Author Archives: Tin Man

The Relevant President

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Quiz:

After the 1994 midterm elections that wiped out Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress and gave us House Speaker Newt Gingrich, President Clinton was reduced to pleading pathetically to the media that he, as president, was still relevant to the political conversation.

How long after the 1994 midterm elections did this happen?

(a) November 1994, a few days after the election.

(b) January 1995, shortly after the Republicans took formal control of Congress.

(c) Not until April 1995.

Answer: (c). It was not until the evening of April 18, 1995 — more than five months after the election — that President Clinton said the following in a prime-time press conference — a conference that two of the major news networks declined to cover:

The Constitution gives me relevance. The power of our ideas gives me relevance. The record we have built up over the last 2 years and the things we’re trying to do to implement it give it relevance. The President is relevant here, especially an activist President. And the fact that I am willing to work with the Republicans. The question is, are they willing to work with me?

Rhetorically, it was seen as one of the low points of his presidency — having to appeal to the Constitution for his relevance — even though it contained the seeds of his return to public favor.

What’s the point? The point is, give Obama time. Clinton floundered for months after the Republicans took over. He let them overplay their hand. It wasn’t really until a year after the midterms — the government shutdown of late 1995 — that Clinton really got his mojo back.

(Of course, the government shutdown also enabled him to meet a young intern named Monica Lewinsky, so it wasn’t a total plus.)

Incidentally, guess what happened the day after that infamous press conference? The Oklahoma City bombing. Tragic as that event was, it allowed Clinton to play a role the public likes to see in its presidents: chief comforter and expounder of the nation’s grief.

Now, history never repeats itself exactly. Despite what Mitch McConnell seems to think, he is still going to be the Minority Leader of the U.S. Senate, which will deprive Obama of a foil that Clinton had in Majority Leader Bob Dole. It’s not clear whether the economy will come back in the next two years, it’s not clear whether Obama has the political acumen of Bill Clinton, and it’s not clear whether John Boehner will overplay his hand like Newt Gingrich did. We’ll see.

This week’s election results give me hope, in a way, because they point the way to Obama’s re-election. He’s not automatically going to get re-elected; several different things will have to go right.

But there’s certainly a very good chance of it.

Election Night 2000: NBC Coverage

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As I mentioned in my previous post, NBC was my choice when it came to news coverage on Election Night 2000. (It’s still my choice today.) Was it because of the anchor, Tom Brokaw? The commentator, Tim Russert? The music? The set? The graphics? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a loyal NBC fan; it’s hard to switch brands in life, whether you’re talking about news or peanut butter.

Anyway, NBC’s coverage that night was terrific. Below is a compilation of the highlights, from the very beginning at 7:00 in the evening to the very end at 5:00 in the morning. I stayed up and watched until they went off the air at 5:00 in the morning. I love Tom Brokaw’s droll expressions of disbelief as things just get weirder and weirder and the mood gets late-night giddy as everyone starts to suffer from lack of sleep. It’s highly entertaining.

(Looks like embedding is disabled, so you’ll have to click on the arrow and then the link.)

Election 2000, 10 Years Later

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This Sunday, November 7, is the 10th anniversary of Election Night 2000.

On November 7, 2000, I had been living in my apartment for eight days. I had just moved to Jersey City after living in central New Jersey for about a year. Recently I’d started a one-year law clerkship in Newark, which meant that I could finally move back up to the northern New Jersey/New York City area. I really wanted to live within the five boroughs, but my job required me to remain a legal resident of New Jersey, so I decided to live as close to New York as I could. Jersey City seemed to be an up-and-coming place, so I decided to give it a try.

I was supposed to move into my apartment in September, but the apartment had been newly renovated and the inspections kept getting delayed. I was able to store my stuff there, but I wasn’t able to actually move into my apartment until the end of October.

As for the presidential election, the daily tracking polls had been swinging back and forth for days. For a while, Bush had maintained a small lead, but as Election Day approached, Gore seemed to be closing the gap. Commentators were saying this was going to be the closest election in ages. Nobody really knew what would happen. Some were saying that Bush could win the popular vote but still lose to Gore in the electoral college. Wouldn’t that be typical? Bush, the “popular” and “plain-spoken” candidate, could win the straightforward vote, but that sneaky, calculating Al Gore could wind up winning on a technicality.

As a state employee, I had Election Day off from work. As my co-clerk and I, both liberals, had left the office on Monday evening, we’d tried to bolster each other’s spirits. “I guess the next time I see you, on Wednesday, we’ll know what happened,” I said to her.

On Tuesday I woke up late and voted. (I must have filed my voter registration in advance.) I can’t remember what I did for most of the day — I probably did some unpacking.

That evening I had to attend a continuing legal education lecture until 8 or 9 p.m.; all licensed attorneys had to do this during their first two years of practice. I was really irritated to have it on election night, but I took my Walkman and a pair of headphones with me so I could listen to the early results during the lecture. (It was a big lecture hall with a few hundred people.) Afterwards, I took the PATH back to Jersey City, and as I came up out of the PATH station to walk home, I quickly put my Walkman back on. The conventional wisdom was that if Gore won Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, he had a good chance of winning the election; if he lost one of those three, Bush would probably win the election. The reporters on the radio were saying that Gore had won all three: Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania. As I continued walking home, a woman, who must have guessed what I was listening to, said to me, “What’s happening with the election?” I told her about Gore’s winning trifecta of states, and we were both happy.

When I got home I turned on NBC to watch Tom Brokaw, my news anchor of choice. I didn’t have a TV stand, so my TV rested on my desk chair while I sat on my couch and watched in my half-unpacked apartment.

And we know what happened over the course of the night, as the election entered the Twilight Zone: Florida taken from Gore, Bush declared the winner, Bush’s total narrowing, Florida retracted, Bush maintaining an infinitesimal lead in Florida as Gore begins to pile up a lead in the national popular vote, surprising the pundits. I stayed awake and watched it all, riveted to the TV until NBC’s coverage ended at 5:00 in the morning.

Ten years later… here we are.