I, like everyone else, am saddened at the passing of Sen. Ted Kennedy, and very appreciative of his long and distinguished service to his country and his state.  And like other liberals, I hope that his death will help inspire Democrats to quit wetting their pants and pass health care reform.

But I can’t help finding it ironic that many commentators are pointing to his 1980 speech to the Democratic National Convention as the finest of his career:

It is an excellent speech, particularly its closing passage.

But there’s one very small problem, one that I have not seen noted elsewhere:  the speech was widely regarded as having damaged Jimmy Carter’s bid for reelection.  Over the course of a fairly long address, Kennedy makes only a passing reference to the man who defeated him:

I congratulate President Carter on his victory here.

I am — I am confident that the Democratic Party will reunite on the basis of Democratic principles, and that together we will march towards a Democratic victory in 1980.

That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement.  In fact, Kennedy’s tepid embrace of his opponent long ago became the gold standard of political bad sportsmanship.

It’s forgotten now, but during the 2008 Democratic National Convention, pundits of every stripe wondered whether Hillary Clinton would pull a Kennedy by failing to offer a strong endorsement of Obama (speculation which turned out to be completely unfounded — Hillary offered a resounding endorsement of Obama, ending all predictions of a divided party).  Here is but one of many examples:

When Hillary Clinton strikes her first podium pose Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention, she’ll do so knowing that almost half of the people staring at her wanted her to be the party’s presidential nominee. And somewhat more than half preferred Barack Obama.

How she speaks to both groups will set a tone for unity, or disunity, as the party points toward the November election. . . .

Her protracted concession brings to mind a similar primary battle in 1980 between incumbent President Jimmy Carter and Sen. Ted Kennedy. Carter got more delegates, but Kennedy ignored the inevitable right up until the convention. He finally conceded several days before they appeared together at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Kennedy was visibly ambivalent about the nominee.

The Republicans capitalized on the divided Democrats, and Ronald Reagan easily won the election.

That’s the story you won’t see in today’s obituaries:  Kennedy’s failure to champion Carter badly hurt the incumbent.  The John Anderson insurgency was largely driven by disaffected Kennedy supporters (including me — I volunteered for Anderson in what was my first opportunity to vote for President).

It would be an exaggeration to suggest that Reagan won solely because of Democratic disuinion — the sad state of the economy had a far more significant impact, as did Carter’s failure to resolve the Iranian hostage crisis.  But I do not think it is an exaggeration to suggest that the decision of many disaffected liberal Democrats to vote for Anderson (or sit out the election) didn’t help.

Ted Kennedy was a great, great man.  But in 1980, his failure to be a good soldier pretty much put an end to his party’s hopes for retaining the White House.

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Two images for you.

First, Gallup daily tracking (which does not include last night’s debate):

That’s the first double-digit lead of the election.  To be fair, some other trackers see a narrowing, but most folks regard the Gallup and Rassmussen daily trackers as the most reliable, and both show Obama with a significant lead.

Second, a map from Open Left showing a composite of the half-dozen websites out there forecasting the electoral college.  Remember, this is not Open Left’s estimate, but an average of all such sites.

The score is Obama 338, McCain 163, 37 too close to call.

There’s still four weeks left, and anything can happen here, but we’re moving into Reagan-Carter territory here.

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Assume for a moment that John McCain is a transitional figure, and that he will serve only one term if he actually does manage to get elected.  If that is true, where does the Republican Party go after he leaves office?

Sarah Palin represents a dead end for the Republicans.  A Palin candidacy in 2012 will be to the Republicans what George McGovern was to the Democrats:  a transitional, highly partisan individual who appeals to the base without significantly expanding it the way Reagan did.

To make an even more forced analogy, Palin is the Republicans’ Neil Kinnock, the Labor Party leader who preceded Tony Blair.  Kinnock was an old-school traditional Labor ideologue who helped solidify the base but could never translate that into electoral success.  It may be that Republicans have to go through a similar period where they enjoy the false comfort of an ideologue in charge, one who gets trounced regularly, before moving back to a centrist, more inclusive place in American politics.

To further strain the analogy to the breaking point, the fundamental question is who will be the Republicans’ Bill Clinton/Tony Blair/Bruce Cameron — the thoughtful, charismatic, and young centrist who pulls his/her party back into the mainstream of the political discourse.

Another way to look at it is that John McCain is to Ronald Reagan as John Major was to Margaret Thatcher:  the last exhausted gasp of a once-vibrant worldview.

There really are three types of political leaders in the United States:  base mobilizers (McGovern, Mondale, Bush II, Palin), centrists (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush I, Clinton, Dole, Gore, Kerry, McCain), and game-changers (FDR, Goldwater, Reagan, and perhaps Obama).

The problem for Republicans is that they will see Palin as a game-changer when in fact she is only a base-mobilizer. And with the (disastrous) exception of Dubya, most base-mobilizers don’t win elections.

Discuss.

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As I listened to McCain’s ridiculous gaffe — where he claimed nations don’t invade other nations in the 21st century, apparently forgetting all about our little Iraq adventure a few years ago (oh, and Afghanistan, which despite Security Council approval still was an invasion of sorts) — it brought to mind a largely forgotten moment in the 1976 presidential election.

During his second debate with Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford argued that Eastern Europe was not dominated by the Soviet Union.  Even when challenged by the questioner to make sure it wasn’t a mistake, Ford repeated his assertion.  Watch it for yourself:

At the time, Ford’s mistake was called “the blunder heard ’round the world,” and many election post-mortems suggested it was a significant factor in his defeat.

I think that McCain’s gaffe is nearly as bad.  The only question is whether the media will hold him to account.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Sorry, I forgot what decade I was in for a moment.

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