Trump and Harris would Rather be Right than President
“I had rather be right than be president.” Either Donald Trump or Kamela Harris could utter the phrase. In picking their running mates, both seemed more ready to be “right” than win. Sadly, “being right” is, for both, a matter of ideological self-indulgence, not a sacrifice of personal ambition for a larger national cause.
Henry Clay, Senate majority leader and a founder of the Whig party, was the first to say he’d rather be right than president, but he coined the phrase at a time when preservation of the Union was at stake. His words were spoken to a southern colleague on the eve of the 1844 presidential campaign, after Clay had antagonized southerners by accepting a petition to end slavery within the District of Columbia.
Known as the Great Compromiser, Clay also opposed the immediate abolition of slavery for fear the South would secede. In 1820, he had orchestrated a compromise that admitted to the Union slave-state Missouri, but otherwise banned slavery above a line that became Oklahoma’s northern border. In 1850 Clay crafted a compromise that admitted free-state California but required the return of fugitive slaves. Neither abolitionists nor secessionist southerners found anything good to say about the Great Compromiser. However, Abraham Lincoln never wavered in his praise, as he, like Clay, realized slaves could not be emancipated if the North did not have the industrial strength to resist secession from the Union. That only happens—barely—by 1865.
By choosing to sacrifice personal ambition to save his country, Clay’s decision to be right, no matter the electoral cost, expressed a commitment to a noble cause. But today the phrase captures no such idealism. Both presidential nominees have selected running mates who duplicate their own ideological predilections rather than use the choice to build national consensus and heal divisions. Ironically, pursuit of political self-interest would have better served the national interest than a selection of a problematic running mate with whom one is ideologically compatible.
Trump picked J. D. Vance, an untested, first-term, red-state Senator, because he doubles down on Trump’s own national conservatism. Kamala Harris says she feels “comfortable” working with Tim Walz, an unknown, left-leaning governor from a blue state, who must explain why he waited three days before calling out the national guard to control civil unrest in Minnesota’s largest city.
Each presidential candidate has found a soulmate, but neither has chosen a candidate that softens divisions or strengthens the chances of electoral victory. Within days of his nomination, Vance was forced to explain off-hand, ill-chosen comments about single women. Meanwhile, Walz has struggled to explain his hasty departure from military service on the eve of his country’s entry into the Iraq war. Both candidates thrill the extremes of their parties, but neither does anything to build a solid electoral majority. Neither comes from a crucial swing state that could be the difference on election day.
Five times Henry Clay faltered in his quest for the presidency. In each case, he was damaged by his willingness to bargain, to reach compromise, to forestall division, to build an American system knitted together by roads, canals, and railroads that would connect states to one another in ways that would make separation impossible. In the end, Clay achieved what he thought to be “right,” in large part because Lincoln fulfilled Clay’s vision by both emancipating slaves and saving the Union. Upon Clay’s death, his biographer tells us, Lincoln eulogized the Great Compromiser: “I recognize his voice . . .speaking as it ever spoke, for the Union, the Constitution, and the freedom of mankind.”
Today’s issues seem not as great as those the country faced on the eve of the Civil War, but both Trump and Harris have had opportunities to build consensus without sacrificing their electoral chances. Had Nikki Haley been chosen as the running mate, Trump would have looked beyond the past to the future, forcing never Trumpers to reconsider. Had Harris picked either Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro or Andy Beshar, governor of Clay’s beloved state of Kentucky, she would have demonstrated her inclination and ability to resist the Democratic party’s progressive wing.
The vice-presidential selection is the most revealing action a presidential nominee takes during a campaign. Everything else can be rhetoric, strategy, and manipulation. But the selection of the vice-president prefigures choices a nominee is likely to make when he or she enters the Oval Office.
John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan made outstanding, highly strategic vice-presidential selections. Kennedy, a young, untested senator, enhanced the gravity of his ticket by turning to the powerful Senate majority leader, Lyndon Johnson, who brought Texas into the fold on election day. Similarly, Governor Reagan’s choice of George H. W. Bush brought international experience to a ticket and welcomed Rockefeller liberals into what became a broad-based Republican alliance.
Partisans who defend Vance and Walz say they will mobilize the base. But is that the main problem facing either Republicans or Democrats today? Does Trump really need someone to demonstrate his commitment to close the border and set high tariffs on foreign goods? Does Harris, sporting a California progressive pedigree, really need, as a number 2, someone who has signed a state law giving free college tuition to undocumented immigrants?
The ghost of Henry Clay watches, wonders, and worries at what the new meaning of “rather be right” foreshadows for the Union, the Constitution, and the freedom of mankind.
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Paul E. Peterson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and a professor of government at Harvard University.