U.S. Presidential elections 2024: What to read ahead of the Harris-Trump showdown

With just days to go for the U.S. presidential elections on November 5, after what is arguably the most polarised campaign in recent history, it is time to start looking at what the future may hold. In the run-up to the polls, there were surprising turns, including the Joseph Biden-Kamala Harris switch as the Democrat candidate, and the assassination attempts on former President and Republican nominee Donald Trump.

A number of books on the upcoming elections makes it clear there are not two, but three likely outcomes: a Trump win, a Harris win, and a contested outcome that goes to the courts, and possibly the streets. “This is the strangest election cycle I’ve ever seen… I’m telling people, you’re worried about November, I’m worried about tomorrow morning,” says Trump loyalist and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, according to an exchange in War, Bob Woodward’s latest book, out just weeks before election day.

A smartphone screen showing the live broadcast of presidential debate between Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
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Important conversations

To turn the covers of a Woodward book is to spend hours as a fly on the wall in the White House and other places where important conversations take place in the U.S. capital.

From his iconic start with reporting partner Carl Bernstein on the Watergate scandal that ended the Nixon Presidency, and their book All the President’s Men, Woodward has honed his skill as the ultimate insider-outsider in Washington with more than a dozen books focused on different presidencies. His trilogy on the Trump Presidency (2017-2021), Fear: Trump in the White House, Rage, and Peril (written with Robert Costa), brought out in granular detail the chaos, the unpredictability and the insecurity of the world’s most powerful country, and how that period changed the world.

Woodward’s latest, in that sense, takes off from previous books, Bush at War and Obama’s Wars, to speak about how the Biden years have dealt with three global conflicts: the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Israel’s assault on Gaza and Lebanon after the October 7, 2023 attacks. The book is remarkably up to date, and provides an insight on the past few years in the Oval office and just outside it. Woodward takes note of Biden’s dogged decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, something he had failed to convince former President Barack Obama of doing.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin meet for the U.S.-Russia summit at Villa La Grange in Geneva, Switzerland.
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He looks at Biden’s unsuccessful attempt at deterring Russian President Vladimir Putin from going into Ukraine, even though the U.S. had remarkable intelligence far ahead of time that Russia would invade. Woodward also observes how the U.S. Presidency has tackled Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a leader that Biden has a long history of run-ins with, while supporting Israel to the hilt.

Woodward’s recording of the profanity used by heads of state is sometimes jarring, but conveys the seriousness of the times: At one place, Woodward recounts Biden saying that Obama never took Putin seriously enough and “f***ed it up” in 2014 with the Crimean invasion, about the same time that Trump says that Biden had “f***ed us up” by not handling Putin better.

Anti-war protesters raise hands behind U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on President Biden’s funding request to support Israel and Ukraine, as well as bolster border security, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
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A lunch conversation Woodward reveals between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Biden, where Blinken convinces the President to step down from the campaign is proof of how close the author is to the principals.

Where they stand

People wear masks depicting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a demonstration in solidarity with Palestinians, in Dublin, Ireland.
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While the book is about the Biden Presidency, it is by far the best account of where both former President Trump and Vice-President Harris would likely stand on foreign policy and dealing with Russia and Israel if they come to power. Trump’s obvious admiration for Putin, and easy understanding with Netanyahu comes through in a number of events described in War. One of the most telling chapters deals with Harris’s tough talk with Netanyahu in September this year, where she raises civilian killings in Gaza, and warns that the next generation of Americans may not share the sympathy for Israel’s actions that hers does.

Unfortunately for readers here, War makes little mention of India, with the exception of the White House’s outreach to India, China, Turkey and Israel to send messages to Putin cautioning against nuclear adventurism, and a reference to high levels of illegal immigration from India and China. Even the Indo-Pacific strategy bears scant notice or indication where the Presidential contenders will stand.

What memoirs tell

For those seeking less policy and more personal stories about the candidates, there are several books like Kamala Harris’ updated memoir, The Truths we Hold: An American Journey. This adds more on her worldview in the concluding chapter.

An image of Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris displayed on a screen inside the arena, at Madison Square Garden, in New York, U.S.
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Trump put out a book after surviving the assassination attempt, Save America, which is prohibitively expensive and expectedly bombastic. A more personable account comes from former First Lady Melania Trump’s book Melania, that has, however, been panned as a “tell-nothing” sanitised version of events.

Interesting details of Trump’s beginnings come from his nephew Fred Trump’s All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, out recently, and his niece, Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, which is a profile in Trump psychology.

suhasini.h@thehindu.co.in