So which past election is this, anyway?
Use your imagination, now.
We're in an election year. A discredited Republican presidency has turned public opinion very strongly against the GOP. Fortunately for the Republicans, though, their current candidate for the White House is considerably better thought of by the average voter than is the party as a whole. The Democrats, for their part, are running an attractive but inexperienced candidate who is very big on "the vision thing," somewhat naive on foreign policy matters- and very good indeed at high-flying but essentially empty rhetoric on the stump.
Gas prices are through the roof. Inflation and unemployment have both been showing signs of moving up- simultaneously, in such a manner that any effort to deal with one is apt to make the other worse. The nation's confidence has been shaken by an unpopular war. The country is crying out for change. Yet the sober fact is that the problems the nation faces are intractable ones that it will likely take more than four years to solve- and then, they're more likely to work themselves out through the attrition of time and the inexorable course of business cycles than through anybody's policy moves.
No, it's not 2008 I've just described. Well, maybe it is, actually- which is rather my point. But the year I was thinking of, in fact, is 1976.
I'm not alone in seeing parallels between the two years. Just the other day, I saw a cartoon with Jerry Ford (labeled "Gerald McCain") and Jimmy Carter (labeled "Jimmy Obama") standing before a puzzled John Q. Public, who asks himself, "Haven't I seen these guys somewhere before?" And several weeks ago, I saw an article (I forget who wrote it) which- without exploring the parallel with 1976 in particular depth- came pretty much to the same conclusion I'm leading up to.
I'm of the belief that this is, indeed, a good election to lose; that, like 1976, this is a year in which whoever wins the White House is doomed to be a one-term president. Our problems are going to get worse before they get better, for the most part- and voters are not generally inclined to ask the degree to which it really was the poor incumbent's fault that things are as bad as they've become on his watch.
Yes, I'm strongly inclined to the view that whoever loses this election will control both Houses of Congress and the White House from 2012 through 2020. If- as I expect- Obama wins this November, that prospect ought to be of some comfort to my fellow Republicans.
Another parallel- drawn by Michael Grunwald of Time- is to the election of 1980. Like 2008, that was a year in which all the dynamics favored the "outs." Yet the election remained close in the polls until literally the last weekend of the campaign, when the bottom fell out on Jimmy Carter and the electorate- having decided that maybe Ronald Reagan wasn't so scary after all- finally made up their minds along lines that they had been thinking all along.
Certainly doubts persist about Barak Obama, and with good reason. He has never run anything in particular. Nor is his resume as a legislator that impressive. He is still in his first term as a U.S. senator- and he has spent more time during that term traveling and making speeches than taking care of business. Before that, he was an Illinois state senator- an office not often thought of as a springboard to the presidency.
A Democrat I know remarked the other day that Obama's resume sounds a great deal like Jack Kennedy's in 1960. He has a point. JFK's aura has pretty much clouded the fact that his qualifications for the White House at the time he was elected were abysmal- and that his early days in the White House were pretty much a disaster. Nikita Khruschev, the Soviet leader, intimidated him in their first meeting, and pretty well dominated the encounter. And the Bay of Pigs blunder- admittedly having its misbegotten origin in the Eisenhower administration- is legendary. And then, there's the Vietnam buildup, apocryphal tales of plans to withdraw during his second term aside. Style, class, soaring rhetoric and and adoring media can camouflage mediocrity very well indeed, and I see no reason why even a less than stellar Obama performance in the White House shouldn't benefit the same way Kennedy's did.
On the other hand, I've seen McCain compared to Bob Dole. And the inane "McSame" argument Obama supporters make, advancing the silly premise that McCain is the second coming of George W. Bush, is as groundless as it is obligatory, given Bush's unpopularity. It's also an argument that only someone totally unfamiliar with McCain's record could make honestly.
So who are these guys? My hunch is that they're both Jimmy Carter- only McCain is the Carter of 1980, and Obama the Carter of 1976.
We're in an election year. A discredited Republican presidency has turned public opinion very strongly against the GOP. Fortunately for the Republicans, though, their current candidate for the White House is considerably better thought of by the average voter than is the party as a whole. The Democrats, for their part, are running an attractive but inexperienced candidate who is very big on "the vision thing," somewhat naive on foreign policy matters- and very good indeed at high-flying but essentially empty rhetoric on the stump.
Gas prices are through the roof. Inflation and unemployment have both been showing signs of moving up- simultaneously, in such a manner that any effort to deal with one is apt to make the other worse. The nation's confidence has been shaken by an unpopular war. The country is crying out for change. Yet the sober fact is that the problems the nation faces are intractable ones that it will likely take more than four years to solve- and then, they're more likely to work themselves out through the attrition of time and the inexorable course of business cycles than through anybody's policy moves.
No, it's not 2008 I've just described. Well, maybe it is, actually- which is rather my point. But the year I was thinking of, in fact, is 1976.
I'm not alone in seeing parallels between the two years. Just the other day, I saw a cartoon with Jerry Ford (labeled "Gerald McCain") and Jimmy Carter (labeled "Jimmy Obama") standing before a puzzled John Q. Public, who asks himself, "Haven't I seen these guys somewhere before?" And several weeks ago, I saw an article (I forget who wrote it) which- without exploring the parallel with 1976 in particular depth- came pretty much to the same conclusion I'm leading up to.
I'm of the belief that this is, indeed, a good election to lose; that, like 1976, this is a year in which whoever wins the White House is doomed to be a one-term president. Our problems are going to get worse before they get better, for the most part- and voters are not generally inclined to ask the degree to which it really was the poor incumbent's fault that things are as bad as they've become on his watch.
Yes, I'm strongly inclined to the view that whoever loses this election will control both Houses of Congress and the White House from 2012 through 2020. If- as I expect- Obama wins this November, that prospect ought to be of some comfort to my fellow Republicans.
Another parallel- drawn by Michael Grunwald of Time- is to the election of 1980. Like 2008, that was a year in which all the dynamics favored the "outs." Yet the election remained close in the polls until literally the last weekend of the campaign, when the bottom fell out on Jimmy Carter and the electorate- having decided that maybe Ronald Reagan wasn't so scary after all- finally made up their minds along lines that they had been thinking all along.
Certainly doubts persist about Barak Obama, and with good reason. He has never run anything in particular. Nor is his resume as a legislator that impressive. He is still in his first term as a U.S. senator- and he has spent more time during that term traveling and making speeches than taking care of business. Before that, he was an Illinois state senator- an office not often thought of as a springboard to the presidency.
A Democrat I know remarked the other day that Obama's resume sounds a great deal like Jack Kennedy's in 1960. He has a point. JFK's aura has pretty much clouded the fact that his qualifications for the White House at the time he was elected were abysmal- and that his early days in the White House were pretty much a disaster. Nikita Khruschev, the Soviet leader, intimidated him in their first meeting, and pretty well dominated the encounter. And the Bay of Pigs blunder- admittedly having its misbegotten origin in the Eisenhower administration- is legendary. And then, there's the Vietnam buildup, apocryphal tales of plans to withdraw during his second term aside. Style, class, soaring rhetoric and and adoring media can camouflage mediocrity very well indeed, and I see no reason why even a less than stellar Obama performance in the White House shouldn't benefit the same way Kennedy's did.
On the other hand, I've seen McCain compared to Bob Dole. And the inane "McSame" argument Obama supporters make, advancing the silly premise that McCain is the second coming of George W. Bush, is as groundless as it is obligatory, given Bush's unpopularity. It's also an argument that only someone totally unfamiliar with McCain's record could make honestly.
So who are these guys? My hunch is that they're both Jimmy Carter- only McCain is the Carter of 1980, and Obama the Carter of 1976.
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