As we come to the close of 2024, it is worth looking back over this year at some of the highs and lows. Being an election year, and a historical one at that, with only the second time a president has served two nonsequential terms, it is probably not a surprise that most of my columns this year focused on the election. In fact, the first column I wrote in 2024 was about Colorado and Maine both removing Donald Trump on their state’s primary ballots. They justified their decisions with a clause in the 14th Amendment which says no person shall be president that has engaged, “in insurrection or rebellion.” The decision made it to the U.S.
Supreme Court that concluded that a state can disqualify a person from state office but not a federal one, allowing Trump on both ballots.
In February I looked at an issue brought up by President Joe Biden in a speech where he asked, “Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?”
Biden claimed that Trump wanted to destroy democracy while he was trying to preserve it. The issue I addressed was that Trump was being blocked from the ballots in some Democratic states and the Democratic Party was blocking their own from challenging Biden in the primaries, neither seemed too democratic. I argued while it is not common to compete against a sitting president for the position, it was also not common for a sitting president to have a low 33% approval rating. Also, historically, sitting presidents have been challenged—most recently Lyndon B. Johnson dropped out of the 1968 campaign when he lost a couple of primaries.
Democrats suffered another blow in February when Special Counsel Robert Hur released his findings on Biden’s handling of classified documents. Hur said that while Biden had mishandled the documents, he would not pursue charges because of the difficulty of convicting Biden because he had “limited precision and recall” and he was “a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” The report and visible gaffs from the president left many wondering if Biden was mentally fit for the job.
In June it was the Republican Party’s turn to hit a speed bump when Trump was convicted on all 34 counts of the Hush Money Case in New York. Questions at the time were “would he serve jail time?” and “can a convicted felon still run for president?”
While I suspected that Trump would never see the inside of a jail cell, I focused on the fact that Trump’s conviction would not preclude him from running for a second term.
Historically it had happened before in 1920 with socialist candidate Eugene Debs. I also wrote about the 1981 Nixon v. Fitzgerald Supreme Court case where the Court found that the Constitution supported a grant of absolute immunity to the president.
They based their decision on two concepts: the Executive Vesting Clause and Separation of Powers. I wrote at the time, “In arguing for absolute immunity, the courts have said that the president does not have absolute power.
For one, impeachment still applies as stated in the Constitution. There is also scrutiny from Congress and the press. The belief is that presidents care about their approval rating and historical reputation as well as hurting themselves or their party in future elections.”
July brought another problem for Biden when he met Trump on stage for their first debate. As expected, there was little policy discussed; instead both men spent the evening tooting their own horns. Seventeen times they said their administration or programs were the greatest or best—not just good—but the greatest of all time.
Twenty-two times they called their opponent’s presidency or programs the worst of all time. At one point they got in a fight about who was the better golfer, both greatly exaggerating their physical prowess. The biggest takeaway from the debate was that Biden came off looking old and Democrats instantly started to wonder if they needed to replace him.
Also, in July came the startling news that Trump had been shot in an assassination attempt.
While Trump was only shot in the ear, and no candidate wants to risk death, Trump, like candidates before him who survived assassination attempts, only grew stronger.
In such a close election, it’s impossible to know if the attempt helped with Trump’s victory, but it could not have hurt.
Then, after the shooting, Biden decided that he needed to drop out of the race for the good of the Democratic Party, and the scramble was on to replace him. The obvious choice was Kamala Harris, but there were also concerns of her own likability and ability to win. Yet Democrats were in a tough position as the primaries were past and there was no good way to choose to another candidate.
Their only option was to allow the delegates to choose at the Democratic Convention.
While the news called this unprecedented—they were right in the way the events unfolded—but there had been 11 other times in our nation’s history where a sitting president did not run for another term, and some, like Lyndon B. Johnson, pulled out in the middle of the primaries. It should be noted that it was only after the 1968 election that primaries were used to choose a candidate; before that they were always chosen in conventions.
Losing Biden took away a historic election of only the third time two presidents faced off against each other.
Yet having an ex-president run against an ex-vice president was just as rare, it had happened only twice before, 1800 with current President John Adams against then-Vice President Thomas Jefferson, and again in 1984 with President Ronald Reagan against former Vice President Walter Mondale.
The last election news I covered before the big day was a remark Harris made to protestors at a rally in October. Just three weeks before Election Day someone at a rally shouted, “Jesus is Lord” to which Harris responded “Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally.” The comment did not get the attention I thought it would, and virtually none from the mainstream media, but it would not be the first time a presidential candidate made a remark before the election that did some damage. Again, in a close election, a few votes here and there matter.
In November, after a long year, the election finally came. And to what seemed like a surprise to many, Trump won 312 to 226 in the Electoral College. It was a historical win in that there are few times that politicians get a do-over—and for presidents, it had only happened once before. Grover Cleveland was the only other president to get such a gift as he won in 1884, lost in 1888, but came back and won in 1892. Trump supporters were elated. While detractors were left once again trying to figure out how this man they had vilified could win a second term.
With an election such as this, it’s easy to forget that there were other major news stories that impacted our lives, many of which dealt with politics. In March the big news was the House of Representatives impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. With immigration being one of the hottest political issues of the day, Republicans impeached the secretary on charges of being “engaged in a pattern of conduct that is incompatible with his duties…[and] has failed to faithfully uphold his oath and has instead presided over a reckless abandonment of border security and immigration enforcement.”
The charges also include that he, “willfully violated the Immigration and Nationality Act by releasing illegal aliens into the interior of the United States despite the plain language of the Act.” While there have been four presidential impeachments, this was only the second of a Cabinet member, the first being Secretary of War William Belknap during the Grant administration and involved southwest Oklahoma.
2024 was a difficult year for college campuses as they harkened back to the 1960s with student protesters taking over buildings and tent cities occupying several spaces across the nation.
Protesters were upset with the continuing war in Israel and the death of so many Palestinians. Since Hamas killed more than 1,200 Jews in an Oct. 7, 2023, raid, Israeli military forces had tried to clear Hamas out of Gaza.
Students and professional protesters gathered on U.S. campuses chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free.” The nation was outraged when college presidents were brought before Congress and refused to condemn the attacks against Jewish students, leading to the firing and resignation of several prestigious university leaders.
In October the U.S. Supreme Court was back in the news as the conservative court ruled against the president. But this time, instead of Biden, it was Trump. Back in 2017 President Trump asked the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Agency to reclassify bump stocks as machine gun accessories and ban them.
However, a Texas gun store owner sued the federal government on the grounds that bump stocks were wrongfully classified. The ruling, which overturned the ban, had nothing to do with the Second Amendment and everything to do with Article I, Section I, of the Constitution which gives Congress sole responsibility to make law. Congress defined what an automatic weapon was in 1934. Because Congress made the law, only Congress can change it—not the president. In an important ruling for strict constructionists, the Court said the president cannot overstep Congress’ authority.
Finally on the geopolitical front, in October Israel came back into the headlines as Hezbollah decided to attack Israel from the north causing Israel to fight a war on two fronts. Hezbollah (a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group) and Hamas are very different organizations but at times can work together as they share a common goal of the elimination of Israel. Like Israel has done in the past, they were forced to invade southern Lebanon to create a buffer zone between Hezbollah and Israel.
On a positive note, for this region, as this year is coming to an end, Bashar al-Assad, the tyrannical leader of Syria who has plunged his nation headlong into years of civil war, was overthrown.
What does this mean for the regime? I don’t know. The group now in charge are saying the right things, but they also have ties to al-Qaeda, so I am holding my optimism for now.
So many events this year have been divisive. But fortunately there have been a few cultural events that brought everyone together, even if we disagreed over the outcomes.
Of course, the year kicked off with an exciting Super Bowl which saw the now two-time champion Kansas City Chiefs defeat the San Francisco 49ers in an overtime match.
While I felt the halftime show was only so-so, many liked the performance that featured Usher. As always, what drew the most people in were the commercials. I personally liked the Etsy commercial where France gifted us the Statue of Liberty forcing us to send them a cheeseboard.
In a very nontraditional way, another sports moment that brought us all together was the Jake Paul v. Mike Tyson fight. It unified genuine boxing enthusiasts and bandwagon riders because the humdrum performances of both fighters left many disappointed at best, and wallowing in our loathing the next morning. Live on Netflix, which also had numerous technical difficulties in its streaming, Paul v. Tyson was the most watched boxing match of all time. Yet instead of seeing the champ, “Iron Mike,” crush his opponent like days of old, we watched an old man seem to pretend to fight a guy who got famous dancing on TikTok. At the end of the day, we can all agree to our disappointment of the highly anticipated exhibition. Finally in a moment of fun, much of the nation gathered on April 8 with funny glasses to watch the moon pass in front of the sun. I know its small, but I’ll take my positive wins where I can get them.
On a more somber note, 2024 saw the passing of many great men and women. At the time I noted two celebrities, not because they were celebrities, whom I normally care less about, but because these two were culturally significant and brought a little happiness into our lives. The first was James Earl Jones who passed on Sept. 9. Jones was arguably the most famous voice in Hollywood. Then Sept. 28 we lost Kris Kristofferson, the poet laureate of the Outlaw Country movement and part of the greatest generation of country singers ever. Both will be missed.
Finally, while I did travel some this year and wrote about my journeys to Great Britian, there is not room enough her to remember those sojourns. However, I will close with a few lines from one of Scotland’s favorite sons, Robert Burns, who left us these words, “Should old acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot, In the days of auld lang syne?”
Happy New Year from my family to you and yours. May next year be even better than the last and hopefully you will drink a cup of kindness yet, for the sake of auld lang syne.
James Finck is a professor of American history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He may be reached at HistoricallySpeaking1776@gmail.com.
