Peering Into the Future

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"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

George Santayana
(1863–1952)

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It really is amusing to hear diehard Democrats talking about the permanent damage that would be inflicted on the Republican Party if it cannot settle on a nominee before Easter.

And that, many of them are saying, is what we can expect if Mitt Romney fails to win the Michigan primary on Tuesday.

Granted, losing Michigan would be a bad thing for Romney — for several reasons.

First of all, it is never good when a presidential candidate fails to win his home/native state — just ask Presidents Al Gore (who lost his home state in 2000) and George McGovern (who lost his home state — and damn near everything else — in 1972) — and, while Romney made his name as an adult in Massachusetts and Utah, he grew up in Michigan.

Romney has been criticized by many in his party for not being sufficiently conservative. He's probably been the steadiest of the candidates, tap–dancing his way past the deep holes into which his rivals all seem to fall as soon as they are named the latest not Romney, but he has shown little positive movement within his party, even as the others have, one by one, dropped from the race.

Instead, the next not Romney emerges — and disgruntled Republicans gravitate to the flavor of the month.

Losing the state where he spent his youth could well be interpreted as further evidence to an increasingly skeptical Republican base that Romney can't close the deal.

Second, Michigan is a large state. Presidential candidates who can't win at least some of the largest states usually don't succeed in the general election — and the Republican rank–and–file are hungry for victory this year.

Consequently, the nominee's appeal to big–state (which usually means largely urban and suburban) voters is very important.

The outcomes are generally taken for granted in some large states. For instance, in the last 20 years, Democrats have been able to depend on winning the largest one (California) as well as New York and Pennsylvania and sometimes Michigan and Ohio. That's a pretty sizable base with which to begin in the Electoral College.

Republicans have carried Texas in every election since 1980, and sometimes they carry Florida. The GOP's big–state base isn't as big as the Democrats', but it's still a good start — and I really believe that Republicans are so eager to defeat Obama that they will vote for Romney, if he is the nominee, in spite of their misgivings.

I am convinced that Texas will vote for Romney if he is the nominee — even though most Texas Republicans probably would have preferred Texas Gov. Rick Perry before he dropped out and now are likely to support Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich in the primary, even if it is held in late May (as now appears likely) and the outcome in Texas will have no influence on any other state.

Such a streak is no guarantee, of course. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first Democrat to carry Indiana and Virginia since 1964. In 2000, West Virginia voted for a non–incumbent Republican for the first time since 1928.

It's always possible that Texas will vote for Obama — but not very probable.

Records are made to be broken, and, likewise, electoral win streaks are made to be snapped. From 1904 to 2004, Missouri was on the winning side in every presidential election except one, but the Show–Me State voted for John McCain in 2008.

Missouri may start a new streak of voting with the winning side in 2012, but, until the votes are counted in November, clues to national voter behavior must be found elsewhere.

As polarized as American politics has become, the so–called swing states — the largest of which ordinarily are Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida — are probably the closest things to a bellwether that one is likely to find.

But the Democrats' current dire predictions for the Republicans if they have no presumptive nominee long before their convention in Tampa are not based on bellwethers.

They are based on a flawed faith in the conventional wisdom that once anointed nominees after only a couple of small states (led by New Hampshire) held their primaries.

Extended battles for the nomination were presumed to be fatal to a party's hopes for success because the nominee would be bruised and bloodied by the process — until Obama outlasted Hillary Clinton for the Democrats' nomination in 2008 and went on to be elected.

Of course, he might not have been elected if it had not been for the economic implosion in mid–September 2008. Before that happened, there was considerable angst in the Democratic Party, with some Democrats openly suggesting that Obama should have picked Clinton, not Joe Biden, to be his running mate.

After the economy imploded and was losing jobs at a six–figure monthly pace, the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

Today, I hear Democrats saying that, because recent numbers have been favorable to Obama, he is becoming an increasingly sure thing for re–election. Five months ago, Republicans were saying almost the same thing — except they were talking about how the numbers showed Obama was destined to lose.

Both parties have been on the right track, but they ignore the conventional wisdom I've been hearing since I was in college. It's held up pretty well over the years, and it still seems plenty valid to me.

Here it is — in a nutshell.

My political science professors all used to say that an election that involves an incumbent is always a referendum on that incumbent — and voters make up their minds about incumbents about six months before they go to the polls.

If that part is true, then the window is still open for both Obama and his eventual opponent, whoever that turns out to be. But it will be closing soon.

Here is how things have looked for recent presidents who sought second terms about six months before the voters went to the polls:

• George W. Bush was narrowly re–elected in November 2004.
  
  His second term was such a disaster that it is easy to forget the fact that, in early May 2004, most polls showed his approval ratings just below the 50% mark, roughly even with the number who disapproved.


• Bill Clinton's approval ratings were stuck in the 40s for most of 1995, but he rebounded and, by early May 1996, his approval numbers were in the mid–50s.
  
  He was re–elected by a comfortable margin in November 1996.


• In the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, George H.W. Bush was so popular that none of the top–tier Democrats wanted to run against him in 1992.
  
  But, by May 1992, a sour economy had taken its toll, and Bush's approval numbers were in the low 40s. He lost his bid for a second term to Clinton that November.


• Ronald Reagan appears to have become the role model for all modern presidents and presidential wannabes — regardless of party.
  
  Republicans have been comparing themselves to Reagan for a long time, but recently Democrats have been getting into the act. Obama's supporters have been holding out Reagan as proof that a president can overcome high unemployment.
  
  With an unemployment rate that is significantly higher than the one that existed when Reagan asked for a second term, that isn't hard to understand, but it might be hard to duplicate. Reagan's approval numbers in May 1984, when joblessness was declining sharply, were in the low 50s and on the rise. He was re–elected in a landslide.


• Obama and his supporters may try to compare their administration to Reagan's, but it is most often compared these days to the administration of Jimmy Carter — and the Carter presidency offers a cautionary tale for Obama.
  
  In May 1980, Carter's approval was in the low 40s. It was the last time Gallup found 40% or more of respondents approving of the job he was doing.
  
  Gas was selling for around $1.25 a gallon in May 1980. The price had been about 85 cents a gallon five or six months earlier.
  
  There were other factors involved in Carter's unsuccessful bid for a second term that fall, but the impact of the higher gas prices on American budgets can't be discounted.

Keep an eye on gas prices in the next couple of months — and see what kind of influence they are having on Obama's approval numbers.

I've heard experts speculate that gas prices in most parts of the country will be around $4/gallon by early May — which is, of course, when the higher prices usually kick in prior to the summer driving season. If that happens, I expect Obama's approval numbers to drop to 40 or lower.

And if that happens, it won't really matter who the presumptive GOP nominee is. He will win.

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Palin's Pronouncement

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As hesitant as I am to give Sarah Palin credit for, well, anything, I actually do feel compelled to give her some credit for her observation that a brokered convention would not necessarily be a bad thing.

Folks who perpetuate the idea that it would be bad for the Republican Party, she said, have "an agenda" — which, admittedly, sounds a lot like her usual conspiracy theory talk defaming everyone in the media or the party establishment — but suspend your disbelief and/or skepticism for a few minutes, OK?

While I won't rule out the possibility that Palin is playing the rest of us for a bunch of suckers and laying the groundwork for a "Draft Palin" movement in Tampa later this year, I will concede that she makes a valid point or two, especially when you consider recent electoral history.

Four years ago, the Democrats' nominating process dragged into the summer, and the pundits said it would mortally wound the nominee.

And, I suppose, it could have if 2008 had been an ordinary political year. But it wasn't.

You couldn't tell that right after the conventions. In the first half of September, the Democrats were struggling in the polls, and there was talk that Barack Obama had made a tactical error in choosing Joe Biden to be his running mate. Some Democrats openly fretted that Hillary Clinton should have been the running mate.

Seemed like business as usual — perhaps all those months of infighting really had taken their toll.

But then the economy imploded, and voters became determined to change directions. In the last six weeks of that campaign, the tide turned irreversibly to the Democrats. If Obama had needed two ballots or more to win the nomination in August, it probably wouldn't have mattered by Election Day 2008.

From the vantage point of 2012 (and in the eventual long–term context of history), the outcome of the 2008 election might look inevitable, but it was hardly certain at the time.

Anyway, Palin's assertion challenged the (pardon the pun) conventional wisdom that conventions do not serve the same purpose in the TV age that they did in the first 150 years of the republic's existence.

In the last half century, conventions have been about making the best possible use of the free air time the parties received. Organizers of modern conventions want things to be decided outside the view of the cameras. They want their primetime coverage to present a picture of a united, harmonious party to the national audience, enthusiastic about its nominees and its platform and ready to do battle in the general election campaign.

They don't want their conventions to be discussions about important issues that engage the viewers instead of entertaining them, and they don't want prolonged battles for the nomination. They want bands and balloons and cheering delegates. Perhaps they are fearful that if a convention goes past the first ballot — and previously committed delegates are free to vote in any way that they please — that is an invitation to chaos.

But that is not necessarily so.

Democrats have been holding presidential nominating conventions since 1832. Republicans have been holding such conventions since 1856. Originally, parties made important decisions at their conventions. They nominated their candidates for president and vice president, that's true, but they also defined who they were and what they stood for in their platforms.

In a nation that was still growing, still emerging and constantly facing new challenges, that was important. It helped Americans decide which directions they wanted to take, what kind of country they wanted to have. It was the essence of democracy.

The platform–building process is still important today, but the debates (such as they are) take place weeks before the convention — under the watchful eyes of the presumptive nominee's staff.

And their overwhelming concern is how it will look on television.

Before television came along, few Americans saw what went on at a party's convention, and most read about it through the media filter. It didn't matter to them if the acceptance speeches were delivered before 10 p.m. or at 3 in the morning — or if it took several ballots to decide on a presidential nominee.

The modern assumption is that a multi–ballot convention will be a negative. But Palin says it doesn't have to be, and I agree with her on that.

A convention in which viewers do not know the outcome could generate a lot of interest, and I think that would tend to attract viewers, kind of like an athletic contest between evenly matched teams.

No organizer wants to see something like what unfolded in the streets of Chicago in 1968, but that doesn't necessarily have to be the image the country sees. Instead, it could see a group of Americans calmly and rationally discussing the pros and cons of issues that affect their countrymen and the candidates who propose to lead them.

In the past, multi–ballot conventions have sometimes produced compromise nominees, and that is one possible scenario. No one really knows what to expect, in no small part because neither party has had a multi–ballot convention since 1952, when TV was still in its infancy.

The Republicans' most recent experiences with multi–ballot conventions — in 1948, when the GOP needed three ballots to settle on Tom Dewey for the second straight election, and in 1940, when the Republicans picked Wendell Willkie after six ballots — weren't especially good.

Dewey was defeated by Harry Truman (Mitt Romney has been compared to Dewey), and Willkie lost to FDR (Newt Gingrich has suggested that this year's convention might resemble the one in 1940).

But in the pre–television days, open conventions were known to produce Republican nominees who won sometimes — Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, James Garfield in 1880, Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and Warren Harding in 1920 — so it is not unprecedented.

Likewise, multi–ballot conventions produced some winners on the Democratic side — James Polk in 1844, Franklin Pierce in 1852, James Buchanan in 1856, Grover Cleveland in 1884, Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and FDR in 1932.

Don't misunderstand. There is no guarantee that an open convention will produce a winner. Nine multi–ballot Democratic conventions produced losers as did three other Republican ones (in addition to the two previously mentioned).

And you can add political scientist and historian to the lengthy (and still growing) list of things that Palin is not.

But this much is certain. Both the winners and the losers of the last 14 presidential elections were nominated in one ballot

Could a multi–ballot nominee fare any worse?

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The Inevitability of Mitt Romney

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In the aftermath of Mitt Romney's victories in the Iowa caucus last week and the New Hampshire primary just two days ago, I've been hearing it all:

• Romney's nomination is inevitable.


• That may be so, but he can't beat Barack Obama.


• In fact, opinions about whether Romney can or can not win the election are all over the map. Everyone seems to have an opinion on that.

It has long been said that Republicans give their presidential nominations to the person who is next in line — in other words, whoever finished second the last time there was no incumbent.

In 1988, it went to George H.W. Bush, who served for eight years as Ronald Reagan's vice president after coming in second to Reagan in the GOP's 1980 presidential nomination race.

The runnerup to Bush 41 in '88 was Bob Dole, who was given the 1996 nomination after Bush 41 had been elected and then sought a second term.

In 2008, John McCain, who lost to George W. Bush in 2000, won the nomination. And now, it's Romney's turn.

That doesn't sit well with conservative Republicans, who frequently complain that their party's nominees aren't real conservatives.

Granted, I consider myself a centrist. I'm not qualified to pass judgment on anyone's conservative credentials, but I was a bit taken aback yesterday when I heard a conservative acquaintance loudly asserting that — with the exceptions of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan — no Republican nominee in the last half century was a conservative.

I mean, I always thought that Richard Nixon was a conservative, but this guy pointedly disputed that. I suppose conservatives still hold it against Nixon that he created the Environmental Protection Agency, but they voted for him, anyway, when the alternative was much farther to the left.

That, it seems to me, was always part of Nixon's problem. Republicans liked him well enough to vote for him, but they didn't love him, and Nixon wanted to be loved.

Maybe that is why I was drawn to a comment by Ari Fleischer, Bush 43's press secretary, for CNN.com.

"Republicans like Romney," Fleischer writes. "They think he's qualified. But they don't love Romney and many worry about his core convictions."

Polls tend to reflect that. Roughly three–fourths of Republicans are said to favor anyone who is "not Romney," but they can't agree on who that should be.

No one can say Republicans haven't examined all their options. Every other Republican in the field has been given his/her moment under the microscope and been found to be lacking. Romney may prove to be a flawed nominee — or a flawed president — but the conservatives have not coalesced behind an alternative, and, barring an unexpected twist of fate, I'm inclined to agree with Charlie Cook, who is among those who say Romney's nomination is inevitable.

Things might have been different if one of the party's right–wing heavyweights had entered the race, but they all declined to do so.

I don't know if Romney's nomination really is inevitable. I've been studying presidential politics for a long time, and I know that just about anything is possible — until it becomes a mathematical impossibility.

If Romney manages to win South Carolina, he won't be a mathematical lock to win the nomination. But most of his challengers will find it difficult to continue with financial resources drying up and the top political operatives gravitating to the apparent winner.

In the meantime, Romney will gain momentum in his drive for inevitability.

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The Bland Leading the Bland

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When the Republicans gathered for their 1956 national convention, they were there to renominate a president who had been far from a sure thing to seek a second term almost a year earlier.



President Eisenhower had suffered a heart attack on Sept. 24, 1955, and he had undergone surgery related to his Crohn's disease early in 1956. Thus, there was some uncertainty whether Eisenhower would seek re–election — at least initially.



However, the president bounced back, and speculation in Republican circles shifted to the question of whether the vice president, Richard Nixon, would be retained.



As a matter of fact, that was a reasonable source for guesswork — even though it seems that, in modern times, almost no vice president has been spared such speculation when the president was about to begin a re–election campaign. At least, no incumbent vice president in my memory has been considered a lock for renomination.



Until the president took it upon himself to put such gossip to rest.



Whether most, all or any of the presidents in my lifetime really were considering new running mates, I do not know. The only president in my life who actually chose a running mate other than the incumbent vice president was Gerald Ford — and neither he nor the vice president had been elected.



But there is enough evidence available that we can be reasonably certain that, in 1956, Eisenhower was interested in a new running mate.



Eisenhower, it has been said, believed Nixon was too partisan and too controversial. Ike's party had lost control of both houses of Congress in the 1954 midterm elections, and he may have wanted a vice president he thought would work better with Democrats.



Some historians have said Eisenhower approached Nixon about taking a Cabinet post. But Nixon was popular with the base of the Republican Party and, if he was asked to withdraw, he must have declined.



It's possible, too, that Ike never asked Nixon to fall on his sword.



Anyway, in the end, Nixon remained on the ticket. What's more, he re–defined the vice presidency. He used it as a platform from which he campaigned for numerous Republican candidates in 1954. In the process, he assembled a devoted network of grassroots Republican allies across the country — which may have been the reason why Eisenhower relented and kept him on the ticket. He may have wished to avoid a confrontation within the party.



That, in fact, was how Nixon built the array of connections that led to his nomination and election in 1968 — by campaigning for Republicans from coast to coast in the 1966 midterm elections. And, in 1968, Nixon pioneered the "Southern strategy" that continues to influence American politics.



But, in 1956, all that was still in the future.



It may be hard for 21st century observers to fathom, but there really was nothing particularly extreme about the 1956 Republican platform. In fact, the 1956 convention was largely absent any drama to speak of.



Consequently, when the Republicans gathered in San Francisco, there was no suspense about the identities of the nominees. There really wasn't much suspense about anything. It seems to have been a largely by–the–script convention; Eisenhower was renominated by acclamation.



But the historical perspective is fascinating — for the Republican Party that so gleefully renominated Eisenhower 55 years ago is very different today. Passages from Ike's acceptance speech testify to that.



Eisenhower may have been a rather bland, plain vanilla president, but he did possess some beliefs that were bold even for his time — and almost certainly would be considered too liberal by modern GOP standards.



"Our party detests the technique of pitting group against group for cheap political advantage," Eisenhower told the delegates.



He also said, "The Republican Party is the party of the future because it is the party that draws people together, not drives people apart."



One can only wonder what Ike would think of today's Republican Party.

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