Over the Line

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"I have to admit yesterday when I saw that cartoon — not much ticks me off but making fun of my girls, that'll do it."

Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas)

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I have always been an advocate of the First Amendment.

Now, I was brought up to believe in all of the freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, but the First Amendment has always been my thing. That is no surprise, I guess, given my background; ordinarily, I will come down on the side of freedom of speech and freedom of the press over just about anything else.

When I was in college, I took what amounted to an exception–free stance. I saw no circumstances in which freedom of the press or freedom of speech could justifiably be abridged. To do so, I felt, was contrary to the concept of true liberty.

As time has passed, though, my positions have modified, and I have come to believe that there are limits. Freedom of speech does not give one the right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater — to actively encourage public hysteria. There is the greater good to be considered.

And freedom of the press does not give anyone the right to publish anything. People who are in the public eye are one thing. Most of them chose to be where they are — there are exceptions, of course, but I'm not talking about people who are thrust into the spotlight through no choice of their own. I'm talking about politicians, movie stars, professional athletes. They knew — or should have known — what to expect. But usually their families are off limits.

The Washington Post crossed that line with its cartoon of Ted Cruz and his two young daughters this week.

Now, it is important to remember that there is no law that prevents a publication from running a cartoon on any topic the editor and/or the editorial board desire. There is no legal obligation for any newspaper or magazine or TV program to avoid mentioning a politician's children, but there is a moral one. It is the guideline of good taste and sound judgment, and it is a line that most news outlets, regardless of their editorial leanings, will not cross. This week the Washington Post went over the line.

One can debate, I suppose, Cruz's judgment in using his children in one of his television commercials, but the truth is that he is far from the first politician to do so. In fact, I can't recall a truly serious candidate for the presidency in my lifetime, whether he was his party's nominee or not, who did not use his family in his campaign. And I can't recall a single candidate for a lesser office, from my developmental years in Arkansas through my adult years in Oklahoma and Texas, who didn't bring forth the family during the campaign. Photo ops, TV commercials, rallies, the spouse and kids were everywhere — especially if they were photogenic.

This is the first time in my memory, however, that a candidate's children were attacked editorially for participating in that candidate's campaign advertising.

The editor of the Post tried to wriggle out of it by observing that, because Cruz had used his family in a Christmas–themed political commercial, he could understand why cartoonist Ann Telnaes thought the Post's prohibition on such depictions of a prominent politician's children had been lifted, at least in this case. He admitted failing to review the cartoon before it was published and said he disagreed with Telnaes' assessment.

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"When a politician uses his children as political props, as Ted Cruz recently did in his Christmas parody video in which his eldest daughter read (with her father's dramatic flourish) a passage of an edited Christmas classic, then I figure they are fair game."

Ann Telnaes
Washington Post cartoonist

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But the damage has been done, and the Post now acknowledges that the episode was a "gift" to the Cruz campaign, which has criticized the media for its double standard in its coverage of Democrats and Republicans. It gives him lots of ammunition to whip up the faithful in the weeks and months ahead. It may give Cruz added momentum heading into the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.

I can only imagine the outcry if Barack Obama's daughters were portrayed in an editorial cartoon as monkeys.

Pushing the Panic Button

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When I was a journalism student in college, one of my professors said something that remains with me today. "Use real quotes whenever you can," this professor said. "People like to read what other people have to say."

Unless the article is clearly a personal opinion piece, he continued, readers don't care what the reporter has to say about anything. They only want the reporter to give them an account that is as complete — and as completely neutral — as possible.

Readers are interested in opinions, of course — which goes a long way, I think, toward explaining the public's fascination with public opinion polling.

Public opinion polling is an emerging science, and I believe many (regretfully, not all, but many) of its practitioners do try to learn from mistakes, theirs and others'. Pollsters in the mid–1930s learned from the Literary Digest's mistakes when the Digest predicted that Franklin D. Roosevelt would lose his bid for re–election in 1936 (primarily car and/or home telephone owners were polled, and those were two things that only the affluent could afford during the Great Depression, so the poll was skewed ).

Pollsters learned from their experience in 1948 — when Dewey defeated Truman — that, if you decide a race is a foregone conclusion and stop polling two weeks before the election, you do so at your own peril.

That kind of stuff seems like common sense today, but there was a time when it was not obvious. I honestly believe most pollsters really do want to be right so they try to make adjustments that will improve the efficiency of their polling.

It is still important to remember that all polls are not conducted equally. You need to know who is behind a poll and whether that person or group has a reputation for leaning to one side or the other. You need to know how questions are worded — even the slightest variation can affect the results, and some pollsters do choose certain words that are likely to get the kind of response they want.

(For such people, I suppose, a good thesaurus is the most valuable professional investment they can make.)

Those are issues that have affected polling all along, but new issues always crop up. For example, American law prevents pollsters from calling phone owners who will be charged simply for answering the call so people whose only phone is a cell phone will be underrepresented — and that affects certain demographic groups (the young, the poor, etc.) more than others.

That's the thing about polling. It's a work in progress.

Personally, I tend to favor Gallup. Gallup has been around much longer, and it has more credibility than the others, more of a reputation for neutrality.

But I pay attention to the others as well. Even if they have a bias of some kind, they can still tell you things about the public mood.

Having said that, I think there are a lot of messages coming from two polls that have come out in recent days — particularly the Washington Post/ABC News poll but also the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

As usual, though, the two sides are only interested in hearing what they want to hear — or reacting (perhaps overreacting is the better word) to results that seem to jeopardize their agenda.

Well, here we are, six months before the midterm elections, and there is a lot in the Washington Post/ABC News poll to worry members of the president's party, especially those who will be on the ballot this year. After all, the Washington Post and ABC News have been friendly to the administration.

By and large, Barack Obama's agenda is the Democratic Party's agenda. That is usually the case with an incumbent president. His party is his army. It takes its marching orders from him. So, even though the president's name will not be on the ballot in the sixth year of his presidency, he still hovers over this election like a Shakespearean ghost. His approval will have a huge influence on the outcome — and, historically, sixth–year midterms have not been kind to presidents.

Dan Balz and Peyton Craighill of the Washington Post observe that Obama's current approval rating is the lowest it has been since the Post began measuring it early in his presidency — 41%. That was Harry Truman's approval rating in May 1950; that November, Truman's approval was unchanged, and his party lost 29 House seats and six Senate seats.

Truman's successor, Republican Dwight Eisenhower, is the only postwar president whose approval clearly went up between May and late October in his sixth year (from 52% to 57%), but his party lost 48 House seats and 13 Senate seats.

Since the end of World War II, there have been seven presidents (or presidential teams) who faced a sixth–year midterm. In almost every case, their approval in spring of the midterm year was higher than their approval shortly before the election in November.

And only Bill Clinton, whose approval ratings were in the 60s in his sixth–year midterm, avoided losing ground in Congress, thanks primarily to the backlash over the Republicans' attempt to remove him from office.

The Washington Post/ABC News poll indicates there are a number of areas where work needs to be done.

Balz and Craighill speculate that Obamacare will be a major issue, as it almost certainly will. A plurality in the Washington Post/ABC News poll opposes Obamacare. Nearly 60% of respondents say Obamacare is raising health care costs.

But that isn't the only thing that has Democrats pushing the panic button.

Balz and Craighill also write that "[p]essimism about the economy also persists, with more than seven in 10 describing the economy in negative terms. Public attitudes about the future of the economy are anything but rosy. Just 28 percent say they think the economy is getting better, while 36 percent say it is getting worse and 35 percent say it's staying the same."

Part of that, I am sure, has to do with the increased costs of health care, but it also has to do with the recovery, which has been as tepid as a recovery can be.

Two–thirds of the poll's respondents say the country is going in the wrong direction — an ominous conclusion for a sixth–year incumbent's constituents to reach.

Strategists for both parties are certainly keeping an eye on the 2016 races for the party nominations, which is addressed in the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. That poll found that nearly 70% of respondents don't want either Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton to be the next president.

The news in that poll was slightly better for Obama — it showed his approval rating at 44%, but that isn't very encouraging. It is still lower than Obama's rating at this point in 2010.

Perhaps we'll get a better idea of how the recovery is coming along when the latest jobless report comes out on Friday.

Spilling the Beans

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A pretty convincing case can be made that what happened 40 years ago today was what marked the beginning of the end for Richard Nixon.

Three weeks earlier, Nixon's claim to have been uninvolved in — in fact, to have been unaware of — either the planning of the Watergate burglary or its coverup took a severe (but hardly lethal) blow when his former counsel, John Dean, spent a week testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee.

Nixon's defenders insisted that it was the word of only one man against the words of everyone else. Had it remained that way, Nixon might well have weathered the storm and limped through his second term. I'm sure there would have been lingering suspicions about Nixon's guilt or innocence — but no evidence to elevate those suspicions from whispered rumors to criminal accusations.

But what happened 40 years ago today changed things.

I'm speaking of Alexander Butterfield's revelation of the existence of a White House taping system that had been recording all of Nixon's meetings and phone conversations. Butterfield was a deputy assistant to Nixon, having gotten that position through an old college friend of his, Bob Haldeman, the president's chief of staff.

(I always thought that was historically significant, but the only mention I have seen of it — other than an opinion piece that, appropriately, ran in the Washington Post a month ago — has been in the form of rather brief entries in "Today in History" type columns.)

Butterfield's job in the White House never struck me as being particularly glamorous — but his duties did differ from those of his colleagues in at least one important regard. He was responsible for maintaining the taping system, and very few people knew about that.

But everyone knew about it on this day in 1973.

Butterfield was called in to testify in public after undergoing pre–testimony questioning from the committee's staff three days earlier.

In his testimony three weeks earlier, Dean had suggested that Nixon's behavior had led him to believe conversations might have been recorded, and the committee had been following up on that in routine pre–testimony questioning of witnesses. Butterfield later said that he had decided not to voluntarily disclose the existence of the system, but he would truthfully answer any direct question that was put to him.

It turned out that Butterfield was asked a direct question in that pre–testimony session — by the counsel for the minority, Donald Sanders — and he confirmed that such a system did exist. This put him at the head of the line for witnesses who would be called the following Monday — when the chief counsel for the minority, Fred Thompson, asked him the now–famous question, "Are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?"

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Butterfield replied that, when he was working at the White House, he had been aware of the presence of listening devices and that they had been installed about three years earlier.

After describing the extent of the taping system and identifying who had knowledge of its existence, Butterfield was asked if either John Ehrlichman or John Dean would have known about it.

"It would be very unlikely," Butterfield replied. "My guess is they definitely did not know."

As I have written here before, my family was out of the country in the summer of 1973 so I do not have any firsthand knowledge of what the atmosphere was like on that Monday in July. But my guess is that, after watching extensive testimony from the former attorney general and the former counsel to the president, viewers couldn't have been enthusiastic when Butterfield, the former deputy assistant to the president, was called to testify.

He sounded like something of a nuts and bolts guy when he described his duties in the White House.

"I was in charge of administration," Butterfield told the committee, "that is to say that the staff secretary, who is the day–to–day administrator at the White House, reported directly to me. And, of course, I reported to Mr. Haldeman, as did everyone.

"I was responsible for the management and ultimate supervision for the Office of Presidential Papers and the Office of Special Files ... I was in charge of security at the White House insofar as liaison to the Secret Service and the Executive Protection Service is concerned and insofar as FBI background investigations for prospective presidential appointees is concerned."

Even after hearing a rundown on his duties, viewers had to wonder who this guy was and what he could possibly contribute to the discussion. They were about to find out.

It was a critical moment in the evolution of the Watergate scandal. Of that, there can be no doubt.

But it seems appropriate at this point to mention something.

I have heard some people complain that it is an urban myth that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters responsible for the early coverage of the scandal, brought down the Nixon presidency. I'm willing to concede that point to a certain extent.

Woodward and Bernstein alone did not bring down the Nixon presidency. It was the accumulated weight of the various investigations, like the proverbial snowball rolling downhill, that brought Nixon down — along with his own hubris and paranoia.

Woodward and Bernstein kept the story alive when virtually no one else in the Fourth Estate was willing to take the chance. Nixon, after all, enjoyed approval ratings in the upper 50s, even lower 60s, in the summer of 1972, and he wielded enormous power. No one wanted to offend him. No one wanted to challenge him. The existence of the "enemies list" was not acknowledged publicly until after Dean testified, but many in the press had long suspected that there was such a thing — if not on paper, certainly in the minds of Nixon and his minions.

By this day in 1973, plenty of questions had been raised but practically no answers had been given. In the minds of most — and in spite of mountains of apparent evidence to the contrary — it was still seen as one man's word against another's.

But when Butterfield told the Senate Watergate Committee 40 years ago today that a taping system had been recording every Oval Office meeting and conversation that involved the president, everyone knew that there was a witness, a silent witness, that would verify whether Nixon or Dean was telling the truth.

In short, it was now possible, everyone knew, to get an answer to Sen. Howard Baker's memorable question: "What did the president know and when did he know it?"

This witness was not vulnerable to accusations of faulty memory, but it could be tampered with — as America would discover in a few months.

Forty Years Since the Watergate Break-in

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"The absurdity of the idea still appalls in retrospect — the idea that there were secrets of value to anyone in the brawling, boisterous, open Democratic Party, whose appeal to the American people for so many generations had come from its air of humanity, its common vulgarity. The national Democratic Party is not a conspiracy; it is a continuing commotion, baffling to all logical, managerial–minded men. But the buggers and their superiors were insisting on penetrating what they thought must be a conspiracy. ... The conspiratorial theory of history was about to destroy its true believers."

Theodore H. White
"The Making of the President 1972"

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Even after 40 years, the burglary of the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington defies logic and understanding, just as it did at the time.

No one really knew what to make of it in 1972. By Election Day, not quite five months after the break–in, much of the country had never heard of the word Watergate. My sense is that relatively few Americans have much better understanding of it today.

And, to be fair, it was — and remains — a far–reaching, complex scandal. Some people have been studying it for 40 years, and there are still things about it that they are learning. There are still layers to be peeled away.

Of course, at the time, no one realized that the burglary was merely scratching the tip of the iceberg. The coverup had little to do with the break–in, as Robert Redford summarized in his portrayal of Bob Woodward in the Hollywood version of "All the President's Men". It was intended to keep all the other illegal activities of the president's men secret.

The coverup, which is probably seen by most as Richard Nixon's most grievous offense, had little to do with the actual break–in that occurred 40 years ago today. It was mostly about continuing to conceal all the other, more serious things that had been going on in the Nixon White House.

And, as most such conspiracies do, that one failed to meet its objective.

But, on this day in 1972, no one knew where the road would lead when Woodward, a young reporter for the Washington Post, took the first tentative steps that eventually led America to its first presidential resignation.

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Initially, the break–in wasn't considered a priority for the political writers, all of whom were busy on election–related stories. The assignment fell to Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Woodstein, as the pair became known, built the story into the most compelling domestic political story of my life. When they had done that, other newspapers began picking up their articles from the news wire, and the investigation began to gain momentum. But, in the early days, few newspapers were printing them.

The story was just too preposterous. All of Nixon's potential rivals were imploding, and it was coming down to the weakest candidate in the field, George McGovern, to carry the banner for the Democrats in the fall.

There was no obvious reason for Nixon and the Republicans to sabotage the Democrats. The Democrats appeared to be doing a dandy job of sabotaging themselves.

(To put it in proper perspective, imagine if Barack Obama's Republican opponent this year had turned out to be someone with extremely limited national appeal, even among his/her fellow Republicans — a Newt Gingrich, perhaps, or a Pat Buchanan. Even if the White House had done nothing to engineer such a nomination, it would probably seem to most observers that the president had the election locked up.)

But, as more became known about the break–in and the reasons for it, the national perception changed dramatically.

Today, Woodward and Bernstein have concluded that, contrary to the conventional wisdom that emerged in the last four decades, the coverup was not worse than the original crime.

The Nixon White House, Bernstein said, "became, to a remarkable extent, a criminal enterprise." The coverup was business as usual.

Woodward concurred. For Nixon, he said, the presidency was about retribution, and he had launched five wars for that reason: "The first against the antiwar movement, the second against the press, the third against the Democrats who threatened to take over the White House from him and deny him a second term.

"And then the fourth when there was the Watergate burglary, the coverup, the obstruction of justice. And then interestingly enough, Nixon never stopped the fifth war, which is against history, to say 'Oh, no, it really is not what it shows on the tapes and all the testimony and evidence.' "

In a damning indictment of modern journalism students, Dan Zak wrote in the Washington Post in April that Woodward and Bernstein are skeptical that aspiring journalists could uncover something like Watergate today.

A big part of the problem is their misplaced faith in the internet, according to Woodward, who was asked to read papers by journalism students at Yale on investigating a Watergate in the digital age and then speak to the students via speakerphone.

Woodward said he "came as close as I ever have to having an aneurysm, because the students wrote that, 'Oh, you would just use the Internet and you'd go to 'Nixon's secret fund' and it would be there.' "

Woodward tried to explain to the students how naive that is.

But that is a long and, in many ways, separate discussion that would all but surely distract us from the subject at hand if we dwelt on it too long.

The Nixonian White House was adept at legal double talk, which prolonged the investigation in the 1970s. Just about everyone was educated in the law, political science or advertising.

If a Richard Nixon occupied the Oval Office in 2012 and was involved in similar activities, my guess is he still would surround himself with people with those backgrounds, but he also would include in his inner circle people with expertise in computers.

Nixon had a truly adversarial relationship with the press, and modern media goes well beyond the traditional print media. It includes things that were still evolving in Nixon's day (television) and things that were not yet conceived (the internet, which, by extension, includes things like blogs).

The actual Nixon was concerned almost exclusively with the print media. His hypothetical 21st century equivalent would have had far more to worry about.

Even Nixon's critics would have acknowledged, if asked, in 1972 that he was an intelligent man — his greatest flaw, most people have agreed, was his deep insecurity — and he would have been smart enough to surround himself with experts in the dominant news delivery system of the time.

My take on it is this: The Watergate scandal that began 40 years ago today was, ultimately, a triumph both for the fundamentals of good, solid journalism in its role as public watchdog and for the relatively smooth operation of the American system.

It all worked pretty much as the Founding Fathers intended.

Read the book Woodward and Bernstein wrote about their investigation — "All the President's Men." Or watch the movie that was based on it.

You won't read about or see journalists as rock stars. It could hardly have been less glamorous. Woodward and Bernstein embarked on a long, arduous road in which doors were slammed in their faces, and they must have often felt as if they were at the end of a long branch and their colleagues in journalism were furiously sawing away.

Their survival was remarkable, and their work deserves to be remembered on this day.

Personally, though, I will settle for a time when every scandal that comes along does not have the suffix "–gate" added to it.

That has led to some pretty clever — and awkward — phrasings over the years.

For example, when Ronald Reagan's policy of selling arms to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages and to raise funds to support the Nicaraguan Contras was publicly revealed, I saw/heard it referred to, alternately, as Irangate or Contragate.

And when Bill Clinton's relationship with a White House intern was revealed, it was referred to by some as Zippergate.

Watergate was an important event in this nation's history — it helped to establish limits on presidential power — but it was not this nation's first presidential scandal, nor was it the last.

Before Watergate, I was a young boy, but I have no memory of any public scandal being called whatever–dome, after the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding years. Perhaps there were "–domes" in the half century between Teapot Dome and Watergate, but, if there were, they have all receded into the long shadows of ancient history.

Each scandal is different and deserves to be remembered (or forgotten) on its own merits.

When future scandals are no longer referred to as a gate, I suppose it will be a signal that our culture has grown and matured.

The Romney Report

I grew up admiring the work of the Washington Post.

The Post's investigation of the Watergate break–in and coverup inspired me to study journalism in college, work for newspapers and, ultimately, teach and advise journalism students.

But I find little to admire in Jason Horowitz's lengthy article about Mitt Romney's alleged misbehavior in high school.

To be sure, there is nothing to admire about the incident that is described in detail in Horowitz's piece. A young man was horribly — inexcusably — mistreated by a group of high school tormentors, a group of which Romney apparently was the leader.

And I feel qualified to make that assessment because I was a victim of a similar act when I was in junior high. In my case, insult was added to injury by the fact that the leader of the group had been one of my closest, most trusted friends. I don't know if Romney and the victim in 1965 were ever friends.

But what most of these cases seem to have in common is that the victim is usually perceived to be different from the attackers in some way. The only real difference, I suppose, between my attackers and the group Romney allegedly led in 1965 is Romney's group was a few years older.

But, in both cases, the acts were, as one of the participants told Horowitz, "senseless, stupid, idiotic thing[s]."

They were also the behavior of the immature — and that is something of which we all have been guilty at some time.

That isn't meant to excuse these acts. It is only meant to explain them.

Some, if not most, immature actions don't cause lasting damage. Regrettably, some do. And it is impossible to know if the victim in 1965 suffered a permanent scar. He died in 2004.

Thus, it is impossible for Romney to make amends to him.

Which brings me to my primary question: What is the point in publishing this story?

Is it to irrefutably expose the fact that what is now considered hazing and bullying went on 50 years ago as well? I thought we established that in TV shows like Happy Days and movies like "National Lampoon's Animal House."

Is it to establish that a presumptive nominee for the presidency was guilty of immature behavior in his youth? I don't really think it is a good idea to start judging presidential candidates by what they did in their teen years, do you?

Besides, Americans have been pretty lenient about that kind of stuff in the last 20 years. After all, Bill Clinton (gasp!) smoked marijuana and Barack Obama acknowledged using cocaine in their teen years. And George W. Bush struggled with alcohol (and, reportedly, other things) well beyond his teen years.

As someone who worked on the copy desk for many years, I can only conclude that the Post's editors must have figured there was some value in running this report.

But what was it?

If it could be shown that this was some kind of indicator of what turned out to be a lifelong pattern of indifference to others, that would be one thing. But evidence of such a pattern is conspicuously absent.

In fact, Horowitz's article quotes classmates of Romney's who spoke of how he matured when he met his future wife. That is not an uncommon influence. And Romney's behavior as an adult stands in stark contrast to his behavior in prep school.

This is not, after all, like 2006, when a video camera caught Virginia Sen. George Allen using an ethnic slur at a re–election campaign event, and it was established that it was representative of things he had been saying and doing for years.

Patrick Pexton, the Post's ombudsman, insists that the story "holds up to scrutiny."

I guess it did — if the objective was to blow the lid off high school hijinks.

No Republican Frontrunner

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I didn't watch Monday night's Republican debate from New Hampshire, but I've been reading a lot about it.

And I have come to the same conclusion as Michael Barone in the Washington Examiner — there is no frontrunner yet.

How could there be? I mean, this is June. The party conventions won't be held for more than a year. Primary voters won't start going to the polls for another six or seven months.

The debate, as Barone observed, "was a New Hampshire debate, but it has serious ramifications for Iowa as well."

Beyond that?

Well, I guess it can also have important repercussions throughout the party, but right now it is one small piece of a still–emerging puzzle.

Immediately, I don't think it registered with many people. A lot can — and probably will — happen between now and the first primaries and caucuses of the 2012 election cycle. This is a time when voters traditionally (and mostly silently) take the candidates' measure. Debates and straw polls have little real meaning at this point.

What matters most right now — when there are no delegates to be won — is perception, and, as Barone suggests, Romney may have the edge in that department. His "behavior," as Barone put it, was that of a frontrunner, "one with confidence and sense of command and with the adroitness to step aside from two major issue challenges."

That could be what a party that is nostalgic for the days of Ronald Reagan needs.

As I recall, "confidence and sense of command" were mostly what Reagan had going for him as the 1980 campaign began. He had been vetted against Gerald Ford in the battle for the GOP's 1976 nomination. Prior to that, he had been governor of the largest state in the nation for eight years, and he had spent decades in front of motion picture and TV cameras.

There really wasn't much left that voters didn't know about him. His challenge was to project an image of strength that would serve him beyond the primaries — which had only begun to assume their prominent role in the nomination process.

When Reagan memorably protested that "I am paying for this microphone!" at a New Hampshire debate in February 1980, it solidified his status as frontrunner for his party's nomination, and he wrapped things up quite early.

No such line appears to have emerged from the June 2011 New Hampshire debate.

There may be no frontrunner yet, either, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't legitimate news coming from the debate. Michele Bachmann, who can be something of a loose cannon, announced that she will be a candidate for the nomination.

Dana Milbank wrote in the Washington Post that she stole the show with that "bombshell."

Jackie Kucinich of USA Today said that Bachmann "emerged from the pack" with her debate performance.

I think that perception derives mostly from the fact that she made her candidacy official. Most people already suspected that she was going to run, though — why participate in a presidential debate if you aren't planning to run? — so the announcement really didn't come as a surprise.

But neither did the announcement automatically confer upon her the title of frontrunner. That, it seems to me, is still up for grabs.

From what I have read, all the participants said things that should appeal to the Republican base — which strikes me as being decidedly more conservative than it was four years ago.

I mean, when I look at the 2012 field of GOP candidates, the class of '08 appears practically centrist by comparison. That suggests, to me, that politics in America has become more polarized, not less, in the last four years — and that whoever is elected will most likely be the survivor of a tug–o–war between political extremes unlike any we have witnessed.

Unless the congressional majorities with which that president must work are made up of like–minded individuals, that doesn't seem encouraging for the passage of landmark, historic legislation.

Compromise will be harder to achieve, and economic recovery will take much longer to accomplish.

That's a gloomy forecast, I know, but these are gloomy times.

Candor in Politics

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Walter Mondale knows something about being candid with voters.

For one thing, he knows it can backfire on you. In a piece in the Washington Post, Mondale recalled that, in his acceptance speech at the 1984 Democratic convention, "I told the truth" when he promised to raise taxes.

He was ridiculed for that promise. Critics did, as Mondale writes, describe it as "exemplifying the folly of proposing tax hikes during an election" and not without justification, either. Ronald Reagan won the election, carrying every state except Mondale's home state of Minnesota.

"[B]ut I won the debate," Mondale observes. "Reagan ended up increasing taxes in 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987."

On the face of it, it does seem like a counterproductive thing to do — proposing that voters pay more in taxes. It's like any time in your life when you had to choose between something that was fun and something that was good for you.

Many more people would lose weight or quit smoking or accomplish something else equally desirable ... if only it wasn't so damn difficult.

It is not my intention to advocate or oppose Mondale's position on raising taxes in 2011 — but, rather, to agree with his observation that there are "political lessons" to be learned from his experience: "avoid generalities, and clearly link taxes to addressing concrete national needs."

It reminded me of a time when I was a young reporter fresh from college.

The newspaper where I went to work after graduation served a county that had approved, in a special election just a few months earlier, a one–year, one–cent–on–the–dollar sales tax to finance the construction of a new county jail.

The old county jail really was a cracker box — in fact, some prisoners escaped from it and were at large for a couple of days not long after I started working for the paper, reminding everyone of the need for a more secure facility.

I wasn't living there during the special election campaign, but I gathered that no one really disputed the claim that a new county jail was desperately needed. The only questions were whether this temporary sales tax would be adequate and would it be the best, most equitable way to raise the funds.

The voters decided the answer to both questions was yes and gave the proposal a big thumb's up.

It was a fair tax, same amount, applied to every purchase within the county, large or small. And it turned out to be more than sufficient to cover the cost of building a new jail.

Matter of fact, the tax raised enough money to cover the cost of the new jail in nine months. The last three months of the tax were going to be a windfall for the county.

That got some folks in the county thinking. If they could get the voters to approve a permanent one–cent–on–the–dollar tax, they could create an all–purpose fund to be used in any way that county officials saw fit.

I heard some of the early musings — at county meetings and in behind–closed–doors conversations — about creating a fund that could be used in the event of a tornado or a flood (both frequent threats in central Arkansas).

But they encountered unexpected resistance this time. At first, people were showing up at county meetings to request that funds be allocated for this project or that one, for this purpose or that one, and county officials kept reminding them that this fund was supposed to be along the lines of an emergency, all–purpose fund.

That wasn't good enough for the voters. They wanted specifics. And, when county officials wouldn't commit to specific purposes, the voters overwhelmingly rejected the proposal to make the tax permanent.

I remember how shocked the county officials were on Election Night. It had all been so easy for them only a year earlier. What went wrong?

They didn't get it then. Some of them probably never did get it.

They had been specific about a need the first time. They had been vague the second time. To the voters, it smacked of a slush fund, and they weren't going to authorize anything like that.

Things really haven't changed that much. Voters still want honesty from their leaders — however remote that prospect may seem at times.

Asking people to pay more in taxes is never a popular thing to do. But people can be a lot more reasonable than many politicians tend to think.

Try some honesty ... for a change.

2012 Is Only Nine Months Away

I guess I've always been something of an election junkie.

As far back as I can remember, I've been fascinated by political campaigns.

I was always interested in history. I guess I was drawn to the exciting stories about the birth of this nation and the decisions that shaped it along the way, but you could rightfully say that just about everything that has happened in America since the Revolutionary War has come to be because of the always–evolving democratic process.

In short, history is about America's leaders and how they carried out the will of the people. It is through a free and democratic election that the will of the people is imposed; thus, elections are the points of origin.

Much of the attention these days is on the Republican prospects for 2012 — who will win the nomination? But, at this point, I think that is still more of a popularity contest, a measure of name recognition, than anything else.

No votes have been cast, other than public opinion polls, which can be useful but have no real affect on the nominating process. No delegates, after all, are committed through the results of opinion polls — other than the polls that count, the ones on Election Day.

Until Iowa holds its caucuses and New Hampshire holds its primaries, no one is leading in either party, not even the incumbent — who, in large part because of foreign policy, may yet draw opposition from within his own party, as Jimmy Carter did in 1980.

It is only natural, I suppose, to speculate about the identities of the nominees, even if one assumes that Obama will be renominated, perhaps unchallenged.

But, at this point in the nominating process, I think it is more instructive to think about what is likely to dominate the political dialogue next year and how it might play with the voters.

I expect the economy to take center stage next year, but I don't expect much to be done about it this year. Anything that is done can only benefit Barack Obama — and Republicans clearly do not want to do anything that will strengthen Obama's hand.

They were cautious at first, unsure of how he would fare as president but conscious of the fact that his initial approval ratings were astronomical; thus, they were hesitant. As those ratings fell, Republicans were emboldened and more inclined to resist White House initiatives.

That wasn't necessarily a problem for Democrats early on. They enjoyed legislative advantages that made it possible for them to enact virtually anything they wished — but, given their disinclination for organization, they were reluctant to seize the moment during the six or seven months in 2009 when all things truly were possible.

They seemed less interested in actually governing and more interested in rationalizing and refining their excuses for why they couldn't do things instead of insisting that they would achieve them — even if it seemed impossible.

That is not leadership. That isn't vision.

It sure isn't "Yes we can." It's more like "Well, we could, but we won't." Or, perhaps, "Turns out we can't."

Democrats can argue, of course, that things are a lot more difficult once you're on the inside than they are when you're still on the outside. But that argument has a limited shelf life. It usually expires in a matter of months, not years.

The time for the Democrats to do something about the economy was between June 2009, when Al Franken's victory was certified in Minnesota, and January 2010, when Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts. But Obama dithered and so did the Democrats in Congress, and they squandered their window of opportunity.

Since Democrats no longer have the majority in the House and no longer enjoy a "filibuster–proof" majority in the Senate, any initiative that they present in 2011 is all but certain to go down in flames. Ditto anything the Republicans may propose because Obama and the Democrats will not be inclined to hand them any legislative victories, either.

Today, jobs aren't being lost at the rate they were when Obama first became president, but they aren't being created in large numbers, either. That is a stalemate that seems certain to continue — which probably suits Republicans just fine.

It doesn't let the Democrats off the hook because they haven't been making very many attempts to find some common ground. It's one thing to talk about bipartisanship when you really don't need it to accomplish your goals; it's another to sing its praises when it is the only way to achieve something.

What I'm saying is simple: I really don't expect either side to put any arrows in its quiver this year. Therefore, the records on which they will campaign are set. That campaign is under way.

It is a contentious, polarized time in American politics, a time when — I believe — voters are more likely than ever to return to their historical tendencies.

And I am very interested in Chris Cillizza's recent observations in the Washington Post. He is absolutely right when he points out that the battle for the Senate and the battle for the presidency may be decided by which party wins the same group of states.

Next year, Democrats will have to defend about two–thirds of the Senate seats that are up for election, in addition to trying to defend the White House.

What will it take to win? Which states are most likely to "flip," as the saying goes, in either battle?

Cillizza writes that there are nine states that are likely to play key roles next year.

Some are familiar battlegrounds — Ohio, Florida, Michigan. Others are less so, perhaps because they are smaller (but still potentially significant in a close race) — Missouri, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico.

And there is one — Virginia — that voted for Obama in 2008, but that was only the second time in the last 15 national elections that the "Mother of Presidents" voted for a Democrat. Polls suggest Virginia is gravitating back to the Republican column.

The importance of those nine states in the battles for both the presidency and the Senate cannot be overstated.

"Of the nine states," Cillizza writes, "Obama carried seven in 2008 — losing only Arizona and Missouri — but Republicans had considerable success in several of them in 2010."

And, unless the trend is reversed, they may continue to enjoy success in them — at more than one level.

Last month, Gallup reported that Obama's approval in all nine was below 50%.

That doesn't mean Obama cannot win those states, but the states' voting histories indicate that it may be an uphill battle to win a majority of them.

And if it is a struggle for the president, it is likely to be even tougher for the members of his party who are farther down on the ballot.

Because electoral politics is frequently a "trickle down" contest, how Obama fares in these key states can influence the fortunes of the Democrats who are seeking another term or attempting to hold seats for their party — and that's going to be very important.

Democrats hold seven of the Senate seats that will be on the ballots in those states next year — Bill Nelson (Florida), Debbie Stabenow (Michigan), Claire McCaskill (Missouri), Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Herb Kohl (Wisconsin) and Jim Webb (Virginia).

Webb has already announced that he will not seek another term, and Kohl may choose not to run, either. Republican senators in Arizona and Nevada have announced they won't run in 2012.

The dynamics are different in Senate races, but they can be influenced by the president's performance.

Don't believe it? Just look at the results from November 1980, when nine Democratic senators were defeated and three open seats that were held by Democrats swung to the Republicans.

The Nuclear Debate

Sometimes I have been accused of being overly negative.

I don't believe that is true. I think I am a realist — and a political centrist. I am not strongly committed to either the right or the left — which tends to annoy some people because they are so devoted to either side — but I feel it is a rational position to take. I try to find the merits in both arguments and, when possible, bring the two sides together.

Many times, that is a tall order.

But there are times when I am hopeful that it can be achieved — maybe because the stakes are so high that a compromise is the only way to break the stalemate.

And, perhaps implausibly, I am feeling hopeful about the complex issue of energy in the 21st century — while we wait to see if the situation with the nuclear reactors in Japan will be the greatest nuclear catastrophe in this planet's history.

Once and for all, let's have a discussion about energy that is calm and reasonable and supported by documented evidence. Let's avoid calling each other names. Let's rise above smears, emotional appeals and other unseemly tactics.

Let's work together.

It is true, as Real Clear Science editor Alex Berezow writes, that there has never been, is not now and will never be an ideal energy source.

Berezow, who (according to Real Clear Science) holds a Ph.D. in microbiology, emphatically underlines his point about every other form of energy currently known to man with that conclusion: "All sources of energy pose some sort of risk or cost. Risk–free, cost–free energy is a complete myth and simply does not, and will not, exist."

Granted. But that isn't really the issue.

He also says that those who fail to "propose realistic solutions" cannot be taken seriously.

Also granted — to a degree — along with his assessment that this is "the most serious of problems."

It is precisely because it is so serious that a truly serious dialogue must begin, and both sides must listen to each other.

The anti–nuclear faction isn't going to sway the pro–nuclear faction, even if Japan starts to glow in the dark, and the pro–nukes aren't going to win over the anti–nukes under just about any circumstances.

The only way to break this impasse is to find some common ground.

Right now, Berezow is right when he argues that there are no "realistic solutions" being proposed. The anti–nukes are frightened by what they have been seeing in Japan. It is a legitimate fear.

When it subsides a bit, that side may be able to make some rational suggestions. Then, perhaps, a discussion about alternative energy sources can begin.

But, for now, the pro–nukes must resist the urge to belittle the other side.

They must be understanding when Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post writes that nuclear power looks like a "bargain with the devil."

That's certainly the way it's looking to some people today. Perhaps events that are still to come will change their minds. Perhaps not.

Let's see what happens.

The Tsunami in Japan

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If you remember the images after the tsunami that struck the day after Christmas in 2004 or after Hurricane Katrina came ashore in New Orleans the next year, there is an eerily familiar quality to the images we are seeing and eyewitness reports we are hearing today from Japan.

Events are still unfolding, of course, and it appears that the losses of lives and property do not yet reach the levels of either the tsunami or the hurricane — Hawaii seems to have been spared the brunt of it — but if you remember 2004, you will remember that the most devastating waves were the ones that spent hours traveling across the Indian Ocean, not necessarily the ones that struck near the quake zone (although those waves were pretty devastating).

Today, after the waves that weren't stopped along the way completed their journey across the Pacific Ocean, we have been hearing reports of damage in northern California and in Oregon.

And, as the waves move to the south, they will surely gather momentum.

Details will continue to emerge. The death toll is almost certain to continue to rise. Like the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, repairing the damage will be a long–term project.

Some lives have been irreparably altered.

As we wait for the entire picture to come into focus, some are pondering questions that should have been asked not too long ago — and, after what has happened, you have to wonder, is it too late to ask them now?

Matthew Daly of the Washington Post reminds readers that House Republicans voted for deep cuts in the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center budget last month.

I doubt that the Democrat–controlled Senate will go along with the idea. They seemed sure to question its wisdom before the earthquake in Japan. I have no doubt that they will reject the proposal now.

National Institute for Civil Discourse

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In nearly two months, I haven't encountered anyone who believes that what happened in Tucson, Ariz., on January 8 was not a tragedy. We all seem to agree that it was.

But that, apparently, is where the agreement ends.

Some people have insisted on blaming the shrill political dialogue from the Tea Partiers and Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh — when, in fact, there is no evidence that the gunman was motivated by them in any way.

All evidence of that link seems to be circumstantial, but the proponents of that particular theory are loathe to let it go. Consequently, plans for a National Institute for Civil Discourse were announced Monday by the University of Arizona.

Stephen Stromberg of the Washington Post observes that the idea was "[i]nspired by the debate that surrounded the shooting" and points out that former presidents from both parties, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, will be co–chairing, similar to (I presume) their service following Hurricane Katrina.

Stromberg, incidentally, wonders if a civility institute really is necessary — and he makes a legitimate point.

"Civility isn't that hard," he writes. "A fundamental rule in good opinion journalism is: Always try to consider an opponent's argument honestly, and accept that there can be principled takes on both sides of most debates, even if one seems unhinged to you. Mistrust people who are too sure of what they're saying — even if you're one of them. And, while you're doing all this, try not to compare your opponents to Stalin, Hitler or Pol Pot unless they literally are Stalin, Hitler or Pol Pot, respectively."

Stromberg is skeptical that a National Institute for Civil Discourse is what the situation calls for — and I tend to agree.

Granted, the Tea Partiers are good suspects if one is determined to find some sort of conspiracy behind the shooting in Arizona. Their rhetoric has been incendiary, and the shooting played right into the hands of those who have been warning that "this kind of thing" became inevitable when people started bringing guns to rallies and carrying signs that equated Barack Obama with socialists — let alone the ones that compared him to Hitler.

But I haven't seen a shred of evidence that the gunman paid any attention to the Tea Partiers. His act appears to have been inspired by his own twisted logic. Those closest to him have said repeatedly that he sympathized with neither the right nor the left, that he was, essentially, apolitical.

That seems to be irrelevant, though.

The Prescott (Ariz.) Daily Courier appears to have bought into the notion that whether the shooting was motivated by the political debate or not is not important. What is important is that "something good" comes from it.

As far as the Daily Courier is concerned, "something good" apparently is more bureaucracy wrapped in a package of workshops, programs, classes and research, all designed to tell people things they should have learned in grade school, if not kindergarten — Play nice. Wait your turn.

"Is it sad that it took a national tragedy and elementally named institute to remind Americans how to converse respectfully?" the paper asks. "Absolutely."

Nevertheless, it must be done — because (I suppose) the next shooting might actually be the result of the extremist rhetoric. And we must prevent that before it happens.

I suspect, though, that the target (if you'll pardon the pun) of the institute's efforts will be the right wing, not the left, which has been guilty of some extreme rhetoric of its own.

The main difference has been the right's blatant use of violent language and images. For the most part, the left has avoided that.

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But it is far from guiltless.

In fact, as long as this institute is going to be a reality, I have a good place for it to start its work — Wisconsin, where pro–union protesters have been carrying some pretty extreme signs at their rallies.

Once again, I'm with Stromberg.

"Call me a pessimistic realist," he writes, "but I'm not sure more workshops are really going to help."

Bad Craziness

When I was a teenager, I was a fan of the Doonesbury comic strip.

I recall reading a strip once in which the Hunter Thompson–inspired character, Uncle Duke, in a clearly hallucinatory state, slumped behind something and muttered, "Bad craziness," while some sort of bizarre creature hovered over where he had stood in the previous frame.

I don't remember the details — and they aren't important, anyway.

But "bad craziness" is what came to my mind when I heard that gas prices have hit a 28–month high.

That is true in spite of the fact that, as Sandy Shore of the Washington Post reports, "[O]il and gas supplies in the U.S. continue to grow and demand for gas is weak."

It's the same through–the–looking–glass sensation I get when I look at the monthly unemployment report.

Earlier this month, we were told that joblessness went down dramatically. But the number of jobs created was not enough to keep up with the growth of the working–age population.

Mathematically, it doesn't add up — until you realize that only the people who are receiving benefits are counted. People whose benefits have expired aren't being counted anymore. They may still be unemployed — and, in this economy, they probably are — but they aren't being counted.

And bureaucrats can congratulate themselves on lowering the unemployment rate — when, in fact, they have done nothing to lower the unemployment rate.

Bad craziness.

Likewise, it is bad craziness for gas prices to be at their highest level since the fall of 2008.

One would be tempted to blame the unrest in Egypt for the price spike. But, as Shore points out, gas prices have been going up since November — predating the revolt in Egypt (which, nevertheless, has contributed to the regional instability that has traders worried about disruption of production and delivery).

And how's this for news? Gregory Karp of the Chicago Tribune reports that prices "aren't likely to go down anytime soon."

Bad craziness.

The Leadership Gap

Over at the Washington Post, they describe Ruth Marcus as "[a] boots–on–the–ground columnist who reports first and opines later."

Thus, when she writes that "[t]he state of the union is ... leaderless," I feel compelled to listen to what she has to say.

She isn't really saying anything that I haven't been saying for quite awhile, but I find it refreshing when I see things like that written in papers like the Post by people like Marcus because I know their histories.

Marcus, the Post admits, leans to the left, which suggests that she supports many of the things Barack Obama does. That doesn't necessarily mean that she supports all of his policies, but she is at least sympathetic to them.

She is clearly not a Tea Partier.

"I'm becoming increasingly worried," Marcus writes, and she isn't alone. A lot of us feel that way. Some of us have felt that way for a long time.

Some of us have been fretting about this absence of leadership for quite awhile. I suppose it is encouraging, though, that some of those who have been Obama's most ardent defenders for the last couple of years are finally beginning to speak of it.

They, of course, would never be accused of racism for noting a flaw in the emperor's clothes, would they?

Then again, Marcus, as the Post says, has a history of using facts to make her points — and that kind of thing has tended to be somewhat annoying for elected officials, many of whom would prefer that their activities in office were not subjected to that kind of scrutiny.

Marcus insists on recalling that, just before he took the oath of office more than two years ago, Obama told the Post, "We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure that some of the hard decisions are made under my watch and not under somebody else's."

As she has sought to hold him to his own standard, she wonders, "[W]hat hard decisions has the president made?"

She worries — and justifiably — that the spending freeze he proposed in his State of the Union address amounts to "nibbling around the edges" and doesn't really address the problem.

"Examine the president's words, and you see nothing new or specific," Marcus writes. "It hardly constitutes bravery to call for a bipartisan Social Security fix that doesn't slash benefits. At that level of generality, who would disagree?"

Obama knew when he came into office that there were difficult choices to be made.

But — in case you didn't already know this — an article in Marcus' Post by writer Peter Wallsten suggests that quite a few difficult choices have not been made.

Wallsten observes that Obama has overseen a "makeover" of his White House staff that is "designed to help him keep a sharp focus on economic issues heading into his 2012 reelection campaign."

It ought to bother Americans to know that others have to keep their president focused on what just about everyone has known all along was the most pressing issue. For that matter, it ought to bother Americans to know that their president has to be managed or handled in any way.

Wallsten calls it "Obama 2.0" — that's a joke, I say a joke, son, but, like any good joke, it has a lot of truth (a lot of unpleasant truth) behind it that Obama cannot afford to ignore.

Obama, with his golden tongue, may be able to persuade voters next year to let him stay in the White House for another four years, even if those voters do think that the country is going in the wrong direction, because they like him, they really like him.

But that is only part of his electoral challenge in 2012 — and how successful he will be will depend to a large extent on what he accomplishes this year.

Things won't be easy for Obama this year or next. His party lost the House in last year's midterms. It is highly unlikely that Republicans will lose enough seats next year to flip control of the chamber again.

But things are going to be a lot tougher for him in the first half of his second term if his party loses the Senate next year.

More than two–thirds of the Senate seats that will be on the ballot in 2012 are currently held by Democrats. Because of the gains made by Republicans in November, they will only need to win about four of those seats to seize control of that chamber as well.

And then Obama will have to hope that his party can regain one or both of those chambers in the midterm of his second term, which has not been very favorable terrain for previous presidents.

In the meantime, he will have to lead an America in which the legislative branch is controlled by a hostile majority.

There is a strange dichotomy that settles in rather quickly when a president has been re–elected, regardless of whether his party is in the majority or the minority in Congress. At the same time that he is enjoying the pinnacle of his political power, he is well on his way to becoming a lame duck.

As each day passes, his authority will diminish even more as lawmakers realize there is progressively less of a penalty to be paid for standing up to the administration — the president is rendered almost irrelevant by the time he takes the oath of office for a second time.

If Obama is re–elected but, at the same time, the opposition seizes full control of Congress, it is hard to see how Obama will achieve anything in at least the first half of his term. Does America have that much time to squander? Can this country wait until at least 2015 for the economy to get back on track and for Americans to be put back to work?

Last November, I remember my father complaining bitterly about the Republican capture of the House. What, he asked me, did people think they were doing, putting Republicans in charge of the House again?

I felt compelled to remind him that it was not a collective decision. Americans voted only in their own districts, and many Republican gains came in districts that have traditions of voting for Republicans but voted for Democrats in either 2006 or 2008. Many of those districts were merely returning to their roots.

And some were legitimate swing districts. If you look at the histories of their representation, you can get a pretty good idea from which direction the wind was blowing.

I also felt compelled to remind him that midterm elections have always been rough for incumbent presidents. Even those rare midterms in which presidents didn't lose any ground on Capitol Hill.

Conventional wisdom holds that, once a president has been through a midterm election, he has learned the ropes and won't be likely to make the kinds of mistakes that new presidents tend to make — and will be more efficient, more effective in the next two years.

Well, that's the thinking. Is that the way it will work out this time?

The New World Order

Well, it isn't a new world order, I guess. More like a new American order.

But it figures to affect what happens in next year's presidential race.

And that is as worldly as most presidential aspirants probably care to be — at least until they can rightfully claim president–elect as their title.

But that new world order — if it is to come — is still in the future. I'm thinking about something much more immediate.

The new order of which I speak is the new Congress, in which Republicans control the House (by a pretty significant margin, too) and Democrats still hold the majority in the Senate (but by a greatly reduced margin).

This week marks the beginning of the first session of the 112th Congress, and I think it is safe to say things are going to be different in Washington in the next couple of years.

Well, I guess some things haven't changed — like the emphasis. Oh, the focus will remain on domestic policy, but I would have thought that, with unemployment entrenched above 9% and frustrated voters having just taken more than 60 House seats away from the Democrats and given them to the Republicans, job creation would be the top priority for lawmakers in both parties.

There may be some lawmakers for whom job creation really is as urgent as it is for rank–and–file Americans, but, as Paul Kane writes in the Washington Post, House Republicans are already plotting a vote to repeal health care reform next week.

Don't worry, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson counsels supporters of health care reform. Repeal ain't gonna happen, he says — to be precise, he writes, "Just to be clear, there's no earthly chance that a bill repealing the landmark health–care overhaul could make it through Congress and be signed into law" — and he makes that assessment based on two factors, one of which seems far more likely (to me) than the other.

The first premise is that the Democrat–controlled Senate would reject it, but I am skeptical of that. It presumes that Democrats will stand resolutely against any efforts to repeal health care reform — but they were seldom that united when they had the allegedly filibuster–proof majority that they openly coveted.

With the Democrats' margin in the Senate reduced to 53–47 (and two of those 53 members aren't even Democrats — technically), all the Republicans need to do is persuade four members to vote with them (fewer if any of the Democrats are absent due to illness or injury).

Why would they be more resistant to Republican pressure than they were when the numbers were more favorable to them?

There are, as I observed in November, a dozen Democratic senators from states that voted for Republicans in the 2010 midterms who must face those voters in 2012. Some probably will be re–elected; others are not so certain, at least at this point.

As we get closer to the election year and opponents emerge on not only the Republican side but the Democratic side as well, some of those Democrats might look at the polls and decide that going with the prevailing wind and keeping their jobs beats tilting at windmills — or supporting a president who hasn't been particularly supportive of them.

That leads, I suppose, to Robinson's second premise, which seems far more likely to me, although it is hard to see how, if it comes to that, it can be of much benefit to the president.

That premise is that Barack Obama will veto any repeal that passes both chambers. It requires way more support to override a veto than Republicans can come up with under present circumstances. Consequently, Obama wins by default.

But he would still be put in the position of having to rally enough Democrats to his side to prevent the veto from being overridden. How hard that would be might depend upon how the Republicans package their assault — which provision(s) of the reform bill face a legislative challenge (and GOP lawmakers are already talking about challenging individual provisions) and that sort of thing.

So I suppose Robinson is right when he says "there's no earthly chance that a bill repealing the landmark health–care overhaul could make it through Congress and be signed into law."

Republicans have made repealing health care reform the centerpiece of their agenda. It is the #1 item on this generation's "Contract With America" — in no small part because it would deny Obama a signature legislative triumph when he is running for a second term.

But perhaps the symbolism of taking a principled stand against health care reform is what matters most as Republicans try to slither their way back into power. They promised to attempt to do certain things, but it doesn't take a mathematician to see that they simply don't have the numbers to insist on anything at the moment. Thus, the attempt itself may have to suffice for now.

That could change in 2012. Congressional Republicans need to conserve the mood of 2010 and prevent the pendulum from swinging back to the left as quickly as it swung to the right.

If nothing else, though, the Republicans are orderly — and patient. They have earned a reputation for giving their presidential nominations to whoever is perceived to be next in line. They seldom, if ever, proceed to item #2 until item #1 has been achieved.

One thing leads to the next in their philosophy. It was a Republican president, after all, who popularized the "domino theory" that was as responsible as anything else for America's tragic involvement in Vietnam.

As long as I can remember, Republicans have seen things in terms of keeping that first domino from falling — because, presumably, all the other dominoes are weaker. At least, they're too weak to resist when that first domino falls.

That doesn't strike me as a very promising omen of cooperation and bipartisanship.

In the next two years, I wouldn't count on making much headway in breaking the gridlock that seems to be a permanent fixture on Capitol Hill.

Each time the old pendulum swings — no matter in which direction — gridlock seems to tighten its grip. It tends to render the system less and less responsive to the people it is supposed to serve, less and less capable of meeting the needs of the citizenry.

Gridlock is a political tool, used (and nurtured) by whichever side it benefits at the moment.

That's the reality of the new world order.

They Know What You Want

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"In a Univision interview on Monday, the president, who campaigned in 2008 by referring not to a 'Red America' or a 'Blue America' but a United States of America, urged Hispanic listeners to vote in this spirit: 'We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.' "

Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen
Washington Post

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They keep promising it to you.

They just won't give it to you.

Why? Because it's such an effective mobilization tool.

If they actually gave it to you after you gave them your vote, why, they couldn't use it anymore!

And they want to keep using it because they want to keep getting your vote.

So they keep promising it to you, speaking of it with fondness, nostalgically. For many, it is the holy grail, a relic from the past, a treasure to be pursued and, if ever captured, to be guarded.

It's like the proverbial carrot on a string ... always just out of reach. If the donkey ever gets it, he will no longer be motivated to pull the heavy wagon.

So the farmer makes sure he can't get to it.

What am I talking about?

Unity.

A sense of common purpose. That all–for–one–and–one–for–all mentality that my parents and grandparents spoke of when they recalled the nation's approach to the Great Depression and World War II.

It was what made America great, I was frequently told as a child, this sense of a common cause.

My elders saw it in the way family and friends unhesitatingly opened their arms and their doors to the jobless and the homeless during hard times.

(Maybe there are some families — some parents, some siblings — and some friends who will do that today. Not many, in my experience.)

They saw it in the way people back home eagerly took on the most mundane of projects if it could contribute in even the smallest way to the national effort to win the war.

(How many real sacrifices have the folks on the home front been asked to make for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan?)

That's what Americans crave, more than anything else. At heart, they're an optimistic lot. They desire inclusion rather than exclusion.

They want to work together to solve problems.

I believe their instinct is to focus on the things they have in common, but, for a long time now, America's leaders — in both parties — have looked for ways to drive wedges between races, generations, genders, religious faiths, sexual orientations.

And, once they have found these hot–button differences, they have exploited them relentlessly. It is always done under the hypnotic guise of unity — but the intent is division.

Divide and conquer.

"Yes we can." — Barack Obama, 2008.

"A uniter, not a divider." — George W. Bush, 2000.

"United we stand." — Ross Perot, 1992.

Many bemoan the politics of negativism and outright demonization, and, while American politics has always had an element of that, I believe the modern model emerged in 1988, when the George H.W. Bush campaign shamelessly capitalized on racial fear with its infamous "Willie Horton commercials."

But I have also believed, for a long time, that it didn't begin there.

I believe the 1988 model had its roots in the polarizing politics of Richard Nixon in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

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After the long, bitter, rancorous campaign of 1968 — the year that saw the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King — the president–elect appeared to try to reach out to a fragmented electorate with a tale from the campaign trail of spotting a teenager holding a sign that said, "Bring us together."

But Nixon won that election by cynically manipulating the electorate with his "Southern strategy" that used racial fear as a wedge issue. Nixon expanded on the theme in 1970 when he campaigned for fellow Republicans in the midterm elections, and many of the Republicans who followed him picked up the baton.

Its success in the South has been all too clear.

Thus, it was with considerable interest that I read an article in the Washington Post by two guys with impeccable Democratic credentials, Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen.

Caddell is a pollster and consultant who had considerable influence within the Carter White House. His involvement in Democratic politics goes back nearly 40 years to the insurgent George McGovern campaign. After the Carter presidency, Caddell worked for Democratic hopefuls like Gary Hart, Joe Biden and Jerry Brown.

Schoen is a pollster and political analyst who has worked for many Democratic campaigns, including Hillary Clinton's 2008 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In the Post, they marveled at "[w]hat a change two years can bring."

"President Obama's post–partisan America has disappeared," they write, "replaced by the politics of polarization, resentment and division."

They make a case with which it is hard to find fault.

Early on, they lament the disappearance of inclusion from the Obama White House.

"Obama is conducting himself in a way alarmingly reminiscent of Nixon's role in the disastrous 1970 midterm campaign," they write. "No president has been so persistently personal in his attacks as Obama throughout the fall."

And they make this remark that echoes what I have been thinking for more than 25 years — among " recent presidents," they write, only Nixon showed the "indifference to the majesty of his office" that Obama has shown.

We hoped for better than this, they write. "Instead, since taking office, [Obama] has pitted group against group for short–term political gain that is exacerbating the divisions in our country and weakening our national identity."

In the past, Caddell and Schoen have aligned themselves with the idealists. They'll have to get used to the notion that the idealists are no better than the ones they replaced.

An important first step is recognizing it.

It seems Caddell and Schoen already have taken that step.