Between a Rock and a Hard Place

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There were times — not many but a few — in my college days when I played some poker with my friends.

I was never very good at it, especially the art of bluffing — and I say that with all due respect because I'm sure those guys who were good at bluffing have gone on to enjoy great success in whichever career paths they followed.

Especially if their career paths were political. Politics frequently requires good bluffing — in other words, having what is known as a "poker face." I've heard it said that Richard Nixon developed quite a poker face from playing poker in the service during World War II. Apparently, it served him well in negotiations he had as president with the Russians and Chinese.

I believe effective bluffing can be boiled down to two parts — 1) plausibly asserting that something is true, whether it is or not, and 2) successfully backing it up when challenged (i.e., when one's bluff is called).

I'm no lawyer, but, in my mind, I equate it with the legal distinction between assault and battery. It's been my experience that a lot of people think assault and battery is a single crime. It isn't.

I don't remember now when I first heard this explained, whether it was during my reporting days when I covered the police beat or on some occasion when I reported for jury duty and a lawyer was questioning prospective jurors.

It might have been something I heard when I was studying communications law in college although that is probably unlikely since neither legal term would have had much to do with communications — directly, anyway.

In case you don't know, an assault is basically a threat, presumably of physical harm (although, in the modern world, I guess you would have to define a threat of computer hacking as an assault as well — not necessarily a physical threat but a financial one, which can, in due course, threaten life).

If the person who is being threatened believes the other person is capable of carrying out the threat, that is assault. If the threat is actually carried out, that is battery.

Barack Obama did the bluffing part last year when he declared that there was a "red line" in Syria — no chemical weapons use would be tolerated.

Now there are reports that Obama's bluff has been called. Apparently, Syria has used chemical weapons on its people. Recently.

Tom Foreman of CNN writes that this has left Obama with three options: "Bad, worse, and horrible."

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Actually, Foreman outlines more than three options, but, at the end of his piece, he acknowledges that, for a variety of reasons, it all comes down to one — firing cruise missiles from ships in the Mediterranean.

Such missiles, he writes, "are magnificent, virtually unstoppable weapons capable of pinpoint, devastating strikes." But the delay in using them complicates matters. The Syrians have had plenty of time already "to hide their own weapons, secure their airplanes and disperse critical command and control assets."

That sounds like what some of George W. Bush's defenders still say about the invasion of Iraq. That invasion, if you recall, was predicated on the belief that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction it would use against the United States, and it was necessary to eliminate them.

To many people, that sounded plausible in the immediate aftermath of 9–11, but no such weapons were found.

Supporters of the invasion insisted Iraq's leaders had moved the stockpiles of weapons. If they did, those weapons still have not been located.

Anyway, at that point, the objective changed from rooting out dangerous weapons to nation building, which was not an original objective of the mission.

In recent days, I have heard supporters of this president justify his taking unilateral action in Syria because other presidents have been launching undeclared wars (and conveniently bypassing the Constitution in the process) since the end of World War II.

But let's get back to our current predicament. I can't speak for anyone else, but I do not blame Obama for this mess — well, not entirely.

Any president who faced these circumstances would be between a rock and a hard place. There are no good options to take, only bad ones and worse ones. I realize that the option I advocate is a bad one, but, in the absence of any good ones ...

At least a portion of these circumstances, however, is Obama's fault. He is the one who drew the red line and told Syria not to cross it. He did that a year ago.

A prudent president would have devoted the past year to building a congressional consensus to authorize him to attack — just in case. Instead, he spent much of that time demonizing the opposition party rather than seeking common ground, knowing full well that he would need the cooperation of the Republican–controlled House to do anything if Syria called his bluff.

None of the polls I saw last year — including the most important one, the one on Election Day — suggested that Obama's party had a prayer of retaking the House. He must have known long before the election that, if he did win, he would have to deal with a Republican–controlled House for at least the first two years of his second term.

As a former constitutional law professor, he should have known that he would need to curry favor with influential Republicans in the House.

And a prudent president would have been building a coalition of American allies. This president has not been doing that, and now it appears we must do whatever we are going to do alone — or practically so.

He says he will consult Congress when it returns from its Labor Day recess, but Congress won't be in session again for a week. That is even more time for Syria to prepare for missile strikes.

Obama is more concerned, it seems, with public opinion polls that suggest that, by margins of 39% to 52%, a majority of Americans opposes military intervention in Syria.

If at last Obama is paying attention to the concerns of the voters, that isn't a bad thing. The American people have witnessed a decade of war that has cost them much but gained them little. The president should consider them, the sacrifices they already have made and the additional sacrifices they are being asked to make, before taking any action — assuming that Congress gives him the green light.

But he should have been laying the groundwork for this for months. He and his secretary of state made naive, false — and dangerous — assumptions about the people with whom they were dealing, and now the global credibility of the United States is at stake. If we do not enforce Obama's red line, what does anyone else have to fear from us?

Polling data suggest that most Americans oppose the idea of an attack, but a majority would support a limited strike.

I think that would be worse than doing nothing (which I believe is the least bad option). A limited strike, lasting a day or two — or perhaps an hour or two — instead of a few weeks (or even months) would be symbolic at best, a virtual slap on the wrist.

Syria (and others like it, in the region and elsewhere) would be emboldened. They would know that there is a price to be paid for using chemical weapons — but that price would be negligible, one that they would willingly pay.

For a missile strike to be more than symbolic, for it to inflict a lesson on Syria that will be felt throughout the region and beyond, it cannot be a limited strike. It cannot be a slap on the wrist that is really intended to give Obama political cover.

To be effective, it must be relentless. It must be decisive. And I don't believe the American people have the stomach for that right now.

I am inclined to sympathize with Obama. He is truly between a rock and a hard place.

But he got there mostly on his own — and now, after nearly five years in the White House, it is high time he learned what leadership is about.

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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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When Clinton Hit Back

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

Secretary of Defense Les Aspin
Washington Post
June 1993

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

Such a case occurred 20 years ago today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Beneath the Dignity of a Great Nation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The trip to West wasn't anything unusual.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Those Second-Term Blues

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About 7½ months ago, following Mitt Romney's decisive victory over Barack Obama in their first presidential debate, I observed that what Americans saw on their TV screens was completely at odds with the narrative they had been spoon fed by the Obama administration.

"And, in my experience," I wrote, "when people conclude that they have been deceived about one thing, they become suspicious of other things that are said by that person or whoever is authorized to speak on that person's behalf."

I still believe that even though the truth of it wasn't immediately apparent — because, also in my experience, it can take awhile for these things to sink in.

Obama went on to win the election, but I believe the seeds of distrust were planted in some voters' minds that night. I think that goes a long way toward explaining why Obama was the first president in nearly a century to win a second term by smaller popular and electoral vote margins than he received the first time.

(Note: I'm not saying that was the only reason why Romney lost. He made his share of mistakes, and the Republican Party has some problems that it needs to address with certain demographic groups. But the fact remains that the Obama campaign focused on negative campaigning to the exclusion of emphasizing a vision for the future to an extent that has rarely been seen in presidential politics — and seldom from Democrats.)

It was not a resounding victory for the president. It was a tepid endorsement, much like the one George W. Bush received in 2004. And, like Bush, Obama's residual good will appears to be eroding.

Comparisons to other presidents in recent memory who lost the confidence of the people may still be a bit premature, but I keep coming back to the fact that, in my lifetime, no other recently re–elected president has been hit with three major scandals at once so early in his second term.

All three of the scandals — the failure to even attempt to defend the embassy in Benghazi and the Americans in it; the use of the IRS as a weapon against organizations because of their political leanings; and the thoroughly unjustifiable seizure of reporters' phone records by the Department of Justice — are affronts to this country's commitment to freedom and justice.

Frankly, they all concern me — but, perhaps because I am a journalist, I am most offended by the misuse of the Department of Justice. If there is no freedom of the press, then there is no freedom. Period.

Who knows what else lurks just beneath the surface in this White House?

Second terms, as I have observed here before, are notorious for being disasters, but there is usually more of a honeymoon between the election and the onset of the administration's decline. This administration, however, seems to be intent on setting a record for rapid implosion.

Obama took the oath of office to begin his second term almost four months ago, and he started suffering legislative setbacks almost immediately. He has never articulated an agenda for the second term — he avoided doing so during the campaign — and the scandals that are now overwhelming his presidency all appear to have begun with a narcissistic obsession with himself rather than a desire to further a political ideology.

Certainly, he was never motivated by anything resembling a desire to serve the will of the people. That is something that appears to be dawning on some Americans for the first time.

Even so, it should surprise no one when this presidency collapses like a house of cards.

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Reasserting That the People Rule

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"We are beginning these hearings today in an atmosphere of the utmost gravity. The questions that have been raised in the wake of the June 17 break–in strike at the very undergirding of our democracy. If the many allegations made to this date are true, then the burglars who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee ... were in effect breaking into the home of every citizen of the United States. And if these allegations prove to be true, what they were seeking to steal was not the jewels, money or other property of American citizens but something much more valuable — their most precious heritage, the right to vote in a free election."

Sen. Sam Ervin
May 17, 1973

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Forty years ago today, the Senate Watergate Committee held its first session.

(I'm going to resist the temptation to compare what began four decades ago today to the scandals that have been erupting in Washington recently — even though there are many initial similarities. The scandals will only prove to be truly comparable if they play out like Watergate did.)

I doubt that very many Americans realized at the time where the road on which the committee had taken the nation would lead. Initially, President Nixon appeared to be insulated from the unsavory activities that had led to the Watergate break–in — just as Barack Obama today claims to have beeen unaware of what was done in his name. All the highest–ranking officials insisted that, even if they acknowledged their own culpability, the president was guiltless.

It would be more than a month before John Dean's testimony would directly challenge Nixon's stated version of events. It would be about two months before the existence of a taping system in the Oval Office — and, therefore, the existence of evidence that could confirm whether Dean's version or Nixon's was correct — became public knowledge.

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Those things happened during the Watergate Committee's work in the summer of 1973.

The hearings that summer were a genuine sensation. Years before cable TV, decades before the internet, people were bringing portable TVs to their workplaces to follow the testimony. Drivers were listening to the hearings on their car radios.

On a retrospective on Watergate I watched once, I heard Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee say that, at the height of the hearings, he could walk from his newsroom to the street, where he could get a taxi and take it anywhere in the city, and he could get out and walk along any street and never miss a beat in the coverage, so pervasive was the coverage by the media of the day.

But that was later.

On this day in 1973, I couldn't say how many Americans were watching. In my hometown, school had not yet dismissed for the summer — as I recall, the dismissal of school came in late May — so I would have been in school on the day the hearings began. My mother was at home in those days, but I have no memory of coming in from school that afternoon and finding her watching the TV. Perhaps she was, but I was a child and the weather was probably nice, and I probably did what I usually did after school on nice days at that time in my life.

I probably played baseball with the neighborhood kids until our parents called us in for dinner or until the sun went down.

Which means I probably made a beeline for my room, put on my rattiest clothes and went back outside to take advantage of what remained of daylight.

I have no memory of the opening statement by the chairman of the committee, Sen. Sam Ervin of North Carolina.

But, as I read it now, four decades after the fact, I am struck by the timelessness of the message — Ervin's assertion that "the right to vote in a free election" is more valuable than jewels or money or property.

Over time, fame and fortune have become part of the American dream, but the original American dream was to have a land where power resides with the people. Individual affluence has nothing to do with that.

It just doesn't get any more basic than that. It has always been at the heart of America, from the earliest days when America was little more than an idea right up to modern times, that the people rule here — and they wield their power through the ballot box.

That isn't always good news for incumbent officeholders — but America isn't about them.

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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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Limping Along to the Midterms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that is another discussion for another time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Inaugural Day 2013

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According to the 20th Amendment, today is the day the president takes the oath of office.

And Barack Obama did take that oath today. But he did so in private.

I suppose that is a fitting metaphor for a president who prefers to bypass the constitutionally prescribed system of checks and balances, but this is done with the blessing of American tradition, if not the Constituton itself.

The 20th Amendment, which was ratified 80 years ago this Wednesday, changed Inauguration Day from March 4 to Jan. 20. That was a necessary change. When the country was founded a couple of centuries ago, it made sense to have the inauguration in March. It was likely that a newly elected president would need all that time to tie up any loose ends in his private life and then travel to Washington to begin his presidency.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the trip to Washington could be long and arduous for a president—elect. But in the 20th century, with the train and the automobile already established as means of transportation and the airplane emerging as one, it wasn't necessary to wait an additional six weeks for the new president to take office.

Especially if the new president was taking office during an economic or international crisis.

The 20th Amendment doesn't mention anything about what is to be done when Inaugural Day falls on a Sunday. I presume that is a tradition dating to the 18th century that continues today.

And, although I consider myself well–versed in American history and traditions, that was a tradition of which I was unaware until 1985. That was the first time in my lifetime that Inaugural Day fell on a Sunday.

Ronald Reagan had been re–elected a couple of months earlier so he took the oath of office for the second time. Nevertheless, I began thinking of how awkward it could be for an outgoing president to have to watch an incoming president take the oath of office twice.

After all, the outgoing president must be on hand for the transfer of power — if at all possible. If the outgoing president is leaving because he has served his two terms, that is one thing, but if the outgoing president was defeated in the most recent election, that is another.

The outgoing president must greet the incoming president at the White House and then ride with him to the Capitol for the public ceremony. It's a short ride up Pennsylvania Avenue, but it could seem interminable if the two are still angry at each other over things that were said during the campaign.

And, for an outgoing president who has been rejected at the polls, it may seem like cruel and unusual punishment to have to stand by and watch his successor take the oath twice.

I don't know if that has ever happened. This is only the third time since the ratification of the 20th Amendment that Inaugural Day has fallen on a Sunday. Each time, the president being sworn in was the incumbent who had been re–elected a couple of months earlier.

If that tradition of a private ceremony on Sunday and a public one on Monday was being observed prior to the ratification of the 20th Amendment, the last time that March 4 fell on a Sunday was in 1917 — when Woodrow Wilson was taking the oath of office for the second time.

I suppose I began thinking about this in 1985 because I had been a supporter of Reagan's opponent in the 1984 election, former Vice President Walter Mondale (who lost in a 49–state landslide).

Maybe I was indulging in a little wishful thinking. It's not as if Mondale was ever really in that race.

But Obama's opponent, Mitt Romney, was in the 2012 race. Some people think he had the momentum until Superstorm Sandy halted it in the final week of the campaign.

If Sandy had not been a late factor in the race, Romney might have won the election.

And, today, Obama would have been forced to stand by while Romney took the oath of office — and then he would have been forced to do so again tomorrow.

Obama was spared that, however. Time will tell if that was a blessing — or a curse.

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The Curse of the Second Term

Barack Obama and his supporters are jubilant these days, basking in the afterglow of their electoral victory. They haven't been terribly gracious in their victory, either, which I have long found to be a recipe for eventual disaster.

And many scoff at the lessons of history, having just turned conventional wisdom on its ear by successfully waging an entire campaign dedicated solely to smearing the opposition. That isn't really anything new in American politics, but, usually, when a politician is re–elected to office, his/her supporters have an idea what he/she intends to do.

But I spoke to many Obama supporters during the general election campaign, and I asked them sincerely — I asked some multiple times — what the incumbent wanted to do if given a second term. Not a single one could tell me what Obama's second–term agenda was.

Perhaps that was the prudent thing. After all, most presidents who win re–election do so after they have expressed some kind of a grand vision — and then they get shot down (often by something entirely unexpected).

Really.

(Sometimes, though, presidents just run out of gas long before their second terms are finished — having already used their first terms to present their best legislative ideas.)

In my lifetime, Obama is the fifth president to be re–elected, and the first four were stymied by serious problems in their second terms.

George W. Bush proclaimed on election night that he had "earned political capital" in the campaign that he intended to spend — and then the president who couldn't think of a single thing he would do differently in his first term got sidetracked in his second by an increasingly unpopular war and the federal government's slow response to Hurricane Katrina.

Bill Clinton was impeached in his second term. No one had heard of Monica Lewinsky in November 1996.

Ronald Reagan's second–term agenda was derailed by the Iran–Contra scandal.

Richard Nixon resigned as Watergate blossomed from a "third–rate burglary" in his first term to a major scandal in his second.

It isn't a new phenomenon, either. For presidents who are re–elected, election night is frequently the high point of their second terms. It's mostly down hill from there.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's second term was bogged down by his attempt to "pack" the Supreme Court.

Woodrow Wilson was re–elected by the slimmest margin of any president until Obama's re–election this week, largely because he kept the United States out of the war that was being waged in Europe — but America wound up in World War I, anyway.

Dwight Eisenhower had a series of problems in his second term. The United States fell behind the Soviet Union in the space race. The infamous U–2 incident embarrassed him in the final year of his presidency and raised tensions between America and the Soviet Union. And his administration lost the services of his trusted chief of staff and several Cabinet officers.

But Eisenhower managed to keep the peace between the two nations, and his second term was also marked by federal enforcement of school desegregation in the South and a memorable farewell address to the nation in which he warned against "unwarranted influence ... by the military–industrial complex."

Obama will face numerous challenges in his second term — the looming fiscal cliff gets all the ink right now, but then it will be the implementation of Obamacare and the probability that both will plunge the United States into another recession, as well as hearings on the terrorist attack in Benghazi — and the time may well come when the president will regret not having made a friend or two on the other side of the legislative aisle.

Trying to make some legislative friends from across the aisle now just isn't likely to work, given the venomous nature of Obama's campaign attacks.

It's a two–way street, though. Obama's short–lived filibuster–proof majority in the Senate is long gone and, most likely, won't be coming back since Democrats must defend 20 seats in the 2014 midterms. Few if any of the Republican–held seats look like they could be in jeopardy (right now, at least), but the Democrats must defend senators from Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina and South Dakota — among others.

But congressional Republicans, who famously said their top objective was to make Obama a one–termer, must reconcile themselves to the fact that, like Bush and Clinton before him, Obama has been re–elected, and it will be necessary now for both sides to work together in the best interest of the country.

That calls for skills that Obama has never really shown that he possesses, but that's the way the system is set up in this country. We have checks and balances built in to the system to prevent any one branch from becoming too powerful, and we have regular elections so voters can at least feel as if they have some power over what happens — even if they don't have nearly as much power as they might like to think they do.

When Clinton was president, and he was forced to deal with a Republican Congress, he gravitated to the political center and worked out deals with members of the Republican majorities.

For the first two years of his second term, Obama must work with a Republican House (and cajole enough Senate Republicans to prevent filibusters from happening) to get things done.

That's going to be tricky. But it must be done. The alternative is a recession, if not a depression, with massive job losses.

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A Big Election About Small Things

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"If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things."

Barack Obama
2008 Democratic National Convention

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Presidential elections are seldom about what they should be about.

I probably should have learned that on this day in 1972 — or, at least, not long thereafter.

As I have mentioned here before, my mother was a huge supporter of George McGovern, the quixotic Democratic nominee who ran against President Richard Nixon that year. McGovern tried to run on the big issues of the day — the biggest of which was the Vietnam War, which had so divided America four years earlier when Nixon had been elected president.

And I frequently went with Mom when she was campaigning door to door for McGovern that fall.

She admired the fact that McGovern spoke about the difficult issues of war and peace, poverty and prosperity, and, while I don't remember McGovern's loss on this day being a surprise to her, as I mentioned on the occasion of McGovern's death last month, she must have known what was coming. Everyone did.

It was a different time, which is something, I suppose, that younger Americans simply cannot understand any more than they can understand how their elders used to listen to recordings on discs several times the size of modern CDs that were deceptively heavy and could only be played with — of all things — needles.

It was the last election in which the major party nominees did not debate at least once — Nixon had learned his lesson from the experience of debating John F. Kennedy and declined all such offers.

Such a move probably would be greeted by a huge public outcry today. Modern voters expect presidential candidates to debate each other, but it merited only a couple of references by most observers and then it was dropped when it drew no traction.

Neither, for that matter, did the Watergate break–in and coverup. Oh, Watergate was mentioned from time to time, but, as Jason Robards observed in the movie version of "All the President's Men" — "Half the country never even heard of the word 'Watergate.' Nobody gives a s***."

And that is my memory of the general attitude toward the break–in. It was one of those things that may happen in a political campaign. It was deplorable, everyone agreed; the people who participated in the planning and the execution of the plan should be brought to justice, but it wasn't the candidate's fault. The candidate, especially if he was an incumbent, could not possibly be expected to know everything that went on within his campaign organization and in his name.

People today — perhaps foolishly, given what we learned about human nature from that episode in our history — expect better than that from their candidates. They wouldn't stand for any of the old–school shenanigans and dirty tricks that, in hindsight, marked all of Nixon's campaigns in one way or another.

"It was customary, during and after the campaign, to say that the American people did not care," wrote Theodore H. White in "The Making of the President 1972."

"Wise men agreed, and the polls supported them, that it meant little — that Americans had become callous, too cynical to worry about morality in government."

White was torn on the issue in what was the final volume in his "The Making of the President" series. Based on his observations from the campaign trail, White wrote, people were concerned about what they were hearing about the president's men and what they had been up to.

And, based on the number of voters who came to the polls compared to four years earlier, White concluded that Nixon "failed to maximize his potential support."

"[I]t is possible," White wrote, "that at least 3 or 4 million Americans were so disillusioned by both candidates that they chose not to vote at all."

For those who did vote, however, there was "an open choice of ideas, a free choice of directions, and they chose Richard Nixon."

And, while some people did try to make the 1972 election about the big things — the war, the economy, Watergate — my memory is that the Nixon campaign focused on small things — inconsistencies in McGovern's voting record or verbal missteps — and didn't spend too much time talking about what Nixon had done or what he hoped to do.

Nixon had told voters in 1968 that he had a "secret plan" to end the war in six months, a plan he could not reveal because of the sensitivity of the information and the strategy. The war was still going on in 1972. He had failed to achieve the thing that most Americans wanted more than anything else.

If the campaign had been about that, Nixon probably would have faced — in the words of one of his successors — a "one–term proposition." And, privately, Nixon was bitter about the war with which Kennedy and Johnson had saddled him.

There were arguments that Nixon could have made that there had been real improvements on long–term propositions — because ending the war and reviving a sagging economy that was just beginning to experience long–term issues on energy really were long–term problems. It was unrealistic to regard them as anything else.

Of course, promising to end the war in six months was unrealistic and probably ill–advised, but even more ill–advised was any decision to vote based solely on that remark. McGovern did mention that promise from time to time in 1972, but my memory is that most people were dismissive of it. I don't remember any fist fights breaking out over the pledge.

Nixon could — and did — focus on big accomplishments, like forging new relationships with the Chinese and the Russians. But, mostly, his campaign was about little things.

Much like the campaign that just concluded.

While their political philosophies were different, Mitt Romney reminds me a lot of George McGovern — a decent man who sought to speak about big things but was frequently mischaracterized and belittled, first in his own party and then in the general election.

Romney handled it better than McGovern did. He didn't have to drop his running mate, after all. But, nevertheless, his was the first major–party ticket to lose both its home states since the 1972 election.

(Paul Ryan, of course, is a native of Wisconsin, but plausible arguments could be made that Romney's home state could be Michigan, the state of his birth, or Massachusetts, the state that elected him its governor. For the purpose of the argument, though, it doesn't matter. The GOP lost both.)

And Romney didn't lose in a huge landslide. It was a squeaker by historical standards. Obama's successful re–election was the most tepid I have witnessed in my lifetime — and he is the fifth president in that time to be re–elected.

Of course, three sitting presidents (including Gerald Ford, who is an exception because he was never elected president or vice president) have been rejected by the voters, too.

I believed Obama would join them. I was wrong.

He may yet join Nixon. I believe there is a lot about the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi that has not been revealed. I don't know if it will be revealed before Obama's term is over. That may depend upon whether mainstream journalists are willing to explore the troubling questions that have been raised, no matter where those questions may lead them.

It should be a source of enduring shame to journalists the way they have often shilled for the administration and failed to act as the watchdogs of the truth they are supposed to be. (I see more egregious examples of this in broadcast journalism than I do in print — but, unfortunately, Americans seem less inclined to read than ever.)

It was the role of watchdog, perhaps more than any other, that attracted me to journalism when I was young — the dogged determination of the press to pursue Watergate wherever it took them. I hope American journalists will rediscover the value of that role.

Perhaps then, if we allow a big election to be defined by little things, it will not be because the press did not do its job.

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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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And the Winner Will Be ...

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For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by presidential elections.

Mind you, I'm not talking about election campaigns. Modern experience is that political campaigns are nasty, dishonest and undignified — although American history does have a few inspiring tales of elevating campaigns that go a long way toward redeeming the rest.

No, I have never been fascinated by the campaigns. I covered some political campaigns when I was a general assignment reporter, and I know that one political rally is pretty much the same as the next. In fact, with their scripted messages of the day and their identical backdrops, any rallies that take place on the same day really could substitute for any of the others on that evening's news broadcast — and hardly anyone would be the wiser.

What has fascinated me is the numbers that come in on election night, what they say about who we are and what we care about — and the most important numbers of all, of course, the tallies in the Electoral College.

I enjoy analyzing the vote by various demographic groups because it tells us a lot about our priorities, but I guess I have always been more intrigued by the raw state totals that usually determine how each state's electoral votes will be cast. Generations come and go, the faces in the voting lines change but political alliances seldom do.

I suppose that explains why certain states always vote for one party or the other. And I have a healthy respect for the lessons of history.

In the lead–up to this year's elections — in large part, I'm sure, because of our national experience with the recounts of 2000 — some have been openly worrying about the possibility that the popular vote winner will not be the electoral vote winner.

Paul Brandus, for example, recently wrote in The Week about nail–biters in American presidential election history.

And he pointed out something that no one else, to my knowledge, has in this election cycle — the possibility that the electoral vote would be inconclusive and the matter would have to be decided by the Congress.

Brandus wrote about the slim mathematical possibility that both Obama and Romney would finish with 269 electoral votes — one short of the required 270. (Personally, I'm more inclined to believe that a "faithless elector" — or two or three — would prevent a candidate from winning in the Electoral College.)

If that happened, the House would select the president, and the Senate would select the vice president. That is how such an impasse is to be resolved, according to the Constitution.

The catch is that the newly elected Congress — not the one that is presently in power — would make the decisions. Congress has adjourned and is not scheduled to be in session again until January, when the newly elected members will be sworn in.

And their first order of business, in the event of an Electoral College tie, would be to choose the president and vice president.

Most people expect the House to remain in Republican hands — the GOP would have to lose about two dozen seats to lose control of the chamber, which is something that almost never happens (historically), but, in the last three elections, we have seen double–digit seat shifts in the House so it is possible.

However, the fate of the Senate, which is narrowly held by Democrats (who must defend about two–thirds of the seats that will be voted on Tuesday), has been less certain for many observers, but the emerging consensus seems to be the Democrats will hold on to their majority in that chamber.

If that turns out to be the breakdown of the next Congress, Brandus observed, the House would be expected to elect Romney president — and the Senate would be expected to re–elect Vice President Joe Biden. Talk about gridlock.

It's a season for silliness, I suppose. Most of the time, the electoral vote winner is the popular vote winner so, historically speaking, talk of such a split belongs under the heading of worst–case scenario. It is possible but not probable, even in a very close race.

And, usually, a candidate's share of the electoral vote tends to mirror that candidate's share of the popular vote (if not exceed it) as well. But not always. The only requirement for winning a state is to get more votes there than the other guy. It can be by a few hundred votes (see Florida in 2000) or by a million or more (see California, Texas, New York in just about every election in the last 30 years).

For that reason, many political scientists have observed, Democrats (like Al Gore in 2000) may be more vulnerable to a popular vote/electoral vote split because — in recent elections, at least — they have been winning heavily populated states like California and New York by wide margins.

The flip side is that most of the states that are popularly labeled red states these days are primarily smaller states (with the noteworthy exception of Texas) — so if a Republican is winning a majority of the popular vote, recent history suggests that he must be winning (perhaps handily) in the Electoral College because his margins in most states will appear tiny when compared to the Democrat's margins in the larger. more urban states.

(While we're on the topic of silliness, I feel torn between hilarity and horror at the suggestion that the president could postpone the election because of the recent hurricane that devastated the East Coast.

(The Constitution spells out when a federal election is to be held, and only an act of Congress — which is not in session, as I mentioned earlier — could do that. Lawmakers from the interior U.S. almost certainly would sympathize with the plight of the folks in the Northeast but would not see any reason to inconvenience their own constituents, many of whom have already voted early, anyway.

(So I find it hilarious that people even suggest this. It may be in jest or it may be serious. I think both may be at play here because I am sure that at least some are being facetious. But I am inclined to feel horror at the thought that there are citizens out there who not only believe the president possesses such sweeping powers that he can reschedule a national election — but are actually comfortable with one individual having such totalitarian power in a democratic republic.)

Speaking of history, I can't recall a week preceding a presidential election that was quite like last week.

I didn't have access to a wide range of news sources when I was growing up, but I've been online for about 15 years now, and I have witnessed all sorts of columns and articles prior to presidential elections during that time.

And, frankly, I was astonished at the number of post–mortems for the Obama campaign that were appearing in print and online editions of publications last week — almost as if the votes had already been counted.

Steve Huntley of the Chicago Sun–Times wrote that Obama has "eroded" the American dream.

Foremost in these post–mortems was a column by Richard Cohen, who wrote in the Washington Post of watching a documentary about Ethel Kennedy that showed her husband on his trips to Appalachia and Mississippi and how he "brimmed with shock and indignation, with sorrow and sympathy" over the plight of the poor.

Kennedy "was determined," Cohen wrote, "you could see it on his face — to do something about it. I've never seen that look on Barack Obama's face." He lamented that "I once wondered if Obama could be another RFK."

But, Cohen wrote, undoubtedly echoing the thoughts of many, "I wish he was the man I once mistook him for."

Anyway, let's get back to the business at hand.

Back in April, I examined the "emerging electoral map" and tried to explain historical voting patterns.

I started off by dismissing nearly half of the states as sure things for one side or another — and, with only one real exception, I'm standing by that forecast.

Of the sure things, Mitt Romney has 14 states — Alabama (9 electoral votes), Alaska (3), Arkansas (6), Idaho (4), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), Mississippi (6), Nebraska (5), Oklahoma (7), Tennessee (11), Texas (38), Utah (6), Wyoming (3). Total = 120 electoral votes.

Barack Obama has 10 states (and D.C.) — California (55 electoral votes), Connecticut (7), D.C. (3), Hawaii (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), New York (29), Oregon (7), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Washington (12). Total = 145 electoral votes.

The wild card in that group, I feel, is Oregon.

Yes, I know that Obama carried Oregon by more than 16 percentage points in 2008. And I know Democrats have carried Oregon in six straight presidential elections.

But I'm still doubtful about the state.

Last Monday, The Oregonian reported a six–point lead for Obama in its latest statewide poll.

That may sound good to Obama supporters, conditioned as they have been lately to disappearing leads in states they were counting on carrying, but it actually represents a decline from findings in polls taken in the last three or four months. It isn't a huge decline as these things go — and it falls within the typical margin for error so things may not have changed in Oregon.

But slippage would be in keeping with the apparent pattern in most states.

And, even though seven electoral votes from a single state doesn't mean much when there are 531 electoral votes in the other 49 states and the District of Columbia, seven electoral votes might make all the difference in a race that is expected to be as close as this one is believed to be.

(Personally, I don't think it will be as close as many people do.)

So, while I still predict that Oregon will vote for Obama, I also say that, if it is a very close race, Oregon will bear watching in the late–night hours when the votes on the West Coast are being counted.

I'm still inclined to keep Oregon among the sure things — but, in the shifting political climate, I'm not as sure of it as I was.

I labeled the next group of states the probables — states that are likely to vote in a certain way but, for one reason or another, their eventual leaning will remain unclear until the votes are counted on Tuesday.

Romney had nine states in this group: Arizona (11), Colorado (9), Georgia (16), Indiana (11), Montana (3), North Dakota (3), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), West Virginia (5). Total = 70 electoral votes.

I'm inclined to leave those states in the Republican column — including Colorado. Many observers have been listing Colorado as too close to call — but Colorado usually seems to be close. (Well, Obama did carry the state by about nine percentage points in 2008.)

It also seldom votes for Democrats. In the 14 presidential elections before 2008, Colorado only voted for Democrats twice. And it hasn't voted for Democrats in consecutive elections since it supported Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936.

Most recent polls show either candidate with a one–point lead or the two candidates tied. I expect it will be close on election night, but I'm sticking with my original prediction that Romney will carry the state.

Obama has five states among the probables: Delaware (3), Illinois (20), Maine (4), Minnesota (10), New Jersey (14). Total = 51 electoral votes.

I still think Obama will win those five states, but I'm a little dubious about Minnesota and New Jersey.

Minnesota has a long history of supporting Democrats. It hasn't voted for a Republican since Richard Nixon's 49–state landslide in 1972.

A week ago, though, rumors were rampant that Obama was planning a visit to Minnesota, sparking speculation that Democrats were in trouble there. Obama, preoccupied with Hurricane Sandy, didn't go to Minnesota after all, but former President Bill Clinton came instead.

Minnesota voted for Obama by about 10 percentage points four years ago, and it is hard to imagine that it would flip to the Republicans. But Clinton's presence there about a week before the election can only be interpreted as a sign that Democrats are worried.

My next category was the leaners. Like the probables, they can be expected to vote in a certain way — but the chances that they actually will are less than they are for the probables.

Romney has two states in this group: North Carolina (15), Virginia (13). Total = 28 electoral votes.

They were both regarded as too close to call a few months ago, but I felt Obama effectively lost North Carolina when he announced his support for gay marriage the day after North Carolina voters resoundingly rejected it.

Virginia is still considered too close to call by many. But its support for Obama in 2008 was the first time it had voted for a Democrat in more than 40 years — and Virginia hasn't voted for Democrats in back–to–back elections since the 1940s — all of which leads me to believe Virginia will vote — albeit narrowly — for Romney. Especially if George Allen's Senate race is successful.

Obama also had two states among the leaners: Michigan (16), New Mexico (5). Total = 21 electoral votes.

New Mexico looks like it will remain in the Democrats' column, but I'm not so certain about Michigan. That, after all, is where Romney was born and where his father served as governor. Obama did win the state by more than 800,000 votes in 2008 — and a recent Detroit Newspoll showed Obama in the lead — but that lead, which has been cut in half since early October, was within the margin of error.

Ramussen recently found Obama leading in Michigan with 50%. I think Obama can count on it — but it may be late in the evening before he can secure Michigan's electoral votes.

That gives the following electoral vote totals: Romney = 218, Obama = 217. And it leaves eight battleground states — Florida (29), Iowa (6), Missouri (10), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), Ohio (18), Pennsylvania (20), Wisconsin (10) — worth 103 electoral votes.

I designated these states as battlegrounds back in April. Most are still regarded as battlegrounds today; a few are considered reasonably safe for one candidate or another, but I think all are in play to an extent.

Recent polls indicate that Missouri is likely to vote Republican, which would boost Romney's electoral vote total to 228. And, in fact, polls have been suggesting a Romney victory in Missouri was increasingly likely ever since I posted my first glance at the Electoral College.

But the other seven states still are generally regarded as too close to call — even if some polls suggest that one candidate or the other has a modest lead.

So let's look at them, one by one:

• Florida — The race appears close in Florida, with recent polls showing one– or two–point leads for either candidate. Florida voted for Obama four years ago, but the state hasn't voted for Democrats in consecutive elections since the days of FDR and Harry Truman.
  
  I think it will be close – no surprise there — but I think it will be in the Republican column. (Romney = 257, Obama = 217)
• Iowa — The Des Moines Register, which has endorsed Romney, reported Saturday that Obama leads by five points, but he is still below 50%.
  
  It will probably be tight in Iowa, but I think Obama will carry it. (Romney = 257, Obama = 223)
• Nevada — With one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, Nevada seems like fertile ground for Romney, and perhaps it will turn out that way on Tuesday.
  
  But even though the Las Vegas Review Journal, in a sharply worded editorial, endorsed Romney last Thursday, Obama's lead in Nevada appears to be growing.
  
  So I will pick Nevada to vote for Obama. (Romney = 257, Obama = 229)
• New Hampshire — New Hampshire was once considered reliably Republican, but it has voted Democrat in four of the last five elections.
  
  A recent University of New Hampshire poll found the candidates tied at 48–48. Since undecided voters tend to break for the challenger, I will call this state for Romney. (Romney = 261, Obama = 229)
• Ohio — It is an article of faith among political observers that no Republican has won the White House without winning Ohio. Sometimes Republicans have lost the national election in spite of winning Ohio (Richard Nixon in 1960, Tom Dewey in 1944).
  
  Most recent polls — MSNBC, CNN, WeAskAmerica.com — show the president at 50% or better in Ohio. And, without the auto bailout, it is hard to argue that Ohio would be doing as well as it is in the current economic climate.
  
  It is worth noting that Rasmussen says the race is a dead heat. Perhaps it is.
  
  But, right now, I'm inclined to pick Ohio to vote for Obama.
  
  Does that mean Romney will lose? Not necessarily. Twenty years ago, when George H.W. Bush sought a second term, polls showed him leading Bill Clinton in Texas — and political observers pointed out that no Democrat had won the presidency without winning Texas.
  
  But Clinton was elected president twice — and Obama was elected president once — without the support of Texas. A U.S. presidential election is actually 51 individual elections (50 states and the District of Columbia). If Romney loses Ohio, it is only 18 electoral votes — the fewest Ohio has been worth since the days of Andrew Jackson — and that loss can be made up with victories elsewhere. (Romney = 261, Obama =247)
• Pennsylvania — I'm sure no one in the Obama campaign thought Pennsylvania would be up for grabs in the closing days of the election, but I predicted it would back in April — and my reason was the strong Republican showing in the state in the 2010 midterm elections.
  
  Republicans won a U.S. Senate seat and the statehouse.
  
  Recent surveys by Franklin & Marshall and the Philadelphia Inquirer have Obama leading but with a plurality, not a majority.
  
  And, since Pennsylvania was assumed to be a lock for Obama, it was spared the barrage of anti–Romney commercials that flooded other battleground states in the spring and summer — so the voters there had few preconceived notions that Romney had to refute
  
  To be fair, that wasn't an unreasonable conclusion. Pennsylvania voted for Obama by a 10–point margin in 2008, and the state hasn't voted Republican since 1988.
  
  In a close race, Democrats usually hope for a strong turnout in Democrat–leaning Philadelphia to help them win Pennsylvania. But I wonder just how strong the turnout in Philadelphia will be, given its close proximity to the area that was most directly affected by Hurricane Sandy.
  
  I believe few, if any, Americans hope that the pain and suffering caused by the hurricane will influence the election in any way, but, if turnout in Philly is lower than usual — and I'm inclined to think it might be — that could tip the balance of power to Romney. And that is what I think will happen. (Romney = 281, Obama = 247)
• Wisconsin — Usually, Wisconsin could be expected to be even more Democratic than Michigan, perhaps about as Democratic as Minnesota.
  
  But a couple of things make me think Wisconsin will vote for Romney.
  
  For one, Wisconsin has been the site of many recent Republican victories — the 2010 election of Scott Walker as governor and the rejection of the recent recall effort, the 2010 election of Republican Ron Johnson to the U.S. Senate, and the shift of two of its eight House seats from Democrat to Republican hands.
  
  For another, Wisconsin does not usually have a candidate on the national ticket. But this year it has one in Rep. Paul Ryan, who ran 13 percentage points ahead of Obama in his southeast Wisconsin district in 2008.
  
  I think Wisconsin will vote for Romney. (Romney = 291, Obama = 247)

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