Obama and the 'Boys of Summer'
WSJ.COM
In Rhodes Cook
Rhodes Cook is a veteran Washington political analyst who tracks national elections and voting trends and publishes a bimonthly political newsletter.
Things seem to be going swimmingly for the Democrats these days. They are riding high in the polls. Money is still pouring into their campaign coffers. Democratic registration figures are up considerably from fours ago. And the party is healing after the bruising primary battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Game over. Right? The presidential election is in the bag.
That is the tone of some political speculation these days. But if anyone needs a reminder that the race for the White House is far from over, he or she should read John Fund's column in the Wall Street Journal of a fortnight ago, "No, McCain Isn't 'Doomed.'" Fund clearly is no bosom buddy of Obama or the Democrats, but his point is well-taken: When it comes to presidential politics, the Democrats aren't a party that can afford to be overconfident.
Since Lyndon Johnson scored his one-sided victory over Barry Goldwater in 1964, Republican candidates have won a majority of the popular vote in five presidential elections, their Democratic counterparts only once. And even then, Jimmy Carter's 50.1% share in 1976 was the barest of majorities.
In the last generation or two, Democratic presidential nominees have been a political version of the "boys of summer." The phrase was used by baseball writer Roger Kahn to memorialize the members of the 1950s-era Brooklyn Dodgers. But for the Democrats, the term hasn't been a pleasant one. In eight of the 10 presidential elections since LBJ's landslide victory, the Democratic candidate has held the lead in the Gallup Poll at some point before Labor Day, but has gone on to win only three of those races.
Even in the three victories (by Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996), hefty double-digit leads during the summer were pared down to single digits percentage-wise by election time. Apply this trend to Obama's modest three-point edge over John McCain in the July 7-9 Gallup tracking poll, and the Democrat's lead would be wiped out long before Election Day.
A variety of factors have prevented Democratic standard-bearers from enjoying more electoral success. The party was divided in 1968 and 1972 by the Vietnam war and in 1980 by liberal opposition to Carter's presidency. In 1988 and 2004, the party's two most recent nominees from Massachusetts (Michael Dukakis and John Kerry, respectively) were readily caricatured as out of touch liberals. Dukakis was undermined about this time 20 years ago by the Willie Horton ad, which painted him as soft on crime; Kerry was hit at a similar point in the 2004 campaign by the Swift Boat ads, which depicted him as a bogus hero in Vietnam. Neither Democrat really ever recovered from what were "defining" attacks.
Obama has yet to suffer such a debilitating assault, although voters have undoubtedly not heard the last of Rev. Jeremiah Wright or the senator's own controversial statement about "God, guns and small-town America."
The Republicans have shown themselves to be masters at exploiting Democratic weaknesses since the days of Richard Nixon. But in many cases, the Democrats have made it fairly easy for them by nominating relative newcomers to the national stage, who were much less familiar to voters than their Republican rivals. That was the case with George McGovern and Carter in the 1970s, and Dukakis and Clinton in the 1980s and 1990s.
Each of them emerged from the Democratic primaries as a fresh face, whose views and personality were largely a blank slate. But as the slates were filled in, often by the Republicans, they steadily lost ground.
Obama is the latest of the Democratic "boys of summer," ahead in the polls but with nearly four months to go until the November balloting. The seemingly anti-Republican nature of this election year should work to Obama's advantage, just as it did for Carter in 1976. But as "Jimmy Who?" can attest, even the most favorable political environment won't guarantee victory. Carter saw a 33-percentage-point lead over President Gerald Ford in that post-Watergate summer 32 years ago melt almost entirely away. Carter's November margin of victory: two points.
The question now is whether Obama can close strong. Can he demonstrate the political skills that his party's recent nominees have too often not — to maintain, and maybe even build his lead, in the months ahead? If he can do that, he would in baseball parlance become "Mr. October" … and in political terms, something even better, the next president of the United States.
Write to Rhodes Cook at Rhodescook@aol.com. |
