On Transparency and 'Phony Scandals'

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"My [a]dministration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in [g]overnment. ... Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their [g]overnment is doing."

Barack Obama
White House memorandum

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Mark this date in red — Aug. 9, 2013.

That was the day Barack Obama held his most recent press conference — and I'm talking about the kind of press conference where the president actually takes questions from the press instead of ducking in to pontificate about some topic that really is beneath the attention of the president and then ducking out before anyone in the press corps has time to ask a question.

When I was growing up, presidents used press conferences (and primetime speeches) to keep the American public informed — especially during national crises. Presidents didn't always hold them any more often than Obama does, but they dealt with substantive topics, and they didn't allow reporters who were perceived as friendly to the administration to ask all or most of the questions.

But Obama, who was pledging to have a "transparent" presidency before he took the oath of office the first time, doesn't have press conferences very often. Oh, sure, he appears in joint press conferences with foreign leaders and other dignitaries with whom he dined and/or conferred in private — in fact, so far, that accounts for more than half of the press conferences he has held since becoming president.

And he does appear to favor those who don't ask him the tough, watchdog–type of questions over those who do, granting access to the lapdogs.

According to the American Presidency Project, Obama averages fewer than two press conferences per month — a pace that certainly would be lower if his first year in office had been like the last four.

As it is, his average is far lower than any president in the last quarter century — and it is lower than any Democratic president (other than Jimmy Carter) since World War I.

Given the turmoil in the Middle East and the fact that the administration had closed more than 20 diplomatic outposts in the region, I would classify this as a crisis — although I'm inclined to think that most days under Obama's watch have been crises.

Consequently, it would have been a good time to explain to the American people what was going on.

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It was ironic, too, that Obama should hold his press conference on that particular day — and in that particular location, the East Room of the White House. Thirty–nine years earlier — to the day and in the same room — President Richard Nixon made his farewell address to the White House staff, then departed shortly before Vice President Gerald Ford took the oath of office.

But it isn't so much the frequency (or lack thereof) of Obama's press conferences that concerns me as it is the content.

And that, I must conclude, is not so much the president's fault as it is the journalists'. I'm willing to concede the possibility that, in private, Obama encourages reporters to ask him tougher questions, but I do not get the sense that that is the case. Instead, I get the feeling that Obama rewards friendly journalists with access and denies access to the less–friendly ones.

(Reminiscent of Nixon's famed enemies list.)

In last week's press conference, somebody in the White House press corps should have asked Obama to identify which of the scandals that have plagued the White House in 2013 are "phony" and why he believes that is so? I think it is a legitimate question, given how often Obama has referred to "phony scandals" (and elicited wildly approving cheers from his supporters) in his never–ending campaign for Obamacare.

But no one asked the question.

Obama is entitled to believe that a topic being discussed in public is "phony" — but I do not believe that he or any other president should be allowed to make such an allegation without being held accountable for it.

That, unfortunately, is what is being allowed to happen. Everything that Obama says, no matter how outrageous it may be, goes unquestioned by the press, and, as a journalist, I am embarrassed by what I see.

Now, Obama isn't the first president to make outrageous statements — nor will he be the last — so I can't really fault him for that. And he isn't the first — nor will he be the last — to make outrageous statements that have gone unchallenged so I can't really fault him for that, either.

Nor can I fault him for not asking the press to throw him some fastballs when he was having so much success driving the softballs they kept lobbing to him out of the park.

But I can and do fault the press for utterly failing to do its job.

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The Centennial of a 'Humble Healer'

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"I am a Ford, not a Lincoln. My addresses will never be as eloquent as Mr. Lincoln's. But I will do my very best to equal his brevity and his plain speaking."

Gerald Ford

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Today would have been Gerald Ford's 100th birthday. He didn't miss being here for it by much, either. He was 93 when he died in December of 2006.

He lived longer than any other president. So far.

As nearly as I can tell, not much of a fuss is being made about the centennial — except maybe in Ford's hometown of Grand Rapids, Mich., where the Grand Rapids Symphony planned a Ford tribute in its Independence Day "Picnic Pops" performance — with the focus being on a special composition written in Ford's honor titled "One of Us, Portrait of A Humble Healer."

This weekend, there have been all sorts of activities in Grand Rapids, and the Vail Daily News in Vail, Colo., where Ford took his ski vacations, says "[t]he valley will stop for a few moments" in Ford's honor.

Other than that, though, there doesn't seem to be much of a fuss, as I said earlier.

In Omaha, Neb., the town where Ford was born, the Omaha World–Herald reports that, while the occasion "will be marked with no pomp and circumstance ... America's 38th president won't be forgotten."

A recent Pew Research Center article observed that, in a Gallup poll last year, a majority of respondents said Ford was an average president, neither above nor below average.

Those who remember the Ford presidency are bound to have differing opinions of him — and that is true of all presidents, even those who have been judged by history to be among the greats. Most folks probably would say Ford was humble. Fewer probably would call him a healer, but I think nearly everyone would agree that Ford was a decent guy.

He was what people of my parents' generation called a "stand–up" guy.

Rarely is there that kind of agreement on any president. But, when compared to the dark, dour and paranoid presidency of Ford's predecessor, Richard Nixon, I guess just about anyone would look like a decent guy.

Ford really was. But he is primarily judged for what was perceived at the time to be a decidedly indecent act — his pardon of Nixon on Sept. 8, 1974, about a month after he took office. Regardless of the general decency of the man, he continues to be judged by many on the basis of that single act.

And that was/is understandable. Nixon's popularity had dropped into the 20s by the time of his resignation. Most of Nixon's fellow Republicans in Congress — on whom Nixon had been counting to keep him from being convicted in an impeachment trial in the Senate — turned on him when the Supreme Court ordered him to turn over the tapes he had been refusing to surrender for months, and the "smoking gun" that proved his early involvement in the Watergate coverup was revealed.

There was a lot of bitterness in the country over the fact that Nixon had dragged the nation through a two–year investigation, protesting his innocence all the while, only to be indisputably shown to be a liar, and, even though there were those who believed an ex–president should not be sent to prison, many more Americans wanted Nixon to stand trial in a court, where he would have to tell the truth or face additional criminal charges.

When Ford pardoned Nixon, it removed any possibility that Nixon would have to face the legal music. That made many Americans angry — enough, some political analysts would say, that it cost Ford election to the presidency in his own right two years later.

Until the end of his life, Ford would say — and not without some justification — that pardoning Nixon was the only way for the country to put Watergate behind it and focus on the sputtering economy.

It was the kind of remark a decent, stand–up kind of guy would make — as were Ford's remarks in his first State of the Union speech in January 1975.

"I must say to you," Ford said, "that the state of the Union is not good: Millions of Americans are out of work. Recession and inflation are eroding the money of millions more. Prices are too high, and sales are too slow. This year’s federal deficit will be about $30 billion; next year's probably $45 billion. The national debt will rise to over $500 billion. Our plant capacity and productivity are not increasing fast enough. We depend on others for essential energy. Some people question their government's ability to make hard decisions and stick with them; they expect Washington politics as usual."

Tell the truth. Can you imagine any other president in your lifetime being quite that blunt with the American people?

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I have often reflected on Ford's decision in late 1973 to accept Nixon's nomination of him to fill the vice presidential vacancy left by the resignation of Spiro Agnew. I have wondered what it was like. In hindsight, it seems somewhat inevitable that Ford would become first vice president and then president. But there must have been a time — however brief it may have been — when Ford's decision had not been made, and it still was possible that he might turn Nixon down.

I always wonder to whom Nixon might then have offered the vice presidency — and how that might have changed America and the world.

Some 16 months earlier, Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern had to do something similar when his running mate was dropped and a new one had to be selected. He offered the spot to just about every prominent Democrat, and they all turned him down — until he got to Sargent Shriver.

McGovern never made his offer in public so there are no recordings of those Democrats turning him down — but they always wound up in the news. The details were only made public — if at all — in books or interviews long after the fact.

I have no memory of anyone other than Ford being offered the vice presidency in 1973, but I can imagine a few of the thoughts that must have gone through his mind when the offer was made. And, based on what I know of Ford, I'm sure he consulted his wife, Betty, before giving Nixon an answer.

He always claimed he expected to be something of a place filler for the rest of Nixon's term, and then he would retire to Michigan when it was over. He apparently accepted the vice presidency with no expectation that he would be president. He figured Nixon would ride out the storm.

Well, that was his story. And maybe that really was what he believed. But my memory is that Nixon's approval ratings took a serious hit when it was revealed in the Watergate hearings (coincidentally, a couple of days after Ford's 60th birthday) that there had been a secret taping system in the White House.

That meant that there was a witness that could verify what Nixon and his associates had said in their meetings after the Watergate break–in. The only real question at the time was whether the witness' account would be heard. Would Nixon be able to run out the clock on his term before that account was heard?

Although Nixon and his lawyers tried every legal trick in the book, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in the summer of 1974 — several months after Ford's confirmation as vice president and more than two years before Nixon's term was due to end — that Nixon had to relinquish the tapes to the investigators.

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In those tapes was the "smoking gun" that ended Nixon's presidency.

At that point, most people seemed to realize that it was just a matter of time — and not much of that — before Nixon would be leaving office. By then, Ford must have been anticipating the massive changes that were about to take place in his life.

Ford certainly didn't give the country politics as usual, even though one of his earliest acts was dismissed as such by many Americans. He was like a breath of fresh air when he became president, which is no doubt why so many Americans felt betrayed when he pardoned Nixon.

To continue with the breath of fresh air analogy, it was like breathing fresh oxygen for four weeks after a steady diet carbon dioxide — only to suddenly inhale carbon dioxide again without warning. There was a national coughing spasm.

There was a lot of raw emotion in the Watergate era, and I have often wondered if Ford might not have encountered such a hostile reaction had he waited longer to issue the pardon.

Some economists of the time felt it was urgent to put Nixon and Watergate behind the country so full attention could be given to the economy. But if their counsel prompted Ford to issue the pardon when he did, those economists did both the nation and the new president a disservice.

Although I disagreed, I always felt Ford truly believed it was essential for the country to move forward, and pardoning Nixon was the only way to do that — while he never managed to completely regain the trust he lost when he pardoned Nixon, Ford was an upfront kind of guy, determined to press on no matter how great the adversity.

And the adversity for Ford in the 1976 presidential campaign only got worse when John Dean, the man who first exposed the Watergate coverup, wrote in his book about the scandal that he had heard from another source that Ford had been involved in efforts to postpone a congressional investigation into Watergate until after the 1972 election, which would have made him an accessory.

I came from a family of Nixon haters, but I was willing to give Ford the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was sincere when he said his motivation was to move the country forward. Perhaps it was that quality that made him an All–America center/linebacker and the acknowledged team leader at Michigan in the 1930s. (It was said Ford "would stay and fight in a losing cause.")

Perhaps that trait was honed even earlier, in his days as a Boy Scout.

Whatever the origin may have been, it forced even Ford's political adversaries to admit to a certain amount of admiration for the way he carried himself before, after and during his presidency.

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Conclave

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As I watched Pope Francis being presented to the faithful yesterday — and especially as I heard and read about him afterward — I was struck by certain similarities between him and former President Gerald Ford.

I suppose the most obvious similarity between the two is the fact that they probably would have been the last people anyone would have expected to see elevated to such heights. Certainly, Pope Francis, coming from the Western Hemisphere, was unexpected. Many people — myself included — felt it was likely the cardinals would choose a European. When it was announced that a decision had been made roughly 24 hours after the conclave began, I thought that was a sure sign that a European, perhaps an Italian, had been elected.

And, if you remember the Ford presidency, it was a surprise when he was picked by Richard Nixon to succeed Spiro Agnew as vice president. Even when Ford was installed as the No. 2 guy in the executive branch, most people probably didn't think he would become president. Personally, I figured Nixon would find some way to run out the clock on his second term, but the clock ran out on him instead, and Ford became president.

Primarily, my thoughts centered on the image of Francis as a man of the people who cooks his own meals and rides the bus to work. It reminded me of the days before Ford became president, when journalists were enamored by the fact that he habitually walked outside his home to retrieve the morning paper or that he would prepare his own late–night snacks (his favorite snack, D.C. reporters couldn't wait to report, was cottage cheese with ketchup on it).

Like Ford, Francis is — or at least wants to be — a regular guy.

According to Catherine Harmon of The Catholic World Report, "[Francis] rode the bus back from St. Peter's with the rest of the cardinals after having been elected pope."

The new pope apparently wants to retain the common touch — even if the folks with whom he rode the bus yesterday were not exactly common — but that is easier said than done.

Ford didn't retrieve his morning paper anymore after Nixon resigned — at least not while he was in the White House. I can't honestly say whether he continued to make his own midnight snacks or if he left it up to others — I'm pretty sure cottage cheese and ketchup was a new one on the White House cooks (anyone who was there at the time probably thought he'd seen it all).

I assume it will be hard for Pope Francis to remain the down–to–earth guy he apparently was before fate tapped him on the shoulder to be the leader of a church with 1.2 billion members worldwide. That was something of a problem for Ford, too, and he had been in the spotlight longer than Pope Francis.

He also had the misfortune of succeeding a president who was intensely secretive and paranoid, words that don't seem applicable to the man Francis is succeeding. Benedict XVI may not be everyone's favorite the way John Paul II seems to have been, but his personality was hardly like Nixon's. He did not resign in disgrace — quite the opposite.

When compared to Nixon, Ford came across as a breath of fresh air. The reaction of the faithful to the introduction of the new pope yesterday was nothing like the sense of absolute relief that swept across the United States when Nixon resigned.

That much was different.

But when Francis' first words to the faithful were an appeal for their prayers and support, it really reminded me a great deal of Ford when he said, in his first speech after taking the oath of office, that, rather than give an inaugural address to the nation, he just wanted to have "a little straight talk among friends."

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"I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots," Ford said, "and so I ask you to confirm me as your president with your prayers."

When Ford left the White House just under 2½ years later, he had lost a fair amount of his initial good will when he pardoned Nixon. But he still managed to retain that image of the common man, a decent guy whom you liked even if you didn't agree with him.

Perhaps the same could be said of Pope Francis. Tonight, when I was having my weekly dinner with my father, I asked Dad what he thought of Francis. He said he liked the new pope's humility and the fact that he took the name of an humble saint. Dad liked that very much.

But he was not so enthusiastic about Francis' views. Dad taught religion and philosophy for many years, and he has always had a good sense of a religious leader's doctrine even if it wasn't readily apparent to others.

Perhaps he will be pleasantly surprised by Francis' words and deeds. Perhaps he will not be. That remains to be seen.

But I think it would be wise for Catholics not to place a burden of expectations that are too high on the new pope. Those who are expecting sweeping changes are probably expecting too much from a church that still announces the selection of its leader via smoke signals.

Change still comes slowly to the Catholic church.

It may have to be enough that he is the first pope from South America, the first Jesuit pope and the first pope to be called Francis.

But certainly it can't hurt for the bishop of Rome to be humble.

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Sonny Side Up

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"Keep your sunny side up, up,
Drown a frown with a smile.
If you think it's raining for you,
Just remember, others are blue."

Lew Brown

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The timing was ironic, I suppose, for Mary Bono Mack's defeat in her bid for another term in the U.S. House last November.

She has represented that California district ever since she was elected to succeed her late husband, Sonny Bono, who died in a skiing accident 15 years ago today.

Whenever I think of him, I mostly think of him as an entertainer, primarily in his musical partnership with his second wife, Cher. They recorded a few hit songs together, the most noteworthy being "I Got You, Babe," which was their signature song.

Nearly all of my exposure to Bono was the result of his entertainment career. And I always made a mental connection between him and the song "Sunny Side Up," even though it wasn't one of his compositions — and, to my knowledge, he never sang it in public.

Sonny was an appropriate name for him. I don't know how he acquired that nickname — it certainly wasn't his given name — but it described his personality.

I can still remember the first time I saw Sonny Bono in a non–entertainment context. (Well, it was kind of entertaining, in its way.)

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It was during TV coverage of the 1976 Republican National Convention.

Bono had been invited to sit with President Gerald Ford's family, and TV cameras frequently showed his image as he hobnobbed with the president's wife and children.

The most comical moment came when Bono and the first lady disco danced after Ford had secured the nomination.

Until I saw Bono at the Republican convention, I had no idea what his political leanings were.

And I might never have known his political views if he had not encountered a mountain of red tape when he tried to open a restaurant in Palm Springs, Calif. Largely because of that experience, he ran for — and was elected — the mayor of Palm Springs in 1988.

Six years later, he was elected to Congress. It was a couple of months after he had won his third term that he hit a tree while skiing near Lake Tahoe.

Sonny was a character, but he understood public relations in a way that few do. After the Republicans had seized control of both houses of Congress in 1995, he reportedly observed that Republican leader Newt Gingrich had gone from being regarded as simply a politician to being a celebrity.

And that was a game changer.

"The rules are different for celebrities," Bono told the authors of "Tell Newt to Shut Up."

"You need handlers. You need to understand what you're doing. You need to understand the attitude of the media toward celebrities."

Bono always seemed to handle himself just fine, and it might not be a bad idea for today's politicians to follow the example he set. He was humble, a carryover, perhaps, from his entertainment days when he always used to say Cher was a better singer.

(She was, but that was beside the point.)

He brought a common–man approach to his work in Washington. A member of the House Judiciary Committee even though he held no law degree (he didn't even finish high school), I recall that Bono complained that the lawyers on the committee were fond of rhetorical games and did more to restrict law enforcement than empower it.

Sonny might not fit the modern Republican Party. He was, reportedly, more accepting of his gay daughter (who redefined herself as a transsexual after his death) than Cher, the more liberal of the two.

He was something of an environmentalist, and he was always a patron of the arts. While mayor of Palm Springs, he helped create the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

He was often put down by his congressional colleagues and the media that covered him. He was called a "dim bulb" and an "idiot savant from way beyond the Beltway," but he had common sense that many of today's lawmakers could use.

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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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The Day Jimmy Carter Was Elected

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Herman Cain to Unemployed: Drop Dead

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"Don't blame Wall Street. Don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself."

Herman Cain

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OK, Herman Cain never told the nation's 14 million unemployed or underemployed Americans to drop dead.

Neither, for that matter, did President Ford tell New York City to drop dead — as a famous headline in the New York Daily News proclaimed during Ford's brief White House tenure.

But Ford might as well have told New York to drop dead, and the same applies to Cain and like–minded Republicans in 2011.

Ford was a Republican, and he was taking a stand against a federal bailout of a city that was struggling. I suppose modern Republicans — openly applauding, as they have recently, the refusal of medical care to someone because that person is not insured — would hail Ford as a visionary.

I have a feeling Cain would have liked the stand against bailouts — except, of course, for those cases in which he would be in favor of them. With today's Republicans — hell, with politicians in general — it's hard to say.

It all really depends, as an acquaintance of mine used to say, on whose ox is being gored.

Cain, of course, was defending New York — or, at least, Wall Street — against the angry protests from citizens who are understandably irked that the financiers have profited from their selfish practices that caused so much pain for many millions of Americans who, as a result of others' creative accounting practices, lost their jobs.

Whose fault was that, Mr. Cain?

Now, I'll be the first to admit that there are always a couple of bad apples in any given barrel. But, as a song from my youth reminded listeners in those days, "One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch." Prejudice is prejudice, whether it is based on race or religion or age or gender — or financial status.

The Great Recession has deprived America of the efforts of many creative, talented people, and it is simply wrong for anyone who knows nothing about individual circumstances to make a blanket assertion that the unemployed are to blame for not having a job.

The vast majority of the unemployed are not to blame for their plight, and it is to Cain's everlasting shame that he does blame them.

What's next? Will he blame the sick and the handicapped for their conditions? Will he blame the elderly for coming down with maladies that typically afflict older people?

America was once a country that offered a helping hand to those who were struggling, but, somehow, America has gone from being a place that sought to judge people on the content of their characters to a place that judges people on the content of their bank accounts. Well, most politicians do, regardless of party.

All the politicians, from the Oval Office on down, want money, lots of it. If they speak of encouraging job creation, it is mostly lip service, intended to gain votes but said in a kind of nudge, nudge, wink, wink sort of way to the money boys. We won't really hold you accountable, it implies.

No, they can't risk offending the money boys — or, for that matter those who have grown comfortable in their rapidly dwindling middle–class lifestyles and for whom the thought of being unemployed is like indigestion or the sight of a homeless person panhandling at an intersection — temporarily unpleasant, but, once gone from one's thoughts, it is forgotten, replaced by musings about this weekend's cookout or the impending release of the latest electronic gadget — and those who can afford it (and even some who cannot) will still contribute money to candidates who promise them they can keep what little they still have.

Money is power. Money is clout. Money buys advertising time. The unemployed can't afford to contribute much to political campaigns — their money is tied up in staying alive. But the financiers, the bankers, the Wall Streeters do have money, lots of it, and politicians in both parties shamelessly pursue it.

It's not your fault, Cain and others like him soothingly tell Wall Street. It's those greedy unemployed people. If they had any gumption, they'd go out and get a job or start their own business and make a fortune like Steve Jobs.

I share the rage that many people feel toward Wall Street, but I try to be rational about it. As I have observed so many times, things are rarely black and white. Most of the time, they are distinguished by subtle shades of gray.

I rather liked what Conor Friedersdorf wrote in The Atlantic: "There are honest and dishonest people on Wall Street, sensible and absurd people in the Occupy Wall Street, accurate and inaccurate critiques of American finance."

It is counter–productive to obsess about blame as we have a tendency to do in our culture these days. After all, Democrats promised to close Guantanamo and bring the troops home. I have Democrat friends who insist that these steps, along with taxing the rich, will put the economy back on track.

And I have Republican friends who blame excessive regulation and Obamacare for restricting job creation.

And neither side will concede that the other might have a good point or two.

We also have a tendency to rush to judgment. When Bush was president, critics were dismissed as unpatriotic. During Obama's presidency, critics have been dismissed as racist. Neither side cared about legitimate concerns that were raised. That's no way to build a consensus.

It's been easier for both sides to adopt a take–no–prisoners–all–or–nothing approach to governing — to rely on shaming the other side.

Well, the shame is on the politicians. And a good place to start is with Herman Cain.

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Ford's Self-Inflicted Wound

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The remark was patently ridiculous.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The damage had been done.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ford never recovered.

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

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

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

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

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Technical Difficulties

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Irreversibly.

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No More Mr. Nice Guy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Missing the Point

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

Let me explain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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