A Ride in a Tank

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The Saturday Night Live parodies of presidential debates sometimes seem like they've been a part of presidential campaigns forever — even though the SNL parodies, like the debates themselves, haven't been regular parts of presidential campaigns for quite 40 years yet.

Twenty–five years ago, the debate parodies were still evolving, but they had already established themselves as truly (and humorously) insightful. And I thought one of the best examples came in a 1988 parody when, after Dana Carvey gave a spot–on impression of a typical George H.W. Bush meandering, cliche–ridden response, Jon Lovitz (as Michael Dukakis) shrugged his shoulders on rebuttal and said, "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy."

There were times that fall when I couldn't help wondering the same thing.

And then there were days like this one when I knew why he lost. For it was on this day in 1988 that Dukakis took his ill–advised ride in a tank, presumably to show the voters he was tough, not a wimp, but he only managed to look ridiculous.

It happened at the General Dynamics Land Systems plant in Sterling Heights, Mich. Dukakis came to participate in a photo opp in an M1 Abrams tank.

As I say, the idea probably was to make Dukakis look tough and assertive, but he never really looked comfortable — sort of like Calvin Coolidge when he did a 1920s photo opp in a Native American headdress.

It was a disaster for Dukakis but a bounty for Bush. The Bush campaign of 1988 — under the leadership of Lee Atwater — never hesitated to exploit a perceived weakness in the opposition.

And, to misquote a memorable line from Saddam Hussein, Dukakis' tank ride was the mother of all political weaknesses.

The Willie Horton–inspired commercials (of which I will have more to say next week) get most of the attention in the accounts of that campaign, and they certainly deserve their own chapter in the history of race relations in America, but the Dukakis–in–the–tank commercial may have been the most effective of the campaign because it so neatly capitalized on everything that made voters uneasy about the Democrats' nominee.

He was perceived as stiff and passionless, a typical wishy–washy, appeasing liberal when it came to things like national defense.

At a time when voters were having to select the successor for Ronald Reagan (who, even in his late 70s, was perceived as being macho, a cowboy, standing tall on the world's stage) being tough and assertive was a clear plus — but being a phony was a definite minus. Dukakis came across as being phony, as not being a genuine leader.

And Dukakis' photo opp wound up reinforcing the negative image the Dukakis campaign intended to disprove.

In other words, you can't smear lipstick on a pig and call it a trophy wife.

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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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Classless

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"Your first time shouldn't be with just anybody. You want to do it with a great guy. It should be with a guy with beautiful … somebody who really cares about and understands women."

Lena Dunham
Obama campaign commercial

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It's amusing to me, the outrage that has greeted the Lena Dunham commercial for the re–election of Barack Obama.

It's amusing because those who are outraged act as if this was unexpected. But how could it be unexpected when the Obama campaign has spent most of its time and money this election cycle pursuing irrelevant arguments — the most recent examples being the president's indignation over Big Bird, binders and bayonets — when there are so many more urgent problems in this country?

Like, for example, the war on women. With so much attention being paid to contraceptives and whether taxpayers should pay for the availability of contraceptive devices for women, with the Obama campaign shamelessly running advertisements that focus on women's "lady parts" as the only factor in a woman's voting decision, it can't surprise anyone when the campaign unveils, in the waning days of that campaign, an advertisement that compares voting to losing one's virginity.

It doesn't surprise me. I understand what's going on. Obama's support among women is slipping, and he wants to prop up that part of the winning coalition from 2008.

But, historically speaking, that was always going to be a tough coalition to keep together.

In a vain attempt to prevent the inevitable, the Lena Dunham commercial is designed to appeal not just to young women but young people in general. They're all part of that 2008 coalition — but, while women's participation rate has been consistent over the years, participation of the young has been spotty.

Until the Obama campaign of 2008, young people (generally described as those between 18 and 29) didn't have a strong record when it came to voting. It went way up in 2008 — much to the astonishment of longtime political observers — but no less than NPR and the Los Angeles Times report a decline in interest among young voters.

That surge of young voters who pushed Obama over the top four years ago? It ain't gonna happen again. But the Obama campaign insists that lightning can strike twice in the same place — you just have to help it along a little.

Presidents are notoriously slow to recognize when they have lost the consent of the governed — so I don't know how much input Obama has in all this, especially with that nasty storm churning along the East Coast and forcing him to do his job.

But I gather that Nolan Finley of the Detroit News may be on to something when he opines, "[T]he president's campaign is now driven by desperation. ... Vulgar is part of the repertoire; Obama called Romney a 'bullsh—er' in an interview. Very presidential."

Actually, that language is mild compared to the language some of Obama's surrogates have been using. Still, I have trouble imagining any president in my lifetime — other than, perhaps, Richard Nixon — using an expletive to describe his political opponent in an interview setting.

It is beneath the dignity of the office — if not the man who occupies it.

But apparently it isn't beneath the dignity of this president's surrogates.

Like Samuel L. Jackson, for example, who recently implored the audience, in an Obama commercial, to "Wake the f*** up!"

I understand why some people find Dunham's commercial offensive. It encourages women to vote for the candidate who makes them tingle between their legs above all else.

"Before, I was a girl," says Dunham — who, in the interest of full disclosure, is 26 but sounds like a teenager — of that first vote experience. "Now I was a woman."

Nearly 100 years ago, the 19th Amendment gave women — not girls — the right to vote. It is a responsibility that should be taken seriously.

Perhaps someday science will give us effective means to test people — both men and women — for emotional and psychological (not just chronological) maturity before they can be registered and allowed to vote.

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The Short, Unhappy Candidacy of Tom Eagleton

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We've reached the point in the presidential campaign when challengers select their running mates and incumbents (presumably) decide whether to keep theirs.

As I have said before, I don't expect Barack Obama to drop Joe Biden from his ticket — even though, as always, there are those in the president's party who advocate that — so there is probably little for Democrats to gain from this.

But Mitt Romney would be well advised to pay attention.

Forty years ago, only two weeks had passed since the McGovern–Eagleton ticket had been nominated by the Democrats to challenge the Nixon–Agnew ticket in the fall.

Things had gotten a little out of hand at the convention, and the presidential nominee wasn't able to give his acceptance speech until well after most people on the American mainland had gone to bed.

Most people, even the most optimistic of the Democrats, probably did not think that McGovern had much of a chance of defeating Richard Nixon. Nixon's approval ratings that summer ranged from the upper 50s to the low 60s.

When a president enjoys that kind of popularity about four months before the election, it usually suggests that a landslide is on the horizon — and Nixon's approval numbers in the summer of 1972 exceeded Reagan's in the summer of 1984 and were roughly the same as Clinton's in 1996.

(Both Reagan and Clinton were re–elected.)

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Nevertheless, while Democrats might have been resigned to the idea that they were going to lose, they had reason to believe, as they left their convention in Miami, that they could win eight or 10 states — not just the state of Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, which is all the Democrats won that fall.

There was reason, in other words, for Democrats to believe that the nation would not tune them out before Labor Day, that their presidential ticket could at least keep up the pretense of being competitive long enough for their congressional candidates to get a foothold.

But that was before the train wreck of the Eagleton candidacy.

I guess the potential for the train wreck was there all along. The day after he clinched the presidential nomination, McGovern approached just about every big–name Democrat about the second spot on his ticket, and all turned him down. Time was running short so McGovern took the advice of Sen. Gaylord Nelson and offered it to Missouri Sen. Tom Eagleton.

Nelson wasn't the first to suggest Eagleton, only the latest. As McGovern observed in an op–ed piece he wrote for the New York Times four years ago, Eagleton clearly wanted the spot. He had been lobbying for it, but McGovern was hesitant to offer it because "I didn't know Eagleton very well."

His first choice had been Sen. Edward Kennedy, but Kennedy turned him down and recommended Eagleton. McGovern's next choice was Sargent Shriver, who also turned him down and also recommended Eagleton. Similar stories unfolded with almost every person who was offered the spot on the ticket.

For awhile, the possibility of offering the spot to TV news anchor Walter Cronkite was discussed. Cronkite, as McGovern observed, had been named the most admired man in America, and the idea of having him on the ticket was "intriguing."

Eventually, McGovern and his staff dismissed the idea as "too unrealistic."

"I later learned from Walter that he would have accepted," McGovern wrote. "I wish we had chosen him."

Of that, there can be no doubt.

Despite whatever misgivings he may have had, McGovern offered the spot to Eagleton, who had assured the nominee's political director that "there was nothing in [Eagleton's] background that would be considered troublesome." He offered the spot to Eagleton 15 minutes before his deadline for announcing his choice.

But haste makes waste, the old saying says, and Eagleton had concealed a few things.

• It turned out that Eagleton had been treated for exhaustion and depression — including electroshock therapy.
• He had been taking strong anti–psychotic drugs.
• When McGovern saw a copy of Eagleton's medical records, he noted words like depression and suicidal tendencies.

Times have changed. In 2012, Americans are more tolerant of many things than they were in 1972.

And the revelation of a history of depression might not carry the same stigma today that it did then.

But the reaction that Eagleton encountered was hostile, fearful. In hindsight, it was inevitable that McGovern would have to drop his running mate.

But it wasn't that simple. There were complications.

He was hesitant, McGovern said later, to remove Eagleton from the ticket immediately because his daughter had suffered from depression, and he was concerned about how she would react.

That has a noble sound to it, but it was hard to reconcile with public actions — not unlike when Nixon's former attorney general and Watergate co–conspirator, John Mitchell, announced he was stepping down as director of Nixon's re–election campaign to spend more time with his wife.

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[Bob] Woodward asked several members of the [Washington] Post's staff ... if they believed the resignation was unconnected to Watergate. They did.

The next day, metropolitan editor Harry Rosenfeld frowned and told Woodward, "A man like John Mitchell doesn't give up all that power for his wife."

Bob Woodard and Carl Bernstein

All the President's Men (1974)

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Similarly, I suppose, a man doesn't give up a major party's vice presidential nomination unless the rattling from the skeletons in his closet becomes too noisy.

In late July 1972, McGovern infamously announced that he was supporting his running mate "1000 percent," but, by the end of the month, Eagleton was off the ticket, and Shriver agreed to replace him.

In military parlance, McGovern had surrendered the high ground to Nixon — and virtually without a fight.

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Goodbye and Good Luck

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Five years ago, I was a John Edwards supporter.

I had one of his bumper stickers on my vehicle, and I believed he was the best hope for the country.

The economic meltdown hadn't happened yet, and my assessment at that time, in the summer of 2007, was that the American public simply wasn't ready to elect a black president — or a female president.

I was a Democrat at the time, and I did not think either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton was the answer for the nation.

I believed the time would come for that, but the time wasn't right. I still didn't think the time was right when the meltdown happened in the autumn of 2008, and the major parties had already nominated Obama and John McCain.

That meltdown completely changed the nature of the 2008 campaign — and I think it is clear that it will heavily influence the 2012 campaign as well. But that is another story.

The story today is about Edwards' acquittal on one count and the jury's deadlock on the other counts in his corruption trial in Greensboro, N.C.

Much of the post–trial discussion has concerned whether the prosecution will attempt to re–try Edwards on the other five counts.

I do not think that is going to happen. I mean, the prosecution spent a lot of money on this trial and came away empty–handed. Many of the jurors probably will be interviewed now, and the weaknesses of the case will be revealed — which could, conceivably, lead prosecutors to pursue a conviction again with a new strategy.

But a Raleigh defense attorney told the Greensboro News–Record that he, too, thinks that is unlikely — and for the same reason as I do.

"They got their best witnesses, their best evidence and the judge ruled in their favor on all major evidentiary issues," he said. "The jury didn't believe them."

The jurors clearly didn't go for the case presented on the third count, which dealt with money that was given to the campaign by a wealthy heiress. It was the only one on which they all agreed.

And the prosecution's case on that count was probably the strongest one it had — which really isn't saying much. I'm no lawyer, and I didn't watch and/or read every report on this case, but I never felt the prosecution established its case. And I'm dubious that it will be able to do so in a do–over.

When I was a reporter covering trials in the county where I lived and worked, I learned a lot about the judicial system, lessons that seem to be repeated over and over again.

One lesson I learned was that there is no reliable way to predict what a jury will do. Don't believe me? Ask the experts who believed O.J. would be convicted of a double homicide or who were convinced that Casey Anthony murdered her daughter and there was no way she would escape the long arm of the law.

But both were acquitted.

And there are other such cases, some that only get local attention and are not the subjects of national attention but are still astonishing when they result in unanticipated verdicts.

Veteran court watchers look at jurors' body language during testimony and closing arguments and try to interpret what they are thinking, whether they have made up their minds. And I remember that such veterans did not hesitate to tell me, when I was a reporter, what they thought a quick verdict meant or what one that took several days' worth of deliberations to reach meant.

But, at best, their conclusions were and are only educated guesses.

Prosecutors may one day bring Edwards before a new jury and charge him with the remaining counts, but don't look for that right away. Their gun is out of bullets and, unless they come up with a new bullet that is sure to bring down their prey, I don't expect to see him in court on these charges again.

Another thought struck me as I watched Edwards' press conference this afternoon.

He said all the right things. His problems were of his own doing, he said, no one else's. In spite of that, though, God is not finished with him yet, he said. "I really believe he thinks there's still some good things I can do."

Perhaps Edwards is right. Perhaps God is not finished with him.

But I am.

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