Where Is the Outrage?

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I support Americans' right to assemble peacefully, to protest peacefully when they believe an injustice has occurred. I believe in freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

I wish my government did, too.

For more than a week now, Americans have witnessed scenes in the streets of Ferguson, Mo., where a black teenager was shot and killed. They haven't always been peaceful — or anything resembling it. What are they protesting? A young man died. That is a sad thing. Some would call it an injustice.

I wouldn't.

Before you make any assumptions about me that are not true, hear me out. My definition of injustice is when justice has been denied. Has justice been denied in this case? No. The system has not had time to do what it was designed to do.

Many of the people I have seen involved in the protests in Missouri say they want justice — but they don't. They want revenge. Those are two different things. Justice requires facts, evidence. Revenge does not.

If anyone — in Ferguson or anywhere else — tells you he/she knows the police officer was guilty of murder, he/she is lying — because no one knows all the facts. That is — supposedly — why we have trials. To see the evidence, hear the testimony, then sift through it all and decide what the truth is.

Murder, by the way, is a legal term that is reserved for a case in which a jury has ruled that someone's death was caused deliberately by someone else. Until a jury has made that determination, legally (based on the laws of the state where the death occurred), no murder has happened.

Legally.

And I can tell you — as one who covered my share of trials in my reporting days — that almost no one knows the whole story until that trial has been held.

We don't really know what happened in Ferguson two weeks ago. We should reserve judgment because we do know that our system requires that we presume the innocence of the accused until he has been proven guilty in an open court. If I am ever accused of anything and find myself in court, I want that presumption of innocence. For it to remain strong, it cannot be denied to anyone. Nor can due process.

That is so important because often there is no unambiguous evidence of someone's guilt, and all the available evidence must be studied before a conclusion can be reached. Criminal charges of any kind are far too serious to be left to emotion.

We do know what happened in Iraq, though. It is not ambiguous. We don't know precisely when it happened, only when the video of the execution of photojournalist James Foley by an ISIS terrorist surfaced. Foley's beheading wasn't accidental. It was intentional. It was carried out by an apparent Briton — but nearly all of him — including his face — was hidden by black clothing.

He wasn't necessarily British. I have taught many foreign students; some spoke with distinctly British accents, but they weren't from the U.K. They came from other countries. Without exception, they were schooled in British schools by British teachers, and if you spoke to any of them on the phone, you would assume they were British. But they weren't.

The English–speaking jihadists were recruited deliberately. It's obvious. With their British accents, they can blend into places like America without arousing any suspicion while waiting for their assignments. Such accents are regarded as non–threatening by most Americans. And, even if they don't necessarily look British, with our borders as wide open as they are, who's going to notice another undocumented foreigner?

I am outraged on several levels by this act of blatant barbarism.

While I have done other things in my life, I will always consider myself a journalist. I never faced the danger that Foley clearly did, but I have known those who did. And when something like this happens, it is like a death in the family. I never met James Foley, but, as I say, I have known many like him.

The president, who never hesitates to stick his nose where it doesn't belong domestically, especially when it involves white on black crime (of which there is remarkably little), took some time from his vacation to acknowledge the murder — and took the unprecedented step of revealing details about a U.S. mission that failed to rescue Foley earlier this summer — then rushed back to the golf course in Martha's Vineyard, which is where he was when Foley's family held their emotional press conference.

He didn't have a photo op with Foley's family the way he did with Bergdahl's — even though he could have negotiated for Foley's freedom when he went against American policy to negotiate for Bergdahl's release.

What reason was there for disclosing details about the mission that failed? Politics. It was the president's way of getting credit for being tough — yes, he did try to do something, but, oops, it just didn't work. And, for all you bad guys, here's what we tried to do with material that we have at such–and–such location. Do you think that put any Americans in jeopardy? I do.

The president, along with his media enablers, is loath to use the word "evil," even when really no other word is sufficient. This is one of those times.

In just an hour or so on the internet last night, I found two references — in the New York Times and U.S. News and World Report — to ISIS' brownshirts as "militant."

My father is OK with the use of the word "militant," but I'm not. It strikes me as flippant. When I hear the word "militant," I think of the protests of the '60s — when campus militants, as they were called, threw Molotov cocktails at buildings — and people. Mostly, those "militants" were protesting for something (i.e., civil rights) or against something (the war in Vietnam). Sometimes, people got hurt. Occasionally (but, really, not that often) people were killed.

But it was never as blatant, as cold–bloodedly deliberate as the slaying of James Foley.

We need a word for these ISIS people. Judging by their behavior, people is far too generous, but there are those who would object if they were called animals, which is much closer to the truth. Do we need a new word? I'm not so sure. I think it would be appropriate to call them 21st–century Nazis. In the '40s, if someone said the word Nazi, you knew precisely what it meant.

Like the 20th–century Nazis, these people cannot be appeased. They are intent upon killing Americans. They said they would execute more Americans — and all they're looking for is an excuse. They asked for $132 million for Foley, then, when they were told that time would be needed to raise the money, they stopped communicating altogether.

They weren't interested in the money. They already control the oilfields in Iraq and Syria as well as all the sources of revenue in the larger cities. All the request for time to raise such a huge sum did was take away an excuse to kill an American, but they had another one ready. They blamed the pin–prick airstrikes and warned that, if they continue, more Americans will die. Obama said they would continue.

Do you doubt that they will make good their threat? I don't. Not for a second. They clearly want to kill Americans — and they want Americans to see them killing Americans.

It was naive for anyone to believe that the war on terror was over. Now, I fear, it will be deadly.

Do you believe that, somehow, ISIS will fail because evil always fails? The Nazis didn't fail. They were beaten by the Allies. It is the only way to deal with this kind of people. I regret having to say that because it contradicts the way I was brought up. But as long as these people exist, they are a deadly threat to us and our modern allies. Our friends in Europe should be especially concerned, being as close to ISIS as they are, geographically.

A few months ago, we observed the 70th anniversary of D–Day, the event that marked the turning point of World War II. A sustained effort is needed now if we are to rid the world of the menace that threatens us today.

We cannot delude ourselves into thinking it is over until it really is.

On Your Own

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"You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging
For your next meal.

"How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?"

Bob Dylan
Like a Rolling Stone

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In less than a year, Bob Dylan will be 70 years old.

That's probably hard to comprehend for a lot of folks who can remember the lanky twenty–something fellow who burst onto the music scene in the early 1960s and composed songs that became anthems for social and political movements in America, a seemingly hesitant troubadour of unrest.

But those ballads may be due for a comeback, and, in the years to come, the twilight of Dylan's career may be remembered as a revival of the songs he wrote when his career was dawning half a century earlier.

I say that because, with each passing day, I get a greater sense of a growing unease and frustration. The middle class is being squeezed out of existence. People with college degrees, even advanced college degrees, have been out of work for months, even years. Many are losing the unemployment benefits that have kept them going — and with them, they are losing their faith in the future and in their leaders.

Speaking of unemployment benefits, I heard some people speaking optimistically recently about the fact that initial unemployment claims were below expectations for the first time in four weeks.

But Jeffry Bartash of MarketWatch quoted Brian Levitt of OppenheimerFunds, who wisely warned that the number of new claims (473,000) is "still an elevated number."

No kidding.

"Nevertheless," wrote Bartash, "investors welcomed the news and U.S. stocks rose modestly in early Thursday trades."

What do you suppose is the message that is being received by long–term unemployed Americans and those who are partially employed or "underemployed?"

Do you think it could be that, as long as you have deep pockets, deep enough to invest in stocks — and political campaigns — you won't be abandoned by your government, but if you're an individual who has worked hard for years to feed his family and keep a roof over the heads of his spouse and children, but you lose your job, not because of anything you've done but because of the mistakes of the higher–ups, then you're not even close to being too big to fail — and your government will throw you under the bus just to show that it can pinch pennies?

"[T]here are well over 14 million Americans without a paying job," writes Mortimer Zuckerman of U.S. News & World Report, "so the level of discontent is very high. Just how are they going to regain control of their lives?"

I've heard a lot of people worrying about Barack Obama's plunging job approval numbers. And, I'll grant you, those numbers are alarming, especially when you compare them to the incredible approval numbers that accompanied him into office (when, if you want to be technical about it, there was nothing, other than rhetoric, of which to approve or disapprove) or some of the numbers of his predecessors.

For example, Gallup currently has Obama's approval rating at 43% and his disapproval rating at 50%. That was the same approval rating George H.W. Bush got in a Gallup poll about two weeks after he lost the presidency to Bill Clinton in 1992. It is also the same approval rating Ronald Reagan — the same Ronald Reagan who is now revered as a conservative icon — had when his party suffered setbacks in the 1982 midterm elections.

And it's lower than any of the job approval findings for Clinton right around the time of the 1994 midterm elections — when Clinton's party lost control of both chambers of Congress.

Obama and the Democrats insist that things are better than folks think, a proposition that seems to me to be so fantastic that it belongs in a Monty Python movie. When Joe Biden, for example, talks about how great the economy is doing, he sounds to me like the Black Knight in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," swearing that his injuries, which left him with no limbs, were merely "flesh wounds."

Maybe they are right — it's a tough point to prove or disprove, with much of it relying on the largely unverifiable claim that jobs have been "saved," which has an almost evangelical ring to it — but, if they are right, the president's got a helluva publicity problem.

And it is a perception to which Obama himself appears to contribute willingly, sometimes eagerly. There is a growing disconnect between this president and the people that Obama is unable — or unwilling — to see. Sometimes — the mosque near ground zero controversy is a good, and timely, example — he seems determined to take a position that is practically guaranteed to antagonize the most people.

To be fair, though — even though it is part of the overall picture — that doesn't specifically address the economy in general or joblessness in particular. But, for that matter, neither did Obama last Labor Day.

It seemed like the ideal time to encourage — or even inspire — the jobless, maybe talk about what he was doing to promote job creation. At the very least, it was a time to reassure the unemployed that he hadn't forgotten that they were hurting and he was doing everything he could to relieve their pain.

But he never did. His focus on that day was on campaigning for health care reform and preparing to address the school children of America.

When you narrow it down to that, however, it's more of the same. He claims that he's been working on and promoting job creation since Day One, but many of the unemployed have seen no evidence of it. They don't know if he's arrogant or flippant or if he takes it for granted that the voters will never turn on him, that they will always adore him as they did in 2008.

But, whichever it is, he's living in a fool's paradise.

You can be sure that the voters do know that, nationally, unemployment is at 9.6%. It was about three percentage points lower when Obama was elected.

Even those voters who are the least knowledgeable of economic theories can tell you that doesn't sound like progress, never mind those who have gone farther in their economic studies than the principles of supply and demand.

Yet I continue to hear the same excuses I've heard since 2008 — this is Bush's fault and all criticism of Obama is based in racism.

The voters can't hold Obama responsible this year. He isn't on the ballot. But more than one–third of the Senate seats, all of the House seats and three–quarters of the governorships are on the ballot. And many of those jobs are currently held by Democrats.

It's no surprise that Congress gets low marks from voters. Congress always gets low marks from voters. But who is affected the most really depends on which party is in the majority. And, with so many Democrats holding congressional offices, a big thumbs down from the voters in 2010 is an expression of dissatisfaction with the Democrats that seems likely to be transferred to the ballot box.

It's really pretty simple, isn't it?

So, Democrats, let me ask you this. How's that working for you?

I can tell you what the latest congressional approval ratings say:

• Let's start with the best news for Congress. It comes from the Associated Press/GfK, which reports that 24% of respondents approve of the job Congress is doing. That's a pretty significant drop, though, from the response to polls three and four months after Obama took the oath of office — when nearly 40% of respondents approved of the job Congress was doing.
  
  That might not sound great, especially compared to the 60s Obama was receiving around the same time — but, in the context of the history of this kind of polling, you can take my word for it. It's pretty impressive.


• CBS News chose to emphasize the fact that, in its recent poll, Obama's job aproval rating went up slightly.
  
  But, while you had to hunt for it, the poll found that only 22% approved of Congress' job performance.


• The NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey has been polling cell phone users only.
  
  The fact that those respondents are all cell phone users suggests that they are among the most receptive to emerging technology, but they haven't been as receptive to Congress, with only 21% approving of the job Congress was doing.
  
  And these surveys have consistently shown that the cell phone users are unimpressed with the direction of the country. Currently, the survey reports, 58% believe the country is going in the wrong direction.


• Gallup's findings were even more discouraging, in part because Gallup's surveys usually are the most reliable.
  
  And Gallup found that only 19% approved of the job Congress was doing.
  
  Like Associated Press/GfK, Gallup found much higher approval ratings for Congress in the spring of 2009, but that approval has declined steadily ever since.
  
  On the plus side, 19% approval represents an improvement over Gallup's finding from last spring. But it shows virtually no change in Congress' rating this summer.

I guess the bottom line is that, if you're out of work, you're on your own. Brush up on your Dylan.

If you've got a job, do whatever you have to do to keep it — even if you hate it.

And if you're a congressional Democrat running for re–election, you've got plenty of problems. Many of those Democrats, I am convinced, will not be successful in November. Make room in the unemployment line.

In the meantime, maybe Obama will say something — anything — about joblessness on Labor Day.

But don't hold your breath.

The Shifting Political Tides

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A timeless reminder of the wages of arrogance.

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I don't know how much of a role the results of the special election in Massachusetts played in this, but The Rothenberg Political Report moved the Senate seat of incumbent Democrat Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas to its "Lean Takeover" category today.

"Given the bent of Independent voters (in the recent Massachusetts special election but also in national surveys), we are increasingly doubtful that the Arkansas Democratic Senator can win another term," says the Report. It gives Lincoln some wiggle room and notes that things can change. We don't yet know the identity of Lincoln's Republican challenger, it observes, and the economy could improve.

"Still, the burden of proof has shifted in our minds, from requiring Republicans to prove that they can defeat Lincoln to requiring Lincoln to show she can win re–election."

Well, I guess that confirms something I wrote yesterday, only a few hours after Scott Brown claimed victory in the special election:

"I'm inclined to think that yesterday's election changes America's political landscape as indisputably as the use of nuclear weapons against Japan changed the world in 1945," I wrote. "Our political world today is not what it was yesterday."

I still believe that, but I don't think a consensus has been reached yet about what this really means. But The Rothenberg Political Report touches on an important part.

It doesn't mention the political world that existed a year ago, when Obama had just taken the oath of office and enjoyed, according to Gallup, a 68% approval rating. In those heady days for Democrats, the skies were blue and so was the political terrain. But things are far different today. Obama's approval rating hovers around 50%, and Democrats have lost the governorships of two states and the Senate seat that was held for nearly five decades by the liberal lion, Ted Kennedy.

The editorial writers at the New York Times, for example, insist that the Massachusetts election was not a verdict on Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, the editorial writers at the Chicago Tribune, while never mentioning the special election, seem to be making implications based on the results in their editorial today. The Tribune, it should be said, is a conservative newspaper, but it broke a 161–year–old tradition when it endorsed Obama in 2008.

And that, I suppose, frees the Tribune to opine about Obama whenever it likes. And however it likes.

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"In his book 'The Audacity of Hope,' Barack Obama had the insight to explain much of his political appeal. 'I serve as a blank screen,' he wrote, 'on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.' That lack of definition proved a big asset in the presidential campaign, allowing him to attract support from liberals who saw Hillary Rodham Clinton as too hawkish, moderates who saw her as too liberal, and independents who saw John McCain as too conservative and too partisan.

"But in his first year in office, the president has had to fill in that screen. And many Americans are disillusioned with the picture that has emerged."

Chicago Tribune

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Meanwhile, the San Diego Union–Tribune thinks what happened on the East Coast could well happen on the West Coast.

"Scott Brown's decisive and historic victory in the U.S. Senate race in the Bay State could be a bad sign for Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer's re–election chances in November," the paper says.

The Union–Tribune, like the city it serves, is politically conservative — so what it says about Boxer should be taken with a grain of salt. But, given the high unemployment and the serious budget problems facing California, it is not inappropriate to think that anti–incumbent fervor could affect Boxer's chances in the fall. Those independent voters get cranky when times are tough, and they lash out at incumbents, whoever they are.

In the past, U.S. News & World Report has had a more conservative reputation than other newsmagazines with which it has been in competition. So it's probably a good idea to keep that in mind when you read anything from that publication.

Even so, Mary Kate Cary says the election in Massachusetts should guide Democrats to the political center. I gather that she is speaking of Democrats in general, not merely the Democrats in Massachusetts. At this point, of course, no one can say whether Democrats like Lincoln or Boxer will run into trouble in November, but if last fall's elections in New Jersey and Virginia — and Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts — tell Democrats anything, it is that there is widespread dissatisfaction in America today. It is not unreasonable to think that it could stretch from sea to shining sea.

Will that lead to a Republican takeover in one or both of the houses of Congress? I don't know, but I presume Cary uses the Clinton presidency as her model for Obama to follow, as many observers are doing. Such thoughts don't necessarily concede control of Congress to the Republicans, but they do imply that Democrats are expected to be dealt a setback in November, as often happens to the party in power in midterm elections. Sometimes the setback is significant. Other times, not so much.

If that happens — and, personally, I believe the Democrats will sustain significant losses this year — Obama, like Clinton, may have to devote most of his time and energy to bolstering his case for a second term. I don't know if the Democrats will lose enough seats to lose their majority status, but I do believe they will lose seats in both houses.

And, in that case, the demands of survival mode will dictate that a more moderate approach will be necessary. It has happened before. In the historical context, fairly recently, in fact.

Think back to before the days of impeachment and the Lewinsky scandal — when the Republicans overwhelmed the Democrats in 1994 and captured control of both houses of Congress. After the election, Bill Clinton moved more to the center, which was the ideological territory he staked out for himself in the 1992 campaign. He seemed to abandon it after taking the oath of office in 1993. After losing majority status in 1994, his party didn't retake Congress for more than 10 years, but Clinton was re–elected in 1996 after repositioning himself.

Perhaps, if Obama moves more to the center now and refocuses his attention on the things people are saying that they are concerned about — like joblessness — he may be able to minimize his party's losses in November.

It's worth a try.

Ronald Reagan and the Electoral Legacy of 1980

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It's ironic, in many ways and on many levels, that the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 served as the subject of the final installment in Kenneth Walsh's series in U.S. News & World Report on the most consequential presidential elections in American history.

• In the current context, the unemployment and inflation numbers may not look as scary today as they did in 1980 (although $4/gallon gas certainly would have horrified voters 30 years ago — when gas was selling for about $1.20/gallon), but the underlying problems in the financial system pose a greater, more lasting threat to the American economy than the painful (but temporary) late-1970s adjustment from a wartime economy to a peacetime one that was more responsible for the country's economic woes than was ever acknowledged in the heat of the political battle in 1980.
  
  However, today, as it was in 1980, Americans must come to terms with the financial reality and decide what must be done. In 1980, Americans decided to follow Reagan's proposals and abandon many of the New Deal programs that had been responsible for reviving and modernizing the American economy half a century earlier but had come to be regarded as outmoded by a majority of voters.


• Twenty years after leaving the presidency (and four years after his death), Reagan remains an admired figure in Republican politics.
  
  During the presidential primaries last spring, Republicans debated each other endlessly over who would be the "new" Reagan — as if that had become the latest question in the unofficial litmus test for being nominated by the Republican Party ["1) Are you against abortion? 2) Are you for gun rights? 3) Are you against gay marriage? 4) Do you have Reaganesque qualities?"].
  
  The ironic part of all that is that Reagan was considered too extreme by many observers during the 1980 campaign. And, as admired as he became during his eight years in the White House and as revered as he has been in the two decades since he left Washington, there are still people who believe that his policies were too extreme — and that his aversion to regulation is at least in part responsible for the economic mess in which we find ourselves today.


• In spite of criticism, Walsh writes, Reagan "pursued the presidency with a special brand of good cheer and optimism that impressed the American people."
  
  And the American people responded.
  
  The part that I find ironic — taken in today's context — is that I don't see much cheer or optimism emanating from either side this year.
  
  In spite of his right-wing views, Reagan managed to reassure people, even those who disagreed with him. And that included many in the Republican Party.
  
  There was perhaps no greater example of Reagan's reassuring quality during the 1980 campaign than his performance in his one and only debate with President Carter a week before the election. That was the debate in which Reagan asked viewers if they were better off than they had been four years earlier.
  
  (It was also the debate in which Carter — unfortunately for him — claimed to have had a discussion about the task of controlling nuclear weapons with his young daughter.)

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As I write this, it remains unclear whether tonight's debate between Barack Obama and John McCain will go forward as scheduled.

But, if nothing else, the election of 1980 symbolizes the importance of presidential debates in the formation of the relationship between a would-be president and the electorate.

Even in 1980, when presidential debates were still an infrequent occurrence in American politics, voters overcame their reservations about Reagan as they watched the debate — and rewarded him a week later with a landslide victory over an incumbent president.

The incumbent won't be on the ballot in 2008, but many Americans still need a nudge to push them from the fence on which they're sitting.

Whether the voters are trying to overcome whatever objections they may have to voting for a black man or a 72-year-old white man with a woman as his running mate, the debates can help provide that nudge.

The debate can even help the millions of Hillary Clinton supporters who remain torn between supporting a ticket that comes closest to sharing their views (in spite of the presence of a nominee many Clinton supporters still see as smug and elitist) or a ticket that has a candidate who shares their gender but not their philosophy.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about Michael Barone's article in National Review about Gerald Ford's near-comeback against Carter in the 1976 campaign.

Barone wrote that 1976 resembled 2008 in many ways — and one of the similarities was how many "gaps" there were in the public's knowledge about the candidates. Ford's comeback was made possible, in part, by his campaign's efforts to educate the public and re-define both candidates' images.

Likewise, there are gaps in the public's knowledge of McCain and Obama. The debates — starting tonight — provide both candidates with the opportunity to fill in those gaps.

The Burden of Great Expectations

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By almost any yardstick one chooses, the 1964 election was a lopsided landslide. President Lyndon Johnson, who ascended to the office after the assassination of John F. Kennedy less than a year earlier, hammered Barry Goldwater in an election that was never in any doubt.

In some ways, the victory wasn't as complete as some — for example, both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan carried 49 states when they ran as incumbents, whereas Johnson carried 44.

But more than 61% of the voters cast their ballots for Johnson, and that's a figure that no one, not even Johnson's idol, Franklin D. Roosevelt, has matched or exceeded.

The 1964 election is the subject of Kenneth Walsh's next-to-last article in his U.S. News & World Report series on the most consequential elections in American history.

By invoking the dead president's memory, Johnson successfully sought the passage of a social agenda that exceeded what Kennedy had hoped to achieve in his lifetime, using skills from his Senate majority leader days to get a mountain of legislation passed.

The legislation wasn't well received in the South, and Johnson himself conceded that the Democrats had handed domination of the region to the Republicans for a generation or more after passing bills like the civil rights act and the voting rights act.

At least, that's what the legend tells us.

If it is mostly legendary, it had the virtue of being accurate. In the 44 years since that time, only one Democrat — Jimmy Carter of Georgia, in 1976 — has carried more than four states in the Old South.

Of course, Johnson's standing in the South (and, consequently, the Democratic Party's standing in the South) wasn't helped by Johnson's efforts to support Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement.

Without the landmark legislation that Johnson promoted, this year's nomination of Barack Obama might not have happened. So, in many ways, it's appropriate that Obama should be nominated not only on the 45th anniversary of King's "I Have a Dream" speech — but also the day after what would have been Johnson's 100th birthday.

For Obama's nomination is as much Johnson's legacy as it is King's.

In the four years that followed the historic landslide of 1964, Johnson's popularity declined along with the popularity of the Vietnam War. By March of 1968, Johnson had had enough and withdrew as a candidate for the Democratic nomination, leaving the war to his successor.

"His failure to honestly discuss how badly the war was going and to reveal the true costs of the conflict led to a credibility gap with voters," Walsh writes. "He also badly underestimated the determination of the enemy to win."

Johnson's administration achieved some remarkable things on the domestic side, but, as Walsh observes, "the momentum behind Johnson's programs stalled under the weight of the war's unpopularity and cost."

And, in the end, the president who wanted to be remembered for his domestic achievements (and who may yet be recognized for that part of his record) instead found waiting for him an ugly little war on the other side of the world that consumed him.

The Election of 1912

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Last week, Kenneth Walsh wrote, in his U.S. News & World Report series on consequential elections, about Theodore Roosevelt's sweeping triumph of 1904.

I wrote, in this blog, that I was never under the impression that Roosevelt's victory was ever in doubt in 1904 — and that I thought the most consequential presidential election in which Roosevelt was involved was the election of 1912, when Roosevelt broke with his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, and the Republican Party to serve as the nominee of the Progressive (or "Bull Moose") Party.

The Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson, benefited from the GOP's disarray and won the election. Four years later, in one of the closest presidential elections in our history, Wilson became only the second Democrat to win two consecutive terms in the White House.

(In case you're wondering, there have been five Democrats who were elected to two terms — or more — as president — Wilson, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Bill Clinton. Cleveland is the only one who did not serve his terms consecutively.)

Last week, I expressed the hope that the election of 1912 would be examined in the series before it concludes at the end of this month.

Well, perhaps Mr. Walsh reads my blog because the election of 1912, which I mentioned last week, is the subject of Walsh's article in this week's U.S. News & World Report.

I'm gratified, of course. I think the 1912 election has a lot to teach us about the evolution of modern presidential politics.

But, in a few hours, Sarah Palin will become the second woman to officially accept a spot on a major party's national ticket.

I guess I was hoping that Walsh would take this opportunity to write about the 1984 election and Geraldine Ferraro's role in it.

Of course, I don't know if Walsh considers the 1984 election one of the most consequential in our nation's history. Ferraro and the Democrats lost 49 states to Ronald Reagan and the Republicans that year, but as I established last week, it is clear that an election doesn't need to be a cliffhanger to be considered consequential.

The election Walsh wrote about last week — 1904 — was, in virtually every way, a landslide. Margin apparently plays no role in whether an election qualifies for Walsh's series.

So, if the 1984 election is included in Walsh's series — and I'm inclined to think that the election featuring the first female nominee for vice president was, indeed, consequential, even if it was a landslide — I think it could have been helpful and informative to reflect on the impact of the first female vice presidential candidate's acceptance speech on the night that the second female vice presidential candidate gives her acceptance speech.

It was an opportunity to examine what has changed in this country in 24 years — and what still needs to be changed.

But that's only a modest complaint.

My father's father was a college professor, and he was a great admirer of Wilson.

Wilson, I believe, was the only U.S. president who was ever president of a college or university (he was the president of Princeton University).

My grandfather was a very young man when Wilson was elected president, and he was inspired by Wilson's example. With his devotion to education, I have no trouble understanding how my grandfather would be inspired by the candidacy of an intellectual like Wilson.

"Wilson was one of the most brilliant and cerebral of America's presidents," Walsh writes. "He was also one of the most inflexible, which in the end kept him from achieving his most ambitious goal — the creation of the League of Nations."

I was only 6 years old when my grandfather died, and I have no memory of anything he ever said about Wilson. But my grandmother spoke of his admiration for Wilson often. So has my father.

I suspect, from what I've heard, that it was a great disappointment to my grandfather and many of Wilson's admirers — just as it was a disappointment to Wilson himself — that the League of Nations never lived up to the promise he believed it held — perhaps because it lacked the support from the United States' Congress that the League's successor, the United Nations, enjoyed three decades later.

As president, Wilson could not overrule the Congress, although he campaigned hard for the support of the American people in this matter — so hard, in fact, that the stress may have brought on the stroke that seriously debilitated him for the rest of his presidency and life.

And I suppose that's the legacy of Woodrow Wilson.

He sacrificed himself for a cause he believed in, as surely as the young men who died fighting the "war to end all wars."

T.R. and the Election of 1904

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Kenneth Walsh has brought his series of articles on the consequential presidential elections in American history into the 20th century with this week's installment on the 1904 election in U.S. News & World Report.

But, while I don't dispute that Theodore Roosevelt — who was elected to a full four-year term in 1904 — "expanded the power of the presidency and demonstrated the power of the 'bully pulpit,'" I never really felt the election of 1904 had all that much to do with it.

Roosevelt became president less than a year after becoming vice president, when the incumbent, William McKinley, was assassinated.

And Roosevelt was president for more than three years before the 1904 election was held. During that time, Roosevelt came up with a compromise that ended a coal strike that could have severely disrupted the fuel supply for homes and apartments in just about every major city in 1902.

For turn-of-the-century America, that would be the equivalent of a politician resolving the problem of high gas prices today.

Roosevelt established himself as an activist president long before he appeared on a ballot to seek a full term on his own.

So, in my opinion, the election of 1904 more or less served as confirmation of public approval of Roosevelt's record as president.

And, to be fair, Walsh acknowledges that there is truth in that. "The campaign of 1904, when Roosevelt sought the presidency in his own right, was a referendum on him and his policies," Walsh writes.

As you can see from the graphic above, Roosevelt received 56% of the popular vote and just about every electoral vote outside the South (he was competitive in a few of the region's border states, but the Democratic Party still controlled the South at the turn of the century).

It's also worth pointing out that, while the Western states were reliably Republican in the last half of the 20th century, they were not that secure for the GOP in the first half of the 20th century. Neither McKinley in 1900 nor William Howard Taft in 1908 swept the Western states the way Roosevelt did in 1904.

It never seemed to me that Roosevelt's victory was ever in doubt.

Of course, it's not a requirement that an election be close for it to be considered consequential as well.

And sometimes a consequential decision enjoys wide support with the electorate. I guess I've always had the impression that a consequential election would be one in which the electorate is divided and a relative handful of voters makes a crucial decision that affects the masses — in ways that were anticipated as well as ways that were unforeseen.

Personally, I always felt that, while the 1904 election was consequential for the reasons Walsh cites, the more significant election in which Roosevelt was a candidate was the 1912 campaign.

In 1912, Roosevelt broke with the Republican Party and his hand-picked successor, Taft, and ran as the Progressive Party candidate. Democrat Woodrow Wilson took advantage of the Republicans' inability to unite and ended the GOP's 16-year hold on the White House.

And, with the exception of the two decades from 1932 to 1952, when Franklin D. Roosevelt and his last vice president, Harry Truman, occupied the White House, neither party has held presidential power for more than 12 years at a time since.

Walsh may yet write about the 1912 election in the next four weeks. But, if he doesn't, I recommend that you read what you can about it. I think it had a more significant impact on American history than the 1904 election did.

Walsh's Series Remains in the 19th Century ...

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... but the election of 1828 truly was unique.

In his latest article in U.S. News & World Report, Kenneth Walsh writes that the 1828 election, which installed Andrew Jackson into the White House, "changed the way Americans thought of the presidency."

In more ways than one.

For starters, the 1828 election was the 11th time that a president was elected. In each of the previous 10 elections, the winner came from Virginia or Massachusetts. And, frequently, one of those states provided the No. 2 vote-getter as well.

But Jackson was born in modern-day South Carolina and, in the eyes of the nation, he was the heroic leader (from his adopted home of Tennessee) who was responsible for the American victory in the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.

He was the first president who was linked to the frontier.

Jackson also received the most popular votes in 1824 — the first time that popular votes were counted — but he lost the election to John Quincy Adams, the son of a former president, in the Electoral College. Does the scenario sound familiar?

"Jackson and his supporters simmered for four years," Walsh writes. "But in 1828, they pulled out all the stops in what became, for all sides, one of the toughest and dirtiest campaigns ever, setting the precedent for future negative campaigns."

(Walsh doesn't mention it, but the 1828 election may have been responsible for making the donkey the mascot for the Democratic Party.

(Jackson's foes called him a "jackass." Jackson liked the name and used the jackass as a symbol, but it apparently died out for awhile — until renowned cartoonist Thomas Nast, who was born in Germany 12 years after the 1828 election, revived it in 1870.)

Jackson won in 1828. And the man of the people opened the White House to his supporters on Inauguration Day.

"[H]undreds of them pushed and shouted their way through the building in search of conviviality as they celebrated their hero's victory," Walsh writes (I suspect that, if he were to teach a class on presidential elections, Walsh would enjoy the lecture on this campaign the most). "Many were rough men in muddy boots who climbed on the chairs and devoured the food and drink provided by uniformed waiters."

In the history books, Jackson's first term is noteworthy for several reasons.

He established the veto as a presidential weapon. He made unprecedented use of the "spoils system." He signed the Indian Removal Act, which led to the infamous "Trail of Tears." A congressional compromise on tariffs enabled him to avoid being the first president to face the secession of one of the states.

(A personal postscript: For nearly 10 years now, whenever I think of the Jackson presidency, I am reminded of a first-season episode of "The West Wing," in which the chief of staff assigns each member of his staff to meet with a "crackpot" who normally wouldn't be given the opportunity to speak to someone from the White House about his or her special interest — as part of his "Big Block of Cheese Day."

(The name is derived from an actual event during the Jackson administration. Jackson received a 1,400-pound block of cheese as a gift and invited ordinary people to come to the White House to sample it. The event was heavily attended, and the cheese was consumed in about two hours.)

Andrew Jackson truly did change the relationship Americans have with their president.

Getting the Credit for a Two-Party System

In the latest installment in his series on consequential presidential elections, Kenneth Walsh writes, in U.S. News & World Report, that Thomas Jefferson's triumph in 1800 "confirmed the emergence of a two-party system in American politics."

It was, as Walsh observes, "the first time that power in America passed from one party to another." And it did so peacefully, as it has continued to do for two centuries.

Even though most of the Founding Fathers objected to the idea of political parties.

Including the father of the country, George Washington.

As historian Thomas Connelly tells Walsh, most of the Founders believed "parties would do more harm than good."

And, to be sure, the election of 1800 was a challenge.

The first two presidents, Washington and John Adams, were Federalists. Jefferson, who was a Democratic-Republican, had an extensive record of service to the young republic. In his 30s, he authored the Declaration of Independence. He later served as Washington's secretary of state and Adams' vice president before being elected president at the age of 57.

He sought the presidency because he disagreed with the direction of the country under Adams. The Federalist Congress had passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which Jefferson saw as a violation of both the First Amendment right to free speech and the Tenth Amendment, usurping power "reserved to the states."

Jefferson went on to serve two terms as president, during which the Louisiana Purchase more than doubled the land area of the United States. After leaving the presidency, Jefferson became the founder of the University of Virginia.

The vote in the Electoral College ended in a tie, and Jefferson had to go through 36 ballot votes in the House of Representatives before he emerged as the president-elect.

Actually, I think the election was more dramatic and had more long-lasting implications for the country than Walsh's article suggests. But I can't complain too much about Walsh's series on consequential elections. He's posted four of the 10 articles he'll post in this series, and the most recent election he's written about occurred 144 years ago.

So it's been a good history lesson, these stories he's written about how Washington and Lincoln and Jefferson became president.

But I suspect there will be a few articles about elections in the 20th century before Walsh is through.

How can there not be?

A Tale of Two Speeches

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Tonight, I've been musing a little about the funny games that history sometimes likes to play with mere mortals like us.

No, this isn't a tricky lead-in to Kenneth Walsh's latest installment in his series of articles in U.S. News & World Report about the most consequential U.S. presidential elections — although, while I'm on the subject, I do recommend this week's article, which is on George Washington's election as president in 1789.

Actually, what I'm talking about is something that anyone who is over 40 should remember — at least in part.

If you're my age or older, you probably remember both events.

I refer to Richard Nixon — who may have experienced the highest of his political highs and the lowest of his political lows on two August 8ths.

On this date in 1968, Nixon accepted the Republican nomination for president at his party's convention in Miami.

Now, being nominated for president was not a new experience for Nixon — he had been nominated in 1960. But the circumstances were different.

Nixon was part of the incumbent administration when he lost to John F. Kennedy in 1960. As such, he was required to defend and support the record of the Eisenhower administration.

Defending a record requires different skills than attacking a record. And Nixon's style was more suited for the role of attacker.

He was always a combative politician, whether he was staring down Alger Hiss early in his congressional career or challenging allegations of a secret fund in his "Checkers" speech as a vice presidential candidate.

Or fighting to keep possession of his tapes during the Watergate scandal.

By 1968, the incumbent Democrats had achieved great things domestically, but they were unpopular because of the Vietnam War. And the economy struggled at times under Lyndon Johnson.

Nixon came to Miami prepared to hold the Democrats' feet to the fire.

The question, he said in his acceptance speech, was "whether we shall continue for four more years the policies of the last five years?"

(With a few modifications, that isn't a bad model for Barack Obama to follow as he prepares his acceptance speech for later this month. It might serve to re-focus the debate.)

On that August night in 1968, when Nixon accepted the nomination and unveiled his new catch phrase, "the silent majority," he did so with the knowledge that, if he could contain George Wallace's support in the South, he had a good chance of winning the election.

And being president was the thing he coveted most in life.

With the exception of five Southern states that voted for Wallace that November, Nixon did manage to contain him enough in the South to win the election. It was another cliffhanger, just like the one Nixon lost to Kennedy in 1960.

Six years later, speaking to the nation from the Oval Office, Nixon announced that he would resign the next day.

In 1968, Nixon chastised the opposition, as a good nominee is expected to do. "When the strongest nation in the world can be tied down for four years in a war in Vietnam with no end in sight ... when the richest nation in the world can't manage its own economy ... "

Historian Theodore H. White called the speech a "return to the tested themes of the primaries," and it united the delegates on that evening, giving the Nixon-Agnew ticket some momentum heading into the fall campaign. But Nixon barely hung on to win the election, and, after taking office in January 1969, he struggled with both the war and the economy until the Watergate scandal overwhelmed his administration.

That is one of the ironic twists of the story.

In the history books, it says that Nixon resigned on August 9 — and, indeed, he did. Gerald Ford was sworn in as president that day, and the Nixons flew home to California.

For drama, Nixon's farewell to the White House staff on the morning of August 9 had no equal. Later, Nixon's son-in-law, David Eisenhower, reported believing that Nixon was about to come mentally unhinged as he lurched through a maudlin, sentimental, nationally televised speech that paid tribute to his mother ("She was a saint," Nixon told the staff) and spoke unself-consciously of a need for "good plumbers" in America (if you weren't around in those days, a little background may be useful here — "plumbers" was the name that was given to Nixon's secret goon squad that was assigned to squelch political leaks).

As a speech, the one Nixon gave on Aug. 8, 1974, announcing his intention to resign the next day, is really memorable only for what it represented — the American Constitution had emerged as dominant even over the most powerful official in the land.

Contrary to the implications of Nixon's behavior, the president was not above the law. And that means that no one is above the law.

But I have to wonder if some of Nixon's words from his 1968 acceptance speech didn't come back to haunt him, even as he announced plans to voluntarily give up the office he had desired so long.

"When the president of the United States cannot travel abroad or to any major city at home without fear of a hostile demonstration," Nixon told the GOP delegates in Miami in 1968, "then it's time for new leadership for the United States of America."

As Nixon was delivering his address in 1974, announcing that he would resign, protesters had gathered near the White House and were chanting, "Jail to the Chief."

It was, as Nixon had proclaimed six years earlier, "time for new leadership."

The 'What-Ifs' of History

For a student of American history, there may be no more compelling mind game than the "what-if" questions.

They reverberate through our nation's history, urging us to contemplate the road not taken.

Kenneth Walsh of U.S. News & World Report has begun exploring the "what-ifs" of our national political experience in weekly installments on U.S. News' web site.

Each Wednesday through September, Walsh is writing about the 10 most consequential elections in our nation's history.

The first two installments have focused on the elections that put Abraham Lincoln in the White House. In Walsh's first article, posted on July 23, he wrote about the 1860 election, in which Lincoln was first elected to the White House.

Shortly after Lincoln's election, Southern states began to secede. In what may be a classic understatement, Walsh observes, "Lincoln immediately was thrown into the cauldron of crisis."

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If that is Part I of the story, Part II follows in the July 30 article, which examines Lincoln's re-election in 1864 and how it contributed to the North's successful conclusion of the Civil War.

For Lincoln, re-election was public vindication of his war policies. It's something that might not have happened if the North hadn't defeated the South at Gettysburg in 1863.

Union victories became more numerous in 1863, "and the North's military success became the most important political development of the 1864 presidential campaign," writes Walsh.

"Perhaps most gratifying to Lincoln, the soldiers doing the fighting gave [him] a huge margin ... even though they knew that re-electing Lincoln would mean continuation of the conflict and the likelihood that many of them would be killed or wounded," Walsh writes. "But they also knew that re-electing Lincoln would virtually guarantee victory, complete with the end of slavery and the preservation of the Union, and these were their top priorities."

Walsh concludes, "In the end, Lincoln's profound legacy was created and propelled by two elections — the one in 1860, which triggered the war, and the election of 1864, which enabled Lincoln to win it."

If those two elections were the bottom two on Walsh's list, I look forward to reading about the other eight.

On the Importance of Vice Presidents

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Can you stand some more commentary on how important the choice of a vice presidential running mate is?

The latest comes from the dean of American political science, Michael Barone, co-author of the biennially published Almanac of American Politics and a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report, who writes about why vice presidents are important.

Barone, ever the political historian, cites a book about the vice presidency, Not Exactly a Crime, which was published 36 years ago — ironically, the year before Spiro Agnew resigned the vice presidency because of crimes he committed while governor of Maryland.

"[A]s we await Barack Obama's and John McCain's choices for vice president, we do so with the knowledge that vice presidents in the last five administrations have been important officers of government," Barone writes.

There have been times — important times — in our nation's history when vice presidents were chosen for just about every other reason except their competence to be the national leader.

And, in some of those cases, the fates conspired to elevate those vice presidents to the Oval Office. The nation managed to survive the far-too-frequent Andrew Johnsons and Chester Arthurs who rose to the presidency that way — and it benefited from the occasional Theodore Roosevelt.

But as Barone points out, as recently as the mid-20th century, Harry Truman had been vice president for not quite three months, and he was so out of the loop that he didn't know that Franklin Roosevelt wasn't even in Washington when Truman was summoned to the White House to be informed of FDR's death in Georgia.

And Truman was left to make perhaps the most critical decision a president has had to make — whether to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.

It wasn't until 1977 that Jimmy Carter truly modernized the role of the vice president, giving Walter Mondale a wider range of responsibilities than merely presiding over the Senate. And every vice president in the last three decades (including, as Barone points out, Dan Quayle) has become better equipped to become president if that need should arise.

This has happened because all of Carter's successors have followed his example.

It's been a good thing for the country that the vice president has played a more active role, although the last vice president to ascend to the presidency through death or resignation did so prior to Carter's presidency — when the vice presidency still amounted to little more than presiding over the Senate (as Barone rightfully points out, a "clerk's job"), going on an occasional foreign junket and representing the country at foreign funerals.

Between 1841 and 1974, the vice president became president through the death or resignation of the duly elected president nine times. That's an average of one every 14.7 years.

It hasn't happened in 34 years.

That doesn't mean it will never happen again.

In fact, I believe the odds are good that the next vice president, whether he/she is a Republican or a Democrat, will become president.

People don't usually tend to vote for a president on the basis of whether they believe the running mate will actually turn out to be president in the next four years. But I believe it's a factor that voters should seriously consider in 2008.

At the age of 72, John McCain would be the oldest man to enter the presidency. It's far from certain that he would live to be 76.

And, as the first black president, Barack Obama — whether people want to talk about it or not — would be a tempting target for a racist would-be assassin. Even a heavy security detail cannot guarantee his absolute safety.

The point to remember is simply this. The selection of a running mate is an important decision for a presidential nominee. It's really the only presidential decision he will be asked to make during the campaign.

If the selection seems to be motivated by concerns over the impact it may have on voters in a certain state or region in the general election, that's a sign that the candidate is not making the choice with the nation's best interests at heart.