The National Debut of the Comeback Kid

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"I felt as if the speech was a 200–pound rock I was pushing up a hill. I later joked that I knew I was in trouble when, at the 10–minute mark, the American Samoan delegation started roasting a pig."

Bill Clinton
My Life (2004)

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When this day dawned 25 years ago, it is probably safe to say that most Americans did not know who Bill Clinton was.

I did because I lived in Arkansas. I grew up there, and, on this day in 1988, Clinton had been governor of the state for a total of more than seven years (not continuously). He had been the state's attorney general for a couple of years prior to becoming governor.

But outside of Arkansas, most people, as I say, probably had not heard of him. That would change before this day was over, though — and not necessarily in a good way, either.

In his presidential memoirs, Clinton wrote that "[a] couple of months before [the Democratic] convention opened in Atlanta, [presidential nominee–to–be] Mike [Dukakis] asked me to nominate him."

(It is traditional for presidential candidates' names to be placed in nomination prior to the roll call of the states, even if the candidate has no chance of winning. It is a practice that goes back to a time in America when conventions really did meet to choose nominees, and no one knew who that might be.

(At most conventions since the end of World War II, there has been no suspense about who the presidential nominee would be. Therefore, being chosen to place the presumptive nominee's name in nomination has become quite a feather in the speaker's cap but hardly strategically important to the nomination process.)

Clinton went on to write that Dukakis felt that, although he was leading then–Vice President George H.W. Bush in the polls, it was necessary for Clinton to "introduce him" to the nation "as a leader whose personal qualities, record in office and new ideas made him the right person for the presidency."

A candidate whose name was to be placed in nomination was allotted 25 minutes for the nominating and seconding speeches, which typically were divided between two, three, sometimes four speakers.

"Because I was his colleague, his friend and a Southerner," Clinton wrote, "they wanted me to do it and to take the entire allotted time."

Clinton agreed but (perhaps with the benefit of considerable hindsight) wrote that he was "flattered ... but wary."

"Conventions are loud meet–and–greet affairs where the words coming from the platform are usually just background music," Clinton wrote, "except for the keynote address and the presidential and vice–presidential acceptance speeches."

In his memoirs, Clinton claimed that he explained to the people in Dukakis' campaign that a long speech was not likely to succeed "unless the delegates and the media were prepared for it." He suggested dimming the lights and having the campaign's floor operatives "keep the delegates quiet. Also [the delegates] couldn't clap too much or it would substantially increase the length of the speech."

Twenty–five years ago today, Clinton said he brought a copy of the speech to Dukakis' hotel suite and showed it to the candidate and his advisers. It would take about 22 minutes to deliver, 25 if applause was minimal, and Clinton promised to cut as much as the campaign staff thought was necessary. Clinton was told to "give it all. Mike wanted America to know him as I did."

Considering the results of that year's election, it is tempting to say "mission accomplished." But that isn't the whole story.

It could well have been the mother of all convention fiasco speeches.

Clinton's speech dragged on for more than half an hour with the delegates erupting into wild applause with every mention of Dukakis' name. Otherwise, though, they appeared to pay little attention.

Network observers made jokes at Clinton's expense that were punctuated by a technician making a cutting motion across his throat, apparently in an attempt to encourage Clinton to wrap it up.

"I had some good lines," Clinton recalled, "but, alas, the biggest applause line I got was near the painful end when I said, 'In closing ...' It was 32 minutes of total disaster."

I was packing to move to Texas when the Democrats convened in 1988, but I remember that, when Clinton returned to Arkansas after the convention, the people of Arkansas were quite warm and supportive. Even those who had disagreed with his politics over the years empathized with what he had been through in Atlanta. Some were even indignant about Clinton's treatment (although, privately, they weren't quite that upset).

Clinton, however, still held his White House ambitions, and he needed some way to overcome the image problem created by his nomination speech.

An appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was thought to be the answer.

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Carson had been making jokes about Clinton's speech in his monologues. In his memoir, Clinton wrote that one of Carson's "more memorable lines was 'The speech went over about as well as a Velcro condom.' "

After negotiations between Clinton's staff and Carson's, it was decided that Clinton would be a guest, and he would bring his saxophone. The reasoning was simple: Carson had a policy of not having politicians on the show, and, by agreeing to play the sax, Clinton made it possible for Carson to continue to ban politicians (well, those who couldn't play a musical instrument).

Clinton had been playing the sax for years, but most Arkansans didn't know it. Turned out that he wasn't bad, either.

But first there were all sorts of gags that related to Clinton's speech.

Carson gave Clinton an introduction that seemed like it wouldn't end, then, when Clinton came out, Carson pulled out an hourglass and put it on the desk.

Clinton seemed to be a punching bag that was too big to resist.

Clinton did pretty well for himself, though. He explained to Carson that he wanted to make Dukakis look good, and "I succeeded beyond my wildest imagination!" Clinton also told Carson that Dukakis liked the speech so much he wanted to send Clinton to the Republican convention to nominate Bush.

My favorite line from Clinton, though, was when he told Carson he had blown the nominating speech deliberately.

"I always wanted to be on this show in the worst way," he said, "and now I am."

It was a public relations triumph. Clinton charmed Carson and earned his redemption with the voters. When he sought the presidency four years later, Clinton was seldom asked about his speech in Atlanta.

It was the night of the New Hampshire primary in 1992 when Clinton declared himself the "comeback kid" after finishing second when he had declined precipitously in the polls following Gennifer Flowers' assertions that she had an extramarital affair with Clinton.

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Clinton's resilience was well known in Arkansas. Several years earlier, after he lost a gubernatorial re–election bid, he sought the office again and defeated the man who had beaten him in the previous election. From that day forward in Arkansas, he was the comeback kid.

(Actually, he was called Kid Comeback before he won that political rematch — as you can see in the above cartoon that was drawn by a college classmate of mine.)

But it was in Atlanta — and then Los Angeles — nearly 3½ years before the New Hampshire primary when Clinton first established himself nationally as the comeback kid.

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When Clinton Hit Back

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"What we're doing is sending a message against the people who were responsible for planning this operation. ... [If] anybody asks the same people to do it again, they will remember this message."

Secretary of Defense Les Aspin
Washington Post
June 1993

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Believe it or not, there was a time — not so long ago — when American presidents wouldn't hesitate to act if a single American was threatened, much less actually injured or killed.

Such a case occurred 20 years ago today.

To put it in context: A couple of months earlier, former President George H.W. Bush — the man Bill Clinton had beaten in the previous year's presidential election — was in Kuwait to commemorate the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War. Seventeen people were arrested and charged with conspiring to kill Bush with explosives that were hidden in a vehicle.

No explosions occurred. No one was hurt. But Clinton was convinced, largely because of information gathered and analyzed by American foreign and domestic intelligence operatives, that the plot originated in Iraq — and 20 years ago today, he used American military might for the first time, ordering nearly two dozen cruise missile strikes on Iraqi intelligence facilities.

The strikes were meant both as retaliation for the plot and warning not to attempt anything like it again. But Clinton didn't shoot first and ask questions afterward. He explored numerous options, even those he felt did not go far enough. Eventually he selected one on the recommendation of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"I felt we would have been justified in hitting Iraq harder," Clinton wrote in his presidential memoirs, "but [Colin] Powell made a persuasive case that the attack would deter further Iraqi terrorism and that dropping bombs on more targets, including presidential palaces, would have been unlikely to kill Saddam Hussein and almost certain to kill more innocent people."

Most of the missiles hit their intended targets, but a few overshot, and eight civilians were killed.

"It was a stark reminder," Clinton wrote, "that no matter how careful the planning and how accurate the weapons, when that kind of firepower is unleashed, there are usually unintended consequences."

The occasion of this anniversary has led me to think about two recent events that tell me much of what I need to know about U.S. policy in the 21st century.

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First, the evasive stance taken by Barack Obama and the members of his administration after the deadly attacks on the embassy in Benghazi last year tells me the executive branch is not willing to stand up for Americans abroad, be they dead or alive — unless there are clear benefits in doing so.

Second, Obama's recent argument in a speech at the National Defense University that the war on terror must end as all wars do shows a staggering naivete. Rhetorically, it sounds good, but the problem is that the war on terror is not a conventional war with armies and generals. It cannot be resolved in conventional ways — if, in fact, it can be resolved at all.

When you are dealing with terrorists, you are not dealing with anything as organized or concentrated as a single army or nation. Your enemies could be from anywhere on the globe — including your own back yard — and as long as even one is on the loose, so is the danger.

Sympathizers with the opposition have always been around — there were Nazi and Japanese sympathizers in America during World War II — but they weren't generally viewed as combatants unless they took some kind of aggressive action.

By the very nature of their activities, terrorists must be regarded — automatically — as combatants.

The idea that America can arbitrarily declare the war on terror over is as imperialistic as any I have heard, and it tells terrorists around the world, OK, we're going back to sleep now. It harkens back to a time when the prevailing attitude was that we were always in the right; therefore, we were entitled to impose our will on others. We — and only we — could decide when a war began and when it ended.

It was the same attitude — the concept of manifest destiny — that directed the westward expansion in the 19th century. America is entitled to seize what it wants.

American imperialism — as well as hubris — is what the terrorists really would like to see destroyed.

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Beneath the Dignity of a Great Nation

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I really don't know — as I have said here before — when I developed my personal fascination with history, especially American history.

But whenever I did, I certainly reached the conclusion at roughly the same time that America was a great nation — or, at least, a great idea for a nation.

It isn't a perfect nation, but it has always aspired to be one. When its faults have been brought to the attention of its people as a whole, sincere efforts have usually been made to correct them. And I have always drawn inspiration from that.

There have been complaints, from time to time. The complaints are not always warranted, but sometimes they are — the FEMA foot–dragging after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans eight years ago comes to mind — but, for the most part, this nation and its leaders have honestly striven to keep promises to the people.

Again, there are exceptions to that, one of which has been on obvious public display in the last few months.

Barack Obama came here to Dallas in April to participate in the opening of the library dedicated to the presidency of his immediate predecessor. When that was over, he and his entourage traveled roughly 70 miles southwest of here to the town of West, Texas, which is near Waco, to mourn the deaths and injuries that were suffered in an explosion at a fertilizer plant.

(The plant, it is always worth mentioning, produced the kind of fertilizer that was used to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.)

Lots of people think it is a constitutional duty of the president to mourn with and to comfort Americans who have been affected by a disaster, but it isn't. You won't find a single word about it in the Constitution or its amendments. It's one of those things that has evolved over time.

"Though the non–administrative capacities of the commander–in–chief were not set out in the Constitution," wrote Dan Fastenberg in TIME two years ago, "the tradition of forging an intimate relationship with the American people goes all the way back to George Washington."

President Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the cemetery in Gettysburg, producing perhaps his most memorable speech as president. President Harding and two of his predecessors attended the dedication of Arlington National Cemetery.

In my lifetime, I can recall a few instances of presidential participation in moments of great sorrow. Ronald Reagan appeared at a ceremony honoring the astronauts who were lost in the Challenger explosion, greeted the family members, embraced some of them. Bill Clinton came to Oklahoma City (when I was living in nearby Norman) to share the grief over the bombing of the federal building there.

Less than a year into his presidency, George W. Bush comforted a grieving nation after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Obama has attempted to comfort Americans on several occasions since becoming president — at Fort Hood following the 2009 shootings, in Arizona following the shootings in 2011, in Boston earlier this year after the explosions at the annual marathon there.

The trip to West wasn't anything unusual.

But it is worth remembering the words he spoke that day — his pledge that the federal government would be there to help the people of that small town long after the attention it was receiving at the time had disappeared — in light of the decision by FEMA to deny additional funds to help West's recovery.

Now FEMA says it won't provide additional funds to the people of that small town.

FEMA may well be correct when it says that the death and destruction "is not of the severity and magnitude that warrants a major disaster declaration."

But the fact is that, when the president was here in April, he made a promise to the people of West. He didn't carry Texas in either of his presidential elections, but my memory is that West was glad he came to the memorial service to share the town's grief and grateful for his promise of continued support even when no one was paying attention anymore.

Can they be blamed for feeling abandoned by their government now?

When the president makes a promise to a constituency, that is a solemn oath — not all that different from the oath Obama has taken twice except that he didn't place his left hand on the Bible when he took it. A president's word is his bond with the people, and all the agencies in the government that are required to fulfill his promise are honor bound to do so.

Failing to do so is far beneath the dignity of a great nation.

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Limping Along to the Midterms

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It is my understanding that the term lame duck has been in use for more than 250 years.

It hasn't always been applied to politics. In fact, I've heard its origin was financial. Sometime during the Civil War, it began to be applied to politicians.

Usually, the term is applied to officeholders who are leaving office when their current terms expire — whether they are doing so voluntarily or involuntarily.

Ever since the passage of the 22nd Amendment, which imposed term limits on the office of president, a chief executive is said to be a lame duck — one who loses influence the closer he gets to to the end of his tenure — immediately after his re–election campaign ends, whether he wins or loses.

If he loses (i.e., Jimmy Carter or George H.W. Bush), he will be a lame duck for a couple of months. It is, of course, humiliating for an incumbent to be rejected by the voters. But, in many ways, it is worse to win re–election. Historically, presidents have enjoyed more power in their first terms than in their second, presumably because the aura of invincibility is gone. The loyal opposition is no longer cowed by an incumbent who will be gone in a few years.

Once the second–term midterms are over, both parties are pretty much in full election mode in anticipation of the open seat in the Oval Office — and the incumbent president becomes largely irrelevant.

(The 22nd Amendment was approved in the 1940s. Until then, presidential tenures were limited only by tradition — and voter preferences.)

That might change if term limits were imposed on all members of Congress. I don't know if such a thing would be constitutional. It might be unsustainable as a violation of states' rights. But if members of Congress were term–limited and faced the possibility of having to deal with only one president for most of their tenures, it might have a profound effect on the implementation of federal policy.

But that is another discussion for another time.

Today I want to address the chances for the president's party to take control of the House in next year's midterms — and give Barack Obama Democrat majorities in both chambers of Congress for the last two years of his presidency.

(That assumes, of course, that the Democrats will hold on to their majority in the Senate, which will be a tall order by itself, given that Democrat–held seats will be on the ballots in red states like Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina and South Dakota.)

At the very least, Democrats need to win 17 seats to take the majority in the House. The situation would be far from ideal if they won only 17. The razor–thin margin would leave no room for error in our polarized democracy, and, as the Democrats' recent setback in the gun–control debate demonstrated, Obama needs that margin for error.

Clearly, the ideal situation would be for the Democrats to have a little breathing room, which probably would require them to capture at least two dozen GOP–held seats.

That may not sound like an impossible task to modern voters, who have seen three elections in just the last decade in which that many seats (or more) flipped to the opposition party — but consider this.

In each of those elections (and two of them were midterms), the flips went against the party that held the White House.

That's the way midterm elections tend to go — and, in more than two centuries of American history, midterm elections have almost always gone against the party in the White House.

Sure, there are exceptions to that — recent ones, in fact — but there were unusual forces at work each time.

In 2002, George W. Bush's Republicans gained ground in the congressional midterms, thanks in large part to Bush's popularity in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and his appeal to patriotism in the buildup for the invasion of Iraq.

And four years earlier, Bill Clinton's Democrats picked up some congressional seats. The economy was booming, and Republicans were seen as having overreached with their attempt to remove Clinton from office.

Besides, after the historic Republican landslide in the 1994 midterms, Democrats really didn't have too many vulnerable congressional seats to defend in 1998.

If you insist on being one of those "the glass is half full" kinds of people — or if you've been drinking a lot of Kool–Aid from that glass — you might see conditions in America being considerably different a year from now than I do.

But I don't see anything like an economic boom on the horizon, not with the implementation of Obamacare coming up and the staggering unemployment crisis that has been allowed to fester (and will, in all probability, grow as a consequence of Obamacare). And, while Republicans don't speak of Obama in glowing terms, neither have they been overreaching the way their forebears did with impeachment 15 years ago; I see no similar backlash that could benefit Democrats.

Barring any unforeseen changes in the next year, 2014 is shaping up to be more like most midterms — and, historically speaking, the second midterm of a president's presidency is worse than the first.

That could be devastating for Obama. He barely clung to his party's Senate majority in his first midterm elections, losing his bullet–proof filibuster–proof advantage in the process, and the House swung to the opposition party by historic proportions.

Just because midterms typically go against the incumbent president's party doesn't mean 2014 will. But my point here is that when incumbents do post midterm gains, it is because circumstances are unusually favorable for them. The circumstances for 2014 don't look too favorable for Obama.

But let's assume that economic circumstances do change for the better. Historically speaking, the tendency for electoral adjustment in American midterms is so strong that such a change probably would not be enough. In 2002 and 1998 — and in 1934, the only other exception I have found — House gains for the incumbent's party were, at best, half of what Obama needs.

Double–digit midterm seat gains in the House have never happened for an incumbent president's party before. Does that mean it can't happen? No. But it does make it exceedingly unlikely, especially since we really only know in hypothetical terms how secure each House district really is since the redistricting that always follows a census. We probably won't have a feel for that until the next presidential election — in 2016.

But we do know a few things about the current House district alignment.

For example, only nine Democrats currently represent districts that Mitt Romney carried in last year's presidential election, and only 17 Republicans currently represent districts that Obama carried. That kind of math doesn't seem particularly favorable for a Democratic takeover.

Of course, the Democrats might not need 17 seats. If Republican former Gov. Mark Sanford's political comeback comes up short in Tuesday's special election in South Carolina's First District, the Democrats might need 16 House seats.

The math still doesn't seem to be there, though, even if Sanford loses.

Short of a dramatic improvement in the economy and/or another instance of overreaching by the Republicans in Congress, the Democrats' best bet is Obama — but he hasn't shown much inclination to campaign for others. Besides, the incumbent's popularity the last two times when the president's party prospered in midterm election was in the 60s — far above Obama, who hovers in 50–50 territory.

Is it impossible for Obama's approval rating to get into 60% territory in the next 18 months? No. Something truly remarkable could happen — the implementation of Obamacare, which is now being characterized as a "train wreck" by members of his own party, could go much better than expected — but right now it looks like a mountain too high.

I wouldn't bet the farm on double–digit gains for Democrats in 2014.

At the same time, though, I wouldn't bet the farm on double–digit gains for Republicans, either. The economy would have to worsen considerably for Republicans to have a realistic shot at that. Some people are predicting that will happen — and, after what we have seen in the last five years, I'm not about to dismiss it — but a kind of acceptable inadequacy is in force.

Unless the acceptable inadequacy becomes unacceptable — and who can say where that line is now? — I expect modest gains for one side or the other in next year's midterms, but nothing approaching double digits.

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The Triumph of Hope Over Experience

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That is said to be writer Samuel Johnson's assessment of a man who married for a second time after the death of his first wife ... to whom he had been unhappily married for many years.

I have come to the conclusion that it has many potential applications to Barack Obama and his campaign for a second term — but I'm having some difficulty narrowing it down to the best one.

You see, I have long felt that it is an accurate appraisal of any voter's decision to vote for Obama.

Based on his record in office, it's hard for me to see how anyone who did not vote for Obama in 2008 would be inclined to vote for him now.

2008 was when his appeal was at its zenith, when his soaring rhetoric reminded many people of American presidents from the past who are still admired today.

And, perhaps more than any other presidential election in my memory, 2008 was a choice between a candidate in whom voters saw themselves as they wished to be — and a candidate in whom voters saw themselves as they really are.

The voters selected the idealized version — and many have been disappointed. Clearly. Only 45% of Americans approved of the job he is doing in a recent poll on the subject. That's quite a tumble from the 70s and upper 60s of the early days of his presidency.

But 2012 is a different election. Ultimately, Obama will be judged on whether he has delivered on his promises — as is every incumbent president.

Thirty–two years ago, Ronald Reagan summed it up for fence straddlers who were trying to decide whether to give President Jimmy Carter a second term: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" Reagan asked, and a majority of voters decided the answer was no.

Reagan the challenger was elected.

This is the eighth election since Reagan asked that question in his debate with Carter (ninth if you count the election in which Reagan defeated Carter). It is the fifth election in which that question has been relevant to one of the candidates (again, if you include 1980, it is the sixth such election).

When the answer has been yes, as it was in 1984 when Reagan sought a second term and in 1996 when Bill Clinton sought a second term, the incumbent has won a resounding victory.

When the answer has been no, though, incumbents generally lose (i.e., Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992) — although they have been known to pull out narrow victories once in awhile (i.e., George W. Bush in 2004).

I have no doubt that many of those who voted for Obama four years ago expected more from him than has been delivered.

Some probably feel obliged to support him now because they share the same party affiliation. For others, he pushes the right buttons when he speaks, whether his actions in office have matched his rhetoric or not.

Still others, I have concluded, feel compelled to support Obama — even if they are not satisfied with his performance in office — because they have decided that it would look bad to the rest of the world if the first black president is rejected by the voters.

Those people, I have noticed, are the first (but hardly the last) to point fingers at Obama's critics and label them racist — whether the label is deserved or not.

Now, I know that there are some people who will vote against Obama because of his race (which, as Morgan Freeman rightly pointed out recently, is not black but, rather, biracial). But far more of those who dissent from Obama do so from deeply held personal convictions.

I learned a long time ago that voters evaluate political candidates on the basis of what matters to them. Politicians (and their most devout supporters) do not get to choose what voters use to make their evaluations.

For some voters, what matters is a candidate's race (or gender or religion or sexual preference). I pity them because they are blind to the experiences and talents that many people bring to the table.

But we have been conditioned to assume that racism only works one way.

Lately, I have been wondering something: If we acknowledge that a certain portion of the vote that will be recorded against Obama in November will be due to his race, shouldn't we also acknowledge that a certain portion of the vote for him will be because of his race?

I know there are people out there who support Obama solely because he is black. I know some of them personally, and I know others from their arguments.

Arguments like ...

"Well, I know he isn't perfect, and I disagreed with him when he did W and X, and I didn't approve when he said Y and Z. And I don't feel comfortable with his positions on A, B and C.

"And he could have done more than he's done, but I'm going to vote for him, anyway."

These are the enablers.

And then there are excusers:

"None of this is his fault. He inherited a terrible mess that was years in the making, and it's going to take years to clean it up."

Perhaps, but recent polls I've seen say that about three–quarters of the voters believe the economy and jobs are the most important issues facing this nation.

That really isn't new. A majority of Americans believed that the economy and jobs were the most important issues facing us in 2008.

Or they will say, "We're screwed either way," and then they will tell you that they will vote to keep the guy who is in office.

I've asked some people if they would be inclined to re–elect a white president under these circumstances. They all said no, but they all said they would vote for Obama.

Four years ago, I told anyone who would listen (and even some who didn't want to) that whoever was elected, Obama or John McCain, his urgent mission would be to put America back to work.

If he did not, I warned, he would pay a severe price when he sought re–election.

Well, here we are, four years later. Obama has done little, if anything, to promote job creation. His policies have, in fact, restricted job creation.

And he continues to blame his predecessor — who certainly deserves his share of the blame for what he did in office but not for decisions that have been made since he left the White House.

This is pass–the–buck politics. It used to stop at the president's desk but no more.

This is a fairly recent phenomenon.

Ronald Reagan didn't continue to flog Carter after he had been in office for 3½ years. Nor did Clinton continue to flog the first George Bush when he had been in office for 3½ years.

But Obama feels entitled to play by different rules, and some of his supporters — in what must be the ultimate example of the triumph of hope over experience — are willing to permit him to do so in spite of mounting evidence that points to the folly of such an approach.

I guess those people never watched a carnival shell game — because that's how it works. The guy who is playing the game keeps talking and keeps distracting, and the mark loses track of where he thinks the pea is.

We are about to embark on a week of shrill, unfounded name calling and mudslinging at the Democrats' convention in Charlotte, N.C., on behalf of a man who hasn't been able to bring unemployment below 8% in the entirety of his term.

That must be evidence of reverse racism.

Certainly, it is proof that Samuel Johnson was right.

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Clinton's Covenant

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Twenty years ago tonight, Bill Clinton accepted the presidential nomination for the first time.

That was a memorable time in my life. Just four years earlier, I had moved from Arkansas, where I grew up, went to school and began my adult life, to Texas, where I intended to enroll in graduate school.

I had already voted for Clinton for governor several times by 1988. In fact, because Arkansas elected its governors to two–year terms until the voters approved in 1984 an amendment to the state constitution that changed the length of state officials' terms to four years, starting with the 1986 elections, Clinton was on the ballot in every election after I turned 18.

That would have changed if I had been in Arkansas when the 1988 election was held — because 1988 was only two years into the four–year term Clinton won in 1986.

Anyway, by July 1992, I had finished work on my master's degree. In fact, I had just been offered a teaching job in Oklahoma, and I was packing to move. But, on this night 20 years ago, I took a break from my packing to watch Clinton give his acceptance speech.

And I felt a sense of pride, of historical inevitability, when Clinton spoke to the convention of a New Covenant with the American voters.

The New Covenant was the theme of speeches Clinton gave in the leadup to the announcement of his presidential candidacy. On this night 20 years ago, it was mentioned prominently and frequently in what was probably the first Clinton speech many Americans had ever heard.

I knew, from years of watching Clinton run for governor of Arkansas, that he was a gifted speaker. And I also knew he could be longwinded at times. But that wasn't anything special. In Arkansas, we were accustomed to politicians who were like the Energizer Bunnies of politics.

At times I thought Arkansas elections were dueling filibusters, endurance contests in which the prize was the office that was being sought. It went to the last man standing, sort of like one of those dance marathons.

Of course, that wasn't how it worked. Never was how it worked, actually — although it might as well have, what with all the other ways that people won elections in Arkansas when I was growing up.

There were political machines all over the state, and there was one that controlled the politics in my home county and a neighboring county. This machine continued to run things as long as the county voted by paper ballot — because, no matter what popular sentiment might be, it was always possible to stuff enough ballot boxes to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat — and the machine's grip on the people of those counties only came to an end when the county's residents voted to purchase voting machines.

(A state judge who presided over cases in the '60s and '70s that were intended to break the grip of these political machines wrote his autobiography a few years ago, and the title was a wry reference to those days — "Waiting for the Cemetery Vote.")

I always thought it was ironic that many people who were just becoming acquainted with Bill Clinton in 1992 believed he came from a powerful and wealthy family. They must have confused him with a Kennedy. In fact, he came from very humble beginnings.

When I was growing up in Arkansas, rich generally seemed to refer to people who had come there from other places — Winthrop Rockefeller, for example. Later on, that list grew to include the likes of Sam Walton, founder of Walmart and Sam's Club, who made his fortune in Arkansas but was born in central Oklahoma and grew up in Missouri.

If someone grew up in Arkansas and somehow found fame and fortune, so the thinking went, that person would surely move to another state. And some have. But some have not, and I tend to think Clinton's victory on the national stage contributed to that.

The unspoken belief when I was a child was that someone from Arkansas might become influential, but he would never be president. Some had tried; others had been called rising stars by the pundits. But none had succeeded. It was the always–a–bridesmaid–never–a–bride school of thought.

Bill Clinton grew up in rural Arkansas, as I did, and we heard the same speeches from the same politicians.

Clinton was much older — still is — but the same governors who shaped his daily life shaped mine. And I rather doubt that the state itself changed much from the time when Clinton enrolled in elementary school to the time when I did — although my hometown had changed quite a bit by the time I was in first grade.

My class was the first in my hometown's history to be integrated from first grade all the way through high school graduation. Clinton started elementary school in the early 1950s. I don't know if his graduating class was ever integrated, but I am 100% certain it wasn't integrated from start to finish.

So perhaps you could say that we didn't really grow up in the same place — although enough of the old Arkansas that molded Clinton was still in place when I came along.

But Arkansans discovered that Clinton was not an old–style Arkansas politician. Well, not entirely. He was always good at the back–slapping brand of politicking that served generations of Arkansas politicians so well.

But he was thoughtful and articulate, too, and his policies were departures from the past. He really was a new Democrat — especially when compared to the other nominees the Democrats had offered to the nation in recent elections.

What is often forgotten about the '92 campaign is that, just as Clinton was about to give his acceptance speech, Ross Perot withdrew from the race, and polls indicated that most of his support gravitated to Clinton.

Clinton took a big lead in the polls that July, a lead he never relinquished even after Perot jumped back in the race in October.

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Why We Can't Have a Serious Talk

Last night, I read an article in the Washington Post about the recent electoral embarrassments that have been handed to Barack Obama in Democratic primaries in West Virginia, Arkansas and Kentucky.

Obama, of course, is the incumbent, and he has drawn no serious opposition for the Democrats' nomination. Consequently, some people apparently believe, the Democrats in the primaries that are being held late in the process should line up like good Democrats and vote for the incumbent.

Even if they have objections.

But the voters in West Virginia, Arkansas and Kentucky have thrown Obama an off–speed pitch when he was looking for a fastball. About two–fifths of the Democratic voters voted for token opposition — in West Virginia, that meant voting for an inmate who is presently incarcerated here in Texas — rather than for the president, who long ago secured his nomination.

The Post's Chris Cillizza writes that many Democrats have a ready excuse for the political resistance they have encountered within their own party — they "ascribe the underperformance by the incumbent to a very simple thing: racism."

Most Democrats speak disparagingly of George W. Bush. And I have no fondness for him, either.

But this is a tactic those Democrats share with Bush and his supporters — and they have been every bit as gleeful in its use and in anticipation of its power to squelch serious discussions.

Sure, it was disguised differently when Bush was president. In those not–so–distant days, anyone who disagreed with Bush on anything was labeled unpatriotic.

End of discussion. Once you have been tarred with that brush, you might as well stop trying.

No matter how strongly you may feel about the issue, no matter how many legitimate concerns you may have, no matter how many hours you may have spent arguing with yourself about it, if the other side has labeled you a racist or unpatriotic, there is nothing you can say to reverse that conclusion, no logic you can offer, no facts you can provide.

But that doesn't mean the allegation is true.

Oh, to be sure, there are people today who do permit race (or religion or gender or sexual preference or anything else) to determine how they will vote, just as there have always been people who were racist (or sexist or homophobic or whatever). And there are people among us who are not patriotic Americans — they have always been with us, too.

That's one of the drawbacks of living in a free society.

But it's not so easy to know who the racists and unpatriotic citizens are. In my experience, they usually don't advertise the fact or leave tell–tale clues behind. They might share their views with like–minded individuals, but they don't usually tend to share them with strangers.

"The problem with that theory," Cillizza writes, "is that it's almost entirely unprovable because it relies on assuming knowledge about voter motivations that — without being a mindreader — no one can know."

It's true that Obama lost all three of those states in 2008, and it is quite likely that he will lose all three in 2012. I don't see a racial backlash in these votes. I see a repeat of a phenomenon I have seen many times in the past — when a candidate locks up his party's nomination, disgruntled voters in the late primaries are emboldened to vote for any alternative on the ballot.

It's an electoral protest, and it should be taken seriously. My experience tells me Democrats shouldn't be dismissive about it.

In 1980 (when another Democrat president was running for re–election), I was living in Arkansas. Gov. Bill Clinton was seeking his second two–year term as governor. He looked like a sure thing. He was young and charismatic, and his only opponent in the party primary was a 77–year–old retired turkey farmer who barely scraped up enough money to pay the filing fee.

Clinton's opponent had no campaign staff or finances to speak of, but he received more than 30% of the vote when the Democrats held their primary.

The governor's staff and supporters insisted that it didn't mean a thing, and, in Arkansas, it was generally accepted that it really didn't mean much. Arkansans, after all, had elected only one Republican governor since Reconstruction.

But they elected another one that November — narrowly.

Both political extremes use the term fascism almost casually in their references to each other, which I find to be alarming — as well as an appalling display of an absence of knowledge.

Neither side is truly fascist — at least, not yet. But, with their blatant use of what Adolf Hitler called "the big lie," it is clear that it probably wouldn't take much to push either one over the edge.

"Make the lie big," Hitler said, "make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."

It was a lie when Bush's supporters accused his detractors of being unpatriotic. It's a lie when Obama's supporters accuse his detractors of being racist.

It has a chilling effect on dissent, and that makes it one of the most anti–democratic (that's democrat with a lowercase d) assertions imaginable.

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Joe Biden Is Not the Problem

I first heard the rumblings nearly two years ago.

In August of 2010, I wrote about former Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder's suggestion that Barack Obama should replace Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton in 2012, but my tendency then was to dismiss it as idle talk by people who really didn't know what they were talking about.

The topic reappeared last fall, and, when I heard it said that good ol' Joe Biden had to go, that he was a drag on Obama, I responded by writing that "too much emphasis is placed on the vice presidential nomination."

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

And I still believe that, even though I read articles at least once a week now suggesting that Obama needs to drop Biden.

It seems to me that, whenever incumbent presidents have been preparing to run for a second term, this kind of talk always seems to surface.

Sometimes it makes sense. In 1992, for example, there was a lot of talk about how George H.W. Bush needed to replace Dan Quayle on his ticket. Quayle had gained a reputation, whether fairly or unfairly, for always saying something stupid, and some people felt he was a drag on the ticket.

Now, in 1992, I was never going to vote for Bush, anyway, but I could sympathize with the sentiment. Quayle was ridiculed so much in those days that it really didn't take much persuading to convince anyone that Bush was bound to do better with someone else on his ticket.

Bush wound up keeping Quayle on the ticket, though, and, in hindsight, it is hard to imagine anyone who could have helped Bush win more than 100 electoral votes from Clinton. I think the challenger was going to win that election.

Some years are like that. I have to say that 1980 was like that. President Jimmy Carter was on shaky ground in all aspects of his presidency, and the talk that surfaced during his battle with Ted Kennedy for the Democratic nomination about dropping Vice President Walter Mondale probably had a lot to do with strategy and little, if anything, to do with Mondale's actual performance in office.

Mondale remained on the ticket, and I can't see how any other Democrat could have helped Carter avoid his landslide defeat to Ronald Reagan.

Usually such talk is frivolous. I don't know where it comes from. Perhaps it is a trial balloon to see if there is any way the incumbent can ratchet up his vote total with a fresh face.

If that is what it is, the conclusion usually is that changing the running mate won't make that much difference. Voters judge incumbent presidents on their records, and the voters' sense of fairness (to which Obama ceaselessly, relentlessly, seeks to appeal) tells them that, unless a vice president is guilty of some egregious offense — that if he has been doing his job (which, constitutionally, only requires him to preside over the Senate and break ties when they occur) — he does not deserve to be dropped.

So Reagan kept George H.W. Bush in 1984. Clinton kept Al Gore in 1996. George W. Bush kept Dick Cheney in 2004. Each was, at some point in those re–election campaigns, the focus of a drop ______ movement.

If Obama does drop Biden, my sense is that the voters, many of whom have become super sensitive to workplace fairness in recent years, would demand to know the reason — and, of course, there are few things that the administration could plausibly blow out of proportion to justify such a move.

The truth is that there is precious little that Obama can point to that will validate his claim that he needs and deserves a second term.

He can't run on his economic record. Unemployment was 6.5% nationally when Obama was elected in November 2008. It has been well above that level throughout his presidency.

His signature achievement, Obamacare, is likely to be overturned by the Supreme Court in the next few weeks.

Instead of bringing people together, Obama has polarized this nation to a greater extent than it was before he was elected.

None of those things can be blamed on Biden. Democrats knew when he was chosen to be Obama's running mate in 2008 that he was gaffe prone — but, for the most part, he's been a good soldier, doing the heavy lifting when he was asked to do it and generally keeping his tongue in check.

Gallup reports that Americans are divided on Biden. The latest survey is, as Jeffrey Jones observes, "the first time opinions of Biden have tilted negative since he became Obama's vice presidential pick," but the numbers are "not materially different" from the public's assessment of him from 2009 to 2011.

And this survey was conducted after both Biden's comments about same–sex marriage on Meet the Press and Obama's comments in an interview a few days later in which he said he supported the legalization of such marriages.

In the week that has passed, Biden has been criticized for forcing the president's hand. But I think it was done deliberately. Obama knows that the polls have shown a general softening in public opposition to gay marriage, and I believe this was an excuse for Obama to give lip service to an issue that he believes will energize groups who helped him win last time.

And, with the last president's experience fresh in his mind, Obama is doing the same thing — he's using gay marriage to distract attention from the real issues.

I knew several women who supported Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries. When John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate, it was mostly a ploy to attract Hillary's supporters, many of whom were thought to be up for grabs in the early fall of 2008.

That ploy failed for several reasons. Polls were showing a pretty close race between Obama and McCain until the economic collapse in September 2008. That, combined with Bush fatigue, pretty much assured that Obama would win.

Ironically, though, Obama had chosen his running mate in large part to bolster his ticket's foreign policy credentials. Biden was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time he was chosen to run with Obama, and there had been some international tensions that summer.

But foreign policy is way down the list in 2012. And, even if it wasn't, Obama has been trumpeting his role in the killing of Osama bin Laden last year. He doesn't need Biden's help in that category anymore.

Of course, Hillary has been secretary of state under this president so her greatest selling point — other than her gender — is her expertise in foreign policy.

And foreign policy is not on most voters' minds this year.

All that Obama has left is class warfare, which is hardly the inclusive, hope and change banner under which he campaigned four years ago. It is the divide and conquer politics that people have been complaining about for years.

Changing running mates won't alter the fundamentals of this campaign. The voters will do what they always do when an incumbent is on the ballot — they will assess the incumbent's record and decide if they want four more years of it.

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Forecasting an Incumbent's Chances

We are just about six months away from the 2012 election.

In the early days of my collegiate career, I was a political science major, and one of the things my professors drummed into my head (and the heads of my peers) was the conviction that voters reach their conclusions about an incumbent about six months before the election.

That is a piece of conventional wisdom that has held up rather well, whereas I have found that people who rely on surveys that measure the likability of an incumbent inevitably are misled.

When times are generally good, as they were when George W. Bush ran against Al Gore, voters can afford the luxury of picking the presidential candidate with whom they would rather share a beer. (Of course, the incumbent wasn't on the ballot that year.)

But when times are not good, likability takes a backseat to competence with most voters. In 1972, for example, when Richard Nixon was seeking a second term, the Vietnam War was still unpopular and there was some dissatisfaction with the economy, but voters were influenced more by whether they thought he was doing a good job (and most did) than whether they liked him (and most did not).

Job approval surveys didn't make their debut until Franklin Roosevelt had already won his second term — and FDR has always struck me as being a special case, having been elected president four times. The margins were different each time, and, of course, one of the issues when Roosevelt sought his third and fourth terms was whether any American president should be allowed to serve more than two terms. Some people who had supported him the first two times opposed him the second two times for that very reason.

Those campaigns for the third and fourth terms qualify as unique cases, therefore, and job approval surveys were still evolving, anyway, so the conventional wisdom of which my professors spoke isn't really applicable.

Nor, for that matter, is it applicable to 1948, when Harry Truman defeated Tom Dewey in an "upset."

I don't mean to suggest that Truman's victory wasn't a surprise (it was) or that voters were insincere when they told pollsters they didn't approve of the job he was doing.

I'm just mindful of the fact that Truman was completing FDR's fourth term. He hadn't been elected president. He was elected vice president.

And, while I can't speak for everyone, I can say that I have never based my presidential preference on the identity of the running mate. Those who choose which ticket to support on that basis are all but assuming that the guy at the top of the ticket won't complete the term.

That strikes me as being the same thing as trying to prove a negative, and, at least in my opinion, it is the wrong way to choose a president.

(In 1980, I did know some people who supported Ronald Reagan because George H.W. Bush was his running mate, and they figured that there was no way Reagan could survive the term. They became increasingly frustrated as Reagan simply refused to die — even after he had been shot — and they wound up having to wait eight years until Bush was elected on his own.

(There are sure to be some who have voted on that basis in other elections. I'm confident there were those who voted against some Republican tickets because Sarah Palin or Dan Quayle were on them. But my gut feeling is that their numbers were few.)

Besides, job approval surveys were still evolving, as I say, and the 1948 election would have a significant influence on how such surveys were conducted in the future.

So I don't include Roosevelt or Truman in such comparisons. Approval polling methods were still primitive when they occupied the White House.

But, by 1956, when Dwight Eisenhower sought his second term, a lot had been learned.

For one thing, pollsters kept polling right up until Election Day. They didn't stop polling long before the election, as they had in 1948 because it was a foregone conclusion that Truman would lose.

In early May 1956, Gallup found that 69% of respondents approved of the job Eisenhower had been doing.

A lot of that may have been due to something of a wave of sympathy for Ike. He had suffered a heart attack about eight months earlier. If the May approval rating was influenced by his health, that wave crested well before Election Day 1956, but Eisenhower still carried 41 states and received 57% of the popular vote.

Eisenhower's successor, John F. Kennedy, died before the end of his term, and his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, had been president for less than a year when he won a full term.

Six months before the election, three–fourths of the respondents to a Gallup survey approved of the job that he was doing — but that, too, may have been the result of public sympathy.

Johnson went on to win the 1964 election by a landslide — but, four years later, the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War forced Johnson to drop out of the race, and a month after he did so, the approval ratings appeared to confirm the wisdom of his decision.

In April 1968, Johnson's approval rating, as reported by Gallup, dropped below 50% and never exceeded that number again. It was tumbling by May.

Consequently, Johnson's decision to drop out of the race seems prescient in hindsight. Odds are, he wouldn't have been successful, even if he had been renominated.

Nixon replaced LBJ, and his Gallup approval ratings in May 1972 hinted at what was to come.

Nixon's job approval six months before the election was somewhere between 54% (his rating in late April) and 62% (his rating in late May). On Election Day, more than three–fifths of the voters endorsed his bid for a second term.

One can argue, of course, that Nixon's campaign was tainted by the illegal activities of his staff and his own involvement in efforts to cover up those activities. But the bottom line is that the job approval ratings pretty accurately measured how voters felt about the Nixon presidency in mid–1972.

Nixon's second term was cut short by the Watergate scandal, and his replacement, Gerald Ford, enjoyed high approval ratings in his first month in office, but his ratings declined rapidly after he pardoned Nixon.

In May 1976, he received approval ratings that hinted at what would happen in the election. For members of Barack Obama's staff, it might be instructive to study the Ford campaign because Ford's approval in mid–1976 was close to where Obama's has been lately — just short of 50%.

Ford, of course, went on to lose to Jimmy Carter in a very close election. Some people have been tempted to presume that it was almost entirely because, not having voted for him to begin with, voters felt no real allegiance to Ford — but he lost largely due to his job performance, because he pardoned Nixon, not because voters stopped liking him. He was still affable Jerry Ford in the minds of most.

But voters did not like the decision to pardon Nixon.

The voters definitely soured on Carter by the time he sought a second term in 1980, and the approval ratings six months out did more than hint at that. In May 1980, Gallup found that the share of voters who approved of the job he had been doing was in the upper 30s and lower 40s.

When the voters went to the polls that November, Carter received 41% of the vote and carried six states. Reagan was elected in a landslide.

In 1984, Reagan won a second term in spite of a jobless rate that was higher than it had been for any successful incumbent in nearly 50 years.

It was conceded at the time that Reagan was widely liked by the American people, but their electoral endorsement of his presidency in November was foreshadowed by Gallup polls in May that indicated that (1) a majority approved of the job he was doing, and (2) that majority was growing, not declining.

When the votes were counted in November, Reagan received nearly 59% of the vote and carried 49 states.

Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush, was elected in 1988 when Reagan was constitutionally prohibited from running again, and his lightning–like victory in the Gulf War seemed to be propelling him to a second term — but a funny thing happened to Bush on the way. A recession derailed him.

The recession was mild by historical standards — certainly when compared to the one that Americans have been slogging through since late 2007 — but it was bad enough to lower Bush's approval ratings from the 50s in late 1991 to 42% by May 1992, according to Gallup.

Once again, it was a reliable predictor of the incumbent's fate. Bush went on to lose to Bill Clinton in a three–man race.

The economy was better four years later when Clinton sought his second term.

Clinton's Democrats lost control of Congress during the 1994 midterms, but Clinton, through a combination of shrewd political moves and sheer good fortune, was on an upward trajectory in May 1996. Six months before the election, CNN/Time reported that 51% of Americans approved of the job he was doing; Gallup found that 55% approved.

The endorsements were solid, if not resounding — as were November's election returns. Clinton was re–elected with 49% of the vote and the support of 31 states.

In 2000, of course, George W. Bush defeated Gore in the Electoral College but lost the popular vote. Although extremely rare, such an outcome was not unheard of — but, to be old enough to remember the last time it happened, one would have to be at least 130 years old when Bush was elected — and there were no job approval surveys in those days.

That probably made Bush something of an exception to the conventional wisdom concerning the relationship between job approval numbers and eventual electoral verdicts on incumbents — since he hadn't received the support of at least a plurality of the voters the first time, as nearly every duly elected president has.

But the job approval rule still held true when Bush sought his second term in 2004.

The job approval ratings in May 2004 warned Bush that he would face a close race in November. NBC/Wall Street Journal, Gallup and other surveys in early May found about as many Americans who disapproved of his job performance as approved.

And that was borne out in the general election, when Bush received less than 51% of the vote and the support of 31 states. In the Electoral College, he defeated John Kerry by 35, 286 to 251.

What will all this mean in the 2012 election? I guess that remains to be seen.

Next Sunday is precisely six months from Election Day, so any job approval numbers that are announced on or after that date could be said to be potential indicators of what to expect in November.

But Gallup reports that, according to his job approval average for his 13th quarter in office, Obama's ratings are below the average for presidents who went on to win re–election.

They're even below one president — Carter — who was defeated in his campaign for re–election.

J. Robert Smith makes intriguing observations in American Thinker that speak to the relevance of history — even though he doesn't connect the dots between job approval ratings and an incumbent's odds of winning a second term.

"Presidential election history gives us indications," Smith writes, "that Mr. Obama either squeaks back into the White House or gets an undignified boot in the back of his designer trousers. ... [O]nly Jerry Ford lost his re–election bid narrowly. Odds are, if Mr. Obama loses, it will probably be on the order of [Herbert] Hoover (1932) or Carter (1980)."

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Sometimes a Cigar Is Just a Cigar

That is what Sigmund Freud allegedly wrote or said to explain that not everything has a deeper meaning behind it.

I haven't studied psychiatry in depth — just what I studied in college — but I know enough about it to know that an article of faith among practicing psychiatrists is the belief that there are no accidents in life, that there is always a profound reason for anything that happens, no matter how innocuous it may appear on the surface.

I haven't been able to locate a definitive source for that quote about a cigar being a cigar so I can't verify that it actually came from Freud. But it makes sense to me — in terms of both my life's observations of human nature and within the context of modern times.

And, from a psychiatrist's perspective, the cigar analogy is ideal. Psychiatrists are known to see sexual implications in darn near everything, and cigars were responsible for a lot of phallic imagery long before Bill Clinton dallied with a White House intern.

I understand the logic of psychiatrists, but I don't always agree with it. There are exceptions to every rule. Always.

Sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar. (Or, to quote Rudyard Kipling, "... a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke." But I digress. Free association, don't you know!)

Anyway, I don't doubt that sex is a strong influence in many of the things people do, but, as I tell my Developmental Writing students at the community college where I teach, things are not always absolute in life.

My students want black–and–white answers, which means I have to explain (sometimes repeatedly) that words that are usually verbs can, under certain circumstances, be nouns. It is not a black–and–white thing, this study of written language, I tell them. Context matters.

I guess that's kind of a roundabout way of getting to what is really on my mind these days.

I've had conversations by e–mail and on Facebook with a fellow with whom I worked and went to graduate school in the late 1980s and early 1990s. When we knew each other, we were both Democrats.

Life has taken us in different directions in the last 20 years — in more ways than one. For one thing, we live in different time zones now, but that is only geographically.

Politically, he has remained with the Democrat Party and is a reasonably enthusiastic backer of the president (although he admits having his differences with the administration at times). The Democrats have veered too far to the left for my taste, though, and I now consider myself an independent.

My friend has had trouble accepting that, I suppose. He's adopted the them vs. us mentality that he so loathes in the opposition.

I find it disturbing that, like the supporters of George W. Bush, who suggested that those who disagreed with his policies were not patriotic, Democrats have concluded that the route to re–election is unfounded inflammatory accusations against dissenters.

In online conversations we have had, I've made it clear to my friend that I am an independent, although he has insisted on acting as if independent and Republican are the same things.

They are not.

I have also made it clear that I am basing my vote this year on the so–called pocketbook issues. That is what affects my life. Frankly, I feel the president has had plenty of time to at least give me the sense that things are moving in the right direction, that things are on a solid footing — but I don't get that sense.

But my friend insists on utilizing emotional arguments and has taken this approach — since I am not supporting President Obama's policies, that means that I hate him (which is not true) and, therefore, I am a racist (also not true).

I don't hate anyone. If I have written anything in my blogs that was interpreted as prejudiced against any race or religion or anything else, I sincerely apologize. That was not my intent.

No, I don't hate Obama. I disagree with many of his policies, but I don't hate him.

I didn't hate Ronald Reagan, either. I didn't agree with many of his policies, but I didn't hate him.

My friend makes the same error that folks on the other side make. He confuses dissent with hate. The terms are not interchangeable.

Voting against a candidate (incumbent or not) or speaking/writing against that candidate's policies is not evidence of hatred, even though both sides in our polarized political process love to accuse the other of hate.

It is evidence of the relative health of the concept of freedom of speech in this country, and each day I find a new reason to fear for the future health of that concept.

In my opinion, no other freedoms can long exist in this country if we lose our freedom of speech. It is critical to our way of life.

Politically, I have long felt that I am a centrist. There is logic to be found on both sides, and I lament the fact that centrists are a vanishing breed.

But any doubt that I am a centrist has completely disappeared in recent years. My conservative friends think I am a liberal, and my liberal friends think I am a conservative.

I am neither. I am me. And maybe my views don't make sense to the extremists. But they make sense to me.

If the extremists prefer to pigeonhole me, whether they know anything about me or have taken the time to speak with me, so be it. Doesn't mean it is true.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

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Promise Fulfilled

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My mother was a Democrat.

I have written here before of her death in a flash flood in 1995 — and I mention it now only because I have been thinking of a conversation I had with her the last time I saw her.

It was mid–April of 1995. I was living in Oklahoma at the time, and I had come to Dallas to spend Easter weekend with my parents. Through the course of that weekend, I had several conversations with my mother on a range of topics.

One of the topics was the new Republican Congress that seized power in the 1994 midterms. Mom was worried that Clinton, like the previous Democratic president, would be defeated when he sought a second term.

"Don't worry, Mom," I told her. "Clinton will win."

To this day, I'm not sure why I said that to her. Clinton's job approval ratings were in the mid–40s at the time — hardly encouraging.

I guess I was speaking from the perspective of having watched Clinton's rise, fall and subsequent rise again in Arkansas politics. (I watched it up close as a young reporter. I covered his runoff campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination when he sought the office after being voted out in the previous election.) Maybe I wanted to reassure Mom that Clinton would not be another Jimmy Carter.

Deep down, though, I guess I must have believed it.

We never spoke about it again. She died a few weeks later — on May 5, 1995.

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But I thought of that conversation often in the next year and a half.

I thought of it exactly 18 months later — on Nov. 5, 1996, the day Clinton was re–elected over Bob Dole. He didn't receive 50% of the vote, but he won as many electoral votes as he did four years earlier against the first President Bush.

There really wasn't any suspense to speak of that night. The outcome was a foregone conclusion, as I recall.

There was simply no compelling reason to change presidents. Some troubling issues were raised during the campaign, most notably concerning Democratic fund–raising practices, but the economy was sound and foreign relations were relatively stable.

It was a different kind of relation that sidetracked the Clinton administration during its second term.

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After Clinton won re–election, he returned to Washington following a victory celebration in Little Rock and was greeted on the White House lawn by his staff.

Among those who lined up to greet him was a then–unknown intern named Monica Lewinsky. She embraced the president as he made his way along the line of well wishers, an embrace that was seen by millions on TV although practically no one knew who she was.

That would change in the years ahead. So would the economic and international stability — after Clinton left office.

I still miss Mom, but I am glad she missed all that.

Nevertheless ...

The day Clinton returned to Washington and embraced Monica on the White House lawn, I went to the cemetery and stood next to Mom's grave for a few minutes.

"We won," I said, probably to no one in particular. I just felt a need to do that.

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The Role of Government

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An important intangible in the presidency is what George H.W. Bush once breezily dismissed as the "vision thing."

That is the sort of attitude that presidents who lack such a vision — and their supporters — tend to have about it. They treat it as if it isn't important, as if competence alone is all that is necessary.

(But the voters don't see it that way. Competence is kind of a relative thing, don't you think? What strikes one person as competent may well strike another as incompetent.)

I have heard defenders of Barack Obama saying much the same thing. Vision — and leadership — aren't so important, they will say. Ah, but they are important. Ask the first President Bush how important he now thinks those qualities are. Or ask President Carter.

Or ask Barack Obama in about 13 months (although my sense is that, if Obama loses — as I expect — he and his supporters will blame it on everything but his performance in office).

Based on what I have seen so far, I expect the 2012 presidential campaign to be about the weaknesses of the other side, not the strengths or achievements of a particular candidate or his vision for the future.

It will be like most of the presidential campaigns in my lifetime — voters will be easily distracted from truly pressing issues by irrelevant ones, and once again America will be deprived of the frank discussion it so desperately needs as its people decide who should lead them for the next four years.

For most voters, the choice will be which candidate to vote against, not which candidate to vote for. Not terribly inspiring.

Someone will win the election because somebody must, but the voters will be no more united than they have been after most presidential elections in my life and the direction will be no clearer.

It isn't always that way, though. Fifteen years ago tomorrow night, when President Clinton and Bob Dole squared off in Hartford, Conn., in the first of their two debates, the president opened his remarks by pledging "to make this campaign and this debate one of ideas, not insults."

And the debate began with a question that went to the heart of the candidates' visions for the nation — what they saw as the role of the federal government.

It was a question that was designed to explore the candidates' ideas in depth, and it succeeded.

"[T]he federal government should give people the tools and try to establish the conditions in which they can make the most of their own lives," Clinton said. "That, to me, is the key."

"I trust the people," Dole said. "The president trusts the government. ... Where possible, I want to give power back to the states and back to the people."

It was the start of a mature and rational discussion about issues that were important. It wasn't resolved on that night — or in the election the next month. In fact, Americans debate it still. But the discussion of the role of government was a welcome change from what had come before and the kind of thing we haven't seen since.

Those were the days.

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Of Myths, Heroism and Flight 93

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I realize that this is a weekend of somber reflection, of remembering the thousands of lives that were lost in the terrorist attacks of September 11.

And I realize that it is true, as President Clinton said during his remarks at the dedication of the Flight 93 Memorial in Pennsylvania, that there has always been a special place in the American heart and memory for heroes who sacrificed themselves for others.

But one of the things my mother taught me was that there is true value in genuinely inspiring words and deeds, and I don't think what happened with Flight 93 was exactly what we have been told.

I agree that the story of that flight is very moving. It is tragic, as are the accounts of the other three hijacked flights, but it differs from the other three primarily in one way — the passengers on Flight 93 had the benefit of the knowledge that everyone on the ground had, that other flights had been turned into missiles that had struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Those other three plane crashes happened so rapidly that relatively few passengers on those flights probably knew what was happening. It was that element of simultaneous surprise that the terrorists apparently were counting on — to strike before anyone realized what was happening.

But there was a delay in the departure of Flight 93, and it disrupted their timing. It wasn't terribly long as these things go (I've been through worse even though I have never been a frequent flier), but it was long enough that, after the flight finally was airborne, the pilot and co–pilot nearly got a general warning from the ground about hijackings, and it was long enough for the passengers to learn what had happened in New York and Washington.

That gave them some time to consider their situation — and their response.

Consequently, many people have accepted the myth that has emerged that the passengers revolted as some sort of selfless sense of patriotism and sacrifice swelled within them.

I don't doubt that they were patriotic, but neither am I convinced that their motives were as altruistic as we have been told for the last 10 years, either.

If they put two and two together — as most of them apparently did — they must have realized that their plane was not going to land safely. They must have realized they were part of a suicide mission. They must have known that it was almost certain that they would die — unless some sort of miracle happened and they were able to take control of the plane and one of the passengers could, either alone or with assistance from the ground, manage to land it.

I'm reminded of a scene from the movie "Lenny" about comedian Lenny Bruce. In the movie, Dustin Hoffman re–created segments from Bruce's shows, including one about the famous Zapruder film, the graphic account of the JFK assassination.

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After the fatal shot, Jackie Kennedy could be seen climbing from her seat onto the trunk of the car and a Secret Service agent coming forward to help her back into her seat. A sequence of photos from the film were published nationally (in TIME, I think) with a caption that said something about how the first lady gave no thought to her personal safety and tried to shield the president from further gunshots.

Bruce/Hoffman said it was a "dirty lie."

"I think that, when she saw the president get it and the governor get it, she decided to get the hell out of there," he said. I agree. I think it was a split–second decision, reaction without reflection. Human instinct.

If she had had more time to think about it, she might have said yes, she would try to protect her husband if she saw he had been hurt.

But others assigned more meaning to it than that.

That's the feeling I get when I hear people speak of the passengers' revolt on Flight 93. They speak of them as if they sat in the back of that hijacked plane and had an in–depth discussion of American history and the principles of freedom and democracy — and then voted to stand up to terrorism.

I'm not saying that the passengers of Flight 93 reacted without any reflection. And the fact that they forced that plane to go down in a Pennsylvania field instead of Washington probably did save hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.

But I don't think that possibility crossed their minds. I think they were thinking only of their own survival. And that isn't a bad thing. It's a normal human instinct — self–preservation.

I've read the transcripts and heard the recordings that have been released to the public. I recall one of the passengers telling the others, "In the cockpit ... if we don't, we'll die!"

I have heard nothing about passengers shouting "Give me liberty or give me death!" or any other patriotic slogans from American history.

Their fates were sealed when that plane left the ground, but they mentally resisted that knowledge. They weren't thinking beyond the moment and doing whatever they could to live to the next moment ... and the next and the next.

There was, I should add, a certain poignance in Vice President Joe Biden's words about rising to the occasion and overcoming adversity. As a young senator–elect, Biden's life was forever altered by the loss of his first wife and their small daughter in a car accident, and for a time he considered leaving politics, but he did not.

Nor did he withdraw from life. He raised his sons the best he could and re–married a few years later. And his nearly four decades of public service stand as testimony to his survival.

Perhaps that will be the future inspiration of September 11 — the way the friends and relatives of the victims rose from the ashes and survived and persevered.

Things were over fairly quickly for the passengers of the planes. Sometimes just surviving is the hardest part.

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