November 23, 1936: Life Magazine Premieres

November 23, 1936: Life magazine begins publication. Henry Luce, publisher of Time magazine, bought the rights to the name Life, and used it as the title of a picture-based news magazine.

The first cover showed the Fort Peck Dam in Montana, photographed by Margaret Bourke-White, one of the few well-known female journalists of the era.  The first series of photographs were the sequence of the birth of a baby, the last showing the doctor holding the baby up by the legs, with the caption, "LIFE BEGINS." Ha, ha.

The red border made Life iconic. And some of the imagines contained within became so as well. The best-known was Alfred Eisenstaedt's photo of a soldier kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day, August 14, 1945.

Life followed Luce's personal views. The son of Protestant missionaries, he was born in China while they were stationed there. As a result, he was a very conservative Republican and an anti-Communist with a strong interest in China. As a result, he supported the Republican candidate for President in every election, and used his magazines, including Life, to push for the overthrow of Red China after 1949.

Fortunately, Luce hated fascism in equal measure, and so, in 1940, he wanted to make sure that the Republican nominee for President would be someone who would stand up to Adolf Hitler, in case, as Luce would have otherwise preferred, that candidate beat FDR as he ran for a 3rd term.

So he plucked Wendell Willkie, a businessman with no political experience, out of near obscurity, and promoted him relentlessly before the Republican Convention. More than any other person, Luce made Willkie a potential President; more than any other publication, Life made him one. But FDR won, and Luce put him on the next cover, with the caption "THE WINNER." He included a quote from Republican newspaper baron William Allen White: "We who hate your gaudy guts salute you."

Luce remained a staunch Republican. In 1950, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the leading General of World War II, was appointed the president of Columbia University in New York. Luce put him on the cover of Life, with the caption, "PRESIDENT EISENHOWER." It was a shot across the bow at President Harry Truman, who had succeeded FDR, and ended up not running in 1952. Eisenhower won 2 terms.

The rising cost of ink and paper, the continued growth of television news, and the 1967 death of guiding light Luce, led to the magazine's downfall. Time, Inc. decided to stop publishing life on a weekly basis at the end of 1972. But in 1978, it was brought back as a monthly, and occasionally issued special commemorative issues. That held until the May 2000 issue.

The baby from the 1st issue? Fittingly, he grew up to become a journalist. And his name was appropriate to his profession: George Story. He suffered a heart attack and died on April 4, 2000, allowing his obituary to be printed in the last issue, with the headline, "A Life Ends."

*

November 23, 1936 was a Monday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And while the NHL season was underway, no games were scheduled. So there were no scores on this historic day.

November 22, 1875: Vice President Henry Wilson Dies

November 22, 1875: Henry Wilson dies in Washington, suffering the latest in a series of strokes that had left him him in ill health for his entire term in office.

President Ulysses S. Grant was good at some things, but picking Vice Presidents was not one of them. In 1868, he ran with Schuyler Colfax, a Representative from Indiana and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who had to drop out of the run for re-election in 1872, when it was revealed he was one of the politicians caught up in the Crédit Mobilier railroad-construction scandal.

So Grant and the Republican Party turned to Wilson. Born on February 16, 1812 in Farmington, New Hampshire, as Jeremiah Jones Coldbath, he was indentured to a nearby farmer, giving him a lifelong hatred of slavery. When he turned 21, in 1833, he legally changed his name. He chose the name Henry Wilson, inspired either by a biography of a Philadelphia teacher, or a portrait from a book on English clergymen.

He couldn't find work in New Hampshire, and walked all the way to Natick, Massachusetts, where he trained as a shoemaker. He made enough money as one to go to law school. He was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in the Whig Party's William Henry Harrison landslide of 1840. He was elected to the Massachusetts Senate in 1843, and again in 1850, serving as its President.

In 1854, having become one of the founders of the Republican Party, he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. In 1861, just before the American Civil War began, he was named Chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee (now known as the Committed on Armed Services). In 1866, he wrote the bill that became the Civil Rights Act of 1866. He seemed an ideal running mate for Grant in 1872.

But on February 13, 1873, as Vice President-elect, Wilson was implicated in Crédit Mobilier. In testimony before a Senate committee, he admitted that he had bought stock from Representatives Oakes Ames of Massachusetts, the leading figure in the scandal, but developed concerns about the propriety of the whole thing, and returned the money. Ames backed this testimony up. Congress took no action against Wilson, who remained popular, but censured Ames.

Both men soon suffered strokes: Ames died from his on May 5, while Wilson suffered his on May 19, just 76 days into his term. His health improved somewhat, and he was able to preside over the Senate. But he wasn't able to give speeches: He was expected to do on December 16, 1873 in Boston, on the 100th Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, but, while he attended, he did not give a speech.

In March 1874, he attended the funeral of his former Senate colleague from Massachusetts, the great abolitionist Charles Sumner. On February 27, 1875, he cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate for the Civil Rights Act of 1875 -- which turned out to be the last law to bear the name "Civil Rights Act" until 1957.

On November 10, 1875, he suffered a stroke at the Capitol. His health soon improved to the point where it was thought he had completely recovered. However, on November 22, back at the Capitol, he had another stroke, and died. His remains were accorded the honor of lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda. He was buried at Old Dell Park in Natick, a town now best known as the hometown of football quarterback Doug Flutie.

Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, with Wilson's death, the man next in line for the Presidency from Wilson's death on November 22, 1875 until the Inauguration of the next President and Vice President on March 4, 1877 was the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Thomas Ferry of Michigan.

Schuyler Colfax lived on until 1885, outliving Henry Wilson by a little over 9 years, and almost outliving Grant.

*

November 22, 1875 was a Monday. There were no scores on this historic day: Baseball season was over, football was in midweek, basketball hadn't yet been invented, and hockey barely existed.

November 21, 1899: The Death of Garret Hobart

November 21, 1899: Garret Hobart dies of heart disease in Paterson, Passaic County, New Jersey. He was only 55 years old.

He was also the Vice President of the United States -- the only one, so far, from New Jersey. A statue of him stands outside Paterson's City Hall.

The native of Long Branch, Monmouth County, on the Jersey Shore – where President James Garfield died 2 months after being shot in 1881 – had led both houses of the State legislature, as Speaker of the Assembly and as President of the Senate. He was Chairman of the State's Republican Party from 1880 to 1891. He was chosen to run for Vice President on the Republican ticket with William McKinley in 1896.

Hobart's death left the Vice Presidency vacant until Inauguration Day 1901: Until the 25th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1967, there was no legal mechanism for replacing the Vice President until the next Presidential election. Had he lived, Hobart would have been re-elected with McKinley in 1900, and then, upon McKinley's death by assassination on September 14, 1901, Hobart would have become the 26th President of the United States.

Instead, Theodore Roosevelt was elected Vice President in 1900, and became one of the most influential Presidents in the country's history, while Hobart has been forgotten. Had he become President, most of TR's progressive reforms probably wouldn't have happened, and there might have been a more fractious America in the early 20th Century.

Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1886, from Hobart's death on November 21, 1899 until McKinley's 2nd term on March 4, 1901, the man next in line for the Presidency was the Secretary of State, John Hay.

John Hay

Hay, who had been involved in Republican Administrations since Abraham Lincoln's, never had to worry about that. He continued to serve as Secretary of State under Roosevelt, until his own death on July 1, 1905.

*

November 21, 1899 was a Tuesday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. Basketball barely existed, and hockey only did so on an amateur level. So there were no scores on this historic day. 

November 19, 1955: National Review Is First Published

November 19, 1955: The weekly magazine National Review is first published by its editor, William F. Buckley Jr.

Modern American conservatism, from Senator Joseph R. McCarthy onward, has been based on lies and hysterics. Buckley tried to change that. But, as is so often the case, telling the truth got him into just as much trouble.

Even his name wasn't originally correct: When born on November 24, 1925 -- 4 days after an eventual ideological opponent, Robert F. Kennedy -- in Manhattan, it was with the name William Francis Buckley. At some point, it was changed to William Frank Buckley Jr.

William Frank Buckley Sr. was a lawyer and an oil developer, whose work took him and his family to Mexico, and when it was time to send his son to his first school, it was a boarding school in Paris. Thus, he spoke Spanish first, French second, and English third. Which seems odd for someone who became so skilled with the English language, and seemed to have such a "patrician" accent.

"Bill" Buckley was an officer in the U.S. Army during World War II, but was never transferred off U.S. soil. He attended Yale University, where both its joys and its frustrations would serve him well. He served 2 years in the early CIA, which helped to inspire his later spy novels. His character Blackford Oakes was, basically, an upper-class American ripoff of James Bond.

Buckley married Patricia Taylor, and settled on an estate (they called it a "farm," perhaps for tax purposes, as rich people sometimes do) in Sharon, Connecticut, far enough from Midtown Manhattan (100 miles) to be isolated, but close enough to be near the corridors of power. Despite being an old-style Catholic and 1 of 10 siblings, he had only 1 child, a son named Christopher, who also became an acclaimed author.

In 1951, William F. Buckley Jr. wrote his 1st book, God and Man at Yale -- known thereafter to the conservative movement by its initials, GAMAY. He attacked several officials and professors at the school as "leftists," including McGeorge Bundy, who would go on to become National Security Adviser to 2 Democratic Presidents.

In a review titled "The Attack on Yale" for the November 1951 issue of The Atlantic, Bundy wrote: "In the end Mr. Buckley's indictment of Yale's economics texts turns out to be a self-indictment. This chapter shows him to be a twisted and ignorant young man whose personal views of economics would have seemed reactionary to Mark Hanna." (Hanna was the Senator from Ohio who managed the conservative Republican campaigns of President William McKinley, who died half a century earlier.) This was in Part I of Bundy's review. Part II began with "The worst is yet to come."

In 1955, with several fellow reactionaries -- including L. Brent Bozell Jr. (who had married Bill's sister, Patricia Buckley, and whose son, L. Brent Bozell III, had just been born, and would later write for the magazine), Russell Kirk (who had published the anthology The Conservative Mind 2 years earlier), Revilo P. Oliver (the noted historian's name is a palindrome, reading the same forwards and backwards), and Whittaker Chambers (the ex-Communist ex-editor for Time magazine, whose testimony had sent Alger Hiss to prison) -- Buckley founded National Review.

(Its 1st drama critic was 23-year-old Garry Wills, who became one of America's greatest historians, and not so conservative. A biographer of multiple Presidents, his books about Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were highly critical.)

Buckley's introductory essay made the magazine's mission clear:

Let's face it: Unlike Vienna, it seems altogether possible that did National Review not exist, no one would have invented it. The launching of a conservative weekly journal of opinion in a country widely assumed to be a bastion of conservatism at first glance looks like a work of supererogation, rather like publishing a royalist weekly within the walls of Buckingham Palace. It is not that, of course; if National Review is superfluous, it is so for very different reasons: It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

National Review is out of place, in the sense that the United Nations and the League of Women Voters and the New York Times and Henry Steele Commager are in place. It is out of place because, in its maturity, literate America rejected conservatism in favor of radical social experimentation.

Of course, there was a reason for this: Conservatism caused the stock market Crash of 1929, just 26 years earlier, and the subsequent Great Depression of the 1930s, which led to the political backlash that caused the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president, and his Administration's radical social experimentation, which saved the nation's economy and perhaps worldwide capitalism itself. Unlike conservatives following the economic downturns of 1973-76, 1990-93, 2001-04, 2007-09, and 2020-21, Buckley was not asking people to forget that the Depression happened on conservatives' watch.

Rather, he was asking people to accept his position, which was that the time for radical social experimentation ended once the immediate economic emergency ended, and that a return to the kind of conservatism that brought the economic prosperity of the 1920s was what was needed today (1955). Of course, as I said, that kind of conservatism caused the Depression.

Buckley once wrote, "I want discretion in the sense that I want intelligence, and no crackpottery. But I want some positively unsettling vigor, a sense of abandon, and joy, and cocksureness that may, indeed, be interpreted by some as indiscretion." In 1957, he published a nasty review that Chambers wrote for Ayn Rand's right-wing novel Atlas Shrugged.

Nevertheless, in 1958, Oliver left the magazine, and joined candy executive Robert W. Welch Jr. to become one of the founders of the John Birch Society, which seemed to encourage crackpots, to the point where, in 1963, both Bob Dylan and the Chad Mitchell Trio wrote songs making them look like paranoid psychotics. (The Trio's song included the line, "There's no one left but thee and we, and we aren't sure of thee!")

And yet, in 1957, 3 years after Brown v. Board, 1 year after the Southern Manifesto, and a few weeks before the Little Rock Crisis, Buckley published an editorial titled "Why the South Must Prevail":

The central question that emerges... is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes – the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.

NR did improve its record on race -- somewhat. It denounced the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Presidential campaigns of Governor George Wallace of Alabama. But it has also, perennially, called for the end of affirmative action. In 1965, at Oxford University in England, Buckley himself infamously took the segregationist side in a debate with black writer James Baldwin.

In the 1980s, NR opposed sanctions against the apartheid government of South Africa, because that government was anti-Communist -- and, like all white-supremacy governments, including in the Southern U.S., it falsely took the official tack that civil rights activists were motivated by Communism.

The Spanish Fascist leader Francisco Franco was a hero in the Buckley household, celebrated as a conservative and Catholic bulwark against the officially atheist worldwide Communist movement, known to its opponents as "the Red Menace." In 1957, Buckley declared in his magazine, "General Franco is an authentic national hero." NR writer James Burnham echoed this sentiment in a 1975 obituary declaring "Francisco Franco was our century's most successful ruler."

(He wasn't. Within 3 years, Spain had a free election, and the voters chose a liberal government. Spanish voters have chosen conservative governments since, but never again a Fascist one.)

In his 1997 book Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith, Buckley condemned the 1960s rulings that he viewed as "the Supreme Court's war against religion in the public school," and argued that Christian faith was being replaced by "another God... multiculturalism." He disapproved of the liturgical reforms following the Second Vatican Council of 1962-66.

On April 4, 1966, the program Firing Line, hosted by Buckley, premiered on NET, and continued on its successor network, PBS, until 1999. In addition to the various NR writers, and conservative activists -- Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Phyllis Schlafly, and so on -- Buckley invited people no one would have expected, like liberal activists Saul Alinsky, Julian Bond and Noam Chomsky; Watergate-busting reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein; Democratic political candidates like Jimmy Carter (not yet President), Jesse Jackson and John Kerry; and even figures from the 1960s "left," like Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Huey Newton.

In August 1968, ABC News invited Buckley and Gore Vidal, a liberal-leaning author and, like Ginsberg, one of the few openly gay celebrities of the time, to debate each other during the controversy-strewn Democratic Convention in Chicago. Even people who would normally have agreed with Vidal politically found themselves sympathizing with Buckley, because Vidal was completely rude, even telling Buckley, "Shut up a minute!"

Buckley compared New Left youths carrying pro–Viet Cong flags to pro-Nazis, which is ridiculous, because the Nazis, as Fascists, were a right-wing movement, not a left-wing one. Vidal responded by saying, "As far as I'm concerned, the only sort of pro- or crypto-Nazi that I can think of is yourself."

This set Buckley off: Remembering his gay-baiting pre-Vatican II Catholicism, and his service in World War II against the Nazis, he said, "Now, listen, you queer: Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I'll sock you in the goddamned face, and you'll stay plastered!" (And by "plastered," he didn't mean "drunk.") And ABC either didn't have a seven-second delay to "bleep out" any profanities, or didn't use it, and Buckley's use of the word "goddamned" stayed on the broadcast -- to this day, a rarity on American television, at any hour of the day.

Buckley and Vidal were the same age, the former born just 9 days before the latter, so there was no age advantage. And, with his Army and CIA training, if there had been a fight, it would have seemed like Buckley would be heavily favored. But someone who knew Buckley mentioned that he had recently broken his left arm, and he could be seen on the videotape tucking that arm in, using his right hand to keep his earpiece in. He might not have won a fight on that occasion.

After Watergate, Buckley rallied the conservative movement behind Ronald Reagan, and was very pleased with how the Reagan Administration turned out. In that Administration's time, and also later in its wake, there would be copies of Buckley's work.

Debuting on NBC in 1982, The McLaughlin Group was a more freewheeling, if host-controlled, version of Firing Line. The American Spectator was founded in 1972, as more of a gut-punching magazine, and by the time Bill Clinton began his successful run for President in 1992, it was willing to embrace any conspiracy theory against him and other liberals, no matter how ridiculous. The Weekly Standard was founded in 1996, as a cheekier, less Ivy-ish version of National Review. Debuting the same year, Fox News Channel made Firing Line seem very quaint by comparison.

I used to read National Review, even though I agreed with very little in it, because it was so well-written, and, probably upon Buckley's insistence, the sense of humor was still there. And it wasn't a mean, bullying, frat-boy sense of humor, either, like The American Spectator had.

In 1995, on PBS, Michael Kinsley of the liberal-leaning magazine The New Republic moderated a Firing Line-sponsored debate on the subject of religion in public life. As captain of one side, favoring more of it, was Buckley. As captain of the other side, favoring less of it but otherwise a conservative, was controversial lawyer Alan Dershowitz.

During his opening remarks, Kinsley told the theater audience, "I should warn you: Some of these panelists are under the delusion that they have a special pipeline to God." Several people, including Buckley, laughed. Kinsley continued: "And some of these panelists are under the delusion that they are God." More people laughed. Buckley was one of them. Dershowitz was not.

But age and ill health caught up with Buckley. He retired Firing Line in 1999. And he gave up editorial control of National Review in 2005. Without him to hold it back, it totally embraced the insanity -- the "crackpottery," as Buckley once put it -- of the Republican Party in the 21st Century.

William F. Buckley Jr. died on February 27, 2008, at the age of 82. Surprising no one who knew him, his death came less than a year after his wife's.

Buckley's son, Christopher Buckley, became a novelist, and was chief of staff to George H.W. Bush while he was Reagan's Vice President.

Firing Line was revived in 2018, again on PBS, hosted by Margaret Hoover, a former Fox News correspondent, and a great-granddaughter of President Herbert Hoover.

*

November 19, 1955 was a Saturday. It was the 3rd Saturday in November, so it was the start of college football's major rivalries:

* Number 1 Oklahoma beat Nebraska, 41-0 at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.

* Number 2 Maryland beat George Washington University, 19-0 at Byrd Stadium (now SECU Stadium) in the Washington suburb of College Park, Maryland. In what amounted to a de facto National Championship game, Oklahoma beat Maryland in the Orange Bowl, 20-6.

* Number 3 Michigan State beat Marquette, 33-0 at Macklin Stadium (now Spartan Stadium) in East Lansing, Michigan.

* Number 5 University of California at Los Angeles beat the University of Southern California, 17-7 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. USC had been ranked as high as Number 9 earlier in the season. UCLA then lost to Michigan State in the Rose Bowl.

* Number 6 Michigan lost to Number 9 Ohio State, 17-0 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor.

* Number 12 Navy and Army had the week off, preparing to play each other the next week, at Municipal Stadium (later John F. Kennedy Stadium) in Philadelphia. Army pulled the upset, 14-6.

* Number 15 University of Pittsburgh beat Penn State, 20-0 at Beaver Field in State College, Pennsylvania. (Beaver Stadium opened in 1960.)  

* Number 17 Tennessee lost to Kentucky, 23-0 at McLean Stadium in Lexington, Kentucky.

* Number 18 Stanford beat the University of California, 19-0 at the old Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, California.

* Number 19 Oregon State lost to Oregon, 28-0 at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.

* Yale beat Harvard, 21-7 at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut.

* North Carolina beat Virginia, 26-14 at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

* Louisiana State (LSU) beat Arkansas, 13-7 at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock, Arkansas.

* Purdue beat Indiana, 6-4 at the old Memorial Stadium in Bloomington, Indiana.

* Illinois and Northwestern played to a tie, 7-7 at Dyche Stadium in Evanston, Illinois, outside Chicago. Northwestern finished the season 0-8-1, Illinois 5-3-1.

* Minnesota beat Wisconsin, 21-6 at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis.

* Kansas beat Missouri, 13-7 at Memorial Stadium in Lawrence, Kansas.

* Washington beat Washington State, 27-7 at Husky Stadium in Seattle.

In non-rivalry games:

* Number 4 Notre Dame beat Iowa, 17-14 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana.

* Number 7 Texas Christian University (TCU) beat Rice University, 35-0 at Among G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth, Texas.

* Number 8 Texas A&M were idle.

* Number 10 Georgia Tech were idle. They beat Pitt in the Sugar Bowl.

* Number 13 West Virginia lost to Syracuse, 20-13 at the old Mountaineer Field in Morgantown, West Virginia.

* Number 14 Mississippi had the week off. They won the Southeastern Conference title, but, rather than play in the Sugar Bowl as the SEC Champion usually does, they played SWC Champions TCU in the Cotton Bowl, and won, 14-13.

* And in New Jersey, Rutgers beat Columbia, 12-6 at Baker Field in Upper Manhattan; and Princeton beat Dartmouth, 6-3 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton.

Baseball was out of season. The NFL played the next day. There were 4 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks lost to the St. Louis Hawks, 104-91 at the old Madison Square Garden. Bob Pettit scored 33 for the Hawks.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Fort Wayne Pistons, 104-102 at the Boston Garden.

* The Philadelphia Warriors beat the Syracuse Nationals, 102-94 at the Philadelphia Civic Center. Neil Johnston scored 37 points for the Warriors. In 1962, the Warriors moved to San Francisco. In 1963, the Nationals took their place, as the Philadelphia 76ers.

* And the Minneapolis Lakers beat the Rochester Royals, 91-90 at the Rochester Community War Memorial (now the Blue Cross Arena) in Rochester, New York.

The NHL's entire "Original Six" were in action:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Montreal Canadiens, 6-1 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Boston Bruins, 3-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* And the Detroit Red Wings beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 4-1 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

And in English soccer, North London team Arsenal went to Lancashire, and beat Preston North End, 1-0 at Deepdale. 

November 16, 1995: The Gingrich Tantrum

November 16, 1995: President Bill Clinton's victory in the federal government shutdown is sealed when the New York Daily News prints a front-page cartoon, showing the Speaker of the House, and the leader of the Republican Party's move to make drastic cuts in the federal budget, as a "cry baby."

After the failure of his health care initiative in 1994, Clinton saw his Democratic Party battered in the midterm elections, with the Republicans taking both houses of Congress. Bob Dole, from Russell, Kansas, regained the office of Senate Majority Leader that he had held in 1985 and 1986, having been the Minority Leader from 1987 to 1994.

And Gingrich, a Pennsylvania native who moved to the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, Georgia to teach at a college, and was first elected to Congress in 1978 and used fiery rhetoric to get into the Republican Party's leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1989, became the Speaker of the House.

Dole was considered mean, a reputation he got in his 1976 Vice Presidential debate with Walter Mondale, and deepened in his 1988 Presidential run. But, politically speaking, he was still a center-right candidate, willing to compromise for the greater good of the country. Gingrich was not: He was frequently called a "firebrand" and a "bombthrower."

Like most politicians, especially Republicans, he wanted to balance the federal budget. But his plan severely cut social services -- and also seriously cut taxes, especially on the wealthy. This didn't work when Ronald Reagan was President in the 1980s, and actually created the harsh economic conditions that led to Clinton's election in 1992. As we have since seen, it didn't work in 2001, and it didn't work in 2017. It would not have worked in 1995.

Every year, the federal budget takes effect on October 1. To put it another way: "Fiscal Year 1996" ran from October 1, 1995 to September 30, 1996. If no deal between Congress and the President is in place by October 1, they can pass a "continuing resolution," or "CR": For the length of the resolution, the proportions of the previous fiscal year continue.

But Clinton and the Republicans controlling Congress couldn't reach a deal by September 30. So they passed a CR that ran until November 13. But the Republicans refused to pass a new budget or a new CR by November 14. So, at 12:00 Midnight on November 13, the federal government shut down, because it was not legally permitted to spend any more money. People were still working for it, but without pay.

And the Republicans went before the media and said it was Clinton's fault. Except Clinton also went before the media, and pointed out that he was still willing to make a deal, and the Republicans weren't. Finally, he called Dole and Gingrich into the Oval Office. So often willing to compromise on things, seemingly desperate to get re-elected, not wanting to be a one-term President like 3 of the last 4 (Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush), but angering many in his own party, Clinton stiffened his spine, and told them, "I don't care if I go down to 5 percent in the polls. If you want that budget signed into law, you're going to have to get somebody else behind this desk."

For once, Clinton held his ground. And polls showed that more people supported his stance than the Republicans' stance. Once the Daily News printed that front page, and blow-ups of it were displayed on the floor of the very House of which Gingrich was Speaker -- by a Representative from Brooklyn, later to be Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer -- their approval rating plummeted. It has never again reached its 1995 height.

Clinton had invited Dole and Gingrich to go with him to the funeral of the assassinated Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin -- certainly, a gesture of respect, if not reconciliation. But the article accompanying the cartoon alleged that, on the flight back, Gingrich wanted to talk about the budget impasse, Clinton didn't, and Clinton made Gingrich get off Air Force One at the back entrance, and Gingrich got upset about these developments.

As comedian Dick Gregory told Clinton at an NAACP convention the following year, "He got upset because you made him a Negro!" Everybody in the audience laughed at the reference to black people being segregated to the backs of buses up until 1955. Clinton couldn't have made that joke himself, but Gregory could.

Did Clinton "make" Gingrich get off at the back of the plane? Was it true? Only Clinton and Gingrich know for sure. The problem was, given Gingrich's own actions over the 17 years he'd served in Congress to that point, the story was completely believable. He had lived by the persona of a guy who tapped into people's emotions, and now, politically, he was dying by them.

Leading an opposition and leading a majority are two very different things, and while some skills cross over, some do not. Gingrich's tantrums had worked pretty well when he was in the opposition to House Democrats like his predecessors as Speaker, Jim Wright of Texas and Tom Foley of Washington State. They did not work when he had a position of power, and they certainly didn't work against a political talent like Clinton. It was like, "Welcome to the major leagues, Newt."

That front page became the Daily News' 2nd-best-known ever, trailing only the October 30, 1975 front page concerning another budget mess, that of New York City, when President Gerald Ford refused to use federal money to bail the City out. The News' front page read, "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD." That headline probably cost Ford the State of New York in the 1976 election, and thus the election itself. Having brought down a President, now, 20 years later, the News was bringing down a Speaker. Not yet, though: Time magazine would name Gingrich its Man of the Year for 1995.

Finally, on November 19, the Republicans caved. And when the general election campaign got underway, the Democrats aired commercials showing Dole and Gingrich together so many times, it began to look like Gingrich was Dole's running mate, instead of his actual choice, Jack Kemp, former pro quarterback and Congressman from New York.

Once the Democrats had their convention, Clinton and his running mate, Vice President Al Gore, solidified their lead, and Dole and Kemp never really challenged them. Dole didn't run a bad campaign, but once Clinton won the battle over the budget, Dole never had a chance, unless there was a new "Clinton scandal" bigger than anything that had happened to that point.

What no one yet knew was that the government shutdown, at the same time that it was securing Clinton's win, was also setting the stage for such a scandal: Among the volunteers working in the White House during the government shutdown was a young woman named Monica Lewinsky.

But the public's backlash against the Republicans' effort to impeach Clinton led to the Democrats gaining seats in the 1998 Congressional elections. Gingrich's marital infidelities had been at least as notorious as Clinton's, and the Republicans didn't care. But now, they cared: To the conservative movement, everything is acceptable except losing, and Gingrich was forced to step down, not just from the Speakership but from Congress.

*

November 16, 1995 was a Thursday. The baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. There were 5 games played in the NBA that night:

* The New York Knicks beat the Golden State Warriors, 120-97 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

* The Orlando Magic beat the Indiana Pacers, 89-80 at the Orlando Arena.

* The Houston Rockets beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 115-87 at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee. Robert Horry led all NBA players on the night, with 40 points.

* The Los Angeles Clippers beat the expansion Vancouver Grizzlies, 103-98 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. (The Grizzlies moved to Memphis in 2001.)

* And the Sacramento Kings beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 105-102 at the Rose Garden in Portland. (It's now named the Moda Center.)

There were 7 games played in the NHL, and all 3 of the New York Tri-State Area teams were in action:

* The New Jersey Devils, the Stanley Cup holders, played the Boston Bruins to a tie, 2-2 at the new FleetCenter in Boston. (It's now named the TD Garden.) The Meadowlands Marauders came from 2-0 down in the 3rd period, to salvage a point thanks to goals from Ricard Persson and Valeri Zelepukin.

* The New York Rangers weren't so lucky: They lost to the Chicago Blackhawks, 3-1 at the United Center in Chicago.

* The New York Islanders weren't even that lucky: They lost to the Los Angeles Kings, 9-2 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California. Wayne Gretzky only got 1 of the Kings' goals.

* The Philadelphia Flyers beat the Ottawa Senators, 5-3 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Tampa Bay Lightning, 5-4 at the ThunderDome in St. Petersburg, Florida. (It's now named Tropicana Field. The following season, the Lightning moved into what's now named the Amalie Arena.) Former Islander Benoit Hogue scored the winner, just 32 seconds into overtime.

* The Florida Panthers and the Vancouver Canucks played to a tie, 2-2 at the Miami Arena.

* And the St. Louis Blues beat the San Jose Sharks, 3-1 at the Kiel Center in St. Louis. (It's now named the Enterprise Center.) 

November 8, 2016: Donald Trump Is "Elected" President

November 8, 2016: A Presidential election is held. The Democratic Party's nominee for President was Hillary Clinton. She was, perhaps, the most qualified candidate the Presidency has ever had. The nation's First Lady for 8 years. A U.S. Senator for 8 years. The nation's Secretary of State for 4 years.

But some people could never forgive her for being a woman, for being a liberal, for being married to former President Bill Clinton, or for staying married to him through all his infidelities.

The Republican Party's nominee was Donald Trump. He was, beyond any question, the most underqualified candidate ever nominated for President by a major party. He had never held public office, either elective or appointive. He had never served in the armed forces, much less held a command in them, like some other men who were not previously politicians. This, alone, should have convinced people that he wasn't fit to be President.

As if that wasn't enough: He was a pathological liar, a known bigot, and a damn fool. Having grown up watching the New York local news, and having seen him on it for over 30 years, I could legitimately tell people that, in spite of being 70 years old, which would have made him the oldest first-time President ever to that point, he was not in mental decline: He was always an idiot.

Even the main argument in his favor, that he was a successful businessman, should have worked against him. For one thing, running a government -- national, state or local -- and running a business are two very different things. Businessmen don't know a damn thing about governing. In other words, even if Trump were a good person with good intentions, he would still have been a lousy President, because he wouldn't have known what the hell he was doing.

For another thing, he wasn't a successful businessman. He was a real estate mogul, and lost money on just about every building he built. He built and operated casinos, and lost money running them. How the hell do you lose money running a casino? And he bought a professional football team, the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League, and ended up destroying the entire league.

As they used to say on the TV show Match Game, Dumb Donald is so dumb!

But not completely dumb. He tapped into the anger that some people had at Hillary. And he let the nation's bigots -- whether they hated people because of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or any  other category -- know that he hated the same people, and would hurt those people at the benefit of those who hated them. It would be government by spite. Essentially, he was giving them permission to be openly bigoted again.

And there were enough people who ate that up that, when combined with those people who, whether they liked Trump personally or not, or whether they thought he was intelligent enough or mentally stable enough to be President or not, were going to vote for the Republican nominee no matter what, because they wanted tax cuts, deregulation and right-wing judges, that he had a chance.

In the election, Clinton won 65.8 million votes, to Trump's 62.9 million. She won 48.2 percent of the popular vote to Trump's 46.1 percent. Gary Johnson, a former Republican Governor of New Mexico, nominated by the Libertarian Party, won 4.5 million votes, or 3.3 percent. Jill Stein, a doctor and the nominee of the Green Party, openly appealed to the supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, who finished a distant 2nd to Clinton in the Democratic Primaries, and got 1.4 million votes, or 1.1 percent.

So, nearly 63 million people saw that he was unqualified, dishonest, stupid, and bigoted, and voted for him anyway. Or, as someone else put it, not everybody who voted for Trump considered themselves racist, but they knew that he was, even if they weren't willing to publicly admit that, and they did not consider that fact to be a dealbreaker.

But, fairly or not, it's the Electoral Vote that matters. Clinton won 20 States, plus the District of Columbia, for 232 Electoral Votes. Trump won 30 States, plus 1 Electoral Vote in Maine, for 306. In the end, there were "faithless electors" who voted for candidates other than those for whom he popular votes in their States said they should, so the final count was Trump 304, Clinton 227.

Two Electors in Texas refused to vote for Trump. One voted for a Republican former Congressman from that State, Ron Paul, who had run for President in 2008 and 2012, and whose son, Rand Paul, was now a Republican Senator from Kentucky, and had run for President in this election. Another voted for Governor John Kasich of Ohio, another of the Republicans that Trump had defeated in the 2016 Primaries. An Elector in Hawaii refused to vote for Clinton. Instead, he voted for Sanders.

And 4 Electors in the State of Washington refused to vote for Clinton. Three of them voted for former General and Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had considered running for President in 1996, and had endorsed Clinton in this election.

The other voted for Faith Spotted Eagle, at the time a 68-year-old member of the Yankton Sioux Nation in South Dakota, who had been among the leaders of the attempt to block oil pipelines being built through Native land in her State. She thus became the 1st Native American ever to receive an Electoral Vote, and along with Clinton 1 of the 1st 2 women to receive one. She had run for the State House of Representatives in 2006, coming in 3rd in a Democratic Primary, and went on to repeat this performance in 2018.

Trump won 6 States that the outgoing President, Democrat Barack Obama, won in 2012: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa and Florida. And some of those votes were close enough to be suspicious: Trump won Michigan by 10,704 votes, Wisconsin by 22,748, and Pennsylvania by 44,292. 

Those 3 States were won by a total of 77,744 votes -- less than the seating capacity of MetLife Stadium. In Michigan, Johnson got 172,000 votes, Stein 51,000. In Wisconsin, Johnson 106,000, Stein 31,000. In Pennsylvania, Johnson 146,000, Stein 50,000.

Had Hillary gotten another 11,000 votes in Michigan, 23,000 in Wisconsin, and 45,000 in Pennsylvania, it would have swung the Electoral Vote in her favor, 278-260 (not counting faithless electors).

And as the votes climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial rite, I developed a headache. That's right: Donald Trump literally makes me sick.

Why did Hillary "lose"?

Say what you want about Trump, and I have. But, however despicable, his racist/populist campaign was very effective. It brought out people who had never voted before, because even the Republican nominees weren't bigoted enough for them. Had any other Republican been nominated, these people wouldn't have voted at all.

Trump also had outside help: Vladimir Putin and the Russian government, and Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks (pro-Russian, and therefore nicknamed "RusskiLeaks"), fabricated statements that spoke to the "Crooked Hillary" lie, and a bunch of gullible people believed it. Furthermore, Russians hacked America's voting machines. This is not, as Trump called it, a hoax: The U.S. Senate confirmed this. The Republican-controlled Senate, mind you.

Then there was James Comey. The Director of the FBI, in effect, turned the election with 2 weeks to go by revealing... nothing at all, but raising suspicions about Hillary. Comey went on to get fired by Trump anyway, for apparent disloyalty. He is the one guy who has gone through this who became hated by both sides.

Then there was the media. They were absolutely terrified of being called "liberal," and of the charge that the election was "rigged." So they weren't willing to call Trump out on his crimes and lies, as they had been against the many lies told by John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.

Then there were those media outlets that actually promoted Trump, because they either had a financial interest in a close election, or actually wanted a conservative to be President, or wanted the "entertainment" of a Trump Presidency. For the ratings, therefore for the money. You know, like when the entertainer Ronald Reagan was in office. In each of these cases, you people know who you are. And we will not forget.

As usual, conservatives said CNN was against Trump. That's insane: They wanted Trump. But if Ted Turner -- who, I'd heard, was already not well -- were still running CNN, Trump would have been properly investigated well before he was going to make it official, and would have been arrested by the FBI when he got to the bottom of the damn escalator at his candidacy announcement at Trump Tower.

But the biggest culprits of all were the progressive purists. The people who wanted Sanders, but didn't go along with him when he endorsed Hillary. The people who voted for Stein instead. The people who voted for Johnson instead. The people who were stupid enough to actually consider Trump to be more progressive than Hillary. And the people who stayed home, and didn't vote at all. Stein's vote totals, let alone Johnson's, in what turned out to be the 3 key States -- Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin -- were greater than Trump's margin of victory.

"The left" -- a term conservatives throw around, as if they have a clue as to what it means -- does this at least once every generation:

* In 1948, they refused to vote for Harry Truman, and instead voted for Henry Wallace. That time, the Democratic nominee won anyway.

* In 1968, they didn't get Robert Kennedy or Gene McCarthy, so they refused to vote for Hubert Humphrey, a champion of liberalism for 25 years, and mostly stayed home. And we got Richard Nixon.

* In 1980, they didn't get Ted Kennedy or Jerry Brown, so they refused to vote for Jimmy Carter, and mostly stayed home. And we got Ronald Reagan.

* In 2000, they didn't get Ralph Nader, so they refused to vote for Al Gore, and either stayed home, or voted for Nader anyway. And we got George W. Bush.

* In 2016, they didn't get Bernie Sanders, so they refused to vote for Hillary Clinton, and either stayed home, or voted for Jill Stein. And we got Donald Trump.

In 1968, 1980, 2000 and 2016, each time, the left caused the election of the President who was the least like the one they wanted. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me four times, and I'm a progressive purist.

Hillary got more votes than any Presidential candidate had ever gotten, to that point, except for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. So don't tell me she was "unpopular." That is a lie. And don't tell me she was "a flawed candidate." They all are. And no candidate has ever been more flawed than Trump. Does the Democratic nominee have to be without flaws? It wouldn't matter: The Republicans would make flaws up. And Hillary proved to be more popular than he was. But the Constitution says Electoral Votes matter more, and those went for Trump -- suspiciously.

In spite of the vote for Trump, the Democrats actually gained 6 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, and 2 seats in the U.S. Senate. Among the new Senators elected were Democrats Kamala Harris of California, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois; and Republican John Kennedy of Louisiana. He may have been a Senator named John Kennedy, but, to paraphrase the late Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, this Senator was no Jack Kennedy.

As they usually do with the winner of the Presidential election, Time magazine named Trump its Person of the Year for 2016.

On October 22, 2018, at a campaign rally, at the Toyota Center, home of the NBA's Houston Rockets, for the re-election of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas -- who, during the 2016 campaign, opposed Donald Trump, and Trump called his wife ugly and said that his father was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy -- Trump told the crowd, "You know what I am? I'm a nationalist. Okay? I'm a nationalist. Use that word. Use that word."

An idealist might say that he wanted to draw a contrast between himself and "globalists," people who want to bring the world together; that a "nationalist" was someone who was for his own country first. A cynic would say that "nationalist" was short for "white nationalist," and that "globalist" really means "Jew," and that both terms are bigoted.

The problem is that it doesn't really matter if Trump is bigoted: The bigots believe he is, and thus they believe that he's with them, and that's why they chose him. Therefore, either he is a bigot, which would be a terrible thing; or he isn't one, and he's just playing the bigots to gain and keep power, in the biggest confidence game in world history, which is a different, but still terrible, thing.

On May 31, 2017, I wrote the following:

It's almost June. Let's take a look at Donald Trump's report card, shall we?

Math: F. He doesn't know that tax cuts don't increase revenue.

English: F. His grammar and spelling are atrocious, and what's "covfefe," anyway? (He had just issued the tweet that contained that word. Although he was complaining about the "press," and could have meant "coverage," as of November 8, 2022, we still don't know for sure what it meant.)

Science: F. He denies that climate change is real.

History: F. He doesn't know that antagonizing allies is not a good thing. He doesn't know that allying with dictators is bad, too.

Civics: D. He seems to slightly grasp the fact that he needs Congress to pass his plans, but doesn't seem to understand that people, including journalists, are constitutionally entitled to question and criticize him.

Geography: F. He doesn't know that Israel is in the Middle East. He doesn't know that Palm Beach is not in D.C. He doesn't seem to know that Trump Tower is not in D.C., either, and, thus, neither is his wife. (This was before he used a Sharpie on a map to make a statement he made about a hurricane affecting Alabama as well as Florida "correct.")

Physical Education: F. We went from an athlete to... this.

Sex Education: F. He still hasn't learned that you don't grab a woman by any body part unless you have her consent.

Home Economics: F. Did he sew that toupee himself?

Arts: F. It's not that he has BAD taste, it's that he has NO taste. No wonder he once sold "Trump Vodka": Vodka has no taste, either! Also, it's Russian.

Recommendation: Expulsion. Granted, this won't teach him anything, either, but it will leave the country better off.

If you had told me on the night of November 8 into 9, 2016 that Trump's tenure in office would lead to the deaths of over 1 million Americans, I would have believed it. But I would have guessed it was due to some stupid war he got us into, not an epidemic that his supporters would have been too goddamned stupid to protect themselves from. I would have guessed they wouldn't have cared about protecting others, but not even themselves? They stockpile guns and food for self-preservation, but won't wear a mask for that reason? Dumb Donald is so dumb, but his fans are still dumber.

Now, Joe Biden is the President, and things are so much better, in every way. Some of the problems of the Trump Administration are still there. But at least now, we've got a government that's working on them.

More things in America have been named after Donald Trump than any President other than George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. However, he named most of them after himself, and before he went into active politics. There are no schools or roads in America named for him. And, after calling American servicemen who died in service to their country "losers" and "suckers," there will never be an American military base or ship named for him.

As of November 8, 2022, the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library only exists online. That is somewhat appropriate, since brick-and-mortar libraries, and museums, encourage learning, while Trump said, the day after his "win," "We won with the poorly educated. I love the poorly educated!"

(UPDATE: On September 30, 2025, it was announced that the library would be built at Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus in downtown Miami.)

Trump followed Theodore Roosevelt as the 2nd President born in New York City, and Franklin Roosevelt as the most recent President born in, or representing, New York. But, infamously, he moved to Florida to take advantage of its lower taxes.

(UPDATE: Trump appointed Senator Marco Rubio, who ran against him in the 2016 Republican Presidential Primaries, to be Secretary of State in his 2nd term. This made Rubio Florida's highest-ranking politician ever.)

Trump played himself in movies and on TV shows before running for office. He was played by Alec Baldwin on Saturday Night Live from 2016 to 2020. Thereafter, on the show, James Austin Johnson played both Trump and Joe Biden.

In a Christmas 2013 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, Trump was played by "Nice" Peter Shukoff, in the Jacob Marley role. Ebenezer Scrooge was played by Zach Sherwin. The "three spirits" were played by "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist as J.P. Morgan, as "Christmas Past" (even though he would still have been in Scrooge's future); DeStorm Power as Kanye West, as "Christmas Present"; and Peter again as the Grim Reaper, as "Christmas Yet to Come."

But when Trump ran for President in 2016, it was Lloyd who played him, against Kimmy Gatewood as Hillary Clinton. In 2020, Lloyd played him again, against Peter as Joe Biden. (UPDATE: In 2024, Lloyd played Trump again, against Kimberly Michelle Vaughn as Kamala Harris.)

*

November 8, 2016, like all modern U.S. Election Days, was a Tuesday. The baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. These 6 games were played in the NBA that night:

* The Brooklyn Nets beat the Minnesota Timberwolves, 119-110 at the Barclays Center. Andrew Wiggins scored 36 points for the T-Wolves, but Brook Lopez scored 26 to let the Nets to victory.

* The Atlanta Hawks beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 110-106 at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. (It's now named the Rocket Arena.)

* The Memphis Grizzlies beat the Denver Nuggets, 108-107 at the FedEx Forum in Memphis.

* The Dallas Mavericks beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 109-97 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

* The Sacramento Kings beat the New Orleans Pelicans, 102-94 at the new Golden 1 Center in Sacramento. Anthony Davis scored 34 in defeat for the Pels.

* And the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Phoenix Suns, 124-121 at the Moda Center in Portland. Damian Lillard scored 38 to lead all NBA players on the night.

And there were 10 games played in the NHL:

* The New Jersey Devils beat the Carolina Panthers, 3-2 at the Prudential Center in Newark. The Devils won a game in a shootout. And yet, Trump's win made this only the 2nd-most-shocking event of the night. Certainly, I approved of this one a lot more.

* The New York Rangers lost to the Vancouver Canucks, 5-3 at Madison Square Garden.

* The Detroit Red Wings beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 3-2 in a shootout at the Wells Fargo Center (now the Xfinity Mobile Arena) in Philadelphia.

* The San Jose Sharks beat the Washington Capitals, 3-0 at the Capital One Arena in Washington.

* In an "Original Six" matchup, the Montreal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins, 3-2 at the Bell Centre in Montreal.

* The Los Angeles Kings beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 7-0 at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. (It's now named the Scotiabank Arena.)

* The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Edmonton Oilers, 4-3 at the PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.

* The Nashville Predators beat the Ottawa Senators, 3-1 at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.

* The Winnipeg Jets beat the Dallas Stars, 8-2 at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg. (It's now named the Canada Life Centre.)

* And the Arizona Coyotes beat the Colorado Rockies, 4-2 at the Pepsi Center in Denver. (It's now named the Ball Arena.)

November 8, 1994: The Gingrich Revolution

November 8, 1994: Election Day is a repudiation of the Democratic Party, in particular of President Bill Clinton, his now-withdrawn health care reform plan, and his Assault Weapons Ban. The Republican Party gains 52 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, giving them control of that body for the 1st time in 40 years, and making Newt Gingrich of Georgia the Speaker. It also gains 9 seats in the U.S. Senate, giving them control of that body for the 1st time in 8 years, returning Bob Dole of Kansas to the office of Senate Majority Leader.

In New York State, Mario Cuomo is defeated for a 4th term as Governor by Peekskill Mayor George Pataki. In Texas, George W. Bush, son of the most recent Republican President, is elected Governor, defeating the State's 1st female Governor, Ann Richards. Bush's brother, John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, narrowly loses to Governor Lawton Chiles of Florida. I suspect that, had it not been for the Savings & Loan Scandal, another brother, Neil Bush, would have run for Governor of Colorado.

Among the new Republicans elected to the Senate: Bill Frist of Tennessee, later the Senate Majority Leader; Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who ran for President in 2012 and 2016; Mike DeWine of Ohio, later elected Governor; and Representative Olympia Snowe of Maine, who was married to John "Jock" McKernan, then wrapping up his 2nd and last term as Governor.

In addition, Senators Richard Shelby of Alabama and Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado switched parties to become Republicans. Shelby had previously called himself "the most conservative member of the Senate"; and Campbell, then the only Native American in either house of Congress (a member of the Cheyenne tribe), was more of a Western libertarian than a traditional conservative, but favored gun rights. So neither switch was a big surprise, although they didn't exactly show courage by jumping ship after the election.

Gingrich knew that it wasn't enough to be against Clinton, or against Democrats in general: You had to give the voters something to vote for. He had a 10-point "Contract With America," which includes some reforms of Congress itself, including some items that Democrats were willing to work with them to pass, if with some minor adjustments. But some were drastic, and opposed by most Americans.

The backlash that hit him even before he could take office as Speaker led to him, with Christmas coming up, to being compared with two of the villains of pop-culture Christmas: Time compared him to Ebenezer Scrooge of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, while Newsweek compared him to the title character of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

As promised, all 10 items passed the House in the 1st 100 days of Republican control. And 9 of them passed the Senate. But some of these, including a radical reform of the nation's welfare laws, and a significant tax cut for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, were vetoed by Clinton.

The 1 item that passed the Senate, but not by enough, was an Amendment to the Constitution requiring that the federal budget be balanced. On its face, this seemed like a good idea. The devil was in the details: Because Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had run the federal budget deficit so high in their 12 consecutive years in the White House, balancing the budget would have required significant spending cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, educational spending, and environmental spending. The Republicans were fine with all of that. But they weren't willing to cut spending on new military projects, and Clinton and the Democrats called them out on that.

In the end, requiring a 2/3rds "supermajority" of both houses on Congress -- 290 votes in the House, and 67 in the Senate, instead of a simple majority of 218 and 51, respectively -- the Amendment fell 1 vote short in the Senate.

One Republican voted against it: Mark Hatfield of Oregon. As a former Governor of a State whose budget was already constitutionally required to be balanced -- a lot easier, since States have far lesser, and lesser-ranging, expenses than the country at large, but by no means easy -- Hatfield understood that the Amendment would have been dangerous. It would have cast millions of people into poverty, made things worse for those already poor, and might even have killed people.

And so, the battle was on: Gingrich would lead a Congressional campaign for 1996 on a revised Contract with America, while Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas would be the Republican nominee for President, supporting it; and Clinton would run for re-election, calling the Republican proposal "the Contract On America," and making the increasingly unpopular Gingrich "Dole's running mate," no matter who Dole ultimately selected to be his Vice Presidential nominee. Gingrich's successes in early 1995 led Time magazine to name him its Man of the Year.

(Dole chose Jack Kemp, former pro quarterback, an 18-year Congressman where he became one of the champions of tax-cutters, an unsuccessful Presidential candidate in 1988, and President Bush's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.)

In the end, Clinton was re-elected solidly over Dole, but the Democrats were unable to take back either house of Congress. Over the course of his 2nd term, even as the Republicans tried to impeach Clinton over things that were none of their, or the American people's, concern, failing to get conviction and removal, they were forced to work with him. In 1997, the federal budget was balanced. Clinton, Gingrich, Dole, and Dole's successor as Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi, could all legitimately claim some credit for that.

But the Republicans' effort to remove Clinton from office angered many Americans, and, incredibly unusual for a party in its 6th straight year of holding the White House, the Democrats actually gained seats in the 1998 Congressional election. Gingrich resigned later that week, pressured into it not because of his own personal and legal failings, in each case worse than Clinton's, but because he had failed as a leader. The conservative movement will accept anything except failure.

The evangelical takeover of the Republican Party became complete with the election of George W. Bush, son of the former President, in 2000. Like Richard Nixon before him, Gingrich bided his time, mended some fences, supported Republican candidates wherever he could, and built a new constituency. In 2008, Barack Obama was elected President, and Gingrich ran for the Republican nomination to beat him for re-election in 2012. He won some Primaries, but his personal scandals came back to haunt him, and he lost too many Primaries to continue.

At the age of 79, he is now seen as an elder statesman in the Party, but, as long as Donald Trump is its emotional leader, the last true "ideas man" in the Republican Party has no place in directing its course.

UPDATE: As of the 2024 election, no Republican freshman elected to the House in 1994 is still in it. But 2 Democrats elected then are: Zoe Lofgren of California and Lloyd Doggett of Texas. Roger Wicker was elected as a Republican from Mississippi, and was elected to the Senate in 2008, and still serves, making him the last remaining "Newtoid."

*

November 8, 1994 was a Tuesday. The baseball players were on strike, and the season would have been over by this point, anyway. The NHL players were locked out, meaning that 2 of the "Big Four" sports in North America were stopped cold due to management's unfairness to the players. And football was in midweek. But there were 5 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 117-113 at Madison Square Garden.

* The Houston Rockets beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 100-98 at the Gund Arena (now the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse) in Cleveland.

* The Detroit Pistons beat the Minnesota Timberwolves, 126-112 at The Palace in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills, Michigan. Joe Dumars scored 40 points.

* The Denver Nuggets beat the Dallas Mavericks, 115-107 at the Reunion Arena in Dallas. Jim Jackson scored 37 points for the Mavs, but the Nugs won thanks it part to 28 points from Rodney Rogers.

* And the Golden State Warriors beat the Miami Heat, 121-114 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

November 8, 1988: George H.W. Bush Is Elected President

November 8, 1988: My 1st election. I was 18 years old. At Hammarskjold Middle School in East Brunswick, New Jersey, which I had attended (as Hammarskjöld Junior High School) from September 9, 1981 to June 26, 1984, I cast a vote for the straight Democratic ticket, including for Joseph V. Chagnon for Mayor (making him the 1st person I ever voted for) and the Presidential nominee, Governor Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts.

Chagnon lost to Councilman Jack Sinagra, who served as Mayor for 3 years, before winning a special election for a State Senate seat. In New Jersey, then as now, it is legal to serve as both a municipality's Mayor and in the State legislature. However, Sinagra had campaigned on the issue of eliminating such "double-dipping," and felt he would be a hypocrite if he didn't resign as Mayor. 

Dukakis lost to Vice President George H.W. Bush, 426 Electoral Votes to 111 (it should have been 112, but a "faithless elector" refused to vote for him), 53.4 percent of the popular vote to 45.6. He had blown it by inadequately responding to some truly filthy and (mostly) false attacks. Indeed, everybody that I voted for lost, with one exception.

The next day, I was in New Brunswick, job-hunting. I saw the Middlesex County Democratic Campaign Headquarters on George Street, and realized I'd never gotten a Dukakis button. I wanted one. So I went in, and there was the Mayor of New Brunswick at the time, John Lynch (another double-dipper in the State Senate), talking to U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg, the one person I voted for who won. He had defeated Pete Dawkins, a Heisman Trophy winner with the Army football team in 1958, and then a Vietnam War hero who rose to the rank of General. Not wanting to interrupt, I waited for them to finish talking. When Lautenberg came my way, I offered him my hand and congratulated him on his re-election. He walked right past me.

I met Lynch a few years later, after he'd resigned as Mayor because he'd become President of the State Senate, making him effectively (we didn't have the office until after the 2013 election) the Lieutenant Governor. He was a much nicer guy. Unfortunately, he later went to prison for corruption. But I'm still proud to have voted for Dukakis. I still don't have one of his buttons, though.

Unlike Reagan, Bush did not have "coattails," taking new Republicans with him: The Democrats gained 2 seats in the House of Representatives, and 1 in the Senate. Among the new Democratic Senators elected were Joe Lieberman of Connecticut (later the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2000), Chuck Robb of Virginia, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin.

Robb and Kerrey had both been Governors, and Robb was a son-in-law of President Lyndon Johnson, having married his daughter Lynda. Lieberman became the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2000. Kohl was the owner of the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks.

Among the new Republican Senators were Trent Lott of Mississippi, Connie Mack III of Florida, and Jim Jeffords of Vermont. All of these were "promoted" from the House of Representatives. Mack was the grandson of Connie Mack, the 50-year manager of the Philadelphia Athletics.

Lott, Jefferson, John Ashcroft of Missouri and Larry Craig of Idaho formed a vocal quartet, calling themselves "The Singing Senators." After winning the majority in the 1994 election, they changed their name to "The Vocal Majority." That came to an end in 2001, when Jefferson left the Republicans to become an Independent.

Bush had run for President in 1980, after having been a Congressman from Texas from 1965 to 1970, and had the unenviable job of Chairman of the Republican National Committee when President Richard Nixon died in 1974. He finished 2nd in Delegates to Ronald Reagan, who then asked him to serve as Vice President.

Bush ran in his own right in 1988, and the race came down to him and the Republicans' Senate Leader, Bob Dole of Kansas, who had preceded Bush as RNC Chairman, and was nominated for Vice President in 1976.

On February 16, after winning the New Hampshire Primary with 38 percent of the vote to Dole's 29, both men were interviewed on CNN's Larry King Live. When King asked Dole if he had a message for Bush, he said, "Yeah, stop lying about my record!"

At the time of the Democratic Convention in Atlanta, Dukakis led Bush by 17 percentage points. In his acceptance speech, Dukakis said, "This election isn't about ideology, it's about competence!" He then proceeded to run one of the most incompetent general-election campaigns ever.

At the Republican Convention in New Orleans, Bush told the delegates, "Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I'll say, 'No.' They'll push, and I'll say, 'No.' They'll push again, and I'll say to them, 'Read my lips: No new taxes!'" That gave the conservative wing of the Party the confidence that Bush's 1st term would be, essentially, Reagan's 3rd, and the party was united behind him.

He ran a very dirty campaign against Dukakis, calling him soft on crime, and dredging up ridiculous issues. Dukakis had the edge in the 1st debate between them, but an awkward answer on the death penalty -- which shouldn't even have been an issue in a Presidential election -- finished Dukakis off. Even a lopsided Vice Presidential debate, in which Republican Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana embarrassed himself, and was further embarrassed by Democratic Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, made no difference: Bush won in a landslide.

Bush's Presidential Library opened on November 6, 1997, on the campus of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. As he was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1976 and '77, its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, outside Washington, is named the George Bush Center for Intelligence. Houston's main airport is named George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

There is a high school named for him in the Houston suburb of Richmond, Texas. The George Bush Turnpike forms a partial loop around Dallas. And the USS George H.W. Bush, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, CVN-77, has been in service since 2006. Like the plane in which Bush survived being shot down by the Japanese during World War II, it is nicknamed the Avenger.

Statue of the George Bushes,

at George W.'s Presidential Library

Bush remains the most recent President born in Massachusetts. He and his son are the only ones who have lived in Connecticut, not counting time spent attending Yale University, although both also did so. And they are the only ones who lived in Maine. Nevertheless, the State each represented in politics was Texas.

Dana Carvey played Bush on Saturday Night Live. By the time the 1992 election approached, a very tired-looking Bush was sounded more like Carvey's impersonation than like his old self. It was a sign that he was going to lose. Nevertheless, Bush accepted Carvey as a friend.

Bush was also played by Harry Shearer on The Golden Girls in 1990, John Roarke in The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear in 1991, Daniel T. Healy in Hot Shots! Part Deux in 1993, Michael Greene in The Day Reagan Was Shot in 2001, James Cromwell in Oliver Stone's W. (about his son) in 2008, and John Hillner in Vice (about his Secretary of Defense and his son's Vice President, Dick Cheney) in 2018.

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November 8, 1988, like all modern U.S. Election Days, was a Tuesday. The baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. There were 9 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Chicago Bulls, 126-117 at Madison Square Garden. Johnny Newman of the Knicks led all scorers in the league that night with 35 points. Michael Jordan scored 31 for the Bulls.

* The New Jersey Nets beat the Washington Bullets, 109-101 at the Brendan Byrne Arena at the Meadowlands.

* The Detroit Pistons beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 116-109 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* The expansion Charlotte Hornets beat the Los Angeles Clippers, 117-105 at the 2nd Charlotte Coliseum. Kelly Tripucka, a native of Bloomfield, New Jersey, led all scorers with 24 points.

* The Atlanta Falcons beat the Indiana Pacers, 112-107 at The Omni in Atlanta. Dominique Wilkins scored 32 points.

* The Houston Rockets beat the San Antonio Spurs, 120-102 at The Summit in Houston. (The arena has since been converted into the Central Campus of the Lakewood Church, Dr. Joel Osteen's "megachurch.")

* The Dallas Mavericks beat the expansion Miami Heat, 92-88 at the Reunion Arena in Dallas.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Golden State Warriors, 114-102 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

* And the Seattle SuperSonics beat the Sacramento Kings, 97-75. Dale Ellis of the Sonics scored 28 points. This was the 1st game played at the 2nd ARCO Arena in Sacramento. The Kings called the building, renamed Sleep Train Arena after a bedding company in 2012, home until 2016, when the Golden 1 Center opened. The old arena's future is uncertain. The 1st ARCO Arena, home of the Kings from 1985 to 1988, has been converted into an office building.

And there were 3 games played in the NHL:

* The New York Islanders beat the New York Rangers, 4-3 at the Nassau Coliseum. The Rangers blew a lead of 2-0, and the Isles blew one of 3-2, but Greg Gilbert -- who turned out to be the 1st man ever to play for the Rangers, the Islanders and the Devils -- scored the winner for the Isles with 2:26 left in regulation. There were 2 fights.

* The Edmonton Oilers beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 7-3 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.

* And the Winnipeg Jets beat the Quebec Nordiques, 8-4 at the Colisee de Quebec.