Conventional wisdom has it that the 2004 U.S. Presidential election will be extremely tight. But history shows that an election with an incumbent president tends to function as a referendum, which could mean a big win — or a big loss — for Democratic hopeful, Massachusett’s Senator John Kerry.
In a column written for The Washington Monthly, editor-in-chief of the National Journal’s Hotline, Chuck Todd, suggests the race for President may not be as close as most pundits believe. In fact, writes Todd …

“2004 could be a decisive victory for Kerry. The reason to think so is historical. Elections that feature a sitting president tend to be referendums on the incumbent — and in recent elections, the incumbent has either won or lost by large electoral margins. If you look at key indicators beyond the neck-and-neck support for the two candidates in the polls — such as high turnout in the early Democratic primaries and the likelihood of a high turnout in November — it seems improbable that Bush will win big. More likely, it’s going to be Kerry in a rout.”

In a prescient BBC article, published in December 2002, correspondent Paul Reynolds compares the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, offering an analysis of what brought Carter down.
Although Reynolds suggests that George W. Bush intended not to be burdened by the same problems — the economy and foreign policy — that defeated Carter, in fact, given the events of the past few months, if you contrast the problems that plagued the Carter administration with those of the Bush White House, the current president’s tenure would seem uncertain, indeed, based on recent U.S. political history.

Presidential hopeful John Kerry, and Senator John McCain for the Democratic ticket this November?

Word out of Washington, D.C. this morning has Democratic party Presidential hopeful considering five candidates for the Vice-President’s slot on the ticket: John Edwards, retired General Wesley Clark, Richard Gephardt of St. Louis, Senator Bob Graham from Florida, and Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack.
All and all, a pretty lacklustre group of potential running mates for a Kerry campaign already dogged by allegations of unutterable dullness.
Although there’s been some blue sky speculation / hopeful thinking about a John Kerry / John McCain Democratic ticket come November, The New Republic’s senior editor, Andrew Sullivan, goes a bit further than previous commentators.

In office, McCain could be given real authority as a war-manager, providing a counterweight to Kerry’s penchant for U.N.-style non-solutions … Domestically, a Kerry-McCain ticket would also go a long way toward healing the Vietnam wound, now rubbed raw again by recent events in Iraq … The next president, whomever he is, may well have to encounter seismic shocks from new terrorist atrocities in America and the world. Under those circumstances, America cannot afford more polarization, partisan division, and acrimony. In parliamentary democracies, such crises sometimes provoke the formation of a ‘national government’ in which both major parties serve together.

A United States government of national reconciliation? With each passing day, and as the position of the United States only continues to worsen — with the continued publishing and broadcast of horrendous pictures and video from Iraq, with the Bush administration’s failed policies on the environment, with the potential for a privatized education system, and a thousand other issues of concern to working Americans — VanRamblings joins the call for the Kerry campaign to implore John McCain to run on the Democratic ticket, to heal the wounds of division that have torn Americans apart, so that order might once again be re-established in the U.S., and the lives of each and every one of us will not be imperiled to the degree that has become the case under Bush.