‘Doing a Biden’ is new international shorthand for ousting past-due
leaders
Facing looming national elections, Japan’s Fumio Kishida, Canada’s Justin
Trudeau and Germany’s Olaf Scholz have all faced calls to follow in the
U.S. president’s footsteps.
By EMILY SCHULTHEIS
09/29/2024 10:00 AM EDT
When President Joe Biden exited the presidential race to make way for
Vice President Kamala Harris this summer, he knew his decision would be
closely watched around the world.
What he didn’t realize is that it would make “doing a Biden” the new
political shorthand for an embattled national leader who sees the writing
on the wall and steps aside for others within his party. Or the move’s
ripple effects: setting an example for those within democracies closely
tied to the United States to pressure their own leaders to step down.
At least three unpopular leaders facing looming national elections —
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz — have felt that pressure
themselves in the two months since Biden bowed out.
“Why isn’t Scholz doing a Biden?” asked the German news magazine Der
Spiegel earlier this month after a string of regional election losses, saying
the chancellor “would be doing his party, his country and himself a favor”
by stepping aside. This summer, in the wake of Biden’s announcement,
the Canadian broadcaster CBC posed the question: “Could Trudeau go
next?” And Kishida was “having a Biden moment” when he stepped down
as the leader of his party last month, one expert quipped.
Griping about an unpopular leader and calling for alternatives is nothing
new, and the political dynamics in each country are different: Kishida was
already on the ropes before Biden stepped down, and it’s not clear either
Scholz or Trudeau will bow to internal party pressure the way Biden
eventually did.
But the explicit references to Biden making the rounds in Tokyo, Ottawa
and Berlin are proof that his decision in July has established a global
model for a politician doing the most unnatural thing: choosing to willingly
give up power without defeat or death.
Rough political waters ahead
Kishida, Trudeau and Scholz are oceans apart, but they have found
themselves in remarkably similar political territory in recent months facing
suggestions they follow in Biden’s footsteps and call it quits.
All three leaders, well into their terms and increasingly unpopular, have
been bombarded with questions from within their parties — Japan’s
Liberal Democratic Party, Canada’s Liberals and Germany’s Social
Democrats, respectively — about whether they’re the right standard-
bearers for national elections in each country slated for next year.
Kishida, first elected as Japan’s prime minister and head of his LDP party
in 2021, has faced declining approval ratings after a series of corruption
scandals rocked his party. On Friday, Kishida’s LDP elected its new
president — and he wasn’t among the hopefuls vying for the job.
Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida listens.
“It is necessary to firmly present a newly born LDP to the people,”
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said. “The most obvious first step
to show that the LDP will change is for me to step down.” | Mark
Schiefelbein/AP
There had already been speculation that Kishida might bow out of his
party’s leadership race this fall, but after Biden’s exit from the U.S.
presidential race in July, politicians and journalists began drawing direct
comparisons between the two politicians.
“Biden is out and Kishida should retire quickly and honorably, too,” one
LDP official told the Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest newspapers,
while a member of Kishida’s Cabinet told the Japan Times: “We need to
closely watch the impact of [Biden’s withdrawal] on the party leadership
race.”
In mid-August, only weeks after Biden’s decision, Kishida made a surprise
announcement that he too would be giving up the slot as his party’s top
candidate.
“It is necessary to firmly present a newly born LDP to the people,” Kishida
said at a press conference last month. “The most obvious first step to
show that the LDP will change is for me to step down.”
Scholz, who took over from Angela Merkel as chancellor just two months
after Kishida became Japan’s prime minister, has been fighting for
political survival amid record-low approval ratings. Like Biden, he’s faced
calls to yield to a politician better positioned to lead the center-left SPD in
next year’s federal election.
“There is a deep disappointment with the government, with the coalition
and with Scholz,” Peter Matuschek, chief political analyst at the German
polling firm Forsa, told POLITICO.
That disappointment with Scholz’s government stems from both the
Ukraine war’s ongoing impact on Germany and infighting within Scholz’s
three-party governing coalition. Scholz’s approval rating stood at just 20
percent earlier this month, according to a poll from the German
broadcaster ARD.
Voters have punished Scholz and his SPD at the ballot box this year,
starting with June’s European Parliament elections in which the party’s
support was nearly halved compared with its 2021 federal election result.
A pair of regional elections in the eastern German states of Thuringia and
Saxony earlier this month, where the far-right Alternative for Germany
(AfD) party made major gains and the SPD was relegated to single-digit
support, intensified clamor for Scholz to step aside — with an explicit nod
to Biden’s actions.
📣 Want more POLITICO? Download our mobile app to save stories, get
notifications and more. In iOS or Android.
“The chancellor could follow the example of U.S. President Joe Biden:
Instead of clinging to power and letting himself be taken apart piece by
piece in the coming months, he is clearing the way for a new political
start,” Spiegel wrote in its daily politics newsletter earlier this month.
Political circles in Berlin already have a potential successor in mind: Boris
Pistorius, Scholz’s defense minister, who has consistently ranked as the
most popular politician in the country. After months of behind-the-scenes
chatter, some party members started to voice those thoughts publicly.
“The SPD must think about Pistorius as a candidate for chancellor,”
Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter said last week.
Polling out this week from Matuschek’s Forsa finds that two-thirds of
German voters — including 63 percent of those who voted for the SPD in
the last federal election — agree Scholz should step aside and allow
Pistorius to run as the SPD’s chancellor candidate.
And across the Atlantic, Trudeau faces serious questions about how much
longer his third term as prime minister can last. Trudeau, who came into
office in 2015 promising “real change,” has been weakened by a series of
scandals throughout his tenure and saw his Liberals’ support erode
further in the 2019 and 2021 elections.
This year, a special election for a Toronto-area parliamentary district in
June signaled more acute trouble for Trudeau’s Liberals, who lost a seat
the party had held for 30 years. The vote, which came just days before the
disastrous debate performance that ultimately doomed Biden, prompted
comparisons between two stubborn North American leaders clinging to
power.
A loss in a second special election for the Liberals earlier this month, this
time in Trudeau’s home region of Montréal — just days after his party’s
governing partner in parliament announced it would quit the informal
alliance — led to more explicit demands to leave office. As in Japan and
Germany, Biden’s example loomed as an analogy. “Is it time for Justin
Trudeau to Be Like Joe?” one columnist asked.
Some have even extended the metaphor to other political figures in
Canada, wondering who in the Liberal Party has the clout to get Trudeau
to change his mind.
“I don’t know that we have an equivalent of a Nancy Pelosi here,
somebody who would bend his ear and have that tough conversation in a
way that would really be impactful on him,” Lori Turnbull, a Canadian
political analyst and professor at Dalhousie University, told POLITICO
ahead of the vote. “Not necessarily to quit, but [to say], ‘We need to
change gears. We need to do something colossally different.”
Canada’s next parliamentary elections are slated for fall 2025, but
Trudeau’s primary political rivals, the Conservatives, hope to force a vote
sooner. The Conservative Party’s firebrand leader, Pierre Poilievre,
introduced a vote of no confidence in Canada’s parliament this week in an
effort to trigger snap elections.
Avoiding Biden’s fate?
Of the three politicians facing these calls to emulate Biden, only Kishida
has thus far surrendered — both Trudeau and Scholz are holding their
ground and appear unlikely to bow out any time soon.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Trudeau said earlier this month. “I’ve got a fight
to lead against people who want to hurt this country, who want to hurt our
communities and who want to take the country in directions that, quite
frankly, are exactly the opposite of where the world needs to go.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is pictured.
Questions about German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's viability as the party’s
standard-bearer in next year’s federal election remain. | Markus
Schreiber/AP
In Germany, last Sunday’s regional vote in Brandenburg, where the SPD
eked out a narrow victory in a state it has led for 34 years, is likely to give
Scholz at least a temporary reprieve from questions about his political
future.
Scholz, reacting to the state election results from the U.N. General
Assembly in New York this week, insisted he and his party “will repeat
what happened in Brandenburg and what we succeeded at doing in the
last federal election: that is, that the SPD is the strongest party in the
running.”
But questions about his viability as the party’s standard-bearer in next
year’s federal election remain, given the belief that the SPD won its
narrow victory in spite of Scholz, not because of him. A looming budget
showdown between members of the governing coalition — which one
coalition party leader referred to as the “autumn of decisions” — may well
see the collapse of Scholz’s government.
“I don’t think there will be immediate calls to change tactics for the SPD,”
Sudha David-Wilp, a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund’s Berlin
office, told POLITICO. “Now that these three crucial state elections are
behind them, it’s not going to happen immediately like some have
thought.”
|
|