AND BARRY AIN'T GOT NO 33 POINT LEAD...:

Ghosts of 1976 in Today's Campaign (Michael Barone, 7/17/08, Real Clear Politics)

Looking back over the last 40 years, the presidential campaign that most closely resembles this year's is the contest between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in 1976. The Republicans were the incumbent presidential party that year, as they are now, but the Democrats had a big advantage in party identification -- on the order of 49 percent to 26 percent then, far more than today.

The Republican president who had been elected and re-elected in the last two campaigns, Richard Nixon, had dismal favorability ratings, far lower than George W. Bush's. His name could scarcely be mentioned at the Republican National Convention. The Democratic nominee was a little-known outsider, with an appeal that was based on the idea that he could transcend the nation's racial divisions. Jimmy Carter, a governor from the Deep South, had placed a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. in the state Capitol in Atlanta.

Ford's political situation then was far more parlous than McCain's today. An early summer Gallup poll showed him trailing Carter by 62 percent to 29 percent. He had barely limped through the primary contests against Ronald Reagan, who continued his campaign up through the mid-August national convention.

I think it's Germond and Witcover who attribute much of Ford's comeback to his set of staged casual conversations with Joe Garagiola. Maverick would excel at that sort of folksy dog and pony show.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 19, 2008 9:30 AM