Common wisdom says that a sitting president can only blame his predecessor for the state of the union for a brief period of time. After a year or two at the helm, a president has to take ownership of the condition of the country. This is partly because people are forgetful, but also because we expect our leaders to be accountable and get results. So, it’s interesting that people are still more inclined to blame Bush than Obama for the economy. And it’s really surprising that people are more inclined to blame Bush today than they were a year ago. I don’t know what explains this phenomenon, but it’s definitely helping Obama maintain some pretty decent approval numbers despite a deeply grumpy and pessimistic electorate.
I think the main thing is that people really don’t like Republicans. Obama is still crushing all comers in pretty much every poll that I’ve seen. I think McCain’s former adviser John Weaver is on to something:
For Weaver and the rest of the team, [Jon] Huntsman’s intelligence and foreign-policy experience, combined with his strong record of fiscal conservatism and social semimoderation (he supports civil unions for gay couples and believes climate change is an urgent issue), made him the ideal candidate to shake up a Republican field that Weaver calls “the weakest since 1940.”
“There’s a simple reason our party is nowhere near being a national governing party,” Weaver told Esquire. “No one wants to be around a bunch of cranks.”
Weaver sees Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and the presumed front-runner, as a man afraid to take a stand — or, more accurately, as a man unafraid of taking every stand. “What version are we on now?” Weaver said. “Mitt 5.0? 6.0?”
And in former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, another leading candidate, Weaver sees what he considers the worst tendencies of his party — pandering to the GOP’s hard-right margins at the risk of falling out of serious presidential contention.
“Tim’s a nice guy,” Weaver said, “and there’s nothing worse than seeing a nice guy pretend that he’s angry. Is that really what we want to be? Is that how we’re going to define ourselves? When’s the last time an angry man ever solved a problem without using a gun?”
Both Huntsman and Weaver think they have the best chance to take on the president next year. “The frustrating thing is that Obama’s beatable,” Weaver told Esquire. “But to beat Obama you have to be bigger than Obama. That’s how we save our party.”
It doesn’t look like Hunstman has a chance, but if he is going to run and not pander to the cranks, at least we’ll have one adult in the room during these debates.
Do you think this is the worst Republican field since 1940?
In terms of their chances of winning the general election, or their potential competence (or lack thereof) at actually being President?
I assume you’re discounting election years where the only field was the sitting incumbent (e.g. Bush in 2004, Reagan in 1984, Nixon in 1972 etc.). Obviously Bush Jr. and Nixon/Agnew 1972 were particularly awful. But at least they were able to keep the government semi-functional, something I doubt the current crop would be able to do (maybe with the exceptions of Romney, Pawlenty, and Huntsman).
If you do discount those years, what other competition does the 2012 field have? 2008, I guess is the only one that could conceivably be worse, both in terms of electability and substantive merit. But even some of the GOP in 2008 believed in climate change, the need for TARP, etc.
So Weaver is right. There’s no competition. 2012 is the worst.
Main competition is actually 2000, which Bush did in fact lose.
What was the lineup?
McCain, Bush, Hatch, Bauer, Keyes, and Forbes?
That’s pathetic.
Good point. It makes sense, though, that the GOP fields really started to crap out from 2000 and beyond. 1996 is the last time you have any legitimate contenders who got their start in politics before the conservative movement really took hold of the Republican party (Dole, Lugar, Wilson, Specter). By 2000 all the GOP candidates were movement nutters and the terrible quality of their fields tracks that.
But since 2000 they have won 2/3 of the Presidential elections.
Says more about the electorate than it does about the field.
Definitely!
They lost the vote 2/3 of the time.
Having powerful friends to bail you out doesn’t make you a good candidate.
has there ever been a GOOD republican field? I mean, since Lincoln?
Sure. Check out the Wikipedia list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Republican_Party_presidential_tickets
In 1940, I don’t know much about Wilkie, but according to Wikipedia he became an ally of FDR’s after the election and was pro-Civil Rights. So, decent guy in retrospect? I don’t know.
1948 is Dewey/Warren. Dewey was basically an earlier version of Eisenhower (who I would argue was a pretty good President), and obviously Warren went on to become one of the great Supreme Court Justices of all time.
1952 and 1956 are Eisenhower. There’s no excuse for Nixon of course, but in Eisenhower’s (slight defense), he hated Nixon and wanted a different running mate for 1956, but the party wouldn’t let him.
After that the tickets start to get worse and worse, but at least the full-blown brainfever insanity of the conservative movement didn’t take over until 2000.
Also, prior to 1940 the Republican party obviously becomes less recognizable as what we consider “Republican” today, the further back in time you go. But don’t forget Teddy Roosevelt (one of the greats), and Grant, who is somewhat unfairly maligned by the scandals of his Administration that he wasn’t really a part of.
The Harding/Coolidge/Hoover triumvirate of the 1920’s is pretty terrible.
I’d say we are back to that era today – with W having played the combined role of the corrupt Harding & Coolidge (he even got his own version of “6 ft of water in the streets of Plaquemines”) & Obama taking up the mantle of the ineffectual Hoover.
I see your point, but I think that’s inaccurate.
The full field:
Gov. Harlan J. Bushfield of South Dakota
Manhattan District Attorney Thomas Dewey
Former President Herbert Hoover
Senate Minority Leader Charles L. McNary
Sen. Robert Taft
Sen. Arthur Vandenberg
Wendell Willkie
The first ballot frontrunners at the Convention were Thomas Dewey, Sen. Robert Taft, and Wendell Willkie–in that order. Willkie won the nomination.
Vandenberg later was the Republican that Truman had to negotiate with in passing the National Security Act of 1947, which is still defines the security institutions in the US (minus DHS).
Wendell Willkie was the archetypal liberal Republican–internationalist, progressives, and strongly anti-socialist. He opposed TVA and other elements of the New Deal that he thought hurt business. And his business was an electric power utility. Robert Rubin is his counterpart today.
The parallel to 1940 would be Gov. Butch Otter of Idaho, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli of Virginia, Former President George W. Bush, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Sen. Orrin Hatch, Sen. John McCain, and a party-switching Robert Rubin. With Rubin getting the nomination.
Subtract Otter and Cuccinelli and that bunch looks stronger than 1940. So the current crop of GOP candidates is actually much worse than the field in 1940.
It’s pretty hard to make a credible argument that the 1940 field was worse than 1964 or even 1968. Sure, Nixon won, but only by a smidgen against a shattered Democratic coalition led by the biggest letdown nominee in living memory. To expect RFK and end up with HHH in 1968 was a huge release of air out of the balloon… and still, Nixon only barely scraped out a win.
1996 wasn’t exactly a stellar collection, either.
At least 1940 had Willkie, who was a genial liberal who probably would have made a fine wartime President had he won. They don’t make Republicans like him anymore.
It’s sad to me that Humphrey still gets no liberal love to this day. Did you read this Rick Perlstein op-ed from a couple weeks ago?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/opinion/27Perlstein.html?pagewanted=print
I was really just commenting Hubert’s candidacy from a horserace handicapping perspective, not on substance. Unfairly or no, he was tied to LBJ’s hip on Vietnam and that severed him from the young left; and he was even more tied to racial desegregation, which severed him from the Democratic right in the South.
And still Nixon only barely beat him.
Gotcha – well, that’s true enough, unfortunately.