The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia

---

---

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you must know that there was a special election in Georgia's Sixth Congressional District this week.

The district has been in Republican hands for nearly 40 years.

Democrats have been eager to anoint the new House majority that they expect after the midterm elections in 2018, and every special election to fill a vacancy that was created when President Trump tapped someone to join his administration has been billed as a preview of coming attractions. After Democrat Jon Ossoff grabbed 48% of the vote in April's so–called "jungle primary" in the Georgia Sixth, millions of Democrat dollars flowed into the district from out of state, much of it from as far away as San Francisco, for the June 20 runoff.

There were high expectations. As it was in most of last year's Republican presidential primaries, Trump has emerged the winner in every special election so far. The margins have been narrow, but close doesn't count. Democrats were hungry for a victory.

And Democrats, who have gone into each contest convinced that public resistance to Trump and the Republicans was just waiting to rise up and be counted, are sounding like the fabled boy who cried "Wolf!"

They have awfully short memories.

I don't know if Tip O'Neill was the first to say "All politics is local," but I know he used the phrase as the foundation of his campaign strategy — and he knew what he was talking about.

O'Neill, a Democrat and five–term speaker of the House, represented a House district in Massachusetts for more than 30 years and rarely faced a serious challenge when he ran for re–election. In that sense, there was nothing particularly remarkable about his re–election in 1982.

But it was only two years, after all, since Ronald Reagan's landslide victory over Jimmy Carter, and the presidency wasn't the only thing the Democrats lost. After more than a quarter of a century of being in the majority in the Senate, Democrats had lost that majority, and their majority in the House was drastically reduced — by nearly three dozen seats. To say there was a certain amount of anxiety among Democrats at that time would be an understatement.

There needn't have been.

The elections in 1982 were the midterms of Reagan's first term as president — and a clear pattern of American political history is that midterms in general almost always favor the out–of–power party. We've grown accustomed in recent times to the possibility that a president's party might not lose ground in one or both of the chambers of Congress in a midterm election, but that is a rare phenomenon that usually requires unique circumstances.

George W. Bush's Republicans, for example, benefited in 2002 from the national mood following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, winning two Senate seats and eight House seats. It was the first time in nearly 70 years that a president's party gained ground in both chambers of Congress in a midterm election.

You have to go back to the 1930s — when America was in the grip of the Great Depression — to find the previous example of a time when the president's party prospered in both chambers in a midterm election. In 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt's Democrats picked up 10 Senate seats (at a time when there were only 96 members of the Senate) and nine House seats. (FDR's midterms of 1938 and 1942 went against the president's party, and what would have been his fourth midterm, which he did not live to see, was a total disaster for his successor, Harry Truman, in 1946.)

While 9/11 is often compared to Pearl Harbor, FDR did not benefit the way Bush did 60 years later. In the 1942 midterms FDR's Democrats lost nine Senate seats and 45 House seats. In spite of what had happened in Hawaii less than a year earlier, voters were anxious about American involvement in World War II.

In the last century, a few presidents have seen their party make midterm gains in one chamber but not both.

Bill Clinton's Democrats benefited in 1998 from a national backlash against the Republicans' partisan impeachment proceedings. They neither won nor lost seats in the Senate, but they won four seats in the House.

Richard Nixon's Republicans lost 12 House seats but won two Senate seats in the midterms of 1970. There was still a certain amount of backlash against the Vietnam War and the Democrats' participation in its escalation.

In 1962 John F. Kennedy's Democrats gained ground in the Senate but lost ground in the House. The Cuban Missile Crisis, which occurred a few weeks before the election, may well have played a role.

In 1914, Woodrow Wilson's Democrats gained five seats in the Senate but lost a staggering 59 seats in the House. The Republicans were more united than they had been in 1912 — when the party's two factions, led by former Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft in the 1912 presidential election, reunited with a common purpose. They also gave themselves pats on the back for the booming economy — the result, they told the voters, of policies passed by Republicans in the previous quarter of a century.

Eight years before that, Teddy Roosevelt's Republicans gained seats in the Senate but lost seats in the House (although they retained a significant majority).

I could go on, but you get the idea, don't you? (Those were the best midterm years for incumbents in the last 110 years, and, in 2017, Democrats have seen the special elections to replace members of the House who were picked to join the Trump administration as targets of opportunity. Sort of a kickoff to the resounding rejection they are certain Republicans will receive next year. Only one real problem with that line of thinking — Republicans have won every special election this year. If you want to have a revolution, you have to have some victories.)

But back to O'Neill.

Even with that history, Democrats were edgy heading into the 1982 midterms. And O'Neill, facing a challenge from a Massachusetts lawyer whose campaign was being financed by out–of–state contributors (primarily oil interests in Oklahoma and Texas), emphasized that point in his campaign.

In November O'Neill won with 75% of the vote, and Democrats recaptured more than two dozen seats in the House, padding the majority they had held since 1955.

But going into that election year, Democrats were anxious. They had taken a beating two years earlier, and, even though O'Neill had won 15 straight congressional races, he was a consummate politician who knew all too well that Massachusetts — the only state to reject Nixon's bid for a second term in 1972 — had voted (narrowly) for Reagan in 1980 (Massachusetts voted for Reagan again in 1984). Was it a symptom of an emerging shift to the right in a state long known for its liberal politics?

Reagan's approval rating in late 1982 was hovering around 40%. It went up when the economy started roaring back to life, but that was after the midterms.

In hindsight it is easy to see the uphill climb that was facing the Republicans in 1982, but it wasn't so easy to see from ground level at the time.

O'Neill took the campaign to the voters. The people who are backing the Republican in this race, he told the voters, don't live here, but they think they can tell you what to do. And he addressed the district's kitchen–table concerns while his opponent — and his opponent's backers — spoke about more national themes.

Does that sound familiar? Democrats wanted to make the Georgia election about cultural issues. The Republicans and their candidate, Karen Handel, wanted to make it about the issues that affected the daily lives of Georgians — taxes and jobs.

On top of that, Ossoff didn't even live in the district.

It wasn't surprising that he received about the same share of the vote that he received in the first vote.

Many Democrats were fooled into believing Ossoff had a good chance to win by his showing in that first vote. The previous congressman, now–Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, was re–elected there last year with more than 61% of the vote. Ossoff already had done better than any of Price's challengers.

Except in his first election.

Price needed a runoff to win the GOP nomination when his predecessor, now–Sen. Johnny Isakson, decided to run for the Senate. After winning the runoff, Price was unopposed in the general election. He won all his re–election bids without breaking a sweat.

And that is really what is so deceptive about special elections. They are held to fill vacancies — which means there is no incumbent.

Incumbents are notoriously difficult to defeat. They have all the advantages of incumbency at their disposal. Their primary obligation is to be aware of and responsive to the needs of a typically concentrated geographical area. As long as they do that, they tend to win re–election with little trouble.

The best chance to "flip" a House district usually comes when the seat is open.

I have heard all the talk of how Handel will face another tough challenge when she seeks a full term next year, but as long as she keeps her focus on her district, I predict that she will win re–election easily.

It's the way it is.

The Day William McKinley Was Shot

---

---

"Father Abe freed me, and now I saved his successor from death, provided that bullet he got into the president don't kill him."

James Benjamin Parker

---

Forty–three men have been president of the United States. Most Americans probably can name a handful — maybe — and most of the ones they can name were president during their lifetimes — as if history didn't exist prior to their births.

(That assumes that the people with whom you are speaking can tell you who is currently president — and, frankly, you would be surprised how many people cannot. I haven't decided whether that is a blessing or a curse.)

Many Americans, of course, can name a few presidents who served before they were born — a list that usually includes George Washington and Abraham Lincoln at the very least although people can surprise you with what they know and what they don't know. If they can name Washington and Lincoln, they may also name Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt.

As some of you probably know (I wish I could say all, but I have to be realistic), those are the four faces chiseled into Mount Rushmore.

---

---

Roosevelt became president when the incumbent president, William McKinley, was shot and killed 115 years ago. In fact, McKinley was shot inside the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., on this day in 1901. His assassin shot twice. The doctors who treated McKinley were only able to retrieve one of the bullets; the other lingered in his abdomen and killed him eight days later.

Roosevelt had only been vice president for about six months when McKinley was shot. McKinley's first vice president died on the eve of McKinley's campaign for re–election, and Roosevelt, then the governor of New York, was nominated by the convention to be McKinley's running mate in 1900 — the president felt it was the delegates' decision to make, not his. Roosevelt was known to have his eye on the White House, and the vice presidency seemed like a good stepping stone for Roosevelt's own run in 1904.

Roosevelt might have been elected in '04 — unless McKinley decided to seek a third term, which, at the time, was permissible. It was only after the presidency of Roosevelt's cousin, Franklin, about 50 years later that the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to two four–year terms was ratified.

Had fate not intervened, McKinley might well have been a candidate for a third term. He was only 58 when he died — younger than many of his predecessors had been when they entered the presidency — and McKinley was already into his second term.

Polls that measure public approval of a president didn't exist at the turn of the century. They wouldn't exist, in fact, until Roosevelt's cousin was in the second term of his presidency. But if they had existed in 1900, they might well have reported solid public approval of McKinley's performance in office.

That might be a difficult conclusion to reach when one looks at the election returns from 1896, when McKinley was first elected to the presidency, and 1900, when he was re–elected. In 1896, McKinley received 51.02% of the popular vote. His share of the vote went up to 51.66% four years later. He received 60.6% of the electoral vote in 1896. That percentage went up to 65.3% in 1900.

Clearly, McKinley was popular enough to be re–elected — and by a wider margin than the one he received when he was elected. That is something Barack Obama cannot say. But on the surface it isn't as impressive as students of presidential politics might expect. See, even though America's last three presidents were re–elected by less than overwhelming popular margins — and the one before that wasn't re–elected at all — it has been commonplace historically for presidents to be re–elected by landslides.

Seen in that context, McKinley's electoral performance may not be especially eye–popping unless you keep a few things in mind. Most important, perhaps, is the fact that realigning elections as the 1896 election is frequently labeled (and which I plan to discuss in greater detail in November) are not always dramatic landslides. Sometimes they are virtually imperceptible unless you consider preceding voting patterns — and what happened in the elections that followed.

The opponent's relative strengths and weaknesses are important factors to consider, too. McKinley had to win both elections with William Jennings Bryan, one of the great orators in American history, as his foe. My guess is that McKinley was lucky to live in the pre–TV and pre–internet age. Far fewer people got to hear Bryan speak in 1896, and that almost certainly worked to his benefit.

He could have been appealing in our time. I have heard him described as open, cheery, optimistic, friendly. That generally plays well with the voters. He was not necessarily a gifted speaker, though, so it may have been a good thing for him that TV and radio played no roles in elections at the time.

When McKinley won re–election in 1900, he carried Bryan's home state of Nebraska, a traditionally Republican state that made an exception for an exceptional favorite son. Bryan was nominated by the Democrats for the presidency three times. The 1900 election was the only time he lost his home state (with the exception of an 1894 Senate race).

It is fair to assume, even though we have no polls to support this conclusion, that McKinley was a popular president on this day in 1901 when his assassin, a 28–year–old anarchist named Leon Czolgosz, fired two shots into the president's abdomen. Czolgosz was about to fire a third time when James Parker, who had been a slave as a child, reached for the gun and prevented the shot from being fired.

As it turned out the first shot struck a button and was deflected. Only the second shot struck McKinley, but it ultimately proved fatal, probably due to inadequate medical care. There was a surgeon in Buffalo who might well have saved the president, but he was performing delicate surgery in Niagara Falls. During the operation he was interrupted and told he was needed in Buffalo; he insisted he could not leave even if it was the president of the United States who needed him. It was at that point that he was told the identity of the patient.

A couple of weeks later, after McKinley had died, that surgeon saved the life of a woman who had suffered almost exactly the same wound as McKinley.

McKinley's death was quite a shock to the American public — who had been misled by unjustifiably optimistic prognoses into believing McKinley was recovering.

He was the third American president to be assassinated within 40 years — and the last to be assassinated before John F. Kennedy more than 60 years later.

Oh, and Roosevelt did win a full four–year term on his own in 1904 — but he did so as the incumbent.

The Election of 1912

---

---

A century ago today, an incumbent president was rejected by the voters.

That might be a bad omen for the incumbent president whose name is on tomorrow's ballot, but, unlike the incumbent who lost on this day in 1912, at least he doesn't have to run against a former president who is running as a third–party candidate.

(If, on the other hand, Barack Obama is re–elected tomorrow, that might open the door to another possible scenario that was suggested in print by Michael Barone the day after the third and final presidential debate two weeks ago. More on that a bit later.)

Presidential elections usually have several "third–party" candidates, but, typically, only the two major parties (which have varied in the last two centuries, but, since the time of Lincoln, the dominant parties in the United States have been the Democrats and Republicans) receive enough support to make them factors.

Most of the time, third parties are, at best, distractions — and magnets for disgruntled voters who like neither of the major–party nominees. But, occasionally, the third–party candidate wins a large share of the popular vote — and a few even manage to win a state or two.

There have been several times in U.S. history when an incumbent president was defeated in a bid for another term; obviously, such elections involve both a past and future president.

But once — and only once — a three–way race involved three credible candidates who had been — or would be — president. That was the election of 1912. Those voters went to the polls a century ago today.

The incumbent president was William Howard Taft, the hand–picked successor for Theodore Roosevelt, who did not run in 1908 because he had served nearly all of William McKinley's second term plus a full one of his own and honored a pledge he had made in 1904 not to seek another one.

Taft had been Roosevelt's secretary of War, and they had been close friends, but a rift developed between them during Taft's presidency and, by 1912, Roosevelt was the acknowledged leader of the progressive wing of the Republican Party while Taft was the leader of its conservative wing, setting the stage for a battle for the party's nomination in 1912.

Even before the presidential campaign, a deep divide within the Republican Party was clear when Republicans lost 10 Senate seats and 57 House seats in the 1910 midterm elections. The 1912 campaign for the Republican nomination merely put an exclamation point on it.

---

---

1912 was the first year that Republicans held presidential primaries, and Roosevelt was, by far, the more popular candidate among the Republicans' rank and file, winning nine of 12 primaries, most by wide margins.

But three–fourths of the state delegations were chosen in state party conventions run by the party's establishment, which strongly favored the status quo, and Taft, along with Vice President James Sherman, was renominated when Republicans convened in Chicago in June.

(Sherman's nomination wasn't the slam dunk that 21st century observers might assume. He was actually the first sitting vice president to be renominated in more than 80 years.)

Roosevelt and his followers held their own convention, and Roosevelt was nominated to run as the standard bearer for the new Progressive Party. When asked by reporters about his physical condition, the 53–year–old Roosevelt responded that he felt as strong as a "bull moose."

It was kind of an odd question, I suppose. I mean, since leaving the White House, Roosevelt had been on an African safari and had suffered no ill effects on it, but he had been stricken with malaria during the Spanish–American War so the question was relevant. From that point on, the new party was known as the Bull Moose Party.

All that sounds like a huge gift for the Democratic challenger, doesn't it? Well, since the Democrat eventually won the election, I suppose it was — except the nominee was not clear when Democrats convened in Baltimore at the end of June.

In those days, a simple majority of the delegates was not sufficient to win the Democratic nomination. The support of two–thirds was required, but no one could even get a majority until the ninth ballot.

In an ironic twist, the initial frontrunner, House Speaker Champ Clark of Missouri, was hurt when the infamous Tammany Hall political machine from New York backed his candidacy. Although it boosted Clark past the 50% mark on the ninth ballot, Tammany Hall's support had the reverse effect, earning the wrath of three–time nominee William Jennings Bryan, who had been officially neutral up to that time and was still the darling of the party's liberals despite having lost all three elections.

Denouncing Clark as the Wall Street candidate (that has a familiar sound to it, doesn't it?), Bryan threw his support behind New Jersey Gov. Woodrow Wilson, a centrist, and Wilson gradually gained momentum, finally winning the support of enough delegates to claim the nomination on the 46th ballot.

Perhaps the greatest irony of that election year was the fact that Wilson, who had been finishing second to Clark in the previous ballots, was on the brink of withdrawing and releasing his delegates to vote for someone else when the schism between Bryan and Clark occurred.

If Wilson had given up a ballot or two earlier, Clark might have won the nomination — or Bryan might have boosted the candidacy of someone else.

And the course of American history would have been altered.

It was a different time, of course. There was no internet, no television, no radio to rapidly distribute images and information; news traveled long distances by telegraph. It was relatively early in the industrialization of the United States. The railroad had opened up the West, but the automobile was still new, and commercial air travel was still many years away.

Those who thrive in our instant information era would feel wholly out of place if they could be magically transported back 100 years.

It was, as I say, a different time. Titanic sank nearly seven months earlier — man flew to the moon and back half a dozen times before his technology permitted him to probe the ocean's depths and find Titanic's remains.

It was a different political time, too. It was, in the estimation of many, progressivism's plateau. A fourth candidate for the presidency, Socialist Eugene Debs, made his fourth run for the office and received 6% of the national vote — his highest share ever of the popular vote.

A labor organizer at heart, Debs had little interest in the American electoral system, and he spoke disparagingly of the so–called "Sewer Socialists" who had made political deals to win low–level elections.

The 1912 campaign would have been one for the books if only because three men who had been or would be president were on the ballot.

But there were other things about the 1912 campaign that were significant.

For one thing, Roosevelt was the target of an assassination attempt about three weeks before the voters went to the polls.

While campaigning in Milwaukee on Oct. 14, 1912, Roosevelt was shot by a former barkeeper from New York, John Schrank.

Schrank claimed to have been visited in a dream by McKinley's ghost, who had urged him to avenge his death and pointed to a picture of Roosevelt. He apparently had been stalking Roosevelt from New Orleans to Milwaukee, where he confronted and shot the former president in his chest at a hotel where Roosevelt was to deliver a speech.

Roosevelt was not killed. The bullet struck Roosevelt's steel eyeglasses case and a 50–page copy of his speech. The ex–president concluded that, because he was not coughing up blood, he was not seriously wounded, and he proceeded to deliver his speech (which took 90 minutes).

Roosevelt's diagnosis was confirmed later by doctors, who decided that it would be more dangerous to try to remove the bullet from his chest than to leave it where it was. Roosevelt carried the bullet inside his body the rest of his life.

An attempt to assassinate a presidential candidate has been rare in American politics. Only two men (Robert Kennedy and George Wallace) have been assassination targets in the last 100 years — and no major–party presidential candidate had been similarly attacked on the campaign trail before.

(Schrank was declared insane and was sent to the Central State Mental Hospital in 1914. He died there of natural causes in 1943.)

Another thing that made 1912 different was the death of Vice President Sherman.

Sherman suffered from kidney disease — in fact, he had delivered his renomination acceptance speech against his doctors' wishes — and he died at his New York home about a week before the election.

In America's history, half a dozen vice presidents had died in office before Sherman did — including Roosevelt's predecessor, Garret Hobart, in 1899 — but no incumbent vice president has died in the century that has passed since Sherman's death, not even Harry Truman's veep, Alben Barkley, who was elected when he was 70 years old.

So, by 21st–century standards, I suppose, it would have been shocking if, say, Vice President Joe Biden had dropped dead last week.

But voters in 1912 probably weren't too shocked. Vice presidents' deaths were more common than presidential deaths in the second half of the 19th century.

Sherman's death was unique, however, in that it left President Taft without a running mate a week before the election. The president of Columbia University, Nicholas M. Butler, was designated to take Sherman's place, but Sherman's name remained on the ballot.

In the long run, I guess, it didn't matter whose name was on the ballot. The Taft–Sherman ticket ran third and received the electoral votes of only Utah and Vermont. That was not attributable exclusively to Sherman's death, but it could not have helped Taft's cause to have such uncertainty about his running mate just days before the election.

Taft's loss, however, turned out to be the Supreme Court's gain, as Claude Marx observes at RealClearPolitics.com

And now, back to Mr. Barone's observation a couple of weeks ago.

In 2008, he noted, Obama "got a higher share of the popular vote than any other Democratic nominee in history except Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson."

But most political analysts, including Barone, are convinced that, if Obama is re–elected, it will be by a considerably narrower margin. Only one president in American history, Barone observed, was re–elected by a smaller margin than the one by which he was elected originally.

That would be Wilson, who was "re–elected in 1916 by 49 to 46 percent in popular votes and 277 to 254 in the Electoral College," Barone wrote.

"If California, which then had only 13 electoral votes, had not gone for Wilson by 3,773 votes," Barone continued, "the incumbent would have lost."

Barone pointed out that Obama has not been definite about his plans for a second term.

"Presidents who get re–elected," he wrote, "usually offer second–term agendas. Obama hasn't, especially on the economy. As a re–elected president, he will be as free of constraints as Wilson was."

Just one thing stands between Obama and that second term — tomorrow's election. (And, for the record, Barone doesn't believe Obama will be re–elected. But Larry Sabato does.)

Fourth-Best President Ever?

---

---

"I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR and Lincoln — just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history."

Barack Obama
60 Minutes interview

---

My, someone certainly has a high opinion of himself and his place in American history.

I didn't watch the president's recent interview on CBS' 60 Minutes, but, apparently, in a segment that was not aired originally, he claimed that his administration's "legislative and foreign policy accomplishments" were as good or better than any other "with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR and Lincoln."

As I have said here before, I'm something of an amateur historian. I minored in history when I was in college, and I have always had an interest in the American presidency and American politics in general.

I'm also a journalist. That was my major in college, and it is the subject I am teaching now. I was trained to write and to think in Associated Press style, which constantly strives for clarity and consistency. So, when a president compares his presidency to "Johnson, FDR and Lincoln," my question is, "Which Johnson?"

The statement, you see, is imprecise. There have been two presidents named Johnson. I'm pretty sure I know which one Obama meant — Lyndon, who succeeded John Kennedy nearly 50 years ago, not Andrew, who succeeded Lincoln nearly 150 years ago.

Until the Clinton presidency, Andrew Johnson was the only president to face an impeachment trial in the Senate — where he was acquitted by a single vote. He chose not to seek a full term on his own in 1868.

A Siena College survey that was released in July 2010 rated Andrew Johnson as one of the five worst presidents in American history.

No, I'm quite sure Barack Obama did not mean to compare himself to that President Johnson. His image has undergone some changes in a century and a half, but, in recent years, he has been remembered as a "white supremacist."

I'm convinced the first black president in American history does not want to be remembered as comparable to Andrew Johnson.

Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, is almost a Lincoln–like figure for American blacks — and he was responsible for the most advancements — in housing, education, employment opportunities, voting rights, in fact rights in general — for blacks and all other underprivileged Americans.

But LBJ, as I wrote about a month ago, had the misfortune of being a president who wanted to do great things domestically (which he did) but served at a time when foreign affairs dominated.

I wrote that Obama appears likely to turn out to be LBJ in reverse — a president who first ran for the presidency because he wanted to end a war and wound up being undone by his inability to tame the economy.

In addition to teaching journalism, I have also been teaching basic writing, and one of the things I try to impress on my students is the importance of using the right word to express the right thought.

That isn't an easy thing for most people — even people who earn their livings (or who have earned their livings) as writers struggle at times to find the right word. I know I do. Most of the time, I keep a thesaurus within arm's reach whenever I sit down to write — and there are still times when I choose the wrong word.

Nor is it easy to select the right word when one is being interviewed without some notes or a TelePrompTer to help. Consequently, I do have some sympathy for Obama. I have seen many people "misspeak" (to use a word that was particularly popular during the Watergate days) in such a setting.

But this wasn't the first time Obama has been interviewed by someone. Far from it. He is no novice when it comes to being interviewed. He just has a tendency to stick his foot in his mouth when he does.

When Obama suggests that his presidency is the best in history "with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR and Lincoln," I really have to marvel at his use of the word "possible" and what it implies.

In hindsight, Obama himself might admit that it wasn't the most prudent word choice he could have made, but I believe it speaks volumes about what he really thinks of himself and his presidency.

I think he really does believe his presidency, in its first two years, accomplished more than any other president — but he will allow for the possibility that LBJ, FDR and Lincoln accomplished more.

Lincoln is kind of a no–brainer. The Siena survey listed him third, and most surveys rank Lincoln in the top three.

FDR was the top–rated president in Siena's survey, which is also kind of a no–brainer. The only president to be elected four times, he guided the country through its worst economic crisis ever and is credited with leading it through World War II even though he died a few weeks before hostilities ended in Europe.

But Siena's survey did not rank LBJ in its Top 10. Apparently, Obama holds him in much higher esteem than most historians — at least the ones who were surveyed.

They ranked Theodore Roosevelt second. Roosevelt is remembered for several achievements — trust busting, conservation, labor laws, public health and safety laws — that continue to influence American life.

T.R. was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize — but, unlike Obama, he was rewarded for an actual achievement (negotiating the resolution of the Russo–Japanese War), not merely for his potential. By his omission from Obama's statement, though, it appears the president thinks his accomplishments in his first two years were greater than Roosevelt's.

The survey listed George Washington as the fourth–best president, and that should be a no–brainer, too. He is remembered as the father of the country, its first president. Thanks to his selflessness (he declined the salary that was offered to him, preferring not to tarnish, in any way, his image as a public servant) and his insistence that the leader of the new country should not be a monarch, we call our presidents "Mr. President," not "Your Highness."

It set the tone for the last 200 years, but I can only conclude that Obama also believes his contributions to American life in his first two years as president are greater than Washington's.

The Siena survey ranked Thomas Jefferson fifth. Once again, that should be a no–brainer, shouldn't it? Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, and there are few documents in recorded history that have had the kind of influence on a culture that it has had.

Jefferson also was responsible for the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the United States at that time — and still represents roughly one–third of its land mass.

But, apparently, Obama feels his accomplishments in his first two years exceeded Jefferson's.

Sixth in Siena's survey was Jefferson's successor, James Madison. Before becoming president, he was the "Father of the Constitution." As president, he sought to continue Jefferson's policies, but he may be largely remembered for the crumbling of U.S.–British relations and the War of 1812, during which the White House, the Capitol and many other public buildings were burned.

Seventh in the rankings was Madison's successor, James Monroe, whose signature achievement probably was the Monroe Doctrine, which established the Western Hemisphere as the United States' sphere of influence and served notice to Europe that any attempt by any of its nations to interfere would be seen as an act of aggression and treated appropriately.

Ironically, America has not re–elected three consecutive presidents since Monroe's re–election in 1820. If Obama wins a second term next year, he would match Monroe's electoral achievement — but, apparently, he believes he has already bested Monroe as a president.

Siena's eighth–ranked president was Woodrow Wilson, a leader of the progressive movement. A Wilson biographer, John M. Cooper, wrote that Wilson's record of legislative achievement, which included child labor reform, the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Federal Farm Loan Act — was unmatched by any other president except FDR, and his advocacy of women's suffrage helped lead to the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

Perhaps it is subliminally, but Obama seems to think that what he did as president in 2009 and 2010 is greater than what Wilson achieved nearly a century earlier.

Ninth on the list was Harry Truman, whose low point in his approval ratings (22) was unmatched by any president until Obama's immediate predecessor, George W. Bush.

But that doesn't tell the whole story of Truman's presidency. From the day he succeeded FDR in April 1945 until he won the 1948 election, Truman did great things in spite of the fact that he had been virtually ignored by Roosevelt in his 82 days as vice president.

He knew nothing of the Manhattan Project, which gave him the weapon that he used to bring the war in the Pacific to a quick conclusion. The attitudes about his use of nuclear weapons in 1945 have changed over the years, but at the time and for years thereafter, it was believed to have saved hundreds of thousands who, it was said, would have perished in a fight–to–the–death invasion of Japan.

He had to deal with the transition from a wartime economy to a peacetime one, which always seems to be uneasy but was especially so after World War II. There were several economic conflicts that had gone unaddressed during the war years but boiled over when the war ended; Truman managed to deal with them all.

He was an advocate of the "Fair Deal," national health insurance and civil rights.

I would guess that Obama has quite a bit of respect for what Truman did as president — so much that he is clearly trying to duplicate Truman's "upset" victory in his re–election campaign in 1948. Truman won a full term largely by running against a "do–nothing Congress," and that seems to be Obama's strategy as well.

For that to work, you need a solid record of achievement to contrast with Congress'. Obama clearly believes he does, and so do his adoring supporters, but, judging from presidential approval ratings, millions are not convinced.

They are not convinced for much the same reason that the people of the late 1960s were not convinced about LBJ. They felt out of sync with their president's priorities. He was focused on domestic issues, which were (and are) important, but they were more concerned about the meat grinder of Vietnam.

In modern times, Obama's highest approval ratings have been for his handling of foreign affairs — when Americans are hurting at home, struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. They need jobs.

The Siena survey ranked Dwight Eisenhower 10th. Eisenhower earned Americans' respect when he led the Allies to victory over the Axis powers in World War II, and he presided over a country that was at peace in the world but suffering from some postwar growing pains in the 1950s.

His most lasting legacy, I suppose, is the interstate highway system — and his warning, in the final days of his presidency, against the growing influence of the "military–industrial complex."

Both continue to influence American life, but Obama thinks his achievements are equal to or greater than Eisenhower's.

Maybe they are, but that will be up to the voters to decide next year.

War and Peace

---

---

We'll be hearing a lot today about war and peace.

Mostly war, I suppose, and that is understandable. Today is, after all, the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor — the event that literally pushed the United States into World War II although one could argue that it had been getting more and more involved in the conflict in the months leading up to the attack.

It is an event that still resonates with people of my parents' generation. They were children when the attack occurred, and, although my mother has been gone for many years now, I remember her telling me of the peaceful Sunday afternoon that suddenly changed when the news came across the radio that Pearl Harbor had been the victim of a sneak attack.

It is hard for me to imagine anyone going through the American education system and not hearing a recording of FDR's famous speech to Congress, when he said that Dec. 7, 1941 was a "date which will live in infamy."

That date has certainly lived on in people's memories.

For me, today brings back memories of 20 years ago when I was working for a small daily newspaper, and I participated in the production of a special section commemorating the 50th anniversary of that attack. For weeks, we solicited 1940s era photos of local residents, both living and dead, who served their country — and we published articles about many of them and their experiences.

That project coincided with my graduation from graduate school. A week later, I was going to receive my master's degree. There were many things demanding my time and attention.

It was a grueling period in my journalism career, to be sure. I had no idea there were so many WWII veterans in the county where I was living — until we took on that project.

Most of them were living then. Far fewer are apt to be living today — and it does make me wonder when we will stop observing Pearl Harbor Day in the kind of semi–official way that we have in recent years. It seems we are moving in that direction with the attrition of people who still remember that day.

That happens with some of history's significant dates. So much time goes by and the people who remember the event pass away, and we are left with holidays and/or anniversaries for which we must be reminded the origin.

Take Veterans Day. It used to be called Armistice Day, which was the observation of the anniversary of the end of World War I.

Hostilities in that conflict ended in 1918, more than 90 years ago. The last time I recall anyone mentioning that event was when I studied history in high school — and my memory is that my history teacher really didn't spend much time on it.

To be sure, the outcome of World War I wasn't very popular in Germany, which paid a heavy price — and that could be said to have played a role in the eventual rise to power of the Nazis in the 1930s. Kinda depends on one's interpretations of things.

Chronologically, though, it is beyond dispute that anyone who was old enough to serve in that war would have to be around 110 years old today. There are a few of those left in the entire world, but not many. Armistice Day long ago lost its meaning as the World War I generation dwindled — so today it is known by the more generic designation of Veterans Day.

Which is not to be confused with Memorial Day. That is a completely different holiday in a completely different time of year — but it does have a similar history.

It started out as Decoration Day, a day for honoring those who died during the Civil War. I don't think there is a particular anniversary connected with it; the graves of Confederate soldiers were decorated in several Southern cities during the war and the practice simply continued after it ended.

Obviously, no one who was alive in the mid–19th century is still living — so there is no one for whom Decoration Day has any meaning. We continue to observe it, though, under the more generic name of Memorial Day.

The purpose evolved to include remembering those who fought in all wars, not just the Civil War, and in recent years it has expanded to include memories of anyone who is no longer living, even if that person didn't serve in the military.

George Carlin used to point out that sports like football that tend to emulate war are played in facilities that use such generic names as War Memorial Stadium or Soldier Field. It is part of the competitive nature of sports, I suppose, that the places where these games are played should bear names that conjure violent images — even though a sport will never be as violent as war.

---

---

But not everything that happened on Dec. 7 has been violent.

Sometimes there has been peace and hope.

On this day in 1972, for example, Apollo 17, the last manned mission to the moon, was launched. As they left the earth and began making their way to the moon, the crew looked back and took a picture of the earth that is known today as the "Blue Marble."

Seen from that vantage point, the blue marble looks so peaceful, just floating along in the black velvet of space. One would never guess that so much turmoil exists on the surface of that marble, that there is savagery loose upon the land capable of causing great pain to millions without the slightest hint of remorse.

Yet the image of the blue marble sparks in many of us that wish for peace on earth and good will to men.

Not a bad thought to keep in mind during the Christmas season.

What Would T.R. Have Done?

---

President McKinley is shot on Sept. 6, 1901.

---

Much has been said and written in this campaign about John McCain's admiration for Theodore Roosevelt.

It has been said many times that McCain is a maverick in the mold of T.R. And, if one aspires to be president, there were few presidents who have been more worthy of admiration or emulation than Theodore Roosevelt.

Today, the day after the Labor Department reported that unemployment in the United States is at its highest level in five years, it's appropriate that our thoughts should turn to Roosevelt.

It was on this day, in 1901, that President William McKinley was shot in Buffalo, N.Y. He lingered for about a week, then died on Sept. 14, 1901. His vice president was Theodore Roosevelt.

As president, Roosevelt compiled a record that was progressive, promising a "square deal" to the working man and giving his support to labor unions.

Almost precisely two years to the day after McKinley was shot, on Sept. 7, 1903, Roosevelt summed up his feelings in his "Square Deal" speech to the New York State Agricultural Association in Syracuse, N.Y., saying, "Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."

---

The drumbeat of monthly job losses has lifted the unemployment rate by 1.3 percentage points in the past six months — an extraordinarily rapid rise that economists say is a strong signal of recession. The last time joblessness rose so fast was in 1993 during the 'jobless recovery' from the 1990-1991 recession.

Washington Times

---

He demonstrated his maverick streak in other ways, too — by promoting conservation and by opposing corruption and illegal practices.

McCain displayed more of a maverick streak when he ran for president in 2000 than he has in 2008.

But this is an opportunity for him to show the same spirit he showed when it looked like Hurricane Gustav might hand New Orleans a Katrina-like blow.

With the Republican convention only hours from being gaveled to order, McCain called for bipartisanship in handling the aftermath of a hurricane. He told Republicans that this was the time to "take off your Republican hats and put on your American hats."

That kind of spirit is needed now. But this time the target audience is much larger. This crisis is more widespread. It doesn't affect only the people along the Gulf coast. The effects of the job losses can be felt in every state.

Job losses across the board were one-fifth higher than projected in August, and losses for June and July were revised upward as well. It is no longer a matter of being able to pay high prices. Now, there is no income in thousands of households where there was an income only a few days or weeks ago.

If a candidate has a good idea for turning things around, he doesn't need to sit on it until after the election so his party will get the credit when it "comes to the rescue" (but is spared having to face the electoral consequences if it doesn't work). It doesn't matter which side gets the credit. If it can help to reverse the economic tide, it will benefit everyone.

And the Washington Times reports that jobs are becoming more scarce as more people enter the job market.

It would be nice to see some presidential leadership.

The Election of 1912

---

---

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

---

---

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.