The future has a history. And while we can’t see into the future, looking into our past can prove powerful.
That said, there are two quotes that come to mind.
Let’s start with George Bernard Shaw (quoting German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel):
“We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”
Politically, 2024 had me and many others, quite frankly, taken aback.
It was a year that saw President Joe Biden drop his re-election bid after being forced out by top leaders of his own party.
Vice President Kamala Harris swept in as the party’s nominee and stood her own in a debate with former President Donald Trump.
The polls showed the two running a tight race. But the polls got it WRONG!
It was a year that saw Trump convicted of 34 felonies, nearly assassinated and winning the right to return to the Oval Office.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, became Trump’s right-hand man in 2024 and promised to help trim the budget and streamline government.
Now the president-elect is turning America into Florida with the potential for resounding implications. Look at the host of friends, neighbors and loyalists from the Sunshine State that Trump is nominating for key administration positions: Pam Bondi, Marco Rubio, Susie Wiles and others.
Mar-a-Lago might be 1,000 miles south of Washington, D.C., but it’s where Trump holds court and is fashioning an administration in “his own image.”
No doubt, 2024 was a year of political disruption, and not only in the good old U.S.A.
According to Pew Research, voters in more than 60 countries went to the polls and ousted incumbents left and right. “Rattled by rising prices, divided over cultural issues and angry at the political status quo, voters in many countries sent a message of frustration."
It created opportunities for right-wing populist agendas in many European parliamentary elections, including France, Austria, Romania, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Germany.
And, of course, Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement was the dominant force in the Republican party and dominates the president-elect’s agenda.
How successful will Trump be in transforming America? How will what happened in 2024 shape the future body politic? What have we learned from history?
Well, let’s go back to where we started here.
Is Shaw right -- or did Stephen Hawking perhaps frame things even better?
“We spend a great deal of time studying history, which, let’s face it, is mostly the history of stupidity.”
Stephen Hawking
News4JAX political analyst and head of the Jacksonville University Public Policy Institute Rick Mullaney joins me on this week’s “Politics & Power” to look at 2024, a political year like no other, and how it might shape the political landscape in 2025.
Catch it anytime on demand, starting Wednesday morning, on News4JAX.com, News4JAX+ and our YouTube channel.