mexico he espoused policies like decriminalizing marijuana. Like that could ever go mainstream.
But back to French, who has never run for political office, and who probably can’t book himself on cable shows, since he doesn’t tweet about the ugliness of other candidates’ wives and whatnot.
I spoke to French once several years ago, when he was organizing Evangelicals for Mitt. (It was not a large organization.) He struck me as thoughtful and decent. I liked him.
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