Q&A: Professor William Howell Discusses What's at Stake in the 2024 Presidential Election

The United States presidential election of 2024 is in full swing, with former President Donald Trump and Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio accepting the Republican nomination and incumbent President Joe Biden declining the Democratic nomination in favor of his Vice President, Kamala Harris.

In a campaign with this many twists and turns, with inflation, immigration, and the future of democracy as topics on the campaign trail, we sat down with William Howell, the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics and the director of the Center for Effective Government at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, to gain some insight.

How would you characterize what's at stake for the country? Is it really the most important election of our lifetime, as people on both sides seem to feel?

The stakes, of course, are enormous. A great deal hangs in the balance in this election: the health and wellbeing of our democracy, all manner of policy issues, and, not least, the future of the Democratic and Republican parties.

That said, I’m reticent to talk about any single election being “the most important” in our history or lifetimes. Looking back, we are plainly living in a politics defined by the beginning of the Iraq War, something that would have been inconceivable had Al Gore prevailed in the 2000 election. It also hard to imagine a Trump presidency without Obama’s election in 2008 and reelection in 2012. Every one of these elections mattered a great deal, both for what they immediately ushered in, and for what they meant for future elections.

Is 2024 the most important election of our lifetime? Sure–as was the last one, and the one before that.

Let’s start with the withdrawal of incumbent President Joe Biden from the race before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Were Democrats’ concerns about Biden’s ability to win overblown?

No. It wasn't some spasm of misguided anxiety that led the Democratic Party to impulsively boot their front-runner from the race; it was done with real cause. President Biden’s debate performance in June spoke to lingering, deep, and abiding concerns about his age and his ability to perform the duties of office.

President Biden’s debate performance tapped into concerns that were both widely felt and very real. Much of the presidency is about communication and performing in public. During his term in office, Biden was shielded from much public exposure. When he did speak without the safety of a teleprompter, many of his supporters grimaced along. And this is what happened in the last four years. Never mind what's going to happen for the next.

Biden clearly wanted to see this campaign through to the end, but he had no choice but to stand down. What we’ve just witnessed has been a party coming to terms with a very real problem and doing something in the final hour to rectify it. All kinds of pressure were applied so that, in the end, Biden's hand was forced.

Would Biden have ended up winning in November? Probably not, but we don't really know. Will Kamala Harris necessarily win by virtue of this shift? We’ll have to wait and see. What we can say with certainty now is that the Democratic Party undertook this change with real cause.

Should President Biden have any hope at meaningful legislation or reform in the remaining time he has in office?

Given the partisan composition of Congress and Biden’s waning influence, it’s hard to imagine that he'll be able to accomplish any great feats legislatively. But on three fronts, we may see continued evidence of this sitting president’s influence.

One is an acceleration of regulatory activity that's handled through the administrative state. There is regularly a burst of unilateral activity in the final months of presidents when they're in office, and I think we can expect to see that now.

We can also expect to see Biden working behind the scenes trying to shore up the international coalition in support of the war in Ukraine, and to shape foreign policy as it relates to Israel. Those are two hotspots around the globe that the United States has been heavily involved in, and where Biden doesn't need, at least for the next six months, lots of congressional support in order to influence ground-level operations.

The third area is one where, admittedly, I’d like to see change. A lament I have about the Biden presidency is, frankly, the inattention paid to institutional reforms in service of a stronger democracy. There was a brief moment early in his term where Biden thought about filibuster reform and another brief moment when he assembled a group of lawyers to think about judicial reform. Since then, very little has happened. But that may be changing. Biden recently announced a set of proposed reforms to the judicial branch, including 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices. I’d like to see him to turn to those themes more, if only to set a democracy reform agenda for the intermediate future.

As it pertains to shoring up our democratic systems, Democrats have consistently called former President Trump a threat to democracy. Are those claims legitimate?

Yes, they are legitimate.

Let’s be clear: Democrats are certainly trying to push this narrative so that they can win in November. They aren't neutral arbiters in a serious-minded evaluation of the stakes of the upcoming election. They are looking for advantages in order to win it.

That being said, the future of democracy in important respects does hang in the balance, particularly when you think about the Trump administration's plans to retrench the administrative state. Project 2025 is an extraordinary, coordinated effort on the part of conservatives to finally lay waste to the administrative state, which they see as an abomination in the constitutional order. And they plan to do so by massively, massively increasing the number of political appointees to the federal bureaucracy. It's the administrative state that interprets and implements statutes, that sets the government in motion. So when Trump promises to drain the swamp, and when members of his party call for the wholesale and indiscriminate firing of civil servants, these aren't idle threats: They come from a long history of conservative skepticism and opposition to the administrative state. They see this as their moment to finally kneecap the federal bureaucracy.

But that’s not all: When you see the damage Trump has done to democratic norms and practices, and his taste for autocratic power, the stakes of the upcoming election appear in stark relief. When you just listen to Trump, take him at his word, it’s plainly apparent that we have real reasons to be concerned about the health and wellbeing of our democracy.

Will Democrats save our democracy, once and for all? No. Will Harris shore up our institutions, should she be elected? Probably not. But the threat from former President Trump is real. We should take it very seriously.

What about Trump’s legal travails? What do you make of the judicial system’s ability to handle the cases against him?

Say what you will about the general importance of the federal judiciary. The idea that the third branch of government is going to serve as a robust guard against demagoguery and the entreaties of a strongman president is just foolhardy.

On legal grounds, many saw the classified documents case as being the strongest among the bunch brought against Trump. It’s astonishing that a district-level Trump appointee with an extreme interpretation of the structure of government saw fit to just dismiss it. It's outrageous, and it comes on the heel of all kinds of delays. Meanwhile, the Georgia election interference case founders, and the January 6 case brought by the Justice Department is wrapped up in the Supreme Court’s newfound discovery of presidential immunity. In the slow pace of its deliberations and the contents of its rulings, the federal judiciary is all but insisting that it won’t check the unilateral actions of a strongman president—not reliably, not consistently, not urgently.

Former President Trump has chosen United States Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate, and Vice President Harris is currently considering her options. How much does a vice presidential selection matter, and what should Harris consider as she’s picking her VP?

With respect to electoral returns, vice presidential selections don’t matter an awful lot. There’s some evidence, though certainly not overwhelming, that vice presidents may be able to deliver their home state. But in this era of acute partisan polarization, the effect is likely to be even smaller than what the historical record might suggest.

What matters is twofold: (1) the selection of a vice president provides insight into the trajectory of a party and the kind of administration the president intends to hold; and (2) the selected individual may him or herself become president, either as a result of a vacancy in office or because they’re the chosen standard-bearer in the aftermath of a presidential term of office. More than anything Kamala Harris recently accomplished, it was her position as Vice President that did the most to deliver her the Democratic Party’s nomination for president this year.

Or let’s take J. D. Vance. His selection speaks to Trump's total unwillingness to countenance any disagreement within his ranks, just as it speaks to his ambition that the populist wing of the Republican Party carry forward in the years ahead. There's real meaning in that selection. Trump is not a young man; he’ll be 82 at the end of his term if he is elected again–just as old as Biden is now. If something were to happen to him–and I certainly hope that it does not–then we’d promptly have as president someone whose entire experience in elected office amounted to two years spent in the Senate.

Meanwhile, Harris is trying to select her own VP. It's not an accident that she's looking at a bunch of governors, many of whom are political moderates who will appeal to independents and that sliver of the electorate that hasn't made up its mind between voting D or voting R. But when making her pick, she surely is paying to issues that go beyond electoral considerations. Presidents regularly select governing partners who can fill out their own experience. Many people thought that President Barack Obama's selection of Biden in 2008 was informed in no small part by Biden's foreign policy experience. Harris may do the same.

And lastly, I expect that Harris will draw lessons from her own experience working with Biden since 2020. This relationship, surely, will inform her selection of a nominee, much like Biden’s experience as vice president under Obama informed his choice four years ago.

If there are debates between Harris and Trump, what would you like to see them discuss?

I would like to see clear proposals about how we might modernize and fortify the institutions that govern our democracy. When thinking about the future of democracy, it's not enough to speak in generalities. We need to talk and argue about specifics. Following Biden’s recommendation, should we have 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices? Should we keep the Electoral College? What, precisely, about the administration of elections might be improved?

If we're going to make actual progress in shoring up our democracy, we need to speak about tangible reforms. I'd like to hear what these candidates have to say about them.

Does it seem like we’re in unchartered territory, with all of the news in the past several weeks?

It sure does.

Historically, there have been instances when an incumbent president withdrew during an election year, as in 1968. There have been previous assassination attempts on presidents, former presidents, and candidates. There have been plenty of elections when uncertainty about a party’s nomination ran right through a brokered convention.

What we've been observing over the course of the last month, though, is altogether exceptional: an incumbent president who secured all the delegates needed for the nomination but who withdrew from the campaign just weeks before the convention for reasons that have nothing to do with a political scandal or with a falling out with his party on the basis of policy issues–and a vice president emerging within hours as the new candidate. On split screen, meanwhile, you have Trump not just wielding, but flaunting his total control over the Republican Party, which was only enhanced through this recent assassination attempt; and then him selecting, if not a facsimile, then certainly a loyal servant as his vice president.

All of this has happened in a matter of weeks. Have we seen some of the elements of this drama before? Sure. Have we seen them strung together in the way that we have this last month? Not even close.