Journalists love close elections. It’s good for business, and they’re more fun to cover. So it’s not surprising that most pundits, backed by most polls, are forecasting a close presidential election this fall between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain .
I think they’re wrong. I think we’re headed for a blowout.
And since it is all the rage these days to try to compare today’s candidates to yesterday’s presidents — Obama as John F. Kennedy, McCain as Theodore Roosevelt — I’ll compare this year’s election to two previous elections, and let you decide which outcome seems more probable.
Scenario One: 2008 is like 1980.
That doesn’t mean the Republican will win in 2008 like he did in 1980. This is about what will shape the race, not which party comes out on top.
That year, an endangered incumbent president was running against a Republican about whom many voters had serious doubts.
Ronald Reagan is viewed as an icon today, and frequently wins praise from Democrats, who try to make President Bush look bad by comparison.
That’s nostalgia talking.
Back then, Democrats treated Reagan like he was a mad bomber. Many undecided voters were uneasy with what they knew about his record, and feared he was too conservative and too belligerent.
On the other hand, they knew what they had in Carter, and they didn’t like it.
Polls ran close all through the campaign. But in the end, the election was not close. Reagan won the popular vote 50-41 percent, and an even more resounding victory in the Electoral College, 489-49.
What happened?
Reagan showed the voters he was not dangerous, and that he could stand toe-to-toe with the incumbent and seem just as presidential (perhaps more so).
That will be Obama’s task this fall. He faces a similar situation in that voters are widely dissatisfied with the incumbent — and link the Republican McCain to the Republican Bush, a linkage the Obama campaign will spend a lot of time and money trying to foster.
Obama is little known outside the chattering class, and not as well known as Reagan was, even in 1980. But, as Reagan did that year, Obama will need to cross that stature threshold for those voters tuning in later in the fall. They’ll have some general impressions, but what they will want to see is: Can this guy be president?
If Obama maneuvers his way through the campaign and, most importantly, the debates on even footing with McCain, voters are likely to be reassured and hand him a sizable victory.
Bob Beckel, a lonely voice predicting a big Obama victory, says it could be by 50-150 electoral votes. If he debates McCain to a stand-off, it could be more than that.
Scenario Two: 2008 is like 1956.
Something might happen in October that could change the equation in McCain’s favor.
In 1956, there was no doubt that President Dwight D. Eisenhower would be re-elected. He had healthy leads in the polls, and he had already beaten his opponent, Adlai Stevenson in 1952.
But late in October, two events seized the public’s attention and reinforced even more the safe haven of Ike over the relatively unknown quantity of Stevenson.
The Suez crisis, in which Great Britain and France teamed with Israel in an attempt to wrest control of the canal from Egypt, and the Soviet invasion of Hungary gave a boost to Eisenhower’s already solid lead.
On Election Day, his winning margin was higher than the polls had indicated, and he topped his 1952 popular vote margin of 11 points, winning by 15. He also increased his Electoral College total to 457, 15 more than he had in 1952.
The idea of the “October surprise” carries sinister — some would say paranoid — connotations, of manipulation of the electoral process by the incumbent party.
But, as Suez and Hungary showed, the world does not wait for presidential elections, and crises do not have to be manufactured to achieve a desired result.
Sometime in October, it’s quite possible something will happen. Given the pre-election terror attacks in Madrid and London, we might even say it’s likely something will happen.
McCain does not have the reservoir of goodwill that Eisenhower, the liberator of Europe and the incumbent president, had in 1956.
But he does have a long public record that qualifies him to be heeded in a crisis.
Under those circumstances, he would be likely to benefit. And, if Obama were to stumble in the least in his reaction, confirming latent but lingering concerns among undecided voters, they could move en masse toward McCain, the safe harbor.
I think one of these two scenarios is likely, and the outcome on Election Night will not be close.
What that tells you is that McCain’s success is captive to events. Obama controls his own destiny.
Which guy would you rather be?
John Bicknell can be reached at jbicknell@cq.com.
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