When Vice Presidential Candidates Collide

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Walter Mondale and Bob Dole met in the first vice presidential debate in 1976.

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History will be made tomorrow night in Danville, Ky., when Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan meet in the vice presidential debate.

This isn't the first time a debate has been held in Danville (population about 16.000). Nor will it be the first time vice presidential candidates have debated. In fact, it will be the ninth time.

It has been said that vice presidential debates have little, if any, influence on the outcome of a presidential election. But they have often been noteworthy.

The first time that vice presidential candidates debated was 36 years ago next Monday, when Walter Mondale and Bob Dole met in Houston.

That night, Dole made a sneering comment about "Democrat wars" and Mondale called him on it.

The vice presidential candidates did not debate in 1980, but, on this day in 1984, the first woman on a major party ticket, Geraldine Ferraro, debated Vice President George H.W. Bush in Philadelphia.

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What stands out in my mind about that debate was the blatantly obvious condescending tone of the vice president's remarks. He was a man with an extensive background in foreign affairs, and he appeared to feel that it was beneath him to debate Ferraro, who had a certain amount of knowledge about foreign policy acquired in three terms in the House as well as her experience dealing with appropriations on the House Budget Committee — but nothing remotely comparable to Bush's resume.

Ferraro was right to tell Bush that she "resented" his attitude, but my memory is that Bush was judged the winner that night.

The victory gave a much–needed boost to 73–year–old President Ronald Reagan's campaign for re–election. Reagan had stumbled badly in his first debate with Mondale only four days earlier, and public opinion polls had begun to show some shakiness in his standing with the voters.

(In the aftermath of his widely panned debate performance last week, Barack Obama can only hope that Biden hands him such a gift tomorrow night.)

When Reagan met Mondale in their second and final debate a week and half later, he seemed energized, and he gave a much stronger performance, essentially locking up his 49–state landslide.

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The vice presidential candidates debated early in October in 1988 — on Oct. 5, a date that has been chosen for vice presidential debates three times. It was on that first occasion — in Omaha, Neb. — that Sen. Lloyd Bentsen told Sen. Dan Quayle that he was "no Jack Kennedy."

Twenty years ago this Saturday, the first — and, so far, only — three–way vice presidential debate was held in Atlanta.

(The first–ever three–way presidential debate was held 20 years ago tomorrow.)

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The vice presidential debate in 1992 was memorable for the things the third wheel in that debate — Ross Perot's running mate, Admiral James Stockdale — said.

I always thought that was something of a pity because Stockdale was an intelligent and exceptionally brave individual. He spent seven years in a Viet Cong POW camp and suffered severe physical injuries during his captivity.

He had earned the right to be treated with respect, but the fact that he was not a career politician worked against him in an arena where that kind of experience would have served him well.

After the debate, jokes were made about his halting and confused delivery, his opening statement ("Who am I? Why am I here?") and other nifty sound bites that, taken together, made Stockdale look old and foolish.

But the truth was that Stockdale did not know he would be participating in the debate until about a week before, and he got no advice from Perot. He was about as unprepared as a man could be for a nationally televised debate — and it showed.

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Two days ago was the 16th anniversary of the debate between Vice President Al Gore and Jack Kemp in St. Petersburg, Fla., during the 1996 campaign.

On Oct. 5, 2000, Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman debated in Danville.

Four years later, to the day, now–Vice President Cheney debated John Edwards in Cleveland.

Four years ago, on Oct, 2, Biden debated Sarah Palin in St. Louis.

If you have no real memory of those debates, don't worry about it. As I say, they don't seem to matter much when people make up their minds how to vote.

But they can be quite entertaining.

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The Day Jimmy Carter Was Elected

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The day that Jimmy Carter was elected president is a day that is vividly imprinted in my memory — for a couple of reasons.

My father's mother died that day, and my father went to Dallas ahead of the rest of the family to work on the funeral arrangements. My mother, my brother and I followed the next day.

The 1976 election was memorable for me, too, because Election Day was the day that certain students from my school (myself included) were spending with various city and county officials. It was kind of a career day, except I don't think it was called that. Anyway, the students would report on their days at a local luncheon for the Jaycees or Kiwanis or whatever it was a couple of weeks later.

I had been assigned to the county clerk, who was very busy that day, dropping in on polling places to see if everything was on the up and up — so my memory of that day is of spending a lot of time getting in and out of the county clerk's car and following him into polling places where he shook hands with folks, talked about voter turnout, asked some routine questions and left.

We never paused to caution protesters about legal restraints at polling places or anything like that — even though we did see some people carrying signs for candidates for everything from president to city council. If they were standing closer to the polls than they should have been, the county clerk never said anything to them.

Oh, and my memory is that it was cold and overcast that day — not too cold (probably in the 50s) — and I don't remember if it ever started to rain, but the threat seemed to be an ongoing concern. I heard several people speculate that turnout might be suppressed by the possibility of bad weather.

Carter always enjoyed an enormous lead over Gerald Ford in the polls in Arkansas — I think the eventual margin of Ford's defeat there was second only to the margin in Carter's home state of Georgia — so turnout was never a factor.

Carter was a "born again" Southern Baptist, which was a subject of some concern in some quarters but not in Arkansas. Most of the people in Arkansas were Baptists then (and, presumably, most are still Baptists), whether they used the phrase "born again" to describe themselves (although most of the Baptists I knew did describe themselves that way).

It would have taken events of biblical proportions — a flood, say, that rivaled the one in Noah's day — to keep enough Carter supporters from going to the polls to give the state to Ford.

Never, not for one second, did I ever doubt that Carter would win Arkansas, but the race had narrowed considerably in the rest of the country in the closing weeks of the campaign. There were several other states where the outcome was far from certain, and the turnout in those states could hold the key to the outcome of the election.

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That evening, I watched the election returns. I was unapologetically for Carter — as were most Arkansans that year — but I wasn't old enough to vote, and I watched, first with excitement, then with a growing sense of frustration, as Carter drew ever closer to the magic number in the Electoral College — and then seemed to stall.

Then, just before 3 in the morning, Mississippi was projected to be in Carter's column, pushing the Georgian over the top.

I probably got about three hours of sleep that night. The next day was a school day, and, since the family was going to be out of town for my grandmother's funeral, Mom wouldn't think of letting me stay home unless I was genuinely sick.

And she knew I wasn't sick — just tired.

My memories of that day after the election are hazy, but some things stand out. I remember greeting my friend Phyllis (of whom I have written here frequently since she died last year) with a warm embrace and the exclamation, "Thank God for the Solid South!"

Nearly every Southern state (with the exception of Virginia) was in the Democratic column. Such a thing has not happened again — even though Democrats have nominated Southerners for president and/or vice president in six of the eight elections since.

(In hindsight, it has been impossible for me to avoid comparisons between Carter's victory in 1976 and Barack Obama's in 2008 — and it has been equally impossible for critics of Obama's presidency to resist comparing his administration to Carter's.

(Carter's election in 1976 was hailed as a triumph for populism, as was Obama's 32 years later. It was a breakthrough for Southern politicians, who, for more than a century, had only become president when the incumbent died — not quite the same thing as being the first black president but similar in its symbolic value.)

I suppose Mom could have let me stay home that day. She withdrew my brother and me from school early, anyway, and we began the drive to Dallas — which took us about six hours. I guess Mom figured I could doze in the car.

Maybe I dozed off for awhile, but I don't remember it. I remember listening to the car radio and hearing, over and over again, news reports about President–elect Carter.

And after we arrived at my other grandmother's home, I watched on TV, for the first time, Carter's emotional return to his tiny hometown of Plains, Ga., where it seemed nearly every resident had gathered to await his arrival.

Upon seeing his friends and neighbors, Carter broke down, weeping in shameless gratitude for their unflagging support.

It was a moving moment just before the end of a year that had more than its share of moving moments. This one I had only heard about on the car radio, and it was so much more moving to see, even if it was on tape.

My grandmother was a Republican who wasn't pleased that Carter had beaten President Ford — but she didn't say anything. She knew how much I had wanted Carter to win.

The next four years didn't turn out the way I anticipated, but I've never regretted supporting Jimmy Carter in 1976.

And I have never forgotten how I felt when he won.

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'Democrat Wars'

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Lately, a proposal that is usually made as a way to offer a glimmer of hope to an embattled president seeking re–election — dropping the vice president from the ticket — has resurfaced.

In the case of Barack Obama, the idea has been bandied about for more than a year now. The latest to bring it up is Laura Washington of the Chicago Sun–Times, who writes that "[t]he idea still has juice" and that Joe Biden's logical replacement would be Hillary Clinton, providing instant appeal to certain groups with whom Obama had problems in 2008.

Washington acknowledges, though, that, while the president "has been having a very bad year," her most reliable source in these matters, a political science professor with expertise in the American presidency, says changing running mates would be "admitting failure." It would smack of desperation, the professor says, and "I just don't think they're at a point of desperation."

I don't know if this White House has reached such a point of desperation yet — and I have my doubts about the mindset that suggests that dropping a vice president from the ticket is going to make up for any perceived shortcomings in the president — but I find the timing of all this to be ironic.

It is just about taken for granted these days that a presidential general election campaign is going to include televised debates.

The series of Kennedy–Nixon debates of 1960 has achieved a somewhat mythical status in American history. They were the first — and, for several years, the only — such debates. They blazed a trail that almost disappeared in the accumulated undergrowth of time and inattention.

The major–party nominees did not debate each other in the next three presidential election years, but, in 1976, they agreed to a series of debates.

And, in every succeeding presidential election year, at least one debate has been held.

As I say, presidential debates were not new in 1976, but they were exceedingly rare. A debate between the vice presidential nominees, however, was new, and the first one was held 35 years ago tonight in Houston.

Now, historically, the job description for the vice president is kind of sparse. Most folks think of the vice president as sort of a president–in–waiting, the first in line if the incumbent president is unable to serve.

But that particular role was not spelled out in the Constitution until the passage of the 25th Amendment — and every vice president who became president following the death of the incumbent between 1841 and 1963 (that is eight in all) did so based on an assumption that was made when William Henry Harrison died in 1841, not on any sort of constitutional provision.

Traditionally, the vice president serves as the president of the Senate, which means very little. It is the vice president's job to maintain order — and he may vote, but only in the event of a tie. The vice president has also served as the United States' representative at the weddings and funerals of foreign dignitaries.

For the most part, though, vice presidents have been, in the words of Franklin Roosevelt's first vice president, John Garner, the executive branch's "spare tire."

(Ironically, the 1976 Republican presidential nominee, Gerald Ford, was the first — and, so far, only — vice president who became president following the adoption of the 25th Amendment.)

That made it difficult to ask questions that were relevant to the constitutional definition of the job. Maybe that is why vice presidential nominees never debated before Oct. 15, 1976. I mean, no one would tune in to watch vice presidential nominees arguing about which one was more experienced at sitting through long meetings or handling jet lag.

So the emphasis was on the role of president–in–waiting, practically assuming that one, if not both, would become president eventually (and, in fact, both were nominated for the presidency in future elections, but neither was elected), and the nominees debated topics that were more appropriate for presidential nominees. They did not discuss the kinds of situations they were most likely to face as vice president.

That alone turned the debate into an exercise in the hypothetical — and then Republican nominee Bob Dole, who hoped to bail out President Ford following his unfortunate gaffe in his debate with Jimmy Carter a week before, compared the number of American casualties in "Democrat wars" in the 20th century to the population of Detroit.

Democrat Walter Mondale protested that the wars had bipartisan support, and post–debate surveys indicated that a majority of viewers felt Dole's comments were unduly harsh.

"Does he really mean that there was a partisan difference over our involvement in the fight against Nazi Germany?" Mondale asked incredulously, echoing the response of many viewers.

In his book about the 1976 campaign, "Marathon," Jules Witcover wrote:

"[A]s I sat at my typewriter at the Washington Post, watching the debate on television and writing the article about it against a late deadline, I thought of Richard Nixon," Witcover wrote. "It was reminiscent of Nixon's seesaw performance at his famous 'last press conference' of 1962 ... There was a nervous, erratic quality about Dole, a carelessness. He spun off snide remarks almost as if he were unaware of the huge television audience or, perhaps more accurately, as if he were intentionally disdainful of it."

I always felt Witcover was on target in his assessment of Dole, and the characterization of his comments during the debate as "snide" describes them perfectly.

As he got older, Dole's personality seemed to mellow, but, in 1976, his brashness simply rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

I never felt that he was much of a plus for the Republican ticket to begin with — and he certainly wasn't on this night 35 years ago.

In hindsight, Ford might have been better served by retaining the vice president he appointed when he succeeded Nixon — Nelson Rockefeller. But conservative Republicans, who were in the process of seizing control of the party, would not have stood for that — even if it could have been satisfactorily demonstrated to them that Rockefeller's more amiable personality went over better with mainstream voters.

I often think too much emphasis is placed on the vice presidential nomination — as if observers expect the running mate to become president automatically, but we've had seven vice presidents since Ford became president and only one has gone on to become president — and he did so mostly because he had the good fortune to run in the wake of a popular president who was prohibited by law from seeking a third term.

There is also too much emphasis on — and too little historical evidence to demonstrate — the running mate's potential to attract voters who have not been enthusiastic about the presidential nominee. In 1976, Dole was expected to help win over conservatives who opposed Ford in the primaries, thus uniting the party for victory in November.

But that didn't happen.

And I don't think replacing Biden with anyone, Hillary or anyone else, is the answer for what ails Obama.

Like the criticism that historians often have of generals, that they are guilty of fighting the last war, not the latest one. The groups that preferred Hillary over Obama in 2008 wanted her to be president, not vice president, and I've seen no evidence that those groups would be more favorably inclined to support Obama now than they were then.

When I was growing up, the conventional wisdom about running mates was that, at best, they should do no harm to the ticket. They were even expected to help the ticket, to a certain extent, but not to win the election for the ticket.

That was — and, as far as I can tell, still is — the presidential nominee's responsibility.

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Ford's Self-Inflicted Wound

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On this night in 1976, President Ford and Jimmy Carter met in the second of their three televised debates.

Ford had been making gains on Carter since their first debate. He still trailed Carter in the polls by a considerable margin, but that margin clearly was narrowing. And Carter, who was known to be a "born again" Christian, received negative publicity for an interview he gave to Playboy.

In early October 1976, things seemed to be moving in Ford's direction.

However, Ford himself froze his momentum in its tracks with what can only be called a self–inflicted wound.

When the candidates met in San Francisco 35 years ago tonight, the subject was foreign policy, which was generally regarded as a strength of Republican nominees during the Cold War.

Carter, perhaps feeling particularly vulnerable after surveys had indicated that more people thought Ford won the first debate than thought Carter did and his interview with Playboy drew a sharp response from feminist leaders and Christian evangelicals, went on the offensive from the start.

Ford retaliated gamely, and the tone of the second debate was established. This would be a bare–knuckles brawl.

In their first debate, Carter seemed intimidated by Ford's office. "[T]his time, the aura of the presidency was no shield for Ford," wrote Jules Witcover in "Marathon," his account of the '76 campaign.

Carter was not as timid as he had often appeared in the first debate. He was aggressive, hammering away at every opening, and I recall thinking, about 10 or 15 minutes into the debate, that Ford seemed almost shocked. This wasn't the Jimmy Carter he had expected.

But that hardly explained what happened next. Max Frankel of the New York Times, in a question about U.S.–Soviet relations, observed that "[w]e've virtually signed ... an agreement that the Russians have dominance in Eastern Europe" and proceeded to ask Ford, "Is that what you call a two–way street of traffic in Europe?"

Astonishingly, Ford replied — as he concluded a rather routine recitation of "several examples" in which his administration had negotiated with the Soviets "from a position of strength" — that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration."

The remark was patently ridiculous.

Some of Ford's defenders — and the president himself — later tried to put a positive spin on the remark. They would claim that Ford was really saying that his administration had never acknowledged Soviet domination of eastern Europe.

And that had a defiant, almost revolutionary, sound to it — except that wasn't precisely what he said.

When NPR's Pauline Frederick, the moderator, tried to go to Carter for his rebuttal, Frankel interjected with a followup for Ford.

"[D]id I understand you to say, sir," he asked in disbelief, "that the Russians are not using eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence in occupying most of the countries there and making sure with their troops that it's a Communist zone?"

Given an opportunity to explain himself then, on the spot, Ford further muddied the waters, saying this instead:

"I don't believe ... that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Rumanians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. Each of those countries is independent, autonomous: it has its own territorial integrity and the United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union."

The damage had been done.

James Naughton of the New York Times observed an "audible intake of air" in the theater that night, Witcover wrote. Even more tellingly, Ford committee director Stuart Spencer, who was watching the debate with security adviser Brent Scowcroft, remembered that "Scowcroft went white. Right then I knew we had problems."

In hindsight, I suppose, Ford's remarks could almost be regarded as prophetic, considering the events that unfolded in the decade to come. But, on this night in 1976, it was nothing less than ludicrous to suggest that Poland and the other countries in eastern Europe were not dominated by the Soviet Union.

But Carter, sensing a vulnerability that he could exploit, said that Ford must have known about the presence of Soviet troops in eastern Europe. If he did not, he was incompetent. If he did and ignored them, pretended they did not exist, he had been dishonest. That was about as blunt as the choice could be. The president of the United States was stupid or a liar. There was no third alternative.

Asked later by Witcover about his reply, Ford admitted he had been "a little careless" but doggedly continued to stand by what he had said.

But it was no temporary storm that had to be ridden out. For Gerald Ford, it was much worse than that. Even before he became president, Ford had been ridiculed by Lyndon Johnson, who suggested that Ford, a star football player at Michigan, had played football too often without a helmet in the years before he was elected to the House.

(LBJ also once said that "Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time" — which reporters cleaned up to read "Ford can't walk and chew gum at the same time." I've never been sure which comparison was more damaging.)

In short, it was the resurrection of the ghost that Ford's staff feared the most — the impression that he was dumb. It had plagued him since his career in the House. It had been a national joke when he stumbled a couple of times in front of TV cameras, launching some of Chevy Chase's most memorable skits on Saturday Night Live.

Ford never recovered.

Some people thought at the time — and some people still believe — that Ford's gaffe in the second debate kept him from winning the election, but I disagree.

I believed then — and I still believe today — that Ford was going to lose, anyway, because of the pardon of Richard Nixon. He needed everything to go his way from the time of the Republican convention to Election Day if he was to have even the slightest chance of winning. What happened 35 years ago tonight didn't help his cause.

My personal view of that decision has evolved over the years, and I have reached the point where I am partially inclined to agree with Ford, who argued that issuing a pardon was the only way to put Watergate behind us and refocus on the issues the nation faced in the mid–1970s.

But, in 1974, the majority of Americans were so angry at Nixon that, when Ford pardoned the former president, he sealed his fate with them.

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Technical Difficulties

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It had been nearly 16 years since the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees had squared off in a televised debate.

But on this night in 1976, when President Ford and former Gov. Jimmy Carter came to Philadelphia, they weren't there to see the Liberty Bell. They were there to debate, and there was much anticipation in the air on that Thursday night.

In a couple of departures from how things had been done in 1960, the debates of 1976 were held in public places and in front of live audiences. The audience that assembled on this night in 1976 for the first of three debates between Ford and Carter expected to see a 90–minute encounter — but they saw more than that.

That first Ford–Carter debate was a lot more than most folks probably expected.

For one thing, it was longer than planned — by 27 minutes. That was how long the sound was out, and that is how long both candidates stood on that stage, virtually motionless, until the problem was resolved.

Because of Carter's huge lead in the polls, Ford had been willing, even eager, to do something that previous incumbents had been unwilling to do — debate his opponent. He believed — as Jules Witcover wrote in "Marathon" — that the American people didn't want someone who had been unknown to them a year and a half earlier to be in charge of foreign policy, and Ford's campaign emphasized questions and doubts about Carter's experience weeks before the two met for their first debate.

Carter later said he wouldn't have won the election if not for the debates. I didn't get that sense at the time, but I wasn't old enough to vote, and perhaps there were nuances that I missed.

But I did get the feeling that the technical difficulties that disrupted that first debate (which really wasn't too memorable, otherwise) gave Carter an opportunity to mentally assess his performance to that point and, like a coach at halftime, make adjustments.

When the debate began, Ford, who trailed by a significant margin in the national polls, came out swinging. Carter, on the other hand, often seemed timid — as if he was intimidated by the aura of the presidency. Perhaps he was.

But, after the unscheduled interruption, Carter appeared more forceful in his criticism of Ford — and he maintained his offensive for the rest of the campaign.

At the time, most surveys indicated the debate had been a draw, although some concluded that Ford had been the winner. But the momentum was with Carter after those technical difficulties 35 years ago.

Irreversibly.

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No More Mr. Nice Guy

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Jerry Ford was always a likable guy — even when he was put in the unenviable position of having to defend Richard Nixon.

And he had to do that far too often after Nixon (under the provisions of the 25th Amendment) picked him to replace the previous vice president, Spiro Agnew, who resigned in disgrace in October 1973.

There were probably many times during Ford's 2½–year presidency when he was too nice for his own good, and this day in 1976, the year he sought a full term as president, may be the best example.

On this night 35 years ago, Ford's task was to defend his own actions as president after Nixon's resignation — when he accepted the Republican presidential nomination.

He was the survivor — narrowly — of a long, sometimes divisive campaign against former California Gov. Ronald Reagan for that nomination, and this night in Kansas City in 1976 was supposed to be his night.

Ford had been mercilessly attacked by Reagan's followers for the fall of Saigon and detente with the Russians. He had been ridiculed for many things, and, although Reagan had not been nominated, the right wing of the party still managed to squeeze several conservative planks into a platform that, in the past, had been much more centrist in its tone.

In so many ways, on this day in 1976, Ford prepared to accept the nomination of a party that was moving more to the right. He could rightfully be said to be the last of his breed of Republicans.

(Not so long ago, Ford's running mate, Bob Dole, observed that Nixon probably couldn't win the Republican nomination today. "He'd be too liberal," Dole said. Astonishing.)

This night was to be Ford's opportunity to present his side, to reassure voters that the GOP had not been hijacked.

Yet, strangely, the night — and the future of the Republican Party — belonged to Reagan and the right wing. In the context of what we have witnessed in the last 35 years, the conclusion that this was centrism's last real gasp in Republican national politics is inescapable.

People often say the party was hijacked by the right–wing extremists in 1980 — and, to a great extent, that was true — but I believe it really began in Kansas City 35 years ago tonight.

And Ford, in his amiable, well–meaning way, was a willing (if unintentional) accomplice.

As tradition required, Ford delivered his acceptance speech, and he did an adequate job. Ford never was a stemwinder of a speechmaker, but it actually wasn't a bad speech — by his standards.

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But he never could compete with Reagan when it came to speech giving.

And, on this night, after he had given a respectable acceptance speech, Ford also gave the delegates — and the viewing audience at home — an unprecedented opportunity to compare the nominee to the man he had beaten, side by side.

With all eyes on him, Ford waved to Reagan, who was sitting in the back of the hall, and prevailed upon him to come down and share the spotlight. Reagan agreed to do so — and, whether he intended it or not, he upstaged the president of the United States with an unforgettable impromptu speech.

While I don't believe that what happened 35 years ago tonight was what ultimately defeated Ford, it sure didn't help.

Ford didn't give a bad speech. He simply didn't sparkle — whereas Reagan, in an extemporaneous speech, did.

When Reagan was done, many of the delegates — and many of the folks watching at home — must have wondered if the wrong candidate had been nominated.

Perhaps that doubt persisted when the voters went to the polls that November. Perhaps the voters were angry about the pardon of Nixon. Perhaps they were simply ready for change.

Whatever the truth was, I think it can be safely said that what happened on this night in Kansas City 35 years ago didn't help Ford's bid for a full term.

And it certainly set the table for what was to come.

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Grits and Fritz

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I have a strong picture in my mind of my family's living room on this night 35 years ago.

It was on this night that Jimmy Carter became the Democrats' nominee for president, and it was truly an incredible accomplishment. Carter literally came out of nowhere in 1976 to become his party's nominee, taking the unprecedented approach of entering every primary contest.

People often forget that segregationist George Wallace was one of the leading Democrats when the 1976 presidential primaries were about to begin — and, since it was widely assumed by most that the Republican nominee would be defeated in the aftermath of Watergate and the disastrous 1974 midterm elections, many Americans feared Wallace might very well be the next president.

But Carter scored some key victories over Wallace in early primaries in Florida and North Carolina, forever eliminating Wallace as a presidential contender. For a time, the other Democrats appeared to work together in something of an Anyone But Carter movement, but Carter continued to prevail in the primaries, ultimately winning two–thirds (with most of his losses coming after the matter had already been decided).

He was the first major–party presidential nominee from the Deep South in my lifetime, and he became the first president to be elected from the Deep South in more than a century.

It's happened a little more frequently since. Bill Clinton, after all, was governor of Arkansas. And, if you want to stretch the point, George W. Bush was governor of Texas — although I can tell you, after a lifetime of living in this region, that Texas is really considered more of a border state by most Southerners.

Everything west of Fort Worth is looked upon as southwestern — which is an altogether different thing.

(One of the things I remember thinking later that year after Carter had won the election was that I looked forward to hearing presidential speeches delivered by someone who spoke like most of the people I knew.)

On this evening in 1976, I can remember sitting in our living room with my father and watching Carter accept the nomination.

In the minutes before Carter gave his speech, the TV cameras scanned the convention crowd. Unlike today, presidential nominees in those days usually didn't name their running mate selections until the last day of the convention, and Carter had announced earlier in the day that his choice for running mate was Minnesota Sen. Walter Mondale.

Thus, some rather hurriedly printed Carter–Mondale signs were distributed among the delegates to wave, which the cameras clearly showed in their shots of the crowd.

But one homemade sign stood out. It simply said, "Grits and Fritz." Fritz, in case you don't know, is a rather common nickname for Frederick, which happens to be Mondale's middle name.

"Grits and Fritz" stuck. I saw bumper stickers bearing that slogan right up to Election Day — I even saw people wearing buttons that said that as they attended the inauguration festivities the following January.

"My name is Jimmy Carter, and I'm running for president," Carter said with his trademark grin, repeating the introductory line he had uttered countless times in the snows of New Hampshire and elsewhere.

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My father roared with laughter. So did the delegates, but their laughter changed rather rapidly into an enthusiastic — and prolonged, as I recall — cheer.

At that moment, I knew the Nixon–Ford days were just about over.

Those were heady days for Democrats, but, of course, they had no idea what was ahead of them — escalating energy prices, a recession and a hostage crisis that set the table for five Republican victories in the next seven national elections, and 18 years (of the next 30) in which Republicans held at least one of the chambers in Congress.

Funny, but I feel like I have lived through it all a couple of times since then.

Ironically, Carter gave a speech that was probably even more memorable — although Carter almost certainly doesn't like to remember it — exactly three years later. It was the so–called "malaise speech."

(It's really ironic that it should be remembered that way. Carter never used the word malaise in his speech, but people still speak of it as if he did.)

On this night in 1979, America was not a happy place. Gas prices had gone up nearly 50% since that night in 1976, but the minimum wage had risen by only 26%.

But that was still in the future on this night in 1976.

In 1976, this night was a triumph for Carter and the Democrats. On this night 35 years ago, Democrats believed that they were on the verge of seizing political power for a generation, much as the Democrats who met to nominate Barack Obama 32 years later appear to have felt.

It remains to be seen whether Obama's presidency ends the way Carter's did.

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The Death of Innocence

Today is an odd day for me, a day that brings back a mixture of memories.

It was on this day 35 years ago that a sixth–grade girl from a small town in my home county vanished in broad daylight. Her body was found a few days later. She had been raped, murdered and left in a stock pond.

Her name was Dana Mize. Few of the people I knew had any idea who she was — until she was abducted. And, initially, that was newsworthy because her father was a candidate for county office in the upcoming primary.

I never met her. But I knew people who knew her fairly well. Her family attended First Baptist Church in my hometown, and "FBC," as it was called, was the biggest church in town. Still is, I imagine. And the congregation always has been tightly knit. A few days ago, I mentioned this upcoming anniversary to an old friend of mine who was a member of that church at the time, and he said he remembered feeling a terrible sadness for the family.

That was the prevailing emotion — at FBC and throughout the county and its communities.

It wasn't long after she disappeared, though, that the whispers began. Her abduction, people were saying, had nothing to do with local politics. If it had, the abductor(s) almost certainly would have contacted someone with a demand that her father withdraw from the race or something similar. But no such communication had been received.

It must have been sexual, so the reasoning went — and, it turned out, the reasoning was right on the money.

I didn't want to believe that. I guess most of the people in the area didn't want to believe it, but I had to admit that it made sense.

It's hard to describe what a shocking time that was. One of the reasons why it was so shocking, I think, was the fact that my hometown was still somewhat innocent and naive when it happened. The place often seemed to exist in a bubble. For whatever reason, people in my hometown seemed to believe they were immune to the tragedies of the world.

That conviction never really made much sense to me because tragedies happened there all the time.

Before I was in grade school, a girl I knew was diagnosed with cancer and died a short time later. When I was in third grade, a classmate of mine died of leukemia. A few years later, the son of some family friends was diagnosed with a brain tumor. A tornado ripped through my hometown when I was 5 and leveled several homes (took a few lives in the process).

And those were just a few of the tragedies that touched me personally. In the years when I was growing up, there were other tragedies that affected other people — like any other place.

I guess what made the Dana Mize episode unique was the fact that criminal intent was behind it. The other tragedies could be written off as being caused by disease or random acts of nature or perhaps sloppiness or stupidity. But this was deliberate.

In a large city, the disappearance of a young girl — and the subsequent discovery of her dead and sexually abused body — wouldn't have raised any eyebrows in those days.

But it was different in my hometown. Everyone who lived there had to accept a previously unthinkable truth: Sexual predators must have been living among us, as they do in any other city or town — and, based on statistics, I can only conclude that some of the girls with whom I attended school must have been abused — by their fathers, by cousins, by family friends, who knows?

In my hometown of Conway, Ark., it seems to me that there must have been sexual predators around — even in that seemingly innocent time.

There was nothing terribly special or unique about my hometown. It was a town much like any other town, I suppose. It was mostly a blue–collar town in a mostly blue–collar county. I'm sure young girls were molested, abused, even assaulted there when I was growing up, but those cases were usually handled quietly, away from the public eye.

What did make the Dana Mize case unique was the fact that the perpetrator didn't live nearby. Turned out, he had flown to Arkansas from his home in New Jersey, committed the crime and flown back.

I still don't know what drew him to Mize's tiny hometown of Vilonia — which was much smaller than Conway. To my knowledge, he had never been to that area before.

I have tried, many times over the last 35 years, to reconstruct his movements, and I have tried to figure out how he could just stumble onto Vilonia. I don't know what the odds would have been, but I keep coming back to the idea that — somehow — he must have known that Vilonia was there.

His plane had to have landed in Little Rock. He could have rented a car at the airport and easily driven to Conway, which is along the highway outside Little Rock.

If the trail stopped in Conway, you could chalk the whole thing up to randomness, I guess. But Vilonia is one of those out–of–the–way country towns. You don't just stumble onto it. You have to be going there on purpose.

And the stock pond where the body was found was, as I recall, even more remote.

A complete stranger to the area would be almost bound to get lost after being, to say the least, distracted by a life–and–death struggle, either before or after the sexual assault, and a search for a suitably secluded spot to drop the body.

It seems likely to me that he would have had to ask for directions back to the highway. And someone almost certainly would have remembered giving directions to a disheveled stranger in a rented car whose clothes may have been dirty and/or wet.

Yet my memory is that the perpetrator did all this in a single afternoon, returned to the airport and caught a flight back to New Jersey — and he didn't ask for directions and apparently wasn't connected to the crime until a few days later, when he confessed to his psychiatrist.

He's still alive, I hear. He was convicted of capital felony murder, which often carries a death sentence, but his jury sentenced him to life without parole. He was 34 at the time he committed the crime so he is about to turn 70.

I've heard he has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, the same mental illness that afflicts the man who shot Gabrielle Giffords back in January.

That would answer a lot of questions, I guess. But not all.

I suppose some questions will never be answered.

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Missing the Point

I've been studying presidential elections most of my life, and it seems to me that Barack Obama and his campaign staff are missing a fundamental fact about presidential politics.

Let me explain.

There are, essentially, two kinds of presidential elections: One in which the incumbent is a candidate, and one in which the incumbent is not a candidate.

The last election was an example of the latter. There have been only a handful of those in my lifetime, but, typically, the party that has been out of power wins, as it did in 2008.

The issues are different in an open race than they are in a re–election contest.

In an open race, the emphasis is all on the future for there is no record to discuss, other than, perhaps, a candidate's legislative or gubernatorial record, which may be seen as a microcosm of what he would do as president.

(It isn't infallible, though. Most presidents seem to learn that governing a single state is an entirely different matter from governing a diverse nation that spreads over several time zones.)

Sometimes the nominee of the party in power is held accountable for the incumbent's record in what amounts to a case of transference. John McCain, for example, was often blamed for George W. Bush's shortcomings.

In a re–election campaign, however, the emphasis is almost solely on the president and his record. Obama might have had some familiarity with that if he had ever been re–elected to anything more significant than the Illinois state senate.

Obama and his advisers act as if they can win in 2012 the way they won in 2008, but they can't. As the outsider, he could criticize Bush and score points. He can't do that in 2012 unless his policies are clearly making things better. We don't know yet if that will be the case.

What we do know is what his approval ratings have been. Lately, they have been inconclusive. They suggest a president who has a lot of work yet to do — and not a lot of time to do it — to persuade the voters that he deserves four more years.

That is why it really doesn't matter who is nominated to run against Obama. It could be a centrist or an extremist. As I observed last month, Gallup reports that Obama and a generic foe are deadlocked.

Obama and his campaign staff are deceiving themselves if they think they can make this campaign about their opponent, whoever he or she may be. This is going to be about Obama and his policies.

If people don't like Obama's policies, they will not vote to re–elect him. If they do like his policies, they will. It's really just that simple.

In the next 20 months, if you want to know how Obama is doing in regard to winning a second term, seek out the poll results on job approval. They've been measuring presidential job approval since FDR was president and they can tell you a great deal — so let's see what those figures can tell us about the men who have been president in the last 70 years:

• At this point in his first term, George W. Bush had just launched the invasion of Iraq. Polls by CBS, Gallup and Newsweek all showed his approval in the 50s range — and that approval soared above 60% as American forces overwhelmed the Iraqis.
  
  It even climbed above 70% in some surveys — a rare occurrence once the shock of the 9/11 attacks wore off.
  
  Bush's popularity remained above 50% long enough for him to win a second term, but those who disapproved of his performance outnumbered those who approved for most of that term, starting with the response to the Terri Schiavo matter.


• In mid–March of 1995, Bill Clinton's approval rating tended to be mired in the mid–40s, but it climbed above 50% after the Oklahoma City bombing and Clinton's speech at the memorial to the victims the following month.
  
  The following year, Clinton was re–elected. It was the Democrats' second straight victory, but it was the fifth straight election in which the Democratic nominee failed to receive a majority of the popular vote.


• George H.W. Bush was the last sitting president who was denied a second term. Like Obama, he was elected in an open election, largely because he was the vice president under the remarkably popular Reagan, who was barred by law from seeking a third term in 1988.
  
  In mid–March of 1991, the elder Bush was still riding the enormous wave of popularity he enjoyed during the Persian Gulf War, and many of his potential challengers were concluding that he could not be beaten the following year. But things began to erode quickly for Bush as a recession (decidedly mild by today's standards) took its toll, and his popularity was below 50% by the start of 1992. He went on to lose to Clinton that November.


• As Ronald Reagan entered the spring of 1983, his approval ratings were beginning to emerge from the 30s range as the country finally began to recover from the recession. He saw his approval ratings begin to exceed 50% for the first time in more than a year after terrorists bombed the Marine barracks in Lebanon that fall and Reagan pledged a continued U.S. military presence there.
  
  By November 1984, Reagan's approval rating was way over 50%, and he won 49 of 50 states in his bid for re–election.


• In mid–March of 1979, Jimmy Carter had not yet given his so–called "malaise" speech, but his approval ratings had been experiencing a malaise, lingering in the 30s in the early part of 1979.
  
  It would get worse — his approval ratings would drop into the Nixonesque 20s range in the weeks prior to that speech. He enjoyed a bounce from the rally–'round–the–flag effect following the embassy takeover in Iran that November, but his approval settled in the high 30s and low 40s for much of 1980.
  
  He was defeated, of course, by Reagan.


• Gerald Ford is a unique case. He was appointed vice president in 1973 to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned. The next year, he succeeded President Nixon, who also resigned.
  
  So, when Ford ran for a full term in 1976, he was an unelected incumbent.
  
  The view from about 1½ years prior to that election has to be seen differently because Ford had only been president for about six months. Compared with the sullen, secretive Nixon, Ford was a breath of fresh air and enjoyed initial approval ratings in the 60s and 70s, but he pardoned Nixon a month later and never really got over the political fallout.
  
  About 20 months before the '76 election, Ford had a job approval in the 30s. His approval rebounded slightly, but he never really got into the 50s range again.


• Richard Nixon's approval ratings were in a decline in the spring of 1971. He was around 50% approval in mid–March and remained within a point of two of that for the rest of the year, but his job approval began to rise in 1972, in part, presumably, because of the activities that came to be part of the Watergate scandal.
  
  Nixon won by a landslide in November 1972.


• Like Ford, Lyndon Johnson took office under unusual circumstances. He was sworn in less than a year before the election, and Gallup consistently reported approval ratings in the 70s until after he had won a full term in 1964.
  
  Because he had not served half or more of his predecessor's term, Johnson could have sought re–election in 1968, but, by mid–March of 1967, after reports that the military was conducting germ warfare experiments and polls that indicated growing opposition to the war, his approval was in the 40s. Johnson decided to drop out of the 1968 race a year later.


• Who knows what might have happened if John F. Kennedy had not been assassinated? He had encountered some opposition to his policies, as every president does, but, in mid–March of 1963, two–thirds of Americans expressed their approval of the job he had been doing.
  
  He is the only president since Americans have been surveyed about presidential job performance who remained above 50% (well above, in fact) throughout his presidency. He was at his lowest level in the months before his assassination, but any president would have loved to have his approval rating (58%) less than a year before asking the voters for another term.


• Dwight Eisenhower was always popular during his presidency. There were some occasions when his popularity dropped below 60%, even a few when his popularity dropped below 50%, but those who said they approved always outnumbered those who said they didn't.
  
  In March 1955, Ike's approval was in the upper 60s and lower 70s, which had been typical of the first two years of his presidency — and, as it turned out, was typical of most of his tenure. He had a serious heart attack in September of 1955 and spent several weeks in the hospital, but it didn't prevent him from seeking and winning a second term in 1956.


• Harry Truman had the unenviable task of succeeding Franklin D. Roosevelt when he died in 1945.
  
  In mid–March 1947, Truman's approval rating was in the 60s following the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine to oppose the spread of communism. Truman's approval rating fluctuated, sometimes wildly, in the next year and a half, dipping into the 30s after he signed the Marshall Plan (which authorized billions in aid to more than a dozen countries) but rebounding enough for him to defeat Tom Dewey in the general election.
  
  Truman, having been the incumbent when term limits were imposed on presidents, was eligible to run again in 1952, but he chose not to. Perhaps he was influenced by his March 1951 approval ratings, which were in the 20s.


• Like Kennedy and Eisenhower, more people always approved than disapproved of the job performance of Franklin D. Roosevelt — at least since pollsters began asking that question early in his second term. Gallup only reported an approval rating below 50% once (it was actually 48%, but disapproval was at 43%) — a week before the Nazis invaded Poland.
  
  In both March 1939 and March 1943, the years prior to his campaigns for re–election in 1940 and 1944, distinct majorities approved of the job he was doing, and he was re–elected both times.

If you think the Republicans could shoot themselves in the foot by nominating an extremist like Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich, remember that Reagan himself was widely regarded as an extremist when he sought the presidency in 1980.

In those days, many Democrats believed he would be the easiest Republican to beat, another Barry Goldwater. I recall hearing Democrats worry more during the primaries about other Republicans in the field, the centrists like Howard Baker and George H.W. Bush.

Or maybe Ford would be persuaded to run again. Everyone remembered how close he came to defeating Carter four years earlier.

Most Democrats didn't think Reagan could be nominated. And if he was, he couldn't win. Reagan, they said, was too old, too conservative, too much of a loose cannon with his off–the–cuff remarks about things like trees causing most of the pollution.

I even remember many Democrats acting relieved that a "dunce" like Reagan had won the nomination that summer. They had no idea that a Republican wave was coming their way.

But it turned out that the voters weren't happy with Carter, and Reagan won in a landslide.

The Democrats of today are making a similar misjudgment. They look at polls that show high numbers of Americans who like Obama personally, and they see polls that show high negatives for Palin and Gingrich and midrange numbers for the other prominent Republicans on the list — and they conclude that Obama will win because people like him.

But that really isn't the issue with an incumbent. Sure, it is important to be liked. But most voters won't be making their decision based on that.

There is still time — not a lot, but some — to turn things around, but the fact remains that much of the record would not be kind to Obama if the voters were going to the polls today.

Smart Republican operatives would have been running 30–year–old clips of Reagan asking voters if they were better off than they had been four years earlier — and linking Obama's policies with Carter's.

Say what you will about the direction the economy may (or may not) be taking. The fact remains that unemployment is around 9% right now. It was around 6.5% when Obama was elected. And that was bad. No one is disputing that. But this is worse.

For millions of unemployed or under–employed Americans, the answer is likely to be "No!" if they are asked Reagan's question.

That is what Obama must change before the voters start casting their ballots next year if he hopes to remain in the White House past January 2013.

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When Presidential Politics Began to Change

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Presidential politics began to change on this day 35 years ago, although no one knew it at the time.

Not even Jimmy Carter, and he is the man who was responsible for the change.

On this day in 1976, the people in New Hampshire went to the polls to express their preferences for president in both the Democratic and Republican primaries.

Carter was but one of about half a dozen people on the Democratic ballot. Only two candidates — President Ford and Ronald Reagan — were on the Republican ballot.

New Hampshire, of course, was then, as it is now, the first state to hold a presidential primary, and all the hopefuls — the longshots as well as the favorites — came to pursue every possible vote. In modern times, New Hampshire's retail politics has both launched and destroyed presidential campaigns, and in 1976, until this day, most of the serious contenders for their parties' nominations were on the ground there, each hoping to be the one to catch lightning in a bottle.

Historically, however, presidential primaries were relatively rare prior to 1976. Delegates were still chosen via caucuses or in the old–fashioned smoke–filled rooms, where politicos made deals with no consideration given to their constituents' wishes. Before 1976, many primaries were nothing more than popularity contests.

When things got started in 1976, the three Democrats who were probably considered the front runners for the nomination were Sen. Henry Jackson, Gov. George Wallace and Gov. Jerry Brown. A fourth — Ted Kennedy — was probably the sentimental choice of many Democrats, but he declined to seek the nomination.

Carter made a point of entering every Democratic primary, taking his case directly to the people. He really had no choice. When the primary season began in 1976, he was virtually unknown nationally, even though he had finished ahead of five other rivals in the Iowa caucuses in January.

(People often think Carter won those caucuses, but he didn't. He finished second to "uncommitted.")

The Iowa caucuses really didn't have a lot of clout in those days — and that, too, I think is something that Carter changed because, as he had hoped, Iowa gave him some momentum — and he did go on to win the New Hampshire primary four weeks later.

There was talk at the time that the results might have been different if Jackson had entered both Iowa and New Hampshire, but he did not, and his victory in the Massachusetts primary the following week could not derail Carter, who won the next 10 primaries and, in essence, clinched the Democratic nomination in late spring.

With the nomination assured, Carter could take his time in selecting his running mate, a luxury that was rarely available to presumptive nominees prior to that time.

"If an instant choice had been required at that time," Carter wrote in "Keeping Faith," his presidential memoir, "it would have been Senator Frank Church of Idaho, or perhaps Senator Henry Jackson of Washington."

Jackson, however, might have caused problems within the party. His support for the Vietnam War had been divisive. Church would have caused no such problem.

Ultimately, of course, Carter chose Walter Mondale.

"I have always been thankful that we formed this partnership," Carter wrote. "He has sound judgment and strong beliefs and has never been timid about presenting them forcefully to me. But whenever I made a final decision, even when it was contrary to his own original recommendation, he gave me his full support."

The relationship between the president and the vice president would be forever changed by the Carter–Mondale partnership. Until they were elected in 1976, most presidents seemed to ignore their vice presidents.

But that, of course, was still in the future. On this day in 1976, it was far from clear who would be the Democrats' standard bearer that fall.

When I think of that day, I think of a ritual that I started the day before and repeated frequently that year with a dear friend of mine. I've written about her here before. I knew her as "Aunt Bess."

I had been visiting Aunt Bess on Wednesday afternoons for about four months when the 1976 presidential campaign got under way. She was old enough to be my grandmother, and she would listen to whatever I had to say as intently as any grandmother would.

Our Wednesday afternoons together were special for both of us. She would pour glasses of tea or Coke or whatever she had on hand, and we would sit and sip our drinks and talk for an hour or more on the issues of the day. If the weather was nice, we might sit outside. Other times, we would sit in her dining room, which was rather small but had the benefit of a large window through which we could watch the world while we talked.

Then, when our time was up, she would prepare to leave for church, and I would return home.

It is a memory that means a great deal to me now. I loved Aunt Bess very much. In fact, she and another good friend of mine, Phyllis (I've written about Phyllis here frequently since she died last August), were members of the same Baptist church in my hometown.

(Actually, the fact that they were both Baptists really isn't significant, I suppose. I was brought up in the Methodist church in my hometown, but the fact is that, then as now, Baptists far outnumbered any other religious group in Arkansas.

(When I lived there, it really wasn't possible to not have friends who were Baptists. Well, perhaps it was possible, but I know it wasn't easy. Can't say I ever tried to prove or disprove it, but I'm pretty sure it is so. More than three–quarters of Arkansans are Protestants, and half of them are Baptists. I don't know what the percentages were in Conway at that time, but they probably mirrored the rest of the state.)

By late February 1976, we had been talking about the presidential campaign for several weeks. We had both become Carter supporters since his strong showing in Iowa, and we both hoped a Southerner could win the nomination and the general election, but neither of us would commit to the idea that it was probable — or even possible.

In February 1976, Carter had generated some talk, but there wasn't much evidence, even after the New Hampshire primary, that he was anything more than the flavor of the month, the latest manifestation of the public's desire to sweep away the last remaining traces of the Nixon years.

Then, the day before the primary, I remember calling Aunt Bess on the phone and giving her my prediction for what would happen the next day.

I remember few specifics about my prediction — except that I correctly predicted who would win on each side. Carter's victory that day really wasn't a big surprise. He had been in the news after his showing in Iowa, and I predicted that he would receive about 30% of the vote. He actually got 28% of the vote, but that was clearly more than the runnerup, Mo Udall, got.

I was most proud, at the time, of my prediction in the Republican primary. President Ford and the GOP establishment were nervous about Ronald Reagan, and many believed Ford was vulnerable for a number of reasons.

It turned out they were right — but in the general election, not the primaries, even though Reagan did make things interesting, to say the least.

Prior to the primary, most observers said the GOP race was a tossup. I told Aunt Bess that Ford would win by a single percentage point — and he did.

In hindsight, though, I'm proud of something else. I told Aunt Bess that I thought Carter would be the Democrats' nominee — "and I think he'll beat Ford." I didn't mention it again, and I have seldom thought of it in years.

I still like to predict the outcomes of presidential primaries and elections. We still have one presidential election every four years, but there are a lot more presidential primaries than there were when Carter first sought the presidency.

And that is a major part of his legacy.

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