Barbara Bush Dies at 92

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Former first lady Barbara Bush, who died yesterday at the age of 92, was a remarkable woman, and her attributes are justifiably being remembered today. She said many things that should inspire the rest of us on our journeys through life.

I have felt considerable empathy for the Bush family, especially Mrs. Bush's children, who have had the pleasure of having their mother with them longer than most. I learned when my own mother died that, no matter how old we are when it happens, it feels strange to be a motherless child.

And I have learned that is a feeling that never really goes away.

I have no doubt that George W. Bush, who is now 71 years old, is feeling that way tonight — in spite of his insistence that "my soul is comforted" by his mother's certainty that there was an afterlife waiting for her.

The loss of a parent is a blow for most people, whether it is expected or not.

But it is also worth remembering that she, like all of us, was human and subject to the same shortcomings we all have.

For example, when her husband, then–Vice President George H.W. Bush, debated the first woman to be on a national ticket, Geraldine Ferraro, in October 1984, Mrs. Bush, when asked her opinion of Ferraro, replied, "I can't say it, but it rhymes with rich."

Well, we all have our shortcomings, as I said.

And most of the time Mrs. Bush was inspirational, reminding us of things that really count in life. But she wasn't perfect. None of us are.

We shouldn't lose sight of that fact as the accolades pour in.

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.

The Game Changer

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Last night's mass shooting in Orlando, Florida is a political game changer.

I have long thought that terrorism is the real wild card in this year's campaign. Terrorist attacks make people feel unsafe, which is, of course, the objective. The more terrorist attacks there are between now and Election Day, the worse the news is for the Democratic ticket that wishes to succeed Barack Obama and Joe Biden — because terrorist attacks make voters compare the situation under those who have been in power with the situation when their predecessors were in power.

And, say what you will about George W. Bush, terrorists weren't carrying out attacks on Americans in California and Florida or anywhere else when he was in the Oval Office. At least, not after 9–11. The wisdom of fighting the terrorists in the Middle East instead of having to fight them here is not lost on American voters when they see news reports of people being gunned down at nightclubs and Christmas parties.

So the best–case scenario for the Democrats would be if no more terrorist attacks occurred on U.S. soil between now and the election. I'm sure that is what they are hoping for.

But I don't think that is what will happen just as I never thought the election campaign would pass without being marred by a single terrorist attack. And it hasn't. Is there anyone so naive as to think there will not be at least one more in the next five months?

I've heard implications of the left's favorite straw man, the automatic weapon, which is already heavily regulated and wasn't even used in this attack. It's easier to ignore terrorism when it is happening half a world away than it is when it is happening just down the road a piece.

And it is easier to blame something that isn't responsible — automatic weapons — than it is to blame something that is responsible — Islamic radicalism.

Hindsight Is 20/20

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Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It really is. I believe it is an extremely good quality for a person to possess, to be able to look back at a decision that turned out to be the wrong one and learn from it.

The decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was the wrong decision. I believed it was the wrong decision at the time, but that was not a popular position to take. It took a certain amount of courage, back in those post–September 11 days, to tell one's friends and co–workers, many of whom supported the decision to invade Iraq, that it was a bad decision, and I did not always have the strength of will to argue with people about it, especially as confident as supporters of the invasion were that weapons of mass destruction would be found.

After a certain amount of time had passed and it became clear that the pretext for the invasion — the alleged existence of those weapons of mass destruction — was based on faulty information, public opinion began to sour on the war. But I think it is important to remember that a lot of people supported the invasion initially — including Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president in 2016 — no matter how much they may pretend otherwise today.

Mrs. Clinton wasn't the only Democrat who voted to authorize George W. Bush to use force against Iraq. When the Senate voted on Oct. 11, 2002, 29 of 50 Democrats joined 48 Republicans in a 77–23 vote giving Bush the authority he sought. Her colleague from New York, Chuck Schumer, voted to authorize the use of force. So did Joe Biden and Dianne Feinstein and Harry Reid.

In my lifetime, I have had the opportunity to vote for national tickets with a Bush on them half a dozen times. I have never voted for one and, if Jeb is nominated next year, it will make seven times I have refused to lend my support to a Bush in a national campaign.

But I find myself sympathizing — to an extent — with his recent stumble on the question of invading Iraq.

Fox News' Megyn Kelly asked him, "Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?"

Bush tried to answer a different question. "I would've, and so would've Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody, and so would have almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got."

He kind of got back to what Kelly was getting at when he elaborated: "In retrospect, the intelligence that everybody saw, that the world saw, not just the United States, was faulty. And in retrospect, once we … invaded and took out Saddam Hussein, we didn't focus on security first. And the Iraqis, in this incredibly insecure environment, turned on the United States military because there was no security for themselves and their families."

Kelly was dealing in hypotheticals, and what Bush should have said — but, obviously, did not — was that he won't answer hypothetical questions. I'm an amateur historian, and what–if is the kind of game historians love to play. But it is a game that really cannot be won because the past is what it is. It's no trick to look back on a bad decision and know it was a mistake, but human beings are not blessed with the ability to see the future. If they were, I guess many would not marry the people they married or invest in companies that go belly up.

Or bet on the wrong horse at the racetrack.

There seems to be an impression among many Americans these days that a president must be infallible, that he must be capable of all things — including superhuman stuff like seeing the future. But anyone who looks for an infallible leader, someone around whom everyone can rally, is just asking to be disappointed. In the life of every presidency, there will be those who think the president does everything right and those who think the president does everything wrong — and everyone else who falls in between those two extremes. To misquote Abraham Lincoln, you can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all the people all the time.

A president can only act within the reality of his times — and hope, at the end of the day, that he made the right decision. Seems to me that the best presidents have been the ones who second–guessed themselves and tried to learn from each decision they made — and the worst presidents were the ones who would not admit to having made a mistake.

If one is going to answer Kelly's question, though, it would have to be something like this: "In hindsight, it was a mistake to invade Iraq." That's it. Bush's inclination to defend his brother is admirable, but it does not have to be part of his answer to that question.

It can be the answer to another question if it is asked. He is right when he observes that a president must act on the information he has. But that is not the question that was asked. So don't answer it.

Better still, though, not to answer hypothetical questions at all. Politicians can't win hypotheticals, and politicians always want to play games they can win. Hypotheticals require proving a negative, and that cannot be done.

One time, I saw illusionist Penn Jillette talking about Nostradamus' prophecies that supposedly predicted Napoleon and Hitler and many other events that occurred long after his death. Jillette complained that the prophecies, which were apparently written in a deliberately obscure way, never named names, places or dates. What good is that, he wanted to know, if we want to prevent or avoid a certain event?

It's a fair point.

Let me ask you something. If time travel was possible, and you could go back in time, would you kill an infant Adolf Hitler sleeping in his crib? It is safe to say, I believe, that nazism would not have seized control of Germany without a charismatic leader at the helm. Snuffing out an infant who, knowing what we know now, grew up to plunge the world into a war that claimed millions of lives could be seen as heroic.

But could you take the life of a baby? You might say now that you could, but, when the chips were down, you might find it incredibly difficult to kill a small child, even knowing that, by doing so, you could save millions of others.

In the two decades between his resignation and his death, Richard Nixon might have said that, in hindsight, having the taping system installed in the Oval Office was a mistake — but that would have been with the benefit of knowing how it eventually played out, producing the evidence that brought his presidency to an end. But when the system was installed, his motivation (ostensibly) was the preservation of the historical record.

As Dr. Phil would say, how did that work out for ya?

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.

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.

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.

Democrats Not Likely to Catch a 'Wave' in 2014

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The federal shutdown ended this week — just in time to avoid default.

As the government shutdown dragged on, I heard some Democrats gleefully anticipating a "wave" election next year that will restore a Democrat majority to the House of Representatives.

With public opinion polls showing Congress' approval at record low levels, I suppose that is a normal reaction, even one to be expected, but history simply doesn't support it. Frankly, it sounds a lot like the talk that was prevalent four years ago, just after Barack Obama took office, that held that Democrats would be in charge of things for a generation, at least.

Of course, history has been turned on its ear in the last two presidential elections. A nation that had never so much as nominated a black man for president before 2008 has now elected a black president twice. With Gallup reporting that, less than a year after Obama's re–election, congressional approval is at 11%, doesn't it follow that Republicans in Congress are in, to use a George H.W. Bush expression, deep doo–doo?

Well, that assumes that a midterm election is really no different than a presidential election — and that simply has not been true historically. It wasn't even true in the first midterm election of this president's tenure. Less than two years after he took office with stunningly high approval ratings (when there was literally nothing of which to approve or disapprove), Obama saw his party lose more than 60 seats in the House.

Democrats regained eight seats in 2012, but that was achieved with the president's name at the top of the ballot. Having Obama on the ballot brought out many voters who typically do not vote, just as it did four years earlier. But, without him on the ballot, those voters reverted to historical form and did not participate in the 2010 midterms.

At best, Obama will be an advocate for others in 2014 — that is, when he chooses to participate. He didn't tend to lend much support to Democrats who were on the ballot in 2010 until it was too late to make much difference.

The great unknown about 2014 is the impact that Obamacare will have. In the first 2½ weeks, there have been conflicting accounts about the success or failure of the initial efforts, mostly focusing on the woes of the websites being used to enroll people. In a year, it will be clearer how the system is performing, whether it is delivering everything that was promised, and that is sure to influence the election.

But this year's shutdown will be forgotten. After all, another one is looming in just 90 days.

The midterms in the sixth year of a presidency have been, historically speaking, brutal for the president's party. The exceptions to that truly are few and far between.

No doubt, Democrats will recall that they fared all right in the midterms that were held in Bill Clinton's sixth year in office, but that was more backlash against the Republicans for going ahead with unpopular impeachment proceedings than anything else.

Sixth–year midterms typically go poorly for the party in the White House. Recent history tells the tale. George W. Bush's Republicans lost both chambers of Congress in 2006. Ronald Reagan's Republicans lost the Senate to the Democrats in 1986. In the sixth year of the Nixon–Ford presidency, the Democrats (helped in no small measure by the Watergate scandal) padded their majorities in the House and Senate — by nearly the same number of seats they lost in 1966, the sixth year of the Kennedy–Johnson presidency.

Sixth–year midterms almost always go badly for the president's party, no matter how popular the president may be. Reagan's approval rating was in the 60s in October 1986. Dwight Eisenhower's approval rating was in the 50s in his sixth–year midterm in 1958.

The more unpopular the president is, though (and it is worth noting that, while approval for Congress currently is historically low, Barack Obama isn't doing terribly well, either), the greater the challenge for his party.

There have been only two real exceptions to that in midterms in general in the last 80 years — 2002 and 1998 — and both could be said to have been due to unique (or almost unique) circumstances.

In 2002, the country was still reeling from the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Bush and the Republicans were rewarded for their efforts to stop terrorism with gains of eight House seats and two Senate seats. Four years later, in the "wave" of 2006, they lost 30 House seats and six Senate seats.

In 1998, Clinton's Democrats benefited from backlash against Republicans for their insistence on pursuing impeachment proceedings. They didn't really gain much, just four House seats and no Senate seats, but that's better than parties in their sixth year of occupying the White House typically do — and it was a whole lot better than Democrats did during the first midterm election of Clinton's presidency — when they lost 54 seats.

It's possible, of course, that 2014 will turn out to be a rare wave midterm that benefits the occupant of the White House, but, at the moment, it appears to be lacking the catalyst that could make that happen.

Even under the most advantageous midterm conditions, an incumbent's party hasn't won more House seats than Bush's Republicans did since 1902, exactly a century earlier, when both parties gained more than a dozen seats following the 1900 Census and the creation of 29 House seats.

Obama's Democrats need to win more than twice as many House seats as Bush's Republicans did 11 years ago merely to earn an extremely narrow edge in that chamber. To achieve that, it seems to me, Obama's agenda will need to gain some serious traction in the next year, but the steam seemed to have left that engine before the shutdown. There was already talk of how lame–duck status had been settling in even before Obama began his saber rattling over Syria. It might be set in stone by now.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

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There were times — not many but a few — in my college days when I played some poker with my friends.

I was never very good at it, especially the art of bluffing — and I say that with all due respect because I'm sure those guys who were good at bluffing have gone on to enjoy great success in whichever career paths they followed.

Especially if their career paths were political. Politics frequently requires good bluffing — in other words, having what is known as a "poker face." I've heard it said that Richard Nixon developed quite a poker face from playing poker in the service during World War II. Apparently, it served him well in negotiations he had as president with the Russians and Chinese.

I believe effective bluffing can be boiled down to two parts — 1) plausibly asserting that something is true, whether it is or not, and 2) successfully backing it up when challenged (i.e., when one's bluff is called).

I'm no lawyer, but, in my mind, I equate it with the legal distinction between assault and battery. It's been my experience that a lot of people think assault and battery is a single crime. It isn't.

I don't remember now when I first heard this explained, whether it was during my reporting days when I covered the police beat or on some occasion when I reported for jury duty and a lawyer was questioning prospective jurors.

It might have been something I heard when I was studying communications law in college although that is probably unlikely since neither legal term would have had much to do with communications — directly, anyway.

In case you don't know, an assault is basically a threat, presumably of physical harm (although, in the modern world, I guess you would have to define a threat of computer hacking as an assault as well — not necessarily a physical threat but a financial one, which can, in due course, threaten life).

If the person who is being threatened believes the other person is capable of carrying out the threat, that is assault. If the threat is actually carried out, that is battery.

Barack Obama did the bluffing part last year when he declared that there was a "red line" in Syria — no chemical weapons use would be tolerated.

Now there are reports that Obama's bluff has been called. Apparently, Syria has used chemical weapons on its people. Recently.

Tom Foreman of CNN writes that this has left Obama with three options: "Bad, worse, and horrible."

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Actually, Foreman outlines more than three options, but, at the end of his piece, he acknowledges that, for a variety of reasons, it all comes down to one — firing cruise missiles from ships in the Mediterranean.

Such missiles, he writes, "are magnificent, virtually unstoppable weapons capable of pinpoint, devastating strikes." But the delay in using them complicates matters. The Syrians have had plenty of time already "to hide their own weapons, secure their airplanes and disperse critical command and control assets."

That sounds like what some of George W. Bush's defenders still say about the invasion of Iraq. That invasion, if you recall, was predicated on the belief that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction it would use against the United States, and it was necessary to eliminate them.

To many people, that sounded plausible in the immediate aftermath of 9–11, but no such weapons were found.

Supporters of the invasion insisted Iraq's leaders had moved the stockpiles of weapons. If they did, those weapons still have not been located.

Anyway, at that point, the objective changed from rooting out dangerous weapons to nation building, which was not an original objective of the mission.

In recent days, I have heard supporters of this president justify his taking unilateral action in Syria because other presidents have been launching undeclared wars (and conveniently bypassing the Constitution in the process) since the end of World War II.

But let's get back to our current predicament. I can't speak for anyone else, but I do not blame Obama for this mess — well, not entirely.

Any president who faced these circumstances would be between a rock and a hard place. There are no good options to take, only bad ones and worse ones. I realize that the option I advocate is a bad one, but, in the absence of any good ones ...

At least a portion of these circumstances, however, is Obama's fault. He is the one who drew the red line and told Syria not to cross it. He did that a year ago.

A prudent president would have devoted the past year to building a congressional consensus to authorize him to attack — just in case. Instead, he spent much of that time demonizing the opposition party rather than seeking common ground, knowing full well that he would need the cooperation of the Republican–controlled House to do anything if Syria called his bluff.

None of the polls I saw last year — including the most important one, the one on Election Day — suggested that Obama's party had a prayer of retaking the House. He must have known long before the election that, if he did win, he would have to deal with a Republican–controlled House for at least the first two years of his second term.

As a former constitutional law professor, he should have known that he would need to curry favor with influential Republicans in the House.

And a prudent president would have been building a coalition of American allies. This president has not been doing that, and now it appears we must do whatever we are going to do alone — or practically so.

He says he will consult Congress when it returns from its Labor Day recess, but Congress won't be in session again for a week. That is even more time for Syria to prepare for missile strikes.

Obama is more concerned, it seems, with public opinion polls that suggest that, by margins of 39% to 52%, a majority of Americans opposes military intervention in Syria.

If at last Obama is paying attention to the concerns of the voters, that isn't a bad thing. The American people have witnessed a decade of war that has cost them much but gained them little. The president should consider them, the sacrifices they already have made and the additional sacrifices they are being asked to make, before taking any action — assuming that Congress gives him the green light.

But he should have been laying the groundwork for this for months. He and his secretary of state made naive, false — and dangerous — assumptions about the people with whom they were dealing, and now the global credibility of the United States is at stake. If we do not enforce Obama's red line, what does anyone else have to fear from us?

Polling data suggest that most Americans oppose the idea of an attack, but a majority would support a limited strike.

I think that would be worse than doing nothing (which I believe is the least bad option). A limited strike, lasting a day or two — or perhaps an hour or two — instead of a few weeks (or even months) would be symbolic at best, a virtual slap on the wrist.

Syria (and others like it, in the region and elsewhere) would be emboldened. They would know that there is a price to be paid for using chemical weapons — but that price would be negligible, one that they would willingly pay.

For a missile strike to be more than symbolic, for it to inflict a lesson on Syria that will be felt throughout the region and beyond, it cannot be a limited strike. It cannot be a slap on the wrist that is really intended to give Obama political cover.

To be effective, it must be relentless. It must be decisive. And I don't believe the American people have the stomach for that right now.

I am inclined to sympathize with Obama. He is truly between a rock and a hard place.

But he got there mostly on his own — and now, after nearly five years in the White House, it is high time he learned what leadership is about.

When Clinton Hit Back

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"What we're doing is sending a message against the people who were responsible for planning this operation. ... [If] anybody asks the same people to do it again, they will remember this message."

Secretary of Defense Les Aspin
Washington Post
June 1993

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Believe it or not, there was a time — not so long ago — when American presidents wouldn't hesitate to act if a single American was threatened, much less actually injured or killed.

Such a case occurred 20 years ago today.

To put it in context: A couple of months earlier, former President George H.W. Bush — the man Bill Clinton had beaten in the previous year's presidential election — was in Kuwait to commemorate the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War. Seventeen people were arrested and charged with conspiring to kill Bush with explosives that were hidden in a vehicle.

No explosions occurred. No one was hurt. But Clinton was convinced, largely because of information gathered and analyzed by American foreign and domestic intelligence operatives, that the plot originated in Iraq — and 20 years ago today, he used American military might for the first time, ordering nearly two dozen cruise missile strikes on Iraqi intelligence facilities.

The strikes were meant both as retaliation for the plot and warning not to attempt anything like it again. But Clinton didn't shoot first and ask questions afterward. He explored numerous options, even those he felt did not go far enough. Eventually he selected one on the recommendation of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"I felt we would have been justified in hitting Iraq harder," Clinton wrote in his presidential memoirs, "but [Colin] Powell made a persuasive case that the attack would deter further Iraqi terrorism and that dropping bombs on more targets, including presidential palaces, would have been unlikely to kill Saddam Hussein and almost certain to kill more innocent people."

Most of the missiles hit their intended targets, but a few overshot, and eight civilians were killed.

"It was a stark reminder," Clinton wrote, "that no matter how careful the planning and how accurate the weapons, when that kind of firepower is unleashed, there are usually unintended consequences."

The occasion of this anniversary has led me to think about two recent events that tell me much of what I need to know about U.S. policy in the 21st century.

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First, the evasive stance taken by Barack Obama and the members of his administration after the deadly attacks on the embassy in Benghazi last year tells me the executive branch is not willing to stand up for Americans abroad, be they dead or alive — unless there are clear benefits in doing so.

Second, Obama's recent argument in a speech at the National Defense University that the war on terror must end as all wars do shows a staggering naivete. Rhetorically, it sounds good, but the problem is that the war on terror is not a conventional war with armies and generals. It cannot be resolved in conventional ways — if, in fact, it can be resolved at all.

When you are dealing with terrorists, you are not dealing with anything as organized or concentrated as a single army or nation. Your enemies could be from anywhere on the globe — including your own back yard — and as long as even one is on the loose, so is the danger.

Sympathizers with the opposition have always been around — there were Nazi and Japanese sympathizers in America during World War II — but they weren't generally viewed as combatants unless they took some kind of aggressive action.

By the very nature of their activities, terrorists must be regarded — automatically — as combatants.

The idea that America can arbitrarily declare the war on terror over is as imperialistic as any I have heard, and it tells terrorists around the world, OK, we're going back to sleep now. It harkens back to a time when the prevailing attitude was that we were always in the right; therefore, we were entitled to impose our will on others. We — and only we — could decide when a war began and when it ended.

It was the same attitude — the concept of manifest destiny — that directed the westward expansion in the 19th century. America is entitled to seize what it wants.

American imperialism — as well as hubris — is what the terrorists really would like to see destroyed.

Beneath the Dignity of a Great Nation

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I really don't know — as I have said here before — when I developed my personal fascination with history, especially American history.

But whenever I did, I certainly reached the conclusion at roughly the same time that America was a great nation — or, at least, a great idea for a nation.

It isn't a perfect nation, but it has always aspired to be one. When its faults have been brought to the attention of its people as a whole, sincere efforts have usually been made to correct them. And I have always drawn inspiration from that.

There have been complaints, from time to time. The complaints are not always warranted, but sometimes they are — the FEMA foot–dragging after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans eight years ago comes to mind — but, for the most part, this nation and its leaders have honestly striven to keep promises to the people.

Again, there are exceptions to that, one of which has been on obvious public display in the last few months.

Barack Obama came here to Dallas in April to participate in the opening of the library dedicated to the presidency of his immediate predecessor. When that was over, he and his entourage traveled roughly 70 miles southwest of here to the town of West, Texas, which is near Waco, to mourn the deaths and injuries that were suffered in an explosion at a fertilizer plant.

(The plant, it is always worth mentioning, produced the kind of fertilizer that was used to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.)

Lots of people think it is a constitutional duty of the president to mourn with and to comfort Americans who have been affected by a disaster, but it isn't. You won't find a single word about it in the Constitution or its amendments. It's one of those things that has evolved over time.

"Though the non–administrative capacities of the commander–in–chief were not set out in the Constitution," wrote Dan Fastenberg in TIME two years ago, "the tradition of forging an intimate relationship with the American people goes all the way back to George Washington."

President Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the cemetery in Gettysburg, producing perhaps his most memorable speech as president. President Harding and two of his predecessors attended the dedication of Arlington National Cemetery.

In my lifetime, I can recall a few instances of presidential participation in moments of great sorrow. Ronald Reagan appeared at a ceremony honoring the astronauts who were lost in the Challenger explosion, greeted the family members, embraced some of them. Bill Clinton came to Oklahoma City (when I was living in nearby Norman) to share the grief over the bombing of the federal building there.

Less than a year into his presidency, George W. Bush comforted a grieving nation after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Obama has attempted to comfort Americans on several occasions since becoming president — at Fort Hood following the 2009 shootings, in Arizona following the shootings in 2011, in Boston earlier this year after the explosions at the annual marathon there.

The trip to West wasn't anything unusual.

But it is worth remembering the words he spoke that day — his pledge that the federal government would be there to help the people of that small town long after the attention it was receiving at the time had disappeared — in light of the decision by FEMA to deny additional funds to help West's recovery.

Now FEMA says it won't provide additional funds to the people of that small town.

FEMA may well be correct when it says that the death and destruction "is not of the severity and magnitude that warrants a major disaster declaration."

But the fact is that, when the president was here in April, he made a promise to the people of West. He didn't carry Texas in either of his presidential elections, but my memory is that West was glad he came to the memorial service to share the town's grief and grateful for his promise of continued support even when no one was paying attention anymore.

Can they be blamed for feeling abandoned by their government now?

When the president makes a promise to a constituency, that is a solemn oath — not all that different from the oath Obama has taken twice except that he didn't place his left hand on the Bible when he took it. A president's word is his bond with the people, and all the agencies in the government that are required to fulfill his promise are honor bound to do so.

Failing to do so is far beneath the dignity of a great nation.

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.

What Democrats Learned From Bush

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Today, George W. Bush is widely regarded, by Democrats and Republicans alike, as a failed president.

Most Democrats tend to go beyond that point in their assessment; Republicans not quite so far. In the absence of a clear consensus, I suppose failed is a good, fairly middle–ground term.

One thing I noticed about Democrats in the Bush years was their growing frustration over constantly being in the minority. When Barack Obama came along, Democrats had reclaimed majority status in both chambers of Congress only two years earlier, and it had been 14 years since the Democrats controlled both Congress and the White House.

They craved what Bush had enjoyed for three–quarters of his presidency — a Congress of the president's party. It wasn't exactly a dictatorship, as Bush famously lamented, but when the Republicans controlled Congress, they frequently served as a rubber stamp for Bush.

And they deliberately divided Americans. If you supported Bush, they said, you were a patriot. But if you didn't agree with him, you were not a patriot.

Democrats learned the wrong things from the Bush experience. They saw Bush's smear of Kerry as the route to re–election.

During the 2008 campaign, I never felt comfortable with Obama. It had nothing to do with his race and everything to do with his policies and philosophy. Too far to the left for my taste. But, when he was elected, I was willing to give him a chance, the same chance I give every new president, whether I agree with him or not.

Patriots do that.

He has been given the same amount of time to implement his policies that most presidents have been given (except for those who were completing someone else's unfinished term) — four years.

Thus, I — and, frankly, anyone else who participates in this year's election — have no choice but to judge Obama on his record in office. Whether that record has been a success or failure will be up to the voters.

But you can get an idea of how Obama feels about it. It's the same record he avoids discussing at every opportunity. The president who campaigned four years ago on the theme of hope and change and the pledges of transparency and uniting Americans demonstrates daily that all he knows about seeking re–election he learned from George W. Bush.

I've seen his advertisements on television, and they are all attack ads.

I guess I expected more maturity from the Democrats, that they would have learned what not to do after being restored to power — especially when it became clear that economic conditions would be worse when Obama took office than they had been in more than half a century.

Even before the 2008 election, I was saying that the next president had to focus on encouraging job creation because very little can be accomplished in a consumer–based economy when the consumers can't afford to consume.

Anything else the next president wants to accomplish, I said, will have to wait until the jobs crisis has been dealt with.

It's four years later, and I'm saying the same thing. There's just more urgency now. And the majority of voters agree with me.

But Democrats in 2012 are acting like Republicans in 2004. Instead of presenting a vision for the future and legislation designed to achieve it, Obama is doing what Bush did.

Eight years ago, opponents of the president were dismissed as unpatriotic. Supporters of the president currently seeking a second term dismiss his critics as racists.

After being smeared as unpatriotic, I believe Democrats felt a certain amount of pressure (internally if not externally) to reassure voters of their dedication to homeland security in the first presidential election following 9/11. Consequently, they nominated John Kerry, a hero of the Vietnam War, to be their standard bearer in 2004.

To discredit the Democrats' nominee, the Republicans countered with their shameless swift boating smear.

If Democrats had made a really honest assessment of the Bush years, they would have concluded that it is essential to maintain Congress' independence, that it is crucial to discuss legislation in a full, open and candid way and that they must realize that presidents and their parties do not have the luxury of selecting the sort of times in which they must govern.

In 2007, Obama did not enter the race because of economics. He entered it primarily because of his opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Polls indicate that the majority of Americans — including many Republicans — have been pleased with Obama's handling of foreign affairs.

But that isn't the issue that matters to most Americans.

It is a different time, and the emphasis is on the economy — poll after poll has indicated, for well over a year, that the economy is the most important issue in the campaign. By far.

History demands that Obama must justify his economic agenda and its results through 3½ years. He must make the case — convincingly — that his policies are working. He can't just say they are and let it go at that.

"Circumstances rule men," Greek historian Herodotus wrote. "Men do not rule circumstances."

If you go back and look at the transcripts of the debates and speeches in the 2000 campaign, you will see that very little was said about terrorism — but it came to define the Bush presidency (and, consequently, Bush's bid for a second term). And the fact is that he did win a second term — but with highly questionable tactics that did not tell the voters much about what they could expect from a renewal of the Bush presidency.

His record helped him with just enough voters for him to win re–election by the narrowest Electoral College margin since 1916, but his conduct during the campaign was misleading and deceptive.

The economic data that has been accumulating has not helped Obama's economic record. Unemployment has been stuck at 8.2% for the last few months, and the Commerce Department reported Friday that GDP in the most recent quarter sagged to 1.5%.

"A growth rate below 2% isn't enough to lower the unemployment rate," writes Tom Raum in the Washington Post.

I'm not an economist. I can only guess that Raum knows more about this than I do. But we'll find out soon. The next jobs report comes out this Friday.

I'm not what you would call a gambling man. I've been to the race track a few times in my life, but I can't recall the last time I made even a friendly wager on something.

But if I was going to make a bet, I'd bet that no one in the White House is looking forward to Friday's jobs report.

After all, it is still the performance of the economy on which many Americans will be judging this president.

Some of the president's supporters cling to the notion that likability will be enough. But after more than four rough years, voters won't be satisfied that easily. This isn't about who you want to drink a beer with after work. This is about who will do the most to make sure you have a job.

But there are those who insist it is all racial. And they will try to distract voters from the record and make them believe that voting to change presidents is somehow the act of racists.

I'm not naive enough to believe that race does not play a role in the decisions of any voters. Certainly, there are some voters who will vote against Obama because of his race — just as there are some who will vote for him because of his race.

And that, it seems to me, makes the latter just as racist as the former. How else can you explain the nearly unanimous support the president enjoys in the black community?

Of course, Democrats have done well with black voters for decades, but never as well (or with as great a turnout) as Obama did four years ago. Were those voters being racist in reverse?

It's a divisive brand of politics. It's polarizing, and it does nothing to promote the post–racial society of which Obama spoke in 2008.

Or to tell voters what kind of president he will be in a second term.