The Morning Delivery

113th Congress By the Numbers

Since the 113 Congress officially opened for business in January, the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a public policy research arm of the United States Congress, recently issued a statistical breakdown on the new congress, covering everything from gender, religion, education, military service, and foreign birth.

We can all rest easy knowing that if members of Congress go after each other’s throats during these heated sequestration talks, that there are 5 Peace Corps volunteers in the House who might be able to restore a sense of calm during the stormy sea of discontent. Even if peace and tranquility isn’t in the cards, no reason to fear, because the 113th Congress comes equipped with 3 sheriffs, 1 deputy sheriff, 2 FBI agents, and even a firefighter in the Senate for all the fire breathers in need of being hosed down.

It’s also comforting to know that if any members of the 113 Congress should suddenly take ill; there are 2 physicians in the Senate, 17 physicians in the House, 1 psychiatrist; and 3 psychologists all of whom purportedly will make House calls.

And according to the CRS report, even if the 113th Congress accomplishes nothing of importance to email or text home about, at least they’ll be fully entertained. After all, the current Congress is comprised of a screenwriter, a comedian, a documentary film maker, 5 radio talk show hosts, 6 radio or television broadcasters, and a public television producer.

Here, then, is a statistical rundown of the 113th Congress:

• As of February, 2013, there are 232 Republicans, 206 Democrats (including 5 Delegates and the Resident Commissioner), and 3 vacant seats in the House of Representatives. The Senate has 45 Republicans, 55 Democrats, and 2 Independents, who caucus with the Democrats

• Average Age of House Members: 57.0 years

• Average Age of Senate Members: 62.0 years

Gender/Ethnicity.

• A record number 100 woman serve in the 113th Congress: 80 in the House, including 3 Delegates, and 20 in the Senate.

• 43 African Americans will serve in the House and 2 in the Senate. This House number includes 2 Delegates.

• A record number 38 Hispanic or Latino members are represented in the 113th Congress: 34 in the House, including 1 Delegate and the Resident Commissioner, and 4 in the Senate.

• 13 members (10 Representatives, 2 Delegates, and 1 Senator) are Asian American or Pacific Islanders.

• 1 American Indian (Native American) serves in the House.

Age.

• With 25 the youngest to be able to serve in the U.S House or Representatives (as required by the U.S. Constitution) , 29-year-old Patrick Murphy (D-FL), born March 30, 1983 is the youngest, while the oldest is 89-year-old Ralph Hall (R-TX), born May 3, 1923.

• With 30 the youngest to be able to serve in the Senate, 39-year-old Christopher S. Murphy (D-CT), born August 3, 1973 is the youngest, while Senator  Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), 89, born January 23, 1924 is the oldest.

Professions

• According to the CQ Roll Call Guide to the New Congress, in the 113th Congress, law is the primary profession of Senators, followed by public service or politics, and then business or the corporate field. In the House, business is first, followed by public service or politics and law.

Other professions represented in the 113th Congress, include:

• 102 educators, employed as teachers, professors, instructors, school fundraisers, counselors, administrators, or coaches (90 in the House, 12 in the Senate).

• 2 physicians in the Senate, 17 physicians in the House (including 1 Delegate), including 2 dentists, 2 veterinarians, and 1 psychiatrist; 3 psychologists (both in the House), an optometrist (in the Senate), and 5 nurses (all in the House).

• 5 ordained ministers, all in the House.

• 5 Peace Corps volunteers, all in the House.

• 3 sheriffs and 1 deputy sheriff, 2 FBI agents (all in the House), and a firefighter in the Senate.

• 2 physicists, 6 engineers, and 1 microbiologist (all in the House, with the exception of 1 Senator who is an engineer); 33 former mayors (24 in the House, 9 in the Senate.

• 5 radio talk show hosts (4 House, 1 Senate), 6 radio or television broadcasters (5 House, 1 Senate), 7 reporters or journalists (5 in the House, 2 in the Senate), and a radio station manager and a public television producer (both in the House).

• 9 accountants in the House and 2 in the Senate

• 5 software company executives, all in the House.

• 3 pilots, all in the House, and 1 astronaut, in the Senate.

• 1 screenwriter, 1 comedian, and 1 documentary film maker, all in the Senate, and 1 professional football player, in the House.

• 28 farmers, ranchers, or cattle farm owners (25 House, 4 Senate).

• 2 almond orchard owners, (both in the House), 1 cattle farm owner (a Senator), 1 vintner (a House Member), 1 fisherman (a House Member), and 1 fruit orchard worker (a House Member).

• 7 social workers in the House and 2 in the Senate.

• 9 current members of the military reserves (8 House, 1 Senate), and 7 current members of the National Guard (6 House, 1 Senate).
Education

• Roll Call Member profiles at the beginning of the 113th Congress, reported 21 members of the House and 1 Senator have no educational degree beyond a high school diploma.

• 7 Members of the House have associate’s degrees as their highest degree, and 1 House Member has an L.P.N. (nursing) degree.

• 85 members of the House and 14 Senators earned a master’s degree as their highest education degree.

• 169 Members of the House (38% of the House) and 57 Senators (57% of the Senate), held law degrees.

• 19 House Representatives have doctoral (Ph.D. or D.Phil.) degrees.

• 22 Members of the House and 3 Senators have a medical degree.

• 3 Representatives and one Senator in the 113th Congress are graduates of the U.S. Military Academy and 1 Senator and 1 Representative graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy.

• 1 Senator and 2 Representatives were Rhodes Scholars, 2 Representatives were Fulbright Scholars, 2 Representatives were Marshall Scholars, and 1 Representative was a Truman Scholar.

Religion

• Statistics gathered by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, report that 98 percent of the Members of the 113th Congress cite a specific religious affiliation, with the vast majority being Christian.

Other findings by Pew:

• 56% of the members (247 in the House, 52 in the Senate) are Protestant, with Baptist as the most represented denomination.

• 31% of the members (136 in the House, 27 in the Senate) are Catholic.

• 6.2% of the members (22 in the House, 11 in the Senate) are Jewish.

• 2.8% of the members (8 in the House, 7 in the Senate) are Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).

• 3 Members (2 in the House, 1 in the Senate) are Buddhist, 2 House members are Muslim, and 1 House Member is Hindu.

• Other religious affiliations represented include Greek Orthodox, Quaker, Unitarian Universalist, Christian Science Unitarian Universalist, and Christian Science.

Foreign Birth

• 9 Representatives and three Senators (2.2% of the entire 113th Congress) were born outside the United States; their places of birth include: Canada, Cuba, Great Britain, Japan, Peru, and Thailand.

 Military Service

• At the beginning of the 113th Congress, there were 108 members (20% of the total membership) who had served or were serving in the military, 10 fewer than at the beginning of the 112th Congress (118 Members) and 12 fewer than in the 111th Congress (120 members).

• According to CQ Roll Call, the House currently has 87 veterans (including 2 female members, as well as 2 Delegates); the Senate has 18.

• 8 House members and 1 Senator are still serving in the Reserves, and 6 House Members and one Senator are still serving in the National Guard. Both of the female veterans are combat veterans.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
February 21, 2013

Source: Congressional Research Service, CQ Roll Call, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life,

 

Presidential Inaugurations: Feats, Facts and Historic Firsts

On Monday, January 21, 2013, President Barack Obama will take the oath of office, marking the 57th formal Presidential Inaugural ceremony.

In all, U.S. presidents have been sworn in 70 times, which includes both private and public ceremonies.

This year's ceremony will be the seventh time the Inauguration date has fallen on a Sunday. There has never been a precedent for a president holding a formal Inauguration on a Sunday, so in keeping with tradition, President Obama will be sworn in publicly on Monday, January 21st.

Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes (1877), Woodrow Wilson (1917),Dwight D. Eisenhower (1957) and Ronald Reagan (1985), however, all elected to have the oath of office administered privately on a Sunday, with the formal swearing-in taking place on the following Monday. Presidents James Monroe (1821) and Zachary Taylor (1849) did not hold private swearing-in ceremonies on a Sunday.

Like his predecessors, Mr. Obama will hold a private swearing-in ceremony in the Blue Room of the White House just before noon on Sunday, January 20th.

Since Monday's ceremony coincides with Martin Luther King’s Birthday, the 44th U.S. president will use one of the Bibles used by Dr. King, along with another Bible used by Abraham Lincoln at his public swearing-in ceremony.

As part of the star-studded entertainment scheduled for Monday's Inauguration, James Taylor will belt out ``America the Beautiful''; Kelly Clarkson will let loose with ``My Country, 'Tis of Thee''; while The National Anthem will be sung by Beyonce. Other musical selections will be performed by PS 22, Staten Island, New York, Lee University Festival Choir, Cleveland, Tennessee and the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir.

The poet chosen to read at the Inauguration is Richard Blanco, a Spanish born Cuban-American, the first Latino, openly gay, as well as the youngest poet ever at a presidential inauguration. Myrlie Evers-Williams, a civil rights activist and journalist and widow of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers will deliver the Invocation.

In order to prepare for Monday’s festivities, what follows are some feats, facts, and historic firsts for Presidential Inaugurations.

• George Washington, the nation's first chief executive took his oath of office on Thursday, April 30, 1789 in New York City on the balcony of the Senate Chamber at Federal Hall on Wall Street.

• On March 4, 1793 during the first Inauguration to take place in Philadelphia, PA, George Washington delivered the shortest Inauguration address in presidential history, a mere 135 words. George Washington was additionally the only president not to be sworn in by a Chief Justice.

• John Adams on March 4, 1797 was the first president to receive the oath of office from a Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

• The first Inauguration to be held in Washington D.C. took place on March 4, 1801 for the presidency of Thomas Jefferson.

• The first Inaugural ball was held on March 4, 1809 for James Madison. The festivities were held at Long's Hotel; tickets went for $4.

• The first president to take the oath of office on the east front portico of the U.S. Capitol was Andrew Jackson on March 4, 1829.

• President William Henry Harrison delivered the longest Inaugural address (8,445 words) on March 4, 1841. He died of pneumonia one month later.

• In 1845, the Marine Band played ``Hail to the Chief’’ for the first time at the Inauguration ceremony for James Polk.

• Chief Justice John Marshall administered the oath on Inauguration day a record nine times from 1801 through 1833.

• On March 4, 1853, Franklin Pierce was the first president to recite his Inauguration address entirely from memory.

• The Inauguration ceremony for James Buchanan on March 4. 1857, was the first to be photographed.

• For the Inauguration ceremony of Abraham Lincoln on March 4, 1865, African-Americans participated in the ceremonies for the first time.

• The first Inaugural ceremony recorded by a motion picture camera took place on March 4, 1897 for William McKinley.

• For the first time since 1853, the Inaugural ball was suspended on March 4, 1913 at the request of President Wilson because he found it inappropriate for such a solemn occasion.

• Edith Bolling Galt Wilson was the first First Lady to accompany the President (Woodrow Wilson) both to and from the Capitol on March 5, 1917.

• Warren G. Harding in 1921 was the first president to travel to and from his Inauguration ceremony in an automobile.

• Calvin Coolidge's Inauguration ceremony was the first to be broadcast nationally by radio on March 4, 1925.

• Beginning in 1933 with Franklin D. Roosevelt, every president has said ``so help me God'' at the conclusion of the oath.

• As a result of a change made by the 20th Amendment, Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to be inaugurated on January 20th, 1937.

• The Inauguration ceremony for Harry S. Truman on January 20, 1949 was the first ceremony to be televised. Truman also reinstated the Inaugural ball.

• Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 20, 1953, broke with precedent by reciting his own prayer after taking the oath, rather than kissing the Bible.

• Bill Clinton's Inauguration on January 20, 1997 was the first to be broadcast live on the Internet.

• Ronald Reagan's Inauguration on January 20, 1981 was the first to be held on the west front of the U.S. Capitol. Prior to 1981, all outdoor Inaugurations were held on the east side of the Capitol.

• January 21, 1985 was the coldest Inauguration date on record with noon temperature of 7 degrees; the warmest Inauguration day on record with a noon temperature of 55 degrees took place four years earlier on January 20, 1981.

• President Obama's Inauguration on January 20, 2009 drew the largest attendance of any event in the history of Washington, DC as well as the largest audience for a presidential Inauguration.

-Bill Lucey
January 19, 2013

Source:  Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies

Is President Barack Obama Bound for Mount Rushmore?

Is President Obama bound for Mount Rushmore?

It seems ever week or so, a political pundit or newspaper columnist, metaphorically speaking, propels the president to Mt Rushmore status. In fact, Mount Rushmore and Mr. Obama are invoked so frequently in the same sentence that I began to wonder if in fact there is a movement in place to chisel the 44th president on the South Dakota mountainside.

Aside from a few Facebook pages and other minor petition drives on the Internet, there doesn’t appear to be any major Barack on Rushmore movement.

And for good reason.

According to the U.S. National Parks, there’s simply no room for any more additions to Mount Rushmore. Besides, the rock that surrounds the sculpted faces is not suitable for additional carving. David Barna, chief spokesman of the National Park Service, informs me that when Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore died in 1941, his son Lincoln Borglum closed the project and indicated that no more carvable rock existed.

Since 1989, the National Park Service has worked with RESPEC , a rock mechanics engineering firm, to study the structural stability of the sculpture and to install rock block monitoring devices that assure long-term preservation of the sculpture. `` RESPEC supports our long held belief,’’ Barna says, ``that no other rock near the sculpted faces is suitable for additional carving.’’ RESPEC additionally believes that if additional work were undertaken it is possible that exposing new surfaces could result in major instabilities within the existing carving.

Aside from the structural barriers, the Mount Rushmore National Memorial strongly believes the four presidential figures in place in the Black Hills of South Dakota and the ideals and meaning for which it was originally founded is fully representative without any new additions. As Barna explains it, Mount Rushmore ``is one man’s artistic interpretation, and a tribute to that period of our nation’s history. The National Park Service takes the position that death stayed the hand of the artist and the work is complete in its present form.’’

Despite the rock solid evidence that any additions to Mount Rushmore simply aren’t in the cards, that hasn’t kept some organizations from continuing to plead their case.

Grover G. Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and chairman of the Reagan Legacy Project has been a strong supporter of the [Ronald] Reagan-on-Rushmore movement, even though he didn’t originate the movement.

Responding through an email, Mr. Norquist’s was told there actually is enough space for another sculpture. `` My preference’’, Norquist writes, `` has always been to remove the statist Teddy Roosevelt and put Reagan there.’’ 

Though he would love to have President Reagan added to Mount Rushmore, Mr. Norquist’s real goal is to have something named after Reagan in each county in the United States. With 3,077 counties in the country, there are approximately 100 structures of some kind named after Reagan. ``There is talk’’, Norquist tells me, ``of naming the highway to Rushmore after Mr. Reagan.’’

The Reagan Legacy Project was largely responsible for persuading Congress in 1998 to rename Washington National Airport, Reagan National in honor of the 40th U.S. president. The same organization continues to try to get the U.S. Treasury Department to have Reagan placed on $10 and $20 bills.

In addition to efforts to get Mr. Reagan added to Mount Rushmore, other names that have been suggested over the years, include: John Wayne, Elvis Presley, Mickey Mouse, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lou Rawls, Larry Bird, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the ninth president of the United States, William Henry Harrison, the first president from the Whig party.

The idea for Mount Rushmore was born in 1923, when South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson thought the ``national scenery’’ needed something spectacular to lure tourists to South Dakota. ``Something of special interest to make it impressive'' Robinson thought.

After Gutzon Borglum, the Danish-American artist and sculptor was selected, he initially began exploring the Needles of the Black Hills of South Dakota, but found the area too weathered and the rock much too brittle for carving. Borglum was then told about Mount Rushmore. As soon as he stood on the crest of the mountain towering 6,200 feet above sea level, near the isolated mining town of Keystone South Dakota, he reportedly cried out "Here is the place!" American history shall march along that skyline."

A Footnote: Mount Rushmore was originally known to the Lakota Sioux tribe as ``Six Grandfathers.’’ The mountain was subsequently renamed after Charles E. Rushmore, a prominent New York lawyer, during an expedition in 1885.

Gutzon Borglum’s idea was to create a symbol of the expanse of the American West. Sculpting the images of celebrated western figures like Buffalo Bill, Lewis & Clark, and Sacagawea were originally considered before a special commission was established who insisted on U.S. presidents because they best represented the "foundation, expansion and preservation" of the United States.

In the early stages, only the images of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were to be sculpted; but Borglum later extended it to include Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, because in his mind, adding Lincoln and TR would make the Mount Rushmore project a unique American story. Borglum was such an admirer of Lincoln, that he named his son after him. And he was actually a personal friend of Roosevelt and always admired his passion and love of the west.

Borglum believed America’s greatness was linked to the expanse of the national domain events, particularly the west, most prominent among them was the Louisiana Purchase, the admission of Texas, and the acquisition of Florida, California, Oregon, Alaska, and the Canal Zone. All of these significant events were realized under Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt.

So Mount Rushmore, in the end, wasn’t so much a tribute to the greatness of these four presidents as much as it was a tribute to what they represented in expanding the United States into what it is today and representing American ideals. It was Borglum’s hope that Mount Rushmore, the ``Shrine of Democracy’’ would stand the test of time much like the Pyramids of ancient Egypt and the Statue of Liberty as an embodiment of what America represented.

Despite the celebration of American ideals on Mount Rushmore couched in America’s mission of Manifest Destiny, Native Americans have long considered the myth of Manifest Destiny to be nothing more than a shameless disguise for American imperialism.

Mount Rushmore used to be known as the sacred site of Paha Sapa, holy mountains where ceremonies were held for the spirits of dead warriors; and where others meditated and prayed for guidance from the Great Spirit.

It was also the area which was originally intended to belong to American Indians forever, as stipulated in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. But once General George Armstrong Custer discovered gold there in 1874, the Fort Laramie Treaty was soon invalidated and the Lakota forced to relocate to other reservations.

Leaders of the United Native Americans and the American Indian movement occupied the site behind Mount Rushmore in the early 1970’s, voicing their protest and calling for the return of their rightful land and an end to institutionalized racism in South Dakota.

 -Bill Lucey

November 19, 2012

[email protected]

Mount Rushmore Fast Facts:

• Calvin Coolidge created the Mount Rushmore Commission in 1927 to build the monument, oversee its administration and provide maintenance of the sculpture.

• The Mount Rushmore sculpture cost $989,992.32; 85 percent of the project was paid for by the federal government.

• Mount Rushmore took 14 years to build: October 4, 1927 - October 31, 1941

• The estimated erosion rate is 1 inch every 10,000 years.

• Mount Rushmore is named after Charles E. Rushmore, a New York City Attorney

• Mount Rushmore is 5, 725 Feet (1,745 meters) high.

• Each face is 60 feet (18 m) high.

• Each nose is 20 feet (6 m) long.

• Each eye is 11 feet (3.4 m) wide.

• Each mouth is 18 feet (5.5 m) wide.

• If their entire bodies were carved, each president would be 465 feet (142 m) tall.

• There were no deaths or major accidents in the 14 years of work. By the end of the project, workers had removed 1.5 million tons (1.36 million t) of granite from the mountain.

• Nearly 500,000 tons of stone were blasted from Mount Rushmore to care the four heads.

 • In 1937 Congress passed a bill, calling for an image of Susan B. Anthony to be carved beside the four presidents, but Congress provided money only for the four heads that had been planned. In the end, it was determined that there was no room on the mountain for another head.

• The faces of the presidents were finished one by one, Washington in 1930, Jefferson in 1936, Lincoln in 1937 and Roosevelt in 1939.

• Borglum once considered carving a short history of the United States on a tablet beside the figures, but he dropped that idea. This "tablet" would have been the record of American expansion through the acquisition of territory.

• The monument is featured in one of the most famous scenes in movies: the chase in Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 thriller, "North by Northwest with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint who actually were not on the mountain but on a Rushmore reproduction in a Hollywood studio.

• On July 4, 1991, President George H.W. Bush officially dedicated Mount Rushmore.

 • Mount Rushmore National Memorial is visited by nearly three million people each year.

On Election Night All Eyes Will Swing Toward Ohio

The clock is ticking.

As you might have gathered by now, Ohio has received a great deal of attention in this election cycle.

And for good reason. Ohio, after all, has been the native state of seven U.S. presidents; and another president, William Henry Harrison, the 9th president of the United States, while born in Charles City, a Virginia colony, settled in Ohio later in his life and always considered the Buckeye state his home.

But Ohio has caught everyone’s attention for another reason. To hear the pundits tell it, given the ``blue wall'' of Democratic states signed sealed and practically delivered to Mr. Obama, if Mitt Romney expects to keep Barack Obama a one-term president,  it’s virtually an absolute must he flip Ohio, which Barack Obama carried in 2008, winning 51.5 percent of the vote to 46.9 percent for John McCain.

And if that isn’t enough, here’s another reason why Ohio is so crucial to Mr. Romney and President Obama: No Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio; while John Kennedy in 1960 was the last Democrat to secure the presidency without carrying the Buckeye state.

So to get a sense of what will be taking place in Ohio on Election Night, I checked in with a few folks to see what’s in the works.

Ben Marrison, editor of the Columbus Dispatch is preparing for a long frantic if exciting election night.  In order to get the latest election results in for the first edition, they will extend deadlines as far as they possibly can, probably 30-60 minutes late. Marrison also indicated the Dispatch will have web producers assigned to each major race, working with the reporters on those stories. There will also be a television crew planted in the newsroom from the TV station the Dispatch owns, who are planning a special four hour election report, capturing the Dispatch reporting staff putting this historic election night edition together.

The Dispatch Washington Bureau has also been summoned from the nation’s capital to help with the election coverage in Columbus.  ``It’ll be busy and fun’’, Marrison says, ``election nights are like Christmas.’’

And after the polls officially close in Ohio, that’s when the anxious moments will set in.

The Ohio Republican Party will be gathering at the Renaissance Downtown Columbus, 50 North 3rd Street, (2nd floor ballroom) beginning at 7 p.m.  ET; the evening will include live results coverage, speakers (TBD), music, and a cash bar. This event will be open to the general public and members of the press.

The Ohio Democratic Party, meanwhile, including Chairman Chris Redfern, Senator Sherrod Brown, former Governor Ted Strickland, Justice Yvette McGee Brown, Joyce Beatty, and other Democrats from across Ohio will gather at the Hilton Columbus Downtown (401 North High Street, Columbus, Ohio) beginning at 7:30 p.m. to celebrate what they hope to be the re-election of President Barack Obama, and Senator Sherrod Brown.  Only credentialed members of the press will be permitted to attend the Democratic bash.

Ohio, along with Florida, will receive so much attention Election Night, the national networks are making plans to plant staff member’s right in the heart of the Buckeye State.

Here’s a brief synopsis of what’s being planned by the national networks:

• At CNN, anchors Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper will kick off the election coverage from Washington, with Candy Crowley from Boston and Erin Burnett from the hotly contested state of Ohio, beginning at 6 p.m. And as the night progresses, CNN’s Washington crew will be checking in with correspondent Martin Savidge who will be reporting from Cleveland, Ohio with live updates.  In addition, Don Lemon will be based in Columbus and  Carol Costello in Cincinnati. Besides Ohio, CNN will have at least 15 other correspondents fanned out across the United States from Chesterfield Virginia to Dixville Notch, New Hampshire.

Throughout the night, viewers will want to check in on CNN’s Election Center for the latest election results and analysis.

• At ABC, led by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos, ABC News will bring viewers election results as they come in beginning with a special edition of “World News with Diane Sawyer” at 6:30pm ET and continuing with full election coverage from 7:00pm ET until at least 2:00 am ET. A special edition of “Nightline” will air at 2:35am ET.

ABC News Correspondent Ron Claiborne will be reporting from Ohio; and on ABC News Radio, Matt Gutman and Jim Ryan will report on voter turnout from Florida and Ohio.

In addition to Ohio, ABC Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper will report from the Obama election headquarters in Chicago “and ABC World News” weekend anchor David Muir will be planted at the Romney election headquarters in Boston. Other ABC correspondents reporting from key battleground states include: Amy Robach, Cecilia Vega, Sharyn Alfonsi, and David Wright.

For the latest results, online users will want to go to the ABC News politics page .

• NBC’s all-night Decision 2012 coverage and analysis begins at 6 p.m. ET, hosted by Rachel Maddow with Chris Matthews and Rev. Al Sharpton, Lawrence O’Donnell, Ed Schultz, and Steve Schmidt from New York City. 

Other MSNBC correspondents, who will be reporting Tuesday night, include: Alex Wagner, Chris Hayes, Ezra Klein, former RNC Chairman Michael Steele, Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, and former Gov. Ed Rendell. Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman and CNBC’s John Harwood will provide reports from the campaigns and their reactions.

For the latest election results and analysis, online viewers will want to check out MSNBC’s special election night coverage for live election results, including the key races for House and Senate.

• At WashingtonPost.com, visitors to The Post’s website and mobile web will find live video programming from 7 pm – 1 am ET. by The Fold, an online news program anchored by on-air journalists Brook Silva-Braga and Emi Kolawole, who will provide instant reactions and interviews from The Post’s newsroom, including candidate acceptance speeches and perspectives across the battleground states. Analysis will additionally be provided by Post journalists, including Dan Balz, Chris Cillizza, Nia-Malika Henderson, Karen Tumulty and others.  

Other election night coverage, including results, interactive maps, live blogs and analysis can be found on the Post's Politics Page.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
November 2, 2012

Whatever Became of Those Catchy Presidential Campaign Slogans?

I heard New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman on a talk show not long ago, reflecting on the presidential clash between President Obama and Mitt Romney, wondering whatever became of the bumper stickers that used to be so prominent in presidential campaigns.

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered the same thing: what has happened to the art of catchy campaigns slogans, buttons and bumper stickers?

Before Mr. Obama latched on to ``Romnesia’’ as a condition affecting Mitt Romney, which is the inability to remember past positions, the slogans have been awfully bland and uninspiring by both camps. Obama championed the flat sounding `Forward,’’ while Mr. Romney invoked the equally uninspiring `` Committ to Mitt,’’ and ``We Can't afford four more years.’’

Only recently, the Romney campaign has stumbled upon a snappy phrase more to their liking: “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose,’’ a popular catchphrase from the NBC American sports drama television series “Friday Night Lights,’’;  though the show's writer and director Peter Berg took issue with Team Romney for co-opting that phrase into their campaign without permission.

Matthew A. Baum, who is the Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications and professor of public policy and government at Harvard University, has noticed the same trend regarding the lack of political slogans in this election cycle. ``It seems to be’’ Baum wrote in an email, `` that slogans haven't played a particularly big role this year. That doesn't mean there aren't important pieces of symbolic language. The most obvious one is the "47%" trope that Romney handed gift wrapped to Obama. Obama has sought to use this to cast Romney as an out of touch elitist who doesn't care about the middle class or share their values. On the other side, "You didn't build that" became an important bit of symbolic language for the Romney campaign in its efforts to paint Obama as unsympathetic to small business.’’

According to Baum, then, the ``symbolic language’’ and ``symbolic rhetoric’’ played out in the media (particularly on social media), pack more of a punch, especially to the slice of undecided voters and low information voters who are not accessing the candidates in any great detail.

``All that said'', Baum writes, ``I think it is interesting that there really aren't any compelling campaign slogans this year (no "Hope and Change," no "Bridge to the 21st Century", no "Thousand Points of Light", etc.).’’

To get a sense of the sequence of political slogans and catchphrases through the years, I’ve compiled a list of some of the more entertaining slogans advanced during presidential campaigns.

• Bibles will be burned, property rights destroyed, and the marriage institution abolished’’
-1800-Federalist Party of John Adams attack on Thomas Jefferson because of his sympathy with the French Revolution. 

• ``Dambargo’’
- 1808: Charles Pinckney and the Federalist attack on Thomas Jefferson’s unpopular embargo against trade with Great Britain.

• ``A rich man’s war, but a poor man’s fight’’
1864: -George B. McClellan and the Democratic Party’s opposition to the draft and the continuation of the war.

• ``His Fraudulency’’;  and `` Rutherfraud B. Hayes’’
-1876: Samuel J. Tilden and the Democratic Party’s attack on Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes, whose supporters were accused of election fraud.

• ``Rum, Romanism and Tammany’’
-1928: Herbert Hoover and the Republican Party’s attack on Al Smith’s Catholicism, his refusal to support Prohibition, along with his association with Tammany Hall.

• ``Destruction, Delay, Deceit, Despair’’
-1932: FDR and Democratic Party’s attack of the Republicans.

• ``Ben Hogan for President, If We’re Going to Have a Golfer,/ Let’s Have a Good One.’’
-1952:  Adlai E. Stevenson and the Democratic Party’s popular bumper sticker critical of Dwight Eisenhower’s frequent golf outings.

• `` Au H2O =1964
-Popular 1964 Barry Goldwater bumper sticker.

• ``Welcome Doctor Strangewater’’
-1964: LBJ and the Democratic Party’s attack on Goldwater; in a sarcastic reference to the motion picture, ``Doctor Strangelove.’’

• ``Jack was nimble, Jack was quick /  But Bobby simply makes me sick’’
-1968:  Hubert Humphrey and the Democratic Party’s anti-Robert Kennedy posters during the primaries.

• ``Nobody for President’’
-1980: Popular bumper sticker seen around the country.

• If Jimmy Carter Wins, We Lose’’
-1980: Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party’s attack on Jimmy Carter.

• ``Reagan—Eat  My Grits’’
-1980: Anti-Reagan slogan found circulating at the Democratic Party Convention.

• ``Import peanuts, export Carter’’
-Anti-Carter delegates from New York circulate this slogan at the Republican Party Convention.

• ``ABC Movement-Anybody But Carter’’
-1980: A dump Carter slogan at the Democratic Convention.

• ``JACKSON for President-Follow the Rainbow''
-Campaign Button during Jesse Jackson Sr.'s 1984 run for President.

• ``It's the Economy Stupid''
-In an effort to deflect media attention surrounding reports of Bill Clinton’s marital infidelity; Clinton's campaign manager James Carville posted this slogan in their campaign headquarters. Clinton staffers, in turn, invoked the statement during press interviews and it quickly became a popular sound bite.

• ``Clinton/Gore--Out in Four''
-Bob Dole and the Republican Party's 1996 attack button against Bill Clinton for a second term.

• ``Show Bush the Door in 04''
   -Anti George W. Bush campaign button (2004)

• ``Bush Cheney '04 - Leave No Billionaire Behind’’
-Anti-George W. Bush campaign button (2004)

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
October 25, 2012

Source: ``Words Meant to Influence Political Choices in the United States: 1800-1980’’ By Fay M. Blake and H. Morton Newman; ``Encyclopedia of Presidential Campaigns, Slogans, Issues and Platforms’’ By Robert North Roberts and Scott John Hammond (Greenwood Press). 

How Well Do You Know Your Swing States?

 

 

With less than 30 days to go before Election Day, the race for the White House is heating up; both President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney are reloading their pistols for the final leg of the their blistering campaign with two crucial presidential debates yet to come.

The first presidential debate on Wednesday in Denver took on Super Bowl enthusiasm with more than 67 million people tuning in; nearly 15 million more than watched in 2004, while 10.3 million tweets in 90 minutes exploded across the Internet (a new record), adding even more intensity to what is shaping up to be one of the closest presidential clashes in U.S. history.

Of particular importance will be the attention paid to 11 key swing states (Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina, and Iowa) to see which candidate will be able to seize the majority of these to assure victory on November 6th.

In 2008, Mr. Obama carried 28 states, the District of Columbia, sweeping the Midwest, including winning three of the former Confederate states in the South (Virginia, North Carolina, Florida), and three of the eight states in the Rocky Mountains (Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico), which many believe laid the foundation for a ``blue wall’’ of Democratic states which will ensure Democratic victories on the national stage for years to come.

President Obama was on the verge of pulling away in key battleground states more than a week ago, but since the debate on Wednesday, with Mr. Romney having bested his opponent (at least according to a majority of post-debate analysis and scorecards) has begun to make significant inroads in many key swing states, leaving Mr. Obama (according to multiple polls) locked in a dead heat. Many election observers, moreover, argue the election may tilt either way depending on the size of the voter turnout.

Mr. Obama won 69.5 million votes in 2008 (9.5 million more than John McCain), the largest vote in history for any candidate achieving 53.7 percent of the national popular vote, making it one of the most decisive presidential elections since Ronald Reagan’s landslide of 1984, when he scooped up 49 of the 50 states. What’s more, the number of voters in 2008 increased to 132 million (or 61.6 percent of eligible voters, a 1.5 increase from 2004), while voting participation rose by more than 10 percent in a dozen states, which has largely been attributed to early voting and absentee ballots. In 2008, more than 30 million ballots were cast before Election Day.

So as we inch closer and closer to Election Day and as the key swing states comes under closer scrutiny in the weeks ahead, I thought I would underscore some major features of these states, while providing a past presidential election statistical snapshot of the 11 battleground states which more than likely will determine the winner of the 2012 presidential election. 

NOTE: According to Tom Nardone, associate commissioner for employment and unemployment statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the state unemployment rate estimates for September won't be released until October 19th. The most recent unemployment data for individual states, therefore, is August, 2012.

1.) Ohio (The Buckeye State)

• Capital: Columbus

• Origin of State Name: The name ``Ohio'' is derived from the Iroquois Indian world oheo, which means ``beautiful.

• Population: 11,544,951 (2011 Estimate)

• Counties: 88

• Electoral Votes: 18

• Unemployment Rate: 7.2 percent (August, 2012)

• State Song: ``Beautiful Ohio’’

• State Rock Song: ``Hang on Sloopy’’ (Approved by the Ohio General Assembly in 1985, making Ohio the only state which has officially adopted a rock song).

• State Motto: With God All Things are Possible

• Ohio has been the native state of seven U.S. presidents; another, William Henry Harrison, the 9th president of the United States, while born in Charles City, a Virginia colony, settled in Ohio later in his life and always considered the Buckeye state his home.

• From 1869 through 1881, the White House was occupied by three Ohioans, all Republicans and all former Union Army generals.

• The two candidates for president in 1920 were both from Ohio; Senator Warren G. Harding, the Republican and former newspaper man against James M. Cox, the 46th and 48th governor of Ohio. Harding easily won the general election, winning 37 states and 60.3 percent of the vote.

• From 1856 through 1996, Ohioans for the most part voted for the Republican candidate in the presidential elections, the exceptions being Woodrow Wilson (twice), FDR (three times), Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton (twice).

• In 2008, Barack Obama carried Ohio, winning 51.5 percent of the vote to 46.9 percent for John McCain, a departure from 2004, when George W. Bush won Ohio with 50.8 percent of the vote to John Kerry’s 48.7 percent.

• Out of the last 16 presidential elections, Ohio voted for the winning Democratic candidate seven times, while voting for the winning Republican candidate nine times, dating back to 1948.

• The 2010 census counted more than 350,000 Ohioans of Hispanic descent; a 40 percent increase from the 2000 Census.

• 51.1 percent of the state’s population is female. Around the state, 4.6 million women over the age of 16 are part of Ohio’s workforce.

• Cincinnati is President Howard Taft’s Birthplace.

• Point Pleasant (Clermont County) 25 miles southeast of Cincinnati is the birthplace of Ulysses S. Grant (Republican), the 18th president of the United States.

• Blooming Grove (Morrow County) is the birthplace of Warren G. Harding (Republican), the 29th president of the United States.

• Moreland Hills, a village in Cuyahoga County, is the birthplace of James A. Garfield (Republican), the 20th President of the United States.

• Niles (Trumbull County) is the birthplace of William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States.

• The City of Delaware (Delaware County), 30 miles north of Columbus, is the birthplace of Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican), the 19th President of the United States.

• North Bend, a village in Hamilton County, along the Ohio River, is the birthplace of Benjamin Harrison (Republican), the 23rd President of the United States.

• Benjamin Harrison (1888) was one of only four presidents in United States history to be elected to the presidency by the Electoral College though he lost the popular vote. The others were: John Quincy Adams, 1824, Rutherford B. Hayes, 1876, and George W. Bush, 2000.

Source: Ohio Secretary of State; Worldmark Encyclopedia of the States (7th edition); America Votes 29: Election Returns by State (Rhodes Cook, CQ Press). 

2.) Florida (Sunshine State)

• Capital: Tallahassee

• Origin of State Name: Named in 1513 by Juan Ponce de Leon, who landed during Pascua Florida, the Easter festival of flowers.

• Entered Union: March 3, 1845 (27th State)

• Florida’s Population: 19, 057, 542 (2011 estimate)

• Population Rank - 4th in U.S. behind California, Texas & New York

• 67 Counties

• State Motto: In God We Trust

• State Song: The Swanee River (``Old Folks at Home’’)

• Electoral Votes: 29

• Unemployment Rate: 8.8 percent (August, 2012)

• Beginning in the 1950’s, many registered Democrats in Florida became ``presidential Republicans,’’ throwing their support behind Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 and Richard M. Nixon in 1960.

• In the 1996 presidential election, Florida backed a Democrat (Bill Clinton) for the first time in 20 years.

• In the postwar period from 1948 through 2008, Florida supported the Democratic candidates only five times: 1948, 1964, 1976, 1996, and 2008.

• In the highly controversial 2000 presidential race, a mere 275 votes separated George Bush from his Democratic opponent Al Gore before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a hand recount of returns be stopped, giving Bush the necessary 25 electoral votes in the Sunshine state to secure the presidency.

• In 2008, Barack Obama won Florida with 51 percent of the vote to 48.2 percent for John McCain.

• Largest County - Palm Beach at 2,578 square miles

• Number of people who move to Florida each day - 1,000

• Number of golf courses - more than 1,250

• Number of Beaches - 663 miles

• Persons of Hispanic or Latino Origin, (2011 estimate): 22.9 percent (National Average: 16.7 percent)

Florida’s Connection with U.S. Presidents:

• Andrew Jackson as army general seized La Florida from Spain in 1821 and was sworn in as Florida’s first territorial governor in Plaza Ferdinand VII in Pensacola, an outdoor garden and park in the historic district of Pensacola, Florida. Jackson was the seventh president of the United States from 1829 through 1837.

• The Harry S. Truman Little White House located in Key West is the State of Florida's only presidential site. It was originally constructed in 1890 as housing for naval officers. Truman spent the most time there, logging 11 trips and more than 175 days. President John F. Kennedy hosted British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in the 1960s. William Howard Taft and Dwight Eisenhower also used the Little White House for relaxation much like other presidents used Camp David.

• In 1961, the United States Navy Seabees (construction battalions) constructed a secret bunker on Peanut Island, a five-minute helicopter ride from the former Kennedy estate near Palm Beach. It was an evacuation site for President Kennedy in the event of a nuclear attack during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Kennedy Bunker is now declassified and open to the public.

• In Clermont, west of Orlando, The Presidents Hall of Fame has a hands-on classroom where teachers and students can sit in a chair from the Oval Office or from Ford’s Theater as well as peek inside a 60- by 20-foot replica of the White House.

• In Daytona Beach (Volusia County), Florence Harding, wife of President Warren Harding, childhood home is now a fine dining restaurant called The Cellar.  Harding used the home (originally built in 1907 by his father-in-law) as a wintering spot for his family to escape Ohio’s harsh weather.

• In Orlando, all 44 Presidents bring history to life at The Hall of Presidents, an attraction located in Liberty Square at the Magic Kingdom in the Walt Disney World Resort. The attraction is a multi-media stage show featuring Audio-Animatronic figures of all individual U.S. Presidents, including President Obama, delivering the Presidential Oath, and President Lincoln reciting the Gettysburg Address.

• In Tampa, the 2012 host city for the Republican National Convention welcomed then-Col. Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders in 1898 at the Tampa Bay Hotel.  The national historic landmark is now a museum on the University of Tampa campus filled with treasures.

Source: Truman Little White House, VisitFlorida.com; Worldmark Encyclopedia of the States (7th edition); America Votes 29: Election Returns by State (Rhodes Cook, CQ Press).

3.) Colorado (Centennial State)

• Capital: Denver

• Entered Union: August 1, 1876 (38th state)

• Origin of State Name: From the Spanish word, Colorado, meaning red or reddish brown.

• State Song: Where Columbines Grow

• State Folk Dance: Square Dance

• State Motto: Nil sine numine (Nothing without providence)

• Colorado Population: 5,116,796 (2011 estimate)

• Unemployment Rate:  8.2 percent (August, 2012)

• Electoral Votes: 9

• Between 1960 through 1990, Colorado was considered a solidly Republican red state.

• Between 1948 and 2008, the Democratic presidential candidate won Colorado only four times: 1948, 1964, 1992 and 2008.

• In 2008, Barack Obama won Colorado with 53.7 percent of the vote to John McCain’s 44.7 percent.

• By July, 2009, Colorado’s population exceeded five million for the first time in its history.

• Percent of white persons: 88.3 percent

• Percent of black persons: 4.3 percent

• Percent of persons of Hispanic or Latino origins: 20.9 percent

• Colorado ranked second in the number of citizens with a bachelor’s degree

• Colorado was originally part of the Nebraska, Utah, Kansas, and New Mexico Territories. In 1859 a provisional territorial government was formed, called the Territory of Jefferson. In 1861 Congress created the Territory of Colorado.

• Colorado was the second state in the nation to extend suffrage to women in 1894 after Wyoming.

• In 1803, through the Louisiana Purchase, signed by President Thomas Jefferson, the United States acquired a vast area which included what is now most of eastern Colorado.

• On July 7, 1908 Denver municipal Auditorium, seating 12,500, was completed in time for the Democratic National Convention, when William Jennings Bryan was nominated the third time for President.

• In 1973, Eisenhower Tunnel is built beneath the Continental Divide sixty miles west of Denver, making it easier to reach the ski slopes of western Colorado.

Source: Colorado Department of Personnel & Administration; Worldmark Encyclopedia of the States (7th edition); America Votes 29: Election Returns by State (Rhodes Cook, CQ Press).

4.) Nevada (Silver State), also known as the Sagebrush State, and Battle Born State

• Capital: Carson City

• Origin of State Name: Named for the Sierra Nevada mountain range, nevada, meaning ``snow-covered’’ in Spanish.

• State Motto: "All for Our Country"

• State Song: ``Home Means Nevada’’

• Population: 2,723,322 (2011 estimate)

• Unemployment Rate: 12.1 percent (August, 2012)

• Electoral Votes: 6

• Number of Counties: 16, plus one city-county (Carson City)

• Between 1948 through 2008, the Democratic candidate for president has won Nevada only five times: 1948, 1960, 1964, 1992, and 2008.

• In 2004, Nevada became classified as a “battleground state”; meaning that it was hard to predict which side of the presidential vote the Silver State would fall on.

• In 2008, Barack Obama won Nevada with 55.1 percent of the vote to 42.7 percent for John McCain.

• In 2008, John McCain won over white working class voters in Nevada by 11 points.

• Obama’s convincing victory in the Silver State has been attributed to his strong support among minorities, specifically, 94 percent among blacks( representing 10 percent of voters, a one percent increase from 2004) and 76 percent among Hispanics, (16 percent of voters, a six-point increase from 2004). Among whites in Nevada, Obama lost males by 17 points, women by one point, while winning males overall by a four point margin and female voters overall by 21 points.

• In 1899, Charles Fey invented a slot machine called the Liberty Bell, which became the model for all slots.

• Author Mark Twain worked for the first newspaper in Nevada, the Territorial Enterprise.

• President Theodore Roosevelt visited Nevada in 1903.

• 87 percent of Nevada land is controlled by the Federal government.

• In 1914, Nevada women were granted voting rights by state election.

• Gambling was reinstated in the State in 1931

• Hoover Dam, near Las Vegas was completed in 1935

• Nevada is the seventh largest state in size.

• Nevada is the largest gold-producing state in the U.S. and third in the world behind South Africa and Australia.

• Nevada is the gambling and entertainment capital of the U.S.

• Nevada has over 200,000 slot machines, one for every 10 residents.

• Las Vegas has more hotel rooms than any other place on earth.

• On average, 150 couples are married each day in Las Vegas.

• According to Guy Rocha, Nevada State Archivist, the first sitting president to campaign in the Silver State seeking re-election was Herbert Hoover in 1932, when he stopped in Elko for a few hours on his way to California.

• A number of election laws throughout the older Statutes of Nevada, beginning in 1869, made the sale or provision of alcoholic beverages on Election Day illegal. The provision, NRS 293.605, was finally repealed in 1967.

• African-American men were prohibited from voting in Nevada until 1870, when the national constitution was amended.

• Mormon men were prohibited from voting in Nevada under a statute approved in 1887; until 1888, when the statute was declared unconstitutional by the Nevada Supreme Court. The statute was not officially repealed until 1909.

Source: Home Page of Senator Harry Reid; Political History of Nevada (Eleventh Edition) issued by Dean Heller, Secretary of State; Nevada Commission on Tourism; ``America’s New Swing Region: Changing Politics and Demographics in the Mountain West’’ by Ruy Teixeira; Worldmark Encyclopedia of the States (7th edition); America Votes 29: Election Returns by State (Rhodes Cook, CQ Press).

5.) Michigan (Wolverine State)

• Capital: Lansing, since 1847; prior to that, Detroit

• Number of counties: 83

• Entered Union: January 26, 1837 (26th)

• Origin of State Name: Thought to have been derived from the Fox Indian word mesikami, meaning ``large lake.’’

• State Motto: Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice (If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you).

• State Song: Michigan, My Michigan (unofficial)

• Electoral Votes: 16

• Unemployment: 9.4 percent (August, 2012)

• Michigan had never cast a plurality of popular votes for a Democrat before the 1932 election.

• Between 1948 and 1992, the Republican candidate for president carried Michigan in nine out of 13 elections.

• The Democratic candidate for president has carried Michigan in the last five elections, dating back to 1992.

• Bill Clinton won Michigan with 44 percent of the vote in 1992 and 52 percent in 1996; Al Gore took Michigan with 51 percent of the vote in 2000; and John Kerry secured the Wolverine state with 51 percent of the vote in 2004 to George W. Bush’s 48 percent.

• In 2008, Barack Obama carried Michigan effortlessly with 57.4 percent of the vote to John McCain’s 41.0 percent.

• Gerald R. Ford, the 38th president of the United States, was the only U.S. president from Michigan.

• Mitt Romney was born at Harper Hospital in Detroit, Michigan on March 12, 1947

• Michigan is the 10th largest state in the Union (combined with land and water area).

• Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties alone account for more than 40 percent of the state's population.

• Michigan ranks 38th among the 50 states.

Key Dates in Michigan History:

• 1805: The Michigan Territory is created, with Detroit designated as the seat of government. William Hull is appointed governor. A devastating fire burned Detroit to the ground.

• 1819: The Treaty of Saginaw cedes nearly six million acres of Indian lands to Michigan settlers. Michigan sends a delegate to Congress.

• 1841: The University of Michigan moves from Detroit to Ann Arbor.

• 1854: The Republican Party is organized in Jackson.

• 1908: Henry Ford begins manufacturing the Model T.

• In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt ran as a member of the Bull Moose Party and won a majority of the Michigan popular vote. He ran as a Republican in 1904.

• 1941: Automobile plants are converted for the production of war materials, and Michigan becomes known as the "Arsenal of Democracy."

• 1959: Berry Gordy Jr. founds Motown Records in Detroit.

• 1980: The Republican National Convention is held in Detroit.

• 1981: The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum are dedicated in Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids, respectively.

• 1992: Michigan State University hosts the third and final presidential debate of the election year.

• 2002: Jennifer M. Granholm becomes Michigan's first female governor.

Source: Michigan.gov; Worldmark Encyclopedia of the States (7th edition); America Votes 29: Election Returns by State (Rhodes Cook, CQ Press).

6.) New Hampshire (Granite State); also known as Mother of Rivers, White Mountain State, and the Switzerland of America.

• Capital: Concord

• Origin of State Name: Named for the English county of Hampshire.

• Population: 1,318,194 (2011 estimate)

• State Motto: ``Live Free or Die.'' The motto comes from a statement written by the Revolutionary General John Stark, hero of the Battle of Bennington.

• Entered Union: June 21, 1788 (9th)

• State Song: ``Old New Hampshire’’

• State Sport: Skiing (adopted in 1998)

• Unemployment: 5.7 percent (August, 2012)

• Electoral Votes: 4

• Franklin Pierce, the nation’s 14th president, was the only chief executive to have come from New Hampshire.

• Between 1856 and 1932 New Hampshire voted Republican in every presidential election except in 1912 and 1916.

• For 40 years, between 1948 and 1988, a Democratic presidential candidate only won New Hampshire once:  In 1964 when Lyndon Johnson swallowed up the state with 63.9 percent of the vote.

• In the last five presidential elections, beginning in 1992, the Democratic candidate for president has won New Hampshire four times. George W. Bush, in 2000, took New Hampshire with 48.1 percent of the vote to Al Gore’s 46.8 percent.

• In 1992, Bill Clinton won New Hampshire by a one percent margin; by 1996 he won the Granite State by a commanding 10 percent margin; officially moving NH out of the ``safe GOP’’ column and into the ``battleground state’’ column.

• In 2008, Barack Obama convincingly carried New Hampshire 54 percent to 45 percent, sweeping all of the state's 10 counties.

• New Hampshire was one of the 13 original colonies.

• New Hampshire has 10 counties, 13 municipalities, 221 towns and 22 unincorporated places.

• New Hampshire is one of the six New England states, the others being Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut.

• New Hampshire has 1,300 lakes or ponds and about 40 rivers with a total mileage of about 41,800 miles.

• In 1863, President Lincoln established the first national Thanksgiving Day, inspired by letters from Sarah Josepha Hale of Newport, New Hampshire.

• In her pioneering work as editor of Ladies Magazine (1828-36) and Godey's Lady's Book (1837-77), Sarah Josepha Hale of Newport, New Hampshire, elevated the status of women and the importance of American literature.

• In March 1946, Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey assigned Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe to the Nashua Dodgers, a new farm team, making Nashua, New Hampshire, the first modern city to host an integrated professional baseball team.

• On October 12, 1853, Amos Tuck called a meeting in Exeter, New Hampshire, of four political parties opposed to the Democratic Party and proposed the name Republican.

• Since 1920, the first ballot of the New Hampshire Presidential Primary has been cast in the Ballot Room of the Balsams Hotel in Dixville Notch.

• First Legal State Lottery in the U.S: In 1963, the New Hampshire Legislature approved the Sweepstakes Program. In 1964, Governor John W. King purchased the first lottery ticket at Rockingham Park, Salem, New Hampshire.

• First Women's Strike in the U.S.: In 1828, women mill workers at the Cocheco Mills, Dover, New Hampshire, went out on strike to protest new mill regulations, in what became known as the "Factory Girls" Strike.

• First American in Space: On May 5, 1961, Alan B. Shepard, Jr., of Derry, New Hampshire, rode a Mercury spacecraft aloft for 15 minutes, and reached a peak altitude of 115 miles.

• First Free Libraries in the Nation: The Dublin Juvenile Library, established in 1822, was the first free public library. The Peterborough Town Library, established in 1833, was the first library supported by public taxation.

Source: New Hampshire Department of Resources and Economic Development; New Hampshire State Council on the Arts; ``The Change Election: Money, Mobilization, and Persuasion in the 2008 Federal Elections'' By David Magleby; Worldmark Encyclopedia of the States (7th edition); America Votes 29: Election Returns by State (Rhodes Cook, CQ Press).

7.) North Carolina (Tar Heel State); also known as the Old North State

• Capital: Raleigh (established 1792)

• Origin of State Name: Named in honor of King Charles I of England

• Population: 9,656,401 (2011 estimate)

• Entered Union: November 21, 1789 (12th)

• State Motto: Esse quam videri (To be rather than to seem)

• State Song: ``The Old North State," lyrics by William Gaston, music collected and arranged by Mrs. E. E. Randolph.

• Unemployment: 9.7 percent (August, 2012)

• Electoral Votes: 15

• U.S. Presidents from North Carolina: Andrew Jackson (7th), James K. Polk (11th), Andrew Johnson (17th).

• Democratic candidates for president won five consecutive elections in North Carolina between 1948 and 1964.

• Between 1968 and 2008, Democratic candidates for president only won the Tar Heel state twice: In 1976 and 2008.

• In 2004, George W, Bush carried North Carolina with over 56 percent of the vote.

• In 1996 and 2000, North Carolina was approximately seven percentage points more Republican than the nation. But since 2008, North Carolina has voted only three percentage points more Republican than the nation, moving the Tar Heel state into ``battleground state'' territory.

• In 2008, Barack Obama won North Carolina by the slimmest of margins, with 49.7 percent of the vote to John McCain’s 49.4 percent.

• North Carolina's population has increased by 7.6 percent since 2004

• First state university in the United States - University of North Carolina opened in 1795 in Chapel Hill.

• First successful powered airplane flight - 1903 by the Wright Brothers, Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk.

• North Carolina sent 130,000 to 135,000 Confederate troops into battle and had the highest death toll — about 33,500 — of any Southern state.

• Freedom Hill, an Edgecombe County colony established in 1865 by former slaves, became Princeville, the nation's first town incorporated by African-Americans.

• George Washington spent the night at a dozen North Carolina inns in addition to visiting homes on his tour of Southern battlefields in 1791.

• President James Monroe revived the idea of touring the country, and his 1819 Southern tour brought him to New Bern, a city that specializes in preserving and presenting its history.

• Andrew Johnson, our 17th U.S. president was born (1808) in downtown Raleigh in a kitchen at Casso's Inn, a busy establishment where both of his parents worked.

• Woodrow Wilson, our 28th U.S. president, was the son of a minister who was pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Wilmington from 1874 to 1885.

• Ten presidents have stayed at The Grove Park Inn Resort & Spa in Asheville during in its 99-year history, including Barack Obama.

• According to Golf Digest, 15 of the last 18 U.S. presidents have hit the golf courses — several have found their way to Pinehurst, America's original golf resort. Warren G. Harding, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gerald R. Ford, George H.W. Bush and Richard M. Nixon all teed-up on the famous greens.

• Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Gerald R. Ford and George H.W. Bush all campaigned at the N.C. State Fair.

• President Harry S. Truman broke ground on Wake Forest University’s Winston-Salem campus in 1951.

• President Richard M. Nixon graduated with a law degree from Duke in 1937.

• The Ashe County seat is named for Thomas Jefferson, as are the town of West Jefferson and Jefferson Mountain State Natural Area.

• Madison County and the town of Madison (in Rockingham County): Both are named for James Madison.

• Jackson County and the city of Jacksonville (the Onslow County seat): Both are named for Andrew Jackson.

• Lincoln and Lincolnton: The county and its seat, which are northwest of Charlotte, are named for Abraham Lincoln

Source: North Carolina Department of Commerce; ``The New Politics of the Old South’’ by Charles S. Bullock, Mark J. Rozell;  Worldmark Encyclopedia of the States (7th edition); America Votes 29: Election Returns by State (Rhodes Cook, CQ Press).

8.) Virginia (Old Dominion)

• Capital: Richmond (since 1780)

• Population: 8,096,604 (2011 estimate)

• Origin of State Name: Named for Queen Elizabeth I of England, the ``Virgin Queen’’

• Entered Union: June 25, 1788 (10th).

• State Motto: Sic simper tyrannis (Thus ever to tyrants)

• State Song: ``Carry Me Back to Old Virginia’’ was formally retired from use in 1997 but has not yet been replaced.

• State Slogan: Virginia is for Lovers, created in 1969 as the state’s official tourism slogan, represents a love of life and a passion for travel

• Unemployment: 5.9 percent (August, 2012)

• Electoral Votes: 13

• Between 1948 and 2008, Democratic candidates for president only carried Virginia three times: 1948, 1964 and 2008.

• Beginning in 1952, Virginia voters began to shift their votes decisively toward Republicans.

• From 1968 through 2004, Virginia voters consistently voted Republican, except for 1964 when LBJ won the state with 53.5 percent of the vote.

• President Obama carried Virginia in 2008 by 6.3 percentage points (52.6 to 46.3 percent), 7.1 percentage points higher than John Kerry in 2004.

• Virginia cast 500,000 more votes in 2008 than they did four years earlier, a 16.3 point increase.

• Virginia does not permit voters to declare party allegiance.

• Virginia is known as the “Mother of Presidents” – having produced more American presidents than any other state at 8: George Washington (1st, 1789-1797), Thomas Jefferson (3rd, 1801-1809), James Madison (4th, 1809-1817), James Monroe (5th, 1817-1825), William Henry Harrison (9th, 1841), John Tyler (10th, 1841-1845), Zachary Taylor (12th, 1849-1850), and Woodrow Wilson (28th, 1913-1921).

• Virginia is one of four states known as a “Commonwealth.’’ The others are Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Massachusetts.

• More Civil War battles were fought in Virginia than in any other state.

• Virginia is the site of the first major battle of the Civil War – First Manassas – and the surrender of Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House.

Source: Virginia.gov, Official Tourism Website of the Commonwealth of Virginia; ``Atlas of the 2008 Elections’’ by Stanley D. Brunn; Worldmark Encyclopedia of the States (7th edition); America Votes 29: Election Returns by State (Rhodes Cook, CQ Press).

9.) Wisconsin (Badger State)

• Capital: Madison

• Origin of State Name: Thought to have been derived from the Ojibwa word wishkonsing, meaning ``place of the beaver.’’

• Entered Union: May 29, 1848 (30th).

• Population, 5,711,767 (2011 estimate)

• State Motto: Forward

• State Song: ``On Wisconsin’’

• State Beverage: Milk

• State Dance: Polka, reflecting the rich Czech-Polish and German heritage found throughout the state.

• Unemployment: 7.5 percent (August, 2012)

• Electoral Votes: 10

• Between 1948 and 1984, voters in Wisconsin voted Republican seven times; while tilting toward the Democrat nominee three times: 1948, 1964, and 1976.

• In the 2000 presidential elections, 67 percent of the Wisconsin voting age population voted compared to 52 percent nationally.

• Wisconsin has not voted Republican since 1984, but in the last two presidential elections the state was among the closest races in the nation.

• Democrats won Wisconsin narrowly by 4,000 votes in 2000 and 12,000 votes in 2004. Obama won Wisconsin by 414,818 votes in 2008.

• Congressman Paul Ryan, running mate to Republican nominee Mitt Romney, was born and raised in Janesville, Wisconsin, a city located in the southern part of the state.

• Wisconsin was the first state to mandate a presidential primary beginning in 1905.

• Green Bay, home of the Packers is known as “Titletown USA” and is additionally the state's oldest city.

• Nearly 21 million gallons of ice cream are consumed by Wisconsinites each year.

• Wisconsin was the first state in America to open a kindergarten

• Milwaukee is home of Harley Davidson Motorcycles.

• The Republican Party was founded in Ripon in 1854

• The Hamburger Hall of Fame is located in Seymour.

• The first Ringling Brothers Circus was staged in Baraboo in 1884.

• Monroe is the Swiss Cheese Capital of the World

Source: Wisconsin.gov; Wisconsin Historical Society; Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau; Worldmark Encyclopedia of the States (7th edition); America Votes 29: Election Returns by State (Rhodes Cook, CQ Press).
 

10.) Pennsylvania (Keystone State)

• Capital: Harrisburg

• Origin of State Name: Named for Admiral William Penn, father of the founder of Pennsylvania.

• Entered Union: December 12, 1787 (2nd).

• Population: 12,742,886 (2011 estimate)

• Counties: 67

• State Song: "Pennsylvania.'' The official state song of the Commonwealth was written and composed by Eddie Khoury and Ronnie Bonner and is the official song for all public purposes.

• State Motto: Virtue, Liberty and Independence

• State Slogan: State of Independence.

• State Dog: Great Dane

• State Beverage: Milk

• Unemployment: 8.1 percent (August, 2012)

• Electoral Votes: 20

• James Buchanan, the 15th U.S. President, is the only president from Pennsylvania and the only president who remained a lifelong bachelor.

• Pennsylvania was a stronghold of the Republican Party from Abraham Lincoln (1860) through 1934.

• Between 1948 and 1960, Republican candidates for president won in Pennsylvania in three out of four elections; John Kennedy managed to defeat Richard Nixon in 1960 with 51.1 percent of the vote to Nixon’s 48.7 percent.

• Not until November 1960 did Democratic voter registration surpass GOP registration for the first time in the 20th century.

• Beginning with John F. Kennedy's win over Richard Nixon in 1960, Pennsylvania became firmly attached to the Democratic Party.

• Between 1960 through 2008, the Democratic candidate nominee carried the Keystone State nine times with Republicans carrying the state only in 1972, 1980, 1984, and 1988.

• The last Democratic candidate for president unable to carry Pennsylvania was Michael Dukakis in 1988.

• Barack Obama took Pennsylvania in 2008 by a commanding 54.7 percent of the vote to John McCain's 44.3 percent.

• The Democrats took control of the two major cities, Pittsburgh in 1933 and Philadelphia in 1951, and gained electoral majorities for the Democratic nominees in seven of the eleven presidential elections from 1936 to 1976.

• Pennsylvania is officially a Commonwealth, a word which comes from Old English and means the "common weal" or well-being of the public. In Pennsylvania, all legal processes are carried out in the name of the Commonwealth.

• Both the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were signed in Philadelphia.

• Benjamin Franklin once served as speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

• By 1840 Pennsylvania was the home of more newspapers than any other state.

• The first all-motion-picture theater in the world was opened on Smithfield Street in Pittsburgh on June 19, 1905, by John P. Harris and Harry Davis.

• The first commercial broadcast station in the world was KDKA in Pittsburgh, which started daily schedule broadcasting on November 2, 1920.

• The 2000 Census showed 9.97 percent of Pennsylvania’s population to be African American, less than the national average of 12.3 percent. This included 45 percent of the population of Philadelphia County, 17 percent of Dauphin County, 14.5 percent of Delaware County, and 12.4 percent of Allegheny County.

• Pennsylvania’s Hispanic or Latino population in 2000 was 3.2 percent of the state’s total, far less than the Hispanic percentage for the nation, which was 12.5 percent.

• The first night football game was played in Mansfield, Pennsylvania on September 28, 1892 between Mansfield State Normal and Wyoming Seminary.

• Kathryn O’Hay Granahan was the first female member of Congress from Philadelphia and the Treasurer of the United States from 1962 to 1966.

• In 1946, scientists J. Presper Eckert Jr. and John W. Mauchly of the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania produced the world’s first electronic computer, the ENIAC, for the U.S. Army.

• Forest County has the distinction of being the only county in Pennsylvania without a traffic light.

• In December 1913, the first drive-in gasoline filling station in the world opened at the corner of Baum and St. Clair Streets in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

• Pennsylvania is the first state in the United States to place its URL on license plates.

Source: Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development; Pennsylvania State Data Center; Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: ``The Realignment of Pennsylvania Politics Since 1960’’ by Renee M. Lamis; Worldmark Encyclopedia of the States (7th edition); America Votes 29: Election Returns by State (Rhodes Cook, CQ Press).

11.) Iowa (Hawkeye State)

• Capital City: Des Moines

• Origin: Named for Iowa Indians of the Siouan family

• Population:  3,062,309 ((2011 estimate)

• Number of counties: 99

• Entered Union:  December 28, 1846 (29th)

• State Motto: Our Liberties We Prize and Our Rights We Will Maintain

• State Song: ``Song of Iowa’’

• Rank among states: 30

• White alone:   91.3 percent

• Black or African American alone:   2.9 percent

• Hispanic or Latino (of any race):   5.2 percent

• Unemployment: 5.5 percent (August, 2012)

• Electoral Votes: 6

• Iowa was the birthplace of Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, who was also the first U.S. president born west of the Mississippi.

• For nearly 70 years following the Civil War, the vast majority of Iowa voters supported the Republicans in state and national elections.

• From 1940 through 1984, Iowans voted Republican in 10 out of 12 presidential elections.

• Beginning in 1988, the Democratic candidate for president in Iowa has carried the state in five out of the last six elections. George W. Bush in 2004 narrowly won the Hawkeye state with 49.9 percent of the vote to John Kerry’s 49.2 percent.

• In 2008, Barack Obama carried Iowa with 53.9 percent of the vote to John McCain’s 44.4 percent.

• In addition to Herbert Hoover, Iowa was the birthplace of Vice President Henry A. Wallace (the 33rd Vice President of the United States under FDR, 1941–1945); First Lady Mamie Doud Eisenhower, and Carrie Chapman Catt, a suffragist leader whose efforts resulted in women's right to vote.

• Iowa was the first state created out of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

• John Brown, the radical abolitionist, spent the winters of 1857 and 1859 in the small Quaker village of Springdale, preparing for his raid on the federal armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, which led to his capture and eventual hanging.

• Iowa ranks first in beef, pork, corn, soybean and grain production.

• Iowa has 92,600 farms with an average size of 135 hectares

• The world's first electronic digital computer was built and operated by researchers at Iowa State University in the 1930's.

• Iowa students' ACT and SAT scores rank among the top five states.

• The high school graduation rate in Iowa is 88 percent; 17 percent above the national average.

• The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum located in West Branch, Iowa, next to the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site includes Hoover’s birthplace cottage and final resting place, a blacksmith shop, a one-room schoolhouse, and a replica of the Oval Office.

• Effigy Mounds National Monument is a group of prehistoric American Indian burial and ceremonial mounds located near Marquette in northeast Iowa.

• The estimated Latino population of Iowa as of July 1, 2011, is 158, 014, making people of Latino origin the state’s largest race or ethnic minority. Latinos constitute 5.2 percent of the state’s total population.

Source: Iowa Department of Economic Development; Iowa Tourism Office; Worldmark Encyclopedia of the States (7th edition); America Votes 29: Election Returns by State (Rhodes Cook, CQ Press).

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
October 8, 2012

Election Resources to Keep in Mind:

Office of the Federal Registrar, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration: 1789-2004 Presidential Elections

Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives: Election Statistics

Federal Election Commission: Federal Elections 2008: Election Results for the U.S. President, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives.

The American Presidency Project: Presidential Election Data

Roper Center (Public Opinion Archives): Presidential Elections

United States Election Project: Voter Turnout (Data compiled by Dr. Michael McDonald, Department of Public and International Affairs, George Mason University).

47 Percent Reconsidered

Ever since he was caught on camera saying he has all but written off 47 percent of the voting population who he thinks are dependent on the government and have already thrown their lot with Barack Obama, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has been in complete shambles and disrepair.

A recent Gallup Poll shows that 36 percent of voters say Mr. Romney's comments make them less likely to vote for him, while 20 percent say the remarks make them more likely to vote for him, and 43 percent say the comments won't make a difference.

No one, especially a presidential contender, ever likes to be considered just a number, but it seems ``47 percent’’ will stick to the Republican nominee like a hard stale stick of chewing gum right up until election day.

Since we can’t seem to escape ``47 percent’’ being mentioned on television, in our daily newspaper, on the Internet or in other daily conversations, I thought I would call to mind other ``47 percent’’ figures that might be relevant in the dialogue of this bruising 2012 presidential campaign.

• About 47 percent of Congress, or 250 current members of Congress, are millionaires, according to a study by the Center for Responsive Politics of lawmakers' personal financial disclosure forms covering calendar year 2010.

• Nearly 47 percent of the food-stamp recipients in the United States are children, and about 8 percent are the elderly, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

• According to a March, 2012 New York Times/CBS News poll, 36 percent of Americans approve of the Affordable Care Act, while 47 percent are opposed.

• According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 47 percent more Hispanic citizens voted in 2008 than in 2004.

• A recent Gallup Poll says that 47 percent of Americans now have guns, more than any time since 1993.

• The U.S. currently accounts for 47 percent of global credit and debit card fraud, according to a recent issue of The Nilson Report.

• According to a March, 2012 survey by the Online Publishers Association (OPA), 47 percent of Americans is expected read newspapers and magazines on tablet devices by the middle of next year.

• The share of online shoppers will likely reach 47 percent by 2015, according to a report by The Boston Consulting Group.

• News Corp. profit soared 47 percent in the first three months of the year.

• Apple generates about 47 percent of the mobile computing industry, according to data compiled by the investment firm Morgan Keegan.

• TV ad spending will account for 47 percent of media budgets, according to a joint survey by ANA (Association of National Advertisers) and Forrester Research, Inc.

• 47 percent of Chicago voters backed the city's recent teachers' strike, according to McKeon & Associates, a Joliet-based opinion polling company.

• In the decade since the file-sharing site Napster emerged in 1999, music sales in the U.S. have dropped 47 percent, from $14.6 billion to $7.7 billion, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

• 47 percent of Netflix users in 2012 streamed movies online, according to a recent Nielsen survey.

• 47 percent of Americans say Facebook has the greatest impact on purchasing behavior (compared with just 24 percent in 2011), according to Edison Research, a market research firm.

• About 47 percent of women have no children.

• In 2011, women accounted for 47 percent of all employed persons 16 years of age and older, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

• 33 million people in the United States lived alone in 2011-53 percent of unmarried U.S. residents 18 and older were women; 47 percent were men, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

• About 47 percent of obese and overweight men said they believed their weight was a problem, while 53 percent didn’t, according to a recent study at the University of Florida.

• A survey by Pew Research Center revealed that 47 percent of men eat in a fast food restaurant at least weekly, compared to 35 percent of women.

• About 47 percent of American adults have at least one risk factor for heart disease, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• As of May, 2012, U.S. travel to overseas claimed 47 percent of all U.S. outbound international travel.

• At 47 percent, blacks constitute a disproportionate percentage of the homeless population, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

• Nearly 47 percent of police officers worked a non-day shift, compared to just 9 percent of other U.S. workers, according to researchers from the University of Buffalo.

• Only 47 percent of African-American males and 44 percent of Hispanic males graduate from high school, according to House Resolution 721 from the 112th Congress (June 29, 2012).

• The largest percentage of children (47 percent) in foster care was in nonrelatives’ foster family homes, according to the Children’s Bureau Express.

• According to Congressman Gerry Connolly (representing the 11th District of Virginia),`about 47 percent of the federal workforce are expected to retire in the next decade.

• During a 1-year period, 47 percent of youth ages 14 to 17 experienced a physical assault, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

• Miami tops the list with 47 percent of the labor force being foreign born and where 45 percent of business owners are foreign born, according to  the Fiscal Policy Institute, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit, research and education organization based in New York.

• Heart disease and cancer constituted 47 percent of all deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  

• Exports of manufactured goods to our trade agreement partners totaled $595.8 billion in 2011, representing nearly 47 percent of total U.S. manufactured goods exports, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

• Natural gas furnishes as much as 47 percent of U.S. industrial energy requirements because it meets the industrial energy buyer's criteria of availability, energy cost, and form value so well, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

• The return rate for urgent care within 30 days of discharge was 29 percent for women and 47 percent for men, according to a study from Boston Medical Center.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
September 21, 2012

 

Watergate 40 Year-Anniversary: A Collection of Historic Footnotes

Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, tightening up their lead in The Washington Post newsroom

Publisher Katharine Graham, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, managing editor Howard Simons, and executive editor Ben Bradlee in 1973. Photo By Mark Godfrey/The Image Works.

***

Sunday marks the 40-year anniversary of Watergate.

What started out as a ``third rate burglary’’ at 2: 30 a.m. on June 17, 1972  at the Watergate complex in Washington D.C., quickly ballooned into a federal investigation, leading to 41 individuals linked to the White House being indicted, another 21 individuals would serve prison time, culminating in the 37th President of the United States (facing almost certain impeachment), resigning in disgrace to become the first president in U.S. history forced from office. Not your everyday fender bender.

So, to remember the occasion of one of the most explosive political scandals of the 20th century being  uncovered only through the hard work and dogged dedication of two young aggressive reporters at The Washington Post, I’ve compiled what I hope to be are some interesting facts and footnotes about Watergate scandal.

• ``Watergate" is an "exclusive" apartment building complex (including shopping and offices) in Washington, D.C. On the sixth floor were the offices of the Democratic National Committee. On June 17, 1972, in response to a call by a security guard, police were alerted and found five men spying inside the Democratic Committee's offices. A total of seven men were arrested and indicted in September by a Federal grand jury and charged with  illegally entering the offices with intent to tap conversations and steal documents.: Those discovered in the offices, included: James McCord, Jr., Bernard L. Barker, Frank Sturgis, Eugenio R. Martinez, Virgillio R. Gonzales; E. Howard Hunt Jr. and G. Gordon Liddy. Of the seven, Hunt and McCord were charged with intercepting conversations.

A Footnote: The $80 a week security guard, Frank Wills, who alerted police to the burglaries, died on September 27, 2000 at the age of 52 from a brain tumor. [See Obituary] 

• Alfred E. Lewis, staff writer for The Washington Post, first reported on the break-in at the Democratic National headquarters on June 18, 1972:

Published contributions of this first story, included Washington Post Staff Writers Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Bart Barnes, Kirk Scharfenberg, Martin Weil, Claudia Lery, Abbott Combes, and Tim O'Brien.

In The New York Times on June 18, 1972, the break-in story appeared on page 30.

• On June 19, 1972: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein publish their first article on the Watergate affair, in which they name former CIA employee James W. McCord as being a salaried security coordinator for President Nixon’s reelection committee. 

• Executing an article search for ``Richard Nixon'' on NexisDirect from LexisNexis from June 1, 1972 through 2012, shows that there were a total of 483,088 search results: 31,379 from 1972-1980, 184,305 from 1980 through 1999 and 267,404 from 2000 through 2012.

• Searching for articles on  ``Watergate'' on LexisNexis from June 1, 1972 through 2012, shows there were a total of 127, 506 results with 7,959 results from 1972 through 1980, 60,958 from 1980 through 1999, and 58,589 results from 2000 through 2012.

• Searching on WorldCat  which contains more than 271 million items and represents the collections of 72,000 libraries worldwide, shows that on June 10, 2012, there were 7,965 records for ``Richard Nixon''; 4,206 records for ``Watergate'', 3,590 records for the ``Watergate Affair;  while searching for ``Nixon’’ and ``Watergate Affair’’ as a subject, returns 1,396 records.

• According to Bowker's Books in Print Database, as of May 30, 2012, there have been a total of 266 books published about the ``Watergate Affair'', 87 of those books were written in the 1970's, 36 in the 1980's, 60 in the 1990's, 69 from 2000 through 2009, and 14 from 2010 through 2012.

• Even with many U.S. newspapers well staffed, including beefed up bureaus in Washington, the Watergate break-in remained largely a Washington Post story. Former editor of  national news at The Washington Post Ben Bagdikian once estimated that of the ``sixteen bureaus with ten or more correspondents based in Washington, employing a total of 433 reporters, fewer than fifteen were assigned full time to Watergate before the Senate Select Committee began hearings in May 1973.’’

• In November, 1972, President Nixon won reelection with a commanding 61 percent of the vote, carrying 49 states.

• Despite the public outrage over Watergate, through most of 1973, the sluggish economy dominated the polls, and in 1974 the energy crisis was the biggest concern to American voters.  Even after the public confidence in Nixon plummeted during the Senate televised hearings in the summer of 1973, 43 percent of the poll respondents in June 1974 considered Watergate to be "just politics," compared with 48 percent who considered it to be a serious matter.

• Richard Nixon's overall job rating in a Harris Survey fell from 59 percent in March of 1973 to 29 percent in July of 1974.

• A Gallup telephone poll immediately after Nixon's speech showed 79 percent of a national sample believing Nixon did the "best thing" by resigning and just 13 percent thought he should have "stayed.

• On May 31, 2005, (acutally published in July, 2005 of the magazine) America' best kept secret came to a screeching halt when Vanity Fair revealed the identity of ``Deep Throat’’, Woodward and Bernstein’s critical anonymous source in the Watergate investigation. Their coveted source was W. Mark Felt, the associate director of the FBI under President Nixon.

Felt died on September 18, 2008 at age 95.

• The Watergate scandal coined or popularized a number of words and phrases, among them: Saturday night massacre, stonewalling, cover up, dirty tricks, straight arrow, expletive deleted, third-rate burglary, plumbers, Deep Throat, and the Big Enchilda.

• By far, the most popular term associated with Watergate was ``smoking gun’’ a code word for clear evidence of Richard Nixon’s involvement in the cover-up and grounds for impeachment. One of the first references to ``smoking gun’’ is found in The New York Times on July 14, 1974, when Roger Wilkins wrote in his lead paragraph: ``The big question asked over the last few weeks in and around the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing room by committee members who were uncertain about how they felt about impeachment was, ``Where's the smoking gun''?

• William Safire, writing in a January 26, 2003 New York Times article, found two early references to the phrase ``smoking gun.'' On July 31, 1974, Representative Jack Brooks told the impeachment panel that he thought Nixon was guilty of income-tax invasion. Millions of Americans will view this evidence as a so-called ``smoking gun’’ the Texan said. Then on August 5, 1974, the committee released a transcript of a recording of  a meeting on June 23, 1972, capturing White House chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, asking President Nixon, ``You think the thing to do is to get them, the FBI to stop?  Nixon replied, ``Right, fine.'' Representative Barbara Conable of New York, almost without delay said that it ``looked like a smoking gun'' and the recording quickly became known as the ``smoking-gun tape.''

• The word ``plumbers'' a Watergate euphemism for someone who plugs leaks was coined by David Young, who was a Special Assistant at the National Security Council in the Nixon Administration and an Administrative Assistant to Henry Kissinger. According to transcripts from a television interview, Young stumbled upon the ``plumbers’’ while talking with his mother-in-law, who asked him "What are you working on, dear?" Young replied: "Well, I am plugging leaks." She said "Oh how nice, we had carpenter in the family, now we have a plumber."  Young liked the word plumbers so much that he had the word placed on the inside of the door of their office room (no. 16) in the White House. Later, when questioned under oath, Young admitted we called ourselves the ``plumbers.''

• Contrary to popular belief, Bob Woodward's anonymous source, ``Deep Throat’’ never said ``Follow the Money.''  One of the most famous lines in American cinema was actually coined by ``All the President’s Men’’ screenplay writer, William Goldman.  Woodward himself never separated fact from fiction until he was questioned about the quote years ago. So sure the line was indeed uttered by Deep Throat that he rifled through his notes and to his complete amazement-he realized ``Follow the money’’ was nothing more than a Hollywood creation.

• In the Congressional elections after Richard Nixon’s resignation, the Republicans felt the sting of the voter backlash: The Senate lost five, dropping them to only 37 seats to the Democrats 60. The most crushing loss came in the House, where the GOP lost 48 seats, giving the Democrats a strong majority with 291 seats to the Republicans' 144.

• 75 new Democratic members of the House came to Washington in 1975, many of them still in their early 40’s, giving rise to a new label for this new class of idealistic public servants  determined to change the culture of Washington. They were dubbed the ``Watergate Babies'' by the press.  Of those 75 ``Watergate Babies’’, five of them are still in the U.S. Congress 40 years later: Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont): Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) (first elected to the House in 1974) ;  Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana) (first elected in the House in 1974); Rep. George Miller (D-California); and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California).

• In his original review of the motion picture ``All the President's Men'' for The Chicago Sun-Times published on January 1, 1976  , film critic Roger Ebert wrote: ``For all of its technical skill, the movie essentially shows us the same journalistic process several times as it leads closer and closer to an end we already know. The film is long, and would be dull if it weren't for the wizardry of Pakula, his actors, and technicians.''  Vincent Canby, meanwhile, in his April 8, 1976 review in The New York Times, wrote of the film: ``The manners and methods of big-city newspapering, beautifully detailed, contribute as much to the momentum of the film as the mystery that's being uncovered. Maybe even more, since the real excitement of "All The President's Men" is in watching two comparatively inexperienced reporters stumble onto the story of their lives and develop it triumphantly, against all odds.’’  

• There is a perception that the heroic reporting by Woodward and Bernstein during Watergate led to a sharp spike in enrollment in journalism schools throughout the country.  Unfortunately, no such hard data supports this assumption. Writing in ``Pulitzer School’’ (Columbia University Press, 2003) James Boylan writes: ``A legend that has persisted for thirty years insists that journalism school applications spiked upward after the Watergate exposures.  No such thing: the rise had begun six years before--Columbia had its first big surge from 1963 to 1965--for reasons still not well explained, and continued through the 1980s, at Columbia and elsewhere."

• Though Woodward and Bernstein might not been the direct cause of young people selecting journalism as their chosen career field, their remarkable Watergate reporting clearly helped set a new standard in American journalism. Historian James AuCoin, for example, writing in ``Journalism History’’ (1995), wrote: ``Buried by generations of conservative newspaper publishers and complacent reporters, investigative reporting would not experience a revival until the end of the 1960's, beginning with skeptical reporting on the war in Vietnam and culminating just a few years later in the Watergate disclosures of Woodward and Bernstein, which suddenly gave new muckrakers the status of celebrities.''

• A Footnote: Lincoln Steffens, a New York reporter, who specialized in  investigating government and political corruption at the dawn of the 20th century,  first talked about ``journalistic investigations'' in 1906; and according to Editor & Publisher in a December 8, 1952 article: ``Newspapers must turn more and more to great reporters. They will be known as investigative reporters.’’ ….. `` Investigative reporting has as its goal the stimulation of sufficient indignation to force a new code of ethics on the public officeholder.''

• A graph plotted by Google on their ``Ngram Viewer’ shows how interest in investigative reporting rose, beginning in the late 1960’s. Plotting out the evolution of ``government mistrust’’ shows a similar increase of interest during the same time period.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
June 13, 2012

***

Memorable Watergate Quotes:

• ``A third-rate burglary attempt''
-Ronald L. Ziegler, press conference, Key Biscayne, Florida, June 19, 1972, characterizing the break-in of the Democratic National Headquarters two days earlier.

• ``Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published''
-John N. Mitchell, telephone interview, September 29, 1972 as quoted in ``All the President's Men'' (1974) by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. Bernstein was checking a lead accusing Mitchell of controlling a secret fund that financed the Watergate break-in and other political espionage operations.

• `The essential question is simply put: What did the president know and when did he know it?''
-Howard H. Baker, Jr. Senate Watergate Committee hearings, June 25, 1973

• ``I'm not a crook''
-Richard Nixon, press conference, Disney World, November 11, 1973

• ``I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body.''
-Richard Nixon announcing his resignation as president, August 8, 1974

• ``Our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works''
-Gerald Ford, inaugural statement upon succeeding Richard M. Nixon as president, August 9, 1974

• ``I screwed up terribly in what was a little thing and it became a big thing’’......``I brought myself down. I gave them a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I'd have done the same thing.''

-Richard M. Nixon, television interview with David Frost, May 4, 1977

Source: The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations

***

Key Dates of the Watergate Affair

June 17, 1972: James McCord and four others are arrested by Washington police inside the Democrats' Watergate headquarters. Police confiscate cameras, eavesdropping equipment, and $2,300 in cash with serial numbers in sequence.

September 15, 1972: G. Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt and five others caught inside the Watergate on June 17th are indicted by a federal grand jury.

October 10, 1972: The Washington Post reports that the FBI have established that the bugging of the Democratic headquarters originated from a ``massive campaign of political spying and sabotage’’, which was directed by officials of the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the President. 

October 25, 1972: Based on information from federal investigators, The Washington Post reveals that H.R. Haldeman was one of five high-ranking presidential assistants authorized to make payments from a secret Nixon campaign cash fund used to finance a spying and sabotage campaign against Democratic presidential candidates.

February 7, 1973: The start of the Watergate investigation officially kicks off when the Senate votes unanimously to create the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities under the leadership of Senator Sam Ervin Jr.

April 30, 1973: John Erlichman, Haldeman, and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst resign. Nixon fires John Dean.

May 17, 1973: Televised Watergate hearings begin.

October 13, 1973: The House Judiciary Committee considers procedures for impeachment.

November 14, 1973: The White House learns there is an 18 1/2 minute gap in the June 20, 1972 tape of a meeting between Haldeman and Nixon.

January 15, 1974: Technical experts determine that the 18 1/2-minute gap in the June 20th tape was erased manually.

February 6, 1974: The House votes 410 to 4 to proceed with impeachment, including giving the House Judiciary Committee broad subpoena powers.

March 1, 1974: Seven key members of the Nixon administration, including John Mitchell, Haldeman, Erlichman and Chuck Colson are indicted by a grand jury on charges of conspiring to cover up the Watergate burglary. Nixon is named as an ``unindicted coconspirator''

April 30, 1974: The White House releases 1,239 pages of edited transcripts involving White House discussion on Watergate and other White House business.

May 9, 1974: The House Judiciary Committee begins formal hearings on the possible impeachment of Richard Nixon.

July 24, 1974: In the United States vs. Nixon, the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous decision ruled executive power was something to be determined by the courts, not the president. Nixon, the court ruled, will be required to turn over the tapes

July 24, 1974: The House Judiciary Committee begins debate on articles of impeachment against Nixon.

July 27, 1974: The House Judiciary Committee on a 27-11 vote, recommends Nixon be impeached on grounds that he obstructed the investigation of the Watergate break-in and was equally complicit in the cover-up. Other articles of impeachment are voted on again on July 29 and July 30th.

August 5, 1974: Three new transcripts are released by the White House; the most damaging is the one from June 23, 1972 between Haldeman and Nixon which reveals Nixon personally ordered the cover-up within six days after the break-in of the Democrat's national headquarters.

August 7, 1974: Nixon meets with Senate Minority Leader High Scott, House Minority Leader John Rhodes and Senator Barry Goldwater who inform him the cards are clearly stacked against him: specifically, that he only has about 15 votes against impeachment in the Senate and approximately 10 votes against impeachment in the House.

August 8, 1974: Nixon announces his resignation on nationwide television, which became effective at noon, the next day, August 9th.

September 8, 1974: President Gerald Ford grants Nixon ``full, free, and absolute pardon'' for any crimes he may have committed as president.

-Bill Lucey

Source: ``The Watergate Crisis’’ By Michael Genoves (Guides to Historic Events of the Twentieth Century [Greenwood Press]; Washington Post Archives.

***
All the President’s Men 40 Years Later: A Biographical Update:

• Harry Robbins Haldeman or H.R. "Bob" Haldeman; Richard M. Nixon's White House chief of staff was convicted of conspiracy and obstruction of justice, serving 18 months at the Lompoc Federal Correctional Complex (FCC) located 60 miles northwest of Santa Barbara. After being released from prison (on parole) on December 20, 1978, Nixon’s right hand man became vice president of the David H. Murdoch real estate development company. He died of cancer, age 67, at his home in Santa Barbara, California on November 12, 1993. [See Obituary ] 

• John Daniel Ehrlichman was counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon. Convicted on January 1, 1975 of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury in the Watergate affair, he served a total of 18 months from the Federal prison camp at Stafford, Arizona. After prison, he tried his hand at writing while living in Santa Fe., N.M., later serving as senior vice president of Law Environmental, an engineering company in Atlanta with a concentration on hazardous-waste handling.

He died on February 14, 1999 at his home in Atlanta while suffering from diabetes. He was 73. [See Obituary]

• John Newton Mitchell, Attorney General of the United States from 1969 to 1972 under President Richard Nixon, was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury for his role in the Watergate break-in and cover-up, serving 19 months at the Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, a minimum security prison.

Upon his release from prison on February 21, 1975 for medical reasons, the former attorney general told reporters gathered around him: ``From henceforth, don't call me. I'll call you."

According to his obituary, after being released from prison, he lived an obscure life in his Georgetown home, working occasionally as a consultant.  On November 9, 1988, Mitchell collapsed from a heart attack on the sidewalk in front of 2812 N St., N.W., Georgetown, Washington, D.C.  He was 75.
[See Obituary]

• Jeb Stuart Magruder served in the White House until the spring of 1971, later managing the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP) as Deputy Director, and assistant to CRP Director and Attorney General of the United States John N. Mitchell.

On May 21, 1974, Magruder began serving seven months in a Federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania for his role in the botched burglary of Watergate and the following cover-up.

After prison, he earned a Master of Divinity from the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1981, and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. He served as associate minister at the First Presbyterian Church in Burlingame, California and First Community Church of Columbus, Ohio.  In 1990, Magruder became senior pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Lexington, Kentucky.

• Maurice Stans, who served as the finance chairman for the Committee to Re-elect the President, working for the re-election of Richard Nixon, was indicted on 10 counts of perjury and conspiracy in connection with a $200,000 contribution from fugitive financier Robert Vesco. He was acquitted in 1974.

Soon after the Watergate trials, he wrote a book, “The Terrors of Justice.”, and later another book followed: “One of the President’s Men.”

Stans died on April 14, 1998, age 90, after suffering a heart attack at the Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California.[See Obituary]

• Charles "Chuck" Wendell Colson, a Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973, who compiled the infamous “enemies list” of individuals considered threats to the White House  while orchestrating schemes to discredit Daniel Ellsberg, (the former United States Pentagon analyst suspected of leaking a top-secret history of the Vietnam War to the New York Times and The Washington Post), was released from prison (on parole) in January 1975, after serving seven months in Maxwell Correctional Facility in Alabama for conspiring to cover up the Watergate burglary.

After prison, Nixon’s professed ``hatchet man’’ became an Evangelical Christian leader and cultural commentator and strong advocate for prison reform. Colson founded the Prison Fellowship in 1976; and in 1983, he pushed for bipartisan, legislative reforms in the U.S. criminal justice system.

On April 21, 2012, Colson died from a brain hemorrhage.’’ He was 80. [See Obituary}

• John Wesley Dean III who served as White House Counsel to United States President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973, spent four months in prison for his role in the Watergate cover-up on charges of obstruction of justice.

Dean, now a fierce critic of the Republican Party (who advocated the impeachment of George W. Bush), lives in Beverly Hills, Calif. with his wife, Maureen and is currently an author, columnist, and commentator on U.S. politics. He’s also an investment banker.

• James Walter McCord, Jr. a former CIA agent, later an electronics expert in the Watergate burglaries was charged with eight counts of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping.  He was sentenced to four months in jail.

In 1974, he published a book entitled, "A Piece of Tape -- The Watergate Story: Fact and Fiction."

McCord currently resides in Rockville, Md.

• Egil Krogh, head of the "Special Investigation Unit" in the White House, formed a secret operation charged with fixing leaks, an organization that came to be known as the ``plumbers’’ and was the one who approved the September 1971 burglary of the office of Lewis Fielding, the psychiatrist treating Daniel Ellsberg.  G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt carried out the actual break-in.

On November 30, 1973, Krogh pled guilty to federal charges of conspiring to violate Fielding's civil rights and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. He was sentenced to two to six years in prison, but was released after 4 ½ months. 

After being readmitted to practice law, he became a partner at Krogh & Leonard in Seattle and currently provides legal, consulting, and mediation services to energy and other clients.

In 2007, Krogh wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times, describing ``the meltdown of personal integrity’’ which had poisoned the Nixon White House.
 
Krogh’s brother-in-law, Peter Horton, is the director and executive producer of the ABC television series Grey's Anatomy.

• George Gordon Battle Liddy, better known as G. Gordon Liddy, was the chief operative for the White House Plumbers unit during Richard Nixon's presidency.

Along with E. Howard Hunt, Liddy carried out the Watergate burglaries of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building in May and June 1972.

On January 30, 1973, Liddy began serving a 20-year prison sentence for his role in the Watergate break-in, for conspiracy in the Daniel Ellsberg case and for contempt of court,, but on April 12, 1977, President Jimmy Carter commuted his sentence to eight years ``in the interest of fairness’’, so the president reasoned, based on the limited sentences of others convicted in the Watergate scandal. Liddy became eligible for parole on July 9, 1977 and was released on September 7, 1977 having served a total of four and a-half years of prison time.

Liddy is currently a radio talk show host and frequently a guest panelist for Fox News Channel.

• Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. was an American intelligence officer and writer. Hunt served for many years as a CIA officer. In addition to Liddy and others, Hunt was one of the Nixon White House "plumbers" — a secret team of operatives charged with fixing "leaks". Hunt and Liddy engineered the first Watergate burglary, and other undercover operations for Nixon. For his complicity in the Watergate scandal, Hunt was convicted of burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping, and beginning on April 25, 1975, served 33 months in prison at the low-security Federal Prison Camp at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.

After prison, Hunt moved to Miami, married a schoolteacher and started a second family. He died in South Florida of complications from pneumonia on January 23, 2007 [See Obituary]

• Donald Henry Segretti, a former political operative for the Committee to Re-elect the President (Nixon) during the early 1970s, ran a campaign of ``dirty tricks’’ against the Democrats, with his work being paid for by Herb Kalmbach, Nixon's lawyer, from presidential campaign re-election funds. Prior to April 7, 1972, there was no requirement that contributors to political campaigns had to be disclosed.

In 1974, Segretti pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of distributing illegal and forged campaign literature and was sentenced to six months in prison, but was released after serving four months.

In the 1976 film ``All the President's Men’’, Segretti was played by Robert Walden.

In 2000, he served as co-chair of John McCain's presidential campaign in Orange County, California.

-Bill Lucey

****

 Watergate Resources to Keep in Mind:

• Watergate Trial Conversations (Nixon Presidential Library & Museum)

• The Washington Post Watergate Special Section

• Records of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force

• Richard M. Nixon: The Watergate Tapes (University of Berkeley)

• The Obama Administration:  Nixon Library Now Telling Full Watergate Story

• PBS American Experience: Nixon

• The Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers (Harry Ransom Center: The University of Texas at Austin)

• A Question & Answer with Bob Woodward (posted on www.bobwoodward.com  

 

38 Years Ago, Impeachment Hearings Against RMN Begins

 

38 years ago, on May 9, 1974, at approximately 1: 10 p.m. (EST), impeachment hearings against Richard Nixon began before the 93rd Congress of the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by New Jersey Democrat Peter J. Rodino in room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building. 

Specifically, the committee began considering evidence related to the President’s possible involvement in the Watergate break-in and cover-up.

Prior to this, on March 18, 1974, Federal District Judge John J. Sirica ordered that the grand jury report of their 21 month investigation related to Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal be turned over to the House impeachment inquiry.

Over the next 11 weeks, the committee heard testimony (behind closed doors) which revealed a pattern of misuse of presidential power. 

A Footnote: According to the New York Times, only 11 citizens were able to squeeze into the packed committee room on May 9, 1974 with most of the space occupied by 90 news reporters, 43 aides or guests of the members, 10 committee staff assistants as well as three live television cameras.

The Watergate investigation officially kicked off on February 7, 1973, when the Senate created the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (chaired by Senator Sam Ervin, Jr., a former North Carolina Supreme Court justice) to investigate campaign activities related to the presidential election of 1972. The White House, meanwhile, launched the Watergate Special Prosecution Force under Archibald Cox in May, 1973.

During the investigations, Nixon refused to turn over 64 tapes to special Watergate prosecutor, Leon Jaworski on grounds of executive privilege. On July 24, 1974 in United States vs. Nixon , the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous decision ruled executive power was something to be determined by the courts, not the president; and furthermore in an absence of a legitimate claim of national security, executive privilege could not be used to withhold evidence from a grand jury about possible criminal actions.  Nixon, the court ruled, will be required to turn over the tapes.

A Footnote: According to Ruth P. Morgan, writing in the Presidential Studies Quarterly (Winter, 1996), ``Another immediate impact [of Watergate] was the rush to judgments by the other institutions of government.  Howard Ball has effectively argued that the Supreme Court, in choosing to fulfill their "duty" to end the Watergate crisis, rushed to judgment too quickly and should have spent a great deal more reflection and analysis on ruling a constitutional privilege of executive privilege before creating it by precedent.’’

On July 27, the Judiciary Committee adopted the first article of Impeachment by a vote of 27-11, charging Nixon with obstructing the investigation of the Watergate break-in; two days later, the committee adopted the second Article of Impeachment with misuse of power and violation of the oath of office; and by July 30th, the House Judiciary Committee adopted the third Article of Impeachment, charging Nixon with failure to comply with the House subpoenas.

On August 5th, in compliance with the Supreme Court order, Nixon released conversation transcripts and three tapes in what became known as the ``Smoking Gun’’ so named because of its incriminating conversations, revealing Nixon not only knew of the break-in, but ordered the cover up and directed the FBI to abandon its investigation of the burglary.  The transcripts of the tapes showed three conversations between Nixon and his White House Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman six days after the break-in. The most damaging of the tapes released was the one from June 23, 1972 in which Nixon discussed using the CIA to block the FBI’s investigation of the burglary, which clearly demonstrated the burglary had become linked to the White House and Nixon had attempted to use federal agencies to obstruct justice.

When this new damaging evidence surfaced, 11 Republicans on the Judiciary who previously voted against Impeachment announced they would change their votes, giving Nixon little choice but to resign the office, which he did on August 9, 1974, becoming the first U.S. president to do so.

Prior to his resignation, Richard Milhous Nixon served in the office of the presidency for five years and 201 days. His successor, Gerald R. Ford, pardoned him on September 8, 1974 for ``all offenses against the United States’’ during his presidency. Nixon died on April 22, 1994, four days after suffering a debilitating stroke at his Park Ridge New Jersey home. He was 81. (See The New York Times Obituary ).

The Watergate break-in first became public when The Washington Post reported (June 18, 1972) the arrest of five men (one a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency) on charges of second-degree burglary in the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the sixth floor of the plush Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.

-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
May 9, 2012

 
***
Web Sites to Keep in Mind:

Watergate Timeline, May 9, 1974-September 8, 1974 (Gerald R. Ford Library & Museum) 

Opening Statements and Supporting Evidence Presented to the House Judiciary Committee related to the Watergate Scandal

 Richard M. Nixon: The Watergate Tapes (University of California, Berkeley)

The Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers (The University of Texas at Austin)

The Watergate Files-Film Reels (Gerald R. Ford Library & Museum) 

U.S. Presence in Afghanistan: 10-Year Scorecard

Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker

Lara Logan, CBS News

Since the Koran burning last month, U.S. troops urinating on the bodies of fallen Taliban fighters, and the killing of Afghan civilians in Kandahar by Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, seven Americans and two Britons have been killed by Afghan forces in Afghanistan, only compounding American voters sense of urgency to get out of this troublesome region, the sooner the better.

A New York Times poll  published Monday showed just how disillusioned Americans have become over the war, with 69 percent of the respondents saying we shouldn’t be at war in Afghanistan, a marked increase from 53 percent just four months ago.

The poll also found that 68 percent thought the fighting was going “somewhat badly” or “very badly,” compared with 42 percent who held such a belief in November.

After 10 years of military engagement in Afghanistan, with a majority of U.S. troops scheduled to be withdrawn by the end of the 2014, many are beginning to question what has been accomplished in the region and whether the Afghans will be able to go it alone once the U.S. passes the baton to them less than two years from now.

If you happened to peek in on the Charlie Rose show recently (March 12th) and listened to the harsh assessment of the progress made in Afghanistan as put forward by Dexter Filkins, of the 'New Yorker' magazine, Lara Logan of CBS News, Jere Van Dyk of CBS News, Seth Jones of the RAND Corporation and Zalmay Khalilzad of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, you might have come away not only disappointed by the lack of progress, but also deeply cynical wondering exactly what the U.S. forces have been doing in Afghanistan for the last 10 years?

Filkins told Rose that as of last year, there was one (yes, you heard right, exactly one) Afghan battalion that can operate independently.  ``It’s fiction to believe’’, Filkins told Mr. Rose, ``that the U.S. can leave Afghans to fight and function for themselves….what we’re really talking about is another decade before Afghans can operate independently.’’

And with the Afghan army unable to stand on its own two feet once the U.S. pulls out at the end of 2014, civil war will in all likelihood break out, most of Rose guests agreed.

If the U.S. doesn’t leave some kind of U.S. forces behind after 2014, Zalmay Khalilzad of the Center for Strategic and International Studies is convinced that the U.S. might only have to go back again. ``We have seen this movie before’’, Khalilzad said. ``Extremist groups will come and we (the U.S) would have to bomb Afghanistan from afar.’’

During the interview, Lara Logan of CBS News made the most compelling argument that it doesn’t really matter what has happened or hasn’t happened inside Afghanistan, the biggest problem is that sanctuaries still exist inside Pakistan, and according to Logan, ``the U.S. hasn’t removed the fundamental condition which gave rise to 9/11.’’

Logan additionally argued, persuasively I might add, that even 10 more years in Afghanistan would be counterproductive since it will more than likely only produce more isolated incidents, similar to the Koran burning and shooting of Afghan civilians. Those isolated incidents, Logan argues, albeit the exception rather than the rule, is nonetheless ``defining the U.S. image in the eyes of Afghans.’’ All the wells, schools and other infrastructure projects which have been built by the U.S. doesn’t matter, Logan says, `` because it doesn’t get reported.’’

So to hear Rose’s guests tell it, after 10 years, the U.S. has three huge problems remaining in Afghanistan: a dysfunctional (and corrupt) Afghan government, sanctuaries (extremists) remaining in Pakistan, and the Taliban just ``waiting to run out the clock’’, as Filkins described it, biding time, just waiting for the U.S. to withdraw so they can reclaim power in the region.

It was not a pretty picture as described by Mr. Rose’s guests.

Since the war is a decade old, I thought I would compile a statistical scorecard of the gains made by U.S. forces since the war began on October 7, 2001.

Bill Lucey
[email protected]
March 29, 2012

*****
10 year scorecard: U.S. Presence in Afghanistan

How much money has the U.S. spent on Operation Enduring Freedom?
$413.2 billion from the Department of Defense and $25.1 from USAID (current dollars).  There is also $4.2 billion in Veterans money devoted to Afghanistan to date, bringing the grand total to approximately $442.5 billion current dollars.

According to the Congressional Research Service, through the end of FY2011, the United States has provided over $67 billion in assistance to Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, of which about $39 billion has been to equip and train Afghan forces.

How many casualties has there been in Afghanistan?
Total Deaths: Afghanistan only-1,794; other locations-109 with 3 DOD civilian casualties, bringing the total to 1,906 as of March 28, 2012.

How many journalists have been killed in Afghanistan?
Since the Committee to Protect Journalists began tracking this, 24 journalists have been killed in Afghanistan.

What’s the total number of foreign forces in Afghanistan?

Approximately, 131.000, including about 90,000 U.S. and 40,500 non-U.S. partner forces. (U.S. total was: 25,000 in 2005; 16,000 in 2003; 5,000 in 2002 (International Security Assistance Force, ISAF); totals were: 12,000 in 2005; and 6,000 in 2003.) U.S. forces are deployed at 88 bases in Afghanistan.

How big is the Afghan National Army (ANA)?

As of January 2012, about 176, 350 with 195,000 planned by November 2012. There are about 2,000 trained per month. 5,300 are commando forces, who are trained by U.S. Special Forces. ANA privates are paid about $200 per month; while generals make about $750 per month.

What is the approximate size of the Afghan National Police (ANP?)

As of January 2012, about 143, 000, with goal of 157,000 by November 2012. 21,000 are Border Police; 3,800+ counter-narcotics police; 14,400 Afghan National Civil Order Police (ANCOP).

How many members of Al Qaeda still remain in Afghanistan?

According to General Petraeus, as of April 2011, there were less than 100 or so with a small number of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

How many Taliban fighters are there in Afghanistan?

According to both U.S. military and Afghan estimates in mid-2011, up to 25,000, although General John Allen, the top US commander in Afghanistan, has gone on record as saying he believes the numbers are much lower. Other remaining factions include: 3,000-Haqqani and 1,000-Hikmatyar.

Approximately how many military attacks are there every day in Afghanistan?
Based on testimony from Department of Defense officials, there were more than 1,500 per month in 2010; compared to 800 per month in 2007; and 400 in 2005.

What’s the population of Afghanistan?
More than 28 million; the population of Kabul is 3 million, up from 500,000 in the Taliban era.

What is the literacy rate?
28% of population over 15 years of age: 43% of males; 12.6% of female.

What is the unemployment rate?
Unemployment rate is about 40%.

The percentage of Afghans who have access to health care?
65% with basic health services access-compared to 8% during Taliban era

Has the judicial or court system improved in recent years?
Since the fall of the Taliban, there have been 1,000 judges, including 200 women trained.

How many Afghans have access to electricity?
15%-20% of the population, with much of it imported from neighboring states.

How many cell phone subscribers?
About 6.5 million, up from negligible amounts during Taliban era.

Sources: CIA, The World Factbook; The Brookings Institution, Congressional Research Service, U.S. government official testimony.

Top 10 non-U.S. Donors to Afghanistan? ($ in millions)
Japan: 3,150
European Union 2,880
Asian Development Bank 2,270
Britain 2,220
World Bank 2,140
Germany 2,130
India 1,515
Canada 1,255
Netherlands 775
Norway 745
Source: Afghanistan Ministry of Finance: Development Cooperation Report, 2010.

Coalition Deaths by Country:
U.K.: 407
Canada: 158
France: 82
Germany: 53
Italy: 46
Denmark: 42
Poland: 35
Spain: 34
Australia: 32
Netherlands: 25
Turkey: 14
Romania: 19
Georgia: 10
NATO: 10
Norway: 10
Estonia: 9
Hungry: 7
Czech: 5
Sweden: 5
New Zealand: 5
Latvia: 3
Jordan: 2
Portugal: 2
Finland: 2
Albania: 1
Belgium: 1
Lithuania: 1
South Korea: 1
Source:  iCasualties.org (updated March 28, 2012)

Key Players in Afghanistan:
The Pashtuns
Ethnic Pashtuns (pronounced POSH-toons, sometimes referred to as Pathans—pah-TAHNS), as the largest single ethnicity, have historically asserted a “right to rule.” Pashtuns are about 42% of the population and, with few exceptions, have governed Afghanistan.
President Hamid  Karzai is a Durrani Pashtun. His cabinet and inner advisory circle has come to be progressively dominated by Pashtuns, both Ghilzai and Durrani, which has largely minimized the advisory input of the other communities.

The Tajiks
Tajiks are the second-most numerous community, composing an estimated 25% of the population, and are the core of the “Northern Alliance” grouping that is opposed to but often works amicably with Karzai.

The Hazaras
Many Pashtuns are said to be increasingly resentful of the Hazara Shiite minority (about 10% of the population) that is advancing economically and politically through education; the Hazaras have historically been looked down upon by the Pashtuns, who have tended to employ Hazaras as domestic workers and other lower and lower middle class occupations. These jealousies could have been a factor in the December 6, 2011, bombings of Hazaras in three cities, killing 60, while they were visiting their mosques to celebrate the Shiite holy day of Ashura. A Pakistan-based militant group, Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, claimed responsibility—possibly in an effort to stir up sectarian conflict in Afghanistan. Afghan Shiite officials said such tactics would not work, as there is no inclination toward sectarian conflict in Afghanistan.

The Uzbeks
Uzbeks, like the Hazaras, are about 10%. The Uzbek community is Sunni Muslim and speaks a language akin to Turkish, as well as Dari. The most well-known Uzbek leader in Afghanistan is Abdul Rashid Dostam, who was allied with Soviet occupation forces but later defected and helped bring down the Communist regime in Afghanistan in April 1992. Because of their alliance with the Soviet Union during the occupation period, many Uzbeks in Afghanistan are leftwing and highly secular.

Source: Congressional Research Service

***
Web Sites to Keep in Mind:

U.S. Casualties (updated daily)

DOD Dictionary of Military Terms

Military Casualty Information by Branch of Service: (Casualty information broken down by type and month)

Military Personnel Statistics

Casualty Timeline (by month) from October 7, 2001 Through March 5, 2012

U.S. and Coalition Casualties in Afghanistan (CNN)

Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission

Afghanistan International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)

Afghanistan Map: National Geographic Society: