Reply #20: Many of these are historical rewrites [View All]

[karynnj]

Truman won election by the skin of his teeth. The more positive image has gradually developed.

Eisenhower. I just watched day 1 of the 1960 Democratic Convention at NYC's Paley Center museum. The Democrats ran against the Republicans on restoring our strong image abroad and reviving the economy. This was the CW in the later 1960s when I studied that time period in a history class.

LBJ - LBJ opted not to run to concentrate on the Vietnam peace talks. To say he did not know what to do with Vietnam diminishes what he did here. It is also not all that clear that had he announced both the peace talks and that he would stand for re-election that he would have lost. Incidentally, Nixon also ran on a platform calling for ending the war. Had the Democrats united behind the extremely decent, liberal, progressive Humphrey, he would have won. It likely was the riot in Chicago and liberals holding back their votes, that gave us Nixon.

Clinton - in 1996, he did NOT project strength. He did project charisma and many thought all the Republicans attacks were unfair - which they were. If anything, the outlandish charges led to me not even considering others for which there could be some truth. Dole was an extremely poor opponent.

Bush II - Kerry was as strong a candidate as the Democrats had and I can EASILY argue that he ran a better campaign than Clinton did in 1992 - the difference GHWB was at 33% approval. The fact is that Kerry did project strength - enough that the RW spent billions on a dishonest campaign to lie about his service to destroy his genuine image of integrity and leadership. (I am NOT saying his actions as a 25 yr old were why he show be president - his 2o years in the Senate were, but they showed extraordinary character. He might have done better with a more capable VP behind him, especially because Edwards did not even deliver what could reasonably have been expected - that he would be a team player and show the same enthusiasm he did in the primary. It also would have helped if the Clinton allies (Begala, carville etc) in the media had even tried to cover anything positive on Kerry - rather than clearly waiting for the restoration.