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For students and researchers of history, political comebacks in our times make for interesting, even thoughtful reading. The return of Donald Trump to the White House, despite all the legal entanglements he has been caught in since he left the presidency in a huff nearly four years ago, has been as dramatic as it has been shocking. Where a very large number of people believed that he would lose to Kamala Harris, Trump went on to win an impressive victory.
This is not the first time that such a remarkable comeback has been observed in American history. In the late 19th century, Grover Cleveland lost the presidency after four years in office, but then came back four years later to serve a second term. That is precisely what Trump will be doing between 2025 and 2029. And, yes, there is the unforgettable story of Richard Nixon, who lost the presidential race to John Kennedy in 1960, then lost the race for California governor to Pat Brown in 1962 and yet came back in 1968 to be elected the 37th President of the United States (US).
History is by and large an account of political leaders who, after an electoral mishap or political earthquake, have generally lapsed into silence or have gone on to adopt other professions or engage in non-political activities. Even so, there have been the individuals who have consistently refused to call it a day when the sun apparently set on their careers. Deng Xiao-ping, one of the foremost among the revolutionaries who brought communism to China, was purged twice in the course of the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976. Following the deaths of Zhou En-lai and Mao Zedong in 1976, Deng came back to inaugurate a new era in China, one that would lead to an economic opening without jeopardising communist control.
Deng's success was unprecedented, on which his successors have built over the decades since his death in 1997. In the West, Winston Churchill, having led Britain brilliantly during the Second World War, surprisingly saw his Conservative Party lose the election to Clement Attlee's Labour in 1945. He bided his time as Leader of the Opposition and then returned to power five years later when the electorate gave his party a fresh majority at the election. In later times, Harold Wilson achieved a similar feat when, after losing to Edward Heath's Tories in 1970, he led the Labour Party back to power in 1974. Wilson left office voluntarily in 1976, passing on the baton to James Callaghan.
A decidedly remarkable comeback relates to Indira Gandhi. Having governed India for eleven years, in the course of which she had the country operate in a state of emergency for nearly two years, she lost the election to Morarji Desai's Janata coalition in 1977. Three years later, as the Janata government unravelled through infighting, Indira Gandhi and her party returned to power with a bang in 1980. No politician in India has achieved a similar success since her time.
In Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was forced out of the government, where he had been Foreign Minister, by President Ayub Khan in mid-1966. Many thought it was the end of Bhutto's career, but he formed his Pakistan People's Party in November 1967 and won a sweeping electoral victory in what was at the time West Pakistan in 1970. Bhutto ended up being President of a rump Pakistan after his country's army lost the Bangladesh war in 1971.
In France, General Charles de Gaulle returned home a hero in 1944. Appointed Prime Minister in a Nazi-free France, he remained in office till 1946, at which point he resigned owing to disagreements with the country's traditional political class. He vowed, as he left office, to come back when France called him again. And France did that in 1958. With the Fourth Republic having fallen into disarray, the country's national assembly called upon De Gaulle to assume power. Once De Gaulle did that, he busied himself in the task of reordering French politics through giving the country a new constitution specifying the powers of the President, Prime Minister and lawmakers. He called it the Fifth Republic.
De Gaulle served as President of France for over a decade. In April 1969, he promised that if he lost a referendum he had called on a constitutional issue he would quit. He lost the referendum and duly resigned and retired to his country home, where he died over a year later. In Greece in 1974, when the regime of the colonels, which had seized power in 1967, collapsed, former Prime Minister Konstantine Karamanlis was called back from exile. Karamanlis provided the leadership necessary to restore democracy in the country, a process which has survived and has indeed been thriving in Athens.
A study of Bangladesh's history throws up a remarkable series of events relating to the country's War of Liberation in 1971. The Yahya-Tikka junta seriously believed that its military action against Bengali nationalism would be the end of the Awami League and the politics of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. In the event, Bangabandhu and his party made an unprecedented comeback through waging a guerrilla war against the Pakistani occupation forces and setting up the sovereign republic of Bangladesh.
In the 1950s, Juan Domingo Peron, Argentina's authoritarian ruler, was deposed after nine years in power by the country's military. He regained power in the early 1970s but died soon after, leaving his second wife Isabel Peron to take over the presidency. Isabel Peron was subsequently ousted by the army.
There are the accounts of the descendants of political leaders who have reclaimed the legacy of their elders. The sons of Corazon Aquino and Ferdinand Marcos were elected President of the Philippines. The sister and daughter of Thailand's former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra have been elected to power in Bangkok. In Sri Lanka, the wife and daughter of the assassinated SWRD Bandaranaike have served as Prime Minister and President.
In Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia have held prime ministerial office years after the former's father and the latter's husband were assassinated in 1975 and 1981, in that order. Rajiv Gandhi succeeded to India's leadership within moments of Indira Gandhi's assassination in October 1984. Benazir Bhutto was Prime Minister of Pakistan twice and was headed for a third stint in office when she was assassinated in December 2007. Her husband Asif Zardari is in his new term as Pakistan's President, while her son Bilawal has already served as Foreign Minister.
Political comebacks are rich material for an understanding of history. They are at the same time a hint of the ambitions which often drive men and women into reclaiming the mantle of power. The world watches, meanwhile.