There are a small number of political campaigns in which the surface conceals the substance, campaigns in which the dissonance between appearance and reality is pronounced. Consequently, these campaigns are remembered for having been in some way surprising, shaped by unexpected developments or an unforeseen outcome, an outcome that upon reflection might not have been so unexpected if the perception of events had been more aligned with the reality of essential conditions. The general election of 1948 might serve as the most prominent example of this—President Truman’s defeat seemingly so inevitable that one of the country’s foremost newspapers, the Chicago Tribune, ran the now famous headline declaring it so, an inky blooper that famously delighted the victorious incumbent. While the presidential campaign of 2012 was in no way marked by such a dramatic disjunction between expectations formed by misperception and the realities of the case at hand, it was nonetheless a campaign season in which opinions about the candidates and their prospects did not always jibe with the actual circumstances. The actual substance behind the political drama as spotlighted through the media was obscured by disconnected suppositions and skewed perceptions.
The disjunction begins with a curious misreading of the position of the incumbent, President Barack Obama, combined with equally puzzling assumptions fashioned around the challenging Republican Party’s commitment to its front-runner, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Had the perceptions regarding the former been, in fact, an accurate reflection of the reality of things, then the president might have been limited by the voters to a single term; and conversely, had the assumptions regarding the Republican Party’s presumably lukewarm interest in its nominee been accurate, then the incumbent president would have enjoyed a still more impressive victory on Election Day. Neither was the case: The president was never in threat of being dislodged as some had anticipated, nor was the challenger politically incompetent and undercut by diluted support. The Campaign of 2012 did not produce a surprising outcome comparable to 1948, at least as the story goes, but upon reflection the 2012 outcome was quite apart from the expectations held by divergent segments of the electorate.
Notably, political scientists John Sides and Lynn Vavreck examined this dissonance between appearance and reality in their important study of the 2012 presidential campaign, The Gamble. Avoiding anecdotal distractions and methodically inquiring into the manner in which the “fundamental factors” (e.g., the ever-important state of the economy) influence elections, Sides and Vavreck’s study has prompted a number of questions. Just how vulnerable was the incumbent? How thin was the GOP’s support for its front-runner? Did the Republicans in reality delay their commitment to Governor Romney in the hope that a stronger standard-bearer would eventually emerge? Was President Obama’s reelection more likely, and therefore less surprising, than commentators had allowed during the campaign? Appearances aside, was the “conventional wisdom” about both candidates aligned with real factors fundamental to the outcome?
Unchallenged in his own party, President Obama held the advantage of incumbency running up to the election year. Historically, incumbent presidents typically win reelection, losing only nine times since the pivotal election of 1800, the first instance of an incumbent president (John Adams) failing to retain office, and throughout the sweep of American political history, the blind odds have favored incumbents. Nevertheless, upon closer observation, more recent elections seem to have followed a newer, different trend. Among the last six presidents to hold office prior to 2008, only three managed to win reelection: Reagan, Clinton, and the younger Bush in 1984, 1996, and 2004, respectively. The remaining three incumbents within this time frame—Ford (1976), Carter (1980), and the elder Bush (1992)—were voted out. If we include President Lyndon Johnson—who withdrew from the race influenced by what he deemed the constraints of insurmountable exigencies—then we observe that four of the last eight sitting presidents were unable to secure their reelection. This is an observable trend that may warrant a reduced confidence in the presumed advantage of incumbency. All four of those sitting presidents who were unable to win a second term were at some point challenged within their own party: President Johnson by Senator Gene McCarthy, President Ford by former governor Reagan, President Carter by Senator Edward Kennedy, and the elder President Bush by political firebrand and former adviser to President Nixon, Pat Buchanan. The incumbent presidents among the last eight who managed reelection went unchallenged within their party (save for a quixotic, mostly symbolic, and largely ignored antiwar campaign advanced by Republican California representative Pete McCloskey in 1972 during the Nixon incumbency), as was the case for President Obama. Nevertheless, as the campaign for 2012 began to stir into motion, there hovered a palpable assumption that the president was somehow vulnerable; that given a credible challenge, his reelection could be thwarted.
A variety of factors may have encouraged these assumptions, beginning with the state of the economy, which, while improving, was nevertheless generally perceived to be sufficiently stressed to sustain general anxiety. True, the nation was gradually emerging from the severe recession that hampered the last year of the Bush administration and plagued the first three years of the Obama administration, but progress was slow and not widely perceived. Additionally, the expected Republican gains in the midterm congressional elections were extensive; the scale of the seat changes in the House of Representatives was particularly astonishing. Republicans gained sixty-three new seats while recapturing the majority, the biggest shift in that chamber in sixty-two years. Senate Democrats, while protecting an ever-receding majority in their chamber, were weakened by the loss of six seats. Republicans also enjoyed gains throughout the Union at the state level. Media pundits read these signs as a plebiscitary rebuke of the policies and performance of the Obama administration. Humbled by the Republican triumph, the president candidly referred to the numbers on the midterm scorecard as a “shellacking.”
Some of these Republican gains were influenced by the activism of the Tea Party faction, boosting the confidence of the ideological right through its ostensibly newly won leverage. Tea Party influence was unexpectedly persistent, but given that slightly less than a third of the Republicans elected in Congress were directly associated with the faction, its image as a ubiquitous and irresistible force may be exaggerated. Clearly the Tea Party had markedly influenced GOP politics, especially through activity in the primaries and success in local elections, but its focus had been scattered by crackpot distractions such as the “birther” allegations and oddly pointed criticisms of President Obama’s religious affiliation, somehow oblivious to the Constitution’s prohibition against religious tests. While not every Tea Party adherent had adopted these bizarre opinions, the more exercised and vigorous elements of the movement viewed them seriously. Fringe extremists aside, the Tea Party seemed formidable.
Furthering this perception of vulnerability, raised voices of discontent from within the president’s own party, primarily from the liberal wing, reacted in frustration to what they deemed an ideologically moderate and politically conciliatory administration. In spite of caricatures of the president’s ideological positions from the right, President Obama, a pragmatist, gravitated toward the middle, perhaps a left-leaning centrist but a centrist nonetheless, to the chagrin of the left. Historically, such criticisms from within a president’s own party are expected; one cannot be president without drawing criticism from all directions. In the case of President Obama, the liberal criticism seemed to expose fading confidence in the administration growing into disillusionment. In 2008, candidate Obama raised hopes for those who sought a genuine answer to the “failed system in Washington,” an answer that had eluded the leadership in both parties. This virtue of hope and the promise of change were central elements of Senator Obama’s rhetoric, winning over the left with the promise of institutional reform and progressive initiative. By 2010 President Obama was stridently criticized from the party’s left for failing to make good on his promises to transform government and in the process transform American political culture. In office, President Obama appeared to have abandoned the idealism of his campaign for the realism of the pragmatist, prompting complaints of betrayal from the left. While some would argue that the president’s efforts in reforming public support for health care, regulating the financial system, stimulating the economy, addressing environmental degradation, improving fair-pay legislation, and seeking solutions to the burden of student debt were significant efforts toward fulfilling those promises, others—especially in the liberal wing of the party—received his policies as gradualist half-measures and cynical compromises with the right, more politics as usual from the man who had won the election under the clarion of hope and change. Finally, voters left and right were stridently critical of the president’s foreign policy, especially the conduct of military action abroad. To the disappointment of those Obama supporters who had anticipated a reduction of military operations abroad, the fighting continued, and the unfinished business regarding the prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base drew sharp criticism against the administration. For some Democrats, the president had become part of the establishment.
The president, however, was not entirely disengaged from the left. As the Occupy Wall Street protest commenced in September 2011, the president took notice, sympathetic to grievances against income inequality and the influence of Wall Street, symbolized by the contrast between the wealthiest “one percent” and the rest of us, the “ninety-nine percent.” Shedding the caution recommended from within his inner circle, the president resolved to acknowledge the concerns of the Occupy protestors, reaffirming his own commitment to social justice. In Osawatomie, Kansas (already an important place in American history owing to the connection to militant abolitionist John Brown in the mid-1850s and former president Theodore Roosevelt’s speech introducing his “New Nationalism” in August 1910), the president joined his own bully pulpit in rebuking the “one percent,” inveighing against the greed of Wall Street, along with the insurance and mortgage industries, and, fairly or unfairly, implicating the Republican Party for its alleged role in promoting a heartless “you’re-on-your-own economics.” Occupy Wall Street protesters, the president intoned, were justified in speaking to the “broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.” Forceful as it was, the speech only made a modest splash. It received media coverage, but more as a routine event than a major address in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt’s Osawatomie touchstone. Interestingly, and with some insight, the president even-handedly observed similarities shared between both the Occupy and Tea Party movements. “Both on the left and the right,” the president explained, “. . . people feel separated from government. They feel that their institutions aren’t looking out for them.”
Not everyone associated with Occupy Wall Street embraced this. Within a month of Osawatomie, Occupy protestors heckled the president at a New Hampshire event, shouts of “Mic check!” cueing a cascade of chants that temporarily halted the president’s remarks. These “mic check” tactics, dubbed “the People’s Microphone,” were a by-product of the Occupy movement, now aimed at a president friendly to their cause. Nevertheless, the 2011 Osawatomie speech and subsequent comments signaled, at least rhetorically, the president’s recommitment to social transformation, supplying the scaffolding for the upcoming campaign for reelection.
Naturally, ongoing anxieties, however realistic, over economic progress loomed over the president, the principal feature casting the shadow of vulnerability. The Great Recession of 2008–2009 did not further deteriorate into a second Great Depression as many feared; however, the effects of the recession lingered, prolonging the recovery and constraining the administration’s ambitions. Polls indicated sustained misgivings within the general public, even though the economy was evincing slow growth. Significantly, unemployment remained above 8 percent through most of the president’s term, and while this is hardly close to the calamitous 30 percent and more experienced during the darkest days of the Great Depression, the perception among the general public was influenced by nervous pessimism and diminished confidence in the president’s policies. For this reason alone, President Obama was from various quarters compared to President Carter, who was also constrained and dogged by a stressed economy, in the late seventies. As with President Carter, congressional Democrats had become disconnected from the administration, especially those Democrats that leaned left. President Carter had also become isolated from the left wing of his party, thus prompting the intraparty challenge from Senator Kennedy. The deep recession that buffeted President Obama’s first years in office exceeded the problems that plagued the Carter administration and the first year of President Reagan’s subsequent presidency. President Reagan enjoyed the benefits of an economic recovery during his first term, but a comparable recovery did not occur under President Obama, and public opinion circled in a holding pattern of disquiet and diffidence. Plans for an unprecedented and exhaustive economic stimulus were blunted by partisan opposition; nevertheless, the bipartisan package that was approved in Congress exponentially exceeded a previous extensive stimulus attempt by the federal government under President Clinton during the downturn of 1993. Public support was lukewarm at best. In April 2010, seven months prior to the dramatic midterm elections, a Pew Center poll indicated growing disillusionment, over 60 percent of participants expressing mounting pessimism. To compound the president’s problems, the general public also remained unenthusiastic about—and in certain segments of the electorate (viz., the conservative right), vehemently opposed to—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Critics pejoratively labeled the president’s health care reform “Obamacare,” but the tag evolved into the vernacular for the ACA. With the ideological right lobbing broadsides against the administration, the ideological left standing aloof, and the public in general anxious, the president’s prospects appeared compromised. Finally, no one could anticipate how President Obama’s race would figure into the equation; would he encounter a racially charged backlash in 2012? While it is a fact of political history that the American public did elect an African American for the nation’s highest office, it is also evident to honest observers that the electoral triumph of 2008 had not inaugurated, as it was hoped, a racially more tolerant climate. All these factors considered together seemed to cloud the president’s outlook for 2012, consequently energizing Republican opposition.
Nevertheless, these fundamental conditions were dissonant with one important fact: the president was popular. This is not to dismiss those factions within the general public who were critical of the president, some severely so (even to the point of hatred, at times stirred by racist undercurrents, simmering at the crackpot fringe), but rather to indicate that in spite of the many difficulties encountered in his first administration, many Americans still embraced President Obama as a person, even as his policies still invited broad criticism. Sides and Vavreck’s original study of polling data reveals that the president was “unexpectedly popular”; they noticed that the president’s approval ratings were persistently stable, even comparing the president’s actual approval ratings with “expected approval” ratings based on a protracted study of presidential approval ratings dating from the Truman administration. In studying the relationship between fundamental conditions (e.g., the economy, always a central factor) and how these conditions correlate to public reactions to a president’s policies, an “expected approval” rating can be determined and then compared to the actual numbers drawn from a poll. According this study, President Obama’s actual approval ratings were consistently higher than what should have been expected based on external conditions, and furthermore, with the exception of President Kennedy, the difference between President Obama’s actual and expected approval was higher than any administration in the database, which extends back through President Truman. Moreover, in measuring party loyalty and comparing presidents Obama and Carter, Sides and Vavrick observed that Obama was “more popular with Democratic voters than every president since Truman except Kennedy.” Thus, even though disenchantment among Democrats in Congress was real, the data nonetheless reveals more party loyalty than that which had been inspired by fellow Democratic presidents Truman, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton.
Additionally, Sides and Vavreck address the issue of the president’s image. Obama is often depicted as aloof, intellectually distant, and dispassionate—compared by some media wags to the stoic fictional character Mr. Spock (an analogy that seems strangely oblivious to the fact that Mr. Spock is an admired, beloved character to even the most casual Star Trek viewer). Polling data reveals a different impression of Obama’s persona, with most Americans polled—as high as 71 percent, according to Pew—regarding him as “warm and friendly,” a “good communicator” sympathetic to their troubles. Furthermore, while it would appear that the president’s response to the recession was often a focus of criticism, and that the public was at best lukewarm toward his reforms in health care and other domestic programs, the president as a person was still viewed favorably by the majority. For many Americans, it didn’t hurt the president’s image as commander in chief when U.S. Navy Seals killed the murderous al-Qaeda ringleader Osama bin Laden in May 2011. Shrill critics right and left remained adamantine in their intense dislike of the president, but the majority of the public, at least according to the polling data, while tentative in response to his achievements, were nonetheless well disposed toward the man.
While the GOP appeared perched on the catbird seat in November 2010, by the summer of 2011 its advantage, though still evident, began to weaken. Tea Party influence, while still present, was thinning, or at least according to recent polling, the clout that it held in 2010 slightly weakened. Nevertheless, while the GOP seemed to have lost some ground since the midterms, the party remained confident and generated a number of prospective candidates. At the outset former governor Romney, Senator John McCain’s principal challenger for the 2008 nomination, was the obvious front-runner. This populated field of challengers helped shape the impression that Romney’s status as front-runner was temporary, that the gathering of competitors was motivated by distaste for Romney. Thus the whispered petition “Anyone but Romney” appeared to reveal the party’s mood, especially within the noisy conservative wing of the party. This ostensible aversion to Romney encouraged all comers, boosted by the perception that Romney lacked presidential stature. From the influential right, Romney was irredeemably moderate, suspiciously liberal on some issues—the despised “Obamacare” was, after all, akin to the health care policies adopted by Romney himself when he served as governor of Massachusetts. Romney campaigned to rescind President Obama’s health care program, but his fellow Republican rivals were unmoved by Romney’s protestations, given the resemblance shared between Obamacare and the health care program that he helped to establish while governor in Massachusetts. Basking from their influential role in the 2010 midterms, the Tea Party faction insisted on being courted, and Romney was not the kind of suitor for which they pined.
Moreover, Romney’s wealth and the perception of his patrician demeanor worked against him. There may indeed be something to the electorate’s wariness of wealth; beginning with President Truman, only three presidents—Kennedy, the elder Bush, and the younger Bush—were raised in wealth. Even before President Truman, the only other twentieth-century president that came from substantial wealth was Franklin Roosevelt. (Theodore Roosevelt enjoyed great wealth, but as a younger man, he could not be described as having come from wealth.) All told, American voters historically elect candidates from more modest backgrounds, infrequently supporting the wealthiest. Romney’s wealth might not be an endearing quality.
On a personal level, trouble was expected over Romney’s Mormon faith, but ultimately it had no effect. However, his personal image was underappreciated; he was sometimes unfairly described as “boring,” “bland,” blasé, socially awkward, even “weird” or “robotic.” Clearly these were exaggerations to be taken with a grain of salt; nonetheless, his image within the voting public had been distorted by this caricature. Prima facie, Romney just didn’t seem to have the juice to lead a credible campaign against an incumbent, even one that was purportedly vulnerable.
Among the earliest names that were floated as alternatives to Romney were former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP nominee for vice president Sarah Palin, and the popular New Jersey governor Chris Christie. Palin in particular seemed to suit the Tea Party faction, and a Palin candidacy was anticipated, she having already periodically hinted her interest even prior to the 2010 midterm results. However, her showing in various party straw polls conducted throughout the country from January 2011 forward were less than heartening. Still, during the summer of 2011, rumors of a Palin candidacy remained in circulation. Meanwhile, Christie’s name also remained prominent, even though his public intentions were vague. The ambiguity around Christie and the speculation about Palin were dispelled when both prospective candidates announced in October 2011 that they would not run. With Christie and Palin removed from the pool, and with interest in Romney still apparently lackluster, other presidential ambitions were encouraged.
Throwing in early were Representative Michelle Bachman of Minnesota; former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; Texas governor Rick Perry; former Washington lobbyist, entrepreneur, and pizza magnate Herman Cain; Texas representative Ron Paul; Jon Huntsman, ambassador to China; former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum; former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty; former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson; and former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer, along with numerous other, less familiar faces. Names such as Wisconsin representative Paul Ryan, Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, South Dakota senator John Thune, and real estate mogul and reality television entertainer Donald Trump, among several others, were also mentioned as possible candidates, all of whom publicly demurred. As the media coverage of the early primary season began to increase, Gingrich, Perry, and Cain quickly attracted the most attention, each experiencing a surge in the polls and further reinforcing the appearance of doubt regarding the party’s interest in Romney.
Governor Perry surged early, his record and background appealing to conservatives, his fund-raising temporarily surpassing Romney’s, and he polled strong numbers from mid-August into early September. However, these figures spiked and soon began to decline in the aftermath of a damaging sequence of missteps and gaffes, beginning with Perry’s pugnacious and unguarded comments about the Federal Reserve Board and its chairman, Ben Bernanke—whom he accused of treasonous conduct—combined with additional prior claims now leaking into the press of his comparing Social Security to a Ponzi scam, and deteriorating from there. By the time a Florida Republican Party straw poll was conducted in late September, it was clear that the governor’s support was diminishing, his numbers cut in half, enough to finish second but well behind the winner of the straw poll, Herman Cain, who was supported by 37 percent of those polled. This turnaround represented both the ascent of Mr. Cain and the rapid descent of Governor Perry, whose campaign was then doomed by more embarrassing episodes: comments sympathetic to the weird “birther” conspiracy, his association with a hunting ranch saddled with a racially offensive name, and a pointless passing swipe at the upbringing of the Bush family at which the revered family matriarch, Barbara Bush, took umbrage. Worse still was his inane reaction upon losing his train of thought during a November 9 debate while detailing which three cabinet-level departments he would, if elected, eliminate from the executive branch. After identifying both Commerce and Education, forgetting the third department, and then becoming flustered when the EPA was raised by the debate moderator and then withdrawn by the candidate, an exchange causing laughter among the audience, Perry halted, still unable to name the third department, and said, “Oops!” in an attempt to brush off the evident bungle as an insignificant lapse. Perhaps it was insignificant, but Perry’s shrugging reaction came off as shallow. What has since come to be called the “oops moment” was Perry’s coup de grâce, the governor now appearing either unfocused under pressure or incapable of sustaining a serious conversation about policy. Harry Enten, at the Web site FiveThirtyEight, marked Perry’s precipitous decline, losing twenty-seven points in the polls, the steepest on record. Meanwhile, Mr. Cain’s fortunes rose in the wake of his winning the Florida straw poll, framed by persistent promotion of his trademark “9-9-9” plan to replace the current federal tax structure with a three-pronged approach that was a species of flat tax: viz., 9 percent levied on personal income tax, 9 percent drawn from businesses, and imposition of a 9 percent federal sales tax. Cain briefly pulled ahead of the field after the October straw poll, but as with Perry, the surge would break and his support would soon collapse.
Cain’s decline began with criticisms of the 9-9-9 plan, many analysts describing it as a regressive tax that would burden most Americans, although his supporters were unfazed. In one interview he compared himself to Moses, but that raised only mild reaction. A more damaging incident occurred during an October television interview. Having previously boasted that he stood prepared to deflect “gotcha questions,” he garrulously explained that were he to be asked to identify “the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan,” he would say, “You know, I don’t know. Do you know?” Hoping to demonstrate a common bond with the average American, Mr. Cain obviously meant to inject a modicum of self-effacing humor into this frank admission, mining Uzbekistan for material; but it was a misfire, inviting mocking criticisms portraying him as pridefully ignorant about global politics. Finally Cain’s coup de grâce came on Halloween 2011, when charges of sexual harassment and infidelity were aimed at Mr. Cain, allegations he firmly denied but that he was unable to deflect, effectively deflating his prospects; the fleeting Cain surge dissipated, the candidate underscoring his retreat with a sentimental reference to a lyric from a Pokémon movie soundtrack during a December address conceding the end. Romney remained the front-runner.
One might expect the Romney candidacy to quickly gain momentum in the aftermath, but for the moment at least, a third challenger, former Speaker of the House and standard-bearer of the 1994 “Contract with America,” Newt Gingrich, now stepped forward to lure the media’s gaze. Having announced his candidacy months earlier, Gingrich’s campaign languished, as the former Speaker appeared to lack commitment, but also owing to reservations about Gingrich among party insiders. Even so, during an ongoing series of intraparty debates, Mr. Gingrich began to stand out, stimulating renewed public interest in his prospects in spite of his problems inside the party leadership. Drawing upon his background, the former Speaker began to look like a credible challenger, perhaps even displacing Romney as the new front-runner, polling around 37 percent in early December. The former Speaker, however, carried substantial baggage stemming from his personal history as well as his prickly personality. While Gingrich had made a name for himself as a conservative firebrand in the early 1990s, his ideas could be idiosyncratic and unappealing to the purist. Additionally, even party insiders were wary of what they interpreted as Gingrich’s tendency toward self-promotion. Ambivalence surrounded Gingrich: On one hand he could appear as a forthright, intelligent, and informed critic of corruption and a champion of character in political leadership, but then on the other hand, his own foibles would peek through the chinks in his personal armor—bad blood with the House Ethics Committee, marital infidelities from the very man who had attacked President Clinton’s indiscretions, etc. Any Gingrich surge might be dampened by a counter-undercurrent of resistance flowing from the public’s sense of unease about this past. Added to this was a tendency to fluctuate across the ideological terrain while discussing policy, an open-mined quality that was not in itself problematic, but that nonetheless scrambled any potential commitment from the more ardently ideological. From the more conservative perspective, Gingrich enjoyed some support, but he was also capable of tendering bemusing suggestions that would reintroduce old doubts about his real principles. His curious lack of diplomacy and nuance, his oddball musings, and his checkered past neutralized his strengths. By January, the Gingrich surge seemed spent, but a last gasp remained.
As the campaign season developed, a number of other candidates moved in and out of media focus. Among conservatives, there were no candidates more appealing, at least on ideological grounds, than Congresswoman Bachmann and Senator Santorum. Bachmann had announced her candidacy as early as June 2011; she polled encouraging numbers the following July and won an Iowa straw poll (the Ames Straw Poll) in August, receiving over 28 percent among the field (her closest competitor in this poll was Congressman Ron Paul, who came within a percentage point). For this reason Bachman’s candidacy initially looked solid, but as with Perry and Cain, gaffes and errors quickly smothered her momentum. Her gaffes ranged from kooky and inaccurate accusations about Governor Perry and state-sponsored vaccinations in Texas to risible declamations about American history. By the time of the Iowa caucus in early January, her campaign had fizzled out with only 5 percent support.
Gaffes, muffs, and blown opportunities were embarrassing for these challengers; however, front-runner Mitt Romney, who could have been crowned the King of Gaffes, having committed more than his fair share of injudicious comments, managed to soldier on somehow. To emphasize a point at one debate event, he challenged Governor Perry to bet ten thousand dollars. He sprinkled his public comments with blue-blooded flourishes—nonchalant asides about his wife’s two Cadillacs, disclosures about the illegal immigrants who tended his garden, and indecorous confessions that he liked “being able to fire people” on grounds of personal dissatisfaction; and while exhibiting his support for the middle class during one interview, casually remarking that he was “not concerned about the very poor.” Imprudent comments abounded from nearly all the candidates, especially from Romney, and while his numerous, gob-stopping gaffes were duly disseminated through the media—and there was ample derision aimed at everyone’s mistakes, Romney’s included—he nevertheless mysteriously avoided the self-destruction visited hard upon his challengers resulting from similar indiscretions. A curious situation unfolded, one that may be better explained by the factual solidity of Romney’s support concealed behind the appearance of hesitation and doubt. His challengers were not as poorly credentialed as they have since been depicted, and their blunders were by and large no worse, and no more frequent, than those of the front-runner. Even though each of the surging candidates had promptly crashed while Romney held steady, there was still an “anyone but Romney” tinge coloring the campaign. There remained a demand for a credible challenger among segments of the GOP, at least based on appearances, and one more figure would step forward to fill that role.
Beginning with the Iowa caucus, it became evident that former senator Santorum was that challenger; his campaign had already shown signs of increased energy in late December, and on the eve of the Iowa caucus, now held in the first week in January, Santorum’s uptick in the polls could not have been better timed. Fervent and unbowed, Santorum was unabashedly conservative down the line, and he began to draw crowds. Having referred to himself in the past as “the Popeye candidate,” explaining “I am what I am,” Santorum was a marked contrast to the comparatively more moderate and reserved Romney, and at least for the moment, he seemed like the impassioned antidote to the governor’s purported patrician detachment. One episode in particular fueled this momentum: a plaintive, tearful, powerful moment in Boone’s Pizza Ranch Restaurant wherein Santorum and his wife, Karen, in an emotionally charged defense against callous criticisms lambasting their very personal reaction to a heartbreaking family tragedy, drew sympathy, touched nerves, and won support. It had little to do with the issues and much to do about what Iowa conservatives seemed to be seeking and not finding in Governor Romney. On the evening of the Iowa caucus, the numbers rolling in could not have been tighter, with both Romney and Santorum in front and running at 25 percent, Ron Paul polling around 21 percent, Gingrich drawing around 13–14 percent, Perry at 10 percent, and the rest of the pack followed in single digits or less. The day after the caucus, Romney appeared to be the winner but only by the slimmest of margins—a mere eight votes. Such a result was viewed by many as a draw; in a public e-mail message, Romney himself called it a “virtual tie,” and with a feeling of relief, he was quick to move forward full tilt into New Hampshire. Iowa was important to Romney, but he was anxious to move on, as he had never felt comfortable in the Hawkeye State, having lost there by six percentage points to Mike Huckabee in the 2008 caucus, thereafter referring to Iowa as the “La Brea Tar Pits of politics.” A split decision in Iowa was, for Romney, as good as a victory. Spirits were high in Santorum’s camp, buoyed further by a recount in Iowa indicating a new result in which Santorum actually polled higher than Romney by thirty-four votes; however, the final tally remained unofficial, as the results in eight precincts had been lost. By the time news of Santorum’s unofficial slender victory in Iowa broke, Romney had already easily won the New Hampshire primary, with Santorum finishing in fifth place and Iowa’s significance receding.
In New Hampshire, Gingrich and Huntsman went into a full-court press against Romney in an attempt to, as the former Speaker explained, “make Romney radioactive”; but it was to no avail, as Romney, with deep ties in New England, won just over 39 percent in the Granite State and was well ahead of the rest of the pack. Mr. Gingrich’s campaign seemed to undergo a modest revival in the public, polling respectable numbers in selected primaries and caucuses, but his numbers would soon fluctuate and fade. Congressman Paul also managed to remain in the arena, as he showed respectable numbers placing second but far behind Romney. Jon Huntsman showed third, a result that encouraged him to stay in for a short while longer, but he too was soon gone. In spite of a weak run in New Hampshire, Santorum’s prospects were recharged by February victories in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri, while also nationally outpolling the president by a percentage point in a hypothetical Santorum-Obama contest conducted by Rasmussen Reports. Significantly, Santorum’s gains were more sustained than those of candidates who had previously surged and then fizzled. For the moment, Santorum appeared to be stiff competition for Romney.
Relying on the South for his pivot move, Gingrich scored a convincing victory in South Carolina, polling 40 percent to Romney’s distant second (just under 28%). This second surge seemed to renew the former Speaker’s strength, but Romney remained undaunted, having anticipated that he was likely to lose Southern support to more conservative candidates. South Carolina proved to be Gingrich’s zenith; a few days later, Romney won an impressive victory in the Florida primary, bolstered by his own performance in debates against Gingrich as well as Gingrich’s tendency to suffocate his own chances with an all-too-frequent controversial or, in this case, oddball remark about establishing space stations on the Moon by 2020—a laudable goal, to be sure, but a remark misplaced and divergent to common sense. Romney assayed the Gingrich Moon Plan, weighing in that as an executive, he would naturally fire any employee who would submit such an unlikely scheme. Conservatives derided Gingrich, who was castigated by both the National Review and American Spectator, and columnist Ann Coulter quipped, “Reelect Obama/Vote Newt.” Gingrich would win Georgia, his home state, on Super Tuesday, but his campaign was unable to convert the South Carolina surge into the energy needed for a prolonged fight with Romney and Santorum.
Santorum continued to push Romney, winning the popular vote among primary and caucus participants in eleven states—twelve, if one counts the confused result in New Hampshire—and he pressed the governor hard in Michigan, the state where Romney was raised, his father, George Romney, having been Michigan’s Republican governor through the better part of the 1960s, and prior to that, president and chairman of American Motors. George Romney had himself campaigned for the Republican nomination in 1968 as a liberal alternative to Richard Nixon. Moreover, Mitt Romney had a record of success in Michigan, winning the primary there in 2008, besting the eventual party nominee, Senator John McCain, by nine percentage points. Nevertheless, he was hardly a native son in Michigan; it had been decades since Romney had resided there—he was governor in Massachusetts, not Michigan—and a controversial New York Times editorial that Romney wrote in November 2008, critical of a federally funded rescue of the struggling American automobile industry, did not endear him to Michigan residents. Worse still, the editors at the New York Times elected to misleadingly title Romney’s op-ed, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” a phrase that has since been attributed to Romney himself, even though he neither explicitly nor even implicitly suggested such a course of action. But like Marie Antoinette, Romney couldn’t shake the misattributed phrase. Meanwhile, Santorum’s steely conservatism continued to animate crowds, and when compared to what was perceived as Romney’s more pliable ideological inclinations combined with a reputation for, however fairly or unfairly ascribed, patrician disdain, the governor’s advantages seemed tenuous. In the days leading toward the Michigan primary, Santorum, who initially polled more than ten percentage points behind, was now drawing almost even with Romney, his campaign appearing increasingly vibrant. Imagined scenarios suggesting a brokered convention were now percolating within the party; Chris Christie’s name was again being whispered as a possible “white knight” to charge forward at the denouement. Governor Daniels of Indiana and Congressman Ryan of Wisconsin were additional names popping up in the buzz among worried insiders. Grumblings about Romney’s alleged ineptitude murmuring throughout the party leadership and persisting through the media dismayed the front-runner and appeared to weaken his support. However, while Santorum had mounted the most effective, consistent, and prolonged challenge to the governor, Romney still managed to take the Michigan prize by three percentage points. Again the clear front-runner, Romney moved toward the primary in Pennsylvania, Santorum’s home turf, in April with the nomination finally in sight.
Soon gaffes and injudicious declamations began to cost the senator—in particular, a scathing criticism of fellow Catholic John F. Kennedy’s famous position, delivered during his 1960 presidential campaign for the assurance of Baptists in Houston and Protestants more generally, defending the doctrine of the separation of church and state. It was actually the second time he raked over President Kennedy’s Houston address, but this time it made news, and it was mixed in with the claim that his fellow communicants who adopted Kennedy’s position were “not real Catholics.” After receiving flak from nearly every candidate in the field, including another Catholic, Newt Gingrich, as well as Governor Romney, Santorum soon publicly admitted to television personality Laura Ingraham that he regretted the remark, but the damage had been done. However, when Santorum focused on policy, he proved more effective. As Super Tuesday approached, he continued to impugn Romney’s credentials as a conservative, stressing a lack of ideological consistency, especially on issues such as health care. “Romneycare” was the label Santorum deployed in his attempt to expose his opponent as a liberal in conservative clothing, hitting the governor hard on issues more effectively than other challengers.
Super Tuesday on March 6 was decisive for Romney, as he won 38 percent of the popular vote spread across eleven separate primaries, converting to 238 delegates secured to 85 for Santorum, 79 for Gingrich, and 21 for Paul. Santorum did manage to win three states (with Gingrich winning in Georgia), but it was essentially a triumph for Romney. Ohio was the tightest contest, Romney there edging out Santorum by only one percentage point. Santorum campaigned hard in Ohio, but in the end he fell short, and his campaign seemed to now be on the wane. Clearly Santorum’s exit was a matter of time after Super Tuesday, and perhaps even after Michigan, but it was a family crisis that forced his withdrawal; his youngest daughter had just been diagnosed with a serious medical disorder, prompting the senator’s judicious decision to withdraw from the campaign two weeks shy of the Pennsylvania primary, even though he would remain on the ballot. The way to the party nomination was now graded smooth for Governor Romney.
Having emerged the presumptive nominee by outdueling more conservative challengers, one might conclude that Romney’s accomplishment had come at a cost. Like Senator John McCain in 2008, Romney, a natural moderate, seemed to have allowed himself to be pulled to the right, causing confusion and doubt among supporters. Research findings offered by Sides and Vavreck supply a fuller account. According to their data, the GOP’s conservative extreme, while influential, “do not comprise the majority of Republican voters”; consequently, Romney’s campaign relied on nearly a third of the party rank and file who were already closer to his comparatively more moderate positions than those held by the Tea Party. In spite of the clear influence of the party’s right, Sides and Vavreck remind students of politics that “moderates and pragmatists in the Republican Party have tended to prevail in presidential primaries.” This is not to dismiss the real influence of the “archconservative” faction, but rather to question “stereotypes like the Molotov Party” that many consider to be the dominant feature of the current GOP. In other words, Romney, whose political history indicates a more moderate approach, could not have defeated a strong challenger such as Santorum if the party were in fact truly dominated by the Tea Party faction and other diehard conservatives. Compared to the Republican Party of the 1950s or even the 1970s, there is no question that the party is currently more homogeneous and that it leans toward the conservative pole; and yet the whole picture is distorted if we focus on just one visible and vocal element. Governor Romney was required to allay the concerns of conservatives, but then President Obama faced a similar situation with his party’s left wing. Both candidates share a pragmatism that is easily lost in ideologically refracted rhetoric and ad hominem punditry.
By the actual primary season, informed voters, those who were likely voters, knew full well the political principles represented by the two candidates. Democrats began to raise questions about Romney’s background in the private sector. Lauded as the savior of the Salt Lake Olympic Games and admired for his success as a businessman, his association with Bain Capital was often scrutinized by opponents looking for the unseemly, cold-hearted side of Romney. Largely initiated by the Gingrich camp, the light shed on Bain was meant to depict Romney as, in the words of Governor Perry, a “vulture capitalist,” the type of “Wall Street wolf” casually wrecking lives by pursuing larger profits while thoughtlessly eliminating jobs. True enough, Romney’s numbers did decline shortly after the Bain allegations against him arose, but it is difficult to prove a correlation. Nevertheless, issues surrounding Romney’s tenure at Bain would reappear in the contest against the president.
President Obama, even though unchallenged in his party, was still a presence during the campaign season, especially since the Osawatomie event in December 2011. On April 4 he delivered a speech criticizing the proposed federal budget, a tight, frugal plan now emerging from House Republicans steered under the leadership of Paul Ryan, a plan that the president condemned as a “Trojan horse” concealing within it the political principles of “social Darwinism,” and observing that it reflected an ideological agenda so extreme that, by comparison, the conservative 1994 “Contract with America” looked “like the New Deal.” Claiming that Romney’s own policies were tightly aligned with the Ryan plan, the president warned that the Republican presumptive nominee was tacking toward the extreme right. Employing a contradictory strategy that simultaneously criticized Romney for playing to the conservatives but also renewing older charges that Romney was a flip-flopper, analogous to an Etch A Sketch (an image actually culled from a gaffe committed by one of Romney’s own campaign advisers, Eric Fehrnstrom, who, in speaking to the mutability of political campaigns and Romney’s willingness to adapt to the concerns of the voters, inadvertently formed the impression that he thought of Romney as a candidate lacking permanent positions, a comment that had also been exploited by Senator Santorum), his positions easily wiped away, leaving no real ground, commitment, or enduring principles: moderate Romney is shaken and wiped away; a conservative Romney is sketched in and then erased again; a politician who “has no core,” but who has, in order to become president, allowed the far right to rewrite his script, filling in a new sketch. With the tapping of Representative Ryan as Romney’s running mate, whom analyst Nate Silver deemed “the most conservative Republican member of Congress to be picked for the vice-presidential slot since at least 1900,” the president’s campaign was supplied with more evidence in support of the charge that the erstwhile moderate Romney was pandering to the right. The president’s campaign would also continue to hammer the governor with his background at Bain—perhaps pandering to its party’s left. In both campaigns, the presumptive nominees were both speaking to the true believers; whether or not this approach made a difference is unclear.
In July Governor Romney, traveling abroad, insulted his London hosts by observing that the city was not prepared to manage the upcoming Olympic Games. This may or may not have had any consequences, but his polling numbers coincidentally began to recede; from July 27 to August 12, the president’s lead widened from a negligible one percent to just under five percent. As Romney’s numbers dipped, Republicans hoped to reverse their fortunes, beginning with the national convention opening in Tampa in late August. The first night of the convention was postponed due to a hurricane warning; on the second night, keynote speaker Governor Chris Christie seemed to have the reverse effect of cyclonic winds, sucking all the oxygen out of the convention hall. As though he had drifted into the doldrums, Christie offered a languid endorsement of Romney through a speech that scarcely mentioned the candidate’s name. While most of the speakers in the lineup performed well, especially former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Christi’s prime time keynote address folded the sails. Things continued to deteriorate when the presumptive nominee for vice president, Paul Ryan, delivered a speech riddled with errors, providing more grist for the media mill. More seriously, on Wednesday, mystified viewers watched as movie legend Clint Eastwood performed a stunningly embarrassing improvisation involving an empty chair as a prop and an imaginary President Obama as a punchline. Between Christie’s tepid keynote and Eastwood’s extemporized wreck, the convention fell into a tailspin; there were but two speakers remaining to prevent a catastrophe: Florida senator Marco Rubio and the candidate himself. Although he confused one of his lines—inadvertently calling for more government over more freedom (but everyone knew what he meant)— Senator Rubio’s speech was competent and sincere, halting the dive. It was Romney’s own speech that salvaged the night. Critics who had previously described Romney as patrician, robotic, or awkward were silenced as he spoke with passion, resolve, and poise, recounting an America that “has been a story of the many becoming one, uniting to preserve liberty, uniting to build the greatest economy in the world, uniting to save the world from unspeakable darkness.” It was through this address that Romney, whose campaigning had been decidedly inconsistent and often sidetracked by gaffes and self-inflicted wounds, began to manifest his strength. It was a crucial moment and a clutch save, perhaps rescuing his campaign altogether. A fiasco averted, Wilson Mitt Romney, the first Mormon to be nominated by a major party for president of the United States, at last looked equal to the task. More mistakes would be made by the governor in the weeks ahead, but they were reparable. The blunders at the convention nearly wrecked everything, and it was the candidate himself, with little support from the other principal players, that saved the campaign. Even though the poor performances by Christie and Eastwood were morsels for the media and inspiration for satirists, the polls did not indicate any damage. In fact, within a week, polling numbers showed that the two candidates had drawn even.
From the beginning Romney’s punch and counterpunch combination relentlessly and predominantly targeted the president on the economy while also stressing Republican opposition to Obama’s health care reforms, the president’s economic stimulus package, climate change, international trade, and immigration, while also publicizing the governor’s own record as a successful executive in both the public and private sectors. Increasing his efforts to appear less the patrician and more plebian, Romney’s rhetoric was aimed at the middle class. From late February through early March, the polling numbers for the president ran around 48–49 percent favorable; for the governor, between 43 and 44 percent. In early May the gap closed, the governor moving within approximately a percentage point, but then the gap again widened in the president’s favor, fluctuating throughout the summer, and by mid-August, on average the president enjoyed a four-to-five-percentahe-point lead. Again this gap suddenly closed; by the first week of September, as the Democrats’ national convention opened in Charlotte, North Carolina, polls showed Romney within less than a percentage point, virtually dead even. The convention as a whole was smooth and unremarkable, minor protests from an Occupy Wall Street spin-off excepted. In prime time the oratory did not disappoint the party faithful: First Lady Michelle Obama, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, Vice President Joe Biden, and San Antonio mayor Julian Castro delivered effective speeches—the First Lady’s being particularly vibrant, and Mayor Castro writing history as the first Hispanic American to serve as keynote speaker at a Democratic national convention. As expected, the president’s own acceptance speech exhibited his rhetorical proficiency, and while not as stirring as speeches from his past, such as his own 2004 convention keynote address or the historic 2008 acceptance speech, it was nonetheless a polished performance. Foremost among the speakers, former president Bill Clinton reached the convention’s high notes. Back in center stage, the former president exhibited a command of the issues conveyed through a lighthearted optimism. He was reassuring, playfully incisive, intellectually agile, and fearlessly spontaneous, cautioning that Romney would “double down on trickle-down” and raising “the most important question . . . what kind of country do you want to live in? If you want a you’re-on-your-own, winner-take-all society, you should support the Republican ticket. If you want a country of shared prosperity and shared responsibility—a we’re-all-in-this-together society—you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.” While President Obama’s own well-crafted speech was a success, he appeared reserved and measured in comparison to his captivating predecessor—Bill Clinton, one of the more adept politicians in the history of presidential campaigning, simply could not be upstaged. He injected new energy into the president’s campaign, generating enough dynamism to distract Romney’s advisers with a new anxiety over the “Clinton problem.” With two months remaining in the seemingly interminable campaign season, the incumbent was well positioned for reelection, and with former president Clinton now charging ahead full bore in his behalf, the Democrats’ prospects brightened. Nonetheless, the Romney campaign was on the verge of staging a late rally, one that would reveal the reality of Romney’s strength that had been concealed behind the appearances.
On September 11, the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, a United States diplomatic outpost was attacked and destroyed in Benghazi, Libya, resulting in the death of the American ambassador at the hands of malevolent and criminal fanatics. Prior to the Benghazi assault, the American embassy in Egypt had issued a general apology regretting the posting by an American citizen of a juvenile and tasteless YouTube video insulting the Islamic prophet and provoking the anger of religious fundamentalists, purportedly initiating the events in Benghazi. Candidate Romney issued a statement stridently critical of the president for ordering the Cairo embassy to apologize, for sympathizing with the militants, and for failing to properly condemn the attack in Libya. The following day, the president announced that the Cairo apology was not issued from or approved by the White House, denouncing Governor Romney’s reproach as irresponsible and self-serving. In reality, the outrage in Benghazi was a blow to the president, to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and to Obama’s record on foreign policy in the Middle East; but the Romney campaign fumbled badly in its apparent eagerness to gain advantage from the misfortune.
Then, to worsen matters for the Republicans, on September 17, just a little more than two weeks before the opening of the presidential debates and approximately seven weeks before the general election, Governor Romney’s campaign was distracted by the sudden appearance of a furtively recorded video in which the candidate, removed from context, conveyed plutocratic insensitivity. During an appearance before a private fund-raiser the previous May, Romney, speaking frankly, dropped a passing dismissal of the “forty-seven percent of the people who . . . are dependent upon government, who believe they are victims . . . who pay no income tax.” He explained that these “forty-seven percent” would dutifully, blindly vote for President Obama, and consequently, Romney would not worry about “those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” Compared to previous gaffes, this one appeared to exceed them all. As the recording was leaked, the media and the president’s campaign pounced, the term “forty-seven percent” now representing for the Obama campaign the gulf between the party that genuinely cared for the people, the Democrats, and the Scrooge McDucks in the GOP. Initially the Romney campaign was dazed by the unexpected exposure of these remarks, but the candidate himself, while concerned, seemed loath to be drawn into the controversy. Refusing a public display of contrition, the governor chose to wait until the first debate for an opportunity to explain his meaning. Even before the debate, the effects of the gaffe began to weaken. Polls averaged a dip of just 1 percent a week after the remark was publicized, while the president’s own numbers actually dropped slightly, less than 1 percent. Indubitably, the comments did not reflect well on Romney’s attitude toward certain segments of the American public, but the data does seem to indicate that in spite of his perturbed advisers, Romney managed to avoid significant damage, offering further evidence that, in spite of himself, the governor’s campaign was stronger than his critics assumed, his candidacy more credible than appearances allowed.
Governor Romney gained momentum from the first debate held in Denver, in which he visibly outperformed a seemingly unprepared president. Romney prevailed throughout, the president hesitant and unconvincing. Forthrightly the governor hammered the president for imposing “trickle-down government . . . bigger government, spending more, taxing more, regulating more” and consequently “crushing” a “buried middle class.” It was a decisive victory for the Republicans; the following week Romney for the first time enjoyed a slight lead in several polls, although on average the numbers were again showing a dead heat. With the general election close, the governor was invigorated, and it seemed that Romney had finally begun to show both substance and style at just the right moment. Now it was the Obama campaign that appeared to be sliding backward as Romney charged forward. At the second debate, held at Hofstra University on Long Island, the president righted himself, resembling more the vibrant candidate of 2008 than the halting incumbent during the fiasco in Denver. By contrast, Romney lived up to his exaggerated awkwardness. While discussing the issue of pay equity for women, Romney boasted that he could have hired “binders full of women” while governor of Massachusetts. Worse still, Romney bungled an attempt to challenge the president on the attack in Benghazi. Improving his performance in the third debate, the governor managed to put the missteps over Benghazi and other gaffes behind him, but most analysts, while acknowledging Romney’s stronger performance, considered the third debate a victory for the president. At one point, responding to Romney’s criticism that the U.S. Navy had fewer ships than in 1916, the president retorted that the military also had more “horses and bayonets” in 1916. As the general election approached, the polls continued to indicate a tight outcome. Governor Romney and the Republican leadership were anticipating victory, and friendlier analysts in the media shared the same optimism.
On the eve of the election, Mitt Romney believed he would be the next president. Many Republican activists and commentators shared this confidence. Twenty-four hours later, it was clear that the external appearance of imminent victory concealed a harsher reality. Similar to the manner in which Romney’s own nomination illuminated the difference between the appearance of his vulnerability and the reality of his strength, the results of the 2012 general election revealed the abiding popularity of the president. The Romney challenge did exceed John McCain’s efforts four years earlier; Mitt Romney actually became the second person, after Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012, in American political history to win over sixty million popular votes, which was no small achievement. Whereas McCain lost by a margin of ten million votes in 2008, Romney fell five million short. In comparison to 2008, the Romney campaign performed better, but that gap of five million stunned the Romney family and its supporters. As the returns rolled in from the pivotal battleground state, Ohio, Karl Rove, appearing on the Fox television network, stubbornly resisted the meaning underneath the data. Even as experts were calling Ohio for the president, Rove insisted otherwise, convinced that the numbers weren’t adding up and recommending caution in calling the state for the president. Impatiently, anchorwoman Megyn Kelly famously asked, “Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better or is this real?” Ms. Kelly’s question encapsulates much of what this campaign season reveals about the disparity between perceptions drawn from preferences and hard data that reflect what is real. While some pundits had anticipated a tight outcome allowing the possibility of a Romney upset, most polls did not support this expectation: the best among them (e.g., Public Policy Polling and Nate Silver’s analysis while still at the New York Times) accurately sounded the data and had forecasted with precision a convincing reelection for the president.
In the Electoral College, Obama won 332 to 206 (61% to 39%), retaining all but two of the states won in 2008 (surrendering only Indiana and North Carolina). Even though Obama’s 51 percent of the popular vote to Romney’s 47 percent was not as impressive as his election four years earlier, he deemed it personally more satisfying. Barack Obama became the third consecutive incumbent president to win reelection (following two-term presidents Clinton and the younger Bush), a sequence that has only happened one other time in American history (Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe). To punctuate his success with the American electorate, President Obama stands now as one of only seven presidents to have won two elections by polling more than 50 percent of the popular vote, joining presidents Andrew Jackson (1828, 1832), Ulysses S. Grant (1868, 1872), William McKinley (1896, 1900), the inimitable Franklin Roosevelt (1932, 1936, 1940, 1944), Dwight D. Eisenhower (1952, 1956), and Ronald Reagan (1980, 1984). Still more notably, he is only the third Democrat to accomplish this electoral feat, along with Jackson and FDR, and just one of two Democrats over the course of the past century—the other being no less than Franklin Roosevelt. By contrast, Bill Clinton, the singular politician of his generation, fell below 50 percent of the popular vote in both of his election victories. Interestingly, only seven Democrats have won over 50 percent of the popular vote in presidential elections: Jackson (twice), Martin Van Buren, Franklin Pierce, Samuel Tilden (who lost the election in the Electoral College), Roosevelt (four times), Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama (twice). Ultimately the reality of the case shed the opaque veil of insubstantial appearance; in spite of the many difficulties that the president faced, and what proved in the end to be a respectable effort from his Republican opponent, Barack Obama’s tally of the popular vote was hardly the consequence of a weakened, vulnerable incumbent, affirming instead his position as one of the more accomplished politicians and noteworthy presidents in American history.
Balz, Dan. Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America. New York: Viking, 2013.
Denton, Robert E., Jr., ed. The 2012 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Halperin, Mark, and John Heilemann. Double Down: Game Change 2012. New York: Penguin Books, 2014.
Sides, John, and Lynn Vavreck. The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.