Let's compare it with all of the upcoming presidential flicks! In its depiction of a discrete period of time, Reykjavik sounds more like this winter's Hyde Park on Hudson (showing a summit between Bill Murray, as Franklin Roosevelt, and the British royals) than Lincoln (taking on the final period of the life of Honest Abe, as embodied by Daniel Day-Lewis). It sounds nothing like The Butler, next year's historical freakout wherein John Cusack will play Richard Nixon, Robin Williams will play Dwight Eisenhower, Liev Schreiber will play Lyndon Johnson ... et cetera.

President Ronald Reagan

It is said that on wintry primary election nights, if you stand in a sensible Republican bathroom at the Witching Hour with a candle in hand, slowly turning in circles while playing the video below on your laptop, Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, may appear in the mirror. 

That's an urban legend made up for this post, but the staff of Storyful was busily curating election-related video when they began to notice an ostinato playing throughout the symphony of Republican talking points issued in this political season. At every turn, candidates have been boldly invoking the memory of the affable 40th president. Reagan has become in this election year more of a mantra than ever before, used by every candidate as a rule by which they measure their worth as an aspirant to the Oval Office. At some point, each candidate clearly thought they were up to the Reagan standard.

Play Storyful's collection of 'Ronald Reagan moments' and simply listen. It's almost hypnotic after a while. Regardless of your own political bent, you may be murmuring "Reaganomics" or "supply side" before you know it.

Storyful: Ronald Reagan mentions by 2012 GOP Presidential candidates - YouTube. (via @AntDerosa)

That was the night when Barack Obama racked up 365 electoral votes, made once-unthinkable inroads into Republican redoubts like Indiana and North Carolina and racked up a higher share of the popular vote than any Democratic presidential nominee since Lyndon Johnson.
But it was also the night that his Democratic Party, riding Obama’s coattails and a two-year wave of discontent with Republican rule, secured overwhelming majorities in both chambers of Congress. And it came less than two months after a Wall Street meltdown turned what was already a recession into something approaching a depression. This formula—new president plus massive Congressional majorities plus dreadful economy—is the perfect recipe for what the Massachusetts result signified: a brutal midterm election cycle for the White House.

No matter what the economic or political climate, midterm elections are almost always unpleasant for new presidents. Only twice in the modern era has the White House’s party not lost seats in one, and both examples are easily explained: In 1998, Bill Clinton’s Democrats picked up a few seats because of an impeachment backlash, and 2002 George W. Bush’s G.O.P. capitalized on lingering 9/11 trauma. The only variable has been degree.

It was easy to ignore all of this back in November ’08, on that magical night when hundreds of thousands exultant Obama supporters celebrated his historic triumph in Chicago’s Grant Park. Or in the early months of 2009, when the new president set to work with a vast majority of his countrymen and –women expressing affection for and faith in him. Back then, it was tempting to imagine that it might somehow stay that way for years to come—that Mr. Obama and the Democrats would sustain their sky-high popularity while the G.O.P. slipped further and further from relevance.

Tempting, perhaps. But totally and completely unrealistic.

The slide that has accompanied the end of Mr. Obama’s first year in office—and that led directly to his party’s loss in Massachusetts—was inevitable.

The reason is simple: Voters live in the present tense.Of course, this isn’t the media’s favored narrative—nor that of all Republicans and most Democrats. Instead, we hear that the president pushed too hard and too fast on health care, or too slowly and too incrementally. And that he lost the middle by pushing for a stimulus plan that was too bloated to accomplish any good, or one that was too small to produce real growth. And that he failed to deliver on his promise of post-partisanship and cooperation, or that he sold his progressive base out by pursuing too much compromise with moderates and Republicans. And on and on.

This is the season for theories on “Why Obama Is Failing,” and every media outlet, politician, interest group and pundit has an explanation—one perfectly tailored to whatever broader agenda the person or group in question is pushing. But reality is so much simpler: When economic anxiety is rampant and one party controls the government, that party will take a beating at the polls.

Just consider the case of the last president who dealt with double-digit unemployment. He came into office much the way Mr. Obama did—elected in a landslide and with stunning Congressional coattails. He promised transformational change and the country desperately wanted to believe in him. But the economy, bad to begin with, deteriorated even further in his first two years, and his party suffered a bloodletting in his first midterm election.

The press, the opposition and even members of his own party said the same things about him then that we’re starting to hear about Mr. Obama now—that he’s in over his head, that the country has turned on him, that he’s a sure one-termer. And then, two years after that midterm, Ronald Reagan won 49 states and was reelected to a second term.

This will be a very rough year for Mr. Obama and his party. Massachusetts is likely a small taste of what’s to come in November. Just try to keep the Reagan example in mind.
                                                                                                                                                                              skornacki@observer.com

That sentence could aptly describe the political outlook that Barack Obama faces as the first year of his presidency nears its end. It also describes, just as aptly, what Ronald Reagan was facing near the end of the first year of his presidency in 1981.

Republicans, buoyed by their off-year victories in New Jersey and Virginia and rosy prospects for the 2010 midterms, are announcing that Obama's poll numbers - which, while clearly not horrible, are hardly what they were in the late winter and spring - show that the country is turning on him and his agenda.

But what's actually most remarkable about the trajectory of Obama's numbers - and of his presidency - is how closely it hews to the model of Reagan's first term. And if it's the Reagan path that Obama is following, then Republicans might want to re-think their giddiness.

Consider this first sentence from a Washington Post story dated November 25, 1981: "Americans enter the 1981 holiday season with gloomy expectations for themselves and increasingly critical views of Ronald Reagan's handling of the economy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll." Sound familiar?

At the time, the country had just plunged into a recession. Unemployment in November '81 stood at 8.3 percent - nearly a full point jump from Reagan's inauguration - and it was clear that things would get far worse before they improved.

Reagan had, months earlier, pushed his massive tax cut program through Congress, but voters were increasingly tuning out his pleadings that - given enough time - it would help combat the economic downturn.

In the Washington Post/ABC News poll mentioned above, he scored a 53 percent approval rating - the lowest of his presidency. Only 45 percent of voters approved of his handling of the economy, and just 41 percent thought his tax cuts would help the economy.

Similarly, two independent polls this week show Obama's job approval slipping to the lowest level of his presidency - a 48 percent approval rating in a new Quinnipiac survey, and a 50 percent score in the latest Gallup tracking poll. In the Quinnipiac poll, only 43 percent of voters approve of his economic policies. Like Reagan's claims about his tax cuts, the administration's insistence that its stimulus program is helping the economy just isn't washing with the public.

There are other similarities between Reagan's first year and Obama's.

Both entered office with unusual fanfare and uncommon mandates, their elections signaling the end of ideological era. In Reagan's case, his triumph was enabled by the stagflation of the late 1970s - and a broader sense that the excesses of the New Deal and Great Society were dragging down the economy and quality of life for the middle class. In turn, the excesses of the conservative, anti-government era that Reagan ushered in - symbolized by the collapse of Wall Street - enabled Obama's victory last fall.

Each man began his first year with a vast pool of personal goodwill among the electorate. Their uncommonly winning personalities saw to that. But that goodwill had its limits: when the massive problems they inherited didn't immediately improve - and, in fact, got worse - their poll numbers began to drop.

The defeats of Democratic gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia this year - heralded by the right as a sign of an anti-Obama backlash - are akin to the struggles of the Republican candidates in those two states in '81. With Reagan's numbers dropping, the G.O.P. lost in Virginia that year and - under circumstances that remain controversial to this day - eked out a narrow victory in New Jersey (where the Republican candidate, Tom Kean, had been comfortably ahead in the summer months).

This is all a long way of saying that the Republicans who are now rejoicing Obama's imminent demise should remember the example of their patron saint, the Gipper. Because at this point in '81 - and even more so in 1982, as unemployment continued to rise - Democrats were just as convinced that the Reagan era would last all of one term. The '82 midterms, which produced a gain of 26 seats for the Democrats, only strengthened this conviction.

But through all of his struggles in 1981 and 1982, there were really only two things you needed to know about Reagan: (1) People genuinely liked him; and (2) People were rooting for him to succeed. This didn't mean they'd give him a pass while the economy was faltering - clearly, they didn't. But it did mean that they'd come rushing back to him if and when the economy returned.

And that's exactly what happened in 1983 and 1984, as unemployment finally began to fall and the recession ended. Reagan called it "morning again in America" and the same public that had been so unconvinced about his tax cuts was more than happy to give him - and his program - credit for the recovery. A 49-state landslide re-election ensued.

Those same two things are true of Obama, no matter how much the right wishes they weren't: People do genuinely like him (71 percent of them, according to a new CNN poll), and they are pulling for him to succeed. This is easy to lose sight of right now, as it will be for some time - especially if, as is likely, the Democrats suffer significant losses in next year's midterms.

But all of the damage can and will be undone if the economy turns around. Reagan proved that to skeptical Democrats 28 years ago.

"The way they treat my son and anyone who's opposed to their point of view is just horrible," the former president said of MSNBC's primetime duo.

Say what you will about Olbermann and Maddow, but there is rich irony in the former president-who has, in retirement, somehow morphed into a symbol of some bygone era of chivalry-lamenting the tone of today's political dialogue: because he, as much as anyone else, is the one who created it.

"What's 14 inches long and hangs in front of an asshole?" Bush, according to Richard Ben Cramer's authoritative account of the 1988 presidential campaign, asked a friendly local in Kennebunkport during that race.

She beat him to the punch-line: "Oh, I've heard that one, George. It's Michael Dukakis' tie." They both shared a good laugh over that one. How's that for civil?

And when it comes to the Bush '88 campaign's treatment of Dukakis, that was on the benign end of the scale. It's not hyperbole to say that Bush's campaign, guided by Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater, essentially wrote the modern Republican political playbook-one that relies on vilifying opponents with personal smears, turning the word "liberal" into an epithet, and fracturing the electorate with barely-concealed appeals to prejudice and racism.

The Bush '88 strategy was spawned by necessity. Contrary to the hagiography that has taken hold this decade, the country had actually grown tired of Ronald Reagan, whose second term was bogged down by revelations about arms-for-hostages dealings with Iran and an illegal war in Central America. As the '88 primary season wrapped up, Dukakis built a solid lead over Bush in the polls-one that exploded to 17 points after that July's Democratic convention.

The issues generally favored Dukakis and voters were ready for a change, so the Bushies fought back with an unprecedented blitz of personal attacks and wedge politics. Dukakis' patriotism was challenged with claims that he was "soft" on flag-burning and the pledge of allegiance, and-borrowing from Joe McCarthy-Bush took to referring to him as "a card-carrying member of the ACLU."

And then there was Willie Horton, the furloughed Massachusetts inmate (many states-including Reagan's California-had furlough programs for violent offenders back then), who'd left the state on a weekend pass and committed a brutal assault and rape. A particularly menacing-looking photo of Horton's black face became the centerpiece of an ad that purported to juxtapose Bush's and Dukakis's views on crime.

The issue of crime, of course, had nothing to do with it; it was pure, old-fashioned race-baiting slicked up for national television. The ad was Atwater's brainchild, though in the grand dirty-tricks tradition, he quietly set up an independent committee to fund it and played dumb when reporters asked about it. (Any doubts about Atwater's extensive role have long since been put to rest.)

Through all of this, Bush refused to condemn, or even comment on, his campaign's actions. He was "above the fray," he'd respond, somehow removed from culpability for the vile attack machine that was operating in his name. And he got what he wanted: The assault on Dukakis delivered a 25-point swing, with Bush winning the November election in a 40-state landslide.

Somehow, the media fell for Bush's "above the fray" nonsense, treating him-even as they pummeled him for his domestic policy failures as president-as the quintessential gentleman. One of the sad injustices of presidential politics is that Bush has enjoyed such a reputation for 20 years while the truly decent man he slimed, Dukakis, has never lived down the gruesome caricature created by the Bush machine.

Oh, and about that "sick puppies" put down of Maddow and Olbermann: Just remember, this is the same George H.W. Bush who in June 1992 invited Rush Limbaugh to the White House for an overnight stay in the Lincoln Bedroom-and who personally carried Limbaugh's bags inside when he showed up.

From the moment Barack Obama cleared 270 electoral votes on election night last November, this moment was inevitable: Nine months into his presidency, Republicans are ratcheting up the comparisons between 2010 and 1994 and the media is starting to ask, ‘What if?’

In a story in Sunday’s New York Times, Representative Tom Price, a Georgian who heads a particularly conservative faction of House Republicans, declared that he has “no doubt” that his party will pick up the 40 seats needed to wrest control of the chamber from the Democrats next year.

To be sure, the G.O.P. isn’t inventing the idea that 2010 will be a Republican year. It probably will be. In 2006 and 2008, very few Democratic incumbents in the House or Senate even came close to losing their seats, so mighty was the Democratic tide. But already, early ’10 polls show numerous Democratic incumbents in serious trouble. G.O.P. gains, particularly in the House, are very likely. 

Price and his fellow Republicans would like to believe that this is because of a backlash against Obama and his “liberal” agenda—that this spring’s tea parties and this summer’s town hall mobs represent a mounting public clamor for conservatism, and that the 2008 election will ultimately prove an aberration. This is where their logic, and the wishful ’94 analogies, goes off the rails.

Republicans are well positioned to gain seats next year for one reason: Democrats control the White House—and everything else in Washington. So the ’10 elections will be a referendum on Obama and his congressional allies—a recipe for automatic losses next fall. (Add in the fact that Democrats gained so many marginal seats in the ’06 and ’08 elections, and it’s only easier for the G.O.P. to score pick-ups in ’10.) There’s nothing new about this; it’s how midterm elections have gone for the sitting president’s party for decades—and the few exceptions can be explained easily.

So yes, it’s tempting to see this year as another 1994. The basic dynamic that Obama’s election established—Democratic president with a Democratic Congress—was last seen in ’94, when Newt Gingrich and Co. picked up 52 seats to claim a House majority.

But there were other important dimensions to the G.O.P.’s ’94 triumph that are plainly missing today.

Perhaps the most important is the state of the Republican Party brand. Today, it is poisonous, as it has been for roughly the last four years. By a 53-25 percent margin, voters have an unfavorable view of the G.O.P., according to a poll released last week. Fewer than 30 percent of voters believe Republicans in Congress are acting in good faith. And even though the G.O.P. has made blanket opposition to Obama’s health care push a key component of their comeback strategy, voters still trust the president more on the issue, by a 47-31 margin.

In other words, Republicans haven’t done anything since Obama’s election to alter the dreadful image that caused them so much harm in the last two elections. This won’t inhibit them from making some gains next year—again, that’s just the nature of midterm elections—but it will limit the extent of those gains. Voters’ unpleasant memories of the Bush era are still fresh enough to give them pause about casting their lot with the same old G.O.P.

The situation was much different in ’94. Then, voters still had fairly pleasant memories of the most recent Republican era. They’d re-elected Ronald Reagan in a 49-state landslide in 1984 and elected George H.W. Bush in another landslide in 1988. And recently as the spring of 1991, just after the first Gulf War, Bush had been sitting on a 91 percent approval rating. The G.O.P.’s defeat in the 1992 wasn’t a wholesale rejection of Reagan-Bush philosophy; it was a response to a nasty recession.

This made the public of 1994 far more receptive to the G.O.P. than the electorate now is. And Republicans helped their cause by unveiling their “Contract with America,” a document that few Americans read but that helped create the impression that Republicans were interested in more than blind opposition to the president.

There was also the realignment factor. About a dozen Southern House seats that had been ripe for a G.O.P. takeover for decades all flipped at once in ’94. In terms of ideology, these districts were already very conservative and Republican-friendly. Bill Clinton’s alliance with Democratic liberals in Congress convinced voters in these districts, who had inherited Democratic allegiances from their parents and grandparents but who had been siding with Republican presidential candidates for years, that it was time to vote a straight ticket for the G.O.P. 

A much better model for the ’10 midterms can probably be found in 1982, Reagan’s first midterm. As with the G.O.P. now, the Democratic label was in disrepute then, a victim of the excesses of the New Deal/Great Society consensus that had defined the party—and governed the country—for several decades. But thanks to a brutal recession (unemployment hit 10 percent in the fall of ’82) and the natural order of midterms, Democrats were still able to pick up 26 House seats in the fall of ’82.

Something like this seems likely next fall. Unemployment will probably still be high and voters will be inclined to send Obama and his party a message. A 20-seat gain for the G.O.P. is hardly unfathomable. But that’s half of what they’ll need to replicate the feat of ’94. It will be an adjustment, not a revolution.

Near the top of his latest prime-time news conference, President Obama acknowledged that “Congress is still working through a few key issues” as it seeks to produce a unified health care plan.

That meant that there wasn’t any specific proposal for Obama to point to and rally support for. We still don’t know how whatever plan emerges will fund expanded access and we still don’t know whether it will include a public option—and Obama shed little light on either issue on Wednesday night.

It's also not clear that a press conference was the most effective means of conveying the message directly. The format introduced all sorts of extraneous questions and issues. A simple 10-minute address from the Oval Office would have let him make a crisp, clear and highly focused statement that would have filtered everything else out.

But maybe that doesn’t matter. He called the press conference with a simple objective in mind: to reframe the health care debate for average Americans in broad, understandable terms. On one side, Obama declared, is reform in whatever form it finally takes when House and Senate Democrats (and maybe a few Republicans) reach a consensus; on the other side—the side of inaction, the Republican side—is nothing but more of the same.

And he tried to make clear what more of the same would mean.

“If somebody told you there’s a plan out there that would double your own health care costs over the next 10 years, that’s guaranteed to result in more Americans losing their health care, and that is by far the biggest contributor to our federal deficit—I think most people would be opposed to that,” Obama said. “Well, that’s the status quo. That’s what we have right now.”

The need for such a message is obvious. Democrats have long enjoyed a significant polling advantage over Republicans on the issue of health care, a disparity that was very much evident when Obama ran against John McCain last fall. Health care, even Republicans will admit, is generally a Democratic issue—except, it seems, when a Democrat actually makes it to the White House and proposes meaningful action on the issue. Then people get uneasy.

It happened 15 years ago, when Bill Clinton came to town with what seemed like a popular mandate for wholesale reform. He deputized his wife to draft a plan, he presented it to Congress, and then watched in horror as Republicans demagogued it to death. We should do something about health care, the G.O.P. said, but not this. Support for the plan unraveled, the G.O.P. won control of Congress (while boasting of killing health care), and reform was dead.

Until now. Like Clinton, Obama took office with a pledge to overhaul health care. If anything, his mandate was stronger—a bigger share of the vote and 15 years of mounting costs and growing public frustration with the system. But the last few weeks have brought haunting parallels to the ’94 debacle, with the G.O.P. warning of “socialized medicine” and the costs of a “government takeover” of health care. Like Clinton before him, Obama has seen his natural polling advantage on health care evaporate before his eyes.  

As Obama noted on Wednesday night, in Washington “the default position is inertia.” What he didn’t say (but what he nonetheless confirmed by scheduling the press conference in the first place) is that inertia has been winning lately.

And so Obama sought to reclaim his (and his party’s) natural advantage on health care; to take voters’ minds off the confusing and ever-shifting details of the Congressional negotiations and to return the conversation to a more basic and fundamental level, where the dividing line between the two parties is clearest and where, as a result, Democrats do best.

He took advantage of the tools that Republicans have given him, playing up Senator Jim DeMint’s comment last week that the G.O.P. can “break” the president by derailing health care and Bill Kristol’s advice that Republicans “go for the kill” on the issue. It also helps Obama that Republicans have never offered a detailed health care plan of their own. This allows the president to present Americans with a stark choice: If you fall for their scare tactics, all you’re going to get is more of what you’ve been getting.

You might say that Obama was stealing a page from Ronald Reagan, who faced a similar moment at this same stage of his presidency. Twenty-eight years ago, nearly to the day, Reagan took to the prime-time airwaves to rally support for the make-or-break item on his first-year agenda, a massive $750 billion tax cut plan. It was facing a critical vote in the House, and it wasn’t clear the votes were there; months of Democratic attacks had produced the same kind of inertia with which Obama is now grappling.

The Congressional debate had been confusing to the Americans, with all sorts of conflicting numbers and calculations flying around—confusion that only helped the opposition. Reagan used his address to make the choice clear to the public, telling a (possibly true) story about a congressman who had just tried to discuss the details of the tax-cut debate with a constituent only to be told by the constituent, “Don’t give me an essay. What I want to know is, are you for them or against them?”

Two days later, 48 conservative Democrats defied their party and sided with Reagan, and his tax cuts were on their way to enactment. Inertia had been overcome.

Obama now wants Americans asking their congressmen and senators the same basic question about health care reform: Are you for it or are you against it? If the debate is on those terms—between doing something and doing nothing—he just might enjoy the same result Reagan did.

High unemployment is the domestic equivalent of an unpopular war--an overpowering drain on presidential popularity that can’t be countered with policy achievements in other areas, personal charm, or any other conventional political weapon. Barack Obama may soon offer the latest affirmation of this.

A few weeks ago came news that the unemployment rate for June had climbed to 9.5 percent—a slight uptick that silenced wishful suggestions that the economy had bottomed out and that a recovery would soon take hold. Now comes the Wall Street Journal’s latest survey of 51 leading economists. Their consensus: unemployment will soon hit 10 percent and will stay there through the first half of 2010, declining only to about 9.5 percent by the end of ’10.

If this bears out, the political implications are obvious: Republicans will fare well in the 2010 midterm elections—and their success will be universally interpreted as proof that the public has turned on Barack Obama.

Why is it worth pointing this out now, 16 months before voters head to the polls? Because we’ve actually seen a script very similar to this before, and it offers some significant lessons as next years approaches.

The last time unemployment soared this high was in Ronald Reagan’s first term. Reagan, like Mr. Obama, came to office as a transformational figure, his rise powered by his sunny warmth, good humor, and a consensus that his predecessor’s party had run out of answers to the country’s problems.

In the wake of Reagan’s win, polls showed a steady rise in the number of Americans calling themselves Republicans—and a corresponding drop in Democratic affiliation. When the Democrats fell back on their stale, pre-1980 rhetoric, it only bolstered Republican confidence that the 1982 elections would bring further G.O.P. gains—control of the House for the first time since 1954, many declared, would soon be at hand.

Democrats have been just as giddy since last November. This time, polls show a surge in Democratic affiliation. Nor can the Republicans seem to get their act together, with Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin—symbols all of what the country rejected last fall--still largely defining the party’s message. Democrats now talk of a favorable Senate map in 2010, with an eye to expanding their majority well past the 60-seat mark.

But the Republican confidence of early ’81 was undermined by the same thing that now threatens Mr. Obama: unemployment. Unlike Obama, Reagan didn’t technically inherit a recession. But unemployment stood at 7.5 percent when he took office, inflation was higher, and there was wide consensus that the economy was stalled. He pushed his signature tax cuts through that summer, and almost immediately after, the economy plunged into a full-scale recession

At the end of September 1982, unemployment hit 10 percent, prompting most Americans to give up on his economic plans. They liked him personally, but he’d killed the economy, or so they concluded. The once optimistic G.O.P. lost 26 House seats and broke even in the Senate (after early predictions of a four- or five-seat gain).

It’s looking more and more like that’s about where Mr. Obama and the Democrats will end up in 2010. With unemployment stubbornly high, the G.O.P.’s message—that a failed stimulus (and maybe health care reform, too) only made things worse—will resonate and voters will tune out Democratic pleas to give things just a little more time. A significant loss of House seats would then be inevitable, and that “favorable” Senate map won’t yield any gains.

At the end of ’82, the consensus was the country’s flirtation with Reaganism had ended and that the Democrats were back. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Unemployment finally crested in December ’82 (at 10.8 percent), then began a steady, years-long decline. By ’84, voters were celebrating the same Reagan policies they’d turned against just two years earlier, and a 49-state landslide ensued.

There’s reason to believe the same will be true for Mr. Obama. Even the Wall Street Journal’s pessimistic economists agree that the effect of this year’s stimulus won’t really be felt until next year, with its implementation staggered. That sets up an eerily similar scenario: a popular rejection of Obama’s policies in 2010, followed by an enthusiastic re-embrace of them in 2011 and 2012, as the economy returns to life and unemployment—a lagging indicator—is finally brought to heel.

It’s a better bet by the day that 2010 will be a good year for Republicans. But it’s an equally good bet that it will be their last good year for a long time.

Flummoxed by Ronald Reagan’s enduring popularity in the face of a string of unsettling foreign and domestic developments, Pat Schroeder, then a Democratic congresswoman from Colorado, took to the House floor in 1983 and said of the first-term president: “He has been perfecting the Teflon-coated presidency: He sees to it that nothing sticks to him.”

Her comment was meant to be disparaging, but in coining the term “Teflon president,” Schroeder actually identified a significant phenomenon in politics—the willingness of voters to excuse in some politicians shortcomings that they wouldn’t accept in most others.

Comparisons between Reagan and Barack Obama have been abundant, so it’s probably only fitting that, five months into his presidency, there are empirical signs that he has a Teflon coating of his own.

Just consider the latest CBS News/New York Times poll, which gives the president a robust 63 percent approval rating, with only a 26 percent disapproval. Nothing new there. But the survey also shows an undercurrent of voter unease with Obama’s actions on some issues. For example, more voters (46 percent) disapprove of his handling of the auto industry than approve (41 percent), and only 44 percent approve of the way he’s addressed health care, compared to 34 percent who disapprove.

Popular discontent also seems to be mounting over Obama’s approach to government spending and budget deficits, areas where Republicans have aggressively targeted the president for criticism. Seventy-four percent of voters say they’ve heard “a lot” or “some” about rising deficits, and 60 percent say that Obama doesn’t have a clear plan to deal with them. Also, 52 percent of voters say they’d prefer the government trim the deficit instead of spending money to stimulate the economy—a 6-point increase from two months ago.

Moreover, the poll comes in the wake of new unemployment numbers that show the nation’s jobless rate stretching to 9.4 percent—the highest it’s been in 26 years. You might think this would all be enough to inflict some serious wear-and-tear on Obama’s popularity. After all, remember how little it took for Bill Clinton’s numbers to deteriorate in the first months of his presidency?

So far, though, it’s not happening. There is one obvious explanation for this: Everyone knows Obama inherited an economic catastrophe (not to mention two wars), and that recovery will take time. So voters aren’t about to give up on him just because the unemployment rate hasn’t gone down. Their patience has been reinforced by a host of news stories suggesting that a turnaround may be near, not to mention a resurgent Dow.

But there’s probably more to it. And here, Reagan’s example, which established both the power and the limits of personal appeal in the television age, can serve as a nice guide.

Take the issue of budget deficits. The 60 percent of voters who don’t believe Obama has a real plan to arrest them are probably right. So far, the president has merely paid lip service to the issue, saying that it keeps him up at night. Republicans, spying a potential opening, have hit him hard on the subject—and, as the CBS/NYT poll shows, they seem to be breaking through on it.

What’s interesting, though, is that Democrats employed the exact same strategy against Reagan, who inherited a $1 trillion debt in 1981 (accumulated over the previous 200 years by his 39 predecessors) and doubled it in his first term. Like Obama, he talked about how concerned he was over the soaring deficits, arguing for a balanced-budget amendment and line-item veto—even as he jacked up military spending and signed one red-ink-soaked budget after another.

Democrats flogged Reagan relentlessly for his fiscal recklessness, and when he ran against Reagan in ’84, Walter Mondale made the soaring debt his centerpiece issue. In one way, their effort succeeded: In an August 1984 poll, voters ranked the budget deficit as their top economic concern—tied with unemployment. And yet, the same poll found that voters who ranked deficits as their top concern preferred Reagan by a 64 to 25 percent margin. And overall, Reagan’s approval rating stood at 55 percent—foreshadowing his 49-state landslide a few months later.

The explanation was simple: Americans largely viewed Reagan and his grandfatherly warmth with affection. They liked him personally and wanted him to succeed. And by ’84, there were clear signs—deficits notwithstanding—that the country’s economic heath had improved over the previous four years. So, they were happy to give Reagan the credit—and to accept his excuses for the runaway deficits and his promises to address them in his second term (which, of course, he didn’t do). 

What is sometimes forgotten about Reagan, though, is that his personal popularity did not always shield him from policy complaints. From late 1981 until early 1983, his job approval ratings dropped precipitously, along with his poll scores on numerous issues. The reason: a recession that began in the fall of 1981 and that eventually pushed unemployment over 10 percent.

It was in this period that Reagan’s Republican suffered a drubbing in the 1982 midterm elections. Generally, people still liked Reagan personally in this period, but it didn’t matter: They believed their lives were getting worse and, thus, they weren’t about to give him a pass on anything.

Obama enjoys personal popularity on a par with Reagan’s, and, despite their concerns on certain issues, voters right now believe that Obama will improve their personal situations. This, too, is evident in the CBS/NYT poll, which shows that 57 percent of voters approve of his overall handling of the economy and that, by a 32 to 15 percent margin, they think Obama’s actions will improve the economy. Also, 44 percent of voters believe the country is now on the right track—up from just 15 percent before Obama was sworn in.

With Reagan, voters showed their willingness to rationalize policy disagreements with a president they liked personally—provided they saw no evidence that their own financial bottom lines were at risk. It’s too early to say for sure, but the early signs suggest the same will be true with Obama.

Yes, vice presidents are a heartbeat away from the presidency, so of course the choice matters. But just consider how differently history might have played out if Ronald Reagan had simply gone with his instinct when, in the summer of 1980, it came time to pick a running mate.

Reagan, then 69 years old, arrived in Detroit for the G.O.P.'s mid-July convention with the presidential nomination sewn up. His aides and supporters were putting the finishing touches on a platform that would move the Republicans sharply to the right—abandoning, for instance, decades of support for the Equal Rights Amendment. In his heart, the former California governor had one clear favorite for his No. 2 spot: Kemp, then a 45-year-old congressman from upstate New York and a 10-year veteran of the House.

Kemp was the most prominent and persistent voice for tax cuts on Capitol Hill. Along with Delaware Senator William Roth, he had been pushing legislation that would phase in dramatic rate reductions over a three-year period. Kemp pitched tax cuts as a prescription for the stagflation that gripped the economy in the late-1970s, a way to spur growth, curb unemployment, expand wealth and arrest rising prices. Even among his own party's establishment, though, his views were considered fringe.

But Reagan was a fellow believer and made Kemp-Roth a cornerstone of his '80 campaign. Over the objections of old-guard Republican economic leaders like Herbert Stein and George Schultz, he etched it into the '80 platform. Kemp-Roth was also a hit with the burgeoning network of conservative activists and interest group leaders who had rallied behind Reagan. Kemp had limited national name recognition (despite his fairly successful professional football career), but to what was then called "the New Right," he was a folk hero.

So it was that Reagan, who had been friends and political allies with Kemp since the mid-'60s, regarded the ex-quarterback as his sentimental favorite for the VP slot. And the New Right forces saw in a Reagan-Kemp ticket an opportunity to vanquish the more moderate G.O.P. establishment once and for all, and to cement their party as a purely conservative entity.

With the VP matter unresolved as the convention opened, individual state delegations began conducting their own votes and publicizing the results. Louisiana, Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona and Washington state all endorsed Kemp. And NBC survey of about three-quarters of all convention delegates found that 35 percent wanted Kemp as Reagan's running mate—second only to George H. W. Bush, who netted 47 percent (thanks, in part, to the fact that, as Reagan's closest primary competitor, he had brought more than 100 delegates who had originally been pledged to him).

Also working in Kemp's favor was Reagan's nonexistent relationship with Bush, who very much wanted the VP slot and whose candidacy was being pushed by many moderates. Bush had run against Reagan from the left in the primaries, deriding Reagan's (and, by extension, Kemp's) tax cut plan as "voodoo economics" and voicing his support for abortion rights, and had nearly derailed his candidacy with an upset win in the Iowa caucuses. If it was between Bush and Kemp, the choice for Reagan was an easy one on personal and philosophical grounds.

But as the week progressed, Reagan's pragmatic aides bombarded him with warnings that Kemp would be an unwise pick. The party was sharply divided into conservative and moderate camps (this was the era when the term "New England Republican" wasn't an oxymoron), and the moderates were already deeply uneasy with the party platform.

And with John Anderson, a liberal Republican congressman who (after a failed G.O.P. primary bid) had bolted the party, running as an independent, these moderates would have another option in November if they felt abused by their party. Picking Kemp, Reagan was told, would do nothing to appease them. Bush, meanwhile, would help unite the party and, with his extensive resume and national name recognition, help assuage voter doubts about entrusting the White House to Reagan. It's important to remember just how radical, even within some corners of the G.O.P., Reagan was perceived to be in 1980.

So, after a last-minute effort to coax Gerald Ford onto the ticket (teaming up with a former president, Reagan believed, would make the G.O.P. ticket virtually unbeatable) failed on the third night of the convention, Reagan settled on Bush and then, with the television networks all broadcasting live, went to the convention hall to announce his choice personally.

In hindsight, Reagan probably would have beaten Jimmy Carter that fall no matter whom he chose as a running mate; his masterful debate performance a week before the election saw to that. But the long-term consequences of picking Bush over Kemp were profound.

First, Bush became the clear front-runner for the 1988 G.O.P. nomination the minute he and Reagan were elected. He used his status as VP to stay in the news, win over crucial allies within the party, and to help build a top-notch fund-raising and campaign operation. As Reagan's No. 2, his name became the knee-jerk response when most casual Republican voters were asked who they'd like as their party's next nominee.

But had Bush not been on the '80 ticket, he probably wouldn't have been much of a factor in the '88 election. Sure, he finished second in the '80 primaries, but with Reagan at the top, the party moved further and further to the right in the '80s. By '88, Bush's moderate '80 platform had become political poison for Republican office-seekers. As Reagan's VP, Bush had the cover he needed to artfully shed his liberal reputation and to rebrand himself as a Reagan Republican. He couldn't have credibly pulled this off otherwise.

This meant that, even though he was the natural heir to the Reagan mantle, Kemp was shut out in '88. Once Reagan was reelected in 1984, Kemp began his 1988 campaign, making hundreds of speeches to groups of all size across the country. The same activists who'd championed him in '80 were still with him, but among the broader G.O.P. electorate, he was largely unknown. An April 1986 poll found that 58 percent of Republican voters wanted Bush as their next nominee. Second place was Howard Baker, who had just stepped down as the Senate G.O.P. leader. Kemp finished sixth with just 4 percent.

Kemp ran anyway in '88, but, predictably, his bid went nowhere, and he was out of the race after dismal showings in Iowa and New Hampshire. Bush lost only one primary and caucus—finishing third, behind Bob Dole and Pat Robertson in Iowa—and won the White House in the fall.

But the reverberations of Reagan's '80 decision could still be felt after that. Bush lost his presidency after one term, when, as a recession took hold, voters decided that he was hopelessly out of touch on the economic issues. But Kemp, who'd been tapped by Bush for the previously low-profile job of HUD secretary, actually emerged as one of the few stars of the Bush administration, celebrated by the media for his deep interest in improving inner-city life and the innovative solutions ("enterprise zones") that he'd thought up. Kemp's ability to show precisely the kind of concern and engagement that Bush failed to show raised an obvious question: Would the G.O.P. have lost the White House in '92 if Kemp—and not Bush—had been the candidate in '88?

Kemp's performance in the Bush years turned him into the initial favorite for the G.O.P.'s 1996 nomination. A December 1992 poll put him in first place among the potential field, at 20 percent. (Dole was second at 19 percent and Jim Baker was third, at 12 percent.)

In 1993 and 1994, Kemp aggressively positioned himself for the race. His moment, it seemed, might finally arrive. But then, weeks before the '94 election, he traveled to California to oppose Proposition 187, a referendum that called for illegal immigrants and their children to be denied all state services. The initiative was massively popular with the G.O.P. base, which greeted Kemp's high-profile move with scorn and contempt. (John McCain received roughly the same treatment this decade when he pushed his immigration reform plan.)

In January '95, Kemp announced that he wouldn't run in '96. The party was changing; supply-side evangelism alone wouldn't be enough for the new Republican base. Dole ended up winning the nomination and making Kemp his running mate, but the duo was doomed to defeat from the get-go. And after '96, Kemp's days as a serious national political player were over.

On the day that he died, three top Republicans—Mitt Romney, Eric Cantor and Jeb Bush—kicked off a drive to make the Republican Party appealing to the masses once again. But more than a decade ago, when he spoke out against Proposition 187, Kemp recognized the self-destructive path on which the G.O.P. was embarking. Had his party listened to him then, Republicans might not now be in such an awful predicament. And they might have listened to him back then had he been their president, and not just a former congressman and HUD secretary. And he might have been their president if only Reagan had gone with his gut in July of 1980.