spinbadz own

Remember the days when corruption icon Bill Clinton was called "The Comeback Kid" by his fawning cheer squad at CNN? The ostensible reasoning then was that Mr Clinton's win in the 1996 Presidential contest was considered a comeback from Democrat losses in Congressional elections two years before.

Today the situation is of course a little different.

Whatever the fate of President Bush, the likelihood of CNN, BBC or the NY Times christening him a "Comeback Kid" parallels the possibility of pigs flying to Jupiter. Or, perhaps, of Bush being remembered by them as a great president in the class of Abraham Lincoln.

Polls, including those conducted by the above news organisations that write off the Mr Bush's electoral chances, can be affected by timing, "weighting", question type, audience and environment. Many seem to be slanted in the hope of annointing a trend or bandwagon effect.

Yet even in the face of such polling, and of unprecedented negative campaigning, the incumbent is still in with a good chance of winning in November.

There is a historical precedent in Bush's favour, that set by Lincoln. This precedent shows that a person disdained and disrespected by the media, opponents, national leaders, half a divided nation and opponents in a war can indeed succeed in an election and then as a president.

Today of course, many people view Lincoln reverentially. But the man who became president in 1861 was seen quite differently by his contemporaries.Prior to 1860 Abraham Lincoln was not a terribly high level Republican. He was merely a good "stump" speaker from backwoods Illinois.

His folksy "well, that reminds me of a story...." style of address could captivate an audience. (This line also reputedly drove his cabinet ministers bananas after he became President. It was usually a precursor of circumlocutory drivel that would - ultimately - dovetail mercilessly on a point.)

Lincoln's weird sense of dress was also an outstanding feature on the stump. The tall hat and long beard, on top of his very tall frame, was remarkable even in those days and not, as many tend to assume, simply a fashion of the era.

He was eccentric in other ways, too. He was known to carry documents in his hat, as if it were a brief case. He was also reputedly prone to bouts of depression.

Anyway, I digress. The point is that although Lincoln had some standing he was not the logical choice as Republican nominee for President in the election of 1860.

The fact is that the really high men in the GOP, people like Salmon P. Chase (founder of the Chase bank and, as Lincoln's Treasury Secretary, inaugurator of the greenback), figured that the Democrats had a lock on the presidency that year. So they nominated Lincoln, the ambitious bumpkin from Illinois, as a sacrificial lamb.

The only reason Lincoln then won the election was because the Democrat Party - incredibly - split. Effectively, two Democrat candidates instead of one opposed Lincoln for the presidency.

The Republican then won the election with less than 50% of the vote.

After the shock of his victory had sunk in, the north-eastern US establishment (including the New York media) treated Lincoln with disdain. Never mind, they said: he won't last long.

If you think George Bush has problems today, get a handle on what Lincoln had to face. William Safire's biographical novel "Freedom" gives a superb account.

For starters, Lincoln was confronted with the problem of geo-physics. We conveniently label the US Civil War as a battle between North and South, but in 1860 there may not have been a real "north". Let alone a northern army to defend it.

Many of the border states swung dangerously. Washington itself is situated within Baltimore (a state of dubious sympathies at that time) and just across the river from Virginia.

It is said that when Lincoln first traveled by coach across hostile Baltimore to reach Washington he disguised himself as a woman. He was laughed at across the nation when the press reported on this.

Shortly after he arrived in Washington a Stonewall Jackson-led southern force won a battle at the Potomac and would certainly have captured Washington - and its incumbent president - if they had advanced just a few more kilometres.

Jackson baulked and turned, thinking the then non-existent "northern army" would lie in waiting.

Surviving setback after setback and obstacle after obstacle, Lincoln eventually managed to mould a northern coalition and raise an army.

Some of the key battles along the way to achieving this aim were lost. Others were won by only the breadth of one of his whiskers. The same pattern was true of the war itself, and of the huge number of political and public (and immense personal) battles Lincoln had to fight in tandem with that war.

Cabinet, Congress, the Europeans, the media, the States, his army generals - all had their own agendas and, more often than not, dismissed Lincoln as a mere roadbump on the way to power.

Yet somehow the country bumpkin from Illinois mastered all.

Can George Bush muster a similar political result? Anyone writing him off at this point would seem to be hopeful and premature. At the end of the day, of course, Bush will win if he looks better than his opponent.

So what are the important issues for Americans, with regard to which he and John "F." Kerry will be compared?

Well, one is the war against Islamic terrorism. And as former Democrat New York mayor Ed Koch points out:

"If John Kerry were to win this presidential election, would he stand up to terrorism to the same extent as George Bush has? I don't think so... (M)y party, the Democratic Party, now has a strong radical left wing whose members often dominate the party primaries.

"... Regrettably, he surrendered his philosophical independence ... to prevail over the original darling of the radicals, Howard Dean. Kerry owes his nomination in large part to the supporters of Dean and the support of Senator Ted Kennedy."

Another big issue - many would say the biggest one - involves personality questions. Like integrity and competency.

Kerry is a patriotic American who performed heroically in the Vietnam War.

But, aside from the questions raised by some who fought alongside him, he was seen to first come under the national spotlight as an anti-Vietnam War activist leveraging his experience as a serviceman. He has since his entry to Congress voted against much military spending.

This is the man who would be commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

The Democrat candidate was estimated recently to be worth around $70 million, far more than George W. Bush, and has had his campaign fueled to some extent by the funding of his even richer wife, Theresa Heinz. He has never been governor of a state.

This is the man who asks for his nation's faith and would represent the downtrodden.

Significantly, Senator Kerry had a wonderful opportunity to dispel character concerns with his speech at the DNC, but was afterwards variously criticised across the media spectrum for waffling and hedging positions.

And what of the economy? Many call this George W. Bush's weak point. Oil prices, the deficit, unemployment - blimps like these are too large to pass under the radar, and may yet provide President Bush's undoing. But as George Schultz points out in yesterday's NY Times, the recession George Bush inherited from Bill Clinton has been dealt with quickly and the economy is on the up.

Schultz also recalls that the groundwork for Clinton-era prosperity was laid by Bush's father. Bush the younger's new economic team under John Snow shows promise. We have seen that the President hasn't flinched from firings or shaking up his team where performances have been sub-standard.

Having said that, a lot of issues in this election are borderline. Time will tell how the chips fall.

But the many people rubbishing G.W. Bush at this stage might do well to study their Civil War history a little more closely.


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Did Lincoln intend to abolish slavery? See his letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greely, 1862

On similarities between Lincoln and Bush regarding the political circumstances of the re-election RNC, see this Opinion Journal item:


"By far the bleakest outlook was at the Republican Convention in Baltimore in June 1864. Abraham Lincoln was thought to be a sure loser: War news was bad, and Grant's army lost 7,000 men in 20 minutes at Cold Harbor just seven days before the convention. Many Republicans wanted to shove Lincoln aside, but he was as shrewd a political maneuverer as he was an inspirational leader, and his agents out in the states made sure that the delegates would back the president. He stayed in the White House and pulled the political strings 40 miles away in Baltimore."