The 2024 presidential campaign invites a sense of realism.
Every presidential campaign opens with a controversy and closes with a scandal. Faced with this prospect, some observers feel disgust, others stoically accept it as the way of the world, and still others approach it with a Machiavellian delight. They see mudslinging and coarseness as the substance that drives great political drama.
The 2024 presidential election, between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, is no different. Vice President Harris began her political career through a high-profile affair with the powerful San Francisco politico Willie Brown. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, cheated on his first wife with their children’s nanny, whom he subsequently impregnated. Harris’s running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, has embellished his military service to the point that some critics have accused him of “stolen valor.” And since becoming the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Harris has changed her positions on multiple issues. These scandal archetypes were once enough to torpedo, or at least damage, presidential campaigns of men like Gary Hart and John Kerry. No longer.
Former president Trump, too, has survived a protracted sequence of personal scandals. His romantic life has splashed through the tabloids for decades, with multiple marriages, accusations of infidelity and womanizing, and an alleged tryst with a pornographic actress. His political scandals as president included impeachment; after leaving the White House, they have included indictment, arrest, and conviction—incidents with no historical precedent.
