Jim Swift -- Bush 43 Alum
Why he supports Harris-Walz in 2024
I first met President Bush helping the White House advance team with a visit to Cleveland in the summer of 2002. As the former President of my Young Republican club in high school, it was the beginning of what would be a career in politics. President Bush and Vice President Cheney inspired me.
Two years later, I took a sabbatical from college to be a field staffer for the RNC for the 2004 race, which confirmed for me that politics was my calling. After graduating, I headed to Washington to work in both the House and Senate on tax and trade policy.
After 5 years on the hill, I shifted from being a career party man to writing about politics.
If you're reading this, you saw, like we all did, the choices the Republican Party made in accommodating Donald Trump or downplaying his crimes. The late Charles Krauthammer observed that "decline is a choice." Along with the signatories of the endorsement letter, we not only saw this decline, many of us lived it. Some of us were against Donald Trump from the beginning, while others tried to steer him, either as a candidate or as President, away from his worst impulses.
While it is disappointing that Republican elected officials who were in a position to prevent this man from ever being returned to office chose not to, those of us who endorsed President Biden in 2020 were again compelled to speak up and act.
Every day Donald Trump remains the leader of the Republican party, it is worse off than the day before. The decline is a constant, and there's no stopping it from the inside, which is why Republicans supporting Kamala Harris are only growing in number.
Like President Biden before her, Vice President Harris is running an inclusive campaign and listening to present and former Republicans, like me, who have not only endorsed her out of necessity, but because she has earned our endorsement.
Not because we universally agree with her on policy, because that isn't true. Rather, how she campaigned as a candidate in 2020, how she helped govern as Vice President, and how she is comporting herself now.
Each of us with a testimonial here got into politics for love of country. We've seen Presidents or candidates who wanted to be Presidents for all Americans because we were honored to work for them. Vice President Kamala Harris is just that kind of candidate and Donald Trump is not. It's that simple.
Jim Swift was a field staffer for the Republican National Committee during the 2004 election and as a professional volunteer for the 2008 Republican National Convention. He also worked for Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Representative Geoff Davis (R-KY) as a tax staffer.