Of Course, It's Political

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It seems oddly appropriate that the House hearings into Benghazi began last week — less than two weeks before the 40th anniversary of the start of the Senate Watergate Committee hearings.

I've heard Benghazi compared to Watergate. I've heard some defenders of the Obama administration protest that "other administrations" did worse, which was, perhaps, the most egregious non–denial denial that was used during the Watergate investigation. And my answer to those Obama supporters who have used it is the same one I heard my parents give to Nixon's defenders 40 years ago — "This isn't about what other administrations did. This is about what this administration did."

Perhaps the most persistent question I've heard has been, "Is it political?" And the obvious answer is: Well, of course, it's political.

I believe Tip O'Neill was right when he said, "All politics is local." But the flip side is that there is, at the very least, a political aspect to everything. Thus, everything is politics. It may not be politics as many people understand the term. It can loosely be described as some kind of policy or protocol — maybe it is sexual politics or racial politics, not necessarily governmental politics — whatever one person or group uses for leverage over another.

Ever since Benghazi, I have heard defenders of the Obama administration use feeble excuses to deflect attention — and they were successful enough to win a narrow re–election in November — but the more we learn about what really happened, the more unavoidable becomes the conclusion that the handling of the attack on the U.S. embassy was motivated entirely by politics.

That was what motivated Richard Nixon and his subordinates as well — politics. It is what motivates every officeholder who ends up being caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Barack Obama is not an exception.

I don't know if Obama is paranoid — or, if he is, if he is as paranoid as Nixon was. Most presidents wind up being psychoanalyzed after their presidencies are over; accordingly, I prefer to leave such evaluations to future historians/psychologists.

It does seem to me, though, that anyone who seeks the presidency must have an enormous ego simply to think he (or she) can handle what must be unrelenting pressure. In a democracy, most such pressure is bound to come from the president's loyal opposition — and each president has plenty of that.

Consequently, any president who seeks a second term must have an ego that is so big we mere mortals can't comprehend it. Because that person has already faced the unique challenges of the presidency — and has concluded that he (and perhaps he alone) is qualified to face them.

I'm no psychiatrist, but it seems to me that an ego can be a powerful — as well as a fragile — thing. Protecting it becomes essential in an election year. I understand that. It was necessary for Nixon 41 years ago, when the burglary at the Democratic National Headquarters threatened to derail his re–election campaign.

Basically the same thing happened with Benghazi.

Nixon's actions were harder for me to fathom. He enjoyed a much higher approval rating than Obama, but, beneath it all, he was not well liked — and he knew it. He really was paranoid — and I suppose he knew that, too. Self–loathing seemed to stream from his pores.

And Nixon never enjoyed the fawning adulation of the media that Obama has. As much as the modern media (mostly the broadcast media) adores Obama, it hated Nixon that much.

But he must have had a huge ego to think he could handle all the problems that existed in the United States and the world when he was elected to the presidency. I have come to believe that it was all politics to him.

Politics is a dirty word in many circles. Some folks voted for Obama when he first ran for president because they didn't perceive him as being — wait for it — political. Isn't that a quaint notion?

I suppose it is a truism, however, that nearly everything in life is driven by politics — even if it isn't overtly so.

Accordingly, even the most modestly realistic person must acknowledge that Washington, D.C., is a political place. It is occupied by politicians. They may not have started adult life as politicians. They may have started as lawyers or doctors or community organizers, but if they have been elected to a federal post, they're politicians.

And that, I think, makes them more sensitive to political concerns than most — no matter how clumsily they may try to appease those considerations.

The Benghazi coverup worked for awhile, but it has been unraveling.

Perhaps the foremost political analyst in America today, Michael Barone of the Washington Examiner, has been critical of the Obama presidency in the past, but this weekend he was asking what Obama and Hillary Clinton were thinking when they were blaming an allegedly offensive video for a protest that spiraled out of control.

That isn't a bad question to be asking, even though we know — don't we? — the answer: Politics.

As it was with the Nixon administration, though, I suppose we'll have to be subjected to months of non–denial denials before we figure out for ourselves what the truth is.

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The Election of 1912

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A century ago today, an incumbent president was rejected by the voters.

That might be a bad omen for the incumbent president whose name is on tomorrow's ballot, but, unlike the incumbent who lost on this day in 1912, at least he doesn't have to run against a former president who is running as a third–party candidate.

(If, on the other hand, Barack Obama is re–elected tomorrow, that might open the door to another possible scenario that was suggested in print by Michael Barone the day after the third and final presidential debate two weeks ago. More on that a bit later.)

Presidential elections usually have several "third–party" candidates, but, typically, only the two major parties (which have varied in the last two centuries, but, since the time of Lincoln, the dominant parties in the United States have been the Democrats and Republicans) receive enough support to make them factors.

Most of the time, third parties are, at best, distractions — and magnets for disgruntled voters who like neither of the major–party nominees. But, occasionally, the third–party candidate wins a large share of the popular vote — and a few even manage to win a state or two.

There have been several times in U.S. history when an incumbent president was defeated in a bid for another term; obviously, such elections involve both a past and future president.

But once — and only once — a three–way race involved three credible candidates who had been — or would be — president. That was the election of 1912. Those voters went to the polls a century ago today.

The incumbent president was William Howard Taft, the hand–picked successor for Theodore Roosevelt, who did not run in 1908 because he had served nearly all of William McKinley's second term plus a full one of his own and honored a pledge he had made in 1904 not to seek another one.

Taft had been Roosevelt's secretary of War, and they had been close friends, but a rift developed between them during Taft's presidency and, by 1912, Roosevelt was the acknowledged leader of the progressive wing of the Republican Party while Taft was the leader of its conservative wing, setting the stage for a battle for the party's nomination in 1912.

Even before the presidential campaign, a deep divide within the Republican Party was clear when Republicans lost 10 Senate seats and 57 House seats in the 1910 midterm elections. The 1912 campaign for the Republican nomination merely put an exclamation point on it.

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1912 was the first year that Republicans held presidential primaries, and Roosevelt was, by far, the more popular candidate among the Republicans' rank and file, winning nine of 12 primaries, most by wide margins.

But three–fourths of the state delegations were chosen in state party conventions run by the party's establishment, which strongly favored the status quo, and Taft, along with Vice President James Sherman, was renominated when Republicans convened in Chicago in June.

(Sherman's nomination wasn't the slam dunk that 21st century observers might assume. He was actually the first sitting vice president to be renominated in more than 80 years.)

Roosevelt and his followers held their own convention, and Roosevelt was nominated to run as the standard bearer for the new Progressive Party. When asked by reporters about his physical condition, the 53–year–old Roosevelt responded that he felt as strong as a "bull moose."

It was kind of an odd question, I suppose. I mean, since leaving the White House, Roosevelt had been on an African safari and had suffered no ill effects on it, but he had been stricken with malaria during the Spanish–American War so the question was relevant. From that point on, the new party was known as the Bull Moose Party.

All that sounds like a huge gift for the Democratic challenger, doesn't it? Well, since the Democrat eventually won the election, I suppose it was — except the nominee was not clear when Democrats convened in Baltimore at the end of June.

In those days, a simple majority of the delegates was not sufficient to win the Democratic nomination. The support of two–thirds was required, but no one could even get a majority until the ninth ballot.

In an ironic twist, the initial frontrunner, House Speaker Champ Clark of Missouri, was hurt when the infamous Tammany Hall political machine from New York backed his candidacy. Although it boosted Clark past the 50% mark on the ninth ballot, Tammany Hall's support had the reverse effect, earning the wrath of three–time nominee William Jennings Bryan, who had been officially neutral up to that time and was still the darling of the party's liberals despite having lost all three elections.

Denouncing Clark as the Wall Street candidate (that has a familiar sound to it, doesn't it?), Bryan threw his support behind New Jersey Gov. Woodrow Wilson, a centrist, and Wilson gradually gained momentum, finally winning the support of enough delegates to claim the nomination on the 46th ballot.

Perhaps the greatest irony of that election year was the fact that Wilson, who had been finishing second to Clark in the previous ballots, was on the brink of withdrawing and releasing his delegates to vote for someone else when the schism between Bryan and Clark occurred.

If Wilson had given up a ballot or two earlier, Clark might have won the nomination — or Bryan might have boosted the candidacy of someone else.

And the course of American history would have been altered.

It was a different time, of course. There was no internet, no television, no radio to rapidly distribute images and information; news traveled long distances by telegraph. It was relatively early in the industrialization of the United States. The railroad had opened up the West, but the automobile was still new, and commercial air travel was still many years away.

Those who thrive in our instant information era would feel wholly out of place if they could be magically transported back 100 years.

It was, as I say, a different time. Titanic sank nearly seven months earlier — man flew to the moon and back half a dozen times before his technology permitted him to probe the ocean's depths and find Titanic's remains.

It was a different political time, too. It was, in the estimation of many, progressivism's plateau. A fourth candidate for the presidency, Socialist Eugene Debs, made his fourth run for the office and received 6% of the national vote — his highest share ever of the popular vote.

A labor organizer at heart, Debs had little interest in the American electoral system, and he spoke disparagingly of the so–called "Sewer Socialists" who had made political deals to win low–level elections.

The 1912 campaign would have been one for the books if only because three men who had been or would be president were on the ballot.

But there were other things about the 1912 campaign that were significant.

For one thing, Roosevelt was the target of an assassination attempt about three weeks before the voters went to the polls.

While campaigning in Milwaukee on Oct. 14, 1912, Roosevelt was shot by a former barkeeper from New York, John Schrank.

Schrank claimed to have been visited in a dream by McKinley's ghost, who had urged him to avenge his death and pointed to a picture of Roosevelt. He apparently had been stalking Roosevelt from New Orleans to Milwaukee, where he confronted and shot the former president in his chest at a hotel where Roosevelt was to deliver a speech.

Roosevelt was not killed. The bullet struck Roosevelt's steel eyeglasses case and a 50–page copy of his speech. The ex–president concluded that, because he was not coughing up blood, he was not seriously wounded, and he proceeded to deliver his speech (which took 90 minutes).

Roosevelt's diagnosis was confirmed later by doctors, who decided that it would be more dangerous to try to remove the bullet from his chest than to leave it where it was. Roosevelt carried the bullet inside his body the rest of his life.

An attempt to assassinate a presidential candidate has been rare in American politics. Only two men (Robert Kennedy and George Wallace) have been assassination targets in the last 100 years — and no major–party presidential candidate had been similarly attacked on the campaign trail before.

(Schrank was declared insane and was sent to the Central State Mental Hospital in 1914. He died there of natural causes in 1943.)

Another thing that made 1912 different was the death of Vice President Sherman.

Sherman suffered from kidney disease — in fact, he had delivered his renomination acceptance speech against his doctors' wishes — and he died at his New York home about a week before the election.

In America's history, half a dozen vice presidents had died in office before Sherman did — including Roosevelt's predecessor, Garret Hobart, in 1899 — but no incumbent vice president has died in the century that has passed since Sherman's death, not even Harry Truman's veep, Alben Barkley, who was elected when he was 70 years old.

So, by 21st–century standards, I suppose, it would have been shocking if, say, Vice President Joe Biden had dropped dead last week.

But voters in 1912 probably weren't too shocked. Vice presidents' deaths were more common than presidential deaths in the second half of the 19th century.

Sherman's death was unique, however, in that it left President Taft without a running mate a week before the election. The president of Columbia University, Nicholas M. Butler, was designated to take Sherman's place, but Sherman's name remained on the ballot.

In the long run, I guess, it didn't matter whose name was on the ballot. The Taft–Sherman ticket ran third and received the electoral votes of only Utah and Vermont. That was not attributable exclusively to Sherman's death, but it could not have helped Taft's cause to have such uncertainty about his running mate just days before the election.

Taft's loss, however, turned out to be the Supreme Court's gain, as Claude Marx observes at RealClearPolitics.com

And now, back to Mr. Barone's observation a couple of weeks ago.

In 2008, he noted, Obama "got a higher share of the popular vote than any other Democratic nominee in history except Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson."

But most political analysts, including Barone, are convinced that, if Obama is re–elected, it will be by a considerably narrower margin. Only one president in American history, Barone observed, was re–elected by a smaller margin than the one by which he was elected originally.

That would be Wilson, who was "re–elected in 1916 by 49 to 46 percent in popular votes and 277 to 254 in the Electoral College," Barone wrote.

"If California, which then had only 13 electoral votes, had not gone for Wilson by 3,773 votes," Barone continued, "the incumbent would have lost."

Barone pointed out that Obama has not been definite about his plans for a second term.

"Presidents who get re–elected," he wrote, "usually offer second–term agendas. Obama hasn't, especially on the economy. As a re–elected president, he will be as free of constraints as Wilson was."

Just one thing stands between Obama and that second term — tomorrow's election. (And, for the record, Barone doesn't believe Obama will be re–elected. But Larry Sabato does.)

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Georgia On My Mind

I have this friend who lives in Atlanta. I would describe him as a devoted supporter of Barack Obama.

He says he has been disappointed and frustrated with Obama at times, but it often seems to me that he finds ways to justify or excuse those policies that he says have been disappointing and frustrating. This also leads, at times, to overly optimistic electoral expectations.

At one time, we were living parallel lives. We were pursuing our master's degrees in journalism at the University of North Texas, we were working full time at the same newspaper, and we were working part time as graduate assistants in UNT's editing lab.

Frequently, we were enrolled in the same classes. I used to tease him that I saw more of him than his wife or children did.

We got to know each other pretty well, and we found that we had a lot in common. We both considered ourselves Democrats, and we shared much the same world view.

Anyway, that friend and I went our separate ways eventually. He got his degree, and I got mine. He went on to get his doctorate at another school. I got a job teaching journalism. We had our different life experiences, as friends do.

To an extent, we've moved in different directions. He still considers himself a Democrat; I consider myself an independent. I guess his philosophy hasn't changed much; perhaps mine has, although I don't think of it that way.

But even if it is true, I don't look at it as a bad thing — more like what Joni Mitchell described in "Both Sides Now."

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"But now old friends are acting strange,
They shake their heads,
They say I've changed.
Something's lost
But something's gained
In living every day."

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Life has taken my friend to Atlanta, as I say — where, I presumed, he would obtain unique insights into the voting behavior of people in Georgia.

Maybe he has, but I'm inclined to think they are colored by his personal political perceptions, not necessarily by reality.

In 2008, he told me that Obama would win Georgia for two reasons — the black population of Georgia (roughly 30% of the total) would vote heavily for him (which it did, I suppose) and the presence of Libertarian — and Georgia native — Bob Barr on the ballot.

Barr, he said, would siphon off enough votes from John McCain to hand the state to the Democrats. He didn't.

More than 3.9 million people voted in Georgia in November 2008. About 28,000 of them voted for Barr.

That didn't really surprise me. Georgia has never struck me as being unusually susceptible to quixotic third–party candidacies.

When such a third–party candidate has caught fire elsewhere, in the region or the country at large — i.e., Ross Perot in '92 or George Wallace in '68 — Georgia has jumped right in there.

But, otherwise, third–party candidates have been non–factors in Georgia. Maybe the concept of a two–party system is too deeply ingrained in Georgians.

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As someone who has lived in the South all his life, that sort of seems to me to be true of the South in general, and the percentages from the last election in which a third–party candidate played a prominent role — 1992 — support that.

According to "The Almanac of American Politics 1994," states in the South Atlantic region of the country (Florida, Georgia, Virginia and the Carolinas) gave a much smaller share of their vote to Perot (16%) than almost any other region. The states in the Mississippi Valley — Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee — gave the smallest (11%).

In other words, even in a year in which the third–party candidate was bringing millions of previously politically inactive voters into the process, the South resisted the temptation to abandon the two–party arrangement.

The authors of the 1994 "Almanac," Michael Barone and Grant Ujifusa, used the numbers from the 1992 election to make the case for their observation of the "phenomenon" of straight–ticket voting that year. And I suppose it was a compelling argument for those who sought to explain what had happened that year.

Their analysis always struck me as being somewhat short–sighted, focused as it was on a single election.

See, I never really bought the idea that it was an isolated phenomenon. I have long believed that straight–ticket voting is a reality of American politics, particularly Southern politics. It was true in 1992. I believe it will be true in 2012 — and that the numbers from 2010 and recent presidential elections clearly suggest that the Democrats will lose every Southern state next year.

I know it was always a reality in Arkansas — but that was due, in large part, to the fact that there was really only one political party in Arkansas when I was growing up. The Democrats had a near monopoly on political power in Arkansas — and most of the South — in those days.

But that was really a different Democratic Party. As I have noted before, the politicians who led the Democratic Party in those days probably had much more in common philosophically with today's Republicans.

Eventually, in fact, many of them switched their party affiliations, but it took some time. The Southern Democrats of a generation or two back were trained at their mother's knees to be wary of Republicans.

Republicans were damn yankees, and the transition was a long time coming and really achieved incrementally. Southerners were voting for Republicans for president long before they started voting for Republicans for state and local offices.

The GOP, they were told, had inflicted Reconstruction on the South after the Civil War — and had been responsible for the poverty and misery that afflicted most who lived there, white and black, ever since. It was an article of faith, and so, with the exceptions of a few isolated pockets, most places in the South were run by Democrats for decades.

Many people mistakenly believe the South began moving away from the Democrats to the Republicans in 1980, when Reagan conservatives joined forces with Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, but, in hindsight, that was really more symbolic of the completion of the shift than its beginning. It was in 1980 that the Moral Majority served as the bridge for the last holdouts, the Christian evangelicals, who seemed, prior to that time, to exist outside politics — at least as an interest group or voting bloc.

The real breaking point came in the 1960s, in the midst of the civil rights conflict, campus unrest and general social upheaval. Even Lyndon Johnson, the architect of the Great Society, acknowledged that his greatest legislative triumphs, the ones that guaranteed voting rights and civil rights to all Americans, likely had handed the South to the opposition for a generation or more.

His words have truly been prophetic. Of the 11 elections that have been held since Johnson won by historic proportions in 1964, the Democratic nominee has lost every Southern state in six of them — and has only come close to sweeping the region once (in 1976) even though the party has nominated Southerners for president five times.

Most Southern states have voted for the Republican nominee for president even in years when Republicans were struggling elsewhere ... even in years when native Southerners were on the Democrats' national ticket.

I have always had mixed feelings about the fierce loyalty of Southerners. I have often felt it was more a point of pride, of not wanting to admit when one has been wrong, than a point of principle.

When Southerners give their hearts to someone, it is usually for life. Likewise, when the South gives its allegiance to a person or a political party, it is a long–term commitment — in spite of the behavior of some philandering politicians.

Giving up on a relationship — be it social or political — is a last resort for most Southerners. It is what you do when all else has failed.

(Regarding the dissolution of social/legal relationships, I have always suspected that attitude has more to do with the regional stigma about divorce that still persists, to an extent, today and the reluctance of many Southerners to legally admit a mistake was made than any theological concerns about promises made to a higher power.)

That's probably the main reason why it was so surprising when Obama won the states of Virginia and North Carolina in 2008. Virginia hadn't voted for a Democrat since LBJ's day. North Carolina voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976 but had been in the Republican column ever since.

For those states to vote for a Democrat after regularly voting for Republicans for years was an admission that could not have been easy for many of the voters in those states to make.

Numerically, it seems to have come a little easier to Virginians, who supported the Obama–Biden ticket by nearly 250,00 votes out of more than 3.7 million cast. North Carolinians, on the other hand, barely voted for Obama, giving him a winning margin of less than 15,000 votes out of 4.3 million.

I'm not really sure what this means for 2012. I mean, the 2008 results can't be explained strictly in racial terms, can they? The white share of the population is about the same in both states (64.8% in Virginia, 65.3% in North Carolina), and the black populations are comparable as well (19.0% in Virginia, 21.2% in North Carolina).

If anything, one would expect that a higher black population (along with half a million more participants) would produce a higher margin for Obama in North Carolina than Virginia — but the opposite was true.

What can be said with certainty is that both states voted Republican — heavily — in the 2010 congressional midterms.

• North Carolina re–elected Republican Sen. Richard Burr with 55% of the vote. That's pretty high for North Carolina. Statewide races frequently are much closer.
  
  North Carolina Republicans also captured a House seat from the Democrats.


• Virginia elected Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell in the off–year election of 2009, providing perhaps the first glimpse of what was to come.
  
  Neither of the state's senators was on the ballot in 2010, but Democratic Sen. Jim Webb, who defeated George Allen in the 2006 midterm election, announced earlier this year that he would not seek a second term. Ostensibly, his reason is that he wants to return to the private sector, but I can't help wondering if he has concluded that he caught lightning in a bottle six years ago and cannot duplicate the feat in 2012.
  
  Virginia Republicans grabbed three House seats from Democrats in 2010.

It was less surprising that Florida voted for Obama in 2008.

That's understandable. For quite awhile, Florida has been a melting pot for retirees from all over the nation so its politics tends to be quite different from just about any other Southern state. Until the advent of air conditioning, Florida was mostly a backwater kind of place with a population to match, but in recent decades, the only thing that has truly been Southern about Florida is its geographic location.

In many ways, its diverse population bears watching as an election year unfolds. It may be the closest thing to a political barometer, a cross–section of the American public, that one is likely to find.

The scene of an excruciating recount in 2000, Florida has now been on the winning side in 11 of the previous 12 elections — and conditions in 2008 were probably more favorable for the out–of–power party than at any other time that I can remember.

More than perhaps any other state in the region, Florida's vote seems likely to be influenced by prevailing conditions in November 2012. Obama won the state with 51% of the vote in 2008, but, again, few solid conclusions can be reached based on the racial composition of the electorate. Whites represent a smaller share of the population in Florida (about 58%) than in in Virginia or North Carolina.

But the black vote in Florida is also smaller (around 15%).

In fact, half again as many Floridians are Hispanic (more than 22%), and, while those voters will be affected by economic conditions like anyone else, they may also be sensitive to immigration issues and particularly responsive to proposed solutions to those problems.

There may well be compelling reasons for Hispanic voters to feel overly encouraged or discouraged by U.S. immigration policy under Obama.

What can be said of voting behavior in Florida in 2010 is that Florida's voters made a right turn.

Republicans seized four House seats from Democrats, elected one of the original tea partiers to the U.S. Senate and replaced an outgoing Republican governor with another Republican governor.

There has been persistent talk, in fact, that the senator — Marco Rubio — will be the GOP running mate, no matter who the presidential nominee turns out to be.

And if that turns out to be true, the party really will be over in Florida ...

... and elsewhere in the South.

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Split Decision

You know, history really does repeat itself. Not precisely, though. You have to look for it, but patterns certainly seem to emerge.

More than two years ago — when Democrats had held Congress for a little more than a year and Republican George W. Bush was in his final year as president — I wrote about the virtue of divided government.

On that occasion, I was offering my take on a column written by political analyst Charlie Cook for the National Journal, in which he also wrote about the disparity between the popular vote and the electoral vote. While I do believe the Electoral College should be scrapped — or, at the very least, revised — that's not what I want to discuss in this post.

In April 2008 — which, it is worth noting, was several months before the economic meltdown virtually guaranteed Democratic victories that fall — Cook said both parties had "self–destructive tendencies." If either controlled both the legislative and executive branches of government, it was like a "ticking time bomb; it's only a matter of time before it explodes and the party loses, and loses big."

That time appears to be at hand for Democrats who were so cocky after the 2008 elections. Everyone seems to be in agreement on that point. The disagreement, at this stage, centers on how extensive the losses will be — whether the Democrats will, in Cook's words, "lose big."

I can picture their spinmeisters, already working on the party's excuses for whatever lies ahead. I'm sure racism will be a prominent one. It's a very handy excuse for this president, one that hasn't been available to any of his predecessors — although I'm sure some variant of it has been applicable to a few (i.e., John F. Kennedy, who was not the first Catholic presidential nominee but was the first Catholic to be elected — and could conceivably have used anti–Catholic bigotry if he had lived to run for a second term).

But, even though racism is likely to be used as an excuse for congressional losses, is it valid? In some instances, perhaps it is. But not in most.

Well, two years ago, I wrote something that I still believe: "I've seen more efficiency under a divided government. Each side gets some of what it wants sometimes. But when one party controls the White House and the Congress, things get sloppy, inefficient — and expensive."

I've seen nothing in the last two years that refutes that. Precisely the opposite, in fact. Divided government promotes the art of compromise. Everyone gets involved. No one feels left out — and, consequently, feels the need to obstruct everything the majority tries to do because you just might need some of those folks on the next issue — and you have a realistic chance of winning over some of them — and you don't want to risk alienating them.

When voters elected Barack Obama president and, at the same time, expanded Democrats' majorities in both houses of Congress, there was much rejoicing.

I wasn't sure what to make of it, but I had serious doubts about the collective wisdom. In the aftermath of the economic meltdown, I felt the voters were having a (probably justifiable) tantrum against Republican rule, and I felt torn over the prospect of installing a one–party government to replace another one–party government.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am second to no one in my utter disdain for the George W. Bush administration (well, both Bush presidencies, actually, but let's stick to the most recent one).

And the only electoral decision in which all voters participate is the election of the president. Senators and representatives are chosen, as always, by states and districts.

No "decision" was made in 2008 to give huge majorities to the Democrats, just as no decision was made nearly a decade before that to turn over control of both the White House and the Congress to the Republicans. It's just how it worked out.

And I worried in 2008 that it would make things worse. Democrats seemed to have forgotten how disenfranchised they felt when Republicans controlled the national debate — and how that led the Democrats to become more energized about taking back what they had lost.

In such an adversarial environment, neither side ever seems to be willing to budge even an inch. Isn't that what we've seen in Washington in the last 18 months? Isn't that what we saw in Washington five years ago, in first the Terri Schiavo affair and then the Hurricane Katrina experience?

Not sayin' either side was right or wrong. Just sayin'.

As I say, I felt torn on Election Night. On the one hand, I felt that someone whose very existence would be politically sensitive — such as the first black president — would need to have many members of his party in Congress in order to get anything accomplished.

On the other hand, I have seen one–party rule at several times in my life, and it never really seems to work. The party that is in power always gets too carried away with itself and sees "mandates" where they frequently don't exist. That lends an aura of credibility to everything they do.

And there is often a sense that the party in power knows best, and that clearly seems to have been a problem in the first couple of years of the Obama presidency.

Poll after poll after poll after poll has shown that Americans are worried about unemployment.

I'm going to repeat that, with added emphasis, because I really believe it is important.

Poll after poll after poll after poll has shown that Americans are worried about unemployment.

Now, you may argue — and not without some justification — that the opinions expressed in polls are not written in stone — and they aren't. But, when a topic consistently lands in the top spot of polls about the most pressing problems facing America today, that seems like, at the very least, a hint that it's something that Americans want to address. And a lot of them really want to address the jobs issue.

As George Carlin used to say, even in a fake democracy, people ought to get what they want once in awhile if only to feed the illusion that they're really in charge. In this case, they ain't been getting it — unless Obama and the Democrats were doing things behind the scenes to promote job creation while they were publicly barnstorming the country for health care reform.

But, if that is what they were doing, they missed an opportunity to get some visible credit for their efforts — credit they might wish they had when the voters go to the polls in November. As it is, the Democrats seem to be hoping — like Herbert Hoover at the dawn of the Great Depression — that the market will correct itself. That's not likely to be a winning strategy in 2010.

Because, unless something really dramatic happens, it is unlikely that we will see the kinds of improvements that will reverse the Democrats' fortunes in November's midterms.

It isn't that the voters blame the Democrats — but it would be terrific if they would stop obsessing about blame and focus on strategies for encouraging job creation. The five–figure job gains we've seen lately would have been great a few decades ago. They might even have been marginally acceptable a few years ago. But, since the end of 2007, we've seen waves of six–figure job losses that seemed like they would never end.

And they've left a path of destruction in their wake that is staggering.

As the voters see it, the Democrats are the ones who are in charge. If the voters aren't convinced that they're thinking outside the box in an all–out pursuit of an answer, they'll look for that leadership elsewhere. The Republicans may not be exactly what they want — but what other option do they have?

Well, anyway, I started thinking about all this when I was reading an article today by another political analyst for whom I have a great deal of respect, Michael Barone, one of the authors of what has been the best political reference for nearly 40 years, the "Almanac of American Politics," which is published by the National Journal every other year.

Barone also contributes to the Washington Examiner, where today he suggests that this year's midterms may resemble the ones in 1966.

"Some compare 2010 to 1994, when Republicans picked up 52 House seats and won majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades," Barone writes. "Others compare this year to 1982, when Democrats picked up 26 House seats and recaptured effective control of the House two years after Ronald Reagan was elected president."

As I say, though, Barone's focus today is on 1966, two years after Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats swept the elections of 1964. 1966, Barone writes, "was a year when a Democratic president's war in Asia was starting to cause unease and some opposition within his own party, as is happening now."

And, he continues, "it was a year of recoil against the big government programs of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. The 89th Congress, with 2–1 Democratic majorities, had passed Medicare, federal aid to education, anti–poverty and other landmark legislation."

The key to Republicans' success in 1966, Barone suggests, was that they "actually won the popular vote for the House in the North (defined as the other 36 states) by a 51% to 48% majority. They have only done so since in three elections, in 1968 (a virtual carbon copy of 1966 in House races), in their breakthrough year of 1994 and in the post–9/11 year of 2002."

Recent poll results indicate, Barone continues, that it could happen again this year. Generic polls asking voters which party they would support in their local House race show "Republicans ahead by a historically unprecedented margin."

And, writes Barone, "[i]f those numbers hold, and if they turn out to underpredict Republican performance in the popular vote, as they have in the past, that could mean that Republicans would win a popular vote plurality or majority in the North."

Can't happen, you say? Hmmm, tell that to Massachusetts Sen. Martha Coakley and then tell me what her response was. Coakley was an exception, you say? A terrible candidate? OK. Gotcha. How about checking back with me in a month or so, after most states have held their primaries, and tell me how things are looking?

We should also have a couple more jobless reports in by that time.

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Lessons From History

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

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

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

Anyway ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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