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.

Obama's Challenge

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"We stand at the edge of a New Frontier — the frontier of unfulfilled hopes and dreams. Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus."

Sen. John F. Kennedy,
Democratic presidential candidate,
July 14, 1960 acceptance speech

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In a few hours, Barack Obama will give his nomination acceptance speech.

And when he does, we will live in a new America, one that I wonder if even John F. Kennedy could have imagined on that July night in 1960 — an America in which it is no longer a "dream" (to coopt a word that Dr. Martin Luther King used frequently in his famous speech in Washington 45 years ago today) for a black American to be nominated for president.

(I suspect, however, that, if someone had asked Kennedy which party would be the first to nominate a black for president, he wouldn't have hesitated in saying that the Democrats would be the first to achieve that milestone.)

That's about as much of the American dream as can be pledged to anyone. All Americans are promised the right to participate — not necessarily to succeed.

Success (in any endeavor) depends on things like effort and desire — as well as some things that are beyond an individual's control.

And, while success can be defined as winning the nomination (especially when no one from your demographic group has won the nomination before), a presidential nominee should not be satisfied with that achievement alone.

(It is possible to win a nomination, lose the election, and later be renominated and go on to victory the second time — Richard Nixon proved that when he was elected in 1968 after losing to John F. Kennedy in 1960.

(For that matter, Andrew Jackson was renominated in 1828, four years after losing the first time, and was elected. Grover Cleveland was nominated in three consecutive elections, winning in 1884, losing in 1888, and winning again in 1892 — he's still the only president elected to two non-consecutive terms in office, although he won the popular vote all three times).

(But much more common in the American political experience have been people like Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale — candidates who were nominated for president once, lost and were not nominated again. Apparently, John Kerry and Al Gore are destined for that fate as well.)

Tonight's final session of the 2008 Democratic National Convention will be held at Invesco Field, where the Denver Broncos play their football games. The first three sessions of the convention were held indoors at the Pepsi Center, which is home to basketball's Denver Nuggets.

Clearly, the Invesco Field audience will be appreciably larger than the one that greeted Obama's wife on Monday night or Bill and Hillary Clinton for their speeches on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

The TV audience might well be larger than the others, too, although that (obviously) won't be affected by the venue. The schedule of speakers clearly has something to do with it. According to the Weekly Standard, the Nielsen ratings for the convention revealed that Tuesday night's viewership went up 16% over the previous night.

Based on that, Hillary Clinton was a bigger draw than Michelle Obama.

"Tonight’s Obama-Palooza at Invesco Field should smash all the old records," says the Weekly Standard, "if for no other reason just to see if the Democratic nominee wears a toga to match the Greek columns."

In what is sure to draw comparisons from political observers, Obama's acceptance speech will be the first delivered outdoors by a Democrat since John Kennedy's 1960 acceptance speech — the "New Frontier" speech, as it has come to be known, that Kennedy gave at Los Angeles' Memorial Coliseum.

Former Vice President Al Gore, who was being urged to run for president again nearly a year ago, also is scheduled to deliver a speech tonight.

Obama faces some challenges tonight, as Kennedy did half a century ago.

Kennedy, as a Catholic, had to convince a largely Protestant electorate that he could be trusted. Obama, as the first black presidential nominee, has to do the same with a predominantly white electorate.

Kennedy's challenge differed a bit. In the world of 1960, in which there was a very limited number of political primaries as well as limited private ownership of television sets, it was necessary to use an event like a national convention to introduce himself to the public.

Obama won his nomination in an information-obsessed world — one in which an entire generation of voters has grown up with cell phones, personal computers and cable and satellite TV. It is not as vital to Obama's quest to make introducing himself one of the goals of tonight's speech.

Most viewers will already be familiar with much of Obama's personal story. Many of them will know far less about his positions on the issues.

Of course, like every nominee of the party that is out of power, Obama must present a list of problems that have not been adequately addressed by the incumbent administration.

It won't be enough to say that electing John McCain would mean "four more years of the same." That may be true, but voters need to hear specifics about the problems and what Obama wants to do to correct them.

And that's the "red meat" the delegates want, too.

They need details.

By the way ...

While we're on the subject of details, the Republicans have eagerly used the events of September 11, 2001, for their own political purposes in the last seven years — including their selection of both the location (New York) and timing (early September) of their 2004 national convention.

But the Democrats may have the edge this time when it comes to using that event.

The city of Denver didn't figure prominently in the tragic events of September 11. But the stadium in which Obama will speak tonight was the site of an NFL game for the very first time on Monday night, Sept. 10, 2001 — only a few hours before the hijackings began.

And the team that visited Denver that night was none other than the New York Giants.

(I've often wondered how many conversations about the Giants' 31-20 loss in that game were interrupted the next morning on New York's trains, subways and buses by reports — or actual sightings — of the carnage at the World Trade Center.)

The Republican convention, which is going to be held in St. Paul, Minn., won't lack its own ties to September 11.

Zacarias Moussaoui, who was convicted of being part of the 9-11 conspiracy, had some flight training in Eagan, Minnesota, which is only a few miles from St. Paul.

But, although Moussaoui reportedly was considered by Osama bin Laden for the role of the so-called "20th hijacker," investigations have been able to conclusively determine only that he was a member of al-Qaeda.

While he was convicted on conspiracy charges that related to the 9-11 attacks, apparently, he was rejected as a member of the hijacking teams because he had not yet learned to fly adequately. (As a matter of fact, he already was in custody in Minnesota on the day of the hijackings.)

He is serving his sentence in a federal maximum security prison in Florence, Colo., which is about 100 miles south of Denver.

Ma, Ma, Where's My Pa?

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Back in 1884, when it turned out that Democratic presidential nominee Grover Cleveland had fathered a child outside of marriage, it was part of one of the most vicious presidential campaigns in American history — to that point.

The Republicans had won the White House in six consecutive elections, ever since Abraham Lincoln was first elected in 1860.

In nearly a quarter of a century, the only Democrat to be president was Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's second vice president who became president when Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 and thus served most of that term. Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant handily won the 1868 and 1872 elections for the Republicans.

But in 1884, at the end of a four-year term that had seen the assassination of the duly elected president (James Garfield) and the lackluster presidency of his successor (Chester Arthur), the country seemed ready to elect a Democrat.

Cleveland's opponent was Maine Sen. James G. Blaine, who had been denied his party's nomination in the two previous elections because of a scandal that had erupted over the discovery of the "Mulligan letters" — correspondence from Blaine that showed he was guilty of selling his influence while in Congress.

The "Mulligan letters" had been found by a Boston bookkeeper named Mulligan in 1876 and made public. Blaine refused to admit that he had written the letters.

Democrats liked to attend Blaine's speeches in those days and chant, "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine!"

When Blaine finally got the Republican nomination in 1884, his party thought it had found the personal character issue that would level the playing field against Cleveland:

"Grover the Good," as Cleveland was known, had been involved with a woman and allegedly fathered a baby with her. The child had gone to an orphanage, and, according to the story, the woman had flipped out and been committed to an asylum.

In fact, the woman didn't flip out. And she had received child support from Cleveland, even though, at the time of her relationship with him, the woman was involved with several other men as well.

No one ever knew who the actual father of her child was, and it was believed by many that Cleveland took responsibility because he was the only bachelor with whom the woman was involved.

Cleveland's instructions to his staff were simple. "Tell the truth." Thus, the campaign decided the best way to handle the issue was to be candid about it from the beginning.

No awkward denials of having a relationship with that woman.

To be sure, there were some uncomfortable moments — Blaine's supporters countered the anti-Blaine chant with their own version, which has become much more famous in the annals of history — "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!"

But Blaine continued to have problems of his own.

Although Catholics would not become legitimate contenders for the presidency until well into the next century, their votes mattered in 1884, and Blaine's campaign suffered from a remark by a Republican Protestant preacher in the closing days of the campaign:

"We are Republicans," he said, "and we don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been rum, Romanism, and rebellion."

If Blaine, who was in the audience, was unaware of the anti-Catholic implications of "Romanism," a Democratic operative in the audience was aware of them, and the Democrats spread the word of the slur.

It was enough to make Lee Atwater proud.

The preacher's remark was said to energize Catholic voters and motivate them to support the Democrats. In the end, Cleveland triumphed. Narrowly.

Cleveland won the Electoral College vote, 219-182, and the popular vote by less than one-half of 1%. The New York governor was elected because his home state barely gave him its 36 electoral votes — possibly on the strength of the Catholic vote.

That was an era of truly close elections. Four years earlier, Garfield won the popular vote by less than 2,000 votes (one-tenth of 1%) but achieved a wider margin in the Electoral College, 214 to 155.

The election of 1876, though, was the closest and most disputed election until the Gore-Bush election of 2000. The compromise that put Rutherford Hayes into the White House (by one hotly contested electoral vote) brought about the conclusion of Reconstruction.

When he sought re-election in 1888, Cleveland's infidelity wasn't the issue. In fact, he won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote. In 1892, Cleveland was nominated for the third time and was elected, becoming the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms.

I guess what I'm leading up to is simply this: The voters of America can be very forgiving if a candidate is honest about these matters when they come up. But they tend to be less forgiving of liars.

(As Dwight Eisenhower once remarked, upon reflecting on the U-2 incident in his final year as president in which his administration tried to convince America and the world that it hadn't deliberately violated Soviet airspace, "When you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar, there's no point in pretending that you were out in the field someplace.")

John Edwards' campaign for the 2008 presidential nomination ended in January when he announced his withdrawal.

If it isn't clear to everyone by now — including Edwards — any chance that he could ever be nominated for president ended this week when he conceded the truth of the rumors of his extramarital affair. Rumors that have been circulating for nearly a year.

Edwards admitted the affair with a former campaign employee in an interview with ABC News' Bob Woodruff, but he said the woman's child isn't his.

The family of Edwards' former mistress wanted him to take a DNA test to remove all doubt. But Edwards' former mistress apparently has ruled that out.

The piling on has begun.

"[T]he National Enquirer, whose initial report last December set about the chain of events that produced Edwards' admission on Friday of an extramarital affair, has done what three failed national campaigns couldn't by ending Edwards' future in national politics," says Steve Kornacki of the New York Observer. "The catch is: Edwards doesn't seem to realize it yet."

Kirsten Powers of the New York Post is blunt in her assessment of Edwards: "If it looks like a phony, walks like a phony, quacks like a phony, it's a phony."

In an editorial, the Post takes aim at everything Edwards has said and done and labeled it "sleaze."

I'm not sure that's fair, but I have to admit that Edwards has brought it on himself.

As someone who supported Edwards — and, frankly, was disappointed when he dropped out before I could vote for him in the Texas primary in March — I've been having many thoughts about this matter.

I'm no prude, but I'd like to see people who want to be the leader of the last superpower on earth show that they are committed to certain principles.

I don't want to elect a pope. I want to elect a president.

As a centrist Democrat, I was drawn to Edwards' solutions for the problems facing this country.

I agreed with his complaints about income inequality in America. The sanctimonious symbolism of the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has made no tangible difference in the quality of the lives of most blacks and women in this country.

The stability of employment and income can make a difference — for everyone — white, black, male, female, young, old.

I was also drawn to Edwards' apparently sincere appeals for affordable and accessible health care, particularly in light of his wife's cancer.

And a coherent, long-term strategy for weaning this country from its addiction to foreign oil is desperately needed. Not the blatant attempt to buy votes with a meaningless "summer gas tax holiday" or the finger-pointing (and ultimately ineffective) calls for a windfall profits tax.

But I'm dismayed that the Democrats who seek the presidency frequently have this character flaw — whether it's the ones like Edwards, Gary Hart and Ted Kennedy, who do not get the nomination, or the ones like Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who not only win the nomination but the election as well.

Clinton's infidelity sidetracked his second term.

Kennedy's infidelity allegedly led him to compromise national security secrets in his conversations with his lovers — and may have ultimately led to the death of Marilyn Monroe (if one believes the tales that have circulated about that relationship).

Roosevelt's infidelity nearly cost him his marriage — and could have kept him from being nominated for president.

Of course, Democrats aren't the only ones who have this problem.

General Eisenhower had a wartime affair.

Warren Harding had an affair with the wife of an old friend.

Even John McCain cheated on his former wife with his now current wife.

So neither side has a monopoly on this issue.

Edwards will not be the Democratic nominee in November. After the recent revelations, I don't expect to see his name on a national ticket again.

So let him fade from the national stage.

I just hope whoever is elected president this year will have the wisdom and the courage we need.