If Obama's really running to the middle, why is the Democratic Leadership Council folding?

After an historic shellacking like President Obama and the Democrats endured last November, losing the House in a massive membership swing unseen for decades, a familiar pattern is for the defeated party to go through the Recovery Cycle.

That's a varying period of time of reconstruction and partisan rebranding for the vanquished party to reposition itself and refresh its leadership and membership to reflect the voters' most recent verdict.

According to the latest fashion in news reports out of Washington these days, the brilliant current occupant of the White House is doing just that by deftly waltzing toward the center of the political road in preparation for the next voters' verdict on Nov. 6, 2012, when his name and some new vice president will be on his party's ticket against a pair of as yet unnamed Republicans.

The oft-cited proof of this strategic and philosophic repositioning is Obama's hiring of....

Ronald Reagan centennial: Today's the day; Sen. Mitch McConnell tells a brief story

On Friday we published a guest-written package noting the centennial of Ronald Reagan's birth in the land of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln.

Part I of that video-laden package is here.

Part II of Ronald Reagan's political legacy is right here.

No official notice of the day from the Democratic White House yet, although Barack Obama did mention Reagan's style and achievements favorably during the 2008 presidential primary campaign in some editorial board meetings that he thought would remain closed. But the White House did re-release a tribute op-ed printed under his byline in USA Today and there was the commemorative congressional legislation in 2009.

Today is the actual day of Reagan's birth. To mark that occasion we'll simply let another Republican, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of next-door Kentucky, recount the Reagan story in this brief video below.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Speaking of anniversaries, The Ticket will celebrate its centennial in just 96 years. Don't waste any time. Click here now to follow us via Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot. Our Facebook Like page is over here. We're also available on Kindle now. Use the ReTweet buttons above to share any item with family and friends.

Ronald Reagan's centennial, Part II: An All-American American

 

Sunday is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan, the 40th president, cause for numerous political, memorial and academic observances across the country this weekend.

The Ticket invited one of the nation's top presidential scholars, Prof. Robert Schmuhl of the University of Notre Dame, to examine the political legacy of Reagan as he relates to others of his generation, exclusively for Ticket readers.

(Scroll to bottom for Schmuhl's biography and book information.) We've also included several videos by and about Reagan.

This item is Part II of Schmuhl's writing.

Part I appeared here earlier this morning and can be viewed by clicking here.

Please use the Share buttons above to pass these on, and perhaps leave your own Reagan memories or thoughts in the Comments section below.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Ronald Reagan, American

Ronald Reagan titled his autobiography “An American Life.”

Unlike other presidential authors who put the focus on themselves—Richard Nixon’s “RN” or Bill Clinton’s “My Life”—or emphasized a theme—Gerald Ford’s “A Time to Heal,” Jimmy Carter’s “Keeping Faith” or George W. Bush’s “Decision Points”—Reagan used an indefinite article and a collective adjective.

To his way of thinking, his life was representative, one chapter in what he saw as the larger story of America.

Beyond his accomplishments as president, particularly efforts to invigorate the economy and hasten the end of the Cold War, Reagan brought to his eight White House years a sense of humor (see video just below here) and an....

....unalloyed Americanness that was always a mystery to people from other countries.

For them, his image and reality merged into the gun-toting cowboy from his Hollywood days, and he was following a script written by figures removed from public view.

At home, however, Reagan fit right in and seemed natural. (Listen to the way he talks on the video here and during his presidential campaign announcement video in Part I of today's Ticket series.)

A modest Midwestern upbringing—“We didn’t live on the wrong side of the....

Ronald Reagan's birth centennial, Part I: Politics came late in his life

Sunday is the birth centennial of Ronald Reagan, the 40th president, cause for numerous political, memorial and academic observances across the country this weekend.

The Ticket invited one of the nation's top presidential scholars, Prof. Robert Schmuhl of the University of Notre Dame, to examine the political legacy of Reagan as he relates to others of his generation, exclusively for Ticket readers.

(Scroll to bottom for Schmuhl's biography and book information.) We've also included several videos by and about Reagan.

This item is Part I of Schmuhl's writing.

Part II appears here now.

Please use the share buttons above to pass these on, and perhaps leave your own Reagan memories or thoughts in the comments section below.

-- Andrew Malcolm

 

Politics came late in life

Born a century ago, on Feb. 6, 1911, Ronald Reagan took the political stage well into his 50s after a multimedia career performing on a variety of other stages. Broadcaster, actor, public speaker, Reagan understood the importance of effective stagecraft long before he became, in his phrase, “a citizen-politician.”

Yet Reagan first captured the public’s attention as a political player by doing what he’d mastered years earlier as an entertainer-endorser.

Delivering a speech supporting Sen. Barry Goldwater for president in 1964 wasn’t that different from serving as General Electric’s spokesman in appearances across the country and as host of TV's “General Electric Theater.” (Watch Reagan's practiced television skills in this 1979 announcement of ...

... his candidacy for the 1980 election against Democrat Jimmy Carter.)

Reagan’s 1964 oration, approving Goldwater and defending conservatism, was nationally televised near the end of the campaign. Though Lyndon Johnson soundly defeated Goldwater and Reagan’s name doesn’t even appear in Theodore White’s “The Making of the President 1964,” that one speech proved to be the political springboard for Reagan personally and for the movement he eventually led.

Smiling, jaunty, avuncular, Reagan then and later was always more complicated than he seemed. He was a political man with definite ideas and more than a modicum of ambition.

Indeed, just two years after his 1966 election as California’s governor, he won his state’s ...

Sunday shows: Boehner, W. Daley, Cameron, Clinton

(UPDATE: Due to the unfolding events in Egypt, a number of the Sunday programs have changed their lineup. Those changes are reflected below:

ABC "This Week with Christiane Amanpour": Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Egyptian Amb. Sameh Shoukry and Zbigniew Brzezinski with George Will, Martha Raddatz, Abderrahim Foukhara and Sam Donaldson.

Bloomberg "Political Capital with Al Hunt": Obama advisor David Axelrod.

CBS "Face the Nation" with Bob Schieffer: William Daley, Obama chief of staff, and Clinton.

CNN's "GPS" with Fareed Zakaria: British Prime Minister David Cameron.

CNN's "State of the Union" with Candy Crowley: Clinton, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), John Negroponte, Edward Walker and Alan Simpson.

"Fox News Sunday" with Chris Wallace: House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) with Brit Hume, Kirsten Powers, Bill Kristol and Nina Easton.

NBC's "Meet the Press" with David Gregory: Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Clinton with Martin Indyk and Mike Murphy, Chuck Todd, Harold Ford Jr. and Katty Kay.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Why wait until Sunday for politics? And for the East Coast to tell you what to think? Click here now to follow The Ticket via Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot. Our Facebook Like page is over here. We're also available on Kindle now. Use the ReTweet buttons below to share this item with friends.

State of the Union addresses: So many words for so little action; Tonight, Barack Obama tries again

A president's State of the Union address has by tradition come around halfway to spring on the American calendar, nearly coinciding with another regular rite of winter, Groundhog Day. One event involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of lesser intelligence for prognostication, while the other involves a groundhog. Hey-yoh.

As standard practice as the rhetorical ritual has become, the Constitution actually requires no such address. Article 2 Section 3 simply says: "The President shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." Nothing in there about primetime on a Tuesday evening preempting "NCIS," with days of preceding news leaks.

Two hundred twenty-one years and two weeks ago George Washington actually ....

Just as things were looking up, Obama's annual job approval average puts him near the postwar bottom

As if the poll showing improved approval of Congress under partial Republican leadership wasn't discouraging enough, now comes a new survey showing President Obama's second-year job approval near the bottom of presidents elected in the last six decades or so.

Heading into the president's crucial 2011 State of the Union address next Tuesday evening, Gallup finds that Obama's second-year job approval averaged only 46.7%.

That really looks pathetic when compared to his predecessor, George W. Bush's second-year average job approval of 71.3%. Or to the next highest second-year postwar job approval of 66.8% held by -- oh, look! -- another president named Bush. Of course, both of them were Republicans.

Even Richard "I Am Not a Crook" Nixon had a majority 56.2% approval after two years.

But don't forget that fellow Democrat Jimmy Carter also had a miserable second-year job approval of 45.3%. And he fought back from that basement approval to win a resounding second term. Oh, no. wait. He didn't. He got crushed in 1980, even with a third-party candidate.

Anyway, despite Congress, the current Democrat in the Oval Office still has 655 days to right the SS Job Approval. Bill Clinton (45.9%) and Ronald Reagan (43.3%) pulled it off for second terms, though both of them had been experienced governors, not untested legislators.

According to Gallup, Obama is on the high end of approval declines from first to second years (a slide of 10.5 points), behind only Carter (down 16.6 points) and Reagan (down 13.8 points).

Not surprisingly, Gallup finds the third-year average approval is key to reelection in the fourth year. Of the three presidents most similar to Obama's second-year showing, two improved the third year -- Reagan and Clinton. They were reelected. The third declined. That was Carter. Enough said.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Chile Navy via Associated Press

Ticket Replay: As Obama campaigns, 'It's Mourning in America' again

During the holiday season, as in years past, The Ticket is republishing some of our favorite items from the previous political year. This story was originally published on Sept. 27, 2010:

These videos pretty much speak for themselves.

The first one is the classic "Morning in America" ad that helped ensure Ronald Reagan's overwhelming reelection in 1984 over some Democrat from Minnesota.

Watch it. And then scroll down to the next one.

Now here's a powerful new ad that you'll soon be seeing on TVs across the country.

Its title is different by one letter: "Mourning in America."

Democratic President Obama and his sidekick from Delaware head out on ambitious cross-country campaign swings starting this week, trying to stem what polls indicate is a serious hemorrhaging of political support for their administration, their expensive policies and their majority party that has controlled Congress since 2007.

Obama's not on any ballot on the Nov. 2 elections. But this slow-paced visual....

Royal snub for the Obamas: No wedding invite from Prince William and Kate Middleton

Oh, the humiliation. Once not so long ago one of the world's top celebrities in his own right, Barack Obama and his wife Michelle did not make the cut for invitations to the royal wedding in London next spring.

On April 29 in Westminster Abbey with all the grace and pageantry sure to capture international imaginations, commoner Kate Middleton will marry Prince William, son of Princess Diana. And don't forget the horsedrawn carriage perhaps.

But the current residents of the White House will not be there, according to the Daily Mail.

The official excuse provided to the British paper by royal sources is that the royal couple wants to share their special nuptial moment with ordinary citizens. Anyway, it is not an official state event, they said. And, you know, Westminster only seats 2,000.

Nice try.

So then how to explain the invites to French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni?

And how to explain the invitations to England-loving President and Mrs. Reagan for the wedding of Diana and Prince Charles back in 1981? And the subsequent invitations to the American first family for the wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson five years later?

The Obamas and royal family sure look friendly in the 2009 photo above (well, OK, Prince Philip doesn't look so cheery).

On that grand occasion in Buckingham Palace, President Obama on behalf of the people of the United States presented the British sovereign with the gift of an iPod. She gave him a photograph framed in silver.

That came a few months after Britain's visiting Prime Minister Gordon Brown was denied the traditional Oval Office photo op with the American president. And Obama gave Brown a couple of toy helicopters of Marine One and classic American movie DVD's, reportedly in a format incompatible with British players. Thanks for stopping by.

Such incidents gave rise to silly rumors that Obama carries some kind of vestigial grudge toward America's traditional ally, possibly because his Kenyan father was a colonial subject of Britain's until two years after baby Barack's 1961 birth. And don't forget those pesky WikiLeak documents showing Obama aides consider the current British prime minister, David Cameron, a lightweight. Isn't everyone who doesn't attend Harvard?

Maybe William's grandparents will ultimately change his mind for him. And who wants to go London in April anyway when you can hit the musty gym over at the Interior Department for an hour of hoops with Arne Duncan?

Meanwhile, the current wedding invitation snub could be something as simple as the engaged couple not caring a cricket's wicket about a couple of Chicagoans from a faux Hyde Park. Maybe the British just don't like Nobel Prize winners.

It couldn't possibly be overdue retaliation for that tax protest by Massachusetts liberals dumping 342 chests of British tea into the ocean. That, of course, became known as the Boston Tea Party. Seems like only 237 years ago last night.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Getty Images (2009); Mario Testino.

A tiny tale about Ronald Reagan one holiday season long ago

Here's a sappy little holiday politician story that has nothing to do with large headlines and tax cut conflict in Congress. So it can't be very important.

However, it might fool some people into believing that famous public figures who become icons in our country's unfolding life can also be human at the same time.

The story concerns Ronald Reagan, the notoriously cold-hearted conservative from California. One day in the middle of his eight years as governor (1967-75), Reagan received a letter from two sisters -- Bertha and Samueline Sisco. According to their story, they had promised their dying mother they would always care for their brother, Buzzy who was, as they phrased it in those days, retarded.

The sisters were seeking guidance to some kind of state help in caring for their 43-year-old sibling and the governor's office steered them toward it.

But Gov. Reagan heard a about the family's situation and made some inquiries. He discovered that Buzzy had always wanted a rocking chair to sit in with his teddy bear.

For some inexplicable reason, this touched the ruthless Republican who was clearly already plotting to become the 40th president, bankrupt the Soviet Union and end the Cold War. 

Shortly before Christmas that year California Highway Patrolman Dale Role delivered a rocking chair to the Sisco home, along with a note explaining that it came from the governor's personal family furnishings and he wanted Buzzy and his teddy bear to be rocking in time for Christmas.

Reagan apparently kept in touch with the family for many years before his incapacitation from Alzheimer's in 1994 and his death 10 years later at age 93.

On Thursday at the RR Auction house in Amherst, N.H. an anonymous buyer purchased the old Reagan family chair and a related handwritten letter for about $14,000, according to the firm's Bobby Livingston.

And now we know that even 40 years ago the former movie actor was clearly conniving for some positive blog publicity during the holiday season of 2010.

We now return to our normally scheduled tales of modern-day political conflict and duplicity.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photos: Associated Press (Republican Gov. Reagan tries to goad a Democratic donkey); RR Auction.