The Day William McKinley Was Shot

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"Father Abe freed me, and now I saved his successor from death, provided that bullet he got into the president don't kill him."

James Benjamin Parker

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Forty–three men have been president of the United States. Most Americans probably can name a handful — maybe — and most of the ones they can name were president during their lifetimes — as if history didn't exist prior to their births.

(That assumes that the people with whom you are speaking can tell you who is currently president — and, frankly, you would be surprised how many people cannot. I haven't decided whether that is a blessing or a curse.)

Many Americans, of course, can name a few presidents who served before they were born — a list that usually includes George Washington and Abraham Lincoln at the very least although people can surprise you with what they know and what they don't know. If they can name Washington and Lincoln, they may also name Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt.

As some of you probably know (I wish I could say all, but I have to be realistic), those are the four faces chiseled into Mount Rushmore.

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Roosevelt became president when the incumbent president, William McKinley, was shot and killed 115 years ago. In fact, McKinley was shot inside the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., on this day in 1901. His assassin shot twice. The doctors who treated McKinley were only able to retrieve one of the bullets; the other lingered in his abdomen and killed him eight days later.

Roosevelt had only been vice president for about six months when McKinley was shot. McKinley's first vice president died on the eve of McKinley's campaign for re–election, and Roosevelt, then the governor of New York, was nominated by the convention to be McKinley's running mate in 1900 — the president felt it was the delegates' decision to make, not his. Roosevelt was known to have his eye on the White House, and the vice presidency seemed like a good stepping stone for Roosevelt's own run in 1904.

Roosevelt might have been elected in '04 — unless McKinley decided to seek a third term, which, at the time, was permissible. It was only after the presidency of Roosevelt's cousin, Franklin, about 50 years later that the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to two four–year terms was ratified.

Had fate not intervened, McKinley might well have been a candidate for a third term. He was only 58 when he died — younger than many of his predecessors had been when they entered the presidency — and McKinley was already into his second term.

Polls that measure public approval of a president didn't exist at the turn of the century. They wouldn't exist, in fact, until Roosevelt's cousin was in the second term of his presidency. But if they had existed in 1900, they might well have reported solid public approval of McKinley's performance in office.

That might be a difficult conclusion to reach when one looks at the election returns from 1896, when McKinley was first elected to the presidency, and 1900, when he was re–elected. In 1896, McKinley received 51.02% of the popular vote. His share of the vote went up to 51.66% four years later. He received 60.6% of the electoral vote in 1896. That percentage went up to 65.3% in 1900.

Clearly, McKinley was popular enough to be re–elected — and by a wider margin than the one he received when he was elected. That is something Barack Obama cannot say. But on the surface it isn't as impressive as students of presidential politics might expect. See, even though America's last three presidents were re–elected by less than overwhelming popular margins — and the one before that wasn't re–elected at all — it has been commonplace historically for presidents to be re–elected by landslides.

Seen in that context, McKinley's electoral performance may not be especially eye–popping unless you keep a few things in mind. Most important, perhaps, is the fact that realigning elections as the 1896 election is frequently labeled (and which I plan to discuss in greater detail in November) are not always dramatic landslides. Sometimes they are virtually imperceptible unless you consider preceding voting patterns — and what happened in the elections that followed.

The opponent's relative strengths and weaknesses are important factors to consider, too. McKinley had to win both elections with William Jennings Bryan, one of the great orators in American history, as his foe. My guess is that McKinley was lucky to live in the pre–TV and pre–internet age. Far fewer people got to hear Bryan speak in 1896, and that almost certainly worked to his benefit.

He could have been appealing in our time. I have heard him described as open, cheery, optimistic, friendly. That generally plays well with the voters. He was not necessarily a gifted speaker, though, so it may have been a good thing for him that TV and radio played no roles in elections at the time.

When McKinley won re–election in 1900, he carried Bryan's home state of Nebraska, a traditionally Republican state that made an exception for an exceptional favorite son. Bryan was nominated by the Democrats for the presidency three times. The 1900 election was the only time he lost his home state (with the exception of an 1894 Senate race).

It is fair to assume, even though we have no polls to support this conclusion, that McKinley was a popular president on this day in 1901 when his assassin, a 28–year–old anarchist named Leon Czolgosz, fired two shots into the president's abdomen. Czolgosz was about to fire a third time when James Parker, who had been a slave as a child, reached for the gun and prevented the shot from being fired.

As it turned out the first shot struck a button and was deflected. Only the second shot struck McKinley, but it ultimately proved fatal, probably due to inadequate medical care. There was a surgeon in Buffalo who might well have saved the president, but he was performing delicate surgery in Niagara Falls. During the operation he was interrupted and told he was needed in Buffalo; he insisted he could not leave even if it was the president of the United States who needed him. It was at that point that he was told the identity of the patient.

A couple of weeks later, after McKinley had died, that surgeon saved the life of a woman who had suffered almost exactly the same wound as McKinley.

McKinley's death was quite a shock to the American public — who had been misled by unjustifiably optimistic prognoses into believing McKinley was recovering.

He was the third American president to be assassinated within 40 years — and the last to be assassinated before John F. Kennedy more than 60 years later.

Oh, and Roosevelt did win a full four–year term on his own in 1904 — but he did so as the incumbent.

Presidential Elections From an Historical Perspective

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"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

Mark Twain

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This is Labor Day weekend, the traditional kickoff for a national campaign — but, like so many other facts of political life in the United States, that has been rendered essentially invalid in 2016. This campaign never took a break, not even between the conventions and the Labor Day holiday, which is how it has been in the past.

Before a serious evaluation of the campaign could be made, it was necessary to allow some time to pass after the conventions were over. It has now been more than a month since the conclusions of the conventions, and it is now appropriate to look at the polls and see what they can tell us.

But the polls are apt to be volatile until after the debates so my advice is to treat the polls from now until about mid–October as forms of entertainment.

We heard a lot of talk about making history during the Democrats' convention, just as we did eight years ago when Barack Obama became the first African–American to be nominated for president by a major political party.

There are always emotional appeals in political campaigns, but there are many other factors that drive campaigns, too. A presidential campaign is long and often buffeted by sudden, unforeseen events. This year's campaign, with historically high negative ratings for both major party nominees as well as a general election campaign season that is longer than usual simply because both conventions were held in mid–summer, seems particularly prone to week–to–week, if not day–to–day, fluctuations.

I tend to disregard the polls immediately after the conventions because candidates nearly always get a post–convention bounce. They should. Since the advent of television, parties have been refining their conventions into the choreographed four–night propaganda fests they have become.

If a candidate doesn't get a bounce, even a small one, the convention planners did not do their jobs. It usually takes something like riots in the streets (see Chicago in 1968) to prevent a candidate from receiving a bounce.

In the aftermath of the Democrats' convention, I heard many Democrats boasting of Hillary Clinton's nine–point bounce in the polls. Historically that is about average. It is what George W. Bush received after being re–nominated in 2004, but that margin didn't hold up. He went on to win but by a narrow margin over John Kerry.

To me it suggests there is a sizable portion of the electorate that remains suspicious of Clinton — and wasn't persuaded by the Democrats' Hillary lovefest/Trump bashfest.

Such bounces tend to be short–lived as Americans' ever–shrinking attention spans shift to other things. Al Gore got a double–digit bounce in 2000. Ditto Michael Dukakis in 1988. Look up those two in your history books. In no history book will you find either man having been sworn in as president.

I tend to take polls more seriously the closer we get to the election itself — or, in an era when many voters can cast their ballots up to a month before the actual Election Day, the closer we get to the start of early voting. By October, the debates will have begun, and many voters will have started casting their ballots (as I understand it, a few voters have already cast their ballots). That's when the polls will begin to reveal what we can expect in November.

The polls of October will reflect events that haven't happened yet and the candidates' responses to them. They will have more relevance to the election. They will dictate where campaign resources are allocated.

The old rule of thumb was that people didn't start paying attention to the campaign until after the World Series. In some places, I suppose, that timetable has been moved up a few weeks, maybe to the start of the NFL's season in September.

The polls in August are snapshots of the start of a horse race and should not be considered predictive in any way, but they can be useful as analytical tools, and they can demonstrate convincing trends to expect on Election Night.

The opportunity to make history isn't always enough to win an election. Yes, Obama went on to win, but neither Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman on a major party ticket, nor Sarah Palin, the second woman on a major party ticket, won; Al Smith was the first Catholic to top a major party ticket, but it was John F. Kennedy more than 30 years later who became the first Catholic to be elected president.

We've had Catholics on other national tickets since. Some have won, some have lost. It isn't a subject that is mentioned anymore, and that is probably the chief value that being first provides. Being a black or Catholic — and now, a female — nominee for president no longer raises any eyebrows.

Mitt Romney was the first Mormon to be a major party's presidential nominee, and Joe Lieberman was the first Jew to be on a major party ticket, but neither won. Being first doesn't ensure success.

But it is important, in a country that prides itself on being the land of opportunity, that things like race or gender or religious faith don't get in the way of participation in the process. The voters will then decide if a candidate is qualified for the office he/she seeks.

Make no mistake about it, Clinton's nomination is significant symbolically; win or lose, she has earned a spot in the history books. The voters will decide the rest, and they will make that decision after taking into account those things that they think are important.

I'm sure the symbolic nature of Clinton's nomination will influence some voters — although I suspect most of those voters would have voted for Hillary, anyway.

Politicians don't get to tell voters what is important and what is not. They can say what they think, but they cannot insist on what can be considered and what must be disregarded. Judges can do that with juries; politicians are not permitted to do that.

A presidential election is a complex thing, anyway — starting with the fact that it is really 51 elections with 51 sets of issues that are important to different sets of voters with the electoral votes from each state riding on the outcomes. When voters go to the polls, they may think they are voting for Candidate A or Candidate B — but they are really voting for a slate of electors who will represent the candidate's party in the Electoral College.

Most of the time, those electors support the nominee of their party — but not always. Such electors are called faithless electors — but that is a subject for another time.

(In hindsight, Obama's election may seem inevitable to those who don't remember that, until the economy imploded in mid–September of 2008, Obama was trailing John McCain in many polls — and none other than his running mate, Joe Biden, once mused in public that Obama should have picked Hillary Clinton, his runnerup in the primaries, to be his running mate in the interest of party unity.

(Biden's selection had been rationalized as Obama's attempt to make up for inexperience in foreign policy in the wake of escalating tensions between former Soviet republics Russia and Georgia in the summer of 2008. Ironically, after he was elected, Obama chose Clinton to be his first secretary of state.)

The one thing I have taken from poll after poll is that there is considerable fluidity in this year's electorate; consequently, as a lifelong student of history, I find it more relevant to observe what American voters have done when a term–limited president has had to leave office and those voters have had to select a new leader. I have often heard it said that such an election — in which the incumbent is prohibited by law from running again — is a referendum on that incumbent's performance — and, after eight years, voters generally are ready for a change (I guess you could call it the eight–year itch).

If the rise of Donald Trump on the Republican side and Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side proved nothing else, they demonstrated that there is a considerable desire in this country for a different direction, something the polls have supported consistently. There is just disagreement about which direction to take. To — kind of — quote Howard Beale in "Network," the voters are mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore.

And such people are liable to do anything.

Conventional wisdom was turned on its ear this year as a billionaire novice politician and a 74–year–old socialist took their parties' nominating processes into uncharted waters. If you think there are no surprises left, let me remind you that there are more than two months left until Election Day.

Under these circumstances, it is hard to get a handle on what to expect. A lot of people these days say Clinton will win in a landslide — but, as far as I can see, their predictions are based almost entirely on the polls that have been coming out since the Democrats wrapped up their convention four or five weeks ago. Already we are seeing signs of the race tightening in some states. While it may yet wind up being a blowout, I am still inclined to believe it will be close. External factors — those peace and prosperity metrics — simply are not what have been historically required for the incumbent party to win without the incumbent topping the ticket.

Presidential term limits have existed since the ratification of the 22nd Amendment 65 years ago. Since that time, four presidents (Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) have served two four–year terms. Another (Richard Nixon) was elected to two terms but resigned less than halfway through his second term. Thus, Obama is the sixth president to be elected to two terms since the ratification of the 22nd Amendment.

Three of Obama's postwar predecessors who were elected to and served two terms saw their parties lose the White House when they were forced by law to step down as Obama is today. The one exception to that was when Vice President George H.W. Bush was elected to succeed Ronald Reagan in 1988.

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It is tempting to chalk that up to Reagan's popularity — and I am sure that played a role in Bush's victory that year.

But I don't think approval ratings tell the whole story.

Let's compare Reagan, as the only postwar two–term president who was succeeded by someone from his own party, to the others. A useful comparison point is the December of the president's seventh year in office — less than a year before his successor was chosen. Reagan's approval rating in December 1987 was 49%, which was better than Bush 43 (30%) in December 2007 but not as good as Clinton (55%) in December 1999. Reagan's approval rating also bested Obama's in December 2015 (46%).

If presidential approval was the only determining factor, Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, should have beaten George W. Bush in 2000 — and, indeed, he did in the popular vote but not in the electoral vote that has decided the outcomes of presidential elections since the 18th century. The prolonged legal battle over the state of Florida was won by Bush, giving him enough electoral votes to win. If Gore had carried Tennessee, the state both he and his father represented in the U.S. Senate, or West Virginia, which had not voted for a nonincumbent Republican since 1928, Florida would not have mattered.

Another example of the complexity of presidential elections.

It's important to mention at this point that political science really isn't a science at all — I figured that out when I was a college freshman studying political science. There is no formula in which you can fill in the blanks on each candidate's experience, knowledge and shortcomings and determine which candidate will win. The voters get to decide which factors matter the most to them, and that can — and does — change from one election to the next.

What's more, the United States is a relatively young country compared to most, and there really isn't that much of a voting history to study. There have been fewer than 50 presidential elections since they were opened to the people. (Until 1828, the only participants in presidential elections were the voters in the Electoral College — a handful of men at best from most states whose choices, it should be noted, were generally pretty good.)

So we have little to use for a study of voting behavior in American presidential elections.

Elections aren't the same, either. Some have incumbents running for re–election. Some don't. Some emphasize domestic issues; others stress foreign policy and national security. Probably the most useful — but far from infallible — approach is to compare circumstances. Is the election being held during a recession or boom times? Are we at peace or at war?

How will the historic nature of Clinton's candidacy play in all this? That is hard to say. If you want to compare this campaign to similar campaigns involving female nominees — Ferraro and Palin — you would conclude that Clinton will lose. But Ferraro and Palin weren't nominated for president; Clinton was. She is the first female to be nominated for president so there is no historical precedent to review.

Still, firsts can succeed. Earlier in this post, I listed several historical firsts who lost, but Obama, of course, was elected and then re–elected. Yet, Obama was elected as much because of the economic implosion that happened just before the election as he was because of his status as the first black nominee of a major party.

I think a critical — and, although I have no professional experience in this area, I would think immeasurable — factor is the often–mentioned "fatigue" factor to which I alluded earlier. That makes it pretty tricky to be the candidate of the president's party. If the fatigue is as widespread as most election results have suggested it is after eight years, that candidate must run as the agent of both change and continuity. Only George H.W. Bush, who promised a "kinder, gentler" version of the Reagan presidency in an attempt to appeal to centrists, succeeded.

Now it is Hillary's turn to persuade the voters that she can produce change while keeping things the same.

Recent history plays a key role here. Some states have been voting heavily for one party or another for several elections and, thus, are likely to continue doing so (although there is no guarantee; after all, realigning elections do happen). States that have been narrowly voting for one party or the other, on the other hand, are more likely to "flip" their allegiance. In modern America, this is most often seen in regions so let's examine the regions of America.

And, of course, turnout is a wild card. In poll after poll, majorities have had unfavorable opinions of both candidates. In past elections, most of those disgusted voters may have been considered likely voters. It is far from certain that these voters will be persuaded to support one of the nominees in this race. How will the outcomes in their states be affected if they choose to sit this one out?

In this study, I regard any state that gave no more than 53% of its vote to a candidate last time to be a prime prospect for flipping.

New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont): Obama swept this region in 2012, and only New Hampshire gave him less than 53% of its vote. The other states voted heavily for Obama, which was not surprising since most of these states have been voting for Democratic nominees since Bill Clinton's first presidential election in 1992.

New Hampshire, with Republican roots that prevailed in spite of the presence on Democratic tickets of New Englanders John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Ed Muskie in 1968, has been an exception to the rule and could well be this time, too. At this point, I expect Clinton to carry the other five states and their 29 electoral votes, but Trump could carry New Hampshire's four electoral votes, especially since he has endorsed Sen. Kelly Ayotte for re–election. Ayotte's support will be vital for Trump's hopes in the Granite State. She is the party's leading officeholder there, having been elected with 60% of the vote in 2010.

Polls truly are meaningless at this stage of the campaign. We need to get more distance from the conventions to get a good idea of where the campaigns stand, but recent history suggests that New England is Clinton's to lose.

Mid–Atlantic (D.C., Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania): D.C. has voted for Democrats ever since it was first permitted to vote in presidential elections in 1964. The other states in the region have been pretty reliable for the Democrats as well, but Pennsylvania is usually a swing state, and recent history suggests Democrats have a lot of work to do there this time. Obama won more than 54% of Pennsylvania's vote when he ran the first time (the strongest showing by a Democrat in that state since 1964), but his share of the vote in that state dropped to less than 52% when he sought re–election in 2012.

There should be a lively contest for the state's 20 electoral votes. Meanwhile, Clinton currently appears likely to win the region's other 59.

South (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia): Most of the Southern states have been in the Republican column for the last 40 years. There have been exceptions, though. In 2012, Obama narrowly carried Florida (with just under 50% of the vote compared to nearly 51% in 2008) and Virginia (with just over 51% of the vote; he snapped Republicans' 10–election winning streak in Virginia when he took more than 52% of the vote in 2008).

Obama carried North Carolina in 2008, but the state flipped back to the Republicans in 2012.

Clinton may benefit from having Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine on her ticket — at least in Virginia. The most recent Virginia poll I have seen was published before either of the conventions and showed the candidates tied at 39–39.

Kaine hasn't won by historic margins — when he was elected governor in 2005, he received 52% of the vote, and when he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012, he received 53% of the vote — but they have been sufficient, considering that no national ticket from either party has done better than that in Virginia since Bush–Quayle in 1988. If Kaine's supporters in Virginia turn out in November, Virginia will most likely be in the Democrats' column again.

As I say, most of the Southern states have been reliably Republican but a few could be primed for battleground status in coming years. Georgia, for example, gave Romney a little more than 53% of the vote, which was an increase over McCain's 52% four years earlier, which is considerably closer than presidential races have been in most Southern states, but not necessarily surprising in Georgia, which voted for Bill Clinton the first time he ran for president. Georgia is 30% black and 9% Hispanic. If those two demographic groups assert themselves, it wouldn't take much of the white vote to make elections truly competitive there.

South Carolina and Mississippi, with black populations of 28% and 37% respectively, could become competitive, but Republican margins have remained healthy there even with a black man topping the Democratic ticket.

Generally speaking, Trump should enjoy his greatest success on Election Night in the South.

Industrial Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin): This is the region where the election is most likely to be won or lost.

Based on electoral history, I think Illinois is really the only slam dunk for Democrats in this region. Illinois gave Obama (its former U.S. senator) more than 57% of the vote in 2012, but that was a decline from nearly 62% four years earlier. Still it suggests that Illinois' 20 electoral votes are secure for Clinton.

The rest of the Industrial Midwest, which has been hit hard by the economy of the last seven years, looks like it could be up for grabs.

Obama carried three of the other four states when he ran for re–election. Michigan gave Obama more than 54% of its vote in 2012 (down from more than 57% in 2008), but Michigan isn't far removed from the days when the vote was much closer.

Wisconsin, even with native son Paul Ryan running on the Republican ticket, gave Obama nearly 53% of its vote (down from more than 56% of its vote in 2008). Wisconsin has been voting for Democrats in the last seven national elections, but Obama was the first Democrat since Dukakis to seize a clear majority of the vote there.

Ohio is almost always a battleground state, and it is usually quite close. George H.W. Bush, in 1988, was the last candidate to receive more than 55% of Ohio's vote. Obama carried it twice, but his percentage there in 2012 was under 51%.

Historically, Indiana has been a lock for Republicans, but Obama's narrow victory there in 2008 leaves room for doubt. Obama trailed Romney there by more than 10 percentage points in 2012, which was more along the lines of what political observers have come to expect in Indiana. Trump's win in Indiana's primary all but locked up the Republican nomination, and I expect the state to be in the Republican column in November. The presence of Indiana's governor on the G.O.P. ticket can't hurt.

Midwest (Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota): One electoral pattern that has emerged in recent decades is population–centric: Republicans have outperformed Democrats in mostly rural states while Democrats have outperformed Republicans in larger metropolitan states. That is a trend that has benefited Democrats in places like California, New York and Pennsylvania.

It has benefited Republicans in most of the states in the Midwest region. Romney carried six of the eight states in 2012, all but one with at least 57% of the vote. John McCain won those same six states but by smaller margins.

Missouri nearly gave Romney 54% of its vote but not quite so it barely qualifies as a state that could flip to the Democrats. That could be something to watch on Election Night. In the elections that have been held since Missouri voted against President William McKinley's re–election in 1900, Missouri has only backed the losing candidate three times (Adlai Stevenson in 1956, McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012).

Obama carried Iowa and Minnesota both times. Minnesota is probably the Democrats' most dedicated state. It has voted for Democrats in the last 10 elections. Richard Nixon in 1972 was the last Republican to carry Minnesota, but it hasn't been a slam dunk. Obama's share of the vote there in 2012 was about 52%, down from 54% in 2008. John Kerry took about 51% of Minnesota's vote in 2004, and Al Gore won with just under 48% of Minnesota's ballots (Ralph Nader drew more than 5% there that year).

In fact, Jimmy Carter's triumph there in 1976 with just under 55% is the Democrats' best showing in Minnesota since Lyndon Johnson took more than 63% of the vote in 1964.

Based on my 53% threshold for considering a state at risk for flipping, Minnesota should be on that list. But Minnesota has been consistent in its support for Democrats if not overwhelmingly so. Put an asterisk next to it. It might flip — but it probably won't.

Iowa has only voted for two losing candidates in the last nine elections. Both were Democrats so that makes Iowa's record in that period 6–3 in favor of Democrats. And two of those Republican triumphs in Iowa came when Ronald Reagan topped the ticket in the 1980s. Iowa has been practically a regular in the Democrats' column for nearly 30 years.

But Democrats' share of Iowa's popular vote has been rather small. Less than 52% of Iowa voters endorsed Obama's bid for re–election in 2012. He got nearly 54% of Iowa's vote in 2008. Margins have been low on both sides. Republican Nixon, in 1972, was the last presidential candidate to receive more than 55% of Iowa's ballots.

Largely because of Obama's showing in Iowa four years ago, the state has to be considered a potential flip.

Rocky Mountain (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming): The Rocky Mountain states were pretty reliable for Republicans until recently.

Arizona, with a Latino/Indian/black population that makes up two–fifths of the state's overall population, has voted for Republicans in the last four elections but not by the kind of margins that were seen there as recently as the 1980s. Bill Clinton won the state when he sought re–election and narrowly lost it four years earlier. Since the start of the new millennium, only George W. Bush in 2004 has received more than 54% of the vote there. Arizona could possibly flip in November.

Colorado has been trending Democrat in recent elections, but it gave Obama less than 52% of its vote in 2012. It could flip to the Republicans. What happens there on Election Night will be worth watching.

Idaho routinely gives Republicans more than 60% of its vote. So do Utah and Wyoming.

Montana is less reliably Republican but still gave Romney more than 55% of the vote in 2012. McCain barely won the state in 2008, and Montana was close in the 1990s so it might bear watching on Election Night.

Nevada is a modern bellwether, having voted for every winning candidate but one (Gerald Ford in 1976) since 1912. It gave Obama just over 52% of its vote in 2012, which makes it a possible flip.

New Mexico has been supporting Democrats by and large in the last six elections. It gave Obama just about 53% of its vote in 2012, which makes it a possible flip, but with a Latino presence that represents more than 46% of the state's population and another 10% of Indian and black backgrounds, a flip seems highly unlikely.

Pacific Coast (Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington): Since Alaska became a state in 1959, it has voted Republican in every election but one. Incumbent Republicans (with the exception of George H.W. Bush in 1992) generally do better than nonincumbent Republicans, which suggests that Trump may not win Alaska decisively, but he is still likely to win it. Four years ago, more than 54% of Alaska voters voted for Romney, which was down from more than 59% for the McCain-Palin ticket four years earlier. Of course, Palin was Alaska's governor at the time.

Clinton is just about certain to win California and Hawaii by wide margins. California has only recently been giving lopsided majorities to Democrats. Obama got more than 60% of the vote in that state both times, but prior to that no candidate had received more than 60% of California's vote since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936. Not even Californians Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Still, even if Clinton is held to a more historically typical share of about 55% of California's vote, she would probably win the state by about 2 million votes. Minority groups combine for well over 50% of the electorate in California, and you don't need a poll to know Trump is not popular among minority groups.

Hawaii gave Obama more than 70% of its vote in 2012, which was down a point or two from four years earlier — but that may well have been a byproduct of Obama's Hawaiian roots. The only other presidential candidate to exceed 70% in Hawaii was Lyndon Johnson in the landslide year of 1964. Otherwise, even though Democrats usually win Hawaii, the winning percentage has tended to be in the low to mid–50s.

It wasn't terribly long ago that Oregon and Washington voted for Republican nominees regularly. In more recent elections, both states have trended Democratic, and their percentages from 2012 suggest they are not likely to flip.

Thus, Clinton is likely to win all the Pacific Coast states except Alaska.

Conclusion: Clinton is the likely winner as of Labor Day, but there are still more than two months to go.

The Day FDR Died

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My parents were both teenagers when, 70 years ago today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Ga. He was 63 years old.

Like millions of other teenage Americans, my parents could not remember a time when FDR had not been president — and, unless the 22nd Amendment is repealed, theirs will be the only generation like that. No succeeding president will ever be able to serve more than 10 years; if circumstances ever do permit one person to serve as president for 10 years (which can only happen if a vice president succeeds a president who has just under half of his current term left and then is elected to two four–year terms), it will be nearly, but not quite, as long as FDR's actual tenure turned out to be. Roosevelt was elected to four four–year terms, but he died only a few months into his fourth term so he wound up serving 12 years, not 16.

The authors of the 22nd Amendment made it clear the restriction would not apply to whoever was president when it became the law of the land. So Harry Truman, who succeeded Roosevelt and was the president when the 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951, could have served more than 10 years. Truman, of course, did go on to win a four–year term of his own in 1948, but his popularity had deteriorated so by 1952 that Truman chose not to run again.

Thirty years from now, we may be able to find out if the New York Times was correct when it wrote, following FDR's death, "Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House."

That story is yet to be written, of course, and I often doubt that it ever will, so little regard do most people seem to have for history anymore. By the time 2045 rolls around, it is possible that few people will remember his name, let alone his actual existence. There will be fewer still who will remember him as a living, breathing human being who led his country through its worst economic crisis and a war to stop fascism.

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Here's a tip for anyone who may be reading this 30 years from now: Those who are alive in 2045 who want to know more about FDR's life and death should read Jim Bishop's book, "FDR's Last Year: April 1944 to April 1945." It is likely that those who read it will learn more about FDR and the decisions he made (and why he made them) than nearly all Americans knew at the time.

That isn't unusual, I suppose. At one time or another, every administration must operate in secret. Some do cross the line and use unlawful tactics, though, so a republic must remain forever wary, and the press must never lose sight of its primary role — watchdog.

Of course, there are certain things that were long considered personal and off limits that are not that way anymore. The members of the press who covered FDR knew that he was handicapped, but they never mentioned it in their articles nor did they photograph FDR in a way that showed the heavy leg braces he wore or the wheelchair in which he sat.

And it seems no one outside Roosevelt's inner circle knew that the woman with whom he had been having an affair for two decades, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, was with him at the Little White House, the cottage where he had stayed when he came to bathe and exercise in the natural spring waters of western Georgia, when he died. In spite of reports of an affair between FDR and an unnamed woman — and the mention in a book by FDR secretary Grace Tully, who was also there, of Rutherfurd as one who was present when Roosevelt died — the affair itself wasn't public knowledge until the 1966 publication of a book written by a former Roosevelt aide.

Over the years, I have become convinced that the story of Franklin D. Roosevelt should be a cautionary tale for presidents and their doctors. Indeed, in some ways, I guess it has. Bishop's book showed that the president's doctor knew FDR was dying, could see it in his face and body, for at least a year before Roosevelt finally died, but he did not stop Roosevelt from doing many of the things that were accelerating his decline. Presidential physicians seem to have more authority with their patients now.

Bishop's passage about the moment when FDR was stricken paints a vivid domestic picture of a spring afternoon. It was lunch time, and Roosevelt was posing for artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff, who was painting his portrait. It seemed like a fairly ordinary kind of lazy afternoon when Roosevelt began rubbing his temples. "I have a terrific headache," he said, almost in a whisper, then slumped and his hand fell to his side.

One of the women on hand thought perhaps the president had dropped something and asked him what he had dropped. Roosevelt's eyes were on Rutherfurd who was standing straight ahead, Bishop wrote, then he slipped into unconsciousness. Shoumatoff screamed and never got back to the portrait she had been painting as the folks on hand focused all their energies on trying to save the president's life. For the last 70 years, her painting has been known as the "Unfinished Portrait."

As a veteran of newsrooms, I have often wondered what it must have been like for people who were working on days when important, truly historic events, like the death of a president, occurred out of the blue. Oh, I've had my share of races with the deadline clock, but there haven't been any major unexpected events on days when I have been at work at a newspaper. So it was that I read with interest Val Lauder's recollections of being a young copygirl for the old Chicago Daily News, an afternoon daily, when FDR died. When the news came racing across the newswire, she wrote, the newsroom was sucked into "the silence of shock."

Newsrooms are noisy places. When a cloak of silence descends upon one, it becomes an eerie place.

Then, like an aftershock, the newsroom sprang into action. "The Daily News, an afternoon newspaper, was strictly limited in the hours it could publish," Lauder wrote. "Only an hour or so remained for EXTRAs."

Observing that "I knew clips would be needed," Lauder made a beeline for the newspaper's morgue. A newspaper morgue isn't a place where bodies are kept (well, I guess that is a matter of opinion); it is or was, basically, a newspaper's library where clips and photos were kept in file folders (perhaps they are now extinct, like photographers' dark rooms, with everything being stored digitally).

Anyway, Lauder discovered there was a lot of material on FDR but not so much on the new president, Harry Truman. It reminded me of the first time Ross Perot ran for president. I was working for an afternoon daily in Texas, and we had just finished putting together that day's paper and the presses were running when the news came that Perot was officially in.

It was a chance for the managing editor to go to the pressroom and say something I've always wanted to say — "Stop the presses!"

Which he did.

And I was dispatched to gather information from our morgue for a story on Perot — but I found, when I went to the morgue, that the material we had on Perot was sparse, even though Perot had been a prominent Texan who had been making news as an entrepreneur for 30 years. We went with the newswire story instead.

By the way, an observation here: From time to time, a populist candidate like Perot will gather some momentum, presumably on the logic that, as a political neophyte, such a candidate has not been corrupted by the system. For some, there is a desire to return to the days when it seems it was possible for someone to rise from the ranks of ordinary civilian to the highest office in the land. But political neophytes are apt to make mistakes, which is why they almost never win the presidency — unless they happen to be General Eisenhower fresh from winning World War II against the Nazis.

And which is why I don't think a Ben Carson candidacy will get very far, regardless of what some have told me.

But I digress.

For those who had been close to Franklin D. Roosevelt, his death 70 years ago today was a loss, but it may not have been a surprise. For the rest of the nation, though, it must have been a shock. Roosevelt's appearance clearly had changed in his 12 years in the White House, but many people could rationalize that as normal aging. In the aftermath of his death, they had to come to terms with some unpleasant facts.

The Dearborn (Mich.) Press & Guide probably summed things up for many when it wrote recently, "This year marks the 70th anniversary of several events huge in our nation’s history. None stunned us more than the sudden death in office of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ..."

It was a milestone in mass communication, though, as the Press & Guide observed: "It had been 22 years since President Warren G. Harding had died in office in 1923, and there were no networks then. Radio news, if there was such a thing, meant an announcer grabbed a newspaper and read it on the air. ... In 1945, within minutes of the 5:47 p.m., Eastern time, INS announcement, the sad message had been flashed to a nation."

The next time that a president died in office — John F. Kennedy in 1963 — many Americans got the news and followed the developing story on television.

We've had no presidential deaths since then, but the next time we have one, my guess is that most Americans will get the news via the internet — or whatever technology is dominant at the time.

Looking Ahead to 2016

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Bet you thought that, once the midterms were over, we'd get a reprieve from politics for awhile. Well, you were wrong! At best, all you get is a chance to catch your breath.

America's political pendulum is always swinging. Sometimes the swing is so modest you need a microscope to see it. Other times it swings wildly. In recent years, both parties have made the mistake of misreading election results and assuming they had longer–term implications than they had. Success is fleeting in American politics.

The midterm election was held in early November. By Thanksgiving, I had already read/heard several reports about people who were considering seeking their parties' nominations; then, Jeb Bush put his foot to the gas pedal and accelerated the process. Interested parties need to jump in soon, or all the resources in money and advisers will get locked in for Bush.

As it stands, 2016 will be a non–incumbent year, which means both parties' nominations are up for grabs. Technically speaking, that is. At this point in the process, it's still mostly a name recognition contest. Bush has the name — which isn't as toxic as it was a few years ago — and he's been grabbing up the money and the people even though few people outside of Florida know much more about him than the fact that he is the son of one president and the brother of another.

That was enough for 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, I guess. Romney wisely withdrew yesterday.

I didn't get to see his announcement, but it sounded like an impression of Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront."

Recent polls showed him in the lead, he said, particularly in the states whose primaries come early in the calendar, and he was "convinced" he could have won the nomination a second straight time — something no non–incumbent candidate in either party has been able to do since Adlai Stevenson.

("I coulda been a contendah.")

Once these guys (and gals) get the fever and start looking at themselves in the mirror each morning and imagining "Hail to the Chief" being played when he/she enters a room, the only cure for it seems to be the grave. Maybe it's an addiction. I don't know. But the word addiction has been expanded considerably in recent years. I wouldn't be surprised if politicians are prime prospects for addiction. Many already have addictions of other kinds as well, and being a narcissist almost seems like a key component of a politician's DNA.

I believe Romney is a sincere, well–meaning man who allowed himself to be defined by his opposition. Those things happen in campaigns. Both parties have done it so neither party is innocent; no point in pointing fingers on that one. There's plenty of blame to go around. The bottom line is, once you have been defined by the opposition, it is even more difficult to prevail the next time. To a great extent, Romney had been defined within his own party by his previous campaign for the nomination and by the opposition party in the general election.

Recent speculation of which issues Romney would choose to champion this time seemed to revive the old stereotypes of Romney as elitist, cold and calculating. It reminded me of what I heard when I was a child during Richard Nixon's comeback campaign of 1968. The emphasis was on the new Nixon. Nixon was always reinventing himself, and Romney has slipped into that mode as well.

But he resisted its lure. Good for him. It was the smart thing to do, and it most likely closes the door on his presidential ambitions. If the 2016 GOP nominee fails to win the election, Romney would be 73 in 2020. That isn't too old to win the nomination, but, historically speaking, it is too old to win the election. But my guess is he will continue to hear "Hail to the Chief" when he looks in the mirror each morning.

Barack Obama is barred by law from seeking a third term so, unless he issues an executive order repealing the 22nd Amendment, the Democrats will need a new nominee. Conventional wisdom insists it will be Hillary Clinton.

Really, how often does the frontrunner win the nomination? (I am speaking, of course, about non–incumbent presidential elections. Incumbents are rarely challenged for the nomination if they decide to seek another term — and even more rarely are those challenges serious.)

In the last 40 years, I suppose it has happened more often on the Republicans' side than on the Democrats' — Romney, John McCain (2008), George W. Bush (2000), Bob Dole (1996), George H.W. Bush (1988), Ronald Reagan (1980) and Gerald Ford (1976) all were frontrunners. The narrative on the Republican side was that the nominee always was the runnerup the last time the nomination was up for grabs. That hasn't always been the case, but it has been close to it for nearly 40 years. And those frontrunners almost always faced viable challengers from within before claiming the nomination.

Democrats have been more freewheeling. Hillary Clinton was the frontrunner heading into the primaries and caucuses of 2008 but lost to Obama, a newcomer to the national stage. The argument can be made that the nominees in 2004 (John Kerry) and 2000 (Al Gore) were frontrunners when the primaries began, but they, too, had to fend off challenges.

Clinton's husband was lightly regarded when his 1992 campaign began, but Mario Cuomo decided not to run, and Bill Clinton emerged from a pack of supposedly second–tier candidates dubbed "the Dwarfs."

Heading into 1988, Gary Hart — an insurgent challenger from 1984 — was regarded as the frontrunner until his campaign imploded. Michael Dukakis emerged from a group of largely unknown candidates to win the nomination.

Hart's insurgent candidacy made things uncomfortable for former Vice President Walter Mondale, the original frontrunner who went on to win the nomination. Mondale's former boss, Jimmy Carter, first won the nomination as an unknown riding a populist wave. Four years before that, the extreme left wing of the Democrat Party seized the nomination in the person of George McGovern.

Hillary Clinton may well go on to win the nomination, but she will have to overcome the problems we already know about — she really wasn't a very good candidate the last time, and her recent public remarks suggest that a lifetime in the public eye hasn't taught her much about diplomacy, her years as secretary of State notwithstanding.

What's more, there are rumblings about members of the liberal base pressing for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to seek the nomination. Not surprisingly, Clinton has been trying to improve her standing with the far left wing.

Historically, a non–incumbent presidential election has been an opportunity for both parties to write a new chapter in their history. Unfortunately, it appears that both parties are taking a trajectory that seems likely to give both nominations to dynastic retreads.

Limping Along to the Midterms

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It is my understanding that the term lame duck has been in use for more than 250 years.

It hasn't always been applied to politics. In fact, I've heard its origin was financial. Sometime during the Civil War, it began to be applied to politicians.

Usually, the term is applied to officeholders who are leaving office when their current terms expire — whether they are doing so voluntarily or involuntarily.

Ever since the passage of the 22nd Amendment, which imposed term limits on the office of president, a chief executive is said to be a lame duck — one who loses influence the closer he gets to to the end of his tenure — immediately after his re–election campaign ends, whether he wins or loses.

If he loses (i.e., Jimmy Carter or George H.W. Bush), he will be a lame duck for a couple of months. It is, of course, humiliating for an incumbent to be rejected by the voters. But, in many ways, it is worse to win re–election. Historically, presidents have enjoyed more power in their first terms than in their second, presumably because the aura of invincibility is gone. The loyal opposition is no longer cowed by an incumbent who will be gone in a few years.

Once the second–term midterms are over, both parties are pretty much in full election mode in anticipation of the open seat in the Oval Office — and the incumbent president becomes largely irrelevant.

(The 22nd Amendment was approved in the 1940s. Until then, presidential tenures were limited only by tradition — and voter preferences.)

That might change if term limits were imposed on all members of Congress. I don't know if such a thing would be constitutional. It might be unsustainable as a violation of states' rights. But if members of Congress were term–limited and faced the possibility of having to deal with only one president for most of their tenures, it might have a profound effect on the implementation of federal policy.

But that is another discussion for another time.

Today I want to address the chances for the president's party to take control of the House in next year's midterms — and give Barack Obama Democrat majorities in both chambers of Congress for the last two years of his presidency.

(That assumes, of course, that the Democrats will hold on to their majority in the Senate, which will be a tall order by itself, given that Democrat–held seats will be on the ballots in red states like Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina and South Dakota.)

At the very least, Democrats need to win 17 seats to take the majority in the House. The situation would be far from ideal if they won only 17. The razor–thin margin would leave no room for error in our polarized democracy, and, as the Democrats' recent setback in the gun–control debate demonstrated, Obama needs that margin for error.

Clearly, the ideal situation would be for the Democrats to have a little breathing room, which probably would require them to capture at least two dozen GOP–held seats.

That may not sound like an impossible task to modern voters, who have seen three elections in just the last decade in which that many seats (or more) flipped to the opposition party — but consider this.

In each of those elections (and two of them were midterms), the flips went against the party that held the White House.

That's the way midterm elections tend to go — and, in more than two centuries of American history, midterm elections have almost always gone against the party in the White House.

Sure, there are exceptions to that — recent ones, in fact — but there were unusual forces at work each time.

In 2002, George W. Bush's Republicans gained ground in the congressional midterms, thanks in large part to Bush's popularity in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and his appeal to patriotism in the buildup for the invasion of Iraq.

And four years earlier, Bill Clinton's Democrats picked up some congressional seats. The economy was booming, and Republicans were seen as having overreached with their attempt to remove Clinton from office.

Besides, after the historic Republican landslide in the 1994 midterms, Democrats really didn't have too many vulnerable congressional seats to defend in 1998.

If you insist on being one of those "the glass is half full" kinds of people — or if you've been drinking a lot of Kool–Aid from that glass — you might see conditions in America being considerably different a year from now than I do.

But I don't see anything like an economic boom on the horizon, not with the implementation of Obamacare coming up and the staggering unemployment crisis that has been allowed to fester (and will, in all probability, grow as a consequence of Obamacare). And, while Republicans don't speak of Obama in glowing terms, neither have they been overreaching the way their forebears did with impeachment 15 years ago; I see no similar backlash that could benefit Democrats.

Barring any unforeseen changes in the next year, 2014 is shaping up to be more like most midterms — and, historically speaking, the second midterm of a president's presidency is worse than the first.

That could be devastating for Obama. He barely clung to his party's Senate majority in his first midterm elections, losing his bullet–proof filibuster–proof advantage in the process, and the House swung to the opposition party by historic proportions.

Just because midterms typically go against the incumbent president's party doesn't mean 2014 will. But my point here is that when incumbents do post midterm gains, it is because circumstances are unusually favorable for them. The circumstances for 2014 don't look too favorable for Obama.

But let's assume that economic circumstances do change for the better. Historically speaking, the tendency for electoral adjustment in American midterms is so strong that such a change probably would not be enough. In 2002 and 1998 — and in 1934, the only other exception I have found — House gains for the incumbent's party were, at best, half of what Obama needs.

Double–digit midterm seat gains in the House have never happened for an incumbent president's party before. Does that mean it can't happen? No. But it does make it exceedingly unlikely, especially since we really only know in hypothetical terms how secure each House district really is since the redistricting that always follows a census. We probably won't have a feel for that until the next presidential election — in 2016.

But we do know a few things about the current House district alignment.

For example, only nine Democrats currently represent districts that Mitt Romney carried in last year's presidential election, and only 17 Republicans currently represent districts that Obama carried. That kind of math doesn't seem particularly favorable for a Democratic takeover.

Of course, the Democrats might not need 17 seats. If Republican former Gov. Mark Sanford's political comeback comes up short in Tuesday's special election in South Carolina's First District, the Democrats might need 16 House seats.

The math still doesn't seem to be there, though, even if Sanford loses.

Short of a dramatic improvement in the economy and/or another instance of overreaching by the Republicans in Congress, the Democrats' best bet is Obama — but he hasn't shown much inclination to campaign for others. Besides, the incumbent's popularity the last two times when the president's party prospered in midterm election was in the 60s — far above Obama, who hovers in 50–50 territory.

Is it impossible for Obama's approval rating to get into 60% territory in the next 18 months? No. Something truly remarkable could happen — the implementation of Obamacare, which is now being characterized as a "train wreck" by members of his own party, could go much better than expected — but right now it looks like a mountain too high.

I wouldn't bet the farm on double–digit gains for Democrats in 2014.

At the same time, though, I wouldn't bet the farm on double–digit gains for Republicans, either. The economy would have to worsen considerably for Republicans to have a realistic shot at that. Some people are predicting that will happen — and, after what we have seen in the last five years, I'm not about to dismiss it — but a kind of acceptable inadequacy is in force.

Unless the acceptable inadequacy becomes unacceptable — and who can say where that line is now? — I expect modest gains for one side or the other in next year's midterms, but nothing approaching double digits.