One of the advantages of campaigning as a political outsider who is new to elective office is that you have no track record to defend — you can criticize and pick away at the actions experienced politicians and incumbents have taken without fear of having the tables turned on you. That approach only works once, however: once you gain office, you become fair game for the same type of attacks yourself.
That phenomenon played out quite prominently with U.S. President Donald Trump in June 2019, as tensions between the United States and
Iran ratcheted up and news reports suggested the U.S. had come close to launching a Trump-approved
military strike on Iran.
Before gaining the White House (his first elective office), Trump had been particularly critical of incumbent president Barack Obama, repeatedly tweeting over a span of years his prediction that President Obama would “attack” or “start a war” with Iran. Initially Trump maintained that Obama would do so to boost his re-election chances, then when the 2012 election (which Obama won) passed without an attack on Iran, Trump shifted to offering other reasons. The full list of Trump’s proffered rationales for an Obama-led attack on Iran eventually encompassed all of the following:
- “to get elected” (i.e., to win re-election)
- “because of his inability to negotiate properly”
- “to show how tough he is”
- “to boost his poll numbers”
- “to save face”
