The Fine Art of Compromise ... and Lost Opportunity

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"The trusts and combinations — the communism of pelf — whose machinations have prevented us from reaching the success we deserve should not be forgotten nor forgiven."

Letter from Grover Cleveland to Rep. Thomas C. Catchings (D–Miss.)
August 27, 1894

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I have mentioned here that I have been studying the presidency most of my life.

And Grover Cleveland has always fascinated me. He always stood out because he was — and still is — the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms. (He was also president half a century before presidents were limited to two terms — so, presumably, he could have sought a third term in 1896, but his party repudiated him. More on that in a minute.)

I have found it fascinating, too, to observe all the different presidents in American history to whom Barack Obama has been compared.

That didn't really begin with Obama. Incoming presidents are almost always compared to presidents from the past. I don't know why. Maybe to try to get an idea of what to expect. There have been no other black presidents so Obama couldn't be compared to anyone on a racial level.

When he was about to take the oath of office for the first time, Obama was compared, at different times and for different reasons, to great presidents from American history like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Lincoln, of course, was a natural, having presided over the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. There were some comparisons, as well, to Franklin D. Roosevelt, mostly because FDR had taken office during the most perilous economic period in the nation's history, even to John F. Kennedy, perhaps because both were young and their elections made history.

Over the course of his presidency, Obama has been compared to less accomplished presidents. In recent years, it has frequently been asked if he is more incompetent than Jimmy Carter, who is generally regarded as the most incompetent president in recent memory.

Six years ago, about three weeks before Obama took the oath of office the first time, political scientist Michael Barone suggested that Dwight Eisenhower might be the more appropriate comparison, and I wrote about that.

Barone's point was that Eisenhower had done little to help his fellow Republicans, many of whom "grumbled that Ike ... was selfish.

"Eisenhower, I suspect, regarded himself as a unique national figure," Barone wrote, "and believed that maximizing his popularity far beyond his party's was in the national interest."

I was reminded of that tonight when I heard Obama's speech on immigration. Many congressional Democrats are supporting the president — publicly, at least — but some are not. Regardless of the negative ramifications of his executive order — and a poll conducted Wednesday night indicates that nearly half of respondents oppose Obama's acting via executive order — Obama seems determined to prove that he is still relevant.

Coming a mere two weeks after Democrats lost control of the U.S. Senate in the midterm elections, it seems to me a president who was more concerned about his party's future than his own would act more prudently. Bill Clinton, after all, lost control of both chambers of Congress in the midterms of 1994, and Democrats didn't regain the majority in either chamber for 12 years.

Clinton did manage to retake some his party's lost ground when he ran for re–election in 1996 and then again after surviving an attempt by the Republicans to impeach him before the 1998 midterms, defying all logic.

I've always felt that a lot of that was because Clinton was appropriately chastened by his party's massive losses in the midterms. I felt, at the time, that many of the voters who had voted Republican in 1994 believed Clinton had learned an important lesson and were more open to supporting him and the members of his party in 1996.

Obama has now been through two disastrous midterm elections, and he has emerged from the second not chastened but defiant. He appears to be entirely ready to do everything on his own, completely ignoring the role that the Founding Fathers intended for Congress to play. An opportunity to let compromise and cooperation be what the Founding Fathers envisioned in their fledgling republic is being squandered.

Once such an opportunity is lost, once such a president takes this kind of approach, it is hard, if not impossible, to establish a rapport with the other side.

Obama isn't the first to do this, which brings me back to Grover Cleveland. A little background information is called for here.

Cleveland was first elected president in 1884. He was the first Democrat elected to the office in more than a quarter of a century — in spite of the revelation that Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock. It was close, but Cleveland managed to pull it off.

Four years later, when Cleveland sought a second term, conditions were good. The nation was at peace, and the economy was doing pretty well, but there was division over the issue of tariff policy. The election was another cliffhanger. Cleveland again won the popular vote by a narrow margin, but his opponent, Benjamin Harrison, received enough electoral votes to win.

So Cleveland left the White House in March 1889, but he returned as the Democratic nominee in 1892 and defeated Harrison. It was the second time a major party nominated someone for president three straight times. The first one, Andrew Jackson, also won the popular vote all three times; like Cleveland, though, he was denied the presidency once because he lost the electoral vote.

Perhaps it was the experience of having been returned to the White House after losing the electoral vote four years earlier that contributed to Cleveland's messianic complex. To be fair, it would be hard not to feel that there was an element of historical inevitability at work.

But that doesn't really excuse how Cleveland approached the outcome of the 1894 midterms.

One cannot tell the story of the 1894 midterms without telling the story of the Panic of 1893 for it defined Cleveland's second term as well as the midterms. It was the worst economic depression the United States had experienced up to that time. Unemployment in America was about 3% when Cleveland was elected in 1892. After a series of bank failures, it ballooned into double figures in 1893 and stayed there for the remainder of Cleveland's term.

The depression was a key factor in the debate over bimetallism in 1894. Cleveland and his wing of the Democratic Party were known as "bourbon Democrats," supporters of a kind of laissez–faire capitalism. They supported the gold standard and opposed bimetallism, in which both gold and silver are legal tender.

The economy was already the main topic of the campaign, and a major coal strike in the spring didn't help. In fact, it hammered the fragile economies of the states in the Midwest and the Northeast. Republicans blamed Democrats for the poor economy, and the argument found a receptive audience.

Republicans gained House seats just about everywhere except the Southern states, which remained solidly Democratic, and states where Republicans already held all the House seats. Democrats went from a 220–106 advantage to a 104–226 deficit. It remains the most massive shift in House party division in U.S. history.

Under circumstances such as these, a president has two choices — he can be conciliatory and try to move to the political center, as Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan did, or he can dig in his heels and be even more intransigent.

Much as Obama is doing 120 years later, Cleveland chose the latter approach after the midterms in 1894. Perhaps he felt he had no allies in Washington anymore, but I've always felt his go–it–alone approach was a big reason why he was repudiated by the Democrats in 1896. The fragmented party chose instead to go with William Jennings Bryan, who would be nominated three times and lose each time. In fact, with the exception of the Woodrow Wilson presidency, no Democrat would win the White House for the next 36 years.

For that matter, they didn't regain the majority in the House until the 1910 midterms, but they lost that majority six years later in spite of the fact that President Wilson was at the top of the ballot. It took the stock market crash of 1929 to restore Democrats to majority status in the House in the midterms of 1930.

That is one cautionary tale that emerges from this year's midterms. Another is the exaggerated importance given to the turnout. I know it is a popular excuse to use after a party has been slammed in the midterms, but it is misleading.

In 2006, when Democrats retook the majority in both chambers for the first time in 12 years, they treated it as a mandate for change. But roughly the same number of voters participated in 2006 as participated in 2014. Granted, there has been an increase in the overall population in those eight years so the share of registered voters who participated is different, but the overall numbers are the same.

Republicans, too, pointed to low turnout in 2006. My advice to them would be not to duplicate the Democrats' mistake. They believed their success was permanent — and it never is in politics.

It can last longer, though, if you lead.

Promise Fulfilled

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My mother was a Democrat.

I have written here before of her death in a flash flood in 1995 — and I mention it now only because I have been thinking of a conversation I had with her the last time I saw her.

It was mid–April of 1995. I was living in Oklahoma at the time, and I had come to Dallas to spend Easter weekend with my parents. Through the course of that weekend, I had several conversations with my mother on a range of topics.

One of the topics was the new Republican Congress that seized power in the 1994 midterms. Mom was worried that Clinton, like the previous Democratic president, would be defeated when he sought a second term.

"Don't worry, Mom," I told her. "Clinton will win."

To this day, I'm not sure why I said that to her. Clinton's job approval ratings were in the mid–40s at the time — hardly encouraging.

I guess I was speaking from the perspective of having watched Clinton's rise, fall and subsequent rise again in Arkansas politics. (I watched it up close as a young reporter. I covered his runoff campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination when he sought the office after being voted out in the previous election.) Maybe I wanted to reassure Mom that Clinton would not be another Jimmy Carter.

Deep down, though, I guess I must have believed it.

We never spoke about it again. She died a few weeks later — on May 5, 1995.

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But I thought of that conversation often in the next year and a half.

I thought of it exactly 18 months later — on Nov. 5, 1996, the day Clinton was re–elected over Bob Dole. He didn't receive 50% of the vote, but he won as many electoral votes as he did four years earlier against the first President Bush.

There really wasn't any suspense to speak of that night. The outcome was a foregone conclusion, as I recall.

There was simply no compelling reason to change presidents. Some troubling issues were raised during the campaign, most notably concerning Democratic fund–raising practices, but the economy was sound and foreign relations were relatively stable.

It was a different kind of relation that sidetracked the Clinton administration during its second term.

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After Clinton won re–election, he returned to Washington following a victory celebration in Little Rock and was greeted on the White House lawn by his staff.

Among those who lined up to greet him was a then–unknown intern named Monica Lewinsky. She embraced the president as he made his way along the line of well wishers, an embrace that was seen by millions on TV although practically no one knew who she was.

That would change in the years ahead. So would the economic and international stability — after Clinton left office.

I still miss Mom, but I am glad she missed all that.

Nevertheless ...

The day Clinton returned to Washington and embraced Monica on the White House lawn, I went to the cemetery and stood next to Mom's grave for a few minutes.

"We won," I said, probably to no one in particular. I just felt a need to do that.

The Role of Government

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An important intangible in the presidency is what George H.W. Bush once breezily dismissed as the "vision thing."

That is the sort of attitude that presidents who lack such a vision — and their supporters — tend to have about it. They treat it as if it isn't important, as if competence alone is all that is necessary.

(But the voters don't see it that way. Competence is kind of a relative thing, don't you think? What strikes one person as competent may well strike another as incompetent.)

I have heard defenders of Barack Obama saying much the same thing. Vision — and leadership — aren't so important, they will say. Ah, but they are important. Ask the first President Bush how important he now thinks those qualities are. Or ask President Carter.

Or ask Barack Obama in about 13 months (although my sense is that, if Obama loses — as I expect — he and his supporters will blame it on everything but his performance in office).

Based on what I have seen so far, I expect the 2012 presidential campaign to be about the weaknesses of the other side, not the strengths or achievements of a particular candidate or his vision for the future.

It will be like most of the presidential campaigns in my lifetime — voters will be easily distracted from truly pressing issues by irrelevant ones, and once again America will be deprived of the frank discussion it so desperately needs as its people decide who should lead them for the next four years.

For most voters, the choice will be which candidate to vote against, not which candidate to vote for. Not terribly inspiring.

Someone will win the election because somebody must, but the voters will be no more united than they have been after most presidential elections in my life and the direction will be no clearer.

It isn't always that way, though. Fifteen years ago tomorrow night, when President Clinton and Bob Dole squared off in Hartford, Conn., in the first of their two debates, the president opened his remarks by pledging "to make this campaign and this debate one of ideas, not insults."

And the debate began with a question that went to the heart of the candidates' visions for the nation — what they saw as the role of the federal government.

It was a question that was designed to explore the candidates' ideas in depth, and it succeeded.

"[T]he federal government should give people the tools and try to establish the conditions in which they can make the most of their own lives," Clinton said. "That, to me, is the key."

"I trust the people," Dole said. "The president trusts the government. ... Where possible, I want to give power back to the states and back to the people."

It was the start of a mature and rational discussion about issues that were important. It wasn't resolved on that night — or in the election the next month. In fact, Americans debate it still. But the discussion of the role of government was a welcome change from what had come before and the kind of thing we haven't seen since.

Those were the days.

He Went Quietly, More Or Less

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In my lifetime, it often has seemed that the primary role of a vice president has been to make the president look more presidential by comparison.

Maybe there was a time when the vice president had more dignity, but that surely was before Spiro Agnew came along.

Agnew, who died on this day in 1996, first came to the attention of Republican leaders when he was elected governor of Maryland in 1966. In hindsight, his victory in a traditionally Democratic state can be dismissed as something of a fluke — his opponent was a perennial candidate running on a platform that opposed integration who survived an eight–candidate primary.

Consequently, many Democrats who were against segregation crossed party lines to vote for the more moderate–appearing Agnew.

Whatever the reasons for the victory were, Agnew had credentials that Nixon found appealing when he needed a running mate in 1968.

He was a Republican governor of a traditionally Democratic state that was considered by many to be a Southern border state — at a time when Nixon wanted to implement his "Southern strategy" and exploit the racial divide that was gradually ending the Democrats' century of regional dominance.

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I've heard many stories about how Agnew came to be on the 1968 ticket — and I have found Theodore H. White's account in "The Making of the President 1968" to be the most plausible.

Nixon, White wrote, met during the convention with a cross section of Republican leaders — some conservative, some centrist, some liberal — to discuss prospects for the second slot on the ticket. Each side had its favorites — and absolutely would not consider the others' favorites — so he settled on Agnew (one of the "political eunuchs," in White's words).

Whatever the reasons or circumstances were, Agnew was chosen to run with Nixon — and, as a result, was elected vice president in November of 1968.

During the campaign — and later, in office — he developed a reputation for a combative, judgmental, even cold style.

"Some newspapers are fit only to line the bottom of bird cages," he said on one occasion.

"An intellectual is a man who doesn't know how to park a bike," he said on another.

On yet another, he observed, "[I]f you've seen one city slum you've seen them all."

He was re–elected with Nixon in 1972.

At that time, Agnew was widely seen as the heir apparent for the nomination in 1976 — but then it was revealed that he was being investigated for a veritable stew of criminal acts. In October 1973, he resigned the vice presidency and entered a plea of no contest to a single charge of income tax evasion.

Agnew insisted that the charges against him had been intended to divert public attention from Watergate — he even suggested, in his memoir, that his life was threatened if he did not "go quietly" — and he never spoke to Nixon again.

But, to my knowledge, he never said the charges were not true.

Anyway, when Nixon died in 1994, Nixon's daughters, in an expression of amity, asked the former vice president to attend the funeral, which he did. After Agnew died 15 years ago today, Nixon's daughters attended his funeral.

What I recall about the day that Agnew died was that almost no one had anything nice to say about him. No one, that is, except for Patrick Buchanan, who worked for a time as one of Nixon's speechwriters and was responsible for some of Agnew's more incendiary public remarks.

I guess it took someone who had a way with words (albeit a mean–spirited one) to find something nice to say about Agnew.

It sure wasn't easy during his lifetime.

Re-nominating Clinton

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1996 Democratic National Convention-Clinton Acceptance Speech
- Watch more Politics Videos at Vodpod.

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It's ironic now, when one watches footage from the Democratic National Convention held in Chicago 15 years ago, to see and hear Bill Clinton thanking the delegates for entrusting him with the presidential nomination again.

It's ironic when one realizes that, at that time, Clinton was already involved in the relationship with Monica Lewinsky that would threaten to undermine his second term.

From the perspective of 2011, it's hard to look back at Clinton's second term and not see many ways in which trust was violated — and, as a result, much of a presidency was squandered.

But, on this night in 1996, he was the earnest Bill Clinton I remember from my days in Arkansas. When I lived there, he was defeated in his first bid for re–election, in part because he approved a modest increase in license tag fees.

As I say, the increase was modest, but voters perceived an almost cavalier attitude in Clinton and punished him for it. When he ran for governor the next time around, he publicly apologized to the voters for the increase.

Raising state revenue in the midst of what was then the worst economy since the Depression was necessary, but he still apologized "because so many of you were hurt by it."

Perhaps he didn't realize — or perhaps he chose to ignore — that the decisions elected officials make can influence the voters in many ways — especially those decisions that are intended to be known by only a few people because that is precisely the kind of thing that tends to leak out.

Anyway, as just about anyone old enough to remember the late 1990s will tell you, the revelation of Clinton's relationship with Lewinsky became the foundation of the impeachment charges that paralyzed his presidency.

The — ahem — moral seems clear: If you want your private life to remain private, don't run for office.

It is a reminder, I guess, that elected office — especially the presidency — is a sacred trust. The voters entrust the powers of the presidency to select individuals, and that carries with it certain expectations — of behavior, of policy direction, of a lot of things.

And it's darn near impossible now to listen to Clinton recite his administration's economic accomplishments — i.e., the millions of jobs that were created in his first term — and not feel somewhat wistful after one makes the inevitable mental comparisons to the current economic situation.

Because my roots are in Arkansas, I often feel — justifiably, too, I might add — that I grew up with Bill Clinton. It seemed he was always in office, mostly as governor.

He is quite a bit older than I am, but we both came from small towns in Arkansas (my hometown is considerably larger now, Clinton's is marginally so), and, when he describes his boyhood in his memoir, "My Life," he could be describing mine as well.

After I became old enough to vote, I supported Clinton every time he was on the ballot in the years I lived in Arkansas. Sure, I had heard the stories about his infidelity, but, from what I could see, if there was any truth to the stories, he did a good job of keeping his personal and public lives separate from one another.

No one asked me about Monica Lewinsky in 1996. Nobody had heard her name. That was something that came out after Clinton had been sworn in for a second time.

In 1996, if someone had asked me about Clinton's private life, I would have said that it did not seem to have had any kind of influence on his job performance. I didn't approve of the idea of a president who was unfaithful to his spouse, but I figured that, as long as it didn't affect his job performance, it was not my business.

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Going into the Democratic convention in Chicago 15 years ago today, there were some Republicans who complained that the vice president, Al Gore, was too wooden, too stiff — which always struck me as a weak complaint, a nitpicky kind of thing.

The sort of thing one quibbles over when one has no more arrows in one's quiver.

At the convention, Gore poked a little fun at himself, using the enormously popular "Macarena" song to do so.

Because much of the party's platform and other business were addressed ahead of time, the delegates to that convention had little else to do while they waited for the speakers so they danced to the "Macarena." The television cameras showed them dancing on several occasions, and Gore mentioned it during his speech.

Then he pretended to do his version of the "Macarena" — standing perfectly still (only his eyes moved) — and then asked, "Would you like to see it again?"

The crowd roared.

Seldom in modern memory had Democrats gathered for a national convention in such a jovial mood. Certainly, their last convention in Chicago — the one that nominated Hubert Humphrey in 1968 — had not been a pleasant experience.

And why shouldn't they be jovial? Clinton's job approval ratings had been in the 50s most of the year, and all indications were that he would be re–elected.

And he was.

Bob Dole's Best Speech

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I don't know if Bob Dole harbored presidential ambitions for a long time — or if that was a relatively late phenomenon in his political career.

Thirty–five yeas ago — almost midway through Dole's congressional career — President Ford picked him to be his running mate.

In those days, Ford was seen as a centrist, especially after winning a bruising battle with conservative Ronald Reagan for his party's nomination — and lots of folks believed he chose Dole to boost his credentials with his party's right wing.

Perhaps it was on that night in 1976, as he accepted the vide presidential nomination, when the idea of a Dole presidency took hold. Maybe, before that night, Dole was content to be a senator from Kansas.

But after Ford picked him to be his running mate, Dole must have realized that, if Ford won the election, he would be prevented by law from seeking another term in 1980 — and, as Ford's vice president, Dole would be the favorite for the nomination.

On the other hand, if Ford lost, Dole must have figured that it wasn't likely Ford would run again in 1980. The exposure of a national campaign would almost certainly benefit him under those circumstances as well.

But that isn't exactly how things played out.

Ford did lose the 1976 election, but, by 1980, Dole was not the frontrunner for his party's nomination. Reagan was.

Dole sought the nomination again in 1988 but lost to Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush. He sat on the sidelines in both 1984 and 1992 when Reagan and Bush sought re–election.

Then, in 1996, it was his turn.

There really never was any doubt Dole would be at the top of the GOP ticket that year. He was challenged in the primaries by Pat Buchanan's insurgent candidacy — and a few other more credible rivals — but he was always treated as the presumptive nominee. Sometimes the primaries or caucuses didn't turn out as expected, but those were regarded as temporary setbacks.

Eventually, Dole was the choice of more than 58% of the people who participated in GOP primaries that year. Buchanan got nearly 21% of the vote, and Steve Forbes got about 11%. Everyone else was in single digits.

But Dole, as I say, was dealt some early setbacks, losing the New Hampshire primary to Buchanan and the primaries in Delaware and Arizona to Forbes. He bounced back in late February, winning every remaining primary and losing only one caucus.

Then he resigned from the Senate, where he had served for 27 years, to focus all his attention on his presidential campaign. He didn't have to make such a dramatic choice. His term in the Senate had two years to go, and he had been routinely re–elected in the past, but he wanted to show the voters that he was completely committed to the presidency.

Dole always struck me as a rather plain–spoken — blunt at times — Midwesterner. He had a sense of humor that could be biting at times, and it often surfaced on the campaign trail.

But it was largely kept in check on this night 15 years ago. Dole's acceptance speech was mostly humble and direct — and one of the first issues he tackled was the issue of his age (73).

"Age has its advantages," he told the delegates, "and the first thing you learn on the prairie is the relative size of a man compared to the lay of the land. And under the immense sky where I was born and raised, a man is very small, and if he thinks otherwise, he is wrong."

Whether one agreed or disagreed with him, one could not help but be moved by his devotion to his deceased parents in his defense of government's obligation to help those who cannot help themselves.

He recalled when his father endured personal hardship to visit him in the Army hospital after he was injured in World War II.

"My father was poor, and I love my father," Dole said. "Do you imagine for one minute that, as I sign the bills that will set the economy free, I will not be faithful to Americans in need? ... [T]o do otherwise would be to betray those whom I love and honor most. And I will betray nothing."

And he was eager to embrace the symbolism he saw in his candidacy.

"My life is proof that America is a land without limits," he said. "And with my feet on the ground and my heart filled with hope, I put my faith in you and in the God who loves us all. For I am convinced that America's best days are yet to come."

Dole's best days weren't ahead of him — at least, not in 1996.

But he may have delivered his best speech on this night 15 years ago.

When TWA Flight 800 Went Down

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In the waning hours of July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 began what was supposed to be a rather routine flight from New York to Paris.

But there was nothing routine about it.

Less than 15 minutes after takeoff, the plane exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. All 230 people aboard were killed — including, as I recall, a group of high school students from a small town in Pennsylvania, all members of their school's French Club, and about half a dozen chaperones.

For four years, the National Transportation Safety Board reviewed the wreckage that had been retrieved and finally issued a report, in August 2000, that cited several possible causes of the explosion but pointed the finger at none specifically.

The NTSB would only say that some causes were more likely than others. It could never completely rule out anything.

Nevertheless, there was an unofficial (and rather popular) suspect at the time — and, since the cause of the explosion was never really established, it may well be considered a suspect by some folks today.

In fact, I'm almost certain that it is a suspect. All you have to do is run a search on Google or Yahoo! and you will find all sorts of sites devoted to conspiracy theories about how Flight 800 came to its fiery end.

That suspect was terrorism. It was a rather nameless and faceless sort of thing then. Five years later, after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Americans would see the face of bin Laden and think of al–Qaeda whenever terrorism was mentioned, but it was much more vague in 1996.

In July 1996, many people thought the explosion may have been intended to force officials to postpone the Summer Olympics, which were due to begin in Atlanta on July 19.

Proponents of this particular theory speculated that a terrorist armed with a missile launcher could have fired at the plane from the ground.

That seemed a little farfetched to me at the time, but 15 years later, after seeing some of the things I have seen and knowing that the plan for hijacking planes and crashing them into American landmarks was being hatched at about the same time as the downing of Flight 800, I'm not as sure.

I still have plenty of doubts that a missile launcher was used in 1996 — but, after seeing attempts to blow up airplanes with explosives–laden sneakers and jockey shorts, it doesn't seem so outlandish that terrorists might try to use a rocket launcher of some kind, even a makeshift one, to shoot at a plane.

And even some folks who dismissed the idea of terrorism as too off the wall nevertheless suggested there may have been military maneuvers in the area and that someone, either deliberately or accidentally, may have fired a missile.

To be candid, the military maneuvers theory was what struck me as being really off the wall. I mean, military maneuvers? On Long Island?

Terrorism made sense — but only marginally. The Oklahoma City bombing was slightly more than a year old. The first attack on the World Trade Center had happened about 3½ years earlier. Terrorism on American soil wasn't a common occurrence in 1996, and references to it were still rather vague — but people did think about it when some things happened, and they wondered if it played any role.

The explosion of TWA 800 was one of those things.

Eventually, the NTSB concluded that

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"[t]he source of ignition energy for the explosion could not be determined with certainty, but ... the most likely was a short circuit ... that allowed excessive voltage to enter ... through electrical wiring associated with the fuel quantity indication system."

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As you may recall — or, if you aren't old enough to remember it, you can probably imagine — that was a bit too inconclusive (not to mention too technical) for some people.

Whenever there are gaps in the official account of something big, there will be conspiracy theories. And the gaps in the Flight 800 story have spawned something of an online cottage industry that caters to those who devoutly believe (or want to believe) that flight was brought down by a conspiracy.

Many times, such gaps are innocent, but sometimes they are clues that something is being concealed. And the longer the questions go unanswered, the stronger the belief in the conspiracy becomes.

The investigation of the downing of Flight 800 answered most of those questions, but some lingered.

I suspect whatever brought it down will remain a mystery forever.

A Time to Lead

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"There go the people. I must follow them for I am their leader."

Alexandre Auguste Ledru–Rollin
(1807–1874)

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In the aftermath of what Barack Obama generously called a "shellacking" in the midterm elections, there has been no shortage of advice for Democrats who are understandably staggered by the greatest loss of House seats by one party in one election in decades.

In this corner ...

• E.J. Dionne writes in The New Republic that Democrats need to stick to their guns (so to speak), just like the Republicans did after their rejection in 2008.
  
  They should not listen, he says, to those who advise them to move more to the center.
  
  "Why should Democrats take Republican advice that Republicans themselves would never be foolish enough to follow?" he asks.
  
  Food for thought.


• From the "What? Me Worry?/Collateral Damage" Department:
  
  Bob Shrum concedes, in The Week, that Obama made some mistakes in his first two years as president.
  
  But unless you've been mainlining the Kool–Aid as Shrum seems to have been doing, you won't so easily shrug off the lessons that are there to be learned from this experience.
  
  Shrum insists that, not only has Obama been doing the right things, it will be clear to all by 2012 that they were the right things to do, that it wasn't a case of overreaching or ignoring the jobs issue. No apology is necessary.
  
  What's more, Obama's much–criticized trip to India right after the election will be vindicated as the right course of action instead of remaining in the U.S. to pick up the pieces. Remaining here, Shrum suggests, would have been a sign of weakness. The blood would have been in the water.
  
  And Obama, he says, will be re–elected in 2012. No problem.
  
  Oh, and if any of the folks who voted for him in 2008 go under because they lost their jobs and couldn't get new ones while Obama obsessed over health care, well, they're just collateral damage (see Timothy McVeigh).
  
  (By the way, it was Shrum who, only a month before the just–concluded midterm elections, confidently asserted that "the Democrats will hold the Congress — yes, the House as well as the Senate."
  
  (More than 82 million Americans voted in the election. If fewer than 60,000 people — 8,000 in Colorado, 21,000 in Nevada, and 27,000 in West Virginia — had voted for Republicans instead of Democrats, the Senate would have been a 50/50 split, and all the talk today would have been about whether independent Joe Lieberman could be persuaded by the Republicans to caucus with them, giving them the majority.)


• Ezra Klein at Newsweek metaphorically shrugs his shoulders. Sure, the Democrats lost the election, he writes, but they accomplished such great things.
  
  Great things that are likely to be overturned — if not in the newly elected Congress, almost certainly in the one that looks likely to be elected two years from now.
  
  But I'll get to that in a minute.


• At the New York Daily News, Steve Benen says Obama should call the Republicans' bluff.
  
  Benen recommends turning the tables on the Republicans, proposing things their own people have proposed in the past. For example, he could take a page from the McCain–Palin playbook from 2008 and advocate "establish[ing] 'a cap–and–trade system that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions' and pursue 'alternatives to carbon–based fuels.' "
  
  What's more, Benen writes, "if the president were feeling particularly mischievous, he could endorse the tax rates adopted by Ronald Reagan, who oversaw rates considerably higher than the ones in place today. Would Republicans really condemn Ronaldus Magnus' tax policy?"

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And in this corner ...

• There's something vaguely unsettling (not to mention unseemly) about Karl Rove using the lyrics from a popular singer who is about half his age to make his point about Obama.
  
  But that's what he did — and fairly effectively, too — in the Wall Street Journal when he asserted that the president has a tin ear.
  
  Personally, I think Rove is right about that, but you have to consider the source. Rove clearly has an axe to grind.


• So, too, does Peggy Noonan, a writer whose work I have admired since she wrote Ronald Reagan's memorable speech following the Challenger disaster nearly 25 years ago.
  
  Noonan observes the volatility of the electorate and reminds Republicans, flush with victory, that "things could turn on a dime," as they did with Obama.
  
  Obama's problem, she suggests, is that he did not hold the political center that played a vital role in his election in 2008, and that's a hard argument to deny following an election in which independents so visibly abandoned the Democrats and voted for Republicans. "To hold the center you have to respect your own case enough to argue for it," she writes, "and respect the people enough to explain it."
  
  Noonan's had some experience with the fluidity of the electorate, and she remembers the days in the mid–1990s when the Republicans took control of Congress. She tells Republicans that the right wing's favorite whipping boy, the media, "had a storyline" it was eager to sell — "[t]hese wild and crazy righties who just got elected are ... wild and crazy," and the media will try to sell it in 2011 as well.
  
  There is an impression among many voters — one that is a half–truth at best — that all the Republicans who have just been elected are extremist Tea Partiers. The media will seek to exploit that, Noonan warns. The media, Noonan says, will try to portray all newly elected Republicans as extremists so she urges incoming Republicans "to keep in mind the advice of the 19th century actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who once said ... that she didn't really care what people did as long as they didn't do it in the street and frighten the horses."
  
  And that is what Noonan tells new Republican lawmakers: "Stand tall, speak clear, and don't frighten the horses."

As an amateur historian, I appreciate Noonan's knowledge of great quotes and how she skillfully weaves them into what she writes.

I seldom agree with her, just as I seldom agreed with her boss, but, as a writer, I give her credit for the things she can do with words.

I've never really bought into this media bias stuff that she and the other right–wingers like to peddle. Oh, sure, I'll concede that there is some bias in the media, most of it in broadcasting. Perhaps that is at the heart of my problem. My experience in journalism has been confined to print — well, except for a couple of years that I spent appearing on a weekly cable access sports program as a representative for the newspaper for which I was working at the time.

But mostly I get the sense, from reading what I have read lately, that most people are looking at raw numbers and simply trying to reconcile those numbers with what they see on the ground. Obama insisted, in his post–election press conference, that the fault was not with the agenda but with communication.

That has a nice "shoot the messenger" sound to it, but the ultimate responsibility rests with the president — except that this president, like his predecessor, won't take responsibility for his errors in judgment.

So who does Obama suggest we blame?

• If there isn't an answer to that by November 2012, the messengers who seem likely to get blamed, along with Obama, are the Senate Democrats who must face the voters in that election.
  
  Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post–Gazette — who, incidentally, disagrees with Shrum about Obama's trip to India — is one of those to write recently about those senators.
  
  "Democrats who didn't drown in the Republican wave had to be dismayed by the news conference President Barack Obama held Wednesday before jetting off to India," Kelly wrote. "Particularly unhappy, I suspect, are the 12 Democrats in the Senate from states that voted Republican Tuesday who are up for re–election in 2012.
  
  "In essence, what the president said (in many, many more words) is that he heard what the voters were saying, but would ignore it."
  
  Those 12 Democrats — Bill Nelson of Florida, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester of Montana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, Jim Webb of Virginia and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin — are clearly at risk in 2012.
  
  Now, the Class of 2006 was always going to be at risk, simply because of the numbers. Only about one–third of the Senate's seats is on the ballot in any election year. There are more in some years because senators die or resign, and special elections must be held to choose their successors.
  
  Because 2006 was such a good year for Democrats, that means more Democrats will be defending their seats in 2012. The same, actually, will be true of 2014, when the Democrats who were swept in on the Obama wave are up for re–election.
  
  These politicians — the president and these 12 senators — are going to have to unite behind a message. They need to be laying the foundation for that message now and building their cases, as individuals and as a group, for another term.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, though, and those Democrats simply cannot afford for the president, the man at the top of their ballot, to be their weakest link. In 2012, Obama and the national Democrats may well find themselves stretched too thin as it is by the endangered Senate seats they must defend and the Republican–held House seats they must pursue in hope of either reducing the GOP's advantage or eliminating it altogether.

Since he was elected two years ago, pundits have compared Obama to the most successful presidents in American history — and some of the least successful as well.

Where Bill Clinton stands on that scale is, of course, a matter of opinion, but the fact remains that he survived a disastrous midterm in 1994 to win re–election two years later — and eventually turned over a budget surplus to his successor. He just might have some useful insights for the current occupant of the White House.

In his memoir "My Life," Clinton recalled that the Democrats "got the living daylights beat out of us."

Clinton's recollections sound eerily familiar to what Obama and other Democrats said both before and after the election: "The Republicans were rewarded for two years of constant attacks on me," he wrote. "The Democrats were punished for too much good government and too little good politics.

"... Moreover, the public mood was still anxious; people didn't feel their lives were improving and they were sick of all the fighting in Washington."

Has a familiar sound to it, doesn't it?

But the setback of 1994 reminded Clinton of 14 years earlier, when he was defeated for re–election as governor of Arkansas. "I felt much as I did [then]," Clinton wrote. "I had done a lot of good, but no one knew it. ... I had forgotten the searing lesson of my 1980 loss: You can have good policy without good politics, but you can't give the people good government without both."

And Clinton went about adapting himself to the new political landscape.

It is something other presidents needed to do midway through their terms in office, but not all have.

Will Obama have the wisdom to see what he must do?