Greetings from Baghdad

A lot has happened since I last posted a column on The Gaughan Report.

Michael Phelps achieved sports immortality at the Beijing Olympics, Sarah Palin rose to political stardom (at least among Republicans), Lehman Brothers collapsed, the American economy entered the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, and Barack Obama became the first African-American president in history.

And I missed it all! That's because I've been on active duty in the Navy since July 2008. After getting called up, I spent a week at a navy base in Gulfport, Mississippi, and then three weeks at an army base in Columbia, South Carolina. I arrived in Kuwait in mid-August, and Iraq a week later. I've been in Baghdad ever since.

I'm pleased to report that I'm doing well, although I miss my family very much. I am scheduled to return to civilian life in July 2009, at which time The Gaughan Report will resume in earnest. Until then, I hope all of my readers have a very happy new year.

A Great Night for Obama

Yesterday the Democratic party took a huge step toward selecting a nominee. 48 hours ago, the polls suggested that Hillary Clinton would win a decisive victory in Indiana and keep things close in North Carolina.

But the opposite happened. Barack Obama crushed Clinton in North Carolina, 56% to 42%. And Clinton only barely won in Indiana, 51% to 49%.

Although she lost North Carolina badly, the Indiana results posed even worse news for Clinton. She did well among her core groups, but not nearly as well as expected. The most interesting exit poll finding was that Clinton and Obama ran even among voters with incomes between $30,000 and $50,000 per year. Clinton expected to do far better in Indiana with that key demographic. Her failure to do so kept the outcome in the Hoosier State far too close for Clinton’s comfort.

Yesterday’s results should come as an enormous relief to most Democrats. An end to the campaign finally seems within sight. In the days ahead, uncommitted superdelegates will likely move to Obama in droves. If that happens, Clinton will have a very hard time justifying her decision to continue the race. Even the Clintons can’t spin yesterday’s outcome as win.

Two things in particular stand out from the North Carolina and Indiana results. First, the Jeremiah Wright story did not do as much damage to Obama among Democratic primary voters as many thought it would. Obama did an excellent job of damage control and managed to put the story behind him. To be sure, videos of Jeremiah Wright condemning America and praising Louis Farrakhan will undoubtedly resurface during the fall campaign. But at least for now, Obama has shown an ability to distance himself from Wright and contain the fall-out among voters.

Second, Obama’s refusal to pander on the gas tax issue paid real dividends yesterday. I’m very glad it did. He deserves credit for taking a brave stand on the issue at a time when his opponents were engaging in shameful pandering. Unlike Clinton and McCain, Obama told the truth about the gas tax. The fact is that no consumer would benefit from a temporary suspension of the tax. As economists have universally pointed out, a tax holiday would do two things. It would expand the budget deficit and it would increase demand, which in turn would drive up prices and thus increase the gas companies’ profits. Who wants that to happen?

In short, Obama was absolutely right on the issue and Clinton and McCain were dead wrong. Obama’s opposition to suspending the gas tax could represent a turning point in the campaign. He showed courage and principle in the face of serious pressure to do otherwise. If he continues to muster such fortitude and honesty, he could fundamentally change the dynamics of the presidential campaign.

It will be interesting to see whether McCain changes his position on the gas tax as the campaign unfolds. The effort to pander to voters on the issue clearly did not work for Clinton. McCain portrays himself as a candidate who tells the truth to voters. His stand on the gas tax undermines that image. To regain the moral high ground, he should follow Obama’s lead and belatedly climb back aboard the Straight Talk Express.

So where do we go from here? In the weeks ahead, Clinton will likely win West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico. Obama will likely win Oregon, Montana, and South Dakota. When the smoke clears, Obama will still have a lead in pledged delegates and in the popular vote.

Hillary Clinton is a fighter. She has given every indication that she will stay in the race through Puerto Rico on June 3. But after yesterday, the writing is on the wall. As an experienced politician, she must realize that her chances of winning the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 have ended.

For all practical purposes, the fall election has now begun. After one of the longest primary campaigns in decades, two candidates are left standing: Barack Obama and John McCain. The country could do far worse.

Indeed, we’ve had a surplus of brain-dead campaigns in recent years. Far too many elections have turned on ridiculous and bogus issues.

This year, however, could be different. Obama’s brave stand on the gas tax bodes well for the quality of the campaign he will run during the general election. Let’s hope McCain rises to the challenge. If he does, we could finally have a campaign to be proud of in the fall.

History and Politics

I’m pleased to report that The Gaughan Report is back online. As devoted readers know, I haven’t published any columns since the end of March. I took a break from The Gaughan Report so that I could get work done on a book that I’m writing.

The change in my writing focus stemmed from news that I recently received regarding my military status. I learned that Uncle Sam is giving me an all-expenses-paid, one-year trip to the Middle East, starting in July.

Faced with the prospect of spending the better part of a year on the other side of the world, I knew I needed to focus my writing energies on getting my book done. During weekdays (and many weekends), I’ve got a regular job as a lawyer, so I do all of my extracurricular writing either at night after my little girls go to bed or in the morning before I leave for work.

In December, on a lark, I started using that time to write columns on current events (hence, The Gaughan Report). But for the last month or so, I’ve devoted my extracurricular time to my book, exclusively. Although my book is still not finished, I pledge to my loyal readers that I will try to get a Gaughan Report column posted at least one or two times a week going forward.

As for the topic of my book, it’s about an 1882 Supreme Court case called United States v. Lee. The case pitted George Washington Custis Lee, eldest son of the famous Confederate general Robert E. Lee, against the United States government for legal title to Arlington National Cemetery.

The case arose from events that occurred in the opening days of the Civil War. Arlington cemetery rests on land originally owned by Mary Lee, Robert’s wife and Custis Lee’s mother. When the Civil War began, the Lee family lived at Arlington, where they had a large slave plantation. The Lee mansion stood atop a sprawling, 1100-acre hillside estate along the Virginia side of the Potomac River. Arlington’s location provided its residents with a panoramic view of the nation’s capital. But the qualities that made the Lee estate so noteworthy also made it a potential threat to the city of Washington. Arlington House stands only two miles from the White House and three and a half miles from the Capitol building; the estate property near the Potomac was even closer. If the Confederates had occupied Arlington, they could have rained artillery shells on the White House and other government buildings.

During the opening days of the war, the Lincoln administration offered command of the Union army to Robert E. Lee, who at the time was a colonel in the United States Army. Although Lee opposed secession, which he viewed as a dangerous and radical step, he reluctantly decided to side with his home state of Virginia, which had joined the Confederacy. A month later, the U.S. Army seized the Lee estate. The Lees would never return to Arlington. As the war escalated into an epic confrontation between the Union and the Confederacy, the Lincoln administration converted part of Arlington into a refugee camp for runaway slaves, and later transformed the rest of the estate into the nation’s most hallowed military cemetery.

Years after the war, Mary and Robert’s eldest son, George Washington Custis Lee, brought suit to assert his family’s title to Arlington. The government had claimed title to Arlington on the grounds that the Lees had failed to pay a property tax assessed on the estate during the war. In fact, friends of the Lees had attempted to pay the tax on Mary Lee’s behalf, but the tax commissioners refused to accept the tender of payment from agents of the owners. They insisted that Mary and Robert E. Lee cross through the front lines and pay the tax in person. Obviously, that was not about to happen amidst the bloodiest war in American history.

After the war, two Virginia landowners who had lost their homes under the same tax law as the Lees had filed lawsuits challenging the legality of the government’s actions. In both cases, the plaintiffs won. The Supreme Court ruled that the tax commissioners had exceeded their authority when they demanded payment in person by the landowners.

Despite the highly unfavorable case law for the government’s position, the Justice Department aggressively defended against Custis Lee’s suit. The government rested its argument on the doctrine of sovereign immunity. The Justice Department’s lawyers contended that private citizens such as Custis Lee could not bring suit against government officers without the government’s consent, even when fundamental constitutional rights were at stake, such as the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause.

The case ultimately went all the way to the Supreme Court. In a closely divided 5-4 opinion, the Court ruled in favor of Lee. The majority held that the government had violated the Fifth Amendment when it seized Arlington without paying just compensation to Mary Lee. The Court also rejected the government’s effort to extend sovereign immunity to property disputes such as the Arlington case.

Chagrined by its defeat, the government quietly settled the case by paying Custis Lee $150,000 for legal title to Arlington. The cemetery has remained the lawful property of the United States ever since.

There’s a lot more to the story than that, but at least that gives you the broad outlines of the story. I began the book when I was a law student (it was originally a 3L paper that I wrote for Professor Joe Singer), and I’m now in my fifth year of working on it. I hope to have it finished in the next couple of months. I will keep Gaughan Report readers posted on my progress.

Enough history talk. Let’s talk about Election 2008.

Four months ago, I would have put the likelihood of the Democrats winning the White House at 75%. Today, it’s probably more accurate to say that the Democrats’ chances of winning in November are about 50/50. The reason is because serious questions have emerged about the electability of Barack Obama, the likely Democratic nominee.

Since the start of the primary campaign, Obama has struggled to appeal to blue-collar whites and seniors, demographic groups critical to the Democratic party’s chances in the general election. In mid-February, it looked like Obama had finally found a way to appeal to them. In his landslide victory in the Wisconsin primary, Obama did exceptionally well with both seniors and the working class. The extent of Obama’s victory in Wisconsin moved The Gaughan Report to proclaim the nomination all but locked up for the Illinois senator (see, for example, “The End of the Road for Hillary,” February 20).

But in the days and weeks that followed the Wisconsin primary, Obama lost control of his image. It started when his Ivy League-educated wife (who, it should also be noted, makes more than $300,000 per year as an attorney for a major Chicago hospital) lectured voters on how she never felt proud to be an American until her husband started winning presidential primaries. It got worse when the world learned that Obama’s former pastor and spiritual adviser Jeremiah Wright advocates an off-the-wall and deeply divisive worldview. And then, just before the Pennsylvania primary, Obama himself declared that working class whites “cling” to guns and the Bible.

The results have left his campaign reeling. In March Obama suffered a stinging defeat in Ohio; in April he suffered a blow-out defeat in Pennsylvania. Those losses came despite the fact that Obama’s campaign outspent the Clinton campaign by two-to-one on radio and television advertising.

So what is going on? The fundamental problem for Obama is he looks to many working-class voters like just another condescending limousine liberal. Contrary to what many liberal pundits claim, a whole lot more than racism is at work here. In the last 40 years, the Democratic nominees Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, and John Kerry all lost badly among blue-collar voters. The fact that each of them was white did nothing to improve their appeal to the working class. Thus, to blame race for Obama’s problems with blue-collar voters is to ignore the highly problemmatic and tenuous nature of the modern (i.e. post-1968) Democratic party’s relationship with working-class voters.

Indeed, we have recent evidence that, under the right circumstances, the working class will vote for a black candidate. That evidence was provided by none other than Barack Obama himself. In dramatic fashion, the Wisconsin primary showed that blue-collar Democrats are willing to vote for Obama in big numbers when he positions himself in a believable way as a candidate of—and for—the working class. When he did that in Wisconsin, he won the state by 17 points. But he hasn’t done it since then, and his campaign has paid the price for it. If he’s going to win in November, he must find a way to reach those voters again.

Nevertheless, in the battle for the nomination, Obama still has two huge advantages going for him: he has an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, and he has the backing of most of the Democratic establishment (which obviously includes major media organs, such as the New York Times, CBS, and MSNBC). No matter what happens on Tuesday, Obama’s advantages make it very hard for Hillary Clinton to win over enough superdelegates to capture the nomination.

But 2008 has been an unpredictable year, so don’t count out any scenarios. Even Al Gore is still lurking in the shadows, hoping for a brokered convention. We’ll get a better sense of where the race stands on Tuesday. Hillary had a superb performance on the Bill O’Reilly show last week, and she has improved enormously as a candidate over the course of the last four months. According to the latest polls, she’s taken the lead in Indiana, but Obama still has the lead in North Carolina. He also remains in the lead in most national polls of likely Democratic voters. But the Democratic party’s mood is volatile.

In an effort to shake up the campaign’s dynamics, Obama has courageously come out against a temporary suspension of the gas tax, which Clinton shamelessly advocates (as, I should add, my candidate, John McCain, does too, unfortunately). Even more remarkably and boldly, this weekend Obama came out against ethanol, just as McCain has for years. Obama deserves credit for both stands, but it’s unclear yet whether they will make any impact on Tuesday.

Things just keep getting interesting. Stay tuned.

Opening Day

Today is opening day of the season for most major league baseball teams. By any measure, baseball is bigger than ever. Although the National Football League leads all professional sports leagues worldwide in revenue, pulling in more than $7 billion in 2007 alone, baseball is closing in on the NFL. Last year, baseball’s revenues reached $6 billion, double that of the NBA and triple that of the NHL.

Baseball’s resurgence has deep roots in American history. It is the oldest professional team sport in the United States. Since 1871, more than 380,000 major league baseball games have been played, far more than any other professional team sport in the world.

Baseball’s darkest period came during the period from the 1960s through the 1980s, when fan attendance and television ratings collapsed. Most teams never came close to selling out their games, even in the biggest cities and the most historic venues. In 1965, the Boston Red Sox averaged only 8,000 fans per game at Fenway Park. In 1979, the New York Mets averaged only 9,500 fans per game at Shea Stadium. And in 1981, the Chicago Cubs averaged only 10,600 fans per game at Wrigley Field. Television ratings fell accordingly. By the mid-1980s, most television executives viewed the National Basketball Association as a far more promising long-term investment than baseball.

But in the 1990s, that began to change. Even though in Michael Jordan the NBA had the most popular American athlete since Babe Ruth, baseball pulled away from basketball in both television ratings and fan attendance. Today, many sports business analysts believe baseball could match the NFL in annual revenue in the decade ahead.

What sparked baseball’s revival?

Some say the home run hitting era, which we now know resulted from rampant steroids use. But the dates don’t match up. The steroids era reached its peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s, yet fan attendance and television ratings had started to turn around several years earlier.

Instead, the resurgence of baseball’s popularity correlates directly with the advent of small, fan-friendly “throw-back” stadiums. Built to intimate dimensions, with great sight lines and natural grass fields, “retro” stadiums hearkened memories of the ancient ballparks of the past.

They also marked a dramatic departure from the multipurpose stadiums built between the 1960s and 1980s. Stadiums such as Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium, Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium, and Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium stood as the prototypical examples of the “dark ages” of stadium construction. Giant, cavernous arenas with artifical turf playing fields as hard as concrete, the dual-purpose stadiums (known as “dual-purpose” because they housed both football and baseball teams) lost touch with everything that made baseball special. There was nothing intimate or unique about them, and they frequently stood on vast, soulless parking lots next to busy interstate highways. Any notion of the “neighborhood ballpark” was lost. Yet, to save money and cater to suburban fans traveling to games by freeway, cities across the country built nothing but dual-purpose stadiums for decades.

All that began to change in 1992 with the opening of Camden Yards, the new ballpark for the Baltimore Orioles. The original “retro park,” Camden Yards is a cozy, idiosyncratic ballpark that features a grass field and a beautiful view of downtown Baltimore. Fans loved it immediately. Since Camden Yards opened, not a single multipurpose stadium has been built. Every new ballpark has been built in the “retro style.”

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that baseball attendance is better than ever. Even teams with ancient stadiums have benefited from the retro trend. The three oldest stadiums in baseball are Boston’s Fenway Park (which opened the week the Titanic sank in April 1912), Chicago’s Wrigley Field (1914), and New York’s Yankee Stadium (1923). As baseball returned to its roots by erecting retro ballparks, authentically old stadiums took on new luster. Indeed, since Camden Yards opened in 1992, both Fenway Park and Wrigley Field--the two smallest parks in baseball--have averaged more than 30,000 fans a game.

New York is the most dramatic example of all. In 1927—the year Ruth hit 60 homes runs and the Yankees fielded what may be the greatest team in history—Yankee Stadium averaged 15,000 fans per game. By 1972, attendance at Yankee Stadium had plummeted to 12,500 per game. But in the 1990s the Yankees regularly attracted 30,000 fans per game, and last year Yankee Stadium averaged 52,000 fans a game. In addition, millions of fans tune in every night to Yankee games on the YES network. The 1920s may have been the Yankees “glory years,” but the Yankees as a franchise have never been more popular—or profitable—than they are today.

Baseball’s boom is not limited to the good teams. The Pittsburgh Pirates, perennial basement dwellers, averaged 6,000 fans per game in 1955. Last year, in their beautiful new retro ballpark, they averaged over 21,000 fans per game, despite finishing 17 games out of first place. Population growth in Pittsburgh does not explain the increase in attendance. During those 50 years, the population of the city of Pittsburgh has fallen by 50% and the metropolitan area has experienced only modest growth.

So as the baseball season gets underway today, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the people who built Camden Yards. More than anybody else, they deserve credit for reviving America’s pastime.

The Gore Option

Could the Democratic Party end up nominating Al Gore in 2008?

Some Democrats are beginning to take that scenario very seriously. On Wednesday Joe Klein of Time magazine pointed out that Gore might offer Democrats a way out of the Clinton-Obama mess. As Klein puts it, if “the elders of the Democratic Party decide, when the primaries end, that neither Obama nor Clinton is viable,” the Democratic convention delegates could turn to Gore as a compromise candidate.

The idea of a Gore presidential campaign may sound far-fetched. After all, presidential nominations are usually one-shot deals. Gore got his chance in 2000. Thanks to the butterfly ballot, Ralph Nader, and five justices on the Supreme Court, Gore lost the presidential race despite carrying the popular vote by 500,000 votes. Few Democrats want to revisit the bitter memories of the 2000 election.

But if you think about it, the idea of a Gore candidacy is not as unrealistic as it seems. The reality is the Clinton-Obama race has dealt a serious and potentially permanent blow to the Democrats’ chances of winning the White House. There is a great irony here. Democrats entered 2008 believing that it was a foregone conclusion that they would win the White House. They were less interested in nominating a candidate than in coronating a president.

But that’s no longer the case, as demonstrated by a Pew Research poll released yesterday. Long recognized as one of the most respected and accurate polls in the country, the Pew poll found that 32% of Clinton voters will vote for McCain if Obama gets the nomination. Likewise, 28% of Obama voters say they’ll vote for McCain if Clinton gets the nomination.

Those numbers should send a chill down the spine of every Democrat. They suggest that regardless of who the party nominates, at least 14% of Democrats intend to vote for McCain during the fall election. If disgruntled Democrats carry through on that threat, it will guarantee a McCain victory in the fall. In this era of razor thin presidential elections, neither party can survive the defection of 14% of its voters.

That’s why some Democrats have begun to discreetly explore the possibility of drafting Gore at the Denver convention. It’s not as unlikely as it might seem. Under the Democratic Party’s Byzantine rules, the binding effect of the primaries only lasts through the convention’s first ballot. If neither Clinton nor Obama musters 2,025 delegates on the first ballot, the primary results cease to have any role on the nomination battle. All “pledged” delegates are immediately released. On all subsequent ballots, the delegates may vote for any Democrat they want to, regardless of whether the candidate participated in the primaries. Thus, if the convention goes to a second ballot, Gore would become eligible for the nomination.

Of course, we certainly aren’t there yet. If Barack Obama wins the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, Hillary Clinton will almost certainly drop out of the race. But at present every poll shows Clinton with a double-digit lead in Pennsylvania. A crushing defeat in a crucial state thus remains a very real possibility for the Obama campaign.

As I’ve said many times before, The Gaughan Report does not make predictions. I have no idea what is going to happen at the Democratic convention or during the fall campaign.

But one thing seems certain. The mud-slinging will only get worse as the nomination battle drags on. Hillary Clinton’s only hope for victory rests on tearing Obama’s campaign apart, brick by brick. To fend off her attacks, he’ll undoubtedly continue to respond with attacks of his own. By the time the Democratic convention arrives in August, Clinton and Obama will both have sky high negative ratings, even among Democratic voters.

If that nightmare scenario materializes, there is only one Democrat in a position to unite the party, and that’s Al Gore. In so many respects, he’s a stronger general election candidate than either Clinton or Obama. For starters, Gore won a majority of the popular vote in 2000. That speaks volumes about his ability to win a general election. He’s already been fully vetted, and he knows exactly what to expect on the campaign trail in the fall. It’s also noteworthy that after winning an Academy Award and the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming, he’s enjoying the highest approval ratings of his career. In short, he’s never been a more formidable candidate than he is today.

A lot can happen between now and the general election. But the fact is the Obama-Clinton civil war has given McCain a real chance to win, despite an otherwise bleak environment for Republican candidates. In light of that new reality, Gore is the safest candidate for the Democrats to nominate.

That said, I’m not about to bet the house on a Gore nomination. The likelihood that things will break just right for him to get in the race remains low.

But the 2008 campaign has already been so wildly unpredictable, it’s foolish to count out any contingencies, including a “Draft Gore” movement at the Denver convention. We are in uncharted territory and no one has a clue what lies ahead.

Hillary the War Hero

On St. Patrick’s Day, Hillary Clinton boasted that she had firsthand experience in a war zone. She claimed that back in 1996, when she was First Lady, she flew directly into harm’s way during a visit to Bosnia. “I remember landing under sniper fire,” Clinton declared. “There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.” She added, “But it was a moment of great pride for me.”

Clinton offered the story as evidence of her courage under fire. Although she never served in the military, she cited the Bosnia story as an example that she was not afraid to face enemy fire in a war zone.

There was just one problem with her story. None of it was true.

This week, video emerged of Clinton’s arrival at the Tuzla airport. Instead of depicting a tense, sniper-infested war zone, it revealed that school children, not gun-toting Serbs, greeted Clinton at the airport. Instead of racing to her vehicle to avoid getting shot, Clinton enjoyed a reception on the tarmac that included U.S. military personnel and friendly Bosnian civilians. They welcomed her with flowers, handshakes, and poems.

After the video’s release, Clinton changed her story. She claimed that her St. Patrick’s Day misstatement resulted from “sleep deprivation.” But now it turns out that she made the same bogus claims about her Tuzla trip on at least two prior occasions, going as far back as December.

Needless to say, the flap makes Clinton look very foolish. But she’s not the first politician to make such a mistake. Political candidates have been embellishing their “war records” since the days of ancient Rome.

If there were a gold medal for telling stories of completely bogus heroics, it would go to Lyndon Johnson. During World War II, when LBJ was a young Congressman from Texas, he got himself awarded the Silver Star for valor in combat. What made the award particularly noteworthy was the fact that Johnson never got within 100 miles of the Japanese. His military service consisted of a six-month span in which he toured U.S. military bases in the south Pacific in early 1942. During his time on active duty, he never saw battle and never heard a shot fired in anger. Shortly thereafter, President Roosevelt banned sitting members of Congress, including Johnson, from serving on active duty. Nevertheless, for the rest of his life, Johnson would tell gripping and completely untrue stories of the “bombing runs” he flew against the Japanese during World War II.

Not all politicians feel compelled to fabricate war stories. Some politicians are honest about their lack of wartime heroics. Abraham Lincoln, who spent three months in the Illinois state militia during the Black Hawk War of 1832, freely admitted that the only blood he ever shed for his country was to “mosquitos.”

Nevertheless, as Clinton’s Tuzla whopper shows, many politicians believe that experience under fire gives them a special advantage with the voters. Some politicians, including Clinton, will even make up stories of courage under fire to gain that advantage.

But are they right? Do voters care if politicians have experience in war?

Those questions have special relevance in 2008 because one of the candidates is a genuine war hero. In the 1960s, John McCain flew 23 combat missions over North Vietnam. He also narrowly avoided death during the devastating fire aboard the U.S.S. Forrestal in July 1967. Although he was offered the opportunity to return home, McCain declined it and secured a transfer to another aircraft carrier. Three months later McCain was shot down during a mission over Hanoi. He would spend the next five and a half years in captivity.

Does McCain’s distinguished war record give him an advantage in the general election?

If recent history is any guide, the answer is no.

To be sure, we’ve elected plenty of combat veterans in the past. They include George Washington (French and Indian War), James Monroe (American Revolution), Andrew Jackson (War of 1812), William Henry Harrison (War of 1812), Zachary Taylor (War of 1812), Ulysses S. Grant (Mexican War), Rutherford B. Hayes (Civil War), James Garfield (Civil War), Benjamin Harrison (Civil War), William McKinley (Civil War), Theodore Roosevelt (Spanish-American War), Harry Truman (World War I), John Kennedy (World War II), Gerald Ford (World War II), and George H. W. Bush (World War II). In all, 15 of our 42 presidents have had combat experience, and many others served in the military but never saw battle.

At first blush, that would seem to indicate that going into harm’s way is a great asset for a presidential candidate. But if you look closer, what’s striking is that only four presidents in the last 100 years have had combat experience: Truman, Kennedy, Ford, and Bush Sr.

Moreover, in the last 40 years, combat veterans have lost more presidential races than they’ve won. George McGovern flew 35 bombing missions over Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II and won a chest full of medals, but that didn’t prevent him from losing 49 of 50 states to Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election. In 1976, Gerald Ford, who won 10 battle stars in the Pacific during World War II, lost to Jimmy Carter, whose Navy career consisted solely of peacetime service. George H. W. Bush flew 58 combat missions in the Pacific during World War II, but nevertheless in 1992 he lost to Bill Clinton, a man who by his own admission used every legal method at his disposal to avoid military service during the Vietnam War. And in 1996 Clinton went on to easily defeat Bob Dole, a decorated World War II veteran who lost the use of his right arm after being wounded in combat in Italy.

Moreover, it should not be forgotten that John McCain’s record of heroism didn’t help him during his 2000 campaign against George W. Bush, a man who unlike his father had no combat experience whatsoever. In 2004, Bush Jr. went on to defeat John Kerry, a Navy veteran who saw combat while commanding a patrol boat on the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War.

So why doesn’t experience on the frontlines matter to voters any more? Part of the reason is demographics. During the Second World War, more than 75% of American men between the ages of 18 and 40 served in the military. It is a very different story today. Although we are engaged in two wars, less than 1% of the American population is currently serving in the U.S. military. In the nation as a whole, military veterans compose only about 12% of the population. The number of veterans shrinks every year, particularly as the World War II generation dies off.

As a result, relatively few Americans have first-hand experience with the military, and an even smaller number have combat experience. The bottom line is that as an institution the military has become a mystery to the great majority of Americans.

There are other factors at work as well. In recent elections, the clear trend is that voters prefer candidates with charisma over candidates with strong resumes (thus, Clinton over Bush Sr in 1992 and Bush Jr. over Al Gore in 2000). Wartime heroics are nice, but they aren’t going to make up for other shortcomings in a candidacy. For example, in 1996 Bob Dole’s dour appearance and acerbic wit made a much deeper impression on voters than stories of his World War II experiences.

There are many lessons here, but two stand out. The first is that voters care a lot more about a candidate’s personality, television appearance, and position on the issues than about a candidate’s biography. That’s something McCain should bear in mind. If he wins on November 4, it won’t be because of his long and admirable service in the Navy. It will be because of his stand on the issues and his ability to connect with voters.

The other lesson is that in the 24/7 news culture in which we live, candidates tell fibs about their biographies at their peril. In an age of Youtube and LexisNexis, candidates simply won’t get away any longer with fabricated war stories like those LBJ told a half century ago. Through the uproar over her bogus Tuzla story, Hillary Clinton has learned that lesson the hard way.

A Year to Remember

We’re only three months into 2008, and yet it’s already a year for the history books.

Let’s start with politics. Since the Iowa caucuses on January 3, we’ve seen the most competitive and divisive Democratic nomination battle in 40 years. Unless Barack Obama can land a knock-out blow in Pennsylvania, the nomination battle seems certain to go all the way to the Democratic convention. Whatever happens in Denver, the Democratic Party will almost certainly amend its nomination rules for 2012 to make the delegate math more transparent and less controversial than it is today.

Regardless of who ultimately wins the nomination and the general election, America will make history on election day. If Hillary Clinton wins, we will have the first woman president in history. If Obama wins, we will have the first African American president. And if John McCain wins, we will have elected the oldest first-term president in history and the second oldest to ever occupy the Oval Office (Ronald Reagan was 69, two years younger than McCain is today, when he won in 1980; when he won his second term in 1984, Reagan was 73). And no matter who wins on November 4, we’ll have sent the first senator to the White House since John Kennedy in 1960.

But the year 2008 will be remembered for a lot more than politics. No less an authority than Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chairman, has declared the current financial crisis the most severe the world has faced since the 1940s. Meanwhile, home prices have plunged and foreclosures have skyrocketed. Oil is over $100 per barrel and gold is at $1,000 an ounce (a clear sign of investor pessimism about where inflation is headed). The value of the United States dollar has plunged; one British pound buys two American dollars today. Even the Euro beats the greenback, and the Canadian dollar has reached parity. By any measure, we are living through unprecedented economic times.

On the international scene in 2008, the United States finds itself engaged in two Middle East wars of historic length. The Iraq War reached the 5-year milestone last week; the Afghanistan War will reach the 7-year mark in September. The Vietnam War lasted 8 years and 7 months (August 1964 to March 1973). Thus, in the summer of 2010, Afghanistan will set the record for the longest conflict in American history. The 2008 election also marks one of the rare times in our history when we’ve had consecutive wartime elections.

If we’ve learned anything from 2008, it’s to not make predictions. History marches to its own drummer. But here are five upcoming events to put on your calendar:

The Beijing Summer Olympics: From August 8 to August 24, China will host the Olympics for the very first time. The Chinese will hold the opening and closing ceremonies in the newly constructed Beijing National Stadium, a brilliantly original, 80,000 seat arena built in the shape of a giant bird’s nest. But politics and pollution could overshadow the games. China’s astounding air pollution problems threaten to undermine the quality of the competition, especially in events like the marathon. Don’t expect many world records to be set in Beijing. Moreover, international condemnation of China’s human rights abuses, combined with Beijing’s intense sensitivity to that criticism, could add an element of volatility to the games.

The day after the Olympics ends, the Democratic national convention begins. The city of Denver will host the convention from August 25 to August 28 at the Pepsi Center, the home of the Denver Nuggets basketball team and the Colorado Avalanche hockey team. A floor fight seems certain to erupt over whether the party bosses permit the Michigan and Florida delegations to take their seats. Bitterness between the Obama and Clinton camps has grown so intense, many Democratic party professionals privately warn that if Hillary Clinton somehow manages to win the nomination, she may get booed during her nomination speech. In any event, the convention will certainly make for must-see tv. Incidentally, Denver has hosted the Democratic convention once before. That was in 1908, when Nebraska Congressman William Jennings Bryan won the nomination for the third and final time. In the fall, he suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt’s handpicked successor. Bryan later went on to serve as Secretary of State for Woodrow Wilson and as an attorney for the prosecution during the Scopes Monkey Trial.

The Republican convention will be held at the Excel Center (home to the Minnesota Wild hockey team) in St. Paul, Minnesota, from September 1 to September 4. It begins the day that the Minnesota State Fair, the second largest state fair in the country (behind the Texas State Fair), ends. Many observers expect that John McCain will select Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty to serve as his running mate, which would create an electric atmosphere among the Minnesota delegates on the convention floor. But regardless of who he nominates, McCain will face a challenge in energizing the rest of his demoralized party. His acceptance speech on September 4 represents his last chance to rally the conservative base behind him. As it happens, Minnesota has hosted the Republican National Convention once before. In 1892, the Republican convention in St. Paul renominated President Benjamin Harrison. He went on to lose the fall election to former president Grover Cleveland.

There will be at least three presidential debates in the fall. This year they’re more important than ever. The parties have already agreed to the dates and locations: September 26 in Oxford, Mississippi; October 7 in Nashville, Tennessee; and October 15 in Hempstead, New York. Each will start at 9 pm eastern and last for 90 minutes. The stakes will be enormous, and hopefully the tv ratings will be too.

Of course, the most important day of 2008 is November 4. Four years ago, more than 120 million Americans voted in the presidential election, a turnout rate of 60%. Early signs indicate that 2008 may considerably surpass the 2004 turnout. We could see more than 150 million people vote on election day. Let’s hope so. This is a hugely important election that deserves a robust turnout by the voters. After all, we will be living with the consequences of 2008 for years to come.

A Viewer's Guide to the Pennsylvania Primary

When Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton meet in the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, the outcome of the Democratic race may very well hinge on the results. If Obama wins, the race will be effectively over. A victory in the Keystone State would give him an insurmountable lead in the popular vote. It would also put to rest any doubts about his appeal to blue-collar white voters.

But if Clinton wins Pennsylvania by a big margin, on the order of 15 to 20 percentage points, the Democratic race will become more volatile than ever. If a blowout victory for Clinton materializes on April 22, the nomination almost certainly won’t be determined until the Denver convention in late August. The stakes in Pennsylvania are thus very high indeed.

For all the press coverage of the Pennsylvania primary, there has been surprisingly little discussion of the state itself. So here is a quick primer.

English Quakers under the leadership of William Penn established the colony of Pennsylvania (literally meaning “Penn’s Woods”) in 1681. In keeping with Quaker tradition, Penn set a tone of religious toleration that left a lasting influence on America. By the 1770s, Pennsylvania was the largest, most prosperous, and most important American colony.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s largest city then and now, was home to the first American to achieve international fame, the legendary scientist, publisher, diplomat, and politician Benjamin Franklin. Largely because of Franklin’s influence, Philadelphia hosted the Continental Congress that declared American independence from Great Britain in 1776. Eleven years later, the city hosted the Constitutional Convention. In the mid-ninetenth century, Pennsylvania was the scene of one of the largest and most important battles in American history. Over 51,000 Union and Confederate soldiers fell in three days of fighting at the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In November of that year President Lincoln commemorated the battle with his Gettysburg Address, which remains one of the greatest speeches in the history of the English language.

Today Pennsylvania is the 6th most populous state in the United States. Like Ohio, it has experienced very slow population growth. Pennsylvania’s annual population growth rate is 1%, the national average is 6%. In 1960, Pennsylvania had 11.3 million; today it has 12.4 million. By way of contrast, during that same period California grew from 15 million people to its current population of 36 million.

By any measure, Pennsylvania’s demographics are highly favorable to Hillary Clinton. The state is older, whiter, and slightly poorer than the national average. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, over 83% of Pennsylvania’s population is white; 11% is African American. More than 15% of Pennsylvania residents are over 65. The national average is 12%.

The Keystone State is also well to the left of the national center on trade and other economic issues. It has a smaller upper middle class and fewer college educated people—two key bases of support for Obama—than most states its size. It also has a larger than average number of lower middle class voters. Pennsylvania’s median income and per capita income are both slightly below the national averages of $44,300 and $21,500 (according to 2006 Census Bureau estimates). The state also has an unusually large number of unionized workers, a crucial demographic for Clinton.

Finally, Pennsylvania has a large Catholic population, especially among the state’s two largest ethnic groups, the Germans and the Irish. Throughout the primaries, Clinton has done exceptionally well among Catholic voters. In fact, even in states that she has lost badly, such as Wisconsin, she has usually carried a majority of Catholic voters.

So what does all this mean? It means that unless a scandal breaks between now and April 22, Hillary Clinton will almost certainly win Pennsylvania.

But the real question is this: how big will her victory be? If she wins 55% to 45%, her margin of victory in Ohio, it won’t be enough to change the race’s dynamics. Her magic number is 60%. If she can win three out of every five votes on April 22, she could come within striking distance of Obama in the popular vote nationally. And if that happens, the stage will be set for an unpredictable and raucous Democratic convention in August.

Without question, Obama will carry inner-city Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and the affluent suburbs of those cities. Clinton will sweep the vast rural areas of the state.

The key to the election, however, rests in working-class towns like Scranton, Allentown, and Reading in eastern Pennsylvania and Erie in the western part of the state. There is no doubt that Clinton will win those towns. But it’s crucial for Obama to limit the damage. He needs to carry at least 40% of the blue-collar vote statewide. If he can pull that off, his strength among liberals, upscale voters, and African Americans will get him to an overall total of 45% or even better statewide.

The Keystone State’s importance to the Democrats cannot be overstated. Democrats have won Pennsylvania in every presidential election since 1992, although the contests have usually been quite close. John Kerry beat George W. Bush 51 to 49% in 2004. In each of the last four president elections, Democrats have poured millions of advertising dollars into Pennsylvania. The reason is simple. Without Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes, the electoral college math simply does not add up to 270 for the Democratic candidate, regardless of who that may turn out to be.

It should be troubling to the Democrats, therefore, that John McCain currently leads Obama and Clinton in head-to-head polls in Pennsylvania. The Democratic candidates would be wise to use the next four weeks before the primary to fortify the Democratic party’s base in the state. No matter what happens on April 22, the Democrats must win Pennsylvania on November 4.

President McCain?

2008 was supposed to be a lock for the Democrats. All the pundits (including The Gaughan Report) agreed that the Republicans had little chance of winning the presidential election this fall.

But the latest national polls tell a different story. John McCain’s lead over Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton grows with each new poll. The Rasmussen tracking poll released on Sunday shows that McCain leads Obama 49 to 41%. The same poll finds McCain with a 50 to 42% lead over Hillary Clinton.

Either way you slice it, McCain holds a significant lead in the race for the presidency. At least for the moment.

Democrats have dismissed McCain’s lead on the grounds that once Obama or Clinton secures the nomination, the party will unite for the general election. But history suggests that’s far from a foregone conclusion. In the last 40 years, three candidates have won their party’s nomination after bruising nomination battles: Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Gerald Ford in 1976, and Jimmy Carter in 1980. In all three cases, the candidate who endured a prolonged and divisive nomination battle went on to lose the general election.

The same thing may be happening this year. A Franklin & Marshall poll of Pennsylvania voters released on Friday has potentially devastating news for the Democrats. It found that 20% of Obama supporters, and 19% of Clinton supporters, will vote for McCain if their candidate doesn’t win the Democratic nomination. We haven’t seen levels of Democratic disaffection that high since the Jimmy Carter-Ted Kennedy race in 1980.

Worse still, the level of bitterness between the Obama and Clinton camps grows by the day. Over the weekend, Bill Clinton declared that he hoped the fall election would involve two candidates “who love America,” by which he obviously meant his wife and John McCain. That was Bill Clinton’s way of saying that Barack Obama doesn’t love America. Who knows what the Clintons and their allies will be saying about the Illinois senator by the time the Pennsylvania primary arrives on April 22.

Obama’s fundamental problem is he’s fighting a two-front war. He cannot get past the Wright story if his Democratic challenger (and her husband) keep bringing it up. The battle has taken a toll on Obama’s polling numbers. Yesterday’s Rasmussen tracking poll now has Clinton beating Obama in a head-to-head match-up, 45 to 44%. The Fox News poll also has Clinton ahead, 40 to 38%.

There is, however, some good news for Obama. Bill Richardson endorsed him over the weekend, which could represent for Obama a much-needed bridge to Latino voters, who’ve been very lukewarm to him thus far. In addition, the latest Gallup tracking poll still has Obama ahead of Clinton 48 to 45%.

Putting the polls aside, the bottom line is Obama must find a way to get the discussion off Jeremiah Wright and onto the nation’s economic challenges. If he can’t change the terms of the debate, he’s got real problems on his hands going forward in this campaign.

The Democratic civil war is great news for McCain, but he shouldn’t get too comfortable. The Republican Party remains deeply unpopular nationwide, especially with a recession bearing down on the electorate. Democrats have a double-digit lead in party identification, the largest gap between the parties in 50 years. And no matter what happens in the presidential election, Democrats will likely expand their majorities in both the House and the Senate.

McCain’s age and health also cast a shadow over his campaign. Ronald Reagan was a young and vigorous-looking 69-year-old, with no significant health problems, when he won the presidency in 1980. McCain is an old and tired-looking 71-year-old, with a history of melanoma.

Of course, in and of itself, McCain’s age is not an insurmountable problem. As the baby boomers age, we will likely see many future presidents in their 70s, especially as modern medicine expands our longevity and improves our quality of life.

But McCain’s age will be a problem if he comes across to voters as an old fogy who has “senior” moments. Indeed, that’s exactly how he came across during a press conference in the Middle East on Friday. While attempting to make a point about the Iraq War, McCain declared that Iran was arming and training Al Qaeda fighters in Iraq. The media jumped on the story, because Iran is a Shiite nation, while Al Qaeda is a Sunni terrorist group that’s virulently anti-Shiite.

Had Obama or Clinton made the same error, the media would have been unforgiving. In contrast, it’s largely given McCain a free pass on his Middle East blunder, principally because of his long experience in foreign affairs.

But he can’t expect more Mulligans from the media. The fact is he has no excuse for blunders at this stage in the campaign. Unlike Obama and Clinton, McCain’s not campaigning 14 hours day, seven days a week. He enjoys the luxury that goes with being a candidate who has already secured his party’s nomination. But that also means that any missteps he makes will likely be attributed to his age, and not to exhaustion brought on by a grueling campaign.

All that said, McCain has reasons for optimism. To a greater degree than any candidate in decades, he can sit back and enjoy watching his challengers tear each other apart deep into the summer. Indeed, the evidence is growing that the longer the Obama-Clinton race drags on, the brighter McCain’s chances are of becoming the 44th President of the United States.

Yet Another Clinton Comeback?

If we’ve learned one thing in the 2008 campaign, it’s to never underestimate Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the Democratic nomination. She’s already mounted two Lazarus-like comebacks, the first following her stunning loss in the Iowa caucuses and the second coming after her devastating defeat in the Wisconsin primary.

Throughout the campaign, Clinton has suffered from fundraising shortfalls, organizational blunders, and a hostile press corps. Yet, here we are in late March and she’s still in the hunt for the nomination. The resilience of the 2008 Clinton campaign bears a striking resemblance to her husband’s ’92 campaign, which famously overcame the Gennifer Flowers scandal and the Vietnam War draft-dodging story to win the Democratic nomination.

But Hillary Clinton has a lot harder road to hoe than her husband ever did. She faces an opponent who is extremely popular with liberals, young people, African Americans, and, most important of all, the media. With all due respect to Paul Tsongas, Jerry Brown, and Bob Kerrey, Bill Clinton never faced an opponent as formidable as Barack Obama.

So can Clinton actually do it? Can she beat Obama?

The odds say no. After all, she trails in the popular vote, the number of states won, and the share of pledged delegates.

The only one of those categories in which she has any prayer of catching up to Obama is in the popular vote. Thus far in the campaign, Obama has won 13,281,132 votes and Clinton has won 12,577,409. Those figures don’t include the uncontested Michigan and Florida primaries. Excluding the Wolverine and Sunshine states, Obama’s margin over Clinton is 700,000 votes.

Without question, it will extremely difficult for Clinton to close the gap in the popular vote. To do it, she needs two things to happen.

First, she needs to win 60 percent or more of the vote in Pennsylvania. That’s not impossible. Last weekend, a Public Policy Polling survey put Clinton ahead in the Quaker State by 56 to 30, an astounding 26% lead. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that the Jeremiah Wright story has done enormous damage to Obama among blue-collar Pennsylvania voters.

So how many votes would a 60% showing for Clinton in Pennsylvania translate to? On March 4 Clinton carried Ohio with 55% of the vote, which gave her a margin of victory of 230,000 votes. A 60% victory would be double the margin in Ohio (60-40 versus 55-45). Pennsylvania also has about one million more people than Ohio (12.3 million to 11.3 million). Therefore, assuming a turnout in Pennsylvania as large that of the other Democratic primaries, Clinton would beat Obama by at least 500,000 votes if she carried 60% of the vote on election day.

A win that big would certainly get Clinton a lot closer to Obama in the popular vote, but not close enough. She’d still have to win nearly all of the remaining primaries to catch him. With Clinton’s effort to hold new primaries having failed in Florida and Michigan, there are now only nine primaries left: Guam, Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, South Dakota, and Montana.

Can Clinton run the table in the remaining primaries? It’s highly unlikely. Obama has significant advantages in Oregon, an upscale liberal state, and North Carolina, a state with a large African American population.

But there is one big question mark hanging over the campaign, and that’s the Jeremiah Wright story. No one knows yet the full extent of the damage it has done to Barack Obama.

And that’s why the polls have never been more important than they are now. Early polling last weekend suggested that the Wright story has really hurt the Illinois senator. Obama hoped to contain the damage with his address in Philadelphia on Tuesday, but we won’t know until this weekend whether he succeeded.

There are three post-speech, national numbers everyone wants to see: Obama’s head-to-head numbers against McCain, Obama’s head-to-head numbers against Clinton, and Clinton’s head-to-head numbers against McCain. In the next couple of days, we should get new polling numbers from the NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll, the CBS/New York Times poll, and the ABC News/Washington Post poll.

When those polls come out, The Gaughan Report will weigh in with instant analysis. Until then, enjoy watching the NCAA tournament. Go Badgers.

March Madness

Today one of the most popular sports tournaments in the world begins. On hardwood courts across the United States, sixty-four teams will compete for the national championship of college basketball. Unlike college football, whose “champion” is determined by an unholy combination of polls and computer formulas, college basketball decides its champion on the playing court. Over the course of the next three weeks, more than 130 million people will tune into CBS to watch at least part of the tournament.

The success of the NCAA basketball tournament was not a foregone conclusion. It isn’t even the only Division I college basketball championship. The National Invitational Tournament holds a 32-team contest of its own that runs at the same time as the NCAA tournament.

Although the NIT is now a second-tier competition, consisting of teams that failed to qualify for the NCAAs, it was once the premiere tournament in the country. In fact, the NIT originated the idea of a post-season college basketball tournament. In 1938 a group of New York sportswriters founded the NIT, inviting six teams to compete in it. Impressed by the idea, the NCAA began a tournament of its own in 1939. That year the Oregon Ducks won the NCAA tournament, while the Long Island Blackbirds won the NIT tournament. We’ve had separate NCAA and NIT champions ever since, with the sole exception of the 1950 season, when the City College of New York Beavers shocked the world by winning both tournaments, the only time the feat has ever been accomplished.

Since its founding in 1938, the NIT has held its semifinal and championship games at Madison Square Garden, the mecca of American indoor sports. Because of its location in the media capital of the world, the NIT received more press coverage and enjoyed more prestige than the NCAA tournament throughout the 1940s. That changed, however, when investigators exposed a point-shaving and game-throwing scandal that involved New York gamblers and many college basketball players. To redeem basketball’s reputation and to steer clear of the Big Apple, the NCAA mandated that every conference champion participate in the NCAA tournament. The NIT never fully regained its luster.

Six decades later, money and gambling remain a big part of college basketball’s post-season tournaments. This week more than 30 million people will fill out NCAA brackets, predicting the winners of each round. More than $4 billion will be bet on the games, even though sports gambling is illegal in nearly all jurisdictions outside Nevada. But the interest generated by the gambling translates into high TV ratings, which in turn translates into advertising dollars for the NCAA. When the NCAA held its first tournament in 1939, it incurred a net loss of $2,500 on the event. This year, in contrast, the NCAA will make $545 million—over half a billion dollars—from television advertising revenue during the 17-day-long tournament. That figure doesn’t include the millions of dollars the NCAA will receive from ticket sales and merchandising. Only the National Football League playoffs, which had revenues of nearly $700 million this year, surpass the NCAA tournament in profitability.

To understand just how enormous the NCAA tournament has become, you need look no further than its big brother, the National Basketball Association. In terms of both fan interest and financial revenues, pro basketball languishes far behind the NCAA tournament. The NBA playoffs, which consist of even more games than March Madness, generated only $279 million in revenue last year, barely 50% of college basketball’s annual tournament TV revenues. There are lots of reasons for the NBA’s problems, but at the top of the list is the league’s failure to find marketable stars to replace Michael Jordan, who retired ten years ago and is still badly missed. In contrast, the beauty of the NCAA tournament is that it is a team-focused rather than a star-focused event. The best collegiate players come and go every year, but fan interest remains.

Although the NCAA tournament involves “amateur” athletes, the difference between winning and losing means a huge amount of money to the teams who compete in it. The NCAA shares the tournament profits with all of its conferences through a complicated allotment formula. 50% of those profits go to the conferences based on the number of teams that each conference sends to the tournament. The number of games each conference’s teams win also affects the payout. This year, each conference receives nearly $200,000 for each team that it sends to the tournament, plus a similar amount for each win.

Why is so much attention devoted to college basketball by the NCAA? The answer is simple. Like its autumn cousin, 11-man football, basketball dwarfs the popularity of all the other college sports. The NCAA has a television contract with ESPN under which the cable network broadcasts the championships of 20 Division I college sports (not including football and basketball). ESPN pays $18 million per year for those broadcast rights. That’s less than 4% of what CBS pays annually for the rights to the NCAA basketball tournament.

With so much money involved, one would assume that private schools would dominate the basketball tournament. In fact, the opposite is true. Since the tournament’s inception in 1939, public universities have won the vast majority of national championships, just as they do in college football, with the exception of a handful of traditional football powers, such as Notre Dame, Miami, and the University of Southern California.

Private schools have struggled even more in basketball than in football. Indeed, in the 69-year history of the NCAA tournament, private universities have won the NCAA basketball tournament only 13 times: Syracuse (2003), Duke (2001, 1992, and 1991), Villanova (1985), Georgetown (1984), Marquette (1977), Loyola of Chicago (1963), San Francisco (1956, 1955), La Salle (1954), Holy Cross (1947), and Stanford (1942).

That’s a fact worth keeping in mind when you fill out your NCAA tournament bracket.

Obama's Philadelphia Speech

The big story yesterday was Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia on American race relations. He gave the address in response to the fall-out from the wild and indefensible rhetoric of his recently retired pastor, Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Before I put in my two cents, I should point out that during Obama’s speech I was traveling. I didn’t see excerpts of it on television until I got to the Detroit airport yesterday afternoon. I still haven’t seen video of the whole thing in its entirety, just the parts that Keith Olberman showed on MSNBC when I got home last night. But I did read the transcript of the speech on the New York Times website last night and again this morning.

From the television excerpts that I saw, the most striking visual image of the speech was how presidential Obama looked. Of course, it never hurts to have a row of American flags as your background. But there was more to it than that. To a greater degree than any other candidate thus far in this campaign, Obama looked and sounded like a president yesterday. In light of America’s long history of racial conflict, that may sound odd to say, especially when we’ve never had a black president before, but it’s absolutely true.

Obama didn’t look like a president in the sense of looking like Martin Van Buren or William Henry Harrison. He looked like a president in a modern, 21st century sense. Indeed, if Hollywood were casting a movie today, and they had to choose from Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain to play the role of the president, is there any doubt that the casting director would pick Obama?

I love McCain and will vote for him in the fall (for various reasons that I will write about at a later date), but I’ve got to admit he’s the least presidential looking of the candidates. As David Letterman puts it, “John McCain looks like the guy who thinks the nurses are stealing his stuff. . . . John McCain looks like the guy who picks up the TV remote when the phone rings. . . . John McCain looks like a guy who keeps asking the driver if he’s on the right bus. . . . John McCain looks like the guy who goes to the curb for the paper and locks himself outside of the house.”

Letterman’s jokes make a really interesting point that in the 2008 campaign, it’s the old white male who looks the least presidential of the candidates. In a very real and important way, that represents significant progress for our country.

But it’s the substance of Obama’s speech that really mattered. By any measure, the Illinois senator’s speech yesterday was superb, better even than the speech he gave the night of the South Carolina primary in January, which I’ve written about before. Obama was wise not to disown Wright, despite the indefensible nature of the minister’s comments. To disown his friend and mentor would have been both cowardly and completely unbelievable. Obama belonged to Wright’s church for 20 years and he has a long paper trail of describing how important Wright’s ministry has been to Obama’s Christian faith. The only smart move, therefore, was to embrace Wright, warts and all, and that’s exactly what he did.

The parallel that Obama drew with his white grandmother was also quite powerful and graceful. One line in particular stood out:

“I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

That was a truly great passage in the speech. Among other things, it reminds voters that Obama is every bit as much “white” as he is “black.” But perhaps the most important part of the speech came when Obama turned to the issue of blue-collar whites’ resentment of affirmative action, busing, and other liberal programs designed, however imperfectly, to remedy the effects of racism. Here’s the key passage in Obama’s speech:

“Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.”

Obama’s point about opportunity being falsely seen “as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense” is particularly telling. I suspect that it previews Obama’s campaign strategy going forward. Indeed, look at the following passage, where he discusses black anger and white resentment. He states that they have:

“distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.”

What Obama seems to be proposing here is a modern version of the populist campaigns of the 1890s. What made those campaigns so interesting is that for a very brief time, they united southern blacks and working class whites into a single powerful coalition. Obama seems to be saying that he wants to do the same thing in 2008. If he can pull that off, he’ll make history on November 4, especially when you consider that Obama already has a strong base of support among wealthy and well-educated voters. We’ve never before seen a political coalition that includes both black and white voters and both downscale and upscale voters (FDR’s New Deal Coalition came closest to doing that, but in the end it lacked significant numbers of upscale voters, in part because he liked to call them “economic royalists,” even though it was a social group of which he was a member). Obama’s speech yesterday thus suggests that he seeks to bring about a truly historic coalition.

One last thing is worth noting. After having read the entire speech twice, I don’t believe for a second that Obama just wrote it from scratch over the weekend. From both a stylistic and substantive perspective, it’s far too good to be a hastily crafted address. He clearly worked on it for a long time.

That’s also why I am skeptical of the idea that the Clinton or McCain camps leaked the video of Wright’s sermons to the television media. It seems far more likely that the Obama campaign itself leaked the video to control the timing of the controversy.

Just think about it. Hillary Clinton’s campaign would benefit far more from the Wright videos if they reached voters’ television screens just before the Pennsylvania primary, when the story would do maximum damage to Obama with minimal time for him to recover. Likewise, if McCain’s campaign leaked the story, wouldn’t it make more sense for them to wait until the days immediately following the Democratic convention (assuming Obama wins the nomination)? That’s precisely what the makers of the Swift Boat ads did in 2004, waiting until the days immediately following the Boston convention to hit the airwaves. In that case, the timing worked perfectly to stop John Kerry’s momentum and erase his lead in the polls.

But by breaking in mid-March, the timing of the Wright story was perfect for Obama. Videos of Reverend Wright saying crazy things were inevitably going to come out at some point during the campaign, as Obama had to know. Therefore, the best time for the story to break was now, during this long lull between the major primaries. It gives Obama plenty of time to do damage control before Pennsylvania voters go to the polls in late April. The fact that Obama already had a superb speech prepared for the occasion underscores the point.

All that said, the speech won’t put an end to the Wright controversy, at least not yet. Obama still has a whole lot of work to do. A poll out on Monday revealed that 56% of white voters say they are less likely to vote for Obama because of the Wright story.

However, the speech is certainly an excellent start to his damage control efforts. It could also conceivably do more than that. It gives him a chance to speak directly to blue collar white voters, the demographic that ultimately holds the key to the election. They are the people who gave Nixon and Reagan 49-state landslides in 1972 and 1984. But they are also the demographic that voted for Carter in 1976 and Clinton in 1996. They are not yet committed to either party in 2008.

Obama cannot win the White House without them. His speech yesterday clearly reflected his keen understanding of that fact. It seems likely, therefore, that when the history of the 2008 election is written, historians will point to Obama’s Philadelphia speech as the first volley in his effort to win over blue collar voters. The ultimate outcome of his presidential campaign depends on the success of that effort.

This election just keeps getting more and more interesting. Stay tuned.

District of Columbia v. Heller

This morning the United States Supreme Court hears oral argument in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. The case arose from a challenge to Washington D.C.’s gun ban, which has been in effect since 1976. The law in question bans all handguns not purchased and registered prior to 1976 and it further requires that shotguns and rifles be held in a disassembled state when not in use.

The Supreme Court has not weighed in on the Second Amendment since the 1930s, which makes today’s proceedings truly historic. Although the Court normally allots only 60 minutes to oral argument—30 minutes for each side—the justices will give Solicitor General Paul Clement 15 additional minutes to explain the Bush Administration’s position on the D.C. gun ban.

The Court is expected to announce its ruling on the case in June, just as the Democratic primaries come to an end. Depending on the outcome, Heller could emerge as a major issue in the presidential election.

If it does, it won’t be good for the Democrats. While the Republican Party overwhelmingly opposes new gun control measures, the Democrats, in contrast, are split. Liberal and northeastern Democrats tend to support stricter gun control laws, whereas most of the rest of the party opposes them.

There is no mystery as to where most Americans stand on the issue. Two-thirds of Americans tell pollsters that they oppose gun bans, and most feel very strongly about the issue. As it happens, more than 40% of the American population owns firearms of one sort or another. In elections where guns have emerged as a prominent campaign issue, candidates who advocate vigorous gun control policies usually lose, especially the farther away you get from the coasts. The few instances where gun control advocates do well include mayoral elections in major cities, like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and state and federal elections in solidly liberal northeastern states like Massachusetts. But those are the exceptions to the rule.

The amicus briefs filed in the Heller case illustrate the extent to which the nation’s elected officials reflect the broad base of popular support for private gun ownership. Only 5 states submitted amicus briefs in support of the D.C. ban—New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, and Hawaii. In contrast, 31 state Attorneys General signed an amicus brief in opposition to the D.C. gun ban. Those 31 states represent a cross section of America, ranging from red states like Alabama and Mississippi to blue states like Minnesota, and they include many Democratic Attorneys General.

No one understands the threat that the gun control issue poses for Democrats more than Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Despite the public attention surrounding the Heller case, neither has publicly taken a stand on the D.C. gun ban. Their silence speaks volumes. John McCain, in contrast, has not only spoken out against the D.C. gun ban, he has also joined Vice President Dick Cheney, 55 senators, and 250 members of the House of Representatives in signing a brief opposing the D.C. gun ban.

But the partisan implications of gun control are not the issue before the Court. There are two fundamental questions at stake in Heller. First, does the Second Amendment in fact protect an individual right of gun ownership, or is it a collective right that only extends to state national guard units and other local government agencies? Second, do gun bans in fact make the public safer?

From the standpoint of interpretive clarity, the text of the Second Amendment leaves much to be desired. It states in its entirety: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Suffice it to say, the Founders had a curious sense of the rules of punctuation.

For many years, most legal scholars concluded that the reference to a “well regulated militia” meant that the Second Amendment only protects a collective right. The problem with that argument, however, is that the courts have interpreted the rest of the Bill of Rights to protect individual rights. That’s one of the reasons why even many liberal legal scholars, including Harvard’s Larry Tribe, have come to the conclusion that the Second Amendment protects the individual’s right to bear arms. Tribe and others point out that if the Court were to interpret the Second Amendment as only protecting a collective right to gun ownership, a precedent would be established that the government could one day use to place significant restrictions on other rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. In an age when the government increasingly claims expansive powers to monitor and regulate ordinary citizens’ private activities, the issue of whether the Second Amendment protects individual or collective rights has ramifications that extend far beyond private gun ownership.

The historical record also supports the individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment. At the time of the Amendment’s adoption in 1791, militia service was mandatory for all able-bodied men. The Founders would not have recognized our modern world, where fewer than one-half of one percent of all Americans serve in National Guard units. Thus, when the Founders enacted the amendment, they envisioned that it would apply to a far broader swath of society than that which National Guard members compose today.

The experience of the American Revolution also influenced the Founders’ thinking on the issue. During their eight-year-long war against the British army, the Revolutionary generation saw a clear connection between private gun ownership and political freedom. Indeed, the triggering event of the American Revolution was the British Army’s effort to disarm the population of Concord, Massachusetts by seizing the armory located there. One of the reasons why the British suffered a resounding defeat at the Battles of Lexington and Concord was the fact that the Massachusetts “Minutemen” kept their muskets at their private residences. As a result, they were able to respond within a “minute’s notice” of the news of the approaching Redcoats. That fact was not lost on the authors of the Second Amendment.

To be sure, that history should not be used to obscure the undeniable fact that gun violence takes a terrible toll on our nation. The horrific scenes we’ve witnessed on college campuses from Virginia Tech to Northern Illinois testify to the fact that deranged people with guns pose a very real threat to our freedom and our lives.

But would a nationwide ban on guns actually reduce gun violence? The evidence suggests that the answer is no. For example, our long-standing prohibition on drugs has done nothing to arrest the epidemic of drug use in the United States. What reason do we have to believe a war on guns would be any more effective than the war on drugs? According to recent studies, there are more than 250 million guns in the United States. With so many guns already on the streets, efforts to ban them represent little more than symbolic acts.

Washington D.C. provides a perfect example. In the 32 years since the District of Columbia banned handguns, more than 8,400 people have been murdered in the city of Washington. With a remarkable degree of consistency, the nation’s capital annually leads the country in murders and gun violence. Although Washington’s crime rate has fallen in the last decade, it’s interesting to note that the decline is far less than the national average for city’s its size.

It should also be kept in mind that nearly all jurisdictions ban felons from owning guns, yet those laws have failed to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. As FBI statistics demonstrate, a huge percentage of gun violence is committed by criminals who possess illegally-owned firearms. The bottom line is it’s far easier to pass bans on guns than to enforce them.

I suspect that many readers of The Gaughan Report will disagree with my analysis. I look forward to your rebuttals in the comments. I should also note, in case you are wondering, that I do not personally own a gun and never have. I’m interested in the case from a legal and constitutional standpoint, rather than from a personal standpoint.

In any event, it will be fascinating to see how the Court approaches the Heller case. We have certainly not heard the last of this issue.

It's the Economy, Stupid

Two new polls released yesterday show John McCain leading both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in head-to-head matchups. The Rasmussen tracking poll has McCain beating Obama 47 to 43%; it has McCain beating Clinton 46 to 43%. The Gallup tracking poll has McCain beating Obama 47 to 44%; in contrast, it has McCain and Clinton tied at 46% each.

Those poll numbers should concern Democrats and give hope to Republicans. For all the problems afflicting the GOP this year, the party ended up nominating the one major Republican who has a shot to win in November. The latest Rasmussen and Gallup polls confirm that fact.

Before Democrats press the panic button, they should keep in mind that McCain is still below 50% in the polls. More than anything else, his poll numbers reflect the cumulative toll that the fiercely contested Democratic primaries have taken on Obama and Clinton. It’s also worth noting that in head-to-head polls in the spring of 2004, John Kerry led George W. Bush. We all know how that race turned out. Head-to-head poll numbers at this early stage in the campaign don’t provide insight into who will ultimately win. But they do give us a sense of who has momentum.

Above all, McCain’s lead in the polls brings us to the question that every Democrat is asking: who will be a stronger nominee in the fall, Clinton or Obama?

Until recently, the evidence seemed to indicate the answer was Obama. He represents a fresh start for the Democratic Party while at the same time evoking memories of John F. Kennedy. That’s not a bad combination for a Democratic nominee.

But since Hillary Clinton’s upset victories on March 4, doubts have emerged about Obama’s electability in the fall election. Although he has an unshakable base among upscale, well-educated liberals, young people, and African Americans, he continues to struggle to make inroads with Latino voters and working class whites, both of which lean heavily to Hillary Clinton. No Democrat can win the White House without carrying those two crucial demographic groups. If Obama doesn’t find a way to appeal to those voters, Clinton will win a decisive victory in Pennsylvania on April 22.

It should also be noted that the Rasmussen and Gallup polls show Clinton doing better in head-to-head match-ups with McCain than Obama. In fact, Gallup actually has McCain and Clinton tied, whereas it has Obama trailing McCain by three points. That’s very good news for Hillary.

But perhaps the biggest advantage Clinton has going for her is the nation’s growing economic crisis. The news this morning is bleak. Bear Stearns, one of the world’s largest investment banks and brokerage firms, is on the verge of collapse. Late Friday, in an unprecedented move, the Federal Reserve intervened by backing a massive loan to Bear Stearns from JP Morgan, one of Bear’s major rivals. And now we’ve learned that JP Morgan is in the process of buying Bear. The extent of Bear’s collapse is amazing. One year ago, Bear Stearns stock traded at $170 share. Today, JP Morgan is buying Bear’s stock at $2 per share.

Worse still, some analysts believe Citigroup and Lehman Brothers may be in as much trouble as Bear Stearns. No one has a clue where the money would come to bail them out. Over the weekend, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan declared the current crisis in the financial markets the most severe the global economy has faced since World War II.

Although all that spells big trouble for our economy, it means good news for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Voters in both parties associate Bill Clinton’s administration with the strong economy of the 1990s. As we slide deeper into recession, Hillary Clinton’s connection to the prosperity of the ‘90s will stand her in increasingly good stead with the electorate. That’s especially true among voters in states hemorrhaging jobs, such as Ohio, Missouri, and Pennsylvania, all of which constitute critical swing states in the general election. A fall campaign dominated by economic issues may represent the best argument for nominating Hillary Clinton.

But Clinton still faces an enormous problem in the primaries: there is no realistic way for her to surpass Obama in pledged delegates. That means when the primary season ends in June, Clinton’s only hope for victory will be by winning the superdelegates. Under even the best of circumstances, that would be an ugly and controversial victory for her.

Obama faces a different problem. He leads in pledged delegates, the number of states won, and the popular vote. He will likely still have a lead in all of those categories when the primaries end in June. That gives him a more legitimate and less controversial claim to the Democratic nomination than Clinton has.

But as long as Clinton remains in the race, questions will continue to swirl over Obama’s “electability.” The growing scandal over Obama’s former pastor, the recently retired Jeremiah Wright, underscores Democratic concerns about Obama’s chances in the fall election. Among other things, Wright has close ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and he has even declared that the lyrics to the song “God Bless America” should be replaced with the words “God D--- America.” The pastor story poses a real problem for Obama. Wright not only served as Obama’s minister for 20 years, he also presided at Obama’s wedding, baptized his children, and even gave Obama the title to his book, The Audacity of Hope. It’s strange that Obama waited until the story blew up before belatedly distancing himself from Wright, which he finally did over the weekend. It’s not as though Wright’s rhetoric wasn’t well known to the Illinois senator before now.

So is Obama unelectable in November? Of course not. Every campaign encounters rough patches. The key is how he navigates through the storm.

But Obama needs to act fast. He must stop the bleeding in his poll numbers. If Clinton’s head-to-head numbers versus McCain continue to outperform Obama’s, the superdelegates may swing to her, despite the huge controversy that would trigger.

To avoid that fate, Obama must go on the offensive immediately, especially on economic issues. The argument that he needs to put before the voters is that he’s every bit as prepared to address the nation’s economic problems as Hillary Clinton, and more prepared than John McCain. If Obama fails to do that, he could have a real problem with the superdelegates.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, James Carville constantly reminded Bill Clinton, “It’s the economy, stupid.” The same is true in 2008. Whichever candidate positions herself or himself as strongest on economic issues will win this election.