Best of the Web Today - June 30, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Radio Days
Thanks to all the radio producers who've booked us in response to our offer Monday to discuss "Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House," which by the way you can purchase from the OpinionJournal bookstore.
We didn't hear from any television people, though--and we're very good on TV. Consider this testimonial from a reader who saw us on Fox News Channel: "I was impressed by your appearance last Saturday. I confess that, based on your sense of humor, I hadn't expected such a dapper, confident, at-ease man." If you're a TV producer and you assumed from our sense of humor that we were dowdy, timid and awkward, kindly banish that stereotype right now and e-mail us at opinionjournal@wsj.com to set up an appearance. We're also happy to do more radio.
Landslide Kerry?
Here's an odd phenomenon of this election year: Democrats, who've been losing political ground for nearly four decades and who haven't had a good election without Bill Clinton since 1986, seem overconfident. The May issue of The Washington Monthly featured an article by Chuck Todd, editor of the Hotline, predicting not only that John Kerry will win the election but that it will be a landslide:
The reason to think so is historical. Elections that feature a sitting president tend to be referendums on the incumbent--and in recent elections, the incumbent has either won or lost by large electoral margins. If you look at key indicators beyond the neck-and-neck support for the two candidates in the polls--such as high turnout in the early Democratic primaries and the likelihood of a high turnout in November--it seems improbable that Bush will win big. More likely, it's going to be Kerry in a rout.
But as historical trends go, this one is not very impressive. In the 20th century, incumbent presidents ran in 17 elections, of which they won 12. That itself would seem to be an advantage for Bush. Of the five elections the challengers won--1912, 1932, 1976, 1980 and 1992--only one or two can truly be called landslide victories.
The 1976 election was a close one, with Jimmy Carter beating Gerald Ford with a popular-vote margin barely over 2%, 50.1% to 48%. It was even close in the Electoral College, 297-240 (one prescient Ford elector cast his vote for Ronald Reagan).
The elections of 1912 and 1992 can be characterized as landslide defeats for the incumbents but not landslide victories for the challengers. In both cases the incumbent Republican Party was badly split by a third-party challenge. In 1912 former president Theodore Roosevelt outpolled incumbent William Howard Taft in both the Electoral College (88-8) and the popular vote (27.4% to 23.2%). In 1992 Ross Perot won no electoral votes, but his 18.9% of the popular vote helped hold incumbent George H.W. Bush to a dismal 37.5%. The successful challengers, Woodrow Wilson and Bill Clinton, managed only 41.8% and 43% of the popular vote respectively, though their electoral-vote totals were more impressive, 435 and 370. The only winning candidates ever to have smaller popular-vote totals were Abraham Lincoln in 1860 (39.8%) and John Quincy Adams in 1824 (30.9%), and both were in four-man races.
The third-party dynamic was also present, though not decisive, in 1980. John Anderson, a liberal Republican, got 6.6% of the popular vote; Libertarian Ed Clarke, just over 1%. Ronald Reagan still had a majority, 50.8%, to Jimmy Carter's 41%--certainly a rout, if not a landslide--and Reagan's Electoral College victory was a landslide, 489-49. (An interesting side note: Carter and Grover Cleveland are the only incumbent Democratic presidents ever to lose to Republicans.)
The one indisputable landslide was in 1932, when Franklin D. Roosevelt beat Herbert Hoover, 472-59, with a popular-vote margin of 57.4% to 39.7%.
This year is unlike 1912 and 1992 in that the incumbent party is unified. If there is a serious third-party challenge--a big if--it will come from Ralph Nader at John Kerry's expense. So Todd's model rests on the examples of 1932 and 1980--the Great Depression and the Awful Malaise.
Democrats tried risibly to liken today's economy to the Depression, but now that it's going great guns, even Josh Marshall admits that it's a plus for President Bush. So Todd's prediction of a Kerry landslide ends up resting entirely on the example of 1980:
That year, the country was weathering both tough economic times (the era of "stagflation"--high inflation concurrent with a recession) and frightening foreign policy crises (the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). Indeed, this year Bush is looking unexpectedly like Carter. Though the two presidents differ substantially in personal style (one indecisive and immersed in details, the other resolute but disengaged), they are also curiously similar. Both are religious former Southern governors. Both initially won the presidency by tarring their opponents (Gerald Ford, Al Gore) with the shortcomings of their predecessors (Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton). Like Carter, Bush is vulnerable to being attacked as someone not up to the job of managing impending global crises.
Granted, Carter and Bush are both religious, but beyond this the comparison is awfully strained. The man who toppled Saddam Hussein could hardly be more different from the man who kissed Leonid Brezhnev. Whereas the criticism of Bush is that he is too aggressive in dealing with America's enemies and promoting democratic values overseas, Carter was, as the Boston Globe memorably put it, a wimp. His boldest foreign-policy venture was the boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
Here's Josh Marshall's explanation for why he expects Kerry to win big (the fadeout ellipsis is his):
Iraq--and the myriad of assumptions, policies and repercussions it represents--is what this election is all about. I take it as a given that virtually no Gore voters from 2000 will pull the lever for Bush. But how many lightly-committed Bush voters from 2000 will hold him to account if they believe he gambled big and gambled unwisely with America's honor and safety, and came up short? I think more than a few. And since there were more Gore voters than Bush voters last time anyway, well . . .
The big assumption here is "that virtually no Gore voters from 2000 will pull the lever for Bush." If true, it would mean an easy victory for Kerry, who will no doubt pick up many of 2000's Nader voters.
But it seems awfully far-fetched. Looking at post-1964 elections, Gore's 48.4% of the popular vote was much closer to the Democratic Party's ceiling (Carter's 50.1%) than to its floor (George McGovern's 37.5% in 1972). Gore did as well as he did largely because of factors that don't apply this year: He was a member of an incumbent administration at a time of (apparent) peace and prosperity, running against an opponent who was untested on the national stage. Now, as Marshall makes clear, the Democrats are in the position of hoping that America loses its "gamble" in Iraq--a politically and morally hazardous thing to hope for.
From where we sit, it appears that Democrats in 2004 are repeating the mistake Republicans made in 1996: assuming that the intensity of their own loathing for the incumbent means that loathing is widespread beyond the partisan base. We could be wrong, of course--our own political preferences no doubt color our views--but a party that consorts with the likes of anti-American filmmaker Michael Moore strikes us as more desperate than confident.
Carter's Nuclear Adviser
Yesterday's item on Jimmy Carter's antics at the funeral of a 13-year-old prompted several readers to remind us that even as president, Carter was relying on advisers in their early teens for counsel on matters of war and peace. Here's what he said in his Oct. 28, 1980, debate with Ronald Reagan, in response to a question on the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks:
I had a discussion with my daughter, Amy, the other day, before I came here, to ask her what the most important issue was. She said she thought nuclear weaponry--and the control of nuclear arms. This is a formidable force. Some of these weapons have 10 megatons of explosion. If you put 50 tons of TNT in each one of railroad cars, you would have a carload of TNT--a trainload of TNT stretching across this nation. That's one major war explosion in a warhead. We have thousands, equivalent of megaton, or million tons, of TNT warheads. The control of these weapons is the single major responsibility of a president.
Jimmy Carter took advice from Amy, while George W. Bush takes advice from Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. Did Chuck Todd really mean to compare these two?
He Prides Himself on His Humility
"Because Jefferson was a humble person, I feel a kinship with him."--Jimmy Carter, Time.com, June 29
News From the Axis
The New York Sun reports that the U.S. has expelled two "guards" from Iran's U.N. mission in New York after they were "caught casing New York sites":
The demand by Washington, the third such case involving suspicions against Iranians affiliated with the U.N. mission, came as tensions over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program has led Tehran hard-liners to directly threaten the use of terrorism against America.
"We will map 29 sensitive sites in the United States, and give the information to all international terror organizations," the head of an Iranian body known as Security Without Borders, Hassan Abassi, said two weeks ago.
Speaking in Tehran, he added, "We know where America's Achilles' heel is."
Anyone else hankering for a little regime change right about now?
'Fahrenheit' Out-Earns 'Jackass'--Before Inflation
Contrary to our item yesterday, the first-weekend box-office take for "Fahrenheit 9/11" was higher than that for "Jackass: The Movie," at least in nominal terms. "Fahrenheit" brought in $23.92 million, vs. $22.76 million for "Jackass." But "Jackass" came out in 2002, and using this page from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we calculated that $22.76 million in 2002 dollars is exactly $23.92 million in 2004 dollars. So call it a tie.
Some readers objected that "Jackass" wasn't really a documentary but a comedy, but Michael Moore has done an effective job of defining documentaries down, and he himself has described "Fahrenheit" as a comedy when pressed about its factual inaccuracies. By contrast, as far as we know no one has alleged that "Jackass" takes liberties with the truth.
Come to think of it, if "Fahrenheit" is a documentary, you could almost argue that "The Passion of the Christ" is too, and "The Passion" took in $83.85 million on its opening weekend.
Salad Days
"Cobb Sets Dual Goal for Greens"--headline, FoxNews.com, June 29
O.J. Hussein--II
"Saddam Hussein has become the O.J. Simpson of the Angry Left," we observed last November. We meant that alienated Americans were insisting against all evidence that Saddam was innocent, just as some did with Simpson. But now the Associated Press has raised the comparison in a somewhat different way:
The trial of the 67-year-old Saddam, still months away, stands to be the most sensational case in Iraqi history, igniting Iraqi interest like the O.J. Simpson trial fascinated Americans. The O.J. trial highlighted rifts between black and white Americans; Saddam's case is expected to bare the chasm between the Iraqis who benefited from his 24-year rule, and those whom it scarred.
Well, let's hope the prosecutor is smart enough to avoid a Tikrit jury. But really, isn't it somewhat racist for the AP to liken black Americans to supporters of a genocidal dictator?
The World's Smallest Violin
"The blind sheik who plotted to blow up New York City landmarks has been whining about the brand of tea he's forced to endure in prison, the prosecutor who put him away testified yesterday," reports the New York Post:
Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman complained often about the way he was treated in prison--demanding either Tetley or Lipton tea, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said. He couldn't recall which of those two brands the blind cleric favored.
The sheik even threatened to eat M&Ms or stop taking insulin for his diabetes if he didn't get his teabag of choice, Fitzgerald said.
How about a compromise? Give him whatever tea he wants--with extra sugar.
That'll Scare 'Em!
"Powell Threatens Sudan With U.N. Resolution"--headline, Reuters, June 29
Too Old to Die
An Associated Press dispatch about a Texas man on death row for a murder he committed at 17 includes this odd observation:
Texas is among five states allowing the death penalty for 17-year-olds; a dozen such inmates have been put to death since Texas resumed capital punishment in 1982. Fourteen states allow the death penalty for 16-year-olds.
If this is right, at least nine states allow capital punishment for 16-year-olds but not 17-year-olds.
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It's All Right for You
Check out the sixth correction in today's New York Times:
An account in the Soccer Report column on June 22 about Ethan Zohn, a former player in Zimbabwe who won $1 million on the CBS reality show "Survivor: Africa" in 2002 and has capitalized on his moment of fame by starting an international nonprofit AIDS awareness foundation on the continent, misstated a word in a comment he made. Mr. Zohn said, "We can make value judgments all we want, but through some cultural differences it has been all right for men in Africa to have multiple sex partners"--not "all right for me."
What Would We Do Without Experts?
"Experts Re-create Stinky Dinosaur Breath"--headline, MSNBC.com, June 29
They Seem Like Such Peaceful Creatures
"Dolphin Charged in Assault on Wife"--headline, Boston Globe, June 30
Knit and Dye
The anonymous blogger "boifromtroy" reprints a letter from Enroute, the in-flight magazine of Air Canada:
I was struggling between enjoyment and frustration as I read your article on knitting. Enjoyment because it was a pleasure to see a pastime that I have engaged in for over 30 years given the prominence it deserves. Frustration because I was sitting on an airplane . . . and my knitting was in the luggage hold. Someone needs to invent terrorist-proof knitting needles! Then again maybe we should just let everyone on an airplane knit. This stress relieving activity would reduce the incidence of air rage and probably turn the most hard-core terrorist into a pacifist.
Jane McCall, Ladner, B.C.
At least she didn't suggest letting the terrorists weave. Talk about a looming threat. |
