A First in Presidential Politics

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"Let me just say, first of all, that I almost resent, Vice President Bush, your patronizing attitude that you have to teach me about foreign policy."

Rep. Geraldine Ferraro
Oct. 11, 1984

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Thirty years ago tonight, a woman participated in a vice presidential debate for the first time.

Actually, that isn't really as impressive as it sounds. There had been only one vice presidential debate prior to that — between then–Sen. Walter Mondale and then–Sen. Bob Dole in 1976. If Geraldine Ferraro had not been a participant, the debate probably never would have garnered the attention it did.

But it was part of the historic nature of the 1984 campaign. Ferraro, after all, was the first woman to be nominated to a major party's national ticket. Minor parties had nominated women before, but few of them managed to win even 1% of the popular vote. Most were mere footnotes in the annals of presidential politics. Even the first women to seek a major party's presidential nomination — Republican Margaret Chase Smith in 1964 and Democrat Shirley Chisholm in 1972 — were treated more as oddities than legitimate candidates.

Conventional wisdom holds that, in any election, a Democrat can count on winning one–third of the vote, a Republican can count on winning one–third of the vote, and the election will be decided by what that final one–third — the undecided, the uninformed and the easily swayed — choose to do. Consequently, Ferraro knew she would receive more votes for a national office than any woman before her — although, as it turned out, the Democrats lost that last one–third of the vote by a wide margin.

Conventional wisdom also holds that most people don't vote for the running mate. They vote for the candidate at the top of the ticket.

Now, personally, I have never been a big fan of vice presidential debates. What is there to debate? Vice presidents don't make policy. In fact, it is only in the last 40 years that the vice president has been treated as a legitimate and contributing member of the executive branch — but the transition has been a work in progress. Vice presidents still serve, as they always have, as the designated national representatives at foreign weddings and funerals. Vice presidents also preside over the Senate and cast votes when needed to break ties.

(That is why the distinction is made in this year's midterm elections that Republicans need to control 51 seats to take over the Senate whereas the Democrats need to control 50 seats. The decisive vote in a tie in the Senate belongs to the party in the White House because the vice president presides over the Senate.)

Otherwise, their chief responsibility is to stay awake during tedious Senate debates, even if they are battling jet lag from having just returned from a funeral halfway around the world.

But if vice presidential debates focused only on those experiences that qualify a person to be vice president, no one would tune in. After all, who wants to hear people talk for 90 minutes about their experience attending funerals or weddings or how they managed to stay awake through tedious legislative debates?

So vice presidential debates focus on issues that presidents are able to influence — sometimes — and other times are not able to influence. In short, a vice presidential debate is predicated on the assumption that one of the participants will one day become president, by assassination or election or maybe even resignation, and, consequently, it is necessary to know the candidates' views on abortion and guns.

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Actually, the notion that it is inevitable that a vice president will one day be president is absurd. Forty–seven men have served as vice president; fourteen went on to become president. That's less than 30% — and most of them became president following the death of the incumbent. It is by no means certain that they would have been elected president on their own. Five only served out their predecessors' unexpired terms, then faded into obscurity. Only four (that's less than 9%) were elected to the presidency without the benefit of having ascended after the death or resignation of someone else — and two of them were elected before presidential elections started involving a popular vote in the early 19th century.

The vice presidency simply never has been the stepping stone to the presidency that you might think it would be.

Many vice presidents have gone on to seek the presidency on their own. Many failed to win their party's nominations — and all who did win the nomination after 1836 and before 1988 were defeated (with the exception of 1968, when Richard Nixon, running as a former vice president, won both the Republican nomination and the general election).

George H.W. Bush, of course, had sought the presidency before — in 1980, he had been Ronald Reagan's top rival for the Republican presidential nomination before being chosen to be Reagan's running mate. Ferraro, however, never had sought the presidency. She had barely sought the House seat she occupied, having won three terms, and was barely known outside her district.

So why was it important? It was important for Democrats to keep the momentum going after Mondale's first debate with Reagan. The polls showed the Democratic ticket trailing the Republican ticket by a wide margin — correctly, too, as it turned out — and the Democrats' hopes for victory depended on a perception of sustained momentum.

Bush's objective was simple — halt the Democrats' momentum, then Reagan could close the deal in the rematch with Mondale later that month.

My memory of that night is that neither candidate was the clear winner — which, in some ways, was a victory for Bush because it supported opposition arguments that the Democrats' momentum had stalled. If Bush had been the clear loser, the Democrats would have had momentum decisively on their side when Mondale faced Reagan in their second and final debate a week and a half later. But the absence of a clear winner changed the conversation.

For the next couple of decades, women were frequently mentioned as potential running mates for presumptive nominees — but such talk was mostly to appease women voters. A vice presidential debate has been part of every presidential election since 1984, but Ferraro remained the only member of the club of major–party female nominees for almost a quarter of a century.

It was a week shy of 24 years later — on Oct. 3, 2008 — that a female nominee participated in another vice presidential debate. That was the day that then–Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the first female nominee on a Republican ticket, and then–Sen. Joe Biden met in their only debate of the 2008 campaign.

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Once again, the conclusion was that the debate had been a draw. As nearly as I could tell, the 2008 vice presidential debate, like the one in 1984, had no influence on the outcome of the race.

The Day Mondale Made History

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"You don't have to have fought in a war to love peace."

Geraldine Ferraro

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In 1984, I made up my mind early to support Walter Mondale for president.

His announcement 30 years ago today of his selection of Geraldine Ferraro to be the first female vice presidential nominee of a major political party did not influence my decision.

Nor, I suppose, did it influence most of my friends and co–workers, all of whom seemed to have decided how to vote fairly early, too.

I know it didn't affect my mother. She was an admirer of Mondale before he was chosen to be Jimmy Carter's running mate.

Mom and I never spoke about Mondale's choice so I don't know if she would have selected someone else if it had been up to her. I might have picked someone else. There were times, I guess, when I questioned the wisdom of Mondale's choice — not because of Ferraro's gender but because of her rather thin political resume.

So, if it had been up to me, I probably would have picked someone with more extensive political experience — and perhaps some experience running in a statewide campaign. As a representative, Ferraro's campaigns had been districtwide.

Of course, if the point is to make history with a nomination, one is limited to the options that are available at the time. In 1984, Mondale didn't have the luxury of an abundance of choices. Democrats had no women in the U.S. Senate and only one serving as governor of a state. He probably could have found a woman in the House who had spent more time there than Ferraro, but she might not have shared so many of his views.

Ironically, that would change within the next few years. That may have been — at least in part — an outcome of Ferraro's groundbreaking candidacy. The '80s was a decade of great strides for women. In addition to Ferraro's nomination, Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman nominated to be a Supreme Court justice, and Sally Ride was America's first woman astronaut.

But, in the rush to make history, the Mondale campaign staff failed to adequately vet her and thus was subjected to a distracting investigation of Ferraro's family finances at a time when the Democratic ticket needed to be refining its message for the general election. It was embarrassing, too, because it revived stereotypes about New York Italian–Americans and organized crime.

Twenty–four years later, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin became the first woman nominated for the vice presidency by the Republican Party.

Random Thoughts About Paul Ryan

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The first thought I had this morning when I saw Paul Ryan being introduced as Mitt Romney's running mate was of Dan Quayle, vice president under George H.W. Bush.

Nearly 24 years ago to the day, Bush presented Quayle as his presumptive running mate at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans. Bush, of course, had been Ronald Reagan's vice president for eight years and was running more or less as the Gipper's substitute.

And, consequently, he benefited from Reagan's popularity.

But his choice of a running mate was widely criticized. Quayle, who was only about a year younger than Ryan is today, was bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm, yelping and squealing like a kid on a sugar high. Even some Republicans found it difficult to swallow.

In fact, none other than Ed Rollins, who managed Reagan's re–election campaign in 1984, lamented that the convention "was supposed to be [Bush's] showcase week," but that "got stomped on" by the selection of Quayle.

Initially, Ryan reminded me of Quayle, doing a little whooping and cheerleading as he walked to and then stood before a microphone. But, as he got into his remarks, it was clear that Ryan is no Dan Quayle. In comparison to Quayle, Ryan could be judged a success if he simply gets through his acceptance speech with a little maturity — and he showed more than a little of that in his introduction this morning.

In fact, Joe Biden is likely to realize rather quickly — probably well in advance of the vice presidential debate in a couple of months — that Ryan is no Sarah Palin, either. Palin's lack of knowledge on key issues was widely ridiculed, but nothing remotely like that could be said of Paul Ryan.

Ryan, wrote Michael Barone and Chuck McCutcheon in the 2012 Almanac of American Politics, "is regarded as an intellectual leader in the GOP for his unrivaled influence on fiscal matters."

Speaking of debates, Quayle made the observation in his debate with Lloyd Bentsen that his congressional career was as lengthy as John F. Kennedy's when he was elected president — which was almost, but not quite, correct and gave Bentsen the opening for his famous line that Quayle was "no Jack Kennedy."

(Ryan's congressional service actually does match Kennedy's in length.)

The Bush–Quayle ticket went on to win that 1988 election in spite of Quayle, but it was a different time, and no one yet knows the kind of impact Ryan may or may not have on the race. True, the Democrats led in the polls when both running mates were announced, but Bush overcame that during the general election campaign.

Romney doesn't face the kind of mountain to climb that Bush did, but he doesn't have the benefit of being a member of a successful lame–duck president's team, either.

Romney's task is just the opposite — to make the case that the Obama administration has been a failure — and Ryan seemed well qualified to make that argument.

No, Paul Ryan is no Dan Quayle. And he is no Sarah Palin.

Accept it.

Palin's Pronouncement

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As hesitant as I am to give Sarah Palin credit for, well, anything, I actually do feel compelled to give her some credit for her observation that a brokered convention would not necessarily be a bad thing.

Folks who perpetuate the idea that it would be bad for the Republican Party, she said, have "an agenda" — which, admittedly, sounds a lot like her usual conspiracy theory talk defaming everyone in the media or the party establishment — but suspend your disbelief and/or skepticism for a few minutes, OK?

While I won't rule out the possibility that Palin is playing the rest of us for a bunch of suckers and laying the groundwork for a "Draft Palin" movement in Tampa later this year, I will concede that she makes a valid point or two, especially when you consider recent electoral history.

Four years ago, the Democrats' nominating process dragged into the summer, and the pundits said it would mortally wound the nominee.

And, I suppose, it could have if 2008 had been an ordinary political year. But it wasn't.

You couldn't tell that right after the conventions. In the first half of September, the Democrats were struggling in the polls, and there was talk that Barack Obama had made a tactical error in choosing Joe Biden to be his running mate. Some Democrats openly fretted that Hillary Clinton should have been the running mate.

Seemed like business as usual — perhaps all those months of infighting really had taken their toll.

But then the economy imploded, and voters became determined to change directions. In the last six weeks of that campaign, the tide turned irreversibly to the Democrats. If Obama had needed two ballots or more to win the nomination in August, it probably wouldn't have mattered by Election Day 2008.

From the vantage point of 2012 (and in the eventual long–term context of history), the outcome of the 2008 election might look inevitable, but it was hardly certain at the time.

Anyway, Palin's assertion challenged the (pardon the pun) conventional wisdom that conventions do not serve the same purpose in the TV age that they did in the first 150 years of the republic's existence.

In the last half century, conventions have been about making the best possible use of the free air time the parties received. Organizers of modern conventions want things to be decided outside the view of the cameras. They want their primetime coverage to present a picture of a united, harmonious party to the national audience, enthusiastic about its nominees and its platform and ready to do battle in the general election campaign.

They don't want their conventions to be discussions about important issues that engage the viewers instead of entertaining them, and they don't want prolonged battles for the nomination. They want bands and balloons and cheering delegates. Perhaps they are fearful that if a convention goes past the first ballot — and previously committed delegates are free to vote in any way that they please — that is an invitation to chaos.

But that is not necessarily so.

Democrats have been holding presidential nominating conventions since 1832. Republicans have been holding such conventions since 1856. Originally, parties made important decisions at their conventions. They nominated their candidates for president and vice president, that's true, but they also defined who they were and what they stood for in their platforms.

In a nation that was still growing, still emerging and constantly facing new challenges, that was important. It helped Americans decide which directions they wanted to take, what kind of country they wanted to have. It was the essence of democracy.

The platform–building process is still important today, but the debates (such as they are) take place weeks before the convention — under the watchful eyes of the presumptive nominee's staff.

And their overwhelming concern is how it will look on television.

Before television came along, few Americans saw what went on at a party's convention, and most read about it through the media filter. It didn't matter to them if the acceptance speeches were delivered before 10 p.m. or at 3 in the morning — or if it took several ballots to decide on a presidential nominee.

The modern assumption is that a multi–ballot convention will be a negative. But Palin says it doesn't have to be, and I agree with her on that.

A convention in which viewers do not know the outcome could generate a lot of interest, and I think that would tend to attract viewers, kind of like an athletic contest between evenly matched teams.

No organizer wants to see something like what unfolded in the streets of Chicago in 1968, but that doesn't necessarily have to be the image the country sees. Instead, it could see a group of Americans calmly and rationally discussing the pros and cons of issues that affect their countrymen and the candidates who propose to lead them.

In the past, multi–ballot conventions have sometimes produced compromise nominees, and that is one possible scenario. No one really knows what to expect, in no small part because neither party has had a multi–ballot convention since 1952, when TV was still in its infancy.

The Republicans' most recent experiences with multi–ballot conventions — in 1948, when the GOP needed three ballots to settle on Tom Dewey for the second straight election, and in 1940, when the Republicans picked Wendell Willkie after six ballots — weren't especially good.

Dewey was defeated by Harry Truman (Mitt Romney has been compared to Dewey), and Willkie lost to FDR (Newt Gingrich has suggested that this year's convention might resemble the one in 1940).

But in the pre–television days, open conventions were known to produce Republican nominees who won sometimes — Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, James Garfield in 1880, Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and Warren Harding in 1920 — so it is not unprecedented.

Likewise, multi–ballot conventions produced some winners on the Democratic side — James Polk in 1844, Franklin Pierce in 1852, James Buchanan in 1856, Grover Cleveland in 1884, Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and FDR in 1932.

Don't misunderstand. There is no guarantee that an open convention will produce a winner. Nine multi–ballot Democratic conventions produced losers as did three other Republican ones (in addition to the two previously mentioned).

And you can add political scientist and historian to the lengthy (and still growing) list of things that Palin is not.

But this much is certain. Both the winners and the losers of the last 14 presidential elections were nominated in one ballot

Could a multi–ballot nominee fare any worse?

Ronald Reagan Is Still Dead

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"Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead."

Chevy Chase
Saturday Night Live (c. 1976)

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It's fashionable these days — and justifiably so — for people to complain that Washington is broken.

But that really isn't new. I mean, folks have been complaining about the damn guv'ment for as long as I can remember.

That's a truism of politics.

And the party that is out of power always wants to take power from the other party. Always.

That's another truism of politics.

So, in spite of the racial angle that is introduced into the 2012 presidential campaign because of Barack Obama's pigmentation, I don't see anything special about the desire of the Republican Party to defeat him.

Others may see racists lurking in the shadows, but I see politics as usual. Didn't the Republicans openly seek to defeat Bill Clinton in 1996? And didn't they desire — and achieve — victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980?

For that matter, didn't Democrats wring their hands at the thought of re–electing George W. Bush in 2004? Didn't they unite behind Clinton in 1992 in large part because they desperately wanted the elder Bush and Dan Quayle to leave and 12 years of Republican rule to end?

Politics is a competitive business, folks. The party that is out of power always wants to be the party that is in power. And the worse things are, the louder the opposition seems to be. It's always been that way.

The only thing that has really changed is the absence of civility. Politics was always rough and tumble when I was growing up, but neither side accused the other of being socialist or fascist.

All right, sometimes the discourse got out of line, like whenever someone accused someone else of being a communist. The red scares of the 1950s were hardly this country's finest hours.

Mostly, though, political campaigns were civil, and the discussions were serious. The politicians didn't focus on irrelevant issues — like flag burning or gay marriage or prayer in school — and try to smear each other or accuse each other of being unpatriotic or racist. Go back and look at the advertising and the speeches from the campaigns that were conducted just 25 years ago if you don't believe me.

Smearing opponents and playing on people's fears happened to work pretty well, politicians discovered, and now no one seems to know how to campaign for office without resorting to negative tactics.

I've read and heard from several Democrats — named and unnamed — who say Obama will have no choice but to "do what they do" and resort to negative campaigning to win re–election. That's probably true, but, to me, that seems a rather odd about–face for a president who won election running on a "hope and change" platform.

There's not much hope when there is no change.

But what really works is what voters can see and hear and feel. Maybe the reason so many people make their voting decisions based on what they can see in their lives — and not on what the politicians tell them they should see and hear and feel — is because they trust their own eyes a lot more than they trust any politician.

The people are smarter than the politicians give them credit for being. They're smart enough, anyway, to see through the smokescreens and self–serving rhetoric.

It was tough for the Republicans to get much traction against Clinton in 1996 because things were clearly improving. It was easier for the Democrats to make their case against the Republicans in 1992 than it had been four years earlier because the economy had deteriorated.

Likewise it was easier for Ronald Reagan and the Republicans to make their case in 1980 than it was for Bob Dole in 1996 because of the differences in the economies of those years.

I've said many times that I believe next year's election will be decided by the prevailing conditions and that the who part simply won't matter very much.

And I'll admit that it is possible that things will turn around before Election Day 2012 — but not too probable. Obama has apparently given up on his own call for civility in political discourse, and the Republicans have shown little, if any, interest in working with him. So nothing seems likely to get done until after the next election with this do–nothing government.

It feels like I'm watching a rerun of an episode that I have seen before — and didn't like the first time. I understand that many Democrats are anxious — as they should be. In terms of sheer numbers, there are more Americans who are unemployed or underemployed today than at any other time in U.S. history. Those who haven't run out of patience are in the process of doing so.

If Obama is defeated in 2012 — and I believe he will be — there will be, without a doubt, a segment of the population that will vote against him because of his race — just as there is a segment of the population that will vote for him for the same reason. But it is wrong for anyone to suggest that racism will be the sole reason for his defeat.

Many white Americans voted for Obama in 2008. He could not have been elected if they had not — but poll after poll after poll has shown that he has fallen well short of their expectations and he has been losing them.

Politicians don't have the luxury of choosing what the voters will use to evaluate them or their performances in office, but they do have the option of telling the voters what they think the voters should consider. (Whether the voters actually do consider what the politicians think they should is an entirely different matter — and a subject for another post.)

And one thing that seems to be constant in the GOP, from the candidates to the rank–and–file, is a desire for a Ronald Reagan for this era. I hear the candidates speaking of it, and it is clear they would like nothing better than to be mentioned in the same breath with Reagan, to be compared favorably to the "Great Communicator."

And I hear the rank–and–file speak longingly of Reagan — as if there had never been a time when he was dismissed by many, Republicans as well as Democrats, as reckless, simplistic, a cowboy actor out of his element whose shoot–first–and–ask–questions–later style would plunge the country into a nuclear war.

I guess there has always been a nostalgic element at work during presidential elections, but it seems to be stronger now than in any other election that I can remember. You can see it in the intense yearning on the Republican side for a figure like Reagan to emerge.

It reminds me of the old Weekend Update segments on Saturday Night Live in the 1970s, when Chevy Chase would announce that "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead." There have been times in recent months when I have wanted to remind Republicans that Reagan has been dead for seven years — but I suspect that would not change the longing that exists for a strong leader.

Now, I rarely agreed with Reagan on policy, and I recoiled then (as I do now) at the blatant mixing of religion and politics, but Reagan really was a unique leader. I did not give him enough credit for that when he was president. Ideology was important, as it always is, but there was a quality in Reagan that exists in all great leaders. They are able to connect on some level with most Americans in spite of political differences.

I think this accounts for the somewhat "flavor of the month" approach the Republicans have been taking to the selection of their presidential nominee. They've been searching for the next Reagan.

Initially, of course, it was Mitt Romney who was seen as the front runner among the announced candidates, largely because voters knew who he was. Then attention shifted for awhile to Sarah Palin, even though she hadn't said she would run (and still hasn't). Next in the spotlight was Michele Bachmann, followed by Rick Perry, who — a la Ross Perot — catapulted into the lead without having really said anything.

But Perry's rising star seems to be crashing to earth now that he has said something — and ran into trouble as a result — so the search has gone on.

Then a straw poll in Florida prompted many to anoint Herman Cain as the front runner. (Where, I wonder, would the race–card players be if Cain won the GOP nomination?)

Tim Pawlenty got out of the race when his showing in the Iowa straw poll was short of his own expectations. He had too much ground to make up, critics said. I found that astonishing, given that no one has secured so much as a single delegate to the Republicans' 2012 convention.

Recently, there have been efforts to persuade Chris Christie of New Jersey to enter the race although the deadlines for getting a candidate's name on primary ballots are rapidly approaching. (The Washington Post says he is reconsidering his decision not to run, but that doesn't change the filing deadlines.)

Consequently, sensing that the field that exists today is the field that will compete in the primaries, that there will be no more new entries, Republicans seem to be returning to Romney as the one who is most likely to attract disgruntled independents and Democrats to their cause.

Frankly, I am encouraged by the fact that Republicans are showing at least a little maturity and deliberation in their decision. There have been many opportunities for them to jump on any old bandwagon, regardless of any reservations they may have about the candidate, in their eagerness to defeat Obama, and I am sure there are Republicans who have been tempted to do precisely that — to unite behind a candidate early.

Fortunately, most Republicans seem to have been resisting that temptation.

I'm glad Republicans are carefully examining each candidate, listening to what each has to say and taking their time — because I really do believe that the economy will decide the election, and nine out of 10 Americans currently say it is poor.

(The next president absolutely must make jobs his #1 priority — if not his only priority.)

That makes me think that 2012 will be a strongly anti–incumbent year. That doesn't mean that every incumbent will be defeated — unfortunately, many Americans are pleased with their own representatives but would happily vote against the ones from other districts and states if they could — but I think many incumbents will be defeated, and the presidency is the only race in which everyone, from the bluest of the blue states to the reddest of the red, can vote.

If that anti–incumbent mood is as great as I think it will be, the Republican presidential nominee, whoever that is, stands to benefit from it because the only way that people can express their displeasure is at the ballot box, and the Republican nominee will be the only real alternative — unless a viable third party emerges.

Since the 2012 Republican nominee will probably be the next president — and since I am an independent — I can only hope that they will be reasonable in reaching their decision, that they will choose someone who can reach across the aisle, as Reagan often did.

He won't be Reagan, though. Ronald Reagan is still dead.

PDQ Bachmann

The last presidential election demonstrated rather vividly that growing portions of both political parties are embracing the idea of electing a woman to the executive branch of the federal government, as either president or vice president.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton was narrowly beaten for the presidential nomination by Barack Obama in a race that came to be seen by many as a battle between historical guilt trips, misogyny and racism. And, on the Republican side, of course, Sarah Palin became the first woman nominated by the GOP for vice president.

But each party wants different things from its female candidates — and will tolerate nothing less from the other side. And both continue to hold female politicians to expectations they would never impose on men. In that regard, I suppose, women continue to be subjected to a political double standard if not a societal one.

As far as they have come in my lifetime — and that includes occupying seats on the Supreme Court, traveling in space, acting as diplomats on behalf of the United States and serving as speaker of the House — women are still expected to do things that no man is expected to do — like remain young and attractive long after it is natural for anyone to be young and attractive.

In our highly visual age, appearances have taken on more influence than ever before, but men are not subjected to anything like the scrutiny that women are. Gray hair on a man is seen as distinguished; it is a sign of advanced age in a woman. A few extra pounds have seldom stood between a man and electoral victory; on a woman, they can be politically fatal.

I suppose that accounts for the reaction to Newsweek's unflattering photo of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann on its cover.

Such negative stereotypes are offset, to a degree, by positive ones — such as the image of nurturer and healer — that make the idea of electing a woman president an appealing one for so many in these troubling times. They see a dysfunctional political system that needs a "woman's touch" after being taken to the brink of catastrophe too many times in recent years.

In Republican circles, Palin had that market cornered for a long time because she was really the only female whose name was being bandied about. But things have changed. While Palin has been motoring around the country, Bachmann jumped into the 2012 race and won yesterday's straw poll in her home state of Iowa — and some are wondering if Palin's moment in the spotlight has ended. She is supposed to reveal her 2012 plans next month.

(Personally, I would think that Palin — if she really does intend to run for president, and I am inclined to think she will not — would not mind relinquishing the spotlight for awhile.)

It's made me think about expectations, cliches and modern "firsts" in the American presidency in ways I never did before.

There is a desperation in people's expectations these days, I believe, born in part from a certain amount of disappointment in the policies of the current administration. Many of the president's supporters seem content to give him the benefit of the doubt — and additional time for these saplings to bear fruit. But not everyone, particularly the unemployed, is so generous — and patient.

This president was symbolic, of course, because of his race. He was the first black president. Whatever history may ultimately say about his tenure in the Oval Office, he will always be the first black to be nominated for — and elected to — the presidency.

When a female becomes president, she will be the first of her gender — and therefore will be symbolic as well.

Such distinctions may have made Barack Obama — and may someday make the first female president — sensitive (and vulnerable) to allegations of favoritism or preferential treatment. The religious issue presented similar challenges for John F. Kennedy half a century ago.

My experience is that, after a certain point, most historic "firsts" in the American presidency became isolated, no matter how successful the groundbreaking president may have been, and that the second of whatever it is hasn't come along rapidly.

Kennedy, of course, was the first Catholic to be elected president. He wasn't the first Catholic to be nominated, but he was the first in more than three decades. As president, his job approval ratings never fell below 56%.

Well, it's been more than 50 years since Kennedy was elected and nearly 50 since he was assassinated, but America still has not elected its second Catholic president. Catholics have sought the nomination, including JFK's younger brothers, but only one has been nominated for the presidency.

That's three Catholic presidential nominees in 83 years.

This applies to the vice presidency, too. Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman on a Democratic ticket. There have been half a dozen Democratic tickets since then, and none of the nominees was a woman.

I strongly doubt that Bachmann will be nominated in 2012, but if Republicans really are strongly considering nominating a woman for president, it may be largely because they and the voters who support her believe the kind of healing and nurturing the nation and its economy need can only be provided by a woman.

To meet the unrealistic expectations of the voters, that woman would need to revive this economy P.D.Q. — in an era long before texting, that was a well–known abbreviation for "pretty damned quick." Given the dire forecasts from economists, that doesn't seem likely.

With unemployment stuck in the 9% range and the stock market bouncing back and forth like a tennis ball, the experiment with a black president (whether it is acknowledged as such or not) may come to be widely regarded as a failure, and it may be as long before America elects its second black president as it has been between Catholic presidents.

Even if Barack Obama turns things around and manages to win re–election, my gut feeling is that it will be decades until another black candidate is nominated for the presidency. If he is replaced with a woman — Bachmann, Palin or someone else — this economy may prove too stubborn for her, and the next female presidency will be a long time coming as well.

I don't know what to expect in 2012. There are times when I think Obama is on the verge of righting the ship and really living up to the standards he set for himself and the nation — but then he does something that tells me that my original conclusion, that he is in over his head, was the correct one.

Sometimes, though, presidents rise to the occasion.

And if there is anything of which I am certain, it is that the next president, whoever he or she turns out to be, must rise to the occasion.

Or he/she seems likely to be the last American president.

Paul Revere's Ride

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"Every man is my superior in that I may learn from him."

Thomas Carlyle
(1795–1881)

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I have long admired Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish writer and teacher from the 19th century.

And I believe he was earnest when he wrote that "[e]very man is my superior in that I may learn from him."

To me, that's kind of like Will Rogers' line that "I never met a man I didn't like."

Both statements are unconditional and noble in their intent ... but they do have their logical limits. You have to remember that Will Rogers never met Sarah Palin, and Carlyle never listened to Palin give a history lecture.

As you're almost bound to have heard by now, Palin asserted that Revere "warned the British" with his famous midnight ride.

When I was a child, everybody knew that Revere warned the colonists that the "British are coming." That was something I knew before I heard about it in school, too. I don't know how old I was when I first heard Longfellow's famous poem that begins "Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere ..." but I'm just about certain that I heard it before I started studying history in school.

How can I be so sure? Well, when my brother and I were small, our family traveled to Boston one summer to visit some old friends of the family. I was probably about 7 or 8 years old at the time, and we visited all the historic sites we could — including the Old North Church from which the signal could be seen.

I'm almost positive that someone read that poem aloud to my brother and me during that trip. I don't remember if it was the first time I heard it, but we were always discussing historical events on that trip, visiting all kinds of historic sites and talking — generally, for anything more in–depth would have been way over our heads — about the events that were commemorated at each.

Anyway, when Palin tried to backtrack in the face of a hugely negative response, she insisted that she had not been wrong.

I must confess, I really have trouble swallowing that one.

But, in fairness to Palin, I have to say that I am often baffled by the behavior of her critics. Most of her critics came to the conclusion a long time ago that she is an airhead, a conclusion with which I am inclined to agree.

But many of those critics were also suggesting in January — after the shootings in Arizona — that Palin was smart enough to know the history of a somewhat obscure phrase like "blood libel."

You can't have it both ways.

Either she is as dumb as a post — or she is a conniving manipulator. It simply isn't possible for her to be both.

Gerry

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I didn't vote for Barack Obama in 2008, but I understood what many of his young supporters were feeling.

I understood it quite well. It was the enthusiastic fervor that comes with being on the same side as a trailblazer, a pioneer, and that is a feeling that, I truly believe, every generation in America should experience at least once — because it is really the essence of what it means to be an American.

America has always been about pioneers — the pioneers who braved the ocean and the unknown to come to this continent centuries ago, the pioneers who explored and charted it, the pioneers who took their search for answers into space.

Obama was a pioneer, the first black to be nominated by a major party for president or vice president. Whatever history ultimately says about the successes or failures of his presidency, he will always be the first black nominee, the one who made it possible for others to follow.

In 1984, then–Rep. Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman to be nominated for a spot on a major party's national ticket, and I was an enthusiastic supporter of the Democratic ticket that year.

Ferraro's death today at the age of 75 has brought back a lot of memories of that time for me.

I guess my experience in 1984 more closely mirrored the experience of Republicans in 2008, though, because, as you undoubtedly recall, the Republicans nominated then–Gov. Sarah Palin to be their first female vice presidential candidate.

(In fact, I observed in 2009 that the parties' first female vice presidential nominees had lived parallel lives since their historic campaigns.)

Like the Democrats in 1984, the Republicans went down to defeat in 2008 — so that year I did not have the experience of supporting a barrier–breaking nominee who was successful in the general election.

Well, that may not be entirely true. I wasn't old enough to vote in 1976, but I supported Jimmy Carter, who was — I was told at the time — the first president elected from the Deep South in more than 100 years.

Carter was kind of a pioneer in that sense — although, frankly, I always had my misgivings about that. Lyndon Johnson was from Texas, which I always considered a Southern state (if not a Deep Southern state), and Dwight Eisenhower was born in Texas, although he grew up in Kansas. Woodrow Wilson was born in Virginia, but he spent his adult life in New Jersey.

As a product of the South, I felt a great deal of pride in seeing a fellow Southerner elected president — even though he wasn't the first.

Then, in 1984, I really did get to support a political trailblazer, and, when I think of that time, I have to conclude that I was more carried away with the symbolic nature of Ferraro's nomination than her relevant experience.

It was, frankly, comparable to the experience levels that Obama and Palin brought to their tickets in 2008. Far from impressive.

I don't remember giving much thought to Ferraro's experience level at the time. I was influenced by other things, and one certainly was the historic symbolism of her candidacy.

I never really thought the ticket had a chance to win — and I was living in Arkansas, where the numbers were running pretty heavily against the Democrats (on the national level, anyway). It was hard for someone supporting the Democratic ticket there to get much of a sense that victory was really possible.

A few weeks before the election, Ferraro came to speak in Little Rock. I'm still not sure why she came to Arkansas, what she hoped to gain, but I went to hear her speak with some friends of mine, Mike and Jane, anyway.

About five or six months later, the three of us went to Dallas to see Eric Clapton in concert. The atmospheres at both events were just about the same.

In 1984, a Geraldine Ferraro event was like a rock concert without the music, just the star on stage. She would stand up there and wave, and folks would shriek and holler like they did at the Beatles shows 20 years earlier.

I clearly remember that day. It was a kind of drizzly October morning. I was working nights at the time. Can't recall if the event was on a day that I had off anyway or if it was just an ordinary weekday morning, but it really doesn't matter, I suppose. In those days, I was always off duty in the morning.

Nor does it really matter why Mike and Jane also were able to attend that event on a weekday. The fact remains, the three of us went to see "Gerry" — as her supporters tended to call her affectionately — and my memory is that the place was packed.

And everyone cheered wildly at anything she said. She could have been reading to us from the classified ads in the morning paper, and it wouldn't have mattered.

Personally, with my lifelong interest in history, I was just pleased to experience this brush with history. I have no specific memory of anything she said.

(It was doubly historic, in fact, as I recall. Then–Gov. Bill Clinton attended that rally. He was always a vocal supporter of the Mondale–Ferraro ticket, even though the voters in Arkansas were not as enthusiastic about the ticket as he was.)

I'm sure she spoke critically of Ronald Reagan and his record in the White House. That's one of the main jobs of a vice presidential candidate. But even when she was critical in that campaign, Ferraro was dignified and respectful. She was often subjected to indignities by the opposition, but she never repaid them in kind.

1984 was groundbreaking in another way. It is the first campaign that I can remember that utilized popular music from the politically charged 1960s in its advertising.

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That reminds me of the closing days of that campaign. It was truly a memorable time for me.

Even though it was early November, my memory is that it was unseasonably mild, and my friend Sheila and I decided to do our own form of "campaigning" for Mondale–Ferraro.

The evening before the election, we decided to just go out driving in Little Rock. I had some Mondale stickers on the back of my car, and we thought — naively — that we might drum up some support for Mondale by just cruising around and letting the other cars see the stickers.

What the heck? Gas wasn't too expensive in those days — at least not compared to what we pay today — and my car got good mileage. But there was simply no way that I was going to sway enough voters to my side to change anything in Pulaski County, let alone the state of Arkansas, through mere exposure to the bumper stickers on the back of my car.

I don't think either Sheila or I had any realistic expectation that we could influence the outcome that night — and it didn't matter, I guess. We were experiencing the "Yes we can" moment of our generation.

It turned out that we couldn't — but, in a way, we did.

Because of Gerry Ferraro, women could dream of something of which only little boys were encouraged to dream before. Blacks can do more than dream today — and, I suppose, someday in the future, Hispanics and Asians and gays will join them, if they haven't already.

I had heard little of Ferraro before Mondale chose her to be his running mate, and I heard relatively little from her after that campaign — except for 2008, when she was part of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

For the most part, she played her role on the national stage in 1984, then stepped back to let others take the spotlight.

Gerry Ferraro blazed the trail. She played her role in American history.

She fought the good fight.

Going Rogue

My background is in print journalism — not show business.

And I can only conclude that show business is what people like Sarah Palin really mean when they complain about a "liberal press."

That must be what she means. Her latest remarks were in response to comments made by Bill Maher. He's a comedian (like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert), not a journalist (like Walter Cronkite and Woodward and Bernstein).

Yes, Maher is bright and articulate, and he does engage in political commentary — but anyone can do that, especially today. If you have a computer and an internet account, you can write a blog on anything.

You don't have to have a college degree. You don't have to invest any money (beyond the cost of the computer and the internet account).

You don't really have to know what you're talking about. You don't even have to be able to spell, which, frankly, appalls me. I mean, you don't need to be able to spell if people are only going to hear your views, but if they are going to read them, I think you'd better be able to spell — yet far too few bloggers seem to be capable of that.

You really just need to have an opinion — and everybody's got one. At least one.

If you take a good, honest look at the blogs that are being written these days, you'll find that there's a good mix of opinions being represented out there. It may seem sometimes that things are tilted more one way than another, but, for the most part, I think it is pretty balanced.

It tends to get shrill at times — but I often think that is precisely because people who are accustomed to pushing emotional buttons (like, for example, comedians) are mistaken for people who prefer to deal with facts (like, for example, journalists).

In other words, any resemblance between Bill Maher and Edward R. Murrow is purely coincidental.

Perhaps Palin harbors resentment over the fact that more newspapers endorsed the Democratic ticket than the Republican ticket in 2008. But that was an historical anomaly. In nearly all of the presidential campaigns in the last half century, Republicans have received more endorsements than Democrats.

It may be a simple matter of semantics. When she says "press," Palin may mean anyone in the media.

But that is misleading because the word media is only part of the story.

The more appropriate terminology would be mass media (or mass communication) — media is far too generic.

Even so, mass media covers a wide spectrum of things. It covers all media technologies — both established and emerging.

It covers traditional publications, like newspapers, magazines and books, and it also covers newer technology, like television, radio, audio recordings, movies and the internet, as well as the related fields of advertising and public relations.

Mass media covers a whole range of specialized professions within those more general occupations. For example, newspapers have editors, and so do audio and visual production companies, but they don't edit the same things, and their skills wouldn't be particularly transferable to the other field.

When the Declaration of Independence was signed in the 18th century, press meant newspapers. But, today, it covers a lot of things — and, since people seem to be less inclined to get their news from newspapers these days and more inclined to get it from broadcast outlets — many of which, like the Fox News to which Palin contributes, clearly have an agenda — they tar all members of the media with the same broad, brush strokes, whether or not they apply.

It's easier to do that than think, I guess.

I can live with that misconception, though, easier than I can live with the insistence on labeling anyone who disagrees with Palin a "liberal." She isn't the first political conservative to do that, just the most prominent current one.

When did liberal become a dirty word? As nearly as I can tell, it goes back at least to the 1960s. The liberals of that time were primarily liberal on social issues but more conservative on foreign ones. Hence, when Lyndon Johnson and the established liberals of his day got the country into a war in Vietnam that couldn't be resolved quickly, it sparked resistance from what was called the "New Left."

As E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post wrote in "Why Americans Hate Politics" in 1991, "If liberal ideology began to crumble intellectually in the 1960s it did so in part because the New Left represented a highly articulate and able wrecking crew."

Conservatives were trying before the 1960s to portray liberals as soft and squishy — on communism, on crime, just weak in general — but it really seems to have caught on in the 1980s.

I admit, I leaned more to the left when I was younger. That was at a time when there was more mutual respect in our political discourse, and liberal wasn't treated with the same contempt as pedophile.

I'm much more of a centrist today, but not because of popular (if erroneous) definitions that are misapplied to ideological terms. I try to be respectful of everyone's opinion — and, if you read the things I have written about her in the 2½ years since Palin was chosen to be on the Republicans' national ticket, I think you will agree that I have often come to Palin's defense when I felt she was the victim of — as she correctly calls it — a double standard in American politics.

I don't agree with most of the things Palin says, but I have defended her when I felt she was treated unfairly.

She doesn't make it easy, though. She rejected support she received from the National Organization for Women (NOW) in this skirmish with Maher, presumably because it is a liberal group.

Philosophically, you would think that Maher and Palin would be natural allies, wouldn't you? I mean, Maher is a libertarian, not a liberal. If you know anything about American politics, you should know that the only things those two words really have in common are their first five letters — although there are such things as left libertarians and right libertarians.

The latter are usually considered the best–known form of libertarians, but the things all libertarians seem to have in common are their desires to see the influence of the government diminished and the freedom of the individual increased.

Libertarians tend to reject the labels of left or right, though. I guess if you press a libertarian for more details, he/she will say his/her label probably should be independent. Maher did openly support Barack Obama in 2008, which may be the real reason for his feud with Palin, but he also has not hesitated to criticize Obama since he took office.

As I say, liberal and libertarian sound similar so maybe that is what tugs at Palin's chain (although the apparently sexist slur that Maher used against Palin certainly deserves some credit).

Maybe she just doesn't know the difference between the two.

I guess that wouldn't surprise me.

After all, when you read the dictionary, you really have no choice but to conclude that rogue really doesn't mean what Palin seems to think it means — any more than liberal means what she apparently thinks it means.

Winning the Future

During his State of the Union address last month, Barack Obama spoke of "winning the future."

To most ears, it had a positive sound to it — even if Sarah Palin famously used the acronym WTF to describe her reaction to it (and it wasn't an abbreviation of "winning the future," either, the way that Gerald Ford's WIN in the 1970s was an acronym for "whip inflation now").

Palin, of course, is a divisive figure. When she is the topic of conversation, no one seems to be in the middle of the road. She always inspires strong feelings, either pro or con.

For that reason, I have long felt that she is not likely to be the Republicans' presidential nominee — in 2012 or, for that matter, any other year. She's kind of like Hillary Clinton. Her supporters really love her. Her detractors really hate her.

No middle ground. No room for compromise.

Palin's unfavorable ratings are just too high. To be as politically extreme as Palin and be nominated for — and go on to win — national office, you have to be likable, and she isn't. Palin may, at times, sound warm and fuzzy like Ronald Reagan, but, upon closer inspection, she comes across as cold and prickly like Pat Buchanan.

Obama is a different kind of politician, more inclusive in his words, less defiant in his actions. In 2008, I guess he always seemed to be cut more from the same cloth as the politicians who have been the traditional American leaders. He came across as someone who rose from humble beginnings — a latter–day Lincoln — and had a vision.

But, for all his talk about winning the future, Obama is not winning. He is running out of time. By this time next year, the New Hampshire primary is almost sure to be over, and the Republican front runner is likely to be anointed.

Obama is losing ground to that candidate, according to Gallup. A recent survey says Obama is running dead even with a nameless, faceless, generic Republican opponent.

At about the same time last year, when that question was asked, Obama led, 44 to 42. Now, they are tied at 45 to 45.

The big shift seems to be coming from the folks who said they were undecided. Last year, 11% of respondents said they were undecided. That number is down to 6% today, and the generic Republican picked up three times as many of the undecideds as Obama did.

When you break down the findings, it seems that Obama's support remains fairly constant among women and nonwhites, and his opposition remains equally constant among men and whites. But, while race and gender were often mentioned when Obama and Hillary Clinton were dueling for the nomination, they do not appear to be the crucial battlegrounds today.

Another component of his 2008 triumph was young voters, and Obama's popularity with them is clearly down. Young voters were unusually motivated to participate in 2008, and nearly two–thirds of them voted for the Democrat. Today, Gallup reports, barely a majority of young voters would vote to re–elect Obama.

How much of an impact will young voters have in 2012? Well, absent the kind of motivation that Obama provided three years ago — and absent an equally appealing Republican rival — my guess is that their participation rate will return to a more historically consistent level.

What may be even more worrisome for Obama is the trend among voters in the 35–to–54 age range. In 2008, Gallup says, Obama won 53% of the votes in that group. Today, only 43% say they will support his re–election.

That could be a problem for Obama because, unlike younger voters, people in that age range do tend to vote — at least in greater numbers than the young.

Voting, in fact, is something that people do more regularly as they get older. Thus, the older voters tend to be the more reliable ones. And maybe, in 2012, they will be motivated to support Obama because of his health care reform legislation (assuming it survives congressional repeal attempts).

If that proves to be the case, Obama may have the last laugh on all of us. Voters over the age of 55 only gave Obama 48% of their ballots in 2008, Gallup reports. Consequently, if health care reform is viewed favorably by older voters in 2012, a majority of them may support him for re–election.

But there is no indication that anything like that is happening. Only 43% of voters over the age of 55 support Obama against the generic Republican in 2012, Gallup says.

Poll numbers, of course, are fluid, like the approval ratings of which I wrote this week. And one thing that both should indicate is that presidents, with the "bully pulpit" of which Teddy Roosevelt spoke a century ago, have a certain amount of control over their fate — even when the midterm elections go heavily against them.

Gallup reminds its readers that, when a president is seeking re–election, the election is less a choice between two individuals as a referendum on the incumbent.

"That is not to say it won't matter whom the Republicans choose as their standard–bearer," writes Lydia Saad of Gallup, "but perhaps it matters slightly less than it would in an open election" like the one Obama won in 2008.

The voters' verdict has yet to be written, but time is short for Obama. To make a convincing case for a second term, he must preside over a clearly improving economy — and, as long as unemployment remains where it is and job creation remains as anemic as it has been, it will be hard to persuade voters that things are getting better.

No Easy Answers

It is only natural, I guess, that a lot of people — whether they are qualified to do so — are trying to pinpoint a reason for Saturday's shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a judge and more than a dozen other people in Tucson, Ariz.

Because the congresswoman is a Democrat — and because her assailant apparently holds some extremist views — it is being assumed by many on the left that this is the inevitable product of the rhetoric of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.

Jonathan Martin writes in Politico that the Tucson tragedy is a turning point for Palin. Whether she truly bears any responsibility for what happened, I think it should be the sort of event that makes us all stop and think about the things we say and do overtly — or covertly in the online world where anonymity is often assumed but rarely a reality.

I have no doubt that Palin and the Tea Party have contributed a lot to the atmosphere of intolerance. But those on the left should not be smug. Their responses to this event come across as knee–jerk to me — and likely to make things worse.

Paul Krugman of the New York Times, for example, wrote on his blog that Giffords, a centrist, was targeted because she is "a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona" in November's midterms.

Then, in case you missed the point, he was more direct in Sunday's column: "Where's that toxic rhetoric coming from?" he asked. "[I]t's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It's hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be 'armed and dangerous' without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P."

Actress Jane Fonda leaped into the fray with an ill–advised tweet that, among other things, misidentified Giffords as a progressive (as I said, she is a centrist) and pointed the finger at Palin.

I disagree with Palin on most issues. In all honesty, I try not to listen to her any more than I have to — but, to be fair, I don't recall her issuing a fatwa that called for the execution of Democratic office–holders.

That's the kind of news that would have been hard to avoid — particularly since, in the interest of candor, I must admit that many in the broadcast media (and, sadly, it is broadcasting from which most people do get their news and information) have already shown their bias against her.

I didn't even detect a coded message to that effect from Palin. I mean, I suppose one could apply any sort of definition one wishes to anything that Palin — or anyone else, for that matter — says in public.

But if Palin said anything that could be even loosely interpreted that way, it went straight over my head — and I like to think I'm a reasonably sharp person.

Anyway, my impression, from what I have seen and heard in the last 48 hours, is that the gunman, Jared Loughner (and, by the way, I looked at his Facebook page briefly before someone took it down), is a nut job. There must be a more technical term for it, but I don't know what it is.

His views often seem contradictory, even apolitical. In some ways, I guess, he could be said to be something of a centrist himself, neither right nor left, really, although, as I said, he does hold some extremist views, but there is no consistency. Some are extreme right, some are extreme left.

And he does appear to loathe Giffords. Perhaps the reason for that can be determined at some point.

My experience is that the reasons for these acts are seldom obvious. Thirty years ago, for example, a man shot Ronald Reagan and several others outside a Washington hotel. His reason for doing so? He was infatuated with a movie actress.

Nearly 40 years ago, a man shot George Wallace and several others in a parking lot. The man was motivated by a desire for fame, not by politics, even though Wallace was a notorious segregationist.

The assassinations of the 1960s were shrouded in mystery. Even if they were the acts of lone gunmen, enough questions remain unanswered for them to continue to be the focus of conspiracy theories.

But even if those assassinations were the results of conspiracies, the "lone nut" notion was made plausible by the presence of an actual, verifiable loner who could have been responsible, even if he really wasn't.

If one can presume that the things Loughner wrote about himself in his online postings were true, both sides can find ample evidence for blaming the other side, from the books he claimed to be his favorites to the statements he posted that gave glimpses into a sick and troubled mind.

If there is one thing I have learned from observing these episodes in my life, it is that you can seldom, if ever, identify these people ahead of time. The Arizona Republic, for instance, reports that Loughner was rejected for military service and kicked out of community college.

The military won't discuss the reasons for his rejection, citing the Privacy Act. The Republic mentions "multiple run–ins" with the police at the community college and hints at bizarre behavior.

He "was described by friends and former classmates as a loner," writes Robert Anglen for the Republic, "prone to dressing in black regalia of boots, trench coat and baggy pants even on the hottest days."

I have been hearing about "lone nuts" all my life. Many (not all) have, in fact, appeared to be crazy and to have acted alone. That hasn't prevented conspiracy theories from popping up.

Some have been more credible than others, but the one that emerged within hours of Giffords' shooting, of an older man who was mentioned as a person of interest, turned out to be the cab driver who drove Loughner to the store where the shootings took place.

Apparently, he followed Loughner into the store because he hadn't paid his fare.

There have always been eccentrics among us, but it has only been with the benefit of hindsight that we have been able to distinguish between eccentric behavior and threatening behavior.

I suspect that the people who look for someone to blame have deluded themselves. They believe there are simple answers to complex questions. And there is nothing more complex, more mystifying than the workings and the dysfunctions of the human brain.

It will be awhile before we have any answers about how much damage was inflicted on Giffords. It may also be awhile before we have any answers about why Loughner did this.

I suspect it will take much longer before our society figures out what to do about all this.

There are no easy answers.

The Show That Never Ends

I like college football. I was brought up that way. My interest in pro football has ebbed and flowed over the years, but my interest in college football has been consistent.

And, being a fan of college football, I have always been interested in the way it selects its national champion. I've seen the methodology change a lot over the years, and since 1998, as anyone who follows college football knows, the national champion has been chosen using a selection system (the Bowl Championship Series) that is largely based on polls and conference reputations.

Let me say right now that it is not my purpose to rant about the BCS here. I probably will do that in the weeks ahead, but I'll be doing it at my sports blog, Tomato Cans.

I only bring it up because presidential campaigns and the BCS seem to have a lot in common. Even when the calendar is about as far from football season as it is possible to be, I still see speculation about which teams will be playing for the national title. And, almost without fail, the speculation centers on the well–known names from the well–known conferences.

It's the same way with presidential campaigns. I guess it's always been that way, to a certain extent, and maybe this is an example of the "good old days syndrome," but it seems that I can remember a time when a president took office and speculation about who might run four years down the line took a breather.

Now, it resembles an Emerson Lake & Palmer tune — "Welcome Back, My Friends, to the Show That Never Ends."

That thought occurred to me earlier this week when I saw a report at CNN Politics that Sarah Palin's popularity has been going up. I know some Democrats who get all bent out of shape whenever Palin's name is mentioned, and my advice to them would be to relax.

I'm not sure if Palin is the front–runner right now, but what if she is? She's a known quantity, like Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee — although Huckabee may have fallen from grace after a felon whose sentence he commuted murdered four cops in Seattle. But right now, the only names in the mix are the ones the voters are familiar with from the last campaign.

I think it is clear that the GOP's 2012 presidential nominee will send an important message to the voters about who the Republicans are and what they want to do in the 21st century. It may well turn into a bruising battle for the heart and soul of the party, similar to the one that was waged by the Democrats in 2008.

And, as the Democrats demonstrated last year, sometimes it is the insurgent, the previously unknown quantity, who wins the battle. Being the front–runner at this stage didn't help Ed Muskie, Gary Hart or Hillary Clinton.

Right now, it's a popularity contest, and only the known quantities are allowed to play. It won't necessarily be a self–fulfilling prophecy, like Alabama vs. Texas — with TCU and Boise State banging on the door, yelling to be let in. But very few are allowed to compete at this level, and they have achieved that status because other people know their names.

On that note, a piece by Matt Lewis in Politics Daily caught my eye: "[A] dark horse may be rising out of the Great Plains," he writes.

Electoral history suggests that Republicans really don't need much help in the Great Plains. If they're looking to nominate someone who can help them in a region where they have struggled, there are better choices. Turns out he's writing about Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, and regional appeal couldn't have less to do with it.

Republicans aren't rare in the Dakotas, but Thune stands out in the crowd. He beat Tom Daschle in 2004 in one of the tightest races in the nation, which made him something of a celebrity in Republican circles.

He is only a few months older than Barack Obama. They came to the Senate at the same time, and word has it they are comparable on the basketball court. As a senator, he has compiled a mostly conservative record, especially on cultural issues, that would stand in stark contrast to Obama. He's no "Obama Lite," although he has shown a tendency, at times, to act independently of his party (but not often enough to be regarded a maverick).

One thing is for sure. He'd be the proverbial choice–not–an–echo candidate.

How Thune's political philosophy would play with 21st century Republicans — and, if successful, general election voters — nationally is anyone's guess right now. Of course, it could depend, to a considerable extent, on what the conditions are when the campaign is waged.

And it is futile, in December 2009, to guess what the #1 issue will be in January 2012.

Parallel Lives

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The recent release of Sarah Palin's memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life," has made me ponder the course of her political career and that of the other woman who was a running mate on a major party ticket a quarter of a century ago, Geraldine Ferraro.

Certain similarities jump out at me, starting with their ages. Both were in their 40s when chosen to be running mates. Ferraro was 48, which was within the range of most previous Democratic running mates. Palin, on the other hand, was 44, the youngest Republican running mate in 20 years (considerably younger than Dick Cheney or Jack Kemp had been).

Initial surveys indicated that both were popular choices, although they ran into trouble once their conventions were over and the campaigns began in earnest. Palin's problems in the 2008 campaign have been well documented, but, in case you need a reminder (or you are too young to remember the 1984 campaign), not only was Ferraro criticized for a style that was regarded by some as reckless and defiant, but she had problems with her family as well. Less than a month after being nominated, Ferraro had to face relentless questioning about her and her husband's finances.

That was a distraction, but Ferraro wasn't helped by her shoot–from–the–hip style. After telling reporters that she would release her tax returns but her husband would release only a tax statement (his explanation to her, she said, was "Gerry, I'm not going to tell you how to run the country, you're not going to tell me how to run my business"), she made a remark that dogged her: "You people married to Italian men, you know what it's like." Republicans sensed a gender–neutral opportunity to attack and they didn't let it go to waste.

Both Palin and Ferraro had somewhat limited political careers prior to being nominated, and their lack of experience frequently was compared (unfavorably) to the abundance of experience possessed by their opponents. After Ferraro's debate with George H.W. Bush and Palin's debate with Joe Biden, both were said to have performed better than expected, but they were hammered, nevertheless, by the opposition for their "extremist" political views, and both lost the general elections by wide margins — even though it could be rightly said that the opposition's presidential nominees were more popular personally than their policies.

Ferraro and Palin were chosen in large part to appeal to female voters. It was a roll of the dice that didn't pay off. They may well have attracted some female voters, but exit polls indicated that neither succeeded in winning the women's vote. After the 1984 election was over, most political observers agreed that no potential Democratic ticket could have defeated Ronald Reagan, and, following last year's economic meltdown, the same probably could be said of any potential Republican ticket in 2008. Blaming the female running mates strikes me as convenient but ultimately indefensible.

Like Palin, the year after the campaign, Ferraro published her memoir, "Ferraro: My Story," which was a bestseller. There was talk about her political future, and she was labeled a "rising star" in party politics, but, beyond founding a political action committee that had as its mission the goal of electing 10 women in the 1986 Congressional elections and two unsuccessful bids for the Senate in the 1990s, Ferraro's political career was over.

There is talk today about Palin's political future as well. What that future holds has been debated since Palin's resignation as governor of Alaska a few months ago, but she still clearly appeals to some Republican voters.

I hear some of today's Democrats fretting about Palin. What will become of the nation, they ask, if Sarah Palin is nominated for president in 2012 — and, God forbid, actually wins? I've heard some cite, as an ominous sign, reports from the Des Moines Register that suggest that more than two–thirds of Iowa Republicans have a favorable opinion of Palin.

"That's close to the 70 percent who hold favorable views of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who won the 2008 caucuses," writes the Register's Thomas Beaumont, "and it's higher than the 66 percent who view former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich favorably. Palin's number is also higher than that of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, runnerup in the 2008 caucuses, who is viewed favorably by 58 percent of the state's Republicans."

I would give a lot more credibility to those numbers if this were November 2011 and the Iowa caucuses were a few weeks away. But even that couldn't be viewed as conclusive. In mid–November of 2007, polls indicated that Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney would win the Iowa caucuses.

I may be wrong, but my inclination since July has been that, unless she runs for and wins a seat in the Senate or the House next year, Palin ultimately will not pose nearly as much of a threat as many Democrats fear. She will have no recent achievements to bolster a political record that was — to put it charitably — quite thin in 2008, but it was acceptable for a vice presidential nominee. It will be far less plausible for a potential president.

Beaumont quotes a former director of the state's Republican Party, who claims Palin is misunderstood and has been victimized by mistakes that were not hers. Therefore, this isn't about achievements. "She's getting the chance to set the record straight."

Fine. I'm all in favor of personal redemption. But my belief has been that resigning her post will work against her when many Republicans ask themselves the tough questions that caucus participants must ask about every candidate. Typically, if you don't have recent achievements, you'd better have a record of achievements. Palin doesn't have the latter and she quit the former. That's not exactly a bumper sticker slogan.

Even today, more than two years before the next Iowa caucuses, there are signs that decision will hurt a potential Palin candidacy. A GOP activist told the Register that Palin "needs a policy platform, with a conservative organization or media outlet, to boost her credibility."

And, even though she enjoys high favorable ratings from Iowa Republicans, Beaumont reports, "24 percent of Iowa Republicans view Palin unfavorably, compared with 12 percent for Huckabee." Party activists told Beaumont they believe the decision to resign has a lot to do with that.

Democrats who are worried about 2012 are getting ahead of themselves. They need to be promoting the idea of getting all their senators and representatives on the same page.

History says the party in power will lose ground in the midterm elections. Lately, public opinion surveys are saying the same thing.

Without the bullet–proof majorities in Congress, how much of his agenda can Barack Obama expect to push through in the last two years of his term? How will his record of achievements look then? I suppose that depends on exactly how much ground is lost in 2010.

See, that achievements thing works both ways.

Going Rogue

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rogue (noun)

1. vagrant, tramp


2. a dishonest or worthless person : scoundrel


3. a mischievous person : scamp

Merriam–Webster Online Dictionary

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The other night, a high school classmate of mine made an interesting observation on Facebook.

Referring to Sarah Palin's new book, "Going Rogue," my ex–classmate posted the Merriam–Webster link and wondered, "So, which of these definitions does Sarah Palin think best describes herself?"

He confessed that "ever since the book was announced I've been very puzzled by her choice of titles."

Another former classmate tried to clarify the point, saying, "She is using the term that McCain's staffers used about her."

The first classmate responded, "So she wants to emphasize the fact that the people whose job it was to sell her to the public thought she was unstable and irresponsible? If I were managing her 'brand' I would counsel her to reconsider. Maybe this is all part of being a 'maverick' ..."

I wasn't a Palin fan last year — in the interest of full disclosure, I wasn't an Obama fan, either — and she never seems to make it easy on people like me. This is the 24th post I have written in which "Palin" has been listed as a label, and I have tried — or, at least, I feel that I have tried — to give her the benefit of the doubt.

When it comes to Palin, I rarely agree with her on anything, but I do try to be fair. Her book hasn't hit the store shelves yet so I haven't read her side of the story, but I am unaware of any lobbying that she did (or that anyone did on her behalf) to encourage John McCain to pick her as his running mate.

In fact, Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson wrote, in "The Battle for America 2008," that, although McCain had been reviewing possible running mates since securing the nomination in the spring, Palin's name wasn't added to the list of prospects until about a month before the Republican convention — when the McCain campaign "became alarmed at the size of Obama's lead among women."

If it turns out that Palin waged an active campaign to be chosen, I would feel differently. But the Balz–Johnson account tends to confirm what I have suspected all along — that she was not chosen because of her political views but because of her gender.

McCain, I have contended, believed that the majority of Hillary Clinton's supporters could be persuaded to support his campaign if he had a female running mate. But, while Clinton's supporters undoubtedly were disappointed that she came up short in her bid for the Democratic nomination, it turned out they were driven more by ideology than gender.

McCain might have been more successful in winning their support if he had chosen a centrist woman to be his running mate — but I have seen no indication that ideology played a key role in Palin's selection.

Once she was on the ticket, campaign officials may have experienced "buyer's remorse" when it became clear that she was in over her head — but it should be noted that McCain was the buyer. He may have felt remorseful at times, but I think that was overridden by his desire to avoid appearing indecisive in what was perceived to be his first presidential–level decision.

The role of the campaign staff was to be supportive of the ticket and try to help shore up any weaknesses, like the fact that she came across as inexperienced and uninformed in her interviews with Katie Couric. If she was ill–prepared for the national spotlight during the fall campaign, it was in part because the campaign does not appear to have made much effort to address her deficiencies.

It was legitimate, for example, to question Palin about the leaders of foreign countries and America's relationships with those countries because, if elected vice president, that was the kind of knowledge she would need if she eventually became president. But five vice presidents had been elected since the last time a sitting vice president ascended to the presidency, and such knowledge wasn't strictly part of the definition of the job for which she was a candidate. The vice president presides over the Senate. In modern times, the vice president has been dispatched to represent the United States at the weddings and funerals of foreign dignitaries so familiarity with the governments of foreign countries is a good thing to have, but it is not a constitutional requirement.

The vice president is next in line for the presidency, but it has been nearly 50 years since a vice president became president following the death of a president, and it has been 35 years since a vice president became president following the resignation of a president. As I observed before either running mate was chosen, we're overdue — historically — for such a thing to happen, but, in a lifetime of studying the presidency and presidential campaigns, I have seldom come across an instance in which a prospective vice president was chosen because he (or she) was believed to be the most qualified to take over as president if that became necessary.

I have seen running mates who were chosen because their presence on the ticket, it was believed, would heal political wounds and unify the party (i.e., Ronald Reagan's choice of George H.W. Bush, his main rival for the 1980 Republican nomination, and John Kerry's selection of John Edwards as his 2004 running mate). I have seen running mates who, like Palin, were picked because it was believed they would appeal to certain demographic groups (i.e., Walter Mondale's choice of Geraldine Ferraro in 1984).

I have even seen people who were mentioned frequently as potential running mates primarily as lip service to shaky supporters.

Perhaps my classmate was right. Perhaps McCain's staffers did view Palin as "unstable and irresponsible." If so, they weren't the only ones. But it was their task, as my classmate also observed, to "sell" her to the voters. And they failed.

I'm inclined to believe Palin is right when she says she has been made a scapegoat for McCain's defeat. As objectionable as she may have seemed to many voters, I don't believe any running mate could have salvaged the Republican ticket after the economic meltdown occurred.

Having a running mate who went "rogue" did not cost McCain the election. No matter which definition one takes for that word.