A STATISTICAL QUIRK ...OR A POLITICAL LESSON?
By Paul Goldman
politicsus.com
Al Sharpton says God is on his side. Since Jerry Falwell claims God is a Republican, this would seem to make Reverend Al a real threat in all those states that permit crossover voting in Democratic primaries. Admittedly, an endorsement from the Almighty would seem a major coup for Mr. Sharpton, whose credentials as a Minister (not to mention President) have been questioned. Still, the Lord's will didn't do much for Pat Robertson when he ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 1988. "God isn't finished with me yet," is what Mr. Sharpton tells voters who want to know when he got the call to run for President. But most Democratic voters are done with Al, if you believe the polls.
Still, all this raises a legitimate question: Is the Conventional Wisdom in Washington right about the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination fight?
Admittedly, in the 143-year-old history of the two-party era in American presidential politics, we have never elected a Reverend as our President. This is a fact well known to most Democrats, one cited in the 1980s as to why Reverend Jessie Jackson should first run for Mayor of Washington before seeking the highest job in the nation. But here is a statistic less appreciated, and one that Mr. Jackson might have politely mentioned to former Senator Walter Mondale or Senator Gary Hart when the Capitol Hill establishment first started to question the Reverend's presidential qualifications: In this same period, no current or former Democratic Member of Congress – Senator nor Representative – has ever defeated a sitting Republican President.
That's right: God hasn't been any kinder to sitting Democratic Senators who only go to Church doing election years than he has to Reverends who only seem to be practicing preachers during election years.
Numerically, 13 GOP chief executives have sought re-election in these past 143 years, with the 14th expected to be President Bush. So far, five have lost: Benjamin Harrison in 1892, Howard Taft in 1912, Herbert Hoover in 1932, Gerald Ford in 1976, and George Bush, the elder, in 1992.
All five were defeated by either a sitting or former Democratic Governor. To be sure, except for Governor Roosevelt's drubbing of President Hoover, all the contests were close, with none of the other four Democrat winners even getting a clear majority of the popular vote [Cleveland, Wilson and Clinton got less than 50 percent; Jimmy Carter in 1976 got a bare 50.1 percent].
But at least they all won.
On Capitol Hill, this is considered a mere statistical quirk, a product of bad timing and even worse luck. Naturally, Reverend Al has a more biblical view of the situation.
"God has given them all Douglas' disease," he says. "SDD is God's wrath for the failure of Democratic Senators to take a principled moral stance against Slavery." As best I could determine, SDD is named after Stephen Douglas, the 1860 Democratic nominee who lost to Republican Abraham Lincoln. This election started the current two-party era. By June of 1861, the 48 year-old Douglas was dead, allegedly after a two-month bout with typhoid.
"It was Douglas' disease, not typhoid," insist those who believe this was the start of God's wrath against Democratic Senators running to defeat an incumbent Republican President. As with most conspiracy theories, no amount of facts can alter the perception. In 1860, Mr. Lincoln was not an incumbent. But the fact is that Douglas lost, and then soon died despite seeming to be in the prime of his political life.
So as Democratic Senators kept failing in their quests to defeat a GOP incumbent, it seemed some general explanation need to be developed, one not rooted in their poor campaigning, lack of qualifications, or other factors within their control. After all, Democratic Senators are the Pillars of the Establishment. It could not be a case of the voters simply rejecting them; rather, surely, it must have been something bigger, beyond their control.
Eventually, this led to SDD, Douglas' disease. It is surely not meant literally, but rather metaphorically.
I like to consider myself a sensible person, so naturally I have never given Mr. Sharpton's conspiracy theories a moment's thought, or any of these grand explanations. By and large, Democratic Senators have run flawed nomination campaigns, and even worse general election campaigns. True, each defeat has a unique explanation. But the losing streak
is collectively uncanny.
And yet, one has to admit the last few months do seem to suggest that something - something eerily historic - may be again happening in a Democratic nomination contest.
First, we have seen one of the most remarkable cases of collective political malpractice in the history of presidential politics. The Democratic Party was holding the first big event of the nomination battle, something I will call the Internet Primary.
For some unexplainable reason, the anointed leading candidates for the nomination - all Members of Congress - didn't now about it, and neither did their staffs. The same is true for the political pundits and reporters in the Establishment media.
The only guy that apparently had even bothered to read the primary calendar was Howard Dean, the only Governor in the race. Like FDR, Carter, and Clinton before him, Dr. Dean, a licensed physician, has managed to change the rules of the nomination process. While all the Washington Biggies and their overpaid consultants were doing their conventional wisdom thing, fighting the last war by angling for a big win in Iowa and New Hampshire, the Dean guerrillas were flying below radar, communicating by email.
The Vermont Governor knew the game began not in the dead of a Des Moines winter caucus, but in the June heat of an Internet summer.
Was this just smart thinking by Dean? Or is it an indication that the dreaded quadrennial outbreak of Douglas's disease has begun?
Overnight, Senator John Edwards now is seen as lacking a strategy to get past the first round of primaries; Congressman Gephardt appears to be struggling financially; Senator Lieberman resembles a guy who had peaked in 2000 and has no place to go but down; Senator Graham seems to be riding around in NASCAR circles; and Senator Kerry appears to be in jeopardy of never making it past the snows of Concord.
Suddenly, even the high priests of Conventional Wisdom are wondering if the best laid efforts of the Washington Establishment have only created a primary calendar that guaranteed Dean's nomination.
143 years ago, Stephen Douglas tried to finesse the slavery issue. But Abraham Lincoln had the Democrats in a trap with his brilliant phrasing of the problem, saying, "The Union cannot permanently endure half slave and half free."
Douglas tried to be "too cute by half" only to be left with a sure loss after he was nominated in Baltimore by the Northern Democrats, while Southern Democrats in Charleston picked their own presidential candidate.
Ironically, Dean's rise has been fueled in large measure by his charge that his Washington opponents are trying their own rendition of the Douglas waffle on the issues of day, including the Iraq War.
The last sitting Democratic Senator to be nominated for President was George McGovern in 1972. He lost in a landslide to incumbent Richard Nixon. A similar fate, although by the narrowest of margins, awaited the last former Democratic Senator to win the Democratic presidential nomination, Al Gore, who was defeated by George Bush the younger.
On the GOP side, they nominated Senator Bob Dole in 1996, only to see him run poorly against incumbent Bill Clinton. Prior to Dole, the last GOP Senator to be nominated was the legendary Barry Goldwater, who got trounced by incumbent Lyndon Johnson.
Clearly, the Senate of the United States is a powerful arena, dominated by ambitious men and an increasing number of ambitious political women.
Statistical analysis suggests that a Democratic Senator would have surely beaten Taft in 1912, Hoover in 1932, and probably Bush the elder in 1992.
So yes, the longest losing streak in American political history, the 143 straight years without a Democratic Senator's victory over a sitting GOP President, may indeed be a product of bad timing and worse luck.
And yet, given what has just happened with the first-ever Internet Primary, the thought lingers that perhaps something more has been at work. True, not a disease named for someone who didn't have it, not the wrath of a vengeful God, nor the pins of some 143-year-old voodoo doll; but the failure of all those Members of Congress, and their staffs, to think past the conventional wisdom does demonstrate an inside-the-beltway mentality that has existed long before there were any cars, and concrete highways.
Senator John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon in 1960. But Tricky Dick was not an incumbent. Yet it shows that one can be in the Congress and still think outside the box. JFK, like Dean, changed the rules, by gambling that something called a presidential primary, where voters instead of party bosses picked their candidate, could help him become the first Catholic President.
For the five Washington Biggies running for President, the best news for them - and the worst for Dean - is that they have enough time to learn to play by the new rules.
(c) Copyright. All rights reserved. Paul Goldman. 2003. |
