In the 1992 presidential election, Americans chose Bill Clinton, a newcomer to national politics, over George H.W. Bush, a man who had held just about every important job Washington had to offer, including president, and then re-elected Clinton in 1996 instead of choosing Bob Dole, who had been in the Senate since 1969.
In 2000, another Washington drop-in, George W. Bush, was elected instead of Beltway lifer Al Gore, and then he gained a second term when he defeated John Kerry, who had been in the Senate for two decades. In 2008 and 2012, the pattern continued, when another barely tested neophyte, Barack Obama, bested first John McCain and then Mitt Romney. In 2016, the consummate interloper, Donald Trump, defeated Hillary Clinton, whose range of national experience almost matched the elder Bush’s.
Although in 2020 the trend seemed to reverse, Trump’s term in office was, to say the least, unique, and in 2024 smart money is tilting toward Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who previously spent just three terms in the U.S. House. While turnover in politics is hardly an unusual phenomenon, Americans’ recent string of political U-turns is uncommon in electoral democracies, matched only by France, owner of the world’s most fickle electorate. The question for both nations is not so much why new faces have such appeal as why the old faces lose their allure so thoroughly.
