A Time to Lead

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"There go the people. I must follow them for I am their leader."

Alexandre Auguste Ledru–Rollin
(1807–1874)

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In the aftermath of what Barack Obama generously called a "shellacking" in the midterm elections, there has been no shortage of advice for Democrats who are understandably staggered by the greatest loss of House seats by one party in one election in decades.

In this corner ...

• E.J. Dionne writes in The New Republic that Democrats need to stick to their guns (so to speak), just like the Republicans did after their rejection in 2008.
  
  They should not listen, he says, to those who advise them to move more to the center.
  
  "Why should Democrats take Republican advice that Republicans themselves would never be foolish enough to follow?" he asks.
  
  Food for thought.


• From the "What? Me Worry?/Collateral Damage" Department:
  
  Bob Shrum concedes, in The Week, that Obama made some mistakes in his first two years as president.
  
  But unless you've been mainlining the Kool–Aid as Shrum seems to have been doing, you won't so easily shrug off the lessons that are there to be learned from this experience.
  
  Shrum insists that, not only has Obama been doing the right things, it will be clear to all by 2012 that they were the right things to do, that it wasn't a case of overreaching or ignoring the jobs issue. No apology is necessary.
  
  What's more, Obama's much–criticized trip to India right after the election will be vindicated as the right course of action instead of remaining in the U.S. to pick up the pieces. Remaining here, Shrum suggests, would have been a sign of weakness. The blood would have been in the water.
  
  And Obama, he says, will be re–elected in 2012. No problem.
  
  Oh, and if any of the folks who voted for him in 2008 go under because they lost their jobs and couldn't get new ones while Obama obsessed over health care, well, they're just collateral damage (see Timothy McVeigh).
  
  (By the way, it was Shrum who, only a month before the just–concluded midterm elections, confidently asserted that "the Democrats will hold the Congress — yes, the House as well as the Senate."
  
  (More than 82 million Americans voted in the election. If fewer than 60,000 people — 8,000 in Colorado, 21,000 in Nevada, and 27,000 in West Virginia — had voted for Republicans instead of Democrats, the Senate would have been a 50/50 split, and all the talk today would have been about whether independent Joe Lieberman could be persuaded by the Republicans to caucus with them, giving them the majority.)


• Ezra Klein at Newsweek metaphorically shrugs his shoulders. Sure, the Democrats lost the election, he writes, but they accomplished such great things.
  
  Great things that are likely to be overturned — if not in the newly elected Congress, almost certainly in the one that looks likely to be elected two years from now.
  
  But I'll get to that in a minute.


• At the New York Daily News, Steve Benen says Obama should call the Republicans' bluff.
  
  Benen recommends turning the tables on the Republicans, proposing things their own people have proposed in the past. For example, he could take a page from the McCain–Palin playbook from 2008 and advocate "establish[ing] 'a cap–and–trade system that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions' and pursue 'alternatives to carbon–based fuels.' "
  
  What's more, Benen writes, "if the president were feeling particularly mischievous, he could endorse the tax rates adopted by Ronald Reagan, who oversaw rates considerably higher than the ones in place today. Would Republicans really condemn Ronaldus Magnus' tax policy?"

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And in this corner ...

• There's something vaguely unsettling (not to mention unseemly) about Karl Rove using the lyrics from a popular singer who is about half his age to make his point about Obama.
  
  But that's what he did — and fairly effectively, too — in the Wall Street Journal when he asserted that the president has a tin ear.
  
  Personally, I think Rove is right about that, but you have to consider the source. Rove clearly has an axe to grind.


• So, too, does Peggy Noonan, a writer whose work I have admired since she wrote Ronald Reagan's memorable speech following the Challenger disaster nearly 25 years ago.
  
  Noonan observes the volatility of the electorate and reminds Republicans, flush with victory, that "things could turn on a dime," as they did with Obama.
  
  Obama's problem, she suggests, is that he did not hold the political center that played a vital role in his election in 2008, and that's a hard argument to deny following an election in which independents so visibly abandoned the Democrats and voted for Republicans. "To hold the center you have to respect your own case enough to argue for it," she writes, "and respect the people enough to explain it."
  
  Noonan's had some experience with the fluidity of the electorate, and she remembers the days in the mid–1990s when the Republicans took control of Congress. She tells Republicans that the right wing's favorite whipping boy, the media, "had a storyline" it was eager to sell — "[t]hese wild and crazy righties who just got elected are ... wild and crazy," and the media will try to sell it in 2011 as well.
  
  There is an impression among many voters — one that is a half–truth at best — that all the Republicans who have just been elected are extremist Tea Partiers. The media will seek to exploit that, Noonan warns. The media, Noonan says, will try to portray all newly elected Republicans as extremists so she urges incoming Republicans "to keep in mind the advice of the 19th century actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who once said ... that she didn't really care what people did as long as they didn't do it in the street and frighten the horses."
  
  And that is what Noonan tells new Republican lawmakers: "Stand tall, speak clear, and don't frighten the horses."

As an amateur historian, I appreciate Noonan's knowledge of great quotes and how she skillfully weaves them into what she writes.

I seldom agree with her, just as I seldom agreed with her boss, but, as a writer, I give her credit for the things she can do with words.

I've never really bought into this media bias stuff that she and the other right–wingers like to peddle. Oh, sure, I'll concede that there is some bias in the media, most of it in broadcasting. Perhaps that is at the heart of my problem. My experience in journalism has been confined to print — well, except for a couple of years that I spent appearing on a weekly cable access sports program as a representative for the newspaper for which I was working at the time.

But mostly I get the sense, from reading what I have read lately, that most people are looking at raw numbers and simply trying to reconcile those numbers with what they see on the ground. Obama insisted, in his post–election press conference, that the fault was not with the agenda but with communication.

That has a nice "shoot the messenger" sound to it, but the ultimate responsibility rests with the president — except that this president, like his predecessor, won't take responsibility for his errors in judgment.

So who does Obama suggest we blame?

• If there isn't an answer to that by November 2012, the messengers who seem likely to get blamed, along with Obama, are the Senate Democrats who must face the voters in that election.
  
  Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post–Gazette — who, incidentally, disagrees with Shrum about Obama's trip to India — is one of those to write recently about those senators.
  
  "Democrats who didn't drown in the Republican wave had to be dismayed by the news conference President Barack Obama held Wednesday before jetting off to India," Kelly wrote. "Particularly unhappy, I suspect, are the 12 Democrats in the Senate from states that voted Republican Tuesday who are up for re–election in 2012.
  
  "In essence, what the president said (in many, many more words) is that he heard what the voters were saying, but would ignore it."
  
  Those 12 Democrats — Bill Nelson of Florida, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester of Montana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, Jim Webb of Virginia and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin — are clearly at risk in 2012.
  
  Now, the Class of 2006 was always going to be at risk, simply because of the numbers. Only about one–third of the Senate's seats is on the ballot in any election year. There are more in some years because senators die or resign, and special elections must be held to choose their successors.
  
  Because 2006 was such a good year for Democrats, that means more Democrats will be defending their seats in 2012. The same, actually, will be true of 2014, when the Democrats who were swept in on the Obama wave are up for re–election.
  
  These politicians — the president and these 12 senators — are going to have to unite behind a message. They need to be laying the foundation for that message now and building their cases, as individuals and as a group, for another term.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, though, and those Democrats simply cannot afford for the president, the man at the top of their ballot, to be their weakest link. In 2012, Obama and the national Democrats may well find themselves stretched too thin as it is by the endangered Senate seats they must defend and the Republican–held House seats they must pursue in hope of either reducing the GOP's advantage or eliminating it altogether.

Since he was elected two years ago, pundits have compared Obama to the most successful presidents in American history — and some of the least successful as well.

Where Bill Clinton stands on that scale is, of course, a matter of opinion, but the fact remains that he survived a disastrous midterm in 1994 to win re–election two years later — and eventually turned over a budget surplus to his successor. He just might have some useful insights for the current occupant of the White House.

In his memoir "My Life," Clinton recalled that the Democrats "got the living daylights beat out of us."

Clinton's recollections sound eerily familiar to what Obama and other Democrats said both before and after the election: "The Republicans were rewarded for two years of constant attacks on me," he wrote. "The Democrats were punished for too much good government and too little good politics.

"... Moreover, the public mood was still anxious; people didn't feel their lives were improving and they were sick of all the fighting in Washington."

Has a familiar sound to it, doesn't it?

But the setback of 1994 reminded Clinton of 14 years earlier, when he was defeated for re–election as governor of Arkansas. "I felt much as I did [then]," Clinton wrote. "I had done a lot of good, but no one knew it. ... I had forgotten the searing lesson of my 1980 loss: You can have good policy without good politics, but you can't give the people good government without both."

And Clinton went about adapting himself to the new political landscape.

It is something other presidents needed to do midway through their terms in office, but not all have.

Will Obama have the wisdom to see what he must do?

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Coming Home?

In the late 1970s, movies about the experience of the Vietnam War and its aftermath were abundant — on both TV ("Friendly Fire") and the big screen ("Heroes," "The Deer Hunter," "Apocalypse Now").

And there was a movie called "Coming Home" — which was nominated for eight Oscars and won three — that examined the trauma of the war on the home front.

To a degree, I suppose, you could say that about the others, too — although much of the trauma that was examined in the others (and the even more introspective films that followed in the 1980s) was the trauma of battle (a subject that has been examined in the context of every war in which America has been involved) and not so much the trauma that was experienced by those who didn't actually serve in Vietnam but, nevertheless, had to live with its consequences.

Anyway, there is no truly relevant link between that movie and what I want to write about today, except for the film's title, which popped into my mind as I read articles suggesting that the ever–volatile American electorate was experiencing a new seismic shift away from the Republicans, who heretofore had been regarded as heavy favorites in next month's midterms.

(Well, perhaps there is an analogy to be made between a film about a war and the state of modern political conflict in America — but I'll leave that to others.)

Now, personally, I am deeply skeptical of any suggestion by anyone that the momentum is shifting — at least permanently.

Voters may be having second thoughts. This is something I have heard about since taking political science courses in college, where I became acquainted with what is called the "left at the altar" syndrome.

But that has been more frequently observed in presidential politics. Most recently, I recall hearing distraught Republicans insisting, right up to Election Day, that the tide was turning in 2008 — which, of course, it was not.

Some voters may have hesitated in the final weeks and asked themselves if they really wanted to change parties in the presidency, but few, if any, appear to have changed their votes as a result. The political pendulum continued to lurch leftward.

There have been relatively few moments in the history of mankind — let alone the comparably brief history of this nation — that had the power to move great numbers of people to the opposite side on even a temporary basis. Permanent shifts are more uncommon.

Yet it seems that every man who has won a presidential election has believed that he has been given a mandate to govern in a certain way, that his election was transformational.

Seldom, if ever, has he been willing to entertain the notion that the voters simply rejected the other guy — or, in his absence, as was the case in 2008, his party.

I suppose those who seek the presidency and those who invest much of themselves in electing these individuals don't want to think that anything that demands that much personal sacrifice can be lost in a seemingly casual manner. Perhaps that undermines them and their motivations.

The true believers, it seems to me, want to believe the voters have made the same kind of commitment that they have, and they simply won't believe it is possible to lose their support until it happens.

At this stage of a losing campaign, self–doubt starts to creep in. And then those on the losing side will seek the reasons why the political equivalent of a "perfect storm" occurred. Sometimes they start wondering before the storm strikes.

Most of the time, the evidence was all around them all along. They didn't see it — or they didn't want to see it.

In recent months, I have heard bewildered Democrats asking themselves what could possibly have gone wrong. How could the once hugely popular Barack Obama and his party have fallen so far from grace?

I've heard some people suggest that Obama was guilty of overreaching, of trying to do too much at once. And there may be an element of that in the voters' criticism. I believe that perception has fueled — at least, in part — the resistance embodied in the Tea Party movement.

Others have said that, when they went to the polls two years ago, they simply wanted the next president, whoever that turned out to be, to right the economy and start bringing unemployment down. The Democrats' general avoidance of the issue has alarmed them, frightened them, angered them.

For these and other reasons, the American voters appear to be poised to hand one or both chambers of Congress over to the Republicans. That's pretty bewildering for some folks. I've heard Democrats ask, "How can they vote for the party that drove the economy into a ditch in the first place?"

That seems perplexing on the surface, but the answer really is simple and, in its own way, logical.

In a two–party system, when voters are angry or frustrated or scared, their only recourse is to vote against the party in power. In 2010, many voters are angry and/or frustrated and/or scared, and many may rationalize that the Republicans have learned from four years of being in the minority after a dozen years of being in the majority.

Lately, both parties have taken encouragement from Gallup's latest generic congressional ballot.

• Democrats eager to believe that the voters are "coming home" after considering their alternatives embrace Gallup's finding that, among registered voters, the race is neck and neck.


• But Republicans enjoy a large advantage among likely voters, the ones whose voting histories indicate that they are likely to participate in the midterm elections. Not everyone does. And it has been observed frequently that the very groups that propelled Obama to the presidency and Democrats to their congressional margins two years ago — minorities, the young — do not have voting histories that make them likely voters.

Decisions are made by those who show up.

The enthusiasm factor makes all the difference sometimes. In 1994, there were many House — and even Senate — races that were decided by narrow margins.

But, in a democracy, a one–vote margin is as good as a million. There may be recounts, but, eventually, a winner will be declared.

In 1992, the Democrats won nearly identical congressional majorities to the ones Democrats enjoyed after the 2008 election. And, when the dust settled in 1994, the Republicans had seized both houses of Congress.

Much of what contributed to the Democrats' decline stemmed from two things — their failure to adequately address the economic problems that lingered after Bill Clinton took office and their ultimately unsuccessful pursuit of health care reform.

I, for one, have always found it to be ironic that Obama chose to center his presidency around the issue of health care reform — as if he was defying history to repeat itself. And you should never do that.

(It reminds me of an old Bill Cosby line from an album I listened to when I was a kid.

("Never say that things can't get any worse," Cosby told his listeners. "Because that's when the gremlins say, 'Worse!' ")

Don't challenge history. History always wins that one.

Yes, Obama did mention health care on the 2008 campaign trail — but it wasn't the initial focus of his candidacy (ending the war in Iraq was) and it wasn't the focus of his campaign after the American economy imploded. I recall it mostly being mentioned in an afterthought kind of way.

But, for whatever reason, Obama spent his political capital in pursuit of the passage of a contentious health care reform bill instead of seeking a truly bipartisan effort to stop the bleeding of jobs from the national economy.

Perhaps it was the arrogance of power that made Obama believe he could follow his own path in the presidency — and, in spite of themselves, the voters would see the wisdom of his ways.

Are the voters "coming home" in 2010? I don't think so.

But, if the Republicans do capture Congress this year, that triumph should come with a disclaimer — Political power evaporates quickly.

And Obama needs to study up on Bill Clinton's strategy for dealing with a Republican Congress in 1995. He was re–elected two years later.

And I'm getting the feeling that both parties need to be concerned about this Tea Party movement. There may not be many of the so–called Tea Partiers who win this time — but this movement seems to stem mostly from the sense that the folks in office — Republicans and Democrats — just don't listen to the people anymore.

So I would advise the folks in the next Congress to be sensitive to the voters' wishes long after November.

If they aren't, they're apt to discover this Tea Party movement has legs.

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Celestial Navigation

Do you remember the last year or so of George H.W. Bush's presidency?

He was like a moth on a summer night, frantically drawn to whichever light beckoned to him from the many competing beams that seemed to be shining. And, for the last painful months of the first Bush presidency, he was bouncing from one light source to another, only to discover they were never among his famous "thousand points of light."

Moths, they say, are attracted to light because they fly using a form of celestial navigation so they zero in on a light source and that keeps them flying in a reasonably straight line. It's an act of faith, I suppose ... inasmuch as moths are capable of having faith in anything.

Anyway, back in 1992, Bush was drawn to whichever light seemed to promise him guidance to victory in the election. I guess they were all dead ends or mere reflections of light (and not actual light sources) because Bush lost the presidency to Bill Clinton in a big way, and his party was reduced to a minority status that was almost identical to the one in which Republicans found themselves after the 2008 elections.

After Clinton took office, the hard times lingered. Despite different policies, improvements were slow. And, with the passage of time, Clinton — to use a phrase that has gained popularity in recent years — took ownership of the economy in the eyes of the voters. He insisted on reminding voters that he inherited the bad economy, but that point was irrelevant. Two years after Clinton was elected and Democrats took huge majorities in Congress, the voters handed legislative power to the Republicans.

Now, in terms of the numbers (of displaced workers, of sluggish economic performance, general severity, etc.), comparing the economy of the early '90s to the one facing this country today is like comparing tinker toys to steel girders.

But today's Democrats — and their leader, Barack Obama — have insisted on treating the steel–girder recession like it's the tinker–toy recession. Their words may have said one thing, but their actions have said something else.

Their actions — whether intended or not — have conveyed an inattentiveness to, an utter disinterest in the plight of the unemployed.

As I have mentioned on several occasions, Obama never said a word in public about unemployment on Labor Day weekend 2009 (when his approval ratings were still in the 50s), but he's been singing a much different tune in 2010, when those approval numbers have slid into the low 40s.

And, with polls showing Democrats on the brink of a hammering that may be historic in terms of its scope, he seems to be emulating "41" (as the elder Bush was affectionately known) by bouncing from one topic to another in what can only be seen as politically motivated moves.

In less than eight weeks, the American people will go to the polls. And Obama, in true George H.W. Bush style, has been indulging in his own "Message: I care" moments — i.e., this week's transparent push for new economic proposals — that are intended to mollify the voters until they've voted for the party in power.

Then the voters can be forgotten again.

I really have a hard time following the logic. A year ago, you might have been greeted with, at least, an incredulous look if you had suggested that the voters might be on the verge of giving legislative power to the party that has been in the minority since January 2007. But not so today.

Today, the conventional wisdom and the polls favor a Republican electoral wave in November that may well exceed the one that swept the Democrats from power in 1994.

The warnings seem to be everywhere — like that week in August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina was crossing the Gulf of Mexico or the post–9/11 claims from intelligence sources that the terrorists' electronic "chatter" was deafening in the summer of 2001.

The warnings have been out there for months.

Byron York writes about it in the Washington Examiner. York is a conservative, but I could hardly have expected a gentler treatment of the subject from anyone at the other end of the political spectrum.

"The American people don't expect Obama to perform miracles," York writes in describing the bewilderment of Republican strategists. "They know he inherited a mess. They don't think the unemployment rate will magically fall to 4.5 percent. But they do expect the president to devote himself completely to the economy, and they want to see signs of progress by election day. By 'progress,' they mean not just a good month but the clear sense that the economy is moving in the right direction.

"Instead, they got policy potpourri and 'Recovery Summer.' "

Conventional wisdom suggests that it is much too late for anything to happen domestically that could turn things around for the Democrats. When I was studying political science in college, we talked of how voters' attitudes tend to "harden" about five or six months before an election. In my experience, that has been true. It certainly seems to have been true in 1994.

Speaking of 1994, I learned from that experience. I've been a Democrat most of my life (until earlier this year, in fact). I've been studying voting trends most of my life, too.

I was a registered Democrat in 1994. And, frankly, the tsunami that washed over the country that year came as a shock to me, coming as it did only two years after Democrats won huge congressional majorities, as well as the presidency itself.

But, as I say, I learned from that experience. And one of the things I learned was that, when a president takes office in the midst of hard times, that president must address the issues that are of the most concern to the most people. Usually, that means encouraging job creation.

The president may not want to devote his time and energy to jobs. He may have grander ideas for his presidency. Most presidents, it seems to me, are driven by a desire to lead, but when times are hard, they must do what may be counterintuitive to them and follow — follow, for as long as it takes, the will of the people. Respond to their needs and concerns.

A president can't choose the times in which he serves, but he can choose how he handles the challenges of his times. And the nature of the times is almost always dictated by the state of the economy. Bad economies require a focus on pocketbook issues. If the voters don't get that from their leaders, they will choose new leaders.

If, in the last 20 months, the voters had gotten what York calls "the clear sense that the economy is moving in the right direction," they might have been more receptive to the things for which Obama clearly wants to be remembered. But they haven't gotten that sense.

"Wait a minute!" Obama's defenders say. "Isn't the president pressing a bold economic plan even as we speak?"

Yes. But York has a compelling response: "If these are such great ideas, why wasn't the president pushing them earlier?"

It's a fair question. And today, I can see no circumstances — other than an international incident — that can save Democratic lawmakers in November. Perhaps — by the sheer grace of God — they may be able to salvage either the House or the Senate.

I don't think they will be able to save both. I think they're more likely to lose both.

But unless they can save both, I expect a fight in Congress next year over the repeal of the health care reform package upon which Obama gambled his presidency. And a prolonged fight over health care reform is going to delay any efforts to encourage job creation.

Sure, you can find the Pollyannas of the Democratic Party, like Susan Estrich, who wrote, in a recent column for Creators Syndicate, that, no matter how grim things may seem, the Democrats do have a thing or two on their side.

Nevertheless, Estrich did feel compelled to give a disclaimer, "What all this means is not that Democrats will hold on to the House come next fall, but that they can."

Her experience as Michael Dukakis' campaign manager 22 years ago must have taught her the value of spin because she quickly added that "even if they don't, it hardly spells doom for the president. The one area where the gap between the parties is clearest is that of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm comes from activists and ideologues. Instead of attacking them, this president and his team have to remember to spend some time wooing them."

Is it just me, or does that sound reminiscent of Obama's attempts last year to appease the Republicans in Congress? Well, we all know how well that worked, don't we?

So, logically, it will work even better, now that it's the Democrats, and not the Republicans, who are on the ropes. Right?

That kind of logic reminds me of a monologue I saw David Letterman give on The Tonight Show before he became a late–night host.

In the monologue, Letterman observed that, if a patron complained about the quality of the food, the approach at many restaurants at that time was to bring that patron more of that item.

"If there's anything better than bad food, it's lots of it," Letterman said.

I guess, if you're going to apply that line to current political tactics, you could say that "if there's anything better than bad legislative strategy, it's lots of it."

Well, I guess you could say that if you're a Republican. Not if you're a Democrat.

If health care reform is repealed, the centerpiece of Obama's presidency will be gone with no chance to get it back before Obama himself must face the voters. Without health care reform, what will be the basis for his argument to be given another four years?

And if voters continue to get the sense that the economy is not moving in the right direction in 2011, as they almost surely will not if the administration must constantly engage in skirmishes on Capitol Hill over health care reform — the issue that won't go away and can't be resolved — Obama can forget about a second term.

It didn't have to be this way.

I've seen this coming. I've been warning about it on this blog since before Obama took office. I've seen other people warning about it, too.

But I've been increasingly frustrated by the dawning knowledge that today's Democrats are intent upon forgetting (or ignoring) the recent past.

I could understand their hesitance to take decisive steps that could at least mitigate the damage in a midterm election — which almost always goes against the party in power, anyway, but not always decisively, as seems likely this year — if they were farther removed from the last time the opposing party took control of Congress. In 1994, it had been 40 years since the last time Republicans were in the majority in both chambers.

Most, if not all, of the Democrats who lived through the flip in the 1950s were gone by 1994. They couldn't warn the new generation of Democrats.

But, in 2010, the Democrats are only 16 years removed from the last time that happened. Joe Biden was a senator for more than 30 years. He's seen presidents from both parties wrestle with hard times. He lived through the 1994 midterms. And, when he was in the Senate, he tended to be blunt about what was needed to reverse the tide. But he's been the enabler–in–chief as vice president.

They couldn't have forgotten so quickly, could they?

Apparently, the answer to that is a resounding "yes they could."

And, in 55 days, we will find out exactly how much they have forgotten.

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Hypocrisy and the Damage Done

If anyone confuses me with a George W. Bush supporter, I can only conclude that person

• doesn't know me, or


• hasn't read much in this blog.

Perhaps (or maybe that should be probably) both.

After all, Bush was still president when I wrote that his actions in office needed to be investigated.

I still believe that to be true, but, after revisiting that particular post, I feel I need to amend what I said — if only to make what I feel are somewhat obvious points about hypocrisy.

I'm not saying that Barack Obama was dishonest about his intentions in Iraq — but he has been, at the very least, inconsistent in what he has said.

On the surface, Obama appeared to be gracious toward his predecessor when he said, in his speech informing the public that he had fulfilled his pledge to end all combat operations in Iraq, "[N]o one can doubt President Bush's support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security," and he went on to observe that "there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it."

But there has long been a rising chorus in America of people who believed that the Bush administration (the president and all the others whose names will be forever linked to this tragedy) lied to the people to further its own agenda. And one of those voices had been Obama's.

In the now–forgotten days before the economic implosion, Obama's opposition to the war in Iraq and his desire to end American military involvement there was one of the main things that drew voters to him, not unlike Gene McCarthy's insurgent candidacy against LBJ four decades before.

It may be hard to remember now, but the campaigns for both parties' presidential nominations were conducted with the unpopular Iraq war as the backdrop, not the economy.

"There was no such thing as Al Qaeda in Iraq," Obama told an audience in Ohio during the 2008 presidential campaign, "until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq."

Hmmmm. Seems to me Obama was asserting on that occasion (and on others in the spring of 2008) that both Bush and McCain had been guilty of lying when they pressed Congress for the authority to invade Iraq.

After all, the primary reason for going to war (which has long been discredited) was the alleged existence of "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, weapons that supposedly were aimed at America, ready to launch at a second's notice. And those allusions to mushroom clouds from folks like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, et al., drove that message home.

And, because Al Qaeda was such an emotional subject for most Americans in the months immediately following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the proponents of a war with Iraq tossed around the suggestion that Al Qaeda had used Iraq as a base of operations. That, too, proved to be false.

But, without those two arrows in their quiver at that time, the so–called neocons never could have frightened the American public — or the American Congress — into going along with them.

Lying about the reasons for launching an invasion doesn't seem very patriotic to many Americans — especially Americans who were passionate about their opposition to the war (and believed their opposition was a valid expression of their own patriotism) and yet were slandered as unpatriotic by those who supported the war.

How do you suppose they feel when they hear Obama praise Bush's "love of country" in connection with the Iraqi operation?

Does it seem hypocritical to you?

Hypocrisy isn't an easy thing to confront, is it? Of course, no one is perfect, but Eugene Robinson, an Obama enabler from the Washington Post who complains that American voters are petulant "spoiled brats" who are ready to turn over the Congress to a party they loathe because Democrats haven't produced improvements fast enough to suit them, frets that what voters appear all but certain to do in November makes no sense.

Actually, in the context of the American experience, it does make sense. At the very least, it is consistent. In the midterm campaigns of 1982 and 1994, respectively, both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton repeatedly reminded the voters that they had inherited bad economies.

And surveys showed that the majority of respondents agreed with Reagan and Clinton — but the voters had moved on. They weren't thinking about who started the fire. They were thinking about who had been chosen to extinguish the fire. And, in both cases, that had not been done.

Robinson doesn't think it is fair, and maybe it isn't. But what does fair have to do with it? It's the way American voters have behaved as long as I can remember. It shouldn't surprise anyone.

I'm inclined to think Robinson makes a valuable point when he says Obama can "point to any number of occasions on which he has told Americans that getting our nation back on track is a long–range project." Yet, in the very same column, Robinson admits that, when he was running for president, Obama's "campaign stump speech ended with the exhortation, 'Let's go change the world' — not 'Let's go change the world slowly and incrementally, waiting years before we see the fruits of our labor.' "

And that's the point. Obama raised the bar for himself by making "change" the centerpiece of his campaign. And his words had an urgency, an almost revolutionary sound, to them.

Now, not only is change coming too slowly for some, most can't agree on what kind of change the campaign was really about (and, therefore, the Obama presidency should be about).

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Obama campaigned under the banner of change, and change is what the voters expected. If the voters can't see it, that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. It might mean it isn't the kind of change they expected, or there hasn't been enough of it to make a difference in their lives.

It may well be true, as some have suggested, that some economic indicators are doing better and that this is a stubborn economy — and that, even though it will be years before most Americans see any change in their health care, it is a landmark achievement (that could well be repealed if the other party takes legislative power in a few months) — but real change, the kind that makes a positive difference in people's lives, is hard for many to see, especially when the latest report from the Labor Department showed unemployment moving back up in the direction of 10%.

Perhaps that explains why Gallup reports finding that less than 40% of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing on the economy. And, while Obama may be proud of passing health care reform legislation, he would be wise not to bring it up too much if Gallup is right. His handling of that issue is only marginally more popular than his handling of the economy (Gallup's finding, by the way, is confirmed by CNN polling, which tends to be more pro–Democrat than the typically neutral Gallup).

Some voters continue to take it on faith that the economy is getting better and blame the previous administration for all their difficulties, and Obama eagerly embraces that approach, as other presidents have.

But it just seems hypocritical to me that the same man who, in the days before his inauguration, urged his countrymen to look to the future instead of the past by investigating his predecessor's actions in office — who launched his presidential campaign with an eloquent plea for taking responsibility ("We've been told that our crises are somebody else's fault. We are distracted from our real failures and told to blame the other party, or gay people, or immigrants, and as people have looked away in frustration and disillusionment, we know who has filled the void") — now excuses his own failings by reminding people, at every opportunity, who was in office when the recession began.

And then he praises his predecessor's patriotism as he concludes a war that predecessor began.

This isn't exactly what I would call an "alternate history." If you're looking for something like that, may I recommend David Brooks' piece in the New York Times this week?

While his column rightfully could be considered an example of Monday morning quarterbacking, Brooks does suggest a plausible scenario in which the prospects for the midterm elections wouldn't be as dire for the Democrats — even if the employment numbers were fundamentally unchanged.

American voters may seem like petulant children to Robinson, but the lessons one learns from childhood do have a staying power all their own. They can continue to guide one's steps in adulthood.

And, while I may seem blase about the concept of being fair, I do understand that desire for fairness, justice and all that — and the bitterness one can feel when fair treatment has been denied.

I recall that, when I was about 6, I found myself in a situation in which the people around me were discussing something of which I knew nothing. I don't remember the specifics — or what I opted to do in that situation except that, whatever I did, it must have backfired on me because I felt compelled to discuss it with my mother.

(For some reason, I think this incident involved a discussion some of my peers were having about a TV program. But not everyone had a TV in those days, and it seems to me that, at the time, my family didn't have a TV set, so I knew nothing about TV programs. I probably felt left out of the conversation and decided to change the subject to something I knew about — resulting in a predictable outcome.)

Anyway, Mom told me there would be times in my life when the people around me would be discussing something in which I had no interest or knowledge to contribute to the conversation. In such situations, she told me, there were three things I could do. I could

• ignore the feelings of those I am with and change the subject to something I feel more comfortable talking about,


• try to contribute to the conversation, even though I have nothing to add to it, thereby embarrassing myself and wasting the others' time, or


• be respectful of those who are talking and remain silent.

She told me the third option was the best. And, although I don't remember the specifics of the incident that led to this conversation, I still remember what she told me: "Show courtesy and respect for others, and wait your turn."

I loved my mother very much, and I always wanted to please her. I don't recall if her answer made sense to me at the time, but it made sense to her, and that was all I needed to know.

As I think back on moments from my childhood, it occurs to me that I accepted many of the things Mom told me on face value. I didn't always understand the things she told me or the advice she gave me — and, in that case, I may well have been equally influenced, even if I didn't realize it, by the admonition that supposedly came from Mark Twain that "It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt" — but if she believed it, I believed it, too.

I guess I should have asked more questions, though, because there have been times since Mom died when I have wondered if the sense of justice and fair play that she passed along to me might have been somewhat askew. Or maybe I've just applied her lessons wrong.

I know of at least one occasion about five or six years ago when I was having lunch with a group, and the women in the group were discussing something to which I had nothing to contribute. I don't remember now what the subject was, only that it was something I knew nothing about.

I was in a situation I had neither foreseen nor prepared for. I was also sensitive to traditional gender roles, and I was aware of the issues that always exist just beneath the surface, even if they aren't spoken out loud. I didn't want to trample on anyone's feet. And there were other factors at work as well.

So Mom's advice kicked in. I sat there in silence. I thought I was being courteous and respectful. Apparently, it wasn't taken that way. I say "apparently" not because any of the women in the group ever showed me the courtesy of telling me that my silence had been offensive to them in any way but because one of them told someone else — and he told me.

I've been paying the price for my "transgression" ever since. So much, I suppose, for the sense of fair play and justice in which I believed since I was a child.

Well, that's on a very small (albeit personal) scale. And it may not be entirely applicable.

Maybe I would have gotten the same response if I had said something stupid or insisted on changing the subject. Considering what I have long known of these people who have crucified me ever since for remaining silent, I was in a no–win situation. I believe there was nothing I could have done that would have been right in their eyes, even if I had had hours to carefully consider my options because nothing I have ever said or done has been right in their eyes.

I guess the moral for a president, who faces more demanding critics, is that there are times — especially when the economy sucks — when a president is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

Maybe it's like the moral I always drew from "Short Cuts," Robert Altman's film of several Raymond Carver stories that eventually intersect.

One of those stories dealt with a young boy who was hit by a car being driven by a woman who was distracted by her personal problems. The woman tried to persuade the boy to let her take him to his home, but he seemed OK and, because his mother had always told him never to accept a ride with strangers, he politely refused her offer and insisted he was all right.

But he wasn't. Apparently, he had severe injuries that became more and more apparent after he got home. He fell into a coma and was rushed to the hospital, where he eventually died. His parents spent virtually every waking moment by his side.

Meanwhile, a baker who had been commissioned to bake a cake for the boy's upcoming birthday grew angrier and angrier as the days passed and no one came to pick up the special order (and pay him for all his hard work). The baker, knowing nothing of what had happened to the boy, began making harassing, anonymous calls to the parents' home.

It's always seemed to me that the moral was that life would be a lot simpler and things would turn out a lot better if people knew the whole story before they jumped to conclusions (as neatly as such conclusions may fit their particular world view).

The baker probably wouldn't have made those calls if he had known the family was facing a crisis. And that crisis might have been avoided if the boy had realized that, when his mother told him not to accept rides with strangers, she didn't mean to turn down a ride from someone who has hit you with her car and wants to make sure you are all right.

For that matter, the driver of the car never knew the fatal consequences of her inattentiveness. She told her husband about the incident, but she believed it had been a narrow escape.

Anyway, the grieving parents put two and two together and confronted the baker about the phone calls. When he learned what had happened to the boy, he regretted making the calls and tried to do what he could to make amends for his behavior, offering them some of his freshly baked rolls. "You should eat something at a time like this," he said. And they accepted his offering, perhaps more as a courtesy than because they were hungry.

And the rolls were good. I haven't read all of Carver's short stories, but I have read that one — eventually, I'd like to read the others that were brought to the screen in Altman's movie — and it describes the reassuring flavor of the rolls and the soothing warmth of the kitchen. The parents had not asked for the rolls, but they were good and the parents were grateful for the baker's act of kindness.

But the baker couldn't give the parents the one thing they did ask for. When the mother asked if she could see the cake he had made for her son, he had to confess that he had thrown it away.

And maybe that really is the moral of the story.

Sometimes the damage is done. Sometimes it is too late to know the whole story — or for that knowledge to make a difference.

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Lessons From History

Few people have been studying American politics as long as Michael Barone, who has co–authored the biennial "Almanac of American Politics" since 1972.

When you hear Barone speak, it is fairly clear that he views things from a conservative perspective, but, as one who has been reading those almanacs for many years, I can assure you that he maintains his neutrality in his assessments of states and congressional districts. He may not agree with the voting history of a particular state or district, but he never allows that to interfere with his Joe Friday just–the–facts–ma'am approach.

If you lean to the left politically, your view of him may be skewed by the knowledge that he is a conservative, but it would be a serious mistake to allow that personal bias to deny you the benefit of his considerable expertise.

Anyway ...

If you have been reading midterm–oriented commentary in the last six months or so, you have undoubtedly seen many references to the 1982 and 1994 midterm elections, when two men (Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton) who had been elected president because of bad economies just two years earlier suffered midterm setbacks for the same reason.

Many people, including myself, have speculated that Barack Obama is walking down that same path.

I have not always agreed with the reasoning that others have used to arrive at that conclusion. I can only speak for myself, and my conclusion has been based on certain historical observations, the most basic being that midterm elections almost always go against the president's party.

Sometimes the losses have not been severe — almost always because the prevailing conditions have not been too severe. But when the economy is bad and unemployment is high, the president's party suffers — even if, as Obama's supporters repeatedly insist, the problems began when someone else was in charge.

The vast majority of the arguments on this focus on 1982 and 1994 because those are the most recent examples, the ones most people are likely to remember.

But Barone has applied his scholarly study of elections to an intriguing article in The American that examines what happened in the first election after the end of World War II.

In "What 1946 Can Tell Us About 2010," Barone writes, "Republicans in that election gained 13 seats in the Senate and emerged with a 51–45 majority there, the largest majority that they enjoyed between 1930 and 1980. And they gained 55 seats in the House, giving them a 246–188 majority in that body, the largest majority they have held since 1930."

In his essay — which deserves to be read in its entirety — Barone writes of the similarities he sees between 1946 and 2010:

1. Democrats were promising (or threatening) to vastly increase the size and scope of government.


2. Democrats in 1945–1946 were closely allied with labor unions, which were deeply involved in politics and were avidly seeking more members and more bargaining power.


3. In both 1945–1946 and 2009–2010, opposition to Democrats rose and support of Republicans increased during the electoral cycle, but those increases came later in the cycle in 1945–1946 than they have in 2009–2010.

Barone writes that Republican gains in 1946 were all the more impressive because the Republicans "did not seriously contest most seats in the South." That shouldn't really surprise anyone, least of all Barone with his background.

In 1946, the really influential events of the civil rights era had not yet happened, and it was civil rights, more than anything, that led to the political schism in the South. There were hints of what was to come two years later, when the passage of the civil rights plank of the party platform prompted some Southern Democrats to support Strom Thurmond's segregationist Dixiecrat ticket in the 1948 presidential election. But Democrats continued to dominate the politics of the South for the next 20 years.

A lot of things were different in 1946. Times have changed. The fortunes of both parties have ebbed and flowed in the last 64 years.

Nearly all of the American voters who were old enough to participate in the 1946 midterms are gone now, but their descendants remain and many of them probably perpetuate their parents' and grandparents' political views and voting behavior, the same as they share their family names.

Parallels between the two years could produce similar results with the electorate.

And, writes Barone, "[t]he parallels between the political situation in 1946 and 2010 are limited but instructive."

Of course, one of the instructive points that needs to be taken from Barone's essay is that 1946 represents a worst–case scenario for Democrats. Even Barone acknowledges from the beginning of his essay that 1946 was "the biggest Republican victory of the last 80 years." When the economy is productive (or at least stable), when unemployment is low, when the times are not turbulent, there is less of an inclination on the part of voters to make wholesale change in a midterm election.

And a fact that isn't mentioned in the essay is that, by 1946, Republicans had been in the minority in both houses of Congress for nearly 20 years. That much time spent out of power can bolster the case for change and make things difficult for the majority party — even if the majority party has managed to avoid corruption and scandal.

But conditions are far from ideal, and the Democrats haven't demonstrated that they are more resistant to corruption and scandal than the Republicans were when they were in charge. It will be up to the voters to decide whether that negates the advantages Democrats enjoyed in the last two elections.

The Democrats would be wise to take whatever they can from Barone's assessment.

Perhaps there is little, at this point, that the Democrats can do to change their electoral fate. If so, I can tell you something else that Obama has in common with Reagan and Clinton — whether it is justified or not, he projects the assurance that the course he is following is exactly what is called for, that it is right, that more time is needed before it will be clear to all — or, at least, to most.

That attitude didn't sell in the midterms of 1982 and 1994, and it may not sell in 2010, but it got both Reagan and Clinton re–elected, and it might serve Obama equally well.

Right now, Obama appears to want a second term. But you never know. He might change his mind if he has to spend two years scrapping with a hostile majority — or a hostile and reinforced minority — in Congress.

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