Presidential politics runs on ambiguity - but that may be changing

2024 hasn't been a very subtle campaign, has it?

The first thing I remember about the 2016 election is the hope. From one perspective, the choice was as clear as it could be: a qualified woman, an unqualified man who had insulted every group and broken every norm.

But the second thing I remember is the ambivalence. For every photo of “I Voted” stickers on Susan B. Anthony’s grave or someone wearing white to the polls, there was a reminder of the problems and racial exclusivity of the suffrage movement. Trump broke campaign norms and made anti-democratic threats and railed against the rule of law at his rallies. Hillary Clinton was the candidate tasked with saving democracy – a role she might not have anticipated when she kicked off her campaign in 2015. And the speeches to Goldman Sachs, the primary race against Bernie Sanders, and the comments about “super predators” from the 1990s loomed over the race.

The Clinton campaign, which nevertheless won the popular vote by a wide margin, had such a strong connection with the past three presidential administrations that it struggled to articulate a forward-looking vision. Policy plans certainly existed, but that was not the terrain on which the race was fought. And in the end, the ambivalence of the political environment was born out in the election results. Clinton was running for a third Democratic White House term under good but not great conditions. Trump used his name recognition and lack of connection to traditional conservative movements – and the infighting among those movements – to mobilize around racial backlash while persuading the electorate that he was both moderate, and something new and outside the usual ideological confines of politics. And so one candidate won the popular vote and the other the Electoral College, producing one of the most consequential non-results of any presidential contest.

Presidential elections often take place in this kind of ambiguity. Campaigns jockey for the questions that will drive the debate – the economy, race, character – and the tone it will take, whether positive or negative, retrospective or prospective. The scope and size of national presidential elections also means that candidates use strategic ambiguity by necessity – they must present themselves to multiple groups to be viable, and this requires some blurring and hair-splitting. As a result, recent elections are often driven by questions of definition: in 2000, was there really a meaningful difference between Bush and Gore? (It turns out there was.) In 2004, did John Kerry really have a meaningful record of military service, or was he exaggerating? And if the latter, what did that say about the brand of patriotism that Kerry was offering as an alternative to Bush at a time when the “war on terror” was at the front of the public mind? In 2008, both McCain and Obama used navigated blurry ideological claims. McCain had a reputation as a “maverick” that had appealed across party lines in the past, but also worked on improving his conservative credentials. Obama benefited from being both the darling of progressives and the candidate who promised to soothe the “tone in Washington.”

Viewing campaigns this way explains a lot of what we see. Candidates try to undermine their opponents’ authenticity, while trying to stretch their own political positions to appeal to multiple constituencies. In some sense, these seem like inevitable features of a national campaign.

And these features persist in 2024. Complaints that Harris hasn’t let the electorate “get to know her” well enough reflect how these questions about authenticity present distinct challenges for women candidates. Harris is navigating a Democratic Party that has been rapidly changing but still also heavily influenced by the old guard. Being the sitting vice president also requires a bit of ambiguity – she can use the administration as a guideline for how she might govern, and her service in it is a big part of her qualifications for office. But she also wants to distance herself from the unpopular aspects, and forge her own political persona separate from Biden. She’s linked her personal bio and her career as a lawyer to her political priorities. But her authenticity and openness have still been questioned.

For Trump, this is a somewhat different matter. There’s the mere fact that a former president running for office can employ a lot less strategic ambiguity. They have a full record on all the issues that presidents deal with – and Trump’s is pretty straightforward. Two issues emphasized by the Harris campaign are especially difficult to blur. Trump’s involvement in January 6 is hard to deny, even if partisans are divided on the significance of the event. Most Americans remember it as an attack on democracy, and democracy, as numerous experts will tell you, involves some bright lines.

This year is also, of course, the first post-Dobbs election. Republicans are no strangers to staking out nuanced, ambiguous positions on abortion – this was the major theme of the 1976 election as Gerald Ford tried to appease the activists calling for an anti-abortion amendment by supporting a return to the states instead. The party has shifted over time – both parties have sorted on the issue – but Reagan tried to strike a balance without getting too close to the anti-abortion movement, and even George W. Bush used euphemistic phrases like “culture of life.” With Roe v. Wade gone and the status quo dramatically altered, blurring abortion stances is a lot harder. Trump has tried a few times, eventually backing him into the position of saying he would veto a federal abortion ban. Nevertheless, it may prove much harder for him to escape being connected to the Dobbs decision overall, since he appointed some of the justices that made it happen.

We may also have reached the limits of ambiguity around immigration and race. Not that these were especially subtle in past years, but this year’s election seems to have given up pretense. In 2016, it was plausible that we were experiencing a temporary move away from the “dog whistle” politics of decades prior. In 2024, it seems clearer that more direct racial appeals are here to stay.

Presidential elections have long thrived on ambiguity – candidates who present themselves differently to different audiences and embrace vague messages that can mean different things to different voters, and who point out the flaws in their opponents’ stories and claims to authenticity. The 2016 election, for all of its unique qualities, was no real exception and can even be explained by viewing it through this lens. In 2024, something has shifted, perhaps in equal parts shaping and shaped by a third Trump candidacy. The question remaining is whether these sharper pictures of the choices will matter enough to change the final result.