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Mark Shields is a nationally known columnist and commentator. |
Mark Shields: 'Pundits' gotta predict
WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- The Thursday before Tuesday's presidential election, I gave a noontime speech to a group that politically, one of its members told me privately, was somewhere to the right of Romania's late, unlamented boss, Nicolae Ceausescu.
As the old refrain goes: Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and alleged "pundits" -- at least in exchange for a good meal -- gotta risk making public fools of themselves by predicting the outcome of U.S. elections.
Loyal readers may recall that I did make one, very lucky, accurate prediction in one presidential race. In the nearly half century following the 1932 election of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only two Republicans elected president -- Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and Richard M. Nixon in 1968 -- had both been moderate Republicans, anything but true-believer conservatives.
So in 1980, when Ronald Reagan, the minority conservative leader of the distinctly minority Republican Party, was nominated, a big majority of observers was sure that the Californian could not defeat the admittedly unpopular Democratic incumbent, Jimmy Carter.
Remembering that the 1976 White House contest between Carter and Republican Gerald Ford had been almost a dead heat, I asked voters whom I met in my 1980 travels if any of those who had voted for Ford intended, this time, to switch to Carter or, conversely, if any of the 1976 Carter voters intended to back either third-party candidate John Anderson or Reagan in 1980.
Everywhere I went, the second group -- the Carter-to-Anderson/Reagan -- was dramatically bigger than the Ford-to-Carter crowd. Thus, my totally unscientific prediction that Ronald Reagan would win big in 1980, which he did by carrying 44 of the 50 states.
Of course, the 2000 election between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush was even closer than the 1976 Carter-Ford race. So it has seemed logical to ask voters I met, this year, how many people they personally know -- friends, relatives, colleagues -- who voted for Al Gore in 2000 and intend, this year, to vote for George W. Bush, compared to how many who had voted for Bush, four years ago, and would not vote for his re-election on November 2.
On Thursday, I asked the questions again to a luncheon crowd of perhaps 300. First, how many knew people who had voted for Gore in 2000 and now had switched to Bush: At the most, a half dozen hands went up.
Did anybody know any previous supporters who would desert President Bush and vote for his Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry? At this conservative event, at least 75 individuals raised their hands.
Yes, the evidence is purely anecdotal and absolutely unscientific. Yes, the "poll" samples are surely unrepresentative (almost certainly more Republican than the electorate at large.) But everywhere I have been this year, I have encountered many more defectors from Bush 2000 than from Gore.
Do not get me wrong. John Kerry is not Ronald Reagan. Kerry is not the leader of an ideological movement who has inspired a devoted national following. John Kerry remains at this late hour, to many of his backers, the acceptable alternative to an unacceptable status quo, the "Not George W. Bush."
But make no mistake about it, John Kerry, personally, by his confident and dominant performance in the first presidential debate with President Bush, transformed himself from Loser to Underdog and essentially eliminated whatever advantage Bush had held over him since the Republican convention in national polls.
On the eve of the GOP convention in New York, I was at a dinner with Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who had been chairman of the Republican Party and who knows firsthand the nation's politics.
I asked Barbour who would win in November, and here is what he said: "Mark, if this election is about John Kerry, then George W. Bush will be re-elected." And what if this election is about George W. Bush? "In that case, Mark, George W. Bush will carry Mississippi."
In the final analysis, this election is about the incumbent, George W. Bush, and about his stewardship and his record. The betting here is that while he will not, unlike Ronald Reagan, carry 44 of the 50 states, John Kerry will become the third challenger in 24 years to deny re-election to a U.S. president.
