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Matthew Gagnon of Yarmouth is the executive director of the Maine Policy Institute, a free-market policy think tank based in Portland. A native of Hampden, he previously served as a senior strategist for the Republican Governors Association in Washington, DC.
On Monday, US Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina made his entrance official in the 2024 presidential race at an event at Charleston Southern University, his alma mater. His announcement had been highly anticipated for months, and now that it has happened, his candidacy is real.
Scott is an interesting figure who I have followed for a long time. I became aware of him when was appointed by then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, herself a presidential candidate this year, to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint in December 2012. His appointment made him the first African-American senator of the South since Reconstruction. Since then he has been winning elections in its own right in 2014, 2016 and 2022, each time with more than 60 percent of the vote.
But it was not his ethnicity or his electoral victories that made him a candidate for the presidency. Winning races as a Republican in South Carolina, after all, is no big surprise. What turned him from an ordinary politician into an aspiring chief executive was the way he has done his job as a US senator and his particular brand of politics.
Scott is, in the modern political environment, a bit of a throwback. He’s staunchly conservative, but he’s also a pragmatist who seeks to cut through the partisan rhetoric that often drowns out substantive political discussions. A name was made, for example, trying to find a thoughtful and intelligent bipartisan solution to police reform in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
He’s also an optimist who’s selling a message of hope at a time when most of the country doesn’t seem interested in listening to him. He rejects the constant pessimism and catastrophism we hear almost daily from members of both parties, openly stating that “America is not a nation in decline”, and defending a positive vision of where to take the country.
He seems to want to emulate the positive and hopeful candidacies of Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Barack Obama in 2008. But therein lies Scott’s problem.
In any other year, at any other time, Scott would be a strong candidate for the White House based on his qualifications, his message, and his record. He is a sufficiently serious and accomplished person that he would normally be a major candidate. But will it be?
More specifically, do Republicans want what he’s selling? The country in general?
My gut tells me, sadly, that they don’t. Given all that has happened in the country over the past two decades, Republican voters are keen to elevate combative fighters who believe the country is fundamentally broken and in need of massive change. They see decay and social rot everywhere, and they yearn for candidates who will see it too, and pledge to fight against the powerful interests that are responsible for destroying the soul of the country.
You may wonder whether they are right to feel that way or not, I suspect my left-of-center readers would disagree, but that is beside the point. What matters is how they feel and what they want, and I see no evidence that a sunny optimist who thinks the country is doing well and just needs to change the bureaucrats running it is going to be that interesting to them.
And I don’t think things are that different for the broad non-Republican electorate either. For most independent voters (and even Democrats), there is a pervasive disillusionment with American institutions and a constant sense of crisis and failure that permeates everything. The mood for positivity is unfortunately quite limited.
So I wouldn’t expect Scott’s candidacy to really go anywhere, which is a shame because his brand of politics is probably what the country needs most right now. America has developed a painfully divisive political culture and needs a leader who can articulate a compelling and hopeful vision for America’s future, while earnestly seeking answers to intractable problems and building bridges between radically different populations. It needs a leader with integrity and passion and a fresh, forward-thinking perspective.
Scott could be that leader, but will he be given the chance? almost certainly notbecause what the voters of this country want is not at all aligned with what they really need.
