Myths, Myths, Myths

I did an item today about today's calls for Obama to start firing people willy-nilly that was probably not nearly harsh enough. But the one thing I left out that I really want to get to is yet another myth about a previous president.

No, not the one about second-term presidents never recovering if their approval sinks; I saw that again today, but I've already handled that one.

It's this one (my emphasis):

“I don’t know where the breakdown occurred on that, but it’s Obama’s ‘no new taxes’ moment,” the official said, referring to the broken promise that is widely seen as having cost President George H.W. Bush a second term.

Hogwash! What cost George H.W. Bush a second term was a poorly timed recession. That's all.

Bush breaking his tax pledge was a story in June through October 1990. Look at his approval ratings: it's hard to make much of it. In particular, this all happened before the Gulf War, which relegated it to ancient history. One can argue that it hurt Bush in the long run by destroying trust in him, but that certainly didn't seem to have any effect at all in spring 1991. Only when the economy turned south did his approval ratings follow.

I suspect that for the neutral press, this is a close relative of the equally untrue myth that Ross Perot cost Bush the election. Why? Because after three consecutive solid Republican victories, by 1992 most Republicans believed the myth of a GOP "electoral lock" and therefore were open to bogus explanations of something which actually didn't need much explanation at all beyond the obvious one that incumbent presidents usually lose re-election if there's a recession in the second half of their term. What distinguishes this one, I'm sure, is that a faction of the Republican Party is intensely interested in convincing everyone that higher taxes ruined Bush's presidency, while pretty much no one else cares.

At any rate, at best breaking the pledge was a very minor factor in the 1992 election, and most likely it had no effect at all. Moreover, to the extent that it hurt at all, it may well have been because of how central, high-profile, and specific the pledge was in Bush's 1988 campaign. I'd guess it's easily in the top 1% of all campaign pledges ever if all those factors are combined, and pretty high up there as far as how high-profile and absolute the breaking of it was. Really, however, it likely made no difference at all in 1992.

Q Day 3: Clinton/Tsongas?

I'm not sure why, but Ron E. asks:

What do you think would have been the election results in 1992 if, say, Paul Tsongas had won the Democratic nomination? You can choose whether you think Ross Perot would still have run under that scenario or not.

OK, I do like this question.

To begin with, you can never get into a politician's head, but generally I'd say that as far as I know Perot was motivated by his ego and his hatred of George H.W. Bush, so nothing there. On the other hand, as Steve Kornacki would note Perot didn't really affect the outcome.

As far as Tsongas...I've probably mentioned this before, but I consider him one of the most dishonest candidates ever. That's not really relevant, but I always like to repeat it (I don't know that he knew for a fact that he was dying, but I don't think he was honest about the situation).

I don't know...I tend to believe that out-party candidates make little difference. I'd definitely say that Bob Kerrey would have probably done just as well as Bill Clinton did. Tsongas? I don't know; it's so unlikely that it's hard to imagine what a nomination-winning Tsongas would have looked like. I guess what I'd say is that I'm open to the idea that just from candidate campaigning quality I'm open to the idea that Clinton could have done a couple of points better than Tsongas. They would presumably have been about the same in terms of perception of their ideology -- which does matter, and could have made Tom Harkin a couple of points worse -- but for the rest of it you have to figure that they're about as big a spread as you could get on electioneering skill, no? So call that a couple of percentage points in November, but then remember that a Tsongas who could actually be nominated would be better at that stuff than real Tsongas was, and so never mind.

(Okay, Tsongas had ideological/issue reasons for not getting the Democratic nomination, too. It's a good reminder that the last loser standing isn't always the one who came second-closest to winning the nomination -- Tsongas and Jerry Brown in 1992, probably McCain in 2000, Santorum this year).

Q Day 5

Presumably in reference to my insistence that Chris Christie, Sarah Palin, and others ran and lost in this cycle, Chris G asks: "Did Mario Cuomo run for president in 1992"?

That one's mostly easy: yes, I suppose so. Well, check that; we can use Josh Pullman's formulation here: Cuomo had been running for 1992, but certainly didn't run in 1992.

I don't actually remember what specific, concrete steps Cuomo made before ultimately not entering primaries and caucuses, but if he consulted with staff and prospective staff, talked to important party actors, gave speeches about what he would have done as president, and otherwise did the sorts of things that candidates do, then yes, I'd say during that period he was a candidate.