Columnist.
LONDON -- 1776 is a number with great resonance for Americans, but not one you expect to be featured on a British government website. But there it is, on the home page of the United Kingdom's Department of Education: "As of 1 April 2012, there are 1776 academies open in England." Academies, as you might expect, mean something different in Britain than in the United States. They are, approximately, what we would call charter schools. And there are 1,776 of them largely because of the energy and determination of British Education Secretary Michael Gove. Britain, like America, has gotten pretty dismal results for years from its (in their terminology) state schools. (British public schools are expensive boarding schools; they include Eton, which produced David Cameron and 12 other prime ministers, and Fettes, its Scottish equivalent, which graduated former Prime Minister Tony Blair.)
LONDON -- The best view of London's Olympic Park is from the picture windows at the top floor of the John Lewis department store in the vast Westfield Stratford mall five miles east of the Tower of London. It's not the London tourists usually see. Westfield Stratford is an upscale American-style mall, and the sleek Olympic Park structures have nothing of the historic patina of the Tower of London or the Houses of Parliament. This is a reminder that most Brits, like most Europeans, live not in tourist-thronged historic centers but in far-flung suburbs. They live in freestanding houses, drive cars most places and shop at malls, like most Americans. Only they aren't shopping quite as they used to. John Lewis, like other London stores, is full of "sale" signs and deep discounts. Britain is at the brink of recession and trembling lest the collapse of the euro plunge its European trading partners into economic chaos.
"A step in the right direction." That's what Barack Obama said in Poland, Ohio, about Friday's Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment report, which showed only 80,000 net new jobs and unemployment remaining at 8.2 percent. The thought will occur to many, not all of them Obama detractors, that this was at best a baby step. It's not enough to keep up with population growth, much less to restore the low unemployment rates of most of the 1990s and 2000s. Another thought will occur to professional amateur political strategists: Why did the president's campaign schedule a two-day bus tour of northern Ohio and western Pennsylvania to coincide with the day the unemployment numbers were announced? Sure, Ohio and Pennsylvania are important states politically. They have 18 and 20 electoral votes, and Obama carried them in 2008 with 51 and 54 percent of the votes.
That's more or less what happened last Sunday in Mexico, at least as far as most American journalists (including me) are concerned. That's a vivid contrast with the last three presidential elections in Mexico, which had enormous consequences for that country and for the United States. I happened to be in Mexico on vacation in spring 1994 when Luis Donaldo Colosio, the candidate of the ruling PRI party, was assassinated. I listened to the radio broadcast as Ernesto Zedillo, speaking shakily, accepted the party's nomination to succeed him. As with every PRI candidate since 1929, he won the election in July. In 2000, I was in Mexico to cover the election in which Vicente Fox, candidate of the center-right PAN party, was elected -- the first opposition victory in 71 years.
The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision upholding the Obama administration's health care legislation was a victory for the president, his administration and his party. Their most ambitious legislative achievement has not been nullified, and they are not left in obvious disarray. But it is only a partial victory and in some ways not a victory at all, both in the short run electorally and in the long run in terms of the constitutional order. Politically Obamacare, as its critics call it, remains highly unpopular. It's possible that the court decision will boost its support, but unlikely. Most voters want this law repealed. Mitt Romney and the Republicans want to repeal it. Barack Obama and the Democrats want to preserve it. It's not a winning issue for the incumbent. Constitutionally, many conservatives are unhappy that Chief Justice Roberts and the four justices generally considered liberal voted to uphold the mandate to buy health insurance as a tax, which Congress is clearly empowered to levy.
The Supreme Court's decision announced Monday in the Arizona v. United States case opens the way for sensible reform of our immigration laws. Barack Obama and his administration have taken heart that the court overturned Arizona's state penalties for illegal immigrants. The idea is that states can't pile higher penalties on top of those voted by Congress, just as states can't deport people who Congress allowed into the country. But the much more significant part of the case was the unanimous 8-0 (Justice Kagan not voting) ruling upholding the Arizona provision authorizing state and local law enforcement personnel to help enforce federal law by asking those stopped for other reasons to show that they are citizens or legal immigrants. This has been derided as a "where are your papers?" provision redolent of an authoritarian regime. But federal law has long required legal immigrants to carry their papers. And just about every adult carries a driver's license or equivalent without feeling oppressed.
As Barack Obama's lead over Mitt Romney in the polls narrows, and his presumed fundraising advantage seems about to become a disadvantage, it's alibi time for some of his backers. His problem, they say, is that some voters don't like him because he's black. Or they don't like his policies because they don't like having a black president. So, you see, if you don't like Obamacare, it's not because it threatens to take away your health insurance, or to deny coverage for some treatments. It's because you don't like black people. This sort of thing seems to be getting more frequent, or at least more open. As White House Dossier writer Keith Koffler notes, HBO host Bill Maher accused Internet tyro Matt Drudge of being animated by racism because he highlights anti-Obama stories. MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown if House Chairman Darrell Issa's treatment of Attorney General Eric Holder was "ethnic." Brown agreed, and Matthews said some Republicans "talk down to the president and his friends."
What's up with the white working class vote? For years, the horny-handed blue-collar worker was the star of the New Deal Democratic coalition. It was for him, and his wife and family, that Democrats taxed the rich, invented Social Security and supported militant labor unions. Well, that was then, and this is now. White working class voters -- or white non-college voters, the exit poll group most closely approximating them -- are now a mainstay of the Republican coalition. Ronald Brownstein, a clear-sighted and diligent analyst of demographic voting data, provided some useful perspective in his most recent National Journal column. His bottom line is that in order to win this year, Mitt Romney must capture two-thirds of white non-college voters -- about the same percentage that voted for Ronald Reagan in his 1984 landslide re-election. The reason Romney must do so well is that white non-college voters are a smaller part of the electorate now than they were then. In 1984, they comprised 61 percent of all voters. In 2008, they comprised 39 percent.
There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth as, in the spring, it appeared that forces supporting Mitt Romney would be able to raise about as much money as those supporting Barack Obama. There's even more now that it seems likely that the pro-Romney side will raise and spend more money than the pro-Obama side. Four years ago, the Obama forces heavily outspent those supporting John McCain. The Obama campaign had enough money to target -- and carry -- heretofore Republican states like North Carolina and Indiana. That experience made the Democrats spoiled. The prospect that the other side would have as much money as they do struck them as a cosmic injustice. The prospect that it would have more -- heaven forfend! They like to blame this situation on the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which allows corporations and unions to spend money on political speech. They did so even after their defeat in the June 5 Wisconsin recall election, in which Citizens United had no effect because fundraising was governed by state campaign finance laws.
Who does Barack Obama listen to? Not Republican politicians. Evidently weeks go by between his conversations with Speaker John Boehner, who determines what legislation comes to the House floor. Not Democratic politicians. We have it on good authority that he seldom talks to Democratic members of Congress. Lyndon Johnson used to be on the phone constantly, cajoling and inveigling but also on the alert for shifts in opinion. Speaker Tip O'Neill walked around the Capitol, asking member after member, "What do you hear?" In contrast, Obama, a former adviser told Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum, "is a total introvert. He doesn't need people." But there is one group of people Obama has to listen to: the people who give him large sums of money. He recently attended his 150th fundraiser. That's more than the number attended by the last four presidents put together.
We pundits have been busy crunching the results in last Tuesday's Wisconsin recall election and have noted that the public-employee unions sustained a huge defeat. Some have also looked west, to California, where San Diego and San Jose voters Tuesday voted 66 and 69 percent to cut back public-employee pensions. Those cities voted 63 and 69 percent for Barack Obama in 2008. But there's something else worth noting in the California returns. State voters adopted a new primary procedure, in which the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, go on to the general election. Washington state had a similar primary system in the 1990s, and the primary results tended to be replicated in November. For example, the 1994 primary results enabled some to forecast that Democrats would lose six of nine House seats in November.
The results are in, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has beaten Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in the recall election. That's in line with pre-election polling, though not the Election Day exit poll. Even before the results came in, we knew one thing, and that is that the Democrats and the public employee unions had already lost the battle of ideas over the issue that sparked the recall, Walker's legislation to restrict the bargaining powers of public employee unions. That's supported by a Marquette University poll showing 75 percent of Wisconsin voters favoring increases in public employees' contributions for health care and pensions. It also showed 55 percent for limiting collective bargaining for public employees and only 41 percent opposed. But the strongest evidence is that Barrett and the Democrats avoided the issue. They had tried to make the election about anything else, such as an investigation of staffers for Walker when he was Milwaukee County Executive.
Demographic forecasts generally take the form of predicting more of the same. Old people have been moving to Florida for the past several years, and old people will move there for the next few years. Immigrants have been streaming in from Mexico, and they will continue to do so. You get the idea. Most of the time these forecasts prove right. But sometimes there are inflection points, times when some trends stop and others begin. My read of recent demographic data suggest we may be at such a point right now.
The ham-handed Barack Obama campaign attack ads on Mitt Romney's former firm Bain Capital have drawn a lot of ire from other Democrats. And not just because they were sloppily fact-checked (the ads hit Romney for layoffs long after he left Bain) and because a leading Obama money bundler is a Bain executive himself. Chiming in with various degrees of disapproval were Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker ("nauseating"), former Rep. Harold Ford, Obama car czar Steven Rattner, Sen. Mark Warner and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.
It's comfortable living in a cocoon -- associating only with those who share your views, reading journalism and watching news that only reinforces them, avoiding those on the other side of the cultural divide. Liberals have been doing this for a long time. In 1972, the movie critic Pauline Kael said it was odd that Richard Nixon was winning the election, because everyone she knew was for George McGovern. Kael wasn't clueless about the rest of America. She was just observing that her own social circle was politically parochial.
In the run-up to this weekend's G-8 summit at Camp David, journalists have unfavorably compared European "austerity" with Barack Obama's economic policies.
Is it panic time at Obama headquarters in Chicago? You might get that impression from watching events -- and the polls -- over the past few weeks.
Last week, I wrote about the standings in the presidential race and said it looked like a long, hard slog through about a dozen clearly identified target states, much like the contests in 2000 and 2004. Call it the 2000/2004 long, hard slog scenario. But I said there were other possible scenarios. I can think of three. The 1964/1972 scenario: Challenger disqualifies himself. Barry Goldwater and George McGovern were idealistic, intelligent senators who took positions on issues that made them unacceptable to most voters in years favorable to incumbents.
Just as the political air is filled with talk of the inevitability of Barack Obama's re-election -- we are told that the kids at his Chicago headquarters are brimming with confidence -- in come some poll numbers showing him behind. Not by anything statistically significant, mind you. But when you get the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls and the Politico/George Washington University Battleground poll all showing Mitt Romney leading Obama by 1 point, an Obama victory seems far from inevitable.
