Why We Can't Wait

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"I'm at the start of my administration. One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable. You know, I've got four years. And ... a year from now I think people are gonna see that we're starting to make some progress. But there's still gonna be some pain out there. If I don't have this done in three years, then there's gonna be a one-term proposition."

Barack Obama
Today Show
Feb. 2, 2009

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Um, well, the fact is that, in February 2010, unemployment was at 10.4%.

And, logically, it follows that most people did not see progress at that time.

Now, to be fair, no one can see into the future so it is understandable that Barack Obama's forecasts could be a little off. I don't think anyone would have faulted him if there was an impression that his policies had merely stabilized the situation, that there was still work to be done. He could even have been forgiven if unemployment hadn't been entirely tamed yet.

He isn't, after all, an economist. He had no relevant experience in that area prior to his election to the presidency.

Nevertheless, I think something just about everyone can agree on is that stewardship of the economy is an important part of the president's job description. Some presidents are fortunate enough to preside during boom times, others do not, but most receive more credit/blame than they truly deserve.

One thing is certain, it seems to me: If someone chooses to seek the office, he/she must realize that the economy could play a huge role in his/her presidency. That includes the unemployment rate and pursuing policies that encourage job creation and economic growth.

Unemployment was about 6.5% when Obama was elected in November 2008, and it rose to about 8.5% by the time he took the oath of office in January 2009. That's an increase of two full percentage points during the presidential transition period alone — in a nation in which two percentage points represents nearly half of what has been a typical monthly unemployment rate (not the increase) in the last half century.

Then, in Obama's first year as president, unemployment went up another two percentage points.

Is it any wonder that Americans were frightened? A prudent chief executive would put that consideration above his ego and shift gears when it became clear that a policy was not performing as expected. That's what Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression. He was never wedded to a single approach and was open to new ideas.

But Obama has concluded — somehow — that he must remain committed to his original policies, even when they prove to be failures, because abandoning them is a reflection on him.

After his party lost the Senate seat that had been held for so long by Ted Kennedy, Obama made noises about emphasizing jobs — but quickly returned to his obsession over health care. Unemployment was seldom mentioned until Obama announced his candidacy for re–election last spring.

Obama reminded me then — and still reminds me today — of Charles Emerson Winchester, the smug narcissistic surgeon from the M*A*S*H TV series who once injected a patient with curare, mistaking it for a sedative, and his colleagues rushed in to save the day.

While the other doctors fought to revive the patient, Charles could only think of how it affected him. "Do you think I want this boy to die?" he asked at one point. "It would be the worst thing that ever happened to me."

Many of Obama's supporters will point out that employment has been dropping (albeit slowly) in recent months. But I caution everyone to wait a couple of months and see if this pattern continues. My thinking is that most, if not all, of the recent hiring was due to the Christmas shopping season — which many retailers, eager to erase the memories of recent lackluster Christmas seasons, began promoting in October, if not September.

There is little demand for department store Santas or additional delivery help in January or February, and my expectation is that unemployment will begin to move up again — or, at best, remain where it is.

But even if it remains where it is, that is about where it was when Obama took office — and that was already higher than Obama said it would ever be under his economic policies when he was running for president the first time.

The economy had turned sour less than a year before Obama was elected, and many people were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when he took office.

But it's more than three years later now, and those who have been without full–time work throughout the Obama presidency are running out of patience. They ran out of unemployment benefits long ago.

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Before 2012 is over, Americans will be forced to ask themselves Ronald Reagan's famous question from his 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter — "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

That's what will ultimately decide this year's election — no matter how much the Democrats may insist that the previous administration was to blame for the bad economy or ridicule this year's crop of GOP candidates.

The voters passed judgment on the origin of the wretched economy four years ago. Obama was chosen to deal with it.

Obama was given four years to prove himself. It's the same amount of time that every president has been given, no more, no less.

At the end of the four years, the voters may be asked to renew the president's contract. They aren't always asked to do so. Sometimes the incumbent is prevented from seeking another term because he has already served two. Occasionally, the incumbent has not sought another term.

This incumbent announced his intention to seek a second term nearly a year ago.

The election in November will be about how well he has dealt with the economy he inherited but for which he has hesitated to take responsibility.

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.

The Battle for the Senate

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times.

Practically since the last vote was counted in the 2010 midterm elections, supporters of the administration have bemoaned the difficulty of accomplishing anything with this Congress. Barack Obama can't do anything with this do–nothing Congress, they say.

I find myself struggling to follow the logic.

If the administration has been unable to accomplish its objectives because the Congress — more specifically, the House because that is the chamber that is controlled by the Republicans — has been obstructing its efforts, then it seems to me there are really only two options:

1. Change the president to one who will work with the Congress or


2. Change the majority in Congress to one that will work with the president.

If the American people decide collectively that they want cooperation between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, the former seems more likely than the latter.

I mean, for Democrats to control both chambers of Congress, they would need to reverse the outcome of the midterm House elections, and that's a very tall order.

In 2010, Republicans took 64 seats from the Democrats. It wouldn't be necessary for Democrats to win that many to reclaim control of the House — unless the objective was not merely to win control of it but to regain the margin Democrats enjoyed in Obama's first two years in office.

To seize an extremely narrow majority (but a majority nevertheless) in the House, Democrats would need to increase their total by 25 seats in November. That certainly isn't impossible. Americans have taken at least 21 House seats from one party and given them to the other in the last three elections — but two of those elections were midterm election years, not presidential election years.

Historically, such turnover in Congress typically happens in midterm elections.

The party of an incumbent president who is seeking another term usually wins a few House seats in the process, whether the president wins or not, but only one such incumbent in the last 60 years has seen his party win as many seats as Democrats need to capture the House in 2012.

And no one has been suggesting that Democrats are likely to do that.

Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball indicates that Republicans currently are likely to hold 234 seats, which is 16 more than they need to ensure a majority in 2013 and 2014. Democrats can expect to hold 186. A total of 15 seats are regarded as tossups.

The Rothenberg Political Report says only six House seats are "pure tossups" — and there are five more, although Rothenberg indicates that those seats are leaning, however slightly, to one party or the other.

Well, one thing is certainly clear. Barring the development of something totally unexpected, the numbers just don't seem to be there to flip the House back to the Democrats.

That doesn't faze some of the Democrats I know.

It's no secret that Congress isn't popular, but many Democrats appear to be gambling that, because of that unpopularity, not only will Obama be re–elected but the voters, frustrated by gridlock, will give him a Congress that will work with him.

Don't hold your breath — at least on the latter — writes Alan Abramowitz for Sabato's Crystal Ball.

"[D]espite the abysmal approval ratings that Congress has been receiving," Abramowitz writes, "2012 will not be an anti–incumbent election. That's because opinions about the performance of Congress and opinions about whether most congressional incumbents deserve to be re–elected have little or no influence on the outcomes of congressional elections."

Sweeping losses in the House in a presidential election year (in which a 25–seat turnover is possible) tend to happen when the president (or his surrogate) is in trouble with the voters — in 2008, for example, when Obama was elected after eight years of Republican rule, and in 1980, when Jimmy Carter lost in a landslide.

If a change is going to come in Congress, it seems more likely to come in the Senate, where the Democrats' once filibuster–proof majority was reduced significantly in the 2010 midterms but they still clung to a bare majority.

Only 51 members of the Senate are Democrats, and two independent members of the chamber typically vote with the Democrats, giving them 53 seats. Forty–seven members of the chamber are Republicans.

It's safe to say that — numerically, at least — the bar for success is much lower in the Senate.

If Obama is re–elected, Republicans would need to win four Senate seats to have control of both chambers. That might be easier said than done, but incumbents who win re–election have been known to lose some ground in the Senate simultaneously. Bill Clinton's Democrats lost three Senate seats when he was re–elected in 1996, and Ronald Reagan's Republicans lost a single Senate seat in 1984.

If Obama is defeated, Republicans would need to win only three seats. That would produce a 50–50 tie, but the Republicans would have effective control of the chamber because the new vice president, who would be responsible for casting any tie–breaking votes, would be a Republican.

The fortunes of the individual presidential nominees in certain states could influence the outcome of the battle for the Senate. Rothenberg observes that ticket splitting, in which someone votes for the nominee of one party at the top of the ticket but votes for nominees from the other party in races down the ballot, is "increasingly rare" in America.

Thus, the trend to straight–ticket voting should work in Obama's favor in places like Hawaii and Massachusetts. Both states have long histories of supporting Democrats for president, and both will have Senate races this year. Logically, both seats should be in Democratic hands after the votes are counted, but both are a bit shaky.

In Hawaii, Democratic incumbent Daniel Akaka is retiring, and in Massachusetts, Scott Brown is running for a full six–year term after winning last year's special election to succeed Ted Kennedy. Obama's presence on the ballot could help his party retain — or regain — those seats.

But Obama could just as easily hurt Democratic prospects in states like Missouri, Montana, Nebraska and North Dakota, Rothenberg says. Presently, Democrats hold all four seats, but two are retiring, and those seats are regarded as likely to flip to the Republicans. The incumbents are running in the other two states, and those races are regarded as tossups by both Sabato and Rothenberg.

Nebraska was already likely to elect a Republican senator before incumbent Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson opted to retire, Sabato writes, so that didn't significantly alter the terrain, and that certainly makes sense, given the state's electoral history. But Nelson's decision "makes a Republican takeover of the Senate a little more likely," Sabato observes.

The task could be made even easier in the weeks and months ahead — and Rothenberg points out that it all could come down to half a dozen states that are considered battlegrounds in the presidential race — and also happen to have Senate races on the ballot: Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Five of those seats (all but Nevada's) are currently held by Democrats, and three of those Democrats (the ones from New Mexico, Virginia and Wisconsin) are retiring.

New Mexico may be small, but it bears watching. With a reputation for being a bellwether (it's been on the winning side in 23 of the last 25 elections), it might be the most accurate political barometer on Election Night — in more ways than one.

Virginia, as I wrote last month, had been in the Republican column for more than 40 years until it voted for Obama in 2008. But his popularity has declined there, and I am sure that the state will vote Republican in November. The next question would be, will the Republican nominee's coattails help the GOP retake the seat it lost in 2006?

I don't know what to expect in Wisconsin. The state has supported Democratic presidential nominees in the last six presidential elections, and it has seldom sent Republicans to the Senate since the days of Joe McCarthy — but it voted for a Republican over three–term Sen. Russ Feingold i 2010, and it has frequently elected Republican governors, including the one who was elected in 2010.

Both Obama and his eventual opponent can be expected to spend a lot of time and money in those states. It remains to be seen what kind of an effect the presidential race has on the Senate campaigns there.

The Task at Hand

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"After 10 days off the grid on vacation in Hawaii, President Obama returned to Washington on Tuesday morning and is scheduled to dive right into the prime order of business for 2012: his re–election effort."

David Nakamura
Washington Post

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In a matter of hours, Iowa Republicans will hold their caucuses.

The mettle of the candidates' campaign organizations will be put to the test as they attempt to mobilize their people and get them out to their caucus locations, whatever they may be — churches, schools, libraries, living rooms — and make sure that all the people who are slated to give speeches on their behalf are accounted for and ready to go.

That's the task at hand. Fortunately, the weather is pretty decent — by Iowa standards — so that should help.

It's the first official movement in the grueling process of choosing a candidate to run for president, but it's a grind that usually only one party must face. Typically, one of the two parties has an incumbent — or the incumbent's vice president — running, and that incumbent (or his surrogate) ordinarily does not have a challenger.

That's not always true. Sometimes, incumbents have drawn significant opposition, and it is possible that neither party's nominee In 2008, no incumbent president was in the race, and no incumbent vice president was running. Consequently, both nominations were up for grabs.

But that is quite rare. Usually, all the fun is on one side. This year, all the fun is on the Republican side.

And, typically, the incumbent, the one who faces no challenge or (pardon the expression) token opposition within his own party, sits back and lets the other party have the attention. But one should never underestimate Barack Obama's narcissistic craving for the spotlight.

David Nakamura of the Washington Post reports that, although "White House aides insist that the president is focused on 'task at hand,' " the president will address his supporters in Iowa tonight via the internet.

His remarks are scheduled for the middle of the evening, during the — wait for it — Democratic caucuses.

Huh? Democratic caucuses? Really? Who's challenging Obama for the Iowa delegates? Uncommitted?

The "task at hand," since the president constantly needs to be reminded of it, is putting this country back to work. There is still much work to be done in that regard. It's work Obama was elected to do but has mostly ignored since taking office — until winning votes again became important to him.

Neither Obama nor his supporters should be deceived by the 8.6% unemployment rate the Department of Labor reported last month. It will be a couple of months before the unemployment rate tells us whether that decline in joblessness was as permanent as anything is anymore or merely the seasonal hiring that is typical of the Christmas season.

It's good that the president is back in Washington. That's where this heavy lifting needs to be done.

Not on the internet chatting with folks in a nonexistent caucus in Iowa.

A Close Call

Ordinarily, the American public doesn't know how a president perceives the decisions he must make while he is still in office.

There are, after all, so many decisions a president must make during his term. Seems like the destinies of most presidents, in the words of Forrest Gump, float on a breeze — and not a gentle one at that. They kind of go from one decision to the next without spending too much time (if any) reflecting on one that has already been made. By that time, there are already half a dozen more matters that need the president's immediate attention.

You usually have to wait until a president leaves office, catches his breath and writes his memoirs before you learn which decisions were the most gut–wrenching ones he had to make. They're usually pretty predictable, too — where (and whether) to put American troops in harm's way, which programs to support financially, etc.

Decisions that require courage, that call for the wisdom of Solomon.

Last week, Amie Parnes of The Hill offered Americans a rare glimpse into the mindset of a president — well, of this particular president — and it wasn't for all three years of his presidency, just the current "holiday season." Still, I rather doubt that it will be the subject of a political science lecture, though.

"The toughest call for the president this holiday season," wrote Parnes, "could be whether to join his family for Christmas in Hawaii or stay in lonely Washington."

Parnes conceded that "there's no ideal time for a presidential vacation," which is certainly true. I cannot remember a president who was not criticized for taking a little time away from the Oval Office (Harry Truman once called it the "crown jewel of the federal penal system"), but "this one comes at a particularly inopportune moment."

Yes, I guess you could say that. Obama was already requiring Congress to remain in Washington until an agreement was reached on the payroll tax cut extension. It wouldn't have looked very good if he had taken a "do as I say, not as I do" approach to the matter and skipped town to spend Christmas on the beaches of Hawaii.

Fortunately for Obama, the intransigent House Republicans gave in (no real reason why they shouldn't; as Obama observed, legislators in both parties favored the extension), the president signed the bill into law and got to Hawaii in time to spend the holiday with the wife and kids in their beach house.

While he was in Hawaii, the president also mixed some business with pleasure, attending Christmas services on a Marine base.

Whew! Crisis averted.

Of course, for millions of Americans, holiday travel wasn't an issue. They have no jobs — or, at least, no full–time ones — and, without that, it makes holiday travel something of a moot point.

Has the same effect on the payroll tax cut, too, for that matter.

Ghosts of '68

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As the polls of Republican voters have been careening from one anti–Mitt to the next, chatter about the possibility of a brokered convention has been rising above the din.

My original inclination was to dismiss such talk. The prospect just seemed too remote.

My parents weren't old enough to vote the last time there was a brokered convention. But the rapid rise and fall of challengers to the consistent frontrunner, Mitt Romney, has led me to conclude that a brokered convention is a real possibility. It may still be remote, but it is real.

Many Republicans seem to think Romney isn't committed enough to Republican values so the search has been on for someone else. And there just might be enough of those disgruntled Republicans to deny Romney enough delegate support to wrap up the nomination on the first ballot.

The problem is that each someone else to whom Republicans have flocked has been shown to be flawed in some way. It wouldn't be so bad if the flaws were thought to be modest, but these flaws have been too great for most Republicans.

Romney is always accused of being too wishy washy, a waffler, a flip–flopper. The same thing might be said of any Republican who ran for office in dark–blue Massachusetts — but he has been the one true constant in this volatile campaign. His rivals have risen and fallen, but Romney has remained about where he was from the beginning — around 25%.

That level of support won't be sufficient, his detractors argue, and I agree — if it remains where it has been through most of 2011.

But it won't.

I think it will start to fluctuate once the primaries and caucuses begin — and the fluctuations are likely to be upward. There is a kind of finality about primaries — and caucuses, too, for that matter. It is different from the phase we have been watching this year, which is dominated by fluid and non–binding polls.

Actual delegates are committed to candidates in the primaries and caucuses; there are real numbers to hang your hat on. True, those delegates are only committed through the first ballot — but delegates are not assigned to candidates at random. Those who come to the convention pledged to support Candidate A reached that point because they were true believers in Candidate A.

Unless Candidate A drops out after the first ballot, my guess is that they are likely to remain with Candidate A even if they are no longer bound by party rules to do so.

All of that remains hypothetical at this stage because no Republican convention has gone past the first ballot since Tom Dewey was nominated in three ballots to face President Truman in 1948.

Democrats hope that history will repeat itself in 2012 — an embattled Democratic president, running against a "do–nothing Congress," comes from behind to stage an upset victory and triumphantly waves the early edition of a metro newspaper prematurely proclaiming his electoral demise.

(In the 21st–century version, I guess the image — digital, of course — would be of Obama holding up a laptop with the message "Romney (or Gingrich or Paul or whomever) Defeats Obama.").

Perhaps that is what fate has in store. I have my doubts. I still believe the prevailing economic conditions will have an overwhelming influence on the outcome of next year's elections — unless something totally unexpected happens to distracts the public's attention a week or two before the election.

Republicans, on the other hand, have been wishing for a repeat of 1980, when a charismatic Republican (Ronald Reagan) emerged to defeat an embattled Democratic president (Jimmy Carter) in the general election.

Which scenario you see developing may depend upon which side you favor, but, from a purely historical standpoint, the election I see as having the most in common with the campaign upon which we have embarked is the 1968 campaign.

Then, as now, a Democrat was in the White House. He had been quite popular when he was elected four years earlier, but his approval ratings had steadily declined and his party had lost a lot of seats in Congress in the midterm elections.

"Of the paradox of Lyndon Johnson historians will write many books," wrote Theodore H. White in "The Making of the President 1968."

"Few men have done more good in their time, and no president has pressed more visionary ideas into law. Yet few have earned more abuse and roused less love, loyalty and affection from those he sought to help."

Seems like the kind of thing that some of Barack Obama's supporters might be inclined to write about him when the story of the 2012 presidential campaign is written.

Johnson decided not to seek renomination after he nearly lost the New Hampshire primary to Eugene McCarthy's insurgent campaign, and the story of the Democratic nomination battle that spring was the story of the McCarthy–Robert Kennedy duel in the primaries.

Obama is not likely to withdraw from the race — nor does he appear likely to drop Vice President Joe Biden from the ticket — so the prelude to the Democratic convention next year probably will be quite different from what it was in 1968.

But I believe the most striking similarities are to be found on the Republican side.

All along, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination was Richard Nixon, the former vice president who had been beaten in a close race for the presidency eight years earlier and then had lost a race for governor of California two years later. Nixon had a reputation as a conservative anti–communist, which he toned down in pursuit of the 1968 nomination.

And, as he positioned himself in the party's center, he turned back all challengers, one by one.

First, there was Mitt Romney's father, George, whose candidacy collapsed after he famously claimed he had been "brainwashed" into supporting the war. Romney was ridiculed for the remark and wound up dropping out of the race before the New Hampshire primary.

Nixon's next challenger was New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, a darling of the antiwar wing of the Republican Party who emerged as its champion with a write–in campaign in New Hampshire.

Rocky did defeat Nixon in the Massachusetts primary, but, for the most part, his bid for the nomination was ineffective.

In the spring of 1968 — after the shooting of Martin Luther King and before the shooting of Bobby Kennedy — Nixon's fellow Californian, Gov. Ronald Reagan, was his next challenger.

At that time, Reagan was not the experienced executive he was when he was nominated in 1980. The 1968 Reagan had two years of experience as governor, which didn't really compare to Nixon's political record of more than two decades, yet he defeated Nixon in the California primary. Thanks to his margin there, Reagan finished the primaries (which were not nearly as widespread as they are today) with a slight edge over Nixon in the national popular vote.

But Nixon went to the convention a handful of delegates shy of securing the nomination. Reagan and Rockefeller reportedly were going to join forces in a final effort to deny Nixon the nomination, but neither would agree to endorse the other.

When all was said and done, Nixon won by a wide margin on the first ballot — and went on to win the presidency by a narrow margin in a three–candidate race that fall.

While the manner in which Nixon's rivals fell was not the same as it has been for Romney's, I find the parallels between 1968 and 2012 compelling.

Fourth-Best President Ever?

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"I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR and Lincoln — just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history."

Barack Obama
60 Minutes interview

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My, someone certainly has a high opinion of himself and his place in American history.

I didn't watch the president's recent interview on CBS' 60 Minutes, but, apparently, in a segment that was not aired originally, he claimed that his administration's "legislative and foreign policy accomplishments" were as good or better than any other "with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR and Lincoln."

As I have said here before, I'm something of an amateur historian. I minored in history when I was in college, and I have always had an interest in the American presidency and American politics in general.

I'm also a journalist. That was my major in college, and it is the subject I am teaching now. I was trained to write and to think in Associated Press style, which constantly strives for clarity and consistency. So, when a president compares his presidency to "Johnson, FDR and Lincoln," my question is, "Which Johnson?"

The statement, you see, is imprecise. There have been two presidents named Johnson. I'm pretty sure I know which one Obama meant — Lyndon, who succeeded John Kennedy nearly 50 years ago, not Andrew, who succeeded Lincoln nearly 150 years ago.

Until the Clinton presidency, Andrew Johnson was the only president to face an impeachment trial in the Senate — where he was acquitted by a single vote. He chose not to seek a full term on his own in 1868.

A Siena College survey that was released in July 2010 rated Andrew Johnson as one of the five worst presidents in American history.

No, I'm quite sure Barack Obama did not mean to compare himself to that President Johnson. His image has undergone some changes in a century and a half, but, in recent years, he has been remembered as a "white supremacist."

I'm convinced the first black president in American history does not want to be remembered as comparable to Andrew Johnson.

Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, is almost a Lincoln–like figure for American blacks — and he was responsible for the most advancements — in housing, education, employment opportunities, voting rights, in fact rights in general — for blacks and all other underprivileged Americans.

But LBJ, as I wrote about a month ago, had the misfortune of being a president who wanted to do great things domestically (which he did) but served at a time when foreign affairs dominated.

I wrote that Obama appears likely to turn out to be LBJ in reverse — a president who first ran for the presidency because he wanted to end a war and wound up being undone by his inability to tame the economy.

In addition to teaching journalism, I have also been teaching basic writing, and one of the things I try to impress on my students is the importance of using the right word to express the right thought.

That isn't an easy thing for most people — even people who earn their livings (or who have earned their livings) as writers struggle at times to find the right word. I know I do. Most of the time, I keep a thesaurus within arm's reach whenever I sit down to write — and there are still times when I choose the wrong word.

Nor is it easy to select the right word when one is being interviewed without some notes or a TelePrompTer to help. Consequently, I do have some sympathy for Obama. I have seen many people "misspeak" (to use a word that was particularly popular during the Watergate days) in such a setting.

But this wasn't the first time Obama has been interviewed by someone. Far from it. He is no novice when it comes to being interviewed. He just has a tendency to stick his foot in his mouth when he does.

When Obama suggests that his presidency is the best in history "with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR and Lincoln," I really have to marvel at his use of the word "possible" and what it implies.

In hindsight, Obama himself might admit that it wasn't the most prudent word choice he could have made, but I believe it speaks volumes about what he really thinks of himself and his presidency.

I think he really does believe his presidency, in its first two years, accomplished more than any other president — but he will allow for the possibility that LBJ, FDR and Lincoln accomplished more.

Lincoln is kind of a no–brainer. The Siena survey listed him third, and most surveys rank Lincoln in the top three.

FDR was the top–rated president in Siena's survey, which is also kind of a no–brainer. The only president to be elected four times, he guided the country through its worst economic crisis ever and is credited with leading it through World War II even though he died a few weeks before hostilities ended in Europe.

But Siena's survey did not rank LBJ in its Top 10. Apparently, Obama holds him in much higher esteem than most historians — at least the ones who were surveyed.

They ranked Theodore Roosevelt second. Roosevelt is remembered for several achievements — trust busting, conservation, labor laws, public health and safety laws — that continue to influence American life.

T.R. was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize — but, unlike Obama, he was rewarded for an actual achievement (negotiating the resolution of the Russo–Japanese War), not merely for his potential. By his omission from Obama's statement, though, it appears the president thinks his accomplishments in his first two years were greater than Roosevelt's.

The survey listed George Washington as the fourth–best president, and that should be a no–brainer, too. He is remembered as the father of the country, its first president. Thanks to his selflessness (he declined the salary that was offered to him, preferring not to tarnish, in any way, his image as a public servant) and his insistence that the leader of the new country should not be a monarch, we call our presidents "Mr. President," not "Your Highness."

It set the tone for the last 200 years, but I can only conclude that Obama also believes his contributions to American life in his first two years as president are greater than Washington's.

The Siena survey ranked Thomas Jefferson fifth. Once again, that should be a no–brainer, shouldn't it? Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, and there are few documents in recorded history that have had the kind of influence on a culture that it has had.

Jefferson also was responsible for the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the United States at that time — and still represents roughly one–third of its land mass.

But, apparently, Obama feels his accomplishments in his first two years exceeded Jefferson's.

Sixth in Siena's survey was Jefferson's successor, James Madison. Before becoming president, he was the "Father of the Constitution." As president, he sought to continue Jefferson's policies, but he may be largely remembered for the crumbling of U.S.–British relations and the War of 1812, during which the White House, the Capitol and many other public buildings were burned.

Seventh in the rankings was Madison's successor, James Monroe, whose signature achievement probably was the Monroe Doctrine, which established the Western Hemisphere as the United States' sphere of influence and served notice to Europe that any attempt by any of its nations to interfere would be seen as an act of aggression and treated appropriately.

Ironically, America has not re–elected three consecutive presidents since Monroe's re–election in 1820. If Obama wins a second term next year, he would match Monroe's electoral achievement — but, apparently, he believes he has already bested Monroe as a president.

Siena's eighth–ranked president was Woodrow Wilson, a leader of the progressive movement. A Wilson biographer, John M. Cooper, wrote that Wilson's record of legislative achievement, which included child labor reform, the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Federal Farm Loan Act — was unmatched by any other president except FDR, and his advocacy of women's suffrage helped lead to the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

Perhaps it is subliminally, but Obama seems to think that what he did as president in 2009 and 2010 is greater than what Wilson achieved nearly a century earlier.

Ninth on the list was Harry Truman, whose low point in his approval ratings (22) was unmatched by any president until Obama's immediate predecessor, George W. Bush.

But that doesn't tell the whole story of Truman's presidency. From the day he succeeded FDR in April 1945 until he won the 1948 election, Truman did great things in spite of the fact that he had been virtually ignored by Roosevelt in his 82 days as vice president.

He knew nothing of the Manhattan Project, which gave him the weapon that he used to bring the war in the Pacific to a quick conclusion. The attitudes about his use of nuclear weapons in 1945 have changed over the years, but at the time and for years thereafter, it was believed to have saved hundreds of thousands who, it was said, would have perished in a fight–to–the–death invasion of Japan.

He had to deal with the transition from a wartime economy to a peacetime one, which always seems to be uneasy but was especially so after World War II. There were several economic conflicts that had gone unaddressed during the war years but boiled over when the war ended; Truman managed to deal with them all.

He was an advocate of the "Fair Deal," national health insurance and civil rights.

I would guess that Obama has quite a bit of respect for what Truman did as president — so much that he is clearly trying to duplicate Truman's "upset" victory in his re–election campaign in 1948. Truman won a full term largely by running against a "do–nothing Congress," and that seems to be Obama's strategy as well.

For that to work, you need a solid record of achievement to contrast with Congress'. Obama clearly believes he does, and so do his adoring supporters, but, judging from presidential approval ratings, millions are not convinced.

They are not convinced for much the same reason that the people of the late 1960s were not convinced about LBJ. They felt out of sync with their president's priorities. He was focused on domestic issues, which were (and are) important, but they were more concerned about the meat grinder of Vietnam.

In modern times, Obama's highest approval ratings have been for his handling of foreign affairs — when Americans are hurting at home, struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. They need jobs.

The Siena survey ranked Dwight Eisenhower 10th. Eisenhower earned Americans' respect when he led the Allies to victory over the Axis powers in World War II, and he presided over a country that was at peace in the world but suffering from some postwar growing pains in the 1950s.

His most lasting legacy, I suppose, is the interstate highway system — and his warning, in the final days of his presidency, against the growing influence of the "military–industrial complex."

Both continue to influence American life, but Obama thinks his achievements are equal to or greater than Eisenhower's.

Maybe they are, but that will be up to the voters to decide next year.

Cell Phones Don't Kill People

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I was listening to the radio yesterday morning, and, for awhile, the topic of the discussion was banning cell phone use while driving. Should we or shouldn't we?

I missed the beginning of the conversation, but I assume it was in response to the National Transportation Safety Board's proposal this week for a ban on cell phone use and text messaging devices while driving.

Now, before I go any farther with this, I guess I should say that there are times when I feel like a refugee from another time.

Not to say that I am old — not yet (although there are times when I feel that I need to be wearing a shirt like the one my mother had — it said, "Hill? What hill? I didn't see any hill!") — but there are definitely times when I feel that technology has gone galloping past me.

Time, I have discovered, doesn't merely fly. It sprints. You younger folks will understand that one day.

Anyway, that's how I feel about cell phones.

As I have written here before, I taught journalism on the college level in the mid–1990s. I left the classroom for several years, but I gravitated back to it last year, taking a job as an adjunct journalism professor in the local community college system.

When I did, I quickly discovered how many things had changed in the intervening years. In the '90s, for example, none of my students had cell phones. Today, they all do. It was essential to implement rules about their use in class to maintain order — and get anything done.

It's a battle I'm still fighting.

On a personal level, I resisted cell phones for many years, and I had pretty good reasons. I'm not married, and I have no children. It was an additional expense, and, in the event of an emergency on the road, I figured (at first) that I could always use a pay phone.

Well, I'm still not married, and I still have no children. Cell phones are still an additional expense, but pay phones have just about disappeared. I finally decided it might be worth the expense to be sure I would have one if something happened — but I only use it when it is absolutely necessary.

See, I've learned that anything can happen — and it can happen all by itself. It doesn't need anyone's assistance.

And I have been wary of cell phones because I have long believed that they were likely to contribute to the accident rate — which certainly doesn't need any help.

When my parents taught me to drive, the thing they emphasized, more than any other, was to keep my eyes on the road. If your attention is distracted, they told me, even for a second, it can have tragic consequences, and one must be ever vigilant — because anything can be a distraction.

A distraction can be a very modest, very momentary thing, like the sound of a dog barking or a sudden movement one catches from the corner of one's eye. But cell phone conversations can go on indefinitely, and the distraction from the task at hand can be far from modest.

The introduction of texting into the mix just raised the risk level, as far as I was concerned. It certainly raised my awareness of the risks.

Perhaps it was due, in part, to the fact that I went without a cell phone for so long, but there were certain things about them that I just never considered — and, to be fair, there were other things that just weren't factors until recently.

Like texting.

And, perhaps because my cell phone is so basic, so ordinary, I'm not entirely acclimated to a world in which the internet is at your fingertips, wherever you are. When I was in graduate school, there was no internet (well, no real commercial internet). A few years later, that was a reality. It was a new frontier, but you could only explore it from your desk at home or at work.

Then, along came laptops, and you weren't tied to a physical location anymore. But laptops are still too big and bulky for some people so access to all of it has been condensed to the "smart phone," a gadget that fits in the palm of your hand.

(Oh, what we could have done with those when I was a general assignment reporter fresh out of college!)

The speed of technological advancements has made so many things possible that my poor mind never imagined most of them — and still needs time to absorb it all.

That point was made clear to me when I heard the listeners' calls.

One observed that he frequently uses the GPS app on his cell phone when he is driving in an unfamiliar area. The cell phone is equipped to "speak" to him so it isn't necessary for him to look at the cell phone, as he would if texting. And his car is equipped for hands–free operation of the cell phone so it really is no different than speaking to a human occupant of the vehicle.

He travels a lot, he said, but he rarely has a traditional conversation on his cell phone — and almost never does so when he is behind the wheel. But, when he is using this GPS feature, which he often does because his work requires him to spend a lot of time in unfamiliar territory, "I'm still talking on my phone," he pointed out, "so, technically, I would be in violation of the law."

True — but not necessarily its spirit.

The law is intended to discourage people from talking on the phone while they're driving — which is certainly a noble objective — although, in a culture in which people can be seen trying to eat cereal, apply makeup, even get dressed behind the wheel during the daily morning rush hour, one can be forgiven for wondering if such legislation goes far enough.

Before the discussion ended, a veteran police officer came on the line. Now, most policemen with whom I have spoken about this agree that cell phone use should be curtailed while driving; they just disagree on how the law should address it.

But this particular officer wasn't too concerned about the use of cell phones behind the wheel. It's just another distraction, he said, no worse than having a conversation with someone else in the vehicle — and he went on to point out that he had many electronic distractions in his police car.

It's all a matter of being mature enough to handle it, he said.

Cell phones don't kill people.

A Memory and a Milestone

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My parents posed with me after I received
my master's degree from North Texas in 1991.

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Today is a milestone for me.

It was on this day 20 years ago that I received my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. That was a proud moment in my life.

Sometimes I must admit that it all seems like a dream. Maybe that is a by–product of the passage of time. The farther removed I am from an experience, the more it seems like another lifetime — and, in a way, it is.

I will always remember that day. It was a moment of real triumph after what had been maybe the most challenging year of my life — at least, to that point.

It was special, too, because I was able to share it with my parents. For reasons that I would rather not discuss in great detail, I didn't participate in graduation exercises when I received my B.A. The story is long to tell, but it boils down to some administrative snafus stemming from the fact that I transferred to the University of Arkansas midway through my sophomore year.

I eventually got my degree, but it was issued three months after I completed my degree work, and I had relocated roughly 150 miles away where I was working as a general assignment reporter. I didn't participate in my graduation ceremony — the U of A mailed my degree to me — and my parents didn't get to see me walk across the stage to accept my B.A.

It was, to put it mildly, anticlimactic to open an envelope and take out my degree. Boom! You're a college graduate. I always imagined hearing my name called out and walking across a stage to accept my degree. Never dreamed it would be like that. It was no more special than opening the monthly telephone bill.

But I was able to share this day with my parents 20 years ago — and, for that, I will always be thankful. My mother has been gone for more than 16 years, but she saw me walk across that stage. It was the fulfillment of her dream for me as well as my own.

And it is a memory that means everything to me now.

She and my father posed with me after the ceremony was over. You can see the picture at the top of this post. That is an irreplaceable souvenir for me.

It was kind of a typical December day in Texas, as I recall — a little chilly, overcast, a bit windy. It was the kind of day that reminds you that Christmas is coming, which, in turn, reminds me of a story.

For those of you who don't know it, when a person receives his/her master's degree, the ceremony is usually called a "hooding."

I know that may sound like some kind of Ku Klux Klan ritual, but it isn't.

If you look closely at the picture, you may notice a splash of red around my neck. That is neither a cape nor a muffler or scarf of some kind. (It isn't blood, either, although I often felt, as I pursued my master's degree, that I was shedding plenty of blood.)

It is a hood, the academic dress of one who has earned a post–graduate degree. The hood is in the color of your academic major. I don't know if that varies from one American school to the next, but, when I got my master's at the University of North Texas, the color for journalism majors was red.

The traditions of academic regalia originated in the medieval universities of Europe, and the colors may vary from school to school.

Consequently, I don't know if red is the color for journalism master's or doctoral students at other schools, or if that is just the designation at North Texas.

My understanding, in fact, is that not every school has a hooding ceremony for its master's and doctoral candidates; the ones that do seem to follow their own rules.

Thus, the conclusion is unavoidable that journalism majors at other schools that do have hooding ceremonies may use different colors.

In at least one country, red is the color for those receiving post–graduate law degrees. I definitely wasn't a law student, but I did have to study communications law (and that really does have more credibility than spending the night at a Holiday Inn Express).

Hoods also tend to have the primary color of the school where the degree was earned, and, at North Texas, that color is green. That meant that my hood was red and green — Christmas colors.

My mother pointed that out to me when I picked up my graduation cap, gown and hood shortly before the ceremony. That appealed to her sense of order, I guess. She loved the Christmas season, and she was pleased that my graduation came during it (even though that happened only because a close friend of mine was diagnosed with lymphoma that spring, and I put off finishing my degree work until after his death that summer).

I'm teaching journalism as an adjunct at the local community college these days. I haven't worn my gown and hood in years, but it hangs in my closet, and I see it from time to time. On those occasions, I am reminded of that period in my life, of that accomplishment for which I worked so long and so hard.

Of course, I can be reminded of that at any time. My master's degree is on a shelf in my apartment, and I see it every day.

But seeing the gown and hood that I wore on that day is different.

It's like a tangible link to my past.

Of course, the degree itself is, too, I guess — but not really.

The piece of paper that I was given when I walked across the stage on that December Saturday afternoon in 1991 was kind of an academic I.O.U., a promissory note. My degree would be mailed to me, it said.

It was like one of those dummy hand grenades that soldiers use in basic training — the ones that look official on the outside but are totally ineffective.

My memory is that I received my actual degree — the one that sits on my shelf today — a few weeks later. There was no extended wait for it, but that wasn't what I was holding in the picture you see attached to this post.

That was the dummy, the prop for pictures such as the one for which I posed with my parents.

The actual souvenirs that I have from that day are the graduation program (which I have somewhere although I can't put my hands on it right away), my gown and hood and the photo you see with this post.

And the memories they evoke.

Georgia On My Mind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

... and elsewhere in the South.