Blame Bill!

There was a time, children, when a presidential election involved a choice between serious people who offered plans, policy proposals, and philosophies.

The plans were sometimes not practical and the policies were sometimes ill-advised. The underlying philosophies were not always clear or compelling, but usually an attempt was made.

Somehow, that way of doing things has slipped away, and we’re poorer in every sense of the word because of it.

Today, it seems, it has become entirely a popularity (or, more often, a less-unpopular) contest, a reality show in which none of the players, not the political parties, not the candidates, not the “reporters” covering them, not even a plurality of the voters, can be, or seems to want to be, taken seriously.

You may have noticed this phenomenon. You might even have wondered how it came to pass. If there are still people a century from now, they will probably point to it and shake their heads.

Having given it more thought than is probably healthy, I think there’s an argument to be made that the country lurched fully into silliness in about 1992, with the arrival of Bill Clinton. I think he more than anyone else turned elections, and the presidency, into a beauty contest based on factors superfluous to the functions of the presidency. He altered our view of what a president is and does, what our minimum requirements are for someone to hold that once-revered office, whether a president needs even to be a decent human being. The only requirements now are entertainment and promises to give us stuff that oughtn’t be the government’s to give.

When World War II ended, a failed haberdasher from Kansas City named Harry Truman was president, having weeks earlier obtained the office when Franklin Roosevelt died. It’s fair to say that we’ve not taken the vice presidency all that seriously, the holder of that office being chosen by his party for reasons seldom having much to do with whether he would be a good president if it came to that. In Roosevelt’s case, the older and the sicker he got, the worse his choices for vice president seemed to get. First there was John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner, a lawyer who didn’t attend law school but instead read law at a law firm and passed the Texas bar. When Roosevelt “chose” him as his running mate he was the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and himself a candidate for the presidential nomination; he was picked by Roosevelt in exchange for the delegates Garner had amassed. He stuck around for two of Roosevelt’s four terms. (I think he probably would have been a better president than Roosevelt was, but it is usually risky to move the historical chess pieces around, and that’s a discussion for another day anyway.)

It is Garner who is said to have remarked that “the vice presidency is not worth a bucket of warm spit,” though there is disagreement as to the container, the bodily fluid, and whether he ever said it at all. He certainly did liken the job to serving as a spare tire.

Garner and Roosevelt disagreed on policies. Principle actually figured into our politics for much of the country’s 248 years. In 1940, Roosevelt’s running mate was Henry Wallace, who was nuts. It is impossible to list the evidence of this in the space available, but if it appeals to you it is well documented. He was not popular within his own party — he would run as the Progressive (communist — no, really) candidate in 1948 against the Democrat Harry Truman — and the less loopy Democrat faction forced Truman onto the ticket in 1944 by the reason that Truman had spent his entire life not being Henry Wallace. On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt died and Truman was president.

To keep this column under 100,000 words, we’ll not dig deeply into the good points and bad points of Truman (or any of the presidents and candidates for the presidency) we’ll look at here. Instead, we’ll just note that Truman was a grownup, serious, and sometimes capable of making a case for his policies.

In 1948, his Republican opponent was Thomas E. Dewey, the gang-busting prosecutor who had become the successful governor of New York. A machine politician, Truman won. Both were seen as serious men; while the pugnacious Truman was occasionally amusing, no one voted for either because of his entertainment value. It is notable that Truman’s vice president from 1949 to 1953 was Alben Barkley, who was as competent to be president as Truman, probably more so.. Dewey’s running mate was Earl Warren, who would later be chief justice of the United States.

And so it continued. In 1952, it was Republican Dwight Eisenhower against the Democrat Adlai Stevenson. The former had won the European theatre of World War II, while the latter was governor of Illinois. They had a rematch, with the same result, in 1956. Neither had what today we would call “star power.” Both were competent men of reason.

The election of 1960, between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy, was a sign that we were becoming a little more interested in cosmetics, as illustrated by the four debates: those who saw them on television thought the more telegenic Kennedy had won; those who heard them on the radio thought Nixon had gotten the better of it. Kennedy won, closely, but no one thought that either candidate was a lightweight. There would be no more presidential debates until 1976.

Kennedy, unpopular after two and one-half years in office, was assassinated in 1963 (on the day John Nance Garner turned 95; Kennedy even gave him a happy birthday call that morning). The president was now Lyndon Johnson, a typically crooked Texas Democrat chosen purely for electoral political reasons. He was experienced, though, having been a congressional representative and a senator for 12 years each. He kept Kennedy’s cabinet and paid homage to Kennedy, but did what he pleased and got most of it passed by claiming that it was what Kennedy would have wanted. Earlier, as head of the “space council” while vice president, Johnson chose Houston as the site of the Manned Spaceflight Center that now bears his name. He knew how to wield power.

In 1964, Johnson ran for a term of his own, against Arizona Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, who was the victim of a vicious and false campaign by Johnson and his partisans. His running mate was William Miller of New York, a typical New York Republican but at least someone with electoral experience. Goldwater lost in a landslide — Johnson’s mudslinging had worked. (And continues to work, alas.)

When Johnson dropped out of the 1968 presidential race, at the end of March 1968, he was replaced by Hubert Humphrey, who had not been and would not be in any of the presidential primaries. Humphrey was Johnson’s vice president after Johnson’s 1965 inauguration. He had been in the Senate from 1949 to 1964 (and would be again, from 1971 to 1978). It is worth noting that, just months before the election, the campaign hadn’t really begun yet. Johnson’s withdrawal was in no way late in the process.

It was the last year that nominees were chosen at the party conventions rather than in primaries. Much of what follows supports my belief that the primaries are a bad idea, though conventional selection could be abused as well.

So in 1968 the election would be between Humphrey and a retread Nixon. Thinking people of good will could support either of them. They did have ideas and policies, though Nixon kept talking about a secret plan to win the war in Vietnam, which was apparently a fantasy.

Nevertheless, the 1968 election was neither a popularity nor a beauty contest, though the nutties had their very own candidate in the form of George Corley Wallace, the loud and unattractive former governor of Alabama, who managed to get 46 electoral votes. Nixon’s vice president was Spiro Agnew, governor of Maryland, who looked like a cartoon of Lyndon Johnson and became famous as Nixon’s “attack dog,” uttering angry and incendiary words written for him by Patrick J. Buchanan. Agnew would resign the position in 1973 when he was indicted for tax evasion. People no longer resign under indictment.

In 1972, the Democrats put up George McGovern for president. His chief opponent for the nomination was former governor, senator from Maine, and secretary of state Edmund Muskie, who effectively lost when he seemed to weep at a campaign event after having fallen victim, we would later learn, of a Nixonian dirty trick in the form of a forged letter, followed by an attack on his wife. A single small event, in this case misreported, had torpedoed his candidacy.

George McGovern was a good man who was against the war in Vietnam when that was the only issue that really mattered. His campaign slogan was, “Come home, America,” and while he would never come close to winning, he might have come closer had he not chosen Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his running mate. Eagleton did not mention to McGovern that he had been given electroshock treatments, so a St. Louis newspaper mentioned it for him. McGovern said he was “one thousand percent” behind Eagleton, who was nevertheless out a couple of days later. The campaign seemed rickety and unorganized, and the impression was correct. Casting around for a replacement, McGovern selected R. Sargent Shriver, a Kennedy inlaw who had headed the Peace Corps. Again, a single factor had been disqualifying.

The 25th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1967. Among its provisions was a mechanism for replacement of a vice president. We had had no vice president for the 14 months between the assassination of Kennedy and the inauguration of Humphrey. Had something happened to Johnson during those months, the speaker of the House of Representatives, John McCormack, would have become president.

The new amendment would be invoked for the first time during the Nixon Administration. When Agnew resigned, Nixon named and Congress ratified Gerald Ford, a congressman for 25 years and House minority leader, as vice president. This was important because less than a year later Nixon would himself resign. But for the 25th amendment, Carl Albert, Democrat of Oklahoma, would have become president when Nixon got on the helicopter. When Ford became president, the 25th amendment got immediately invoked again, resulting in Nelson Rockefeller becoming vice president.

In light of recent events and because this column is going to be way too long anyway, it should be noted that Ford was the subject of two attempts to kill him in the space of 17 days in 1975, both times by women and both times in California. On September 5, Manson family member “Squeaky” Fromme was standing right next to Ford in Sacramento when it turned out she didn’t know how to work a Colt 1911 .45 automatic, so no squeak, bang, or bullet was emitted. Fromme was arrested and went to jail for 34 years and Ford went on about his scheduled business. Then, 17 days later, a San Francisco nutjob named Sarah Jane Moore tried to shoot Ford but was forced to accept a gay cab driver as a consolation victim. (The news media found out and reported that the fellow was homosexual, which had until then been unknown to his family.) She said she wanted to spark a revolution, but all she got was an inability to ride in taxis or anything else for the next 32 years. The cab driver survived. It was as close as Nelson Rockefeller would ever get to achieving his goal of becoming president. Again, not a lot of fuss was made over the incident, though thereafter Ford wore a Kevlar-reinforced raincoat during public appearances.

Ford sought election in 1976. His opponent was Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, a very nice and reasonably bright man who would nevertheless become, until recently, the worst postwar president. There were three presidential debates and a vice presidential one. Again, the election was based largely on ideas and administrative ability rather than attractiveness. Carter’s vice president was Walter Mondale, Humphrey’s senatorial successor.

We were a more serious people, too. When Iran became a terrorist state and announced it by taking the entire U.S. embassy staff there hostage, we stood behind President Carter, thinking or at least hoping he would show strength. He didn’t. ABC News, still a news organization, started a nightly half hour program called “America Held Hostage.” It would later become the “Nightline” program. When Carter approved a military hostage rescue that went very badly, we had doubts. All while inflation soared, as did interest rates. Home mortgages were well above 10 percent. Carter is a very nice man and was a very bad president. Then came the killer rabbit. What confidence the people had in Carter dissolved in a Georgia pond.

Enter Ronald Reagan. People with nothing else to say try to dismiss him as a retired actor, which he was, but he had also been president of the Screen Actors Guild and in 1964 had delivered a stirring pre-election speech. He had identifiable, consistent principles. He served two successful terms as governor of California.

In 1980, he was the Republican candidate for president. He projected strength, clarity, and resolve to a country governed by a kindly, religious fellow with an apparent fear of lagomorphs and many other things. When in a debate on October 28, 1980 Reagan responded to Carter by smilingly saying, “There you go again,” Carter’s rabbit was cooked. And on January 20, 1981, just as Reagan was about to get inaugurated, Iran released the hostages.

Reagan likewise dispatched Walter Mondale four years later. Then 73, Reagan was said by some to be too old to be president, and when it came up in the debate, Reagan said “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.” Watch the clip. You might notice three things: a serious reporter asking a serious question politely, Reagan’s cheerful answer, and Walter Mondale’s expression, as he gracefully realizes he had just lost the election. Reagan won with 525 electoral votes to Mondale’s 13.

Reagan’s vice president was George H. W. Bush, a long-time statesman. Again, while there were those who might have disagreed with him, no one could make the case that he was not qualified to be president, though my CBS colleague Bill Lynch sadly described Bush’s tenure as “You Die, I Fly,” because much of his time was spent attending the funerals of foreign dignitaries. (Lynch had gotten Ronald Reagan to record an answering machine message for him, but he couldn’t use it because so many people called him just to hear it. Bill died last year. I hope his family preserved the tape and his other archives.)

Bush was in many ways the end of our seriousness as a nation. It has in many and increasing ways been amateur hour since then. He was both beneficiary and victim of the definitive moment. The first came when he was running for president against Michael Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts. Attempting to seem tough but instead looking like a tourist, Dukakis was photographed riding in a battle tank. It was seen as ridiculous and people decided they might hire him to perform at their kids’ birthday party, but his candidacy for president was effectively over. (The fact that he had presided over the release of convicted murderer Willie Horton, who took it as an opportunity to rob, assault, and rape in Maryland, didn’t help, either. But those were different times.) Bush’s vice president was Dan Quayle, who was a lot smarter than he was made out to be.

By 1992, maybe the country had now decided it wanted an entertainer-in-chief. If so, they got it when Bill Clinton hit the scene.

Following the first gulf war, in which the U.S. liberated Kuwait following its invasion by Iraq and, so it seemed, was home in time for lunch, George Bush was incredibly popular, his approval rating around 80 percent. But years earlier, at the 1988 Republican convention, Bush said, “Read my lips: No new taxes.” By 1992, economic conditions required some taxes to be raised if a budget deal were to be made. The line from the speech was played, over and over. It seems to have been the last time a president or presidential candidate was held accountable by the country for much of anything.

Bill Clinton had arrived, and all bets were off after that.

Among the changes that had come to our country was the arrival of 24-hour news television. The Cable News Network, a Ted Turner project, had benefited from a lively news cycle, once a lively news cycle arrived — it was on the air but largely unnoticed during the 1980s. (A competitor, Satellite News Channel, was on the air in 1982 and 1983, when things were less telegenic.) CNN did good work, exemplified by live coverage of the bombing of Baghdad the first night of the first gulf war, though most of what some of us remember from that night was Bernard Shaw, an anchorman visiting the Iraqi capital ahead of a possible war, wondering over and over if this would affect his plan to fly back to Atlanta the next day. (It did.)

But there wasn’t always a new war starting, and coverage from the scenes of events was expensive. Meanwhile, a mere newscast repeated over and over, even if updated regularly, did not draw a reliable audience, as was proved with the arrival and departure of CNN Headline News. How to fill the time, preferably cheaply? Easy. Get people to holler at each other in an “interview” format. That continues today.

The 1992 election was peculiar in many ways. Bill Clinton filled the empty space that had been occupied by the war over Kuwait. Bush was a known quantity, competent, decent, and in television terms therefore boring. But this new guy, Clinton, was different. He was lively, a bit of a punk but he seemed to clean up fairly well, and he held great appeal to those who might have liked Jimmy Carter if he had been just a little less pious, a little more naughty. Clinton got a lot of coverage.

He had been governor of Arkansas, which ticked the box (since discarded) labeled “might know what he’s doing.” He was more . . . interesting . . . than Bush, and defeated him in November. His vice president was Al Gore Jr., the Tennessee son of a former senator, who had himself been elected to the House of Representatives, then the Senate. He was and is a screwball, but people found it kind of harmless, even cute.

Then there was Ross Perot, who was sort of what people thought the irascible Harry Truman must have been like. Former sportscaster and now CNN evening talkshow host Larry King fell in love with Perot and gave him endless coverage. He became popular through entertainment value, even after he had withdrawn from the race, then re-entered it. When the smoke had cleared the morning of November 4, 1992, Clinton had received 43 percent of the vote, Bush 37 percent, and Perot 19 percent. The power of CNN’s argumentary programming and the fact that people would vote in considerable numbers based on shallow entertainment value had been confirmed.

Having elected Clinton, the country didn’t take long to experience buyer’s remorse. In 1994, he lost both the House and the Senate. Apparently experienced in wriggling his way out of unfavorable situations, he suddenly became somewhat more conservative to get along with the Congress the voters had given him.

The 1996 election was a kind of a yawn. Clinton was vulnerable, but the Republicans gave the nomination to longtime senator and crippled war hero Bob Dole. Dole was qualified but uninteresting, and the whole thing seemed as if the nomination was a retirement gift. His running mate, Jack Kemp, was a conservative favorite. But CNN liked Clinton (except for Larry King, who still liked Ross Perot, who was giving it another, though less successful, shot). Clinton was re-elected.

On January 17, 1998, a Washington gossip website broke some big news. Matt Drudge said the Washington Post was sitting on the story that Clinton was having sex with the help, in the form of a 22-year-old intern named Monica Lewinsky. If it was true, the thinking went, that would be the end of the Clinton presidency. We had some experience with this sort of thing: Senator Gary Hart’s 1988 presidential hopes were ruined when he was found to be spending time on a boat called “Monkey Business” with one Donna Rice. Within a day or two there was a parody song on the radio, “Hello, Donna Rice, Goodbye Hart.” It was expected. After the Clinton disclosure Republican Senator Robert Livingston resigned when Hustler magazine threatened to publish an article about his pecadilloes.

Clinton didn’t resign. He lied. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” he said after a week of silence. The country was then treated to months of references to “the stained blue dress” that proved Clinton was lying, ridiculous discussion of Clinton’s prevarication over the meaning of “is,” and the supposedly wronged wife appearing on television in outrage over what she had been told to call “a vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Though the allegations were unquestionably true, through sheer brazenness the Clintons survived. A female columnist wrote that she’d give Clinton the Lewinsky treatment herself if it meant she could still have an abortion, though this did little but confirm that some women in the national media are kind of slutty. (Which fact I can confirm.)

The Fox News Channel had gone on the air in 1996, staffed by both extremely competent and reliable reporters and tabloid trash reporters. (Remember, it was Fox that brought us “A Current Affair.”) It cut its teeth on the Clinton story and pushed CNN toward honesty. It quickly gained an audience.

The standard of things that would disqualify a person from the presidency had been lowered. It would get lower still.

The last year of the millennium, 2000, saw Al Gore running against George W. Bush, son of the former president and former Governor of Texas. Gore was a bit of a dunce, and in an early November a dirty trick involved the “discovery” that Bush had been arrested for driving while intoxicated 24 years earlier. The election between the legacy candidates was close — so close that it led to an excruciating month of counting and recounting in Florida, during which we learned about “dimpled chads,” “hanging chads,” and similar. Bush won Florida by, it was said, 537 votes and became president. His vice president was Dick Cheney, while Gore’s running mate was Joe Lieberman. The former had been secretary of defense and a congressman; the latter a Connecticut state official whom the Democrats would ultimately throw out of the party on grounds of excessive honesty. Each was probably more competent than his running mate.

Bush was re-elected in 2004, running against current Iran apologist John Kerry and the soon-discredited John Edwards. The die had been cast. It was a battle of lightweights.

The 2008 election brought us Barack Obama and John McCain. Obama was, for lack of a better term, a novelty candidate, being half-black, but his experience was limited to some time in the notoriously corrupt Illinois senate and half a term in the U.S. Senate. McCain seemed another crippled-veteran retirement-gift candidate, despite his many years in congress as representative and senator. The country went with the novelty, who was described by then-Senator Joe Biden as “the first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Despite that odd appraisal, Obama chose Biden as his running mate. McCain chose Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska. She brought nothing to the ticket but did inspire a dozen upper-cable-channel reality shows about Alaska. Obama won easily.

As he did, though by not as much, in 2012, when he and Biden ran against the perfectly competent and ethical Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts, and sensible conservative Paul Ryan, a young and attractive congressman. Through the machinations of Nancy Pelosi the unpopular Obamacare had passed. (Unpopular? Massachusetts had elected a Republican senator because he said he would vote against it, and until some shady stunts by Pelosi et al., he was the deciding vote.) I’ll not dissect the Obama presidency here, but there’s much unseemly to reveal. But the Republicans had run McCain and Palin.

By 2016, Fox News Channel had for many hours each day become Fox Trump Channel. His candidacy was a stunt carried out by the three stooges on the morning show, who brought the angry orange swindler on for as long as he wanted, by phone, once a week. Sensible people are not watching television at that time of day. But the “Fox and Friends” clowns encouraged Trump to seek the presidency, and thus we got another novelty candidate. Who, just to be safe, picked the honest, sensible Mike Pence, governor of Indiana and former congressional representative, as his running mate; thus were voters assured that there would be a backstop in case Trump got out of hand. (Which he would on January 6, 2021, when Pence fought and won a battle against the lesser angels of Trump’s reprehensible nature.)

Trump ran against Hillary Clinton, who in addition to having been a terrible secretary of state under Obama had raised lots of graft for a shakedown racket called The Clinton Foundation, though it was her breathtakingly offensive personality that sank her chances. So the crooked but entertaining (at first) Trump, with his band of supporters and the help of Fox News Channel, won the election.

This was despite disclosures that Trump is, to put it as gently as possible, a louse in every respect. He had sponsored a fraudulent thing called “Trump University.” He had gone through multiple bankruptcies that ended up leaving himself in good shape and his investors holding the bag. A month before the election, a tape made 11 years earlier by the “Inside Hollywood” program was released. It featured Trump describing his favorite way to commit sexual assault. The fact that it did not result in his withdrawal from the campaign showed that there were no longer any standards for the U.S. presidency beyond those required by the U.S. Constitution. (And Trump would later say that violating the Constitution was fine, too, if it served his purposes.)

Trump’s term wasn’t as outrageous as many feared, until the arrival of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. There were daily news conferences by, it would turn out, ethically challenged government medical officials, but then Trump would take over and unleash a stream of uninterrupted stupidity and ignorance.

The fact that he is a loud, malevolent idiot was not what defeated him in 2020. His approval rating never reached 50 percent. The response to COVID-19 had been “throw money at it.” If the Democrats had exhumed Hubert Humphrey and nominated his mummy, it probably would have won. To prevent the socialist Bernie Sanders getting the nomination the not-quite-as-dead Joe Biden was propped on the Barcalounger in his basement and run for president, something he had long desired, but his dishonesty (which once mattered) had disqualified him. Now, not-Trump was the only requirement that mattered.

He won. The aging Trump still claims he won. He was wrong at the time and he is wrong now, but now it’s a pathological issue.

This summer, when it became clear that Biden could continue the race for re-election only if there were a special team hired to force him into his pants before public appearances, Biden was forced out of the candidacy he had won in the primaries — further proof there is no requirement for the presidency, certainly not skill or knowledge of governance.

Meanwhile, Trump and his loyal monkeys had won primaries against serious, competent alternatives — Trump is neither — and got the nomination. Fox News Channel became all Trump, all the time, even cutting into its one reputable program, “Special Report,” which began during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, to broadcast live coverage of Trump rallies at which he says what he says at every other rally. From noon to 4 p.m., and again at 7, the channel is a continuous blonde joke, with the blondes gushing over Trump. (From 8 to 10, it is guys sucking up to Trump.) Many of the people on the channel are loyal former Trump administration employees, also blondes. A few opposition voices are heard, though they are usually quickly knocked down.

Knocking them down is easy, because they can offer no alternative. Kamala Harris as vice president is among history’s most unpopular. Two years ago a poll in California found that only 38 percent of the people there liked her, while 46 didn’t. And she’s from California. But once Bugout Joe was set free to go without pants pretty much whenever he wants, she has been lionized, even though her only selling point is that she’s not Trump and might not be as bad. If her campaign slogan were “A cackling left-wing loon whose only achievements are failures but hey, she’s not Trump” her poll numbers in the presidential race would be pretty much the same. She was chosen by . . . well, no one knows how or why she was chosen, but she’s probably as malleable to self-interested advisors as Biden has been, and that was enough. If either party had nominated any other candidate, the race wouldn’t even be close. But beginning with Bill Clinton elections seem to have been to see how low candidates can go before they’re beyond consideration, as long as they’re marginally entertaining. The bottom has not yet been found, beyond that it’s possible no one not currently incarcerated could be any worse.

As running mates, they chose, respectively, J.D. Vance, the least popular Republican statewide official in the reliably Republican state of Ohio, and Tim Walz, a man who appears to be coronary bait and who is a longtime fan of Communist China. (Check my facts here if you have any doubt.)

None of these people ought to be allowed to be bank tellers, never mind hold the highest executive office in our country.

The only redeeming fact, if we can call it that, is that Bugout Joe Biden has demonstrated in recent months that if we must we can get by with effectively no president at all.

Bill Clinton would say, “Miss me?”