The First Impeachment

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It was 150 years ago today that an American president was impeached for the first time.

It has been fashionable in recent years for those who lose presidential elections to start calling for the impeachment of the winner — even before the winner has taken office — but impeachment had never been attempted before this day in 1868. Only two American presidents have faced the genuine prospect of impeachment since that time, and only one (Bill Clinton) faced a trial in the U.S. Senate. The House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment against Nixon in the summer of 1974, but Nixon resigned before the full House could vote on them.

Four years earlier, Johnson (a Democrat) had been selected as the running mate for Republican President Abraham Lincoln in his bid for a second term. Not only was it unprecedented for a major–party nominee to pick someone from the other party to be his running mate (they actually ran under the National Union banner), but Lincoln's choice was the military governor of Tennessee, a state that had seceded and was still not a part of the Union (it was occupied by the Union army). Tennessee did not participate in the election of 1864.

Johnson was an inspired choice for a president whose mission was to preserve the nation. While a supporter of slavery, Johnson was an unapologetic Unionist who had been the only Southern senator to oppose his state's decision to secede.

I don't think vice presidents deliver inaugural addresses anymore, but they did in Andrew Johnson's day. At least, Johnson tried to deliver such a speech, but he wasn't feeling well so he drank some whiskey, believing that would help. Instead, he got gassed and gave a rambling speech. Thus, the inauguration of 1865, which is remembered in history for Lincoln's magnanimous call for "malice toward none" and "charity for all" in the North's treatment of the vanquished South following the Civil War, was an awkward introduction for Johnson to his fellow Americans.

That was particularly unfortunate since Johnson became the nation's leader a month and a half later.

Six weeks after the inauguration in 1865, Lincoln was assassinated, and Johnson became the 17th president. Things didn't go well for him, and by this day in 1868, 11 articles of impeachment, largely related to Johnson's efforts to dismiss the secretary of war, were adopted by the House. The case was sent to the Senate for trial — where Johnson was ultimately acquitted by a single vote.

Johnson failed to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1868 and left office in 1869.

He returned to the U.S. Senate in 1875 and died shortly therafter.

The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia

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Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you must know that there was a special election in Georgia's Sixth Congressional District this week.

The district has been in Republican hands for nearly 40 years.

Democrats have been eager to anoint the new House majority that they expect after the midterm elections in 2018, and every special election to fill a vacancy that was created when President Trump tapped someone to join his administration has been billed as a preview of coming attractions. After Democrat Jon Ossoff grabbed 48% of the vote in April's so–called "jungle primary" in the Georgia Sixth, millions of Democrat dollars flowed into the district from out of state, much of it from as far away as San Francisco, for the June 20 runoff.

There were high expectations. As it was in most of last year's Republican presidential primaries, Trump has emerged the winner in every special election so far. The margins have been narrow, but close doesn't count. Democrats were hungry for a victory.

And Democrats, who have gone into each contest convinced that public resistance to Trump and the Republicans was just waiting to rise up and be counted, are sounding like the fabled boy who cried "Wolf!"

They have awfully short memories.

I don't know if Tip O'Neill was the first to say "All politics is local," but I know he used the phrase as the foundation of his campaign strategy — and he knew what he was talking about.

O'Neill, a Democrat and five–term speaker of the House, represented a House district in Massachusetts for more than 30 years and rarely faced a serious challenge when he ran for re–election. In that sense, there was nothing particularly remarkable about his re–election in 1982.

But it was only two years, after all, since Ronald Reagan's landslide victory over Jimmy Carter, and the presidency wasn't the only thing the Democrats lost. After more than a quarter of a century of being in the majority in the Senate, Democrats had lost that majority, and their majority in the House was drastically reduced — by nearly three dozen seats. To say there was a certain amount of anxiety among Democrats at that time would be an understatement.

There needn't have been.

The elections in 1982 were the midterms of Reagan's first term as president — and a clear pattern of American political history is that midterms in general almost always favor the out–of–power party. We've grown accustomed in recent times to the possibility that a president's party might not lose ground in one or both of the chambers of Congress in a midterm election, but that is a rare phenomenon that usually requires unique circumstances.

George W. Bush's Republicans, for example, benefited in 2002 from the national mood following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, winning two Senate seats and eight House seats. It was the first time in nearly 70 years that a president's party gained ground in both chambers of Congress in a midterm election.

You have to go back to the 1930s — when America was in the grip of the Great Depression — to find the previous example of a time when the president's party prospered in both chambers in a midterm election. In 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt's Democrats picked up 10 Senate seats (at a time when there were only 96 members of the Senate) and nine House seats. (FDR's midterms of 1938 and 1942 went against the president's party, and what would have been his fourth midterm, which he did not live to see, was a total disaster for his successor, Harry Truman, in 1946.)

While 9/11 is often compared to Pearl Harbor, FDR did not benefit the way Bush did 60 years later. In the 1942 midterms FDR's Democrats lost nine Senate seats and 45 House seats. In spite of what had happened in Hawaii less than a year earlier, voters were anxious about American involvement in World War II.

In the last century, a few presidents have seen their party make midterm gains in one chamber but not both.

Bill Clinton's Democrats benefited in 1998 from a national backlash against the Republicans' partisan impeachment proceedings. They neither won nor lost seats in the Senate, but they won four seats in the House.

Richard Nixon's Republicans lost 12 House seats but won two Senate seats in the midterms of 1970. There was still a certain amount of backlash against the Vietnam War and the Democrats' participation in its escalation.

In 1962 John F. Kennedy's Democrats gained ground in the Senate but lost ground in the House. The Cuban Missile Crisis, which occurred a few weeks before the election, may well have played a role.

In 1914, Woodrow Wilson's Democrats gained five seats in the Senate but lost a staggering 59 seats in the House. The Republicans were more united than they had been in 1912 — when the party's two factions, led by former Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft in the 1912 presidential election, reunited with a common purpose. They also gave themselves pats on the back for the booming economy — the result, they told the voters, of policies passed by Republicans in the previous quarter of a century.

Eight years before that, Teddy Roosevelt's Republicans gained seats in the Senate but lost seats in the House (although they retained a significant majority).

I could go on, but you get the idea, don't you? (Those were the best midterm years for incumbents in the last 110 years, and, in 2017, Democrats have seen the special elections to replace members of the House who were picked to join the Trump administration as targets of opportunity. Sort of a kickoff to the resounding rejection they are certain Republicans will receive next year. Only one real problem with that line of thinking — Republicans have won every special election this year. If you want to have a revolution, you have to have some victories.)

But back to O'Neill.

Even with that history, Democrats were edgy heading into the 1982 midterms. And O'Neill, facing a challenge from a Massachusetts lawyer whose campaign was being financed by out–of–state contributors (primarily oil interests in Oklahoma and Texas), emphasized that point in his campaign.

In November O'Neill won with 75% of the vote, and Democrats recaptured more than two dozen seats in the House, padding the majority they had held since 1955.

But going into that election year, Democrats were anxious. They had taken a beating two years earlier, and, even though O'Neill had won 15 straight congressional races, he was a consummate politician who knew all too well that Massachusetts — the only state to reject Nixon's bid for a second term in 1972 — had voted (narrowly) for Reagan in 1980 (Massachusetts voted for Reagan again in 1984). Was it a symptom of an emerging shift to the right in a state long known for its liberal politics?

Reagan's approval rating in late 1982 was hovering around 40%. It went up when the economy started roaring back to life, but that was after the midterms.

In hindsight it is easy to see the uphill climb that was facing the Republicans in 1982, but it wasn't so easy to see from ground level at the time.

O'Neill took the campaign to the voters. The people who are backing the Republican in this race, he told the voters, don't live here, but they think they can tell you what to do. And he addressed the district's kitchen–table concerns while his opponent — and his opponent's backers — spoke about more national themes.

Does that sound familiar? Democrats wanted to make the Georgia election about cultural issues. The Republicans and their candidate, Karen Handel, wanted to make it about the issues that affected the daily lives of Georgians — taxes and jobs.

On top of that, Ossoff didn't even live in the district.

It wasn't surprising that he received about the same share of the vote that he received in the first vote.

Many Democrats were fooled into believing Ossoff had a good chance to win by his showing in that first vote. The previous congressman, now–Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, was re–elected there last year with more than 61% of the vote. Ossoff already had done better than any of Price's challengers.

Except in his first election.

Price needed a runoff to win the GOP nomination when his predecessor, now–Sen. Johnny Isakson, decided to run for the Senate. After winning the runoff, Price was unopposed in the general election. He won all his re–election bids without breaking a sweat.

And that is really what is so deceptive about special elections. They are held to fill vacancies — which means there is no incumbent.

Incumbents are notoriously difficult to defeat. They have all the advantages of incumbency at their disposal. Their primary obligation is to be aware of and responsive to the needs of a typically concentrated geographical area. As long as they do that, they tend to win re–election with little trouble.

The best chance to "flip" a House district usually comes when the seat is open.

I have heard all the talk of how Handel will face another tough challenge when she seeks a full term next year, but as long as she keeps her focus on her district, I predict that she will win re–election easily.

It's the way it is.

R.I.P., Dale Bumpers

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Dale Bumpers must be a patron saint for anyone who dreams of coming from nowhere and winning whatever the greatest prize in that person's chosen profession happens to be. Bumpers' profession — his calling, if you choose to call it that — was in politics.

He may not be the patron saint of all such people, though. Jimmy Carter, who overcame low name recognition to win the presidency, must hold that title for presidential aspirants. But for those with low name recognition who seek lesser offices, well, they couldn't do better than to have Bumpers on their side.

I spent most of the first 30 years of my life in Arkansas, and it often seemed as if Bumpers, who died Friday at the age of 90, had always been a part of the state's political scene, but the truth was that he spent the first 18 years of his career, after serving in World War II and then studying law at Northwestern, in virtual obscurity as a mostly unknown city attorney in the town where he was born — Charleston, a village in Northwest Arkansas.

He entered state politics in 1970 as a Democratic candidate for governor. The incumbent was a Republican so the Democratic primary was crowded. Bumpers was polling at 1% when he entered the race, but he elbowed his way into a runoff with former Gov. Orval Faubus and won it easily. Then, in the general election, he handily defeated the incumbent, Winthrop Rockefeller, in the process earning the reputation of political giant killer.

That wasn't the last giant he toppled, either. In 1974, after serving two two–year terms as governor, Bumpers challenged five–term Sen. Bill Fulbright in the primary and won by a 2–to–1 margin. He went on to serve four terms in the U.S. Senate.

His most memorable moment in the Senate most likely came a few weeks after his retirement from it in 1999, when he was asked to deliver a closing argument in Bill Clinton's Senate impeachment trial. "H.L. Mencken said one time, 'When you hear somebody say, 'This is not about the money,' it's about the money," Bumpers said. "And when you hear somebody say, 'This is not about sex,' it's about sex."

I always love it when someone works in a quote from Mencken.

Bumpers was frequently mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, and I always thought he would have been a good one. He did whatever he thought was right, not what he thought would win him votes. It's my understanding that, even after serving as governor and senator over a period of nearly 30 years, the accomplishment of which he was most proud was playing an important role in the integration of the school district in his hometown — the first in the old Confederacy.

He always had a sunny disposition, whether he actually believed what he said or not. The thing was that he could make others believe it.

I recall when I was on the faculty of the University of Oklahoma, and I attended a lecture being given by former Sen. George McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972, the year Bumpers was re–elected governor in a landslide. After the lecture, I went up to McGovern to introduce myself and shake his hand. I told him I had seen him once, late in that '72 campaign when he made a brief stop at the Little Rock airport, and a crowd of both the curious and the committed gathered in a hangar to see him.

McGovern told me he remembered that stop because Bumpers had assured him he would carry Arkansas when the votes were counted about a week later. It didn't work out that way. Richard Nixon carried 69% of the vote, the first time in precisely one century that Arkansas voted for a Republican for president. It has now done so in all but three of the 10 presidential elections that have been held since — and native son Clinton was the Democrats' nominee in two of those elections.

But through that transition, Bumpers continued to win elections. When he was elected governor, observers speculated that he would be one of a new breed of Southern governors — a group that, at the time, included the likes of Jimmy Carter of Georgia. Carter, as I have pointed out, enjoyed his own meteoric rise when he came from nowhere in 1976 to win the presidency. Bumpers later said he had long believed that 1976 was his best opportunity to be elected president.

Bumpers was often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, but the talk seemed to be loudest in 1980 and 1984. He declined to enter the race both times. I always thought he would have been successful because he had qualities that served Ronald Reagan so well — that sunny disposition I mentioned and remarkable oratorical skills. On a few occasions as a reporter, I covered Bumpers speaking at Labor Day Fish Fries and Chamber of Commerce luncheons in Arkansas, and I always marveled at his speaking style. It was so engaging, so folksy.

He had a real knack for connecting with people, regardless of their political philosophies. It is why in these last couple of days since his death, both Democrats and Republicans in Arkansas have been speaking highly of Bumpers and his ability to reach across the aisle.

Of course, the political landscape in Arkansas has changed considerably since Bumpers was governor. In those days, reaching across the aisle wasn't really the issue. Democrats held nearly every seat in the state legislature, but Bumpers still had to build a consensus on most issues. The legislature had conservative Democrats, liberal Democrats and moderate Democrats. It was the same challenge that Bumpers' Democratic successors, David Pryor (who followed Bumpers to the Senate four years later) and Bill Clinton, faced as governor.

All three understood that it is necessary for each side to give a little, to compromise if great things are to be accomplished. They may not be quite as great as each side envisioned, but they will be better than doing nothing.

Arkansas was fortunate to be governed by such men in times of tremendous change — and doing nothing was not an option.

The Eternal Randomness of Presidential Politics

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"There's something happening here
But what it is ain't exactly clear."

Buffalo Springfield

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Peggy Noonan recently observed in The Wall Street Journal that, so far, the 2016 presidential campaign has been full of surprises.

She made this observation in the context of another column that she wrote earlier this year in which she anticipated a "bloody" battle for the GOP's presidential nomination and a "boring" one for the Democrats' nod.

Now, she writes, the Republican campaign has become "exciting" with a record–setting debate night, and the Democrats' campaign has become "ominous." In other words, the presidential campaign — in which not one single vote has been cast in either party — has been full of surprises for Noonan.

That in itself surprises me. I've been aware of Noonan for 30 years, going back to when she wrote President Reagan's moving speech to the nation after the explosion of the Challenger in January 1986. If she's been around presidential politics at least that long, she should know how unpredictable it can be. Really. When has it ever been anything else?

As we approached the time last spring when Hillary Clinton made her candidacy official, I began to have a peculiar feeling about this campaign. Everyone acted as if it was a done deal that Hillary would not only win the Democrats' nomination but would breeze to victory in the general election.

Now, in my experience, nothing is that positive — and I have been following presidential politics most of my life. To be sure, there have been times when non–incumbent front–runners ended up cruising to the nomination as expected, but they usually struggle along the way, losing at least a primary or two. In keeping with history, it hasn't been the fait accompli that Hillary Clinton's march to the nomination appeared to be only a few months ago — and no one has even voted yet.

Now, Hillary insists that she never expected an effortless glide to the nomination, that she always expected it to be competitive. Part of that may be the residual effect of having been the presumptive nominee in 2008 only to lose it to an inexperienced — and largely unknown — guy named Barack Obama when the party's voters began participating in primaries and caucuses. And at least part of it is sure to be P.R.

It reminds me of Election Night 1980, when Hillary's husband lost a narrow race for re–election as Arkansas' governor. I guess you had to be in Arkansas at the time to understand just how popular Bill Clinton was there then — and how shocking it was that he had been voted out of office. True, he lost his first race, in 1974, for the U.S. House seat representing Arkansas' Third District, but he took 48% of the vote in that heavily Republican northwest quadrant of the state. Two years later, he was elected Arkansas' attorney general, facing only modest opposition in the primary and none in the general election. Arkansas elected its statewide officials every two years in those days, and, in 1978, Bill Clinton was elected governor.

1980 turned out to be a Republican year, with Reagan sweeping Jimmy Carter out of the White House and Republicans seizing control of the U.S. Senate. There were clear indications prior to the election that it would turn out that way nationally.

But Arkansas was solidly Democratic in those days. Four years earlier, it had given Carter his highest share of the popular vote outside of Carter's home state of Georgia. Even with a Reagan victory more or less expected, the feeling in Arkansas was that Carter would prevail there again.

But he didn't, and neither did Clinton. Both lost narrowly, and, when speaking to his supporters that night, Clinton said that he and his campaign staff had been aware, in the closing days of the campaign, of shifts within the electorate that pointed to the possibility that he would lose. It didn't come as a shock to them, Clinton insisted.

But I'll guarantee it came as a shock to many Arkansans.

I was probably too young at the time to recognize that for what it was — an early manifestation of the Clintons' obsession with controlling the conversation, whatever it was about. Even if you have been blindsided, never let 'em know that.

That trait is often interpreted as deceitful, and perhaps it is. What I have known about Hillary Clinton for a long time — and others only seem to be understanding now — is that she is a cold fish politically. Her husband is a scoundrel, but he is a likable scoundrel. He has sure–footed natural political instincts. It is why he hasn't lost a general election since he was beaten in that 1980 campaign I mentioned earlier. He lost some presidential primaries but always won the nomination he sought.

Hillary has none of her husband's strengths and all of his weaknesses. It is a combination that isn't likely to hurt her much in the race for the nomination — but it is apt to be troublesome when she is trying to win as many independent and even Republican votes as possible. Because she can't win a national election on the votes from her party alone. No one can — not in a country where more than 40% of voters identify as independents.

Self–defined independents are important because they now outnumber Democrats and Republicans. They may lean to one side or the other, but the fact that they call themselves independent suggests that they cannot be taken for granted.

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In spite of what Noonan says, though, I'm not sold — yet — on the narrative that holds that the emergence of Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail and the possible entry of Vice President Joe Biden — who met with Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently in what may have been the strongest signal yet that he will throw his hat in the ring — suggest that a race Noonan once described as "boring" is becoming "ominous." Well, perhaps "ominous" really isn't the right word. Perhaps Noonan — who is a gifted writer — should use a word like "threatening," because, at the moment, that is what this looks like to me.

As usual, I look to history for guidance. All history, really, but I prefer recent history when it is applicable.

There have been times in the last half century when insurgents have won their parties' nominations. Historically, Democrats have been more prone to it — eventual nominees George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, even Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were nowhere in the polls more than a year before the general election when they were the standard bearers for the out–of–power party — so history does suggest that Sanders might have a chance to win the nomination — provided he can peel off some rich donors and make inroads into certain demographics that currently are in Hillary's camp.

But those donors and demographic groups are going to have to get a lot more nervous about Hillary before they'll be ripe for the picking. The fact that Sanders is drawing huge crowds on the campaign trail indicates to me that a sizable segment of the Democrats craves a real contest for this nomination, one that requires Democrats to take clear stands on issues and promote policies that are designed to help the voters, not the candidates.

I think that is true of voters of all stripes. They want to have a conversation about the issues that affect them and their children. They don't want that conversation to be disrupted by distractions. And the emergence of people like Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina suggests voters have lost confidence in career politicians to confront and vanquish the problems and are looking for someone who can bring common sense from another field to the White House.

I would say that Hillary is still the odds–on favorite to win the nomination, but those odds are growing ever smaller. If Biden challenges her with a platform that appeals to an electorate that has clearly soured on politics as usual, things could get dicey for the Democrats. Hillary Clinton could find herself in political history books with all the other sure things — like Ed Muskie and Gary Hart.

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Then there's Donald Trump.

A lot of Republicans fear that, if Trump is denied the GOP's nomination, he will run as an independent — and, in the process, hand the White House to the Democrats for four more years. I suppose they are the new Republicans, the ones whose party has lost five of the last six popular votes, a skid that began with Ross Perot's first independent candidacy.

I'm not so sure about that one, either. Hey, it is still very early in the process, and the folks who fear that Trump, with his deep pockets, will keep the Republicans from winning the presidency by running as an independent overlook a few key points that separate 2016 from 1992.

In 1992, the Republicans had been the incumbent party for a dozen years. They never had majorities in both houses of Congress simultaneously — in fact, for half of that time, Democrats controlled both houses — but the general public perception was that the Republicans had ownership of just about everything.

In 2016, Democrats will have been in charge of the White House for eight years, and the policies that will be debated are policies that, by and large, are products of this administration. If historical trends persist, voters will hold them responsible for conditions that exist, even though Republicans have controlled one or both houses of Congress through most of the Obama presidency; and Trump, although he has been seeking the Republican nomination, was supportive of many of those policies — and may tend to draw as many votes from disaffected Democrats as Republicans if he runs as an independent in the general election.

In short, an independent Trump candidacy won't necessarily work against Republicans, as many fear.

I learned a long time ago not to predict what voters will do until we are close to the time when they have to go to the polls. Attitudes are volatile more than a year from the election, and there may be events ahead that will shape the race in ways we cannot imagine.

One thing that voters in both parties must decide is whether essentially political matters are best left to essentially non–political people. If the answer to that is no, the primaries will bear witness to a thinning of the Republican field. I think that is bound to happen anyway. Virtually none of the GOP candidates mired at 1% or 2% in the polls can afford to stay in the race for long, and I am convinced the field will be half its current size before New Year's Day. At least one of the non–politicians is certain to be among those who drop out.

That will make it possible for all the candidates to participate in the same debate — and voters can judge them side by side. The race will become more focused, as it should.

A Glance at the Race for the White House

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Each time we prepare to elect a president, there always seems to be someone seeking a party's nomination who sought it before but fell short. Most of the time, that candidate (or those candidates in especially active presidential election cycles) is said to be taking a different approach this time — presumably because the original approach failed the first time.

The message may be different, or the candidate may choose a different way to convey that message. The latter appears to be what Hillary Clinton is doing. "Clinton plans to forgo the packed rallies that marked her previous campaign," writes the Associated Press' Lisa Lerer, "and focus on smaller round-table events with selected groups of supporters."

Sometimes that is a good idea; other times, not so much. I am skeptical that it will help Clinton avoid questions about her email or acceptance of cash contributions from foreign governments seeking access while she was secretary of State. In the context of previous presidential campaigns, that isn't really surprising. It is frequently — but not always — difficult to know whether changing the message or how the message is presented is the right approach the second time around — until after the campaign is over.

By that time, of course, one need look no further than the election results to decide if the candidate (should he or she win the nomination) made the right choice. If it wasn't, there will be no shortage of scapegoats and other excuses in what boils down to a circular firing squad.

What is more certain these days is that it is difficult for a party to prevail in three consecutive national elections. Some people attribute that to fatigue with the incumbent party. Since the postwar era has coincided with the advent of television — which, in turn, has led to Americans having unprecedented access to a president's daily activities — that makes sense.

And I do think that plays a role in it, but I think it is more complex than that. Now, I'm going to lay a little groundwork here. I apologize in advance if it seems elementary.

There are two kinds of presidential election years — incumbent years and non–incumbent years. An incumbent year is when America has an incumbent president who is eligible to run for another term — and usually does. I think the last such incumbent who chose not to seek another term was Lyndon Johnson in 1968. Three other presidents in the 20th century made the decision not to seek another term when they legally could have — Theodore Roosevelt in 1908, Calvin Coolidge in 1928 and Harry Truman in 1952.

(Truman was president when the 22nd Amendment was ratified. He had served nearly two full terms by 1952, having succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, but the amendment made the specific point that it would not apply to whoever was president upon its ratification.)

Since we always have an incumbent, the matter of eligibility would seem to be the determining factor, but it isn't. LBJ's decision, which was largely the product of the public's increasingly sour mood about the war in Vietnam, not to seek another term as president instantly turned 1968 into a non–incumbent year. That's a year when the incumbent is not on the ballot in the general election, whether by choice or circumstance.

In recent times, non–incumbent years have tended to favor the nominee of the out–of–power party because those years have come when the incumbent usually is ineligible to seek another term.

It wasn't always that way. For whatever reason, it seems to have been largely a byproduct of World War II that parties almost never win three straight national elections. At least, that's when this pattern emerged. Before that, victories tended to come in bunches. Democrats won five straight elections between 1932 and 1948. The Republicans won the three elections prior to that — and 11 of 15 between 1860 and 1916.

Of course, it was after World War II ended when the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to two full terms in office was ratified, and that was a game changer. Few presidents were tempted to seek a third term before the amendment was ratified, but it was always a possibility. Since the 22nd Amendment was ratified, it has been generally understood that, after winning his second term, a president gradually slips into irrelevance, essentially becoming a lame duck the day he takes the oath of office for the second time. Maybe that explains the pattern that has emerged in the last 67 years.

Since Harry Truman's "upset" victory in 1948, Americans have voted for the same party's nominees for president three straight times only once — in 1988 when Vice President George H.W. Bush was elected to succeed Ronald Reagan. Otherwise, it has been so predictable you could set your calendar by it.

Bush was helped by the fact that President Reagan was still popular after eight years in office — Gallup had Reagan at 51% approval just before the 1988 election — but the popularity of the incumbent does not necessarily help the nominee of the president's party.

Prior to the 2000 election, Bill Clinton's approval rating was between 59% and 62%. Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, narrowly won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote — in large part because he did not take advantage of Clinton's popularity and political skills during his campaign against George W. Bush.

Of course, if the incumbent's popularity is below 50%, his party's nominee to replace him is probably toast before the convention adjourns. George W. Bush's approval ratings were mostly in the 20s just before the 2008 election, which John McCain lost in a modest landslide.

And Lyndon Johnson's approval rating just before the 1968 election (42%) almost precisely mirrored Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey's share of the popular vote — and 1968 turned out to be a cliffhanger but only because independent candidate George Wallace was on the ballot.

The Difference It Makes

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"Tell people that there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure."

George Carlin

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Unless your lifestyle is a reclusive one, like that of the Unabomber — and, if it is, then you most likely aren't reading this, anyway — you're bound to have seen the TV commercial in which the deejay is posing as a financial advisor. He got his hair cut. He put on a nice suit, and he threw around some impressive–sounding financial terms. Then he asked some unsuspecting dupes if they would trust him to handle their retirement planning. They all said they would. Then he revealed the truth about himself. "I have no financial experience at all," he confessed.

The unsuspecting dupes really shouldn't have been all that unsuspecting, though. It's the kind of sleight–of–hand that magicians have been pulling for generations. Sometimes people really should be hesitant based on what they know — and what they don't know. Nevertheless, there are always people who fall for scams.

And there are those who make up their minds and won't change, come hell or high water. In the words of Simon and Garfunkel, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

In my experience, people — particularly Americans — are too quick to give a second chance — and a third one and a fourth one and, well, you get the picture — to those of whom we have ample reason to be skeptical. Most of us have been guilty of it at one time or another. For some, it's just the way they roll — all the time.

Sometimes we are rewarded for giving a second chance; but just as often, if not more, we are disappointed.

Now, in the case of one Hillary Rodham Clinton ...

Most Americans think they have spent a lot of time observing the Clintons, but I've got them beat. I lived in Arkansas before Bill ever won an election. I wasn't familiar with Hillary when she was a legal adviser to the House Judiciary Committee during its impeachment inquiry; it was after that that she agreed to marry Clinton and move to Arkansas. They were both in Little Rock by 1977; Bill was elected the state's attorney general in 1976. And that is when I — and, I suspect, most of the people in Arkansas — first became acquainted with Hillary.

From that point on, Bill was a fixture in Arkansas politics, and Hillary was often seen with him — not so much in his attorney general days but after that when he ran for governor. Statewide officials were elected to two–year terms in those days, and governors sort of lived with the fact that, unless they were stepping down voluntarily in the next election cycle, they pretty much had to spend half of each term running for office. There was no season for raising money for those campaigns, either; fundraising was — and, I expect, still is — an ongoing process.

Arkansas changed that law in the mid–1980s. Statewide officers are elected to four–year terms today, but Bill and Hillary Clinton cut their political teeth on the old arrangement.

Anyway, having observed the Clintons for more than half my life, I've kind of gone beyond the point of being disappointed by anything they say or do.

Since we are all, to a great extent, the products of our experiences, it seems fair to assume that experience plays a significant role in the mindsets of both Clintons. Indeed, given their behavior in their political lives, it seems to be — to most reasonable people — a sight more than an assumption.

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Hillary Clinton: With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans.

Sen. Ron Johnson: I understand.

Clinton: Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?

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In the matter of the Clinton emails, Mrs. Clinton and her supporters want the country to focus on the fact that her people have already gone through the emails and decided which ones to release.

Is that sufficient?

As I recall, it wasn't sufficient 40 years ago when the subject of the congressional investigation in which Mrs. Clinton took part — you know, the one involving President Richard Nixon — offered to release certain White House tapes after they had been screened or edited transcripts of the tapes themselves. I can't say that I know what Hillary Rodham said or thought about that, but I do know what just about every Democrat — and some Republicans — said when Nixon tried to pull that one. They didn't go for it. Nixon went ahead and released edited transcripts, anyway, but they were ridiculed to such an extent that no one really gave them any credibility.

As I recall, when the subject of edited transcripts was first brought up by the White House, special prosecutor Archibald Cox rejected it, saying that transcripts "lack the evidenciary value of the tapes themselves."

(There was something Nixonian in the way Barack Obama insisted he had learned of Hillary's private email through news reports. That, of course, is how Nixon claimed he had learned of the Watergate break–in.)

And now Hillary Clinton reaches into Nixon's playbook. But summaries of her email correspondences — or release of certain emails that were selected by Hillary and/or her staff — lack the evidenciary value of the emails themselves.

Of course, there is more to this than merely the resemblance to a long–ago scandal. There is the question of cyber security. In recent years, we have seen how easily the computer files of huge retail outfits can be hacked and private information can be compromised.

Doesn't that make it even more important that Americans be completely assured that the communications of the secretary of state — whose email correspondence may very well have contained sensitive classified information — cannot be intercepted?

What assurance can they have from a privately run server that sufficient security is in place?

We live in perilous times. It shouldn't be necessary to remind people of that, with all the grisly images we have seen on our TV screens — beheadings, people being burned alive and tossed from buildings — but, nevertheless, there are people who will ignore the facts.

Those are the people who will tell you that ISIS and its allies there in the Middle East are savages, primitive, medieval at best. And I will concede that they follow medieval texts and dress in medieval ways — and, most importantly, they think medieval thoughts. But that does not mean that they turn a blind eye to modern technology. They don't like the modern world, but they know that they must use the tools of the modern world if they are to defeat it. Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants turned modern technology against America in 2001, hijacking airplanes and using computers for all sorts of purposes — communicating with each other, financial transactions, reserving seats on the doomed airplanes.

Why should we think that modern jihadists would behave any differently?

We've heard the stories of their active efforts to recruit people from the West. Doesn't it make sense that they would be looking for people who know how to hack computer systems? It wouldn't surprise me if they already have recruited such people.

It wouldn't really matter where they were, either — although I am quite sure there are already sleeper cells across this country waiting for their orders. Computer hackers can be anywhere. As long as they can connect to the internet, they can go about their business.

What guarantee do we have that Mrs. Clinton's emails, which were not under the protection of the government, were not hacked while she was in office? Oh, I know, there are no guarantees anymore. But it still seems — to me — to be an inexcusable temptation of fate to obsessively control one's email records instead of doing as the law requires.

Fact is, under the law, Mrs. Clinton's email correspondence while secretary of state does not belong to her. Regardless of what it was — a highly sensitive official email to a foreign ally or a personal email to an old friend — it is the property of the U.S. government.

Upon entering office, a president swears to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. That means following the laws of the land.

Mrs. Clinton asks her audiences these days, "Don't you want to see a woman president of the United States?"

My answer to that is — yes. But I want it to be the right woman for the job. Not just any woman.

And the right woman for the job will not have a history of playing by the rules of her choosing, thoughtlessly putting others at risk. It is the same standard I apply to any man seeking the presidency.

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.

Why Do Obama's Approval Numbers Matter?

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As of today, we are less than 100 days away from Election Day. A little more than five years ago, Democrats were fawning over the first 100 days of the Obama presidency. Today, they are considerably less enthusiastic about the next 100 days.

Nothing is cast in stone yet, but the sands are running rapidly through the hourglass for the Democrats.

Over and over, I have been asked the same question: Why do Barack Obama's approval numbers matter in the 2014 midterms?

Usually, I am asked this question by folks who still haven't gotten over that "Yes, we can" mindset from 2008 — some things matter because we say they matter, and other things don't matter because we say they don't matter — and they can't comprehend what has changed.

Well, there's this matter of delivering on one's promises — and presidents always seem to get the short end of the stick on that one. Either they haven't delivered on their promises, and folks are upset about that — or they have delivered on their promises, and folks are upset about that.

A voter's preference is a moving target. It all really depends on whose ox is being gored.

Some people don't understand that a single election never settles things, once and for all — and that no president can count on the same kind of support for his subordinates that he received two years earlier. Those subordinates are charged with implementing the president's policies via the legislative branch. When the policies ain't working, all involved are held accountable.

If the president isn't on the ballot, disgruntled voters will do as George Wallace used to encourage them to do — Send 'em a message. By proxy if necessary.

I'm sorry if this refresher civics course seems elementary. I mention it only to remind folks that this is a democracy, and people make no lifetime commitments to candidates, causes or parties. Well, some do, but many do not, and that really is perplexing for some.

They find the independence of the American voter bewildering.

Obama isn't on the ballot, they point out. He is barred by law from seeking a third term. The election isn't about him. It's about keeping the Senate and winning the House. (OK, even the diehards aren't mentioning that last one anymore. It's become one of those "in a perfect world" kind of things for modern Democrats. Holding on to the Senate is enough of a challenge.)

Well, technically, I suppose, that is true. We aren't electing a president in 2014. We are electing one–third of the Senate and all of the House, just as we do every two years. Every four years, we throw a presidential election into the mix — but not this time.

We're midway through the current four–year presidential term — hence, these are the midterm elections.

Historically, midterms have served as electoral adjustors. They almost always go against the party that occupies the White House, and that tendency is even more pronounced in a president's second midterm. In recent years, it has been referred to as a fatigue factor. There was talk of "Bush fatigue" in 2006 and "Clinton fatigue" in 1998. I can even remember talk of "Reagan fatigue" in 1986.

(If Watergate had not ended his presidency early, Nixon might well have encountered "Nixon fatigue" in November 1974. In hindsight, that might have been better for the Republicans. As it was, they lost five Senate seats and four dozen House seats in the Watergate backlash.)

I'm not really sure why it is that presidential fatigue seems to settle in at this point in a two–term presidency. I just know that it is so. Except for extremely rare circumstances, a president's party is radioactive two years after his re–election.

George W. Bush was extremely unpopular just before the 2006 midterms. Polls consistently showed his approval in the mid– to upper 30s prior to the election, and his Republicans lost six Senate seats and 32 House seats.

Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, was very popular. About a week before the election, his approval rating was 63%, according to Gallup. His popularity took a major hit after the election — when the Iran–Contra scandal was in the news — but Reagan's party still lost control of the Senate for the first time in six years (as well as five seats in the House).

Bill Clinton's second midterm in 1998 probably should have been a disaster for the Democrats — after all, in Clinton's first midterm, his party lost control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in 40 years — but 1998 was one of those extreme circumstances of which I spoke earlier. Republicans were perceived as having overreached in their attempt to impeach Clinton, and voters gave Democrats a four–seat gain in the House.

A recent poll from the Pew Research Center found that Republicans are more engaged than Democrats, but they aren't as enthusiastic as they were in 2010 — or as Democrats were in 2006.

There may be good news and bad news in that for both parties. If Republicans are not as enthused as they were four years ago, they might not be as inclined to show up at the polls. Good news for Democrats.

Pew also finds that, currently, there is virtually no difference in party preference. Forty–five percent of voters prefer Republicans, 47% prefer Democrats. More good news for Democrats.

The enthusiasm gap for the out–of–power party is not as great this year, Pew reports, as it was in 2010 or 2006.

But that is how it stands in July. Unfortunately for Democrats, the election isn't being held in July. Numerous surveys over the years suggest that most Americans don't start paying attention to political campaigns until around October.

More than three–fourths of Republican–leaning voters say they definitely will vote this year whereas about two–thirds of Democrat–leaning voters say they definitely will vote — but those numbers are slightly lower for Republicans and a little higher for Democrats than they were four years ago. Again, more good news for Democrats.

However, about half of those Republican voters say they will vote against any and all supporters of Obama's policies, which is not much different from this point in the election cycle four years ago.

People still point to polls showing record–high dissatisfaction with Congress, and that can't be denied, but it can be misinterpreted. Yes, the American people aren't happy with Congress. But they never are. Dissatisfaction was pretty high in 2006 and 2010, too, but most incumbents who sought re–election were re–elected.

Typically, when people say they are not satisfied with Congress, they mean other people's senators and representatives, not their own. Anti–incumbency is said to be running high today, but it hasn't shown itself much in this year's party primaries.

And conventional wisdom holds that undecided voters are more inclined to break for the challenger in the closing days and weeks of a campaign. Thus, the likelihood that the voters will throw the bums out in November is very low.

What can Obama do? Well, in some cases, the best thing he can do is stay away entirely. He will continue to be a factor in the midterms — presidents just are, that's all there is to it — so he needs to respect the wishes of Democrats who are trying (in some instances, desperately) to hold on to their seats in red states like Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina.

Observers are already referring to races in red states like Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia, where Democrats are retiring, as sure things for the GOP — which would put Republicans halfway to their goal of six seats to seize control of the Senate. Defeating Democratic incumbents in Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina would give them the majority — assuming Democrats don't win one of a couple of Republican–held seats in which they are perceived as competitive.

That kind of thing — where the party that is fighting the electoral tide succeeds — doesn't usually happen in midterm elections, but, as Larry Sabato reminds us, "every election is different."

Earlier, Sabato was inclined to think that 2014 would be another "wave election," like the midterms of 2006 and 2010, but so far, he writes, "this election hasn't gelled quite the way it earlier appeared on paper."

Republicans are also fantasizing about picking up Democratic seats in Iowa, maybe Michigan and Oregon, too. These were seats that, not so long ago, were regarded as safe for the Democrats.

The fact that they are no longer seen as safe should send a chill down every Democrat's spine.

Will She or Won't She?

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I grew up in Arkansas. I lived there during most of Bill Clinton's tenure as governor.

And I feel as qualified to say this as anyone who lived in Arkansas when I did: Hillary Clinton has always been a perplexing person. (Well, at least as an adult. I can't say what she was like as a child.)

During her time in Arkansas' governor's mansion, she often took stands or made statements that cut against the grain with average Arkansans. She was a traditional feminist in most of her views, and she was unapologetic for it — which produced kind of a strange dichotomy. I knew people who frequently disagreed with her yet still admired her determination to stand up for what she believed.

Would those same people have voted for her for anything? I doubt it. To my knowledge, most never supported her husband when he ran for governor.

But they admired her integrity — and, like all first spouses, she had no legal authority in that role. She was part of the deal if they voted for Bill — even if they would not vote for her.

Two for the price of one, as Bill liked to say during the '92 presidential campaign. That seemed to upset some folks, but I barely noticed it. I had heard it before.

And I have heard what she has been saying lately before, too.

She had a conversation with PBS' Charlie Rose the other day, and she was asked about 2016.

"I'm about to have my first grandchild, which I'm thrilled about," she replied. "I can't wait. I want to see what that feels like. I'm not going to skip over it. I want to really be present, as I meet this ... new person in our family."

Can't blame her for that. I know several people who have become grandparents, and they all speak of how rewarding that relationship between grandparent and grandchild is.

I have also known many people who did not live to become grandparents. It is a privilege to live that long, and it certainly should not be taken lightly.

So Hillary's desire to be with her family is completely understandable. It is an excuse I have heard before, though.

John Mitchell served as Richard Nixon's attorney general and, for a time, as Nixon's re–election campaign manager, but he left when the Watergate investigation got too uncomfortable for him.

He gave as his reason for stepping down a desire to be with his family. That was hard for some people to swallow, given that it meant being with his wife, Martha, who had made several phone calls to reporters about the emerging scandal and alleged that political pressure was being applied to her husband and others in the administration.

That was sure to be uncomfortable to say the least, I heard many people say.

I don't think it would be that way for Hillary — except, perhaps, for those times she might have to spend alone with Bill. But Hillary would have the benefit of knowing what it feels like to be a grandmother — and sharing a new relationship with her daughter.

Well, that's a pretty good reason for not seeking the job. But Hillary didn't stop there. She spoke about the negative side as well.

Speaking as one who observed the presidency from close range as both the first spouse and the secretary of state, Hillary told Rose that the job has "gotten tougher."

Well, it always has been a big job — but I can see how it could quickly become overwhelming for anyone. A president has to be better than competent in many different areas.

The economy is still sluggish, just not quite as sluggish as it was five years ago.

Her husband's presidency was relatively peaceful, but, with terrorists and Russians on the march, who knows what kind of foreign environment she would inherit?

And then there are all those social issues that divide Americans' loyalties — guns, contraception and abortion, gay marriage, marijuana legalization, the list goes on and on. I don't think anyone will ever be able to bring Americans together on those issues, but a president is obligated to at least try. Good presidents will try to fashion some kind of compromise that, in the end, pleases no one. Not–so–good presidents won't try to do that. But the issues will still demand a lot of their time and attention.

Seems to me it would be a lot more relaxing — and a lot more fun — to play with her grandchild(ren). She and Bill have that nice big place in New York with that nice big yard that they bought back when they left the White House dead broke. Sounds like a great place to be a grandparent and play with the grandchild(ren).

Plus, if Hillary does not run, she will be able to preserve her integrity.

Just about five years ago, when NBC's Ann Curry interviewed Hillary, she asked her about 2016.

It was a direct question. "Will you run for president again? Yes or no?"

And it got a direct answer. "No."

Curry asked again and received the same response.

For someone who has always argued — albeit in a different context — that no means no, this is a good time to drive home the point.

Of course, the problem is that, when someone prominent rules out a run for the presidency, he/she experiences a spike in his/her favorability ratings.

And the whole thing begins all over again.

Under Exposed

I grew up in Arkansas. I went to school there, graduated from the University of Arkansas, after which I lived and worked in Arkansas for awhile before I decided to move to Texas.

My work experience in Arkansas included some time as a reporter during one of Bill Clinton's campaigns for governor. I was assigned to cover some of his trips around the state, which usually meant traveling in the small, private plane that had been reserved for members of the press — but, once or twice, I got to travel in the candidate's small, private plane and sit next to the candidate.

One of the things I learned from that experience is that it really doesn't take long to fly from one spot in Arkansas to another. If the flight originates in Little Rock, which is in the center of Arkansas, it probably takes 20–30 minutes tops — maybe less — to fly to any of the four corners of the state.

That isn't a lot of time to get to know a person. It was barely enough time to interview the candidate one on one. Sometimes it wasn't even that.

Another thing I learned on that assignment — candidates give the same speech all day. It's the speech of the day, different from the speech that was given the day before and different from the one that will be given the day after — but repeated however many times the candidate speaks that particular day.

If a candidate makes several stops on a given day, many of the reporters who are following him/her can repeat the speech with him/her, word for word, by day's end.

That seems to be SOP on the campaign trail — impersonal though it may be.

Even in such an impersonal setting, one can still make a personal connection with the candidate — and my experience with Bill Clinton was that he could make anyone feel as if he/she was his closest friend.

As I recall, I first met Bill Clinton at a campaign rally in my hometown. He was there to help open the local campaign headquarters. He gave a speech, then worked the crowd, shaking hands and handing out campaign buttons. He came to me, shook my hand, gave me a button (I've still got it) and moved on. We only spoke for a minute if that.

But there was a connection there. I know it ... And knowing Bill as well as I did, well, I felt I could reach some conclusions about him, what motivated him, all that.

Sometimes Hillary was there, sometimes not. She didn't always accompany her husband on his campaign trips in Arkansas, but he was always campaigning. In Arkansas, state officials ran for office every two years until the voters voted to extend the terms to four years. A governor really only had a few months after taking the oath of office before he had to start running again — if he wanted to be re–elected.

Hillary was pregnant with Chelsea during an odd–numbered year and gave birth to her early in an even–numbered year so pregnancy didn't prevent her from campaigning, although the demands of being a young mother may have. Anyway, I don't think she campaigned with her husband much when Chelsea's age could be measured in months. (If she had, I'm sure it would have been the topic of endless conversation and speculation.)

Hillary was rarely there when I covered one of Bill's campaigns.

As a matter of fact, I met Hillary once in a most unexpected way. I was attending a non–political event in Little Rock, and, as I was leaving, I encountered the Clintons on their way to a different event.

Not realizing who she was at first, I almost collided with Hillary. We exchanged a momentary glance. No words were said. None of that really matters, though. We were in the same place at the same time.

There was that connection, you know? Maybe it was the kind of thing that rubbed off on Hillary from Bill. I don't know. But I've been following the trajectory of her career ever since.

Well, being first lady of Arkansas and first lady of the United States isn't exactly resume material. Being first lady of anything, really, is a faux title. No one votes on it; it's a perk that comes with being married to the guy for whom people did vote.

Some first ladies do get to do things of substance. When Bill was governor, he dispatched his wife to conduct community meetings in every county in the state to gather thoughts for improving Arkansas' school system. When he was president, he gave her health care reform.

But after the Clintons emerged from the White House "dead broke," as Hillary said in a recent interview, she went to work in the U.S. Senate — which is something for which people do vote — to support that struggling family. Chelsea, after all, was interested in attending some high–dollar schools.

Then, after she lost the presidential nomination to Barack Obama, and he went on to be elected, she served as secretary of State.

And now she's being mentioned as a possible president again. She even wrote a book to revive interest.

But it is distressing, is it not, to see the absence of coverage for this tome. After all, what could be more important than Hillary? I don't think the poor thing gets enough exposure.

Maybe she needs to take a cue from Oprah and have not only her own TV show but her own TV network that could promote her 24 hours a day.

Someone is missing an opportunity here, I think, just as the networks missed opportunities to replace Jay Leno and David Letterman with Hillary.

But it's not too late for someone to fill this niche and get the nation's attention away from all these unpleasant topics, like jobs and the economy and immigration and health care, and back where it belongs.

On Hillary.

The Great and Powerful Name Dropper

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"You're out of the woods
You're out of the dark
You're out of the night
Step into the sun
Step into the light"

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For as long as I can remember, someone has been running around and whispering names of potential presidential candidates in the ears of anyone who would listen — and even some who wouldn't.

The great and powerful Name Dropper probably predates me, which tells me there must be a family of Name Droppers, not one individual. Maybe it's kind of like a family business with the younger generation taking over at some point.

If that is so, then the family business has really been booming in the last couple of decades, thanks to the proliferation of cable TV and the internet. I doubt that we'll ever be rid of them.

But there is never a shortage of prospective nominees. Most never leap to the next level and become presumptive nominees. But they serve their purpose. They reinforce the credentials of the great and powerful Name Dropper.

Every time you turn around, someone is dropping someone else's name. Then, before you know it, there will be an article in a newspaper or a magazine or on the internet or on cable news proclaiming someone to be an up–and–comer, a rising star. The buzz builds.

Rising stars seem to flame out rather quickly, though. Sometimes it is more like the flavor of the month, falling from favor almost as rapidly as it ascended. When that happens during a presidential election, it can be a disaster for a party. But when it happens at this point in the election cycle, it really doesn't mean anything.

You know how this works, don't you? The great and powerful Name Dropper mentions that [INSERT NAME HERE] is a possible presidential candidate — even if he/she is not really thinking about it. (Oh, I know, once they're in Washington, they all think about it at some point, even if only fleetingly, but they will really think about it when others start talking about them.)

When the buzz has been generated, he/she will be thinking about it, might even form an exploratory committee to look into it.

The formation of such a committee fuels more talk, and, before you know it, [INSERT NAME HERE] is showing up in public opinion polls. [INSERT NAME HERE] may have done little to encourage such talk and may only be generating a support level that falls within the poll's margin for error, but, as they say in show business, any publicity is good publicity.

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Speculation always seems to be especially rampant at this point in the election cycle — the midterms — when all that the polls really reflect is name recognition, not whether Candidate A or Candidate B would be a successful nominee who connects with voters outside the party.

And that really is what both parties need, right? Their nominees can't win with their parties' votes alone, especially since more than 40% of voters self–identify as independent these days, so the parties need nominees with across–the–board appeal.

That doesn't mean that an insurgent can't win a party's nomination, but such nominees usually come from a party's extreme wing, and they take advantage of deep divisions within the party's mainstream to win the nomination. They seldom heal those divisions or win general elections. For every Ronald Reagan who wins in November, there is a Barry Goldwater and a George McGovern who got no traction after the convention.

There have been relative unknowns who went on to win the presidency — Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama come to mind — but, usually, the Frank Churches and Gary Harts of presidential politics fizzle out long before they can start working on an acceptance speech.

Vice presidents often seem to think they will be anointed as the successor for the president whom they have served, but that isn't usually how it works — at least, not for a couple of centuries. After Vice President Martin Van Buren was elected to succeed Andrew Jackson in 1836, the only vice presidents who succeeded the presidents with whom they were elected were the ones who were in office when those presidents died or resigned — until George H.W. Bush was elected to succeed Reagan in 1988.

Bush is still the only sitting vice president in nearly 180 years to be elected president — so, if I were Joe Biden, I don't think I would be looking to move to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in January 2017.

Biden has another strike against him — his age. For a country that blatantly practices age discrimination in most professions, American politics does offer opportunities for older Americans. Many folks have been returned to Congress in their 80s and 90s, and Americans have valued seasoning in their presidents, too — up to a point.

Reagan was first elected president a few months before his 70th birthday, and he was re–elected a few months before his 74th birthday, but he was the historical exception. Since Reagan's presidency, only the first Bush, the one who succeeded Reagan, was over 60 when he was elected. The three presidents who have succeeded Bush were in their 40s and 50s when elected.

Hillary Clinton, too, will be pushing the historical age barrier if she runs in 2016. She will be 69 just before the election.

The great and powerful Name Dropper doesn't need to drop Clinton's name. After eight years as first lady, eight years as a senator and four years as secretary of State, she is familiar to Americans. She has sought the presidency before, and most people are assuming she will do so again, even though she has not made a formal announcement.

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It does not benefit the great and powerful Name Dropper if there is no campaign, though, so Name Dropper has been trying to promote the idea that, whether Biden runs or not, Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat who took back Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in 2012, would make a plausible candidate.

A few problems, though. She is only a couple of years younger than Clinton so any age argument that could be made against Clinton could plausibly be made against Warren, too. The bigger problem, though, is that Warren doesn't seem to be interested in running — as Politico observed in a headline that said so many things.

For a long time, the pattern in presidential politics was that Democrats were more open to freewheeling races for their nominations than were Republicans, thus making it more likely that Democrats would nominate insurgents; Republicans had a tendency to award their nomination to "the next in line," whoever that was perceived to be.

These days, though, the parties have switched places. If Clinton does indeed win the nomination, she will be seen by many as being the next one in line.

Meanwhile, the Republicans seem to be setting themselves up for a Democrat–like free–for–all in 2016. Their 2012 standard–bearer, Mitt Romney, is mentioned by some as a possible candidate, but that can't be Name Dropper's doing. Romney is hardly an unknown.

Besides, once–beaten presidential nominees have rarely attempted it a second time, no matter how close they came to winning the first time. My guess — and I am sure it is Name Dropper's guess, too — is that Romney won't run.

Many of the names being mentioned on the Republican side are reasonably well known — Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush. At least one prospective candidate, outgoing Texas Gov. Rick Perry, sought the GOP nomination in 2012.

Some of the others from that campaign — Rick Santorum comes to mind — as well as other prominent Republicans are said to be considering a run in 2016. Name Dropper has had his/her hand in that, too, I am sure, but Name Dropper really excels when dropping names that few have heard.

As we embark on the 2014 primary season, there may well be candidates who spring from virtual anonymity and articulate the popular mood strongly enough that they win their party's nomination — and then the election — launching them into the 2016 conversation.

Then the great and powerful Name Dropper, fresh from a few months of restful observation, will leap into action and begin whispering in the ears of party leaders that so–and–so is an alternative to Clinton or that so–and–so can unite Republicans.

And the influence continues.