Paul Tsongas

There is now word that Hillary Clinton’s supporters will formally place her name in nomination at the convention tomorrow night, a process that requires a nominating and a second speech, as well as the consent of the candidate herself.

This may be part of a deal with the Obama camp; negotiations about how exactly to handle Obama’s formal nomination are still apparently ongoing. But with this development, it’s worth remembering that the Clintons drew the line at allowing their opponents’ names to be placed in nomination back in 1992, when Bill Clinton was formally anointed as his party’s standard-bearer. Back then, the Clintons told their two main rivals, Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown, that they would not be allowed to speak in primetime if they didn’t first publicly rule out allowing their names to be nominated. Tsongas complied and Brown didn’t, so there was a roll call anyway.

With all of the talk about what roles Hillary and Bill Clinton will play at the upcoming Democratic convention – and whether Clinton will allow her name to be placed in nomination for a roll call vote – it's probably worth looking back to the 1992 convention, when the Clintons dealt with similar issues, but from a much different perspective.

Back then, they were the winners, with Bill emerging from the Democratic primaries with more than enough delegates to secure a first-ballot nomination. But as the July convention in New York approached, two of his primary-season opponents – Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown – each stubbornly clung to their large delegate blocs (more than 500 each), attempting to use threats of rules fights and roll call votes as leverage.  read more »

It’s long been obvious that Bill Clinton believes he was wronged in this year’s Democratic primary campaign, his words and actions deliberately twisted and distorted by his enemies and their accomplices in the press to turn him into someone and something he is not.

Two months after his wife formally conceded to Barack Obama, the former president is still pouting in full public view. In an interview with ABC News last weekend, he was noticeably stinting in his praise of the presumptive Democratic nominee while making it clear that he has some primary-related grievances to air just as soon as this election is over.  read more »

In her embrace of a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax – an idea that virtually every credible economist agrees is a gimmick – Hillary Clinton is making the same bet that delivered her husband to the Democratic nomination 16 years ago: that voters prefer promises of free candy to the truth.

In 1992, with the country mired in an economic slump, Bill Clinton made a middle-class tax cut the centerpiece of his presidential campaign.  read more »

2008 Clinton attack ad

Announcer:

"Listen to Barack Obama last week talking about Republicans.

Obama: "The Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years."

Announcer: "Really? Aren't those the ideas that got us into the economic mess we're in today? Ideas like special tax breaks for Wall Street. Running up a $9 trillion debt. Refusing to raise the minimum wage or deal with the housing crisis. Are those the ideas Barack Obama's talking about?"
Obama: "The Republicans were the party of ideas."  read more »

Bill Clinton rallies support around a name he once sullied.  read more »

The next major event on the U.S. political calendar is not in Iowa, New Hampshire or even Florida. It’s actually next week in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts, where a the lone open House seat in the country – vacated by six-term Rep. Marty Meehan’s May resignation – will essentially be filled in a Democratic primary. (The primary winner will be the overwhelming favorite against the G.O.P. nominee in what is a solidly Democratic district.)

What makes the contest noteworthy outside of Massachusetts is the identity of the Democratic front-runner: Niki Tsongas, the wife of the late Paul E. Tsongas, the former Massachusetts Senator who very nearly knocked off Bill Clinton in the 1992 Democratic primaries. A decade after his death, Paul Tsongas remains a beloved figure in the district, which is centered in Lowell, the old mill city that he never left (and where a downtown arena now bears his name). That alone figures to be enough to lift Niki Tsongas past her four opponents in next Tuesday’s primary.

Niki Tsongas’ looming elevation to Congress seems like a good excuse to indulge in one of my favorite past-times – the political what if game.

Think back to the 1992 presidential primaries, when every big name Democrat backed off, convinced that George H.W. Bush’s Persian Gulf triumph would render him invincible in the fall. That left a decidedly B-list cast of Democratic aspirants: Clinton, Tsongas, Jerry Brown, Bob Kerrey, Tom Harkin and (for a minute) Doug Wilder. The early thinking had Clinton and Kerrey as the front-runner. Tsongas was ignored.

But his message took hold in New Hampshire, whose lead-off primary was even more important than usual, with Iowa – Harkin’s home state – going uncontested. A string of Clinton scandals in January 1992 – Gennifer Flowers and his Vietnam draft maneuvering, basically – sent the Arkansas Governor’s poll numbers plummeting, and Tsongas surged to the lead in New Hampshire. On primary day, Tsongas won by 7 points. Kerrey was essentially flushed from the race. Clinton, though, was saved by the craftiness of his campaign, which sold him to the media as “the comeback kid,” based on his less-awful-than-expected 26 percent showing in New Hampshire.

The race then went south, where polls showed Tsongas faring surprisingly well in Georgia and Florida. The Clinton campaign, though, launched a slick, well-funded stream of negative ads against Tsongas, portraying him as a cold-hearted foe of Social Security, Medicare, and Israel. It was enough to hand Clinton a seemingly decisive series of Super Tuesday victories, which he followed up with wins in Illinois and Michigan the next week – which prompted Tsongas to suspend his campaign.

Then Clinton inexplicably lost the Connecticut primary to Jerry Brown, one of the biggest upsets in the history of presidential primaries. National Democratic leaders, already worried about Clinton’s “character” issues, panicked and began making noise about recruiting a last-minute alternative to Clinton. New York was next on the calendar and Tsongas made it clear that he would re-enter the race if Clinton lost to Brown again. That’s as far as it went, though: Clinton survived New York and the nomination was his.

But what if he’d been tripped up by Brown again? Or what if he’d lost New Hampshire even more decisively – finishing behind Bob Kerrey, say? A change of just a few thousands New Hampshire votes could have derailed Clinton – and made Tsongas the nominee.

Would the country now know Niki Tsongas as a First Lady? And, instead of the headlines she receives every day, would we now be reading after-thought stories about how Hillary Clinton, the wife of a former presidential candidate, is running for Congress in Arkansas?