Posted on 07/19/2008 12:04:38 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
Looking back over the last 40 years, the presidential campaign that most closely resembles this year's is the contest between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in 1976. The Republicans were the incumbent presidential party that year, as they are now, but the Democrats had a big advantage in party identification -- on the order of 49 percent to 26 percent then, far more than today.
The Republican president who had been elected and re-elected in the last two campaigns, Richard Nixon, had dismal favorability ratings, far lower than George W. Bush's. His name could scarcely be mentioned at the Republican National Convention. The Democratic nominee was a little-known outsider, with an appeal that was based on the idea that he could transcend the nation's racial divisions. Jimmy Carter, a governor from the Deep South, had placed a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. in the state Capitol in Atlanta.
Ford's political situation then was far more parlous than McCain's today. An early summer Gallup poll showed him trailing Carter by 62 percent to 29 percent. He had barely limped through the primary contests against Ronald Reagan, who continued his campaign up through the mid-August national convention. His political ads had been disastrous, and on Aug. 1 he did not have a general election media team in place.
Yet by November, the race was about even. Ford ended up losing by just 50 percent to 48 percent. A switch of 5,559 votes in Ohio and 3,687 in Hawaii -- 9,247 votes out of 81 million -- would have made Ford president for four more years.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Yeah, whenever I think about this year’s candidates and heave a dejected sigh, I can always think of 1976 and the boobs we had to choose from, and feel a little better about today.
You are either too young or and idiot.
Gerald Ford was a great man, a wonderful president and you don’t deserve to shine his shoes.
Always fun and informative to read Barone.
Wonderful? I’m not a Ford detractor but his on;y legacy is John Paul Stevens (bad).
That is his only legacy. Well, that and his starting the process to give away the Panama Canal. Of less memorable endurance is his "WIN" program, Detente, his assertion that there was no Soviet dominance of Eastern Europe, his support of homosexuality, his championing the ERA, his pro abortion stance, and his publicly joining the Democrats in denouncing President Bush over the Iraq war.
I have no use for Country Club Republicans.
I remember Gerald Ford quite well and as a 7th grader it was very clear to me who the better candidate was in the Ford/Reagan contest.
Very well put. This half assed hyperlink will show you just how worried the milk-toast limp-wristed alternatives to Reagan were over the fact that principled patriotic Americans were flocking to the governor.
Great post on the Ford Campaign (RINO)
CONCLUSION
We are in real danger of being out-organized by a small number of highly motivated right wing nuts, who are using funds outside of the Reagan campaign expenditure limits. This fact explains the Reagan position on the FEC. If he can keep the FEC immobilized, this assistance to his campaign will not come to light. He is thus able to operate a relatively moderate campaign to capitalize on his natural support and obtain the winning margin from the right wingers support.
You have to agree, though, the GOPs having to accept him as the candidate (because he was a sitting President) was doomed. He lost because of his connection with Nixon (and the pardon he had to give him). While possibly ‘great’ and maybe a ‘wonderful’ president, he would never have gotten there were it not for the circumstances of Agnew’s and Nixon’s problems.
I stood in line for over two hours to cast my first vote for POTUS for Gerald Ford. I detested Jimmy Carter (and history has proved me right about him). I thought that Ford had made the best of a bad situation, even though he knew that it would damage him politically. His pardon of Nixon was the best thing for the image of the United States in the world. The spectacle of a former POTUS on trial was not one that President Ford was willing to allow. We did not know then that the office of POTUS would later be disgraced by one William Jefferson Clinton!
Gerald Ford was a good man. But he was not conservative. That’s a fact, not an insult.
I think, considering the state of affairs in this country at that time, he was an appropriate choice. He did as well as he could once in office. And he did know how to veto, something W could have learned from him.
Had there been anything vaguely resembling accuracy in the media, he probably would have nailed Carter. The media bias then (and now) is worth more than 2 points to the Dems. Add another point for voter fraud.
I don’t know that we can make much in the way of comparisons to now. Every election I think the MSM can’t be any more obvious in their attempts to tilt the election to the DEM. And I am always wrong. The media now is way past the degree of bias shown for Clinton and Kerry. Their degree of support, and the way they show it, for BHO is so bad it is creepy and frightening.
However, I have to wonder about this:
"The Republican president who had been elected and re-elected in the last two campaigns, Richard Nixon, had dismal favorability ratings, far lower than George W. Bush's."
The polls for June and July show President Bush's approval within the range of 23 to 32 percent (http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm)
President Nixon's approval rating in early August 1974 at the end of his term was 24 percent (http://uspolitics.about.com/od/polls/l/bl_historical_approval.htm)
With all due respect to Mr. Barone, I don't think one could fairly characterize 24 percent as "far lower" than 23 to 32 percent.
Nope not 1976. 1992.
The media makes a popular President the village idiot ,
turns a small slown down into a reccesion and paints
the democratic noiminee ( who was a real slime ball )
as the next JFK messiah.
They only pulled it off because of Ross Perot & one of the worst ran campaigns in history by Bush.
This time there is no Perot. Mccain is running a lot better campaign then Bush sr (who seemed to want to lose). Clinton
was so much more skilled that Obama at retail politics.
Mccain is starting to take the gloces off with the new ad
on Obama’s Iraq flip flop’s and the speech yesterday where
he pretty much called Barry a socialist.
From the article:
“The Ford ad team honed in on his record, with man-on-the-street ads, some filmed on the streets of Atlanta. It was risky, going against the grain of public opinion. But the Ford campaign persisted, and it worked. The McCain campaign needs to take the same risk and to persist in the face of media disapproval.”
They won’t do it this time.
Much of Obama’s “record” is based - one way or another - around the issue of “race”. How he has run from his “white past” (to the point of keeping his “typical” white grandmother incognito); how he has embraced “blackness” (and the Liberation Theology of Rev. Wright); how he will “change” things in America (read: shift from a white-majority view of government, to a black-centered vision of same). How he will take things from us (taxation) and make us do things for our own good (as the Marxists did).
Yes, campaign issues can be made of such things. The issue can even be raised that now is the WRONG time in this nation’s history to elevate a black - particularly one of Obama’s beliefs - to the office of the presidency on the harebrained notion that doing so will “unite” a racially divided population. When in truth, the elevation of a black who will pander to black issues to the exclusion of all other races will do more to exacerbate racial tensions in America then to heal them.
Raising ANY of these issues will immediately launch a deluge of phony “hate and racism” charges from the leftwing slime machines.
Again, the McCain camp won’t dare to raise these issues. How would they recover from the media charging them with “racism” before the American people? They think they are obligated to become “friends” with the black elecotorate in order to run a clean campaign, when the hard truth remains that upwards of 95-96% of blacks are going to vote for Obama. Even so-called “Republican” blacks. Even a few black Freepers of this forum, I daresay.
Hopefully, some of the “third-party” nonprofits of the right will work up the nerve to raise and confront the Left on these issues. It may be our only hope of defeating the oncoming black Messiah.
- John
While there is no third party candidate on par with Perot,
Bob Barr’s run may pull enough votes away from McCain say in Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolina’s to make a close
race for those electoral votes tip to Hussein Obama.
As for McCain’s campaign going negative on the Messiah, IMHO I do not see it happening. McCain does not have the will to do it and Obama has pretty much sheilded himself from criticism by playing the race card in reverese.
His ad that came out yesterday was negative. Accused Obama for being against the war to win the nomination and being for the war now to get elected. i watched it , it was pretty strong.
He also made a speech saying Obama’s voting record was left of the voting record of the known socialist in the Senate (I can’t remeber the name) , Therefore mccain said , Obama
may be a socialist.
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