The Arc of History

History really is a funny thing, isn't it?

I've been studying history all my life, but I have only recently (well, comparatively speaking) come to realize certain things about it.

I always realized those things, I guess, but in a compartmentalized sort of way. It is only recently that I have seen how subtly intricate is the link that binds them.

And I can say that it does help to connect the dots. It puts things in context.

See, I have always believed that history really does repeat itself. It doesn't do so precisely — well, not usually — but, at least in hindsight, it is possible to see the repetition.

Every presidential election year seems to inspire articles from people that demonstrate the similarities between that year and some year that preceded it — which, in turn, provides some kind of predictive advantage.

See, all this happened in the year XXXX. That means it will happen again this year. That is the logic of such people, and it is flawed.

For some reason, the 2012 campaign seems to have inspired more than its share of such historical speculation, which seems rather odd because we've never had a non–white incumbent seeking re–election before. From that standpoint, it seems to me that we're really in uncharted waters here. Whatever Obama has done or not done as president, it seems he is always being judged in a racial context — by both his supporters and his foes.

But it isn't just the racial element that makes this campaign different. The fact is that no two elections are the same. There might be similar factors, but there are always differences. Different times, different candidates, different issues.

For awhile, when Barack Obama was frequently being compared to FDR, I heard his supporters arguing that his bid for a second term would be a lot like Roosevelt's campaign for a second term in 1936.

They continued to make the case for that scenario even when Obama's approval ratings slipped well below the level most political scientists consider viable for electoral success.

There has been no real way to compare pre–election job approval numbers for Obama and FDR because such surveys were not being conducted in 1936.

However ...

FDR overcame bad poll numbers, too, I have heard Obama's supporters argue, which is true — but it is also misleading. Polling really was embryonic in those days, and pollsters only sampled people with access to telephones or cars.

Millions of Americans could afford neither and, therefore, were not polled — but they showed up to vote on Election Day.

More recently, I've heard the 1936 analogy used to explain why Obama, in spite of a jobless rate that historically means sure defeat for an incumbent, will win. With an unemployment rate that is currently 8.3%, Obama faces the kind of obstacle that only one president in modern times has been able to overcome.

That president was FDR in 1936, but it is important to remember that, when Roosevelt was elected in 1932, roughly one–quarter of working–age Americans had no jobs. The unemployment rate was still in double digits when Roosevelt won his second term — but it was dramatically lower than it had been when he took office four years earlier.

The unemployment rate under Obama has been worse — at times, dramatically so — on every day of his presidency than it was the day he took the oath of office.

The comparison to Roosevelt simply isn't plausible.

I've also heard the 2012 campaign compared to the 1948 campaign, in which an unpopular president, Harry Truman, defied the polls and won an upset over Republican Tom Dewey.

But polling wasn't much more sophisticated in 1948 than it was in 1932. Pollsters saw a significant lead for Dewey in October and stopped polling under the assumption that the election was a done deal.

Thus, they missed the surge in Truman's direction late in the campaign.

I've been intrigued by how both Obama's campaign and Mitt Romney's campaign have drawn inspiration from successful campaigns run by the opposition in modern times.

Obama, for example, undoubtedly would like for 2012 to resemble 1984, when Ronald Reagan was re–elected by a landslide in spite of a jobless rate that exceeded 7.0%, but I have heard no economists who believe there is a chance that something like that could happen this year.

If that outcome isn't likely, Democrats probably would settle for a narrow victory like the one George W. Bush enjoyed eight years ago.

And that does seem like the playbook they're following.

Bush achieved his victory with a series of negative ads that raised doubts about John Kerry's greatest strength, his service during the Vietnam War. Obama already has spent millions of dollars on negative advertisements intended to raise doubts about Romney's greatest strength at a time of economic distress, his success in the business world — but with little movement in the polls to show for it.

(That scenario, I expect, has additional significance for Obama — an incumbent running for re–election against a bland, wealthy candidate from Massachusetts.)

Romney would like for 2012 to be more like 1992, when an incumbent president was defeated by another governor. The economy is worse now than it was 20 years ago, but there was a very popular independent candidate in that race, a factor that — so far, at least — has not materialized this year (and we're running out of time for it).

(Frankly, I have always wondered if Ross Perot's campaign really made that much of a difference in the ultimate outcome. Exit polls at the time indicated that, if Perot had not re–entered the race that fall, 40% of his supporters would have voted for President Bush, 40% would have voted for Bill Clinton and 20% would not have voted at all.)

Mostly, though, Romney and his people seem to draw inspiration from 1980, when Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter. There was a third candidate in that race, too, but he didn't draw nearly the support that Perot did and had no real influence on the outcome.

That scenario may be possible, although there are still a few noteworthy differences.

For one, Carter was beset by both economic adversity and a hostage situation. The anniversary of the takeover of the American embassy in Iran happened to fall on Election Day, which may well have pushed some fence–sitters into Reagan's column at the last minute.

Obama has plenty of economic issues working against him, but he seems to be on reasonably stable ground with voters on his foreign policies. Something could happen to make voters question the wisdom of those policies, but, right now, Obama is highly unlikely to face the same kind of double whammy that Carter did.

And there is another factor about 1980 that must be considered. Many people romanticize that time and confuse the Reagan of the campaign trail with the Reagan he became in office.

I am really not certain how that kind of variable might be applied to this year's campaign, if at all.

In 1980, the popular impression of Reagan was that he was a crazy old man who would start a nuclear war with the Soviets, and the Carter campaign used that relentlessly.

The record shows that, in eight years as president, Reagan never fired a single nuclear weapon at anyone. True, he was a hawk on military matters, and he favored a strong defense, but he launched no nuclear wars.

Nevertheless, there was a nugget or two of truth in the charge that he would be a reckless commander in chief. Reagan did have something of a history of being defiant when challenged. He could be angry at times, as he was when he protested at the debate in New Hampshire that he was "paying for this microphone."

Republican primary voters responded to that kind of show of strength. It contrasted with Carter's apparent timidity. But Democrats and independents had to be won over. At a time of tension with the Soviet Union, Reagan frightened many voters.

How well did Reagan succeed in neutralizing those fears? Well, his aw, shucks approach to his one and only debate with Carter — and his "There you go again" response to the president's insistence on repeating his negative charges — reassured voters that Reagan was not the loose cannon they had been told he was.

The popular image of Reagan today is of an amiable, kindly man whose presidency produced a booming economic recovery, which was what most Americans wanted in 1980 — along with the release of the hostages.

But there probably will be no similar foreign crisis this year — unless it is of an economic nature.

However, I have heard talk from some people that an October surprise is already planned — in Iran. Oh, the irony!

History does not repeat itself, Mark Twain supposedly said, but it does rhyme.

Job One

When I was growing up, I remember my father telling me he believed the best thing about America was that the right person always came along to provide the leadership the nation needed at the time it needed it.

Dad isn't a classic historian. He taught religion and philosophy at one of the local colleges (there were three) in my rather small hometown so, certainly, biblical history was part of his courses. And he did study history in general to a certain extent — and on certain sub–topics that were of interest to him — but he has never been the go–to guy to put things into historical perspective.

Nevertheless, I had to admit that he was right. America's had its share of incompetent leaders in the last two centuries, but, when the chips have really been down, usually someone steps forward — Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts — to keep the country from veering too far off the path.

Kind of smacks of predestination or manifest destiny, doesn't it? Well, maybe it is a variation on the theme of American exceptionalism, but I think that, given our history, Americans have earned the right to see themselves as exceptional.

You can always find scabs to pick at in American history. This nation isn't perfect. It is a work in progress. We acknowledged that from the beginning, yet we asserted our exceptionalism, in the preamble to the Constitution, when we spoke of seeking to be a more perfect Union.

(Barack Obama used this phrase himself in a speech during the 2008 campaign. You may remember it. It was given amid the controversy brought on by Rev. Jeremiah Wright's infamous "God damn America" remarks.)

It is a nation that was founded on faith. Even if a person has no real religious faith, most Americans do have faith in their country and the concept of limitless opportunity here. We have tried — not always successfully but we have tried — to change those things about ourselves that are contrary to our lofty self–image.

That faith has been severely challenged in the last four or five years by an economic crisis unlike any since the Great Depression. For a president who was elected on the strength of voters' belief in hope and change, it can be staggering when you talk to those who have completely given up hope during his tenure.

Their ranks are likely to swell, I am afraid, with today's jobs report. The economy did add 163,000 jobs in July, and the average monthly jobs gain in 2012 has been 151,000, which is adequate to keep up with population growth, observes Christopher Rugaber of the Associated Press, but it isn't enough to bring unemployment down.

And that was really Obama's mission when he was elected. He made a lot of other promises to a lot of other groups, but the economy and joblessness were the two dark clouds that hung over the Republican–held White House and truly made it possible for a black man with limited political experience to be elected president by an electoral vote landslide.

Until that implosion, the race was neck and neck. Many Democrats openly wondered if Obama had made a mistake in picking Joe Biden as his running mate. Hillary Clinton would have united the party, many said.

The economy's implosion was a very recent development when voters went to the polls in November 2008. It certainly wasn't the reason that either Obama or John McCain got into the race to begin with, but righting the economic ship had become the #1 concern that September.

That hasn't happened, and a recent Gallup poll shows voters want the next president to make the economy and job creation his top — if not sole — priority.

Indeed,through most of Obama's presidency, poll after poll has indicated that it is still voters' top concern. But good news from the Labor Department has been rare. In fact, the unemployment rate went up — to 8.3% — in today's report.

Which puts the president in a position — historically — that makes his re–election prospects seem weaker each day.

With about three months left before the election, Barack Obama faces some pretty steep historical mountains to climb — and not much time to conquer them.

The most ominous is the fact that, when the unemployment rate has been 7% or higher on Election Day, practically no incumbent presidents have won. Ronald Reagan, in 1984, was an exception, but Reagan had a steadily improving economy working in his favor. Obama doesn't have that.

Conventional wisdom also holds that, if a president's approval ratings are below 50% on Election Day, that president is toast. This president, who entered office with three of every five Americans approving (when, technically, there was nothing to approve), hasn't received the consistent approval of a majority of respondents in more than a year.

Recent polls show Obama's approval in the 40s, and today's jobs report isn't likely to help.

Another rule of thumb is that right track/wrong track question that pollsters ask. Essentially, voters are asked if they think the country is on the right track or the wrong track. When the majority say the wrong track, that isn't a good sign for the incumbent.

The latest poll results I have seen on that question were reported by Rasmussen Reports. Only 29% of respondents said the country was heading in the right direction.

(The good news in that for Obama is that the number is up from this time last year, when only 14% believed the country was going in the right direction.)

Rasmussen's figure is a little lower than the others I have seen, which are typically in the 30–36% range, but even the most positive of them has no good news for the administration.

The other truism of American politics has to do with personal income. People vote their wallets. I have always believed it is the reason why Reagan's question at the end of his debate with Jimmy Carter — "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" — resonated the way it did.

Personal income is a little harder to boil down into easily digestible numbers, like the unemployment rate, presidential job approval and right track/wrong track, but the Commerce Department reported recently that personal income was up modestly in June. A troubling side note was the decline in personal spending; in a consumer–based economy, that is definitely not a good sign.

Those four historical factors — frequently cited by historians, pollsters and political scientists as the most reliable predictors of an election's outcome — are all working against the incumbent.

And it doesn't seem likely to me that he can reverse those trends in three months.

You Can't Spin This

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I've seen this countless times before — and, as Weird Al Yankovic put it in his parody of MC Hammer's hip hop song, I can't watch this. I feel as if I have seen this before, and I don't want to watch this again.

But I don't really have a choice.

The monthly jobless report was released today, and, in the wake of recent economic reports, it came as no surprise to learn that unemployment went up to 8.2% in May. It was, however, a bit of a surprise that only 69,000 jobs were added to the economy in May — and, considering the fact that job gains in recent months were revised downward, it may well be that, when the dust finally settles, there may be no net job gains in May — there may even be net job losses.

Sixty–nine thousand jobs doesn't even cover average monthly population gains — let alone make a dent in the number of long–term unemployed.

Barack Obama's re–election campaign has been banking on continued evidence of an economic recovery — even the 0.1% gains that have been witnessed in some recent months would be preferable to the loss that was reported today. Economic experts have been saying for several weeks that they think the jobs situation will deteriorate this summer.

In other words, the worst is yet to come.

If a gain of any kind had been registered in May, it might still have been possible (if the economy managed to lower the unemployment rate by 0.2% per month) for the rate to be as low for Obama this November as it was when the voters re–elected Ronald Reagan in 1984.

And that is what the Obama campaign craves — an opportunity to run for a second term with a jobless rate equal to the one that existed for the Gipper.

Ain't gonna happen.

The first half of Reagan's first term resembled Obama's, with unemployment rates in double–digit territory. But the economy began to recover in 1983, and Reagan was re–elected, even though the unemployment rate was higher than it had been for any incumbent seeking a second term since the days of FDR.

However, the recovery of 1984 was more sustained, far more robust than this one, which has gone in fits and starts, like all the other "recoveries" since we were told the recession ended three years ago. Where Reagan sprinted to the finish line under the "Morning in America" banner, Obama is limping in that direction.

And jobs reports like the one that came out today are pressing the president into the "stay the course" mode that Reagan followed in the 1982 midterm elections — and resulted in the loss of 26 House seats for Reagan's Republicans — which doesn't have the inspirational quality of hope and change.

"Obama sees the glass as half full, arguing the economy is slowly improving and asking voters to trust him to help nurture a full recovery," writes Tom Raum of the Associated Press.

"No president since Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression has won re–election with an unemployment rate as high as it is today," continues Raum.

"It was 7.2 percent when President Ronald Reagan defeated Walter Mondale in 1984."

That doesn't inspire confidence, especially since Obama has shown a marked inclination to lecture people (one of the prominent criticisms of Jimmy Carter when he ran against Reagan in 1980).

Even the New York Times, normally a cheerleader for the Obama administration, has found it hard to put a positive spin on this.

"Economists can explain away a month or two of disappointing numbers," writes the Times' Shaila Dewan. "But this was the third consecutive disappointing monthly performance by the job market, following a winter of solid gains, convincing many that the economic recovery has, for the third year in a row, lost momentum."

Three strikes and you're out.

I can't watch this.

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 LBJ Factor

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I've watched the rapid descent of the popular image of Barack Obama since he took the oath of office.

And I've been intrigued by his apparent public evolution — from the early days of his presidency, when he was widely seen as the reincarnation of Lincoln, Washington and/or FDR, to the recent comparisons between the president and (at best) Bill Clinton following his party's disastrous losses in the 1994 midterms or (at worst) Jimmy Carter's one–term administration.

No one knows with absolute certainty what will happen between now and next November; consequently, no one knows if the voters will deny a second term to Obama or if they will re–elect him with a rousing vote of confidence.

Thus, all these comparisons — while each has certain valid points — are based largely on self–serving speculation.

Republicans would like everyone to believe we are witnessing Carter Redux — because that would mean we are on the brink of the ascendance of another Reagan.

Democrats would like everyone to believe that, in spite of criticism of Obama, we are witnessing a reprise of the Clinton years — and, in 2012, will see a reinvigorated president win a second term by approximately the same margin in the Electoral College that elected him the first time.

Time will tell if either scenario is correct — or if an entirely new paradigm is being written.

My money is on the latter — because, while history truly does repeat itself, it never seems to do things exactly the way it did before. Times change.

In other words, we might be witnessing a Republican resurgence similar to the one that overwhelmed Carter and the Democrats in 1980 — but it might not necessarily produce another Ronald Reagan.

And, even if it did, the times are different. This isn't like a TV rerun (outside of syndication, do they still do that anymore?) — or even a remake. The people would be different. The circumstances — and, hence, the decisions they must make — would be different.

Perhaps the differences would be subtle. Perhaps they wouldn't be so subtle.

Likewise, we could be witnessing another rebound of an embattled Democratic president whose party suffered massive midterm losses (or perhaps, as some Democrats have been suggesting with fondness, another "Dewey Defeats Truman" election in which the incumbent scores a completely unexpected victory), but it doesn't necessarily mean that Obama's second term would be more successful than his first.

(Actually, second terms often seem to be worse than the first. It's worth remembering that Truman's popularity really began to sink irreversibly after his inauguration in 1949, and, while Clinton was re–elected two years after the GOP seized both chambers of Congress, his second term was largely mired in his impeachment defense.)

At the moment, if I am inclined to compare Obama to anyone, it is Lyndon Johnson. I see several similarities/parallels between the two presidents.

At what may be the most basic level, Johnson was the last Democrat to carry states like Virginia and Indiana — until Obama in 2008 (Carter was the only other Democrat to win North Carolina; Carter and Clinton were the only other Democrats to carry Florida).

Both Johnson and Obama won landslide victories in the Electoral College — but so did Clinton (twice). He just didn't receive a majority of the popular vote.

Voting patterns, like poll results, are not infallible indicators of what to expect — but they do provide a certain amount of guidance in the right direction.

It is not in the voting patterns, though, that I see the most striking similarities between Obama and LBJ. It's in their priorities as president — and the public's response, via its approval ratings.

One could say many things about LBJ — and, without a doubt, most, if not all, the good and the bad, were true — but one that is absolutely undeniably true is that he was a great admirer of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And LBJ wanted to leave his mark on domestic policy — as he believed FDR had. He wanted to exceed what his idol had accomplished.

Oh, sure, there were contemporaries of Roosevelt who would tell you that his skill in foreign affairs was evident in his handling of American participation in World War II — both before and after America officially entered the conflict.

But you can still see his hand behind many of the programs and policies that were created to battle the Great Depression of the 1930s — and still exist today.

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LBJ was raised in poverty. Such conditions strongly (and, often, adversely) affect how a man approaches the issues and relationships in his later life, and LBJ earnestly wanted to eliminate poverty. He appreciated FDR's courage in the face of a savage economy, which he witnessed as a young man in Texas and then as a member of the House. "[Roosevelt] was the one person I ever knew, anywhere, who was never afraid," he said after FDR's death in 1945.

When LBJ became president, his #1 goal was to expand on FDR's New Deal with his "Great Society."

And when he won a full term on his own — with a share of the popular vote that surpassed anything that Roosevelt ever received — it was seen by many as an endorsement of his domestic agenda, whether it really was or not.

That part probably was irrelevant because the times forced the American people — as the times so often do — to re–focus their attention.

In the 1960s, that meant Vietnam.

It may have been Johnson's misfortune to become president right when fate made foreign affairs the topic that was increasingly of the most concern to Americans, but presidents don't get to choose what kind of world exists when they are in office.

When LBJ won by a landslide in 1964, Vietnam was still a faraway land that most Americans knew nothing about. The campaign did not focus on foreign policy, but, before long, Americans were dying at a terrifying pace in the jungles of Southeast Asia, and the Johnson administration seemed powerless to do anything about it.

Much may stem from the fact that Johnson's military experience was so limited. Born in 1908, he was too young to serve in World War I, and his early life was influenced by poverty, not the battlefield.

When America entered World War II, Johnson was in Congress. He became a commissioned officer in the Naval Reserve and asked for a combat assignment but was sent to inspect stateside shipyards instead. The closest he came to actual combat was his short–term assignment to a three–man observation team that was sent to look into conditions in the Southwest Pacific.

Two years after Johnson won more than 60% of the popular vote and about 90% of the electoral vote, his Democrats suffered a severe setback in the midterm election, losing 47 House seats. The war had been escalating and, in spite of his efforts to combat poverty, Johnson's domestic agenda didn't seem to be all that successful, either — with race riots occurring from coast to coast.

(Interestingly, one of the freshman Republicans elected to the House in 1966 was George H.W. Bush, the future president and father of another.)

LBJ's popularity dropped sharply, so sharply that, even though he could have run for another term in 1968, he decided not to.

It must have been a disappointing — not to mention dizzying — decline for LBJ. I really believe he wanted to be remembered as a great domestic president — and instead he was consumed by an ugly little war in Vietnam.

LBJ probably benefited enormously from the sympathy and good will of Americans following the assassination of President Kennedy. His popularity never dropped below 60 — and often was much higher — in his first two years as president — but then began its perilous decline in 1966 after Johnson said U.S. troops should remain in Vietnam until Communist aggression had been stopped there.

And when a president's approval numbers go in the tank and stay there for awhile, my experience is that it is really hard to pull them out.

We'll never know if Johnson could have overcome those numbers. By the end of April 1966, a quarter of a million American troops were in Vietnam, and Johnson's approval rating dropped below 50 for the first — but far from the last — time. Less than two years later, he dropped out of the race for the 1968 Democratic nomination.

Fast forward 40 years.

Obama is kind of Lyndon Johnson in reverse — at least when it comes to his policy preference. He wasn't interested in domestic policy. He certainly wasn't interested — or experienced — in economics. He wanted to be a foreign affairs president.

I'm not really sure what drove him to focus on foreign policy. Critics would say it was the political angle, that it was the topic everyone wanted to talk about in 2008. But I think it goes deeper than that.

He never served in the armed forces — but that isn't unusual for people in his age range or younger. Selective service was stopped at the conclusion of the Vietnam War, then registration resumed in 1980, but it's been an all–volunteer service ever since. The most Obama was obliged to do by law was register for a nonexistent draft after he turned 18.

Maybe it has something to do with the multicultural environments in which he grew up. Perhaps it is rooted in his biracial parentage. Whatever the influence was, he specialized in international relations when he studied political science at Columbia University in the early 1980s.

Clearly, that interest was there long before it may have been expedient for a presidential campaign. And it was reflected in his Senate committee assignments when he announced his intention to seek the presidency — Foreign Relations, Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, Veterans Affairs.

And recent polls suggest that it is one of the few areas in which Americans tend to give him positive marks.

But the times don't call for a foreign affairs president.

That doesn't mean foreign affairs isn't important. It is always important, and, most of the time, the need for an international leader is sudden and unexpected — after all, even with Osama bin Laden gone, who knows when or if another 9–11 will occur?

But poll after poll after poll reports that the voters are overwhelmingly concerned about pocketbook issues, and Obama brought no practical experience in that to the White House. When Obama entered the 2008 race, the unemployment rate was about half what it is today. There were — as there always are — economic naysayers who claimed that this policy or that one would lead the country to ruin.

No one really took that kind of talk seriously when Obama launched his seemingly quixotic campaign in February 2007. In fact, the other Democrats who were lining up to run for the 2008 nomination — including Obama — were intent upon foreign policy, too — specifically, ending American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But once again, fate intervened. In the month before the first primaries and caucuses of the 2008 election season, a recession began. It wasn't clear to most Americans how severe things would get, how many jobs would be lost in the months ahead, but a recession had begun that would gather momentum and plunge America into an abyss.

The frustration has grown.

Obama isn't going to bow out of the race the way LBJ did. I don't think he is that pragmatic. He probably still thinks he can win — and maybe he can. But I strongly doubt it.

In the early days of his presidency, polls showed Obama's approval in the 60s, but, with the exception of a brief uptick following the death of Osama bin Laden, his ratings have been below 50 in most surveys for a couple of years now.

The numbers aren't quite as bad as LBJ's — and they are comparable to Clinton's — but I can't help but think that, even if Obama fights it out to the end, he faces essentially the same fate as LBJ.

Perhaps their mutual legacy is that they and the times in which they served were mismatched.

Herman Cain to Unemployed: Drop Dead

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"Don't blame Wall Street. Don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself."

Herman Cain

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OK, Herman Cain never told the nation's 14 million unemployed or underemployed Americans to drop dead.

Neither, for that matter, did President Ford tell New York City to drop dead — as a famous headline in the New York Daily News proclaimed during Ford's brief White House tenure.

But Ford might as well have told New York to drop dead, and the same applies to Cain and like–minded Republicans in 2011.

Ford was a Republican, and he was taking a stand against a federal bailout of a city that was struggling. I suppose modern Republicans — openly applauding, as they have recently, the refusal of medical care to someone because that person is not insured — would hail Ford as a visionary.

I have a feeling Cain would have liked the stand against bailouts — except, of course, for those cases in which he would be in favor of them. With today's Republicans — hell, with politicians in general — it's hard to say.

It all really depends, as an acquaintance of mine used to say, on whose ox is being gored.

Cain, of course, was defending New York — or, at least, Wall Street — against the angry protests from citizens who are understandably irked that the financiers have profited from their selfish practices that caused so much pain for many millions of Americans who, as a result of others' creative accounting practices, lost their jobs.

Whose fault was that, Mr. Cain?

Now, I'll be the first to admit that there are always a couple of bad apples in any given barrel. But, as a song from my youth reminded listeners in those days, "One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch." Prejudice is prejudice, whether it is based on race or religion or age or gender — or financial status.

The Great Recession has deprived America of the efforts of many creative, talented people, and it is simply wrong for anyone who knows nothing about individual circumstances to make a blanket assertion that the unemployed are to blame for not having a job.

The vast majority of the unemployed are not to blame for their plight, and it is to Cain's everlasting shame that he does blame them.

What's next? Will he blame the sick and the handicapped for their conditions? Will he blame the elderly for coming down with maladies that typically afflict older people?

America was once a country that offered a helping hand to those who were struggling, but, somehow, America has gone from being a place that sought to judge people on the content of their characters to a place that judges people on the content of their bank accounts. Well, most politicians do, regardless of party.

All the politicians, from the Oval Office on down, want money, lots of it. If they speak of encouraging job creation, it is mostly lip service, intended to gain votes but said in a kind of nudge, nudge, wink, wink sort of way to the money boys. We won't really hold you accountable, it implies.

No, they can't risk offending the money boys — or, for that matter those who have grown comfortable in their rapidly dwindling middle–class lifestyles and for whom the thought of being unemployed is like indigestion or the sight of a homeless person panhandling at an intersection — temporarily unpleasant, but, once gone from one's thoughts, it is forgotten, replaced by musings about this weekend's cookout or the impending release of the latest electronic gadget — and those who can afford it (and even some who cannot) will still contribute money to candidates who promise them they can keep what little they still have.

Money is power. Money is clout. Money buys advertising time. The unemployed can't afford to contribute much to political campaigns — their money is tied up in staying alive. But the financiers, the bankers, the Wall Streeters do have money, lots of it, and politicians in both parties shamelessly pursue it.

It's not your fault, Cain and others like him soothingly tell Wall Street. It's those greedy unemployed people. If they had any gumption, they'd go out and get a job or start their own business and make a fortune like Steve Jobs.

I share the rage that many people feel toward Wall Street, but I try to be rational about it. As I have observed so many times, things are rarely black and white. Most of the time, they are distinguished by subtle shades of gray.

I rather liked what Conor Friedersdorf wrote in The Atlantic: "There are honest and dishonest people on Wall Street, sensible and absurd people in the Occupy Wall Street, accurate and inaccurate critiques of American finance."

It is counter–productive to obsess about blame as we have a tendency to do in our culture these days. After all, Democrats promised to close Guantanamo and bring the troops home. I have Democrat friends who insist that these steps, along with taxing the rich, will put the economy back on track.

And I have Republican friends who blame excessive regulation and Obamacare for restricting job creation.

And neither side will concede that the other might have a good point or two.

We also have a tendency to rush to judgment. When Bush was president, critics were dismissed as unpatriotic. During Obama's presidency, critics have been dismissed as racist. Neither side cared about legitimate concerns that were raised. That's no way to build a consensus.

It's been easier for both sides to adopt a take–no–prisoners–all–or–nothing approach to governing — to rely on shaming the other side.

Well, the shame is on the politicians. And a good place to start is with Herman Cain.

The Tipping Point?

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"All I know is what I read in the papers."

Will Rogers

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Sometimes I feel like Will Rogers — although these days, with the newspaper industry on life support in many markets, I guess the more appropriate reference would be what I read on news web sites — or something similar.

The president says the economy is getting better and that another recession is not going to happen.

But Morgan Stanley says that prospect is more, not less, likely.

Wall Street clearly puts more — ahem — stock in Morgan Stanley than Barack Obama. Stocks closed down again yesterday, and there is considerable anxiety about the week ahead.

There is a lot of bad news about the economy these days, a lot of uncertainty.

Jobless claims are up.

Gallup reports that confidence in Obama to handle the economy is at its lowest point in his presidency — with only 26% approving.

Obama says he has a strategy to put America back to work — and he will unveil it right after Labor Day, which I suppose is better than what he did for the jobless on his first Labor Day in office.

But why the delay? So he and his family can ride their bikes on Martha's Vineyard for a couple of weeks? If he's got a plan — at long last — shouldn't it be treated with the urgency that this administration has promised but never delivered to the unemployed — and call Congress into special session?

His protests sound a lot to me like when Richard Nixon said he had a "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam — and the American public, weary of the war and Lyndon Johnson, bought it. No details were required.

Nixon was the challenger at the time, not the incumbent, and that is a difference this president simply cannot comprehend. Challengers can speak like outsiders because they are outsiders — even if there was a time when they were insiders.

Presidents are the flip side of the coin. They may well have been seen as outsiders when they were elected, but the very act of being elected transformed them from outsiders to insiders. They were elected to use the power of the office for the common good. Their re–election campaigns tend to be about how well they have done that.

Presidencies, regardless of how novel they may seem at first, have relatively short shelf lives. The American public tends to be quite generous with its presidents — and it has been generous with this one, believe it or not. It is hard to imagine any of his most recent predecessors enjoying popularity ratings in the 40s, as Obama has, in spite of an unemployment rate that is officially around 9.0% but unofficially may be twice as high.

As I listened to Obama complaining about the "bad luck" that has plagued him in recent months, it sounded a lot to me like the kind of thing I have heard from other one–term presidents in my life — Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush — but also from some twice–elected presidents.

I think a majority of voters have stopped listening to Obama. And, in my experience, when they have stopped listening, the president needs to start packing.

James Pethokoukis of Reuters puts Obama's prospects into historical context: "In fact, if a) the economic forecasts of Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are accurate, and b) voters behave as they usually do during bad economic times, then c) Barack Obama will be a one–term president."

A 'Rendezvous With Destiny'

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In the weeks before Barack Obama took the oath of office 2½ years ago, lots of folks were already comparing him to Lincoln and FDR.

Lincoln, as the Great Emancipator, was an obvious one, I guess, considering that Obama was the first black president. Obama's elevation to the presidency could be seen — and, in fact, was seen by some — as the fruition of Lincoln's vision of a post–racial America.

But I always felt the comparison to Roosevelt was more appropriate because of the circumstances and the expectations — OK, maybe I was influenced by the fact that I once wrote a research paper in graduate school on the 1932 presidential election, in which FDR first won the presidency (denying Herbert Hoover a second term by a substantial margin).

I still say the circumstances — which most people readily acknowledged were the worst since Roosevelt's time — had a lot to do with that. It's been nearly 80 years since Roosevelt was elected president, and the economic disaster that contributed much to Obama's election clearly wasn't as severe as the one facing FDR — but it was the worst this country has faced in three–quarters of a century, and that is important to remember.

In 2008, America already was, for all intents and purposes, a post–racial society. Racism still existed, but not on an officially sanctioned level, as it did when schools and public restrooms and businesses of all kinds were segregated.

And organized racism (i.e., the Ku Klux Klan) was not practiced at the level it once was, thanks to laws that were not only enacted but actively enforced.

Discrimination was outlawed, which, it seems to me, is the kind of thing that can only be taken so far as long as it is pursued as vigorously as other crimes.

If, for example, an employer is predisposed not to hire people who belong to a certain race — or, for that matter, happen to be female or over a certain age — it probably would be the kind of thing that would be hard to prove in court without some sort of paper trail. If one exists, it is government's responsibility to prosecute.

I'm sure discrimination still happens, but it's more covert. Folks who discriminate make more of an effort to cover their tracks. Most don't say or do incriminating things indiscriminately.

The election of Obama had no discernible impact on unsanctioned discrimination, but that wasn't really what the campaign was about. Sure, many folks were motivated by a desire to show the world that America had transcended racism, but I think a lot of it had to do with the economy.

It was what Americans have always done.

The bad economy affected everyone — and, as a student of history, I can tell you that, when times are bad, voters need very little encouragement to turn to the party that is out of power.

In 2008, the Republicans held the presidency. There was no incumbent to punish, as there had been in 1932, but the public could hold his party accountable — and it did. The voters gave the Democrats the White House and padded their majorities in the House and Senate.

I believed then — and I believe now — that the Democratic nominee was virtually assured of victory after the economy imploded under a Republican president. If Hillary Clinton had been the nominee, she would have won. If John Edwards had been the nominee, he would have won (and, considering the things that have emerged about him, we might well have faced other issues as a result).

As I say, this is how it has always been in America. When the economy is bad, the voters turn against the party in the White House. Doesn't matter who is in charge in Congress — which is never popular, anyway. Economic policy is believed to be set by the president.

Sure, we've had other economic downturns in the last three–quarters of a century — some modest and short lived, some not so modest and longer lived — but presidents who survived and were rewarded with additional time were the ones who demonstrated leadership and confidence.

They were the ones who met their "rendezvous with destiny," as FDR put it in his acceptance speech at the 1936 Democratic National Convention. Roosevelt was wrapping up his first term in the White House and was asking for four more years.

The unemployment rate in 1936 was much worse than it is today — but it was a clear improvement over the conditions that prevailed when Roosevelt was first elected. People responded to that fact — as well as the fact that Roosevelt had shown an eagerness to try new things when other approaches weren't getting the desired effect.

It's called leadership. It is the pioneering spirit that has always been celebrated in American history.

In the aftermath of the congressional resolution of the debt ceiling crisis, one got the sense from Obama that we had dodged a bullet, not that an important step had been taken toward the fulfillment of his vision of economic recovery and progress.

He hasn't shown the same kind of eagerness to try new things when the old ones did not succeed. Instead, he has been like George W. Bush, unable (or unwilling) to admit to any mistakes and, consequently, learn from them.

He must have made some mistakes. Under Obama's watch, unemployment has never been below where it was on the day he was sworn in. in 2½ years, voters expect to see some improvement.

Yet, on this Friday, roughly 15 months before Obama must face the voters again, forecasters believe the unemployment rate will remain at 9.2%.

In the context of the times, that would have been considered amazing when FDR sought a second term — and might have led to a 50–state landslide. As it was, Roosevelt carried all but two states and received more than 60% of the vote.

But, in 2011, to many voters, it represents a retreat if not outright surrender. Even the most generous voters seem hard pressed to defend these numbers, which directly threaten everything else.

It's why the stock markets have been jittery. It's why creditors have put the United States on a form of economic probation, even though an agreement was reached on the debt ceiling.

What has Obama — who likes to talk about "teachable moments" — learned from his mistakes? Is he meeting his rendezvous with destiny?

Wrong Way

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Gilligan's Island only lasted three TV seasons in the 1960s, but I recall seeing (in reruns) a couple of episodes in which Hans Conried played a character named Wrongway Feldman.

Feldman, if my memory serves me correctly, was a World War I era flying ace who got his nickname because he always flew in the wrong direction.

I mention that because, after hearing today's jobs report, it occurred to me that Barack Obama should be called "Wrongway Obama."

Now, optimistic Democrats have been pointing to the example of Ronald Reagan as evidence that presidents can win a second term in spite of midterm election setbacks and high unemployment rates.

It's one of those historically similar but ultimately illogical (in a modern context) kind of comparisons. The biggest and most obvious problem — and most threatening to this president — is simply that things are going in the wrong way.

Notice the trajectory of the unemployment rates in the chart. As you do, let's revisit the early 1980s for a minute.

There is no question that, in January 1983, the unemployment rate (10.4%), while not at its highest under Reagan, was on its way down from its peak in November 1982, the month that the Republicans lost more than two dozen seats in the House.

Those midterm losses, incidentally, did not cost the Republicans control of the chamber the way last November's losses cost the Democrats their majority. In 1982, the Republicans were in the minority, as they had been for nearly three decades. Through all of Reagan's first term, his party controlled the Senate while the Democrats controlled the House.

Reagan and his Republicans had to forge compromises with Democrats from the start. The like–minded Democrats who helped them accomplish their objectives became known as the "boll weevil Democrats." Without them, it is questionable whether Reagan could have accomplished much in the first two years of his presidency.

Sounds a lot like what Barack Obama must contend with in the last 18 months of his term, doesn't it? His party controls the Senate, the other party controls the House.

But therein lies one of the key differences between 1983 and 2011, you see.

Obama's Democrats enjoyed majority status — for awhile, super–majority status — in both chambers until they were resoundingly rejected in the 2010 midterms. In theory, prior to that, there was nothing to prevent them from enacting anything they wished for two years.

Being Democrats, though, they fought among themselves and drew lines in the dirt over mostly inconsequential matters. They squandered their opportunity.

And now, to accomplish anything in the last half of Obama's term, they will have to do something — repeatedly — that this president has never done before.

He can dig in his heels and resist — but then nothing will happen between now and November 2012. Or he can give in to Republican demands — and perhaps make things worse. Even if he doesn't make matters worse, he'll hand the other side the victories he is going to need to bolster his record in next year's campaign.

Anyway, the jobless rate continued to drop through 1983 until midway through 1984, when it settled into a modest up–and–down pattern — but it was more than three percentage points lower in November 1984 than it had been in November 1982.

Today's jobs report shows a different pattern. It suggests that, after a few slightly encouraging months earlier this year, when unemployment was registering 0.1% monthly declines, it is moving back up. One has to wonder if there is any way that Obama can reverse the trend — and, if he can, will he be able to take credit for it?

In 1983, there were enough Democrats in the House who sympathized with the Republicans that they could push through Reagan administration initiatives.

But, in 2011, politics in America is so polarized that it is really difficult to imagine Democrats enlisting enough Republican support in the House or Republicans enlisting enough Democrat support in the Senate to enact anything.

So, I think you can rule out any real compromises in the next 18 months.

I think it is also important to remember the circumstances under which each president was elected.

Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy in November 1979, when unemployment was around 6% — just about its lowest level during the Carter years, an improvement over what Carter had inherited but much lower than it wound up being when voters went to the polls a year later.

And it was higher than Americans were accustomed to. Reagan's 1980 campaign was built on economic issues. When unemployment surged past 7% in the spring of 1980, peaking at nearly 8% in the summer, he had already laid the foundation for an economic–oriented campaign.

Unemployment was even lower when Obama announced his candidacy in February 2007 — about 4.5%. As hard as it may be to remember now, in 2007, the 2008 campaign figured to be about foreign policy — but that changed when the economy imploded in 2008. When voters went to the polls in November 2008, unemployment was higher than it had been in 15 years.

Well, today, it's more than two percentage points higher than it was when Obama was elected.

There is a lot of work to be done to persuade America that the Obama administration is on the right track — and not much time to do it.

It's the Economy, Stupid

That was true in 1992 when Bill Clinton was elected president. It was true again two years later when the Republicans captured both chambers of Congress.

It was true in 1980 when Jimmy Carter lost the presidency to Ronald Reagan (incidentally, the Los Angeles Times makes the same point I made then — and continued to make on the 30th anniversary of the so–called "malaise" speech — about the choice those voters made), and it was true two years later when the Republicans lost ground in the House in a big way.

It was true half a century before that when Herbert Hoover lost the presidency to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

As far as I can tell from my studies of history, it has always been this way, and I believe it will always be so.

I know that Barack Obama's defenders want to blame his sinking approval numbers on racism, but that simply isn't an accurate — or fair — assessment.

I've never denied that some of those who opposed his candidacy in 2008 and continue to oppose his presidency in 2011 are motivated by racism.

But it is false — a political smoke screen — to suggest that the same man who received more votes than anyone ever has when he was elected president and won a higher share of the popular vote than any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson has fallen from favor because of his race.

His skin color didn't change. When nearly 69.5 million Americans voted for him in 2008, his skin was the same color it is now. Are we to believe that voters who were progressive enough to elect a black president in 2008 have reverted to racism in a couple of years?

It seems more likely that Bruce Drake is on to something when he observes, in a Politics Daily piece based on a recent Quinnipiac University poll, that most voters like Obama personally — "but a small majority don't like his policies."

A president needs to be likable. People want to like their president. And, in general, people do like this one. Contrary to what Obama's defenders want to believe, however, it is not the only consideration.

When times are good, voters can choose the presidential candidate with whom they might like to share a beer.

But when times are bad, voters tend to vote for the candidate they believe is more likely to keep food on their tables. For many reasons, a majority of voters is not confident at this time that Obama can do that.

Now, many things can affect what happens when the voters go to the polls in November 2012. A significant part of the equation is perception — being the politician he is, Obama should know this. We know he does. He manipulated public perception masterfully in pursuit of the nomination and then the presidency itself.

But he seemed to forget all that once he entered the White House. As job losses rose by totals that were well into six digits monthly, Obama seemed to focus only on never–threatened Supreme Court nominations, "teachable moments" and health care reform.

As I have said before, I did not vote for Obama in 2008 (nor did I vote for McCain — I voted for Nader), but I know people who did — and many of them have expressed their frustration and disappointment in his judgment, his priorities.

In a nation where more than 70% of the voters who participated were white, race did not prevent Americans from electing Obama in 2008, and race will not compel them to re–elect him in 2012.

His record will play a decisive role in what happens.

I've often heard Obama's defenders say that it took a long time to create this mess and it will take a long time to clean it up. That's true, but I don't get the sense that people expected Obama to wave a magic wand and unemployment would drop to 4% again and gas prices would fall below $2 a gallon.

I do get the sense that they expected to believe that his attention was riveted on the task at hand — and here is where Obama could learn some lessons from FDR. He made it clear from the first day that his focus was on reviving the economy.

He knew it was a long–term project, and he was sailing in uncharted territory. He was willing to try just about anything. If it didn't work, he was willing to admit that it hadn't worked and dropped it. When the first midterm elections of his presidency rolled around, things weren't back to their pre–stock market crash levels, but they were moving in the right direction and his party gained ground in both chambers.

Roosevelt's dedication was further rewarded when he sought re–election in 1936. Nearly every state voted for him, and his party's majorities in both the House and Senate surged past 75%.

It was not until Roosevelt's partisan attempt to "pack" the Supreme Court early in his second term that the voters' perceptions began to change. He won two more presidential elections, and his party retained control of Congress for another decade, but popular support was never what it had been before, even when the nation was united in its resolve to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Obama became America's first black president not because of (or in spite of) his race but because a majority of voters believed he could put the country on the right path.

If he becomes America's first two–term black president, it will be because they know he can.

Much time has been wasted. But there is still some time left. Recent jobs reports have been encouraging, but it will take sustained and clear growth before most Americans believe that things are turning around.

Word Games

When you've been out of work for awhile, you really start to notice the word games that politicians play with job numbers.

Take today's jobs report, for example. It kind of reminded me of the reaction in June 2009 to the news that fewer jobs had been lost in the previous month than expected. The losses were still in double digits and the unemployment rate climbed to 9.4% when economists had predicted it would go up to 9.2%.

But the focus was on the fact that the pace of job losses was slowing. Things were getting better, we were told. Folks in the administration hailed the report as proof that things were moving in the right direction.

Hold your horses, I warned people. Let's see what happens in the next two or three ... or more ... months. But no one heard me. The sound of popping champagne corks was too loud, I suppose.

Reality slapped some folks in the face the next month. Job losses were worse than expected, nearly half a million.

Anyway, back to today's report.

The economy added jobs, which was good, but it added one–third fewer jobs than expected, which was not so good.

However, the unemployment rate dropped by 0.3 percentage points, to 9.4%, which was better than expected.

And that is what Barack Obama preferred to emphasize. "The trend is clear. The pace of hiring is beginning to pick up," he said upon hearing the news.

If that is, indeed, what we are witnessing, then that is a good thing, to be sure.

But, once again, I counsel my fellow Americans to wait and see if this really is an indicator of a long–term trend — or an exception to the rule.

And, while it is good that the president offers words of hope and encouragement to those who are struggling to find full–time work (something he has rarely done in the first two years of his presidency), he doesn't mention that one of the reasons that the unemployment rate has dropped is because it only counts those who have not exhausted their unemployment benefits.

Those who have exhausted their benefits are simply not counted. Whether they have found employment or not is irrelevant.

The president also doesn't talk about how many of the jobs that were created in December were of a temporary, seasonal nature. Not too much demand for shopping mall Santas and extra gift wrappers in March.

Sometimes this kind of talk can generate similar talk, and a kind of momentum gets going. If something like that happens and employers decide to just start hiring people en masse, that's great.

But let's wait a few more months before we open the champagne bottles.

Facts Are Stubborn Things

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"Carl Van Horn, the director of the Heldrich Center and one of the two professors ... conducting the survey, said he was struck by how pessimistic some of the respondents have become — not just about their own situation but about the nation's future. The survey found that workers in general are increasingly accepting the notion that the effects of the recession will be permanent, that they are the result of fundamental changes in the national economy."

Bob Herbert
New York Times

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I have heard that the New York Times will go to a pay–for–online–access format in 2011.

The Times tried this a few years ago and eventually dropped it. Apparently, it wasn't paying off. But, with the horrid economy, the folks who run the Times — in spite of the somewhat obvious comparisons it invited to Einstein's definition of insanity — made the announcement several months ago that they would give it another try, starting in January.

I suppose we'll find out soon if all systems are still go for that move or if cooler heads have prevailed at the Times. But, acting on the assumption that the bean counters at the Times still can't see the forest for the trees, I have been checking in at the website more frequently — in case that will no longer be an option this time next week.

Well, I suppose it will be an option — but only if I pay the admission price.

My background is in journalism, and I guess I prefer this revenue–enhancing procedure to the one to which so many news outlets have turned — personnel cuts — but I'm not terribly optimistic that it will work.

I feel that way for several reasons, which I may explore next week if the Times follows through with its previously announced plans, but today I am interested in Bob Herbert's column in the Times titled "The Data and the Reality."

Essentially, Herbert reminds readers that, in spite of optimistic talk, in spite of the flurry of bills passed by the lame–duck Congress, in spite of Barack Obama's rhetoric during the midterm campaign, "in the rough and tumble of the real world, where families have to feed themselves and pay their bills, there are an awful lot of Americans being left behind."

In an America where the word "trillion" has become commonplace to describe budget figures, unemployment numbers that are measured in millions seem to have lost their impact on those who still have their jobs and homes — even though, in a nation of about 300 million, any number that has the word million in it should alarm people.

It doesn't, of course. In the America that existed nearly 30 years ago, when the last recession to see a double–digit unemployment rate threatened the re–election of a president, such numbers still impressed some people. They certainly impressed the Americans who lived half a century before that, when a quarter of the population was jobless in the darkest years of the Great Depression.

But in today's America, when people like Herbert remind us that "[m]ore than 15 million Americans are officially classified as jobless," I suspect that prompts knowing nods from people who are jobless — and mostly neutral shrugs from the rest of America, where six—figure monthly job losses were routine for a year or more.

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"The fact that so many Americans are out of work, or working at jobs that don't pay well, undermines the prospects for a robust recovery. Jobless people don't buy a lot of flat–screen TVs. What we're really seeing is an erosion of standards of living for an enormous portion of the population, including a substantial segment of the once solid middle class.

"Not only is this not being addressed, but the self–serving, rightward lurch in Washington is all but guaranteed to make matters worse for working people. The zealots reading the economic tea leaves see brighter days ahead. They can afford to be sanguine. They're working."

Bob Herbert

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And now, on the eve of the second anniversary of Barack Obama's inauguration, we are told that four–fifths of the modest number of jobs that were gained in November were temporary.

Midway through his term, Obama's economic policies can't be seen as resounding successes — and it is on the economy — not health care, not judicial appointments, not his basketball game — that his presidency will be judged when voters are asked whether to re–elect him in 2012.

The unemployed — be they official or unofficial (the part–timers, the underemployed, the ones who should be counted but aren't because they no longer qualify for assistance based on some arbitrary guidelines that were enacted in another time by and for people who are mostly gone from the workforce now) — understand.

They are realistic, according to the survey about which Herbert writes today. "[W]orkers in general are increasingly accepting the notion that the effects of the recession will be permanent, that they are the result of fundamental changes in the national economy," writes Herbert.

The rest are not realistic. Perhaps they're in denial. Perhaps their ignorance is deliberate, sort of a self–defense mechanism. Perhaps they just became numb to the human suffering after awhile.

It's not a pleasant topic to discuss during the Christmas season, is it?

Actually, it shouldn't have to be discussed now at all. It should have been discussed long ago — by Obama and his advisers starting the day after the 2008 election, or, even better, by George W. Bush and his people before the election.

But it wasn't. It got the same treatment as energy independence and infrastructure and the other serious issues that have threatened the nation. It got swept under the rug by bureaucrats who hoped the ship would right itself.

No, no one wants to talk about human suffering at Christmas. I understand that. It spoils the illusion.

I give Herbert credit for trying.

But this is nothing new for him. He's been writing about this for a long, long time. People just don't seem to be listening.

I wish him success. And I'd like to watch and see if his future columns finally get some sort of response from the powers that be — as more and more Americans are sucked into the black hole, as inevitably they will be.

But if the Times follows through on its plans, I simply won't be able to read Herbert's columns online anymore.

I haven't had full–time work in more than two years. I've been working as an adjunct instructor at the local community college since August, but the income from that job only goes so far. I haven't been able to find anything to supplement it.

If the Times starts charging for access, the choice is mine, but it won't be much of a choice, I'm afraid. Fact is, as much as I like reading the Times' columnists, I like to eat more. And, with gas prices on the rise, I need to save whatever money I can simply to be able to drive back and forth to my part–time job.

If something must give, it will have to be the Times.

That's the reality of the unemployed, the part–time employed, the underemployed. It's like slowly bleeding to death while the people with the blood are arguing about whose fault it is.

I've been reading a lot of articles offering advice to Obama for the new reality he will face when Congress convenes in January. Most speak of him moving more to the center, as Reagan and Clinton did, and it would make sense to emulate those presidents who went on to win second terms. They demonstrated their leadership skills when the numbers on Capitol Hill were no longer as favorable for them.

Those numbers certainly don't seem terribly favorable for Obama right now. The super–majority his party enjoyed in the Senate has been gone for nearly a year, ever since the loss of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in last January's special election, and it is anyone's guess how much Obama will be able to accomplish with a six–seat advantage in that chamber.

Obama has not proven to be a pragmatic politician, but Senate Democrats, who hold two–thirds of the seats that will be on the ballot in 2012, need him to become one in a hurry. The longer his approval ratings remain mired in the 40s — or, worse, if they fall into the George W. Bush–like 30s range — the less inclined those senators are going to be to want him joining them on the campaign trail.

I certainly don't think they will be inclined to support many initiatives from a president, however popular, whose policies are perceived by the voters to be leading the country down the wrong road.

Of course, the likelihood that Obama will achieve anything in the House, where Republicans grabbed more than 60 seats from the Democrats in last month's elections, is virtually zero.

We're a long way from 1992, but it is still the economy, stupid.

Hypocrisy and the Damage Done

If anyone confuses me with a George W. Bush supporter, I can only conclude that person

• doesn't know me, or
• hasn't read much in this blog.

Perhaps (or maybe that should be probably) both.

After all, Bush was still president when I wrote that his actions in office needed to be investigated.

I still believe that to be true, but, after revisiting that particular post, I feel I need to amend what I said — if only to make what I feel are somewhat obvious points about hypocrisy.

I'm not saying that Barack Obama was dishonest about his intentions in Iraq — but he has been, at the very least, inconsistent in what he has said.

On the surface, Obama appeared to be gracious toward his predecessor when he said, in his speech informing the public that he had fulfilled his pledge to end all combat operations in Iraq, "[N]o one can doubt President Bush's support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security," and he went on to observe that "there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it."

But there has long been a rising chorus in America of people who believed that the Bush administration (the president and all the others whose names will be forever linked to this tragedy) lied to the people to further its own agenda. And one of those voices had been Obama's.

In the now–forgotten days before the economic implosion, Obama's opposition to the war in Iraq and his desire to end American military involvement there was one of the main things that drew voters to him, not unlike Gene McCarthy's insurgent candidacy against LBJ four decades before.

It may be hard to remember now, but the campaigns for both parties' presidential nominations were conducted with the unpopular Iraq war as the backdrop, not the economy.

"There was no such thing as Al Qaeda in Iraq," Obama told an audience in Ohio during the 2008 presidential campaign, "until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq."

Hmmmm. Seems to me Obama was asserting on that occasion (and on others in the spring of 2008) that both Bush and McCain had been guilty of lying when they pressed Congress for the authority to invade Iraq.

After all, the primary reason for going to war (which has long been discredited) was the alleged existence of "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, weapons that supposedly were aimed at America, ready to launch at a second's notice. And those allusions to mushroom clouds from folks like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, et al., drove that message home.

And, because Al Qaeda was such an emotional subject for most Americans in the months immediately following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the proponents of a war with Iraq tossed around the suggestion that Al Qaeda had used Iraq as a base of operations. That, too, proved to be false.

But, without those two arrows in their quiver at that time, the so–called neocons never could have frightened the American public — or the American Congress — into going along with them.

Lying about the reasons for launching an invasion doesn't seem very patriotic to many Americans — especially Americans who were passionate about their opposition to the war (and believed their opposition was a valid expression of their own patriotism) and yet were slandered as unpatriotic by those who supported the war.

How do you suppose they feel when they hear Obama praise Bush's "love of country" in connection with the Iraqi operation?

Does it seem hypocritical to you?

Hypocrisy isn't an easy thing to confront, is it? Of course, no one is perfect, but Eugene Robinson, an Obama enabler from the Washington Post who complains that American voters are petulant "spoiled brats" who are ready to turn over the Congress to a party they loathe because Democrats haven't produced improvements fast enough to suit them, frets that what voters appear all but certain to do in November makes no sense.

Actually, in the context of the American experience, it does make sense. At the very least, it is consistent. In the midterm campaigns of 1982 and 1994, respectively, both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton repeatedly reminded the voters that they had inherited bad economies.

And surveys showed that the majority of respondents agreed with Reagan and Clinton — but the voters had moved on. They weren't thinking about who started the fire. They were thinking about who had been chosen to extinguish the fire. And, in both cases, that had not been done.

Robinson doesn't think it is fair, and maybe it isn't. But what does fair have to do with it? It's the way American voters have behaved as long as I can remember. It shouldn't surprise anyone.

I'm inclined to think Robinson makes a valuable point when he says Obama can "point to any number of occasions on which he has told Americans that getting our nation back on track is a long–range project." Yet, in the very same column, Robinson admits that, when he was running for president, Obama's "campaign stump speech ended with the exhortation, 'Let's go change the world' — not 'Let's go change the world slowly and incrementally, waiting years before we see the fruits of our labor.' "

And that's the point. Obama raised the bar for himself by making "change" the centerpiece of his campaign. And his words had an urgency, an almost revolutionary sound, to them.

Now, not only is change coming too slowly for some, most can't agree on what kind of change the campaign was really about (and, therefore, the Obama presidency should be about).

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Obama campaigned under the banner of change, and change is what the voters expected. If the voters can't see it, that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. It might mean it isn't the kind of change they expected, or there hasn't been enough of it to make a difference in their lives.

It may well be true, as some have suggested, that some economic indicators are doing better and that this is a stubborn economy — and that, even though it will be years before most Americans see any change in their health care, it is a landmark achievement (that could well be repealed if the other party takes legislative power in a few months) — but real change, the kind that makes a positive difference in people's lives, is hard for many to see, especially when the latest report from the Labor Department showed unemployment moving back up in the direction of 10%.

Perhaps that explains why Gallup reports finding that less than 40% of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing on the economy. And, while Obama may be proud of passing health care reform legislation, he would be wise not to bring it up too much if Gallup is right. His handling of that issue is only marginally more popular than his handling of the economy (Gallup's finding, by the way, is confirmed by CNN polling, which tends to be more pro–Democrat than the typically neutral Gallup).

Some voters continue to take it on faith that the economy is getting better and blame the previous administration for all their difficulties, and Obama eagerly embraces that approach, as other presidents have.

But it just seems hypocritical to me that the same man who, in the days before his inauguration, urged his countrymen to look to the future instead of the past by investigating his predecessor's actions in office — who launched his presidential campaign with an eloquent plea for taking responsibility ("We've been told that our crises are somebody else's fault. We are distracted from our real failures and told to blame the other party, or gay people, or immigrants, and as people have looked away in frustration and disillusionment, we know who has filled the void") — now excuses his own failings by reminding people, at every opportunity, who was in office when the recession began.

And then he praises his predecessor's patriotism as he concludes a war that predecessor began.

This isn't exactly what I would call an "alternate history." If you're looking for something like that, may I recommend David Brooks' piece in the New York Times this week?

While his column rightfully could be considered an example of Monday morning quarterbacking, Brooks does suggest a plausible scenario in which the prospects for the midterm elections wouldn't be as dire for the Democrats — even if the employment numbers were fundamentally unchanged.

American voters may seem like petulant children to Robinson, but the lessons one learns from childhood do have a staying power all their own. They can continue to guide one's steps in adulthood.

And, while I may seem blase about the concept of being fair, I do understand that desire for fairness, justice and all that — and the bitterness one can feel when fair treatment has been denied.

I recall that, when I was about 6, I found myself in a situation in which the people around me were discussing something of which I knew nothing. I don't remember the specifics — or what I opted to do in that situation except that, whatever I did, it must have backfired on me because I felt compelled to discuss it with my mother.

(For some reason, I think this incident involved a discussion some of my peers were having about a TV program. But not everyone had a TV in those days, and it seems to me that, at the time, my family didn't have a TV set, so I knew nothing about TV programs. I probably felt left out of the conversation and decided to change the subject to something I knew about — resulting in a predictable outcome.)

Anyway, Mom told me there would be times in my life when the people around me would be discussing something in which I had no interest or knowledge to contribute to the conversation. In such situations, she told me, there were three things I could do. I could

• ignore the feelings of those I am with and change the subject to something I feel more comfortable talking about,
• try to contribute to the conversation, even though I have nothing to add to it, thereby embarrassing myself and wasting the others' time, or
• be respectful of those who are talking and remain silent.

She told me the third option was the best. And, although I don't remember the specifics of the incident that led to this conversation, I still remember what she told me: "Show courtesy and respect for others, and wait your turn."

I loved my mother very much, and I always wanted to please her. I don't recall if her answer made sense to me at the time, but it made sense to her, and that was all I needed to know.

As I think back on moments from my childhood, it occurs to me that I accepted many of the things Mom told me on face value. I didn't always understand the things she told me or the advice she gave me — and, in that case, I may well have been equally influenced, even if I didn't realize it, by the admonition that supposedly came from Mark Twain that "It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt" — but if she believed it, I believed it, too.

I guess I should have asked more questions, though, because there have been times since Mom died when I have wondered if the sense of justice and fair play that she passed along to me might have been somewhat askew. Or maybe I've just applied her lessons wrong.

I know of at least one occasion about five or six years ago when I was having lunch with a group, and the women in the group were discussing something to which I had nothing to contribute. I don't remember now what the subject was, only that it was something I knew nothing about.

I was in a situation I had neither foreseen nor prepared for. I was also sensitive to traditional gender roles, and I was aware of the issues that always exist just beneath the surface, even if they aren't spoken out loud. I didn't want to trample on anyone's feet. And there were other factors at work as well.

So Mom's advice kicked in. I sat there in silence. I thought I was being courteous and respectful. Apparently, it wasn't taken that way. I say "apparently" not because any of the women in the group ever showed me the courtesy of telling me that my silence had been offensive to them in any way but because one of them told someone else — and he told me.

I've been paying the price for my "transgression" ever since. So much, I suppose, for the sense of fair play and justice in which I believed since I was a child.

Well, that's on a very small (albeit personal) scale. And it may not be entirely applicable.

Maybe I would have gotten the same response if I had said something stupid or insisted on changing the subject. Considering what I have long known of these people who have crucified me ever since for remaining silent, I was in a no–win situation. I believe there was nothing I could have done that would have been right in their eyes, even if I had had hours to carefully consider my options because nothing I have ever said or done has been right in their eyes.

I guess the moral for a president, who faces more demanding critics, is that there are times — especially when the economy sucks — when a president is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

Maybe it's like the moral I always drew from "Short Cuts," Robert Altman's film of several Raymond Carver stories that eventually intersect.

One of those stories dealt with a young boy who was hit by a car being driven by a woman who was distracted by her personal problems. The woman tried to persuade the boy to let her take him to his home, but he seemed OK and, because his mother had always told him never to accept a ride with strangers, he politely refused her offer and insisted he was all right.

But he wasn't. Apparently, he had severe injuries that became more and more apparent after he got home. He fell into a coma and was rushed to the hospital, where he eventually died. His parents spent virtually every waking moment by his side.

Meanwhile, a baker who had been commissioned to bake a cake for the boy's upcoming birthday grew angrier and angrier as the days passed and no one came to pick up the special order (and pay him for all his hard work). The baker, knowing nothing of what had happened to the boy, began making harassing, anonymous calls to the parents' home.

It's always seemed to me that the moral was that life would be a lot simpler and things would turn out a lot better if people knew the whole story before they jumped to conclusions (as neatly as such conclusions may fit their particular world view).

The baker probably wouldn't have made those calls if he had known the family was facing a crisis. And that crisis might have been avoided if the boy had realized that, when his mother told him not to accept rides with strangers, she didn't mean to turn down a ride from someone who has hit you with her car and wants to make sure you are all right.

For that matter, the driver of the car never knew the fatal consequences of her inattentiveness. She told her husband about the incident, but she believed it had been a narrow escape.

Anyway, the grieving parents put two and two together and confronted the baker about the phone calls. When he learned what had happened to the boy, he regretted making the calls and tried to do what he could to make amends for his behavior, offering them some of his freshly baked rolls. "You should eat something at a time like this," he said. And they accepted his offering, perhaps more as a courtesy than because they were hungry.

And the rolls were good. I haven't read all of Carver's short stories, but I have read that one — eventually, I'd like to read the others that were brought to the screen in Altman's movie — and it describes the reassuring flavor of the rolls and the soothing warmth of the kitchen. The parents had not asked for the rolls, but they were good and the parents were grateful for the baker's act of kindness.

But the baker couldn't give the parents the one thing they did ask for. When the mother asked if she could see the cake he had made for her son, he had to confess that he had thrown it away.

And maybe that really is the moral of the story.

Sometimes the damage is done. Sometimes it is too late to know the whole story — or for that knowledge to make a difference.