"President Barack Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on a labor relations panel..."

"... a federal appeals court panel ruled Friday."

The unanimous decision is an embarrassing setback for the president, who made the appointments after Senate Republicans spent months blocking his choices for an agency they contended was biased in favor of unions....

Obama claims he acted properly in the case of the NLRB appointments because the Senate was away for the holidays on a 20-day recess. But the three-judge panel ruled that the Senate technically stayed in session when it was gaveled in and out every few days for so-called “pro forma” sessions.

GOP lawmakers used the tactic — as Democrats have in the past as well — to specifically to prevent the president from using his recess power....

The Supreme Court is likely to take this case, which, if it is not reversed, will invalidate all the decisions the NLRB has made going back more than a year and that going forward, there is no quorum for it to decide any cases. 

Pre-assembling the excuses for Obama's defeat tomorrow.

At Politico (with an "if"):

Obama threw it away in Denver...

The Bush economy killed him...

It was the second-term vision thing...

Citizens United, the super PACs and the Koch Brothers did it...

He lost for a noble cause: national health care...

It all comes back to race...

There's grousing and blaming in the offing if this iffing is happening.

What they'll never say: Mitt Romney was a fine candidate.

He was a fine candidate — and so was Ryan — even with the media spinning everything they could against him. And if R&R win, their victory will be spun as negatively as possible. Politico is giving you a peek of what they will be doing if you people don't get a clue and vote they way you're supposed to. We're going to pummel you with stories of your racism and Obama's martyrdom until you expiate your sins by voting for whomever the Democrats present for your obeisance in 2016. Look out... or rebel.

4 theories — you haven't heard them all before! — about what happened in the first debate.

One of my theories is that Obama was preoccupied by what had happened in Benghazi 3 weeks ago, perhaps scrambling to keep it from turning into a scandal that would sink his campaign. Bob Wright's response is — absurdly — to bring up the ridiculous old theory that the high altitude in Denver played havoc with Obama's big brain.

"Sesame Street has asked President Obama's campaign to take down its latest attack ad against Mitt Romney..."

"... which features footage of Big Bird.

"

Oh, no! Obama can't catch a break. Romney attacked Big Bird, and then Big Bird attacked Obama.

"Has any candidate lost 18 points among women voters in one night ever?"

"And we are told that when Obama left the stage that night, he was feeling good. That's terrifying. On every single issue, Obama has instantly plummeted into near-oblivion...."

Andrew Sullivan melts down.

Look: I'm trying to rally some morale, but I've never seen a candidate this late in the game, so far ahead, just throw in the towel in the way Obama did last week...

I'm trying to see a silver lining. But when a president self-immolates on live TV, and his opponent shines with lies and smiles, and a record number of people watch, it's hard to see how a president and his party recover. I'm not giving up....

Sorry, but it's hard not to see this as a lot of posing. A set up for the big announcement that Obama is back. If Obama is any good at all in the next debate or the one after that, we'll be told the man is a miracle.

Who can replace Kerry as Obama's debate practice sparring partner?

I've got an idea:

Bill Clinton. But even if he would do it, Obama shouldn’t trust him. If somehow he could, I don’t think Obama would like sharing even the practice stage with the man who out-shone him at the convention and who would easily best him at debate. And yet, with 2 more public humiliations in the offing, he’s got to do something. If he’s really desperate, there could be a world crisis of some sort that forces him to cancel the remaining debates.

The Obama campaign used the excuse — blame Kerry — that I offered at 10:29 on the night of the debate.

That's Central time, so: within half an hour of the end of the debate. In fact, I flagged the Kerry problem 10 minutes before the debate began. From my live-blog:

7:50: In the practice debates, Obama had John Kerry pretending to be Mitt Romney, and Romney had Rob Portman pretending to be Barack Obama. I've got to think Romney had the better practice partner. Why would Kerry be any good at that?...

10:29: Everyone seems to be saying that Obama lost by a lot. I blame John Kerry. I'll bet he was a terrible practice partner.

The day after the debate, I quoted a passage from the David Maraniss book about Obama, about how he learned how to debate as a teenager arguing with his grandfather ("Gramps") — "who had tried without much success to assume the role of disciplinarian, laying down what the teenager considered to be 'an endless series of petty and arbitrary rules.'" As Obama himself remembered: "With a certain talent for rhetoric, as well as an absolute certainty about the merits of my own views, I found that I could generally win these arguments in the narrow sense of leaving my grandfather flustered, angry, and sounding unreasonable." I said:

And Romney's not Gramps, though I note that, in Obama's practice sessions for the debate, the role of Romney was played by John Kerry. And I think Kerry was Gramps.

2 days after the debate, I looked at Obama's post debate zinger —"When I got on the stage, I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney" — and I said:

It's as if Obama expected Mitt Romney to show up in the form that Obama supporters have been sculpting in the media! Perhaps that's how Obama's sparring partner in the debate prep portrayed Romney. Oh, how I'd love to get the secret video of Obama practicing debating Romney with John Kerry playing the role of Romney. I think it would explain a lot.

And then, 3 days after the debate, the campaign itself blamed Kerry!

They blame the President's team, first of all, for not preparing him to meet the challenge of an aggressive Mitt Romney.  They say that nobody in the room challenged him, including the guy that he was debating with, John Kerry, because, as they say, he wants to be Secretary of State so he's not going to get in the President's face. And Presidents are used to deference; they're not used to people challenging them like that."

Of course, it's not really Kerry's fault. It's Obama's fault. Presidents are "used to deference"?! It's up to the President to demand the stark truth from those around him. The choice of Kerry and allowing him to present easy practice sessions show terrible judgment. If Obama had such poor judgment about something that would put him at a disadvantage at a crucial event in which he knew he was about to be tested in public, think what that suggests about the advisers that surround him every day as he attempts to deal with the nation's problems in a private setting, where we don't get to scrutinize and evaluate him.

Rocky Mountain high Obama?

“I’m going to say something controversial here... Obama arrived in Denver at 2:00 p.m. today, just a few hours before the debate started. Romney did his debate prep in Denver. When you go to 5,000 feet and you only have a few hours to adjust — I don’t know, maybe....”

Al Gore said on his TV network that apparently somebody watched.

I've also heard that Obama has trouble when you rouse him at 3 a.m. with a telephone call.



And don't bring up the writing on the pajamas. I'm cautioning against that sort of thing now. Stay upbeat, Romney people. Romney sounded like Reagan last night. He's full of optimism and energy. He can speak cogently for 2 hours in the mile-high city, and he can, I presume, answer the phone in the middle of the night.

AND: Just because we're talking about Al Gore and screwing up debates, I want to show you what I find the funniest presidential debate moment of all time:



Bush's head nod is epic, and if you ever want to make me laugh, just look at me with Gore-y triumph and ask "What about the Dingell-Norwood bill?"

67% said Romney won the debate.

And "No presidential candidate has topped 60% in that question since it was first asked in 1984," according to CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

That is, it was by far the most decisive win they'd ever measured. And they measured that time Dukakis didn't seem to mind if his wife was raped and that time Reagan said "There you go again."

"In just a little while, I'll go on stage to meet Mitt Romney in the first presidential debate here in Denver."

Obama emailed last night.

I couldn't be prouder to represent you out there.

Represent me?! Read this morning, it sounds like an outrageous excuse. Like it's my fault. That's representation of me? I didn't know I was so tired and grouchy.

"I got Barry aside and said, 'Look, why don’t we just go for B’s here.'"

David Maraniss — in his book "Barack Obama" — quotes Obama's high-school debate partner, Jeff Cox.

"That way, no big deal. That was my solution. He said okay, whatever." As soon as the debate began, Cox found himself outfoxed. He went into it in traditional fashion, preparing facts to lay out, one argument after another, gleaned from books and Time and Newsweek.

And Barry got up there and he just had a few arguments that I hadn’t thought of.… I was always touching back to this many killed, guns are killing, and he was just bouncing all over the place, but what he did is he went up to that ten-thousand-foot level. I remember him talking about, “How do guns make gun owners feel?” I hadn’t thought of that. How am I going to respond? He was very good on his feet, thinking more strategically on what could benefit him. I was sitting there flabbergasted; I remember thinking this is too heavily a philosophical question for me. And the teacher loved it. Barry was very smooth, and I started stumbling around all over the place. I felt he formulated in his own mind while we were doing it a kind of angle or wedge that was different than the angle I had been going. I was literal— one, two, three, four— and he kind of did some audibles. He wasn’t pulling out a whole lot of facts, he just seemed to have structured a bunch of little islands that he could jump to....

By the time Cox faced off against him, Barry had already mastered the art of knocking a debate opponent off-balance. He had been practicing almost daily on Gramps, who had tried without much success to assume the role of disciplinarian, laying down what the teenager considered to be “an endless series of petty and arbitrary rules” about use of the car and chores around the apartment. Eventually Barry would regret the way he dealt with his grandfather, but at the time he took advantage of his debating skills: “With a certain talent for rhetoric, as well as an absolute certainty about the merits of my own views, I found that I could generally win these arguments in the narrow sense of leaving my grandfather flustered, angry, and sounding unreasonable.”

Unfortunately for Obama, Romney is not the kind of kid who'd make a deal to just go for B's. And Romney's not Gramps, though I note that, in Obama's practice sessions for the debate, the role of Romney was played by John Kerry. And I think Kerry was Gramps.

"Ally" oops.

Obama didn't intend to say anything that wouldn't be appropriate to say.

Carry on!

"It has been a Junius Horribilis for President Obama."

"Could it get any worse?"

Obama’s "doing fine" remark is not just a "gaffe" that will be used against him to "sell" a "story" about him.

Chris Cillizza writes a column titled "Obama’s political gaffe will be fodder in general election." He makes some good points, but propagates a very bad interpretation.

He's right that anything Obama says will be used against him to the extent that it's useful.

[W]hile it is true that midday cable television viewership is low, that rationale completely disregards the media world in which we live, where even the smallest comment can be amplified into a national headline in minutes....

Then there is the reality that gaffes such as the one Obama made Friday are quickly — and, usually, effectively — used by the other side to score political points....

And he's right that Obama's remark — "the private sector is doing fine" — is most useful if Romney can "sell" it as "a window into what the president really thinks."

[Obama's] remark plays directly into the story that Republicans are trying to tell about him — that he is a big-government liberal who thinks the answer to all problems is expanding the federal bureaucracy and who lacks even a basic understanding of how the private sector works.

It's not a matter of Romney using an out-of-context remark to "sell" a "story that Republicans are trying to tell." Put the supposed "gaffe" phrase back in its context — including the follow-up context in which Obama explained himself. I did that work here. Obama meant to say what he did, and he stood by it. He is pushing a bill in Congress that would lavish federal money on state and local governments which, he said, have laid off 450,000 workers.  He told us the private sector is doing fine 3 times in his original statement, because that proposition is a fixed point in the argument for pouring more money into state and local government employment (not "expanding the federal bureaucracy" as Cillizza put it).

In his follow-up remarks, Obama repeated himself. He didn't use the phrase "doing fine" again, but he said there was "some good momentum in the private sector" with "4.3 million jobs created," so the private sector isn't the "biggest drag on the economy." He then pushed his plan for big federal spending to bail out state and local government, which he called "taking steps that would actually help deal with the weaknesses in the economy and promote the kind of economic growth that we would all like to see." And he wanted nothing done to help private business, because that isn't where the problem is.

Now, that's a fully fleshed out economic position. Not a gaffe. It's not merely "fodder" to be exploited by Republicans who want to tell their story. It is Obama's economic plan. It's not tax relief, which Obama comes out and says is unwarranted. And it's not fundamental reform of state and local government of the sort that Gov. Scott Walker has successfully undertaken in Wisconsin, which has worked to avoid laying off government workers. That's something Obama wouldn't even mention, in the very week that Walker won the recall election. Obama is promoting a plan to prop up the states that are not doing the kind of hard work that we've done in Wisconsin and thus reinforcing what is happening in the most irresponsible states.

There now, maybe some of you think I'm just telling a "story that Republicans are trying to tell," but I'm using the totality of Obama's remarks and the actual plan that he's pushing in Congress. I think Obama has committed to an economic plan that stands in stark contrast to the message of the Wisconsin recall: that people want responsible reforms and not profligate spending on government employment.

Woodward and Bernstein on "Face the Nation" — falling short on consistency about journalistic ethics?

First, they praise their own work from the Watergate era:

WOODWARD: Well, that we were just trying to find out what happened and... we were as empirical as we could be. And, you know, it needs to be said that we work for an editor, Ben Bradley, and other editors at the Post who were not - who didn't have an agenda themselves. But their agenda was "get the f-ing story; get into it; keep digging; don't let up." And we were 28 and 29 at the time. And it is very liberating to work in an institution where they really understand what we're trying to do. And they say to you, you know, use all your resources, use all the resources of this newspaper. In fact, if there is peril, if we are not believed but we think we have good sources, continue.

Then, the interviewer, Bob Schieffer, brings up the present-day problem with national security leaks that seem to be coming from the White House and for the purpose of making Obama "look like a stronger leader."

BERNSTEIN: I think first you've got to be very careful about creating a witch hunt for sources, and a witch hunt in which you go after reporters, because now more than ever we need real reporting on this presidency, on national security, on all these areas. And the press is not the problem here. We've got plenty of laws and if somebody inside is doing things with real national security secrets that he oughtn't or she oughtn't to be doing in terms of giving them to the press, that's one thing. But let's be really careful before we start a witch hunt here.

WOODWARD: Yes, and I completely agree with that. And by having an investigation, I mean, was there real harm to the national security? I think that question needs to be addressed at a policy level. And it's very difficult, I know from doing stories like this, where you are dealing with sensitive government secrets, to modulate and be careful, at the same time hold the government accountable for what they're doing. So this is an area that needs to be handled with great delicacy and I'm not sure we have a political system that knows how to do anything with great delicacy.

BERNSTEIN: The record of the press, you know, is really quite good in protecting real genuine national security secrets which we often know about. Don't put -- you know, think of what you are carrying around in your head that you don't put on the air.

What happened to get the f-ing story; get into it; keep digging; don't let up?

Tormenting Obama with the words "doing fine"...

... is Jennifer Rubin.

The GOP's "Doing Fine" ad evokes the opening titles to "The Terminator."

We were just talking about the way that ad is closely modeled on an anti-McCain ad from 2008. You can see the McCain ad at the Politico link where the similarity was noted. At my post, my son Chris dropped by to say the GOP ad "uses the main theme beat from The Terminator."

Here's the new "Doing Fine" ad:



And here's the opening title sequence from "The Terminator." Sorry I can't embed that. Anyway, the beat is used throughout the movie to make the viewer feel anxious about the relentless approach of the horrible robot from the future.

Obama's effort at explaining why he said "the private sector is doing fine."

Let's see if it makes as much sense as Romney's explanation of "I like being able to fire people," which, actually always made sense if you were allowed to see the whole quote, not clipped short. The explanation was right there in the next sentence: "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If someone doesn't give me the good service I need, I'm going to go get somebody else to provide that service to me." Romney was using what actually often works great in a speech: a provocative, short, surprising sentence, followed by something that convinces the listener that what sounded counterintuitive is really true.

But "The private sector is doing fine" wasn't that kind of remark. It was made in response to a question after he read a prepared statement, which had made the same point and purported to back it up with facts, and it was a point he wanted to make to justify a government jobs plan:

[Congress] left most of the jobs plan just sitting there...

Keep in mind that the private sector has been hiring at a solid pace over the last 27 months. But one of the biggest weaknesses has been state and local governments, which have laid off 450,000 Americans. These are teachers and cops and firefighters. Congress should pass a bill putting them back to work right now, giving help to the states so that those layoffs are not occurring....

And the most important thing I think we can do is make sure that we continue to have a strong, robust recovery.... We’ve got a couple of sectors in our economy that are still weak. Overall, the private sector has been doing a good job creating jobs. We’ve seen record profits in the corporate sector.

The big challenge we have in our economy right now is state and local government hiring has been going in the wrong direction. You’ve seen teacher layoffs, police officers, cops, firefighters being laid off. And the other sector that’s still weak has been the construction industry. 

And here's the way he put it in the question section:

Q What about the Republicans saying that you’re blaming the Europeans for the failures of your own policies?

THE PRESIDENT: The truth of the matter is that, as I said, we’ve created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government — oftentimes, cuts initiated by governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don’t have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.

Note the failure to mention the Wisconsin recall and the Scott Walker method of actually getting the budget under control and then not firing people.

So here's the new transcript, where Obama tries to climb out of the hole he dug for himself:

Listen, it is absolutely clear that the economy is not doing fine. That’s the reason I had the press conference. That’s why I spent yesterday, the day before yesterday, this past week, this past month, and this past year talking about how we can make the economy stronger.

The economy is not doing fine. There are too many people out of work. The housing market is still weak and too many homes underwater. And that’s precisely why I asked Congress to start taking some steps that can make a difference.

So far, he's only referring to "the economy" — not the private sector.

Now, I think if you look at what I said this morning and what I’ve been saying consistently over the last year, we’ve actually seen some good momentum in the private sector. We’ve seen 4.3 million jobs created — 800,000 this year alone — record corporate profits. And so that has not been the biggest drag on the economy.

That's a repetition of what he said in the original remarks, which he summed up as "the private sector is doing fine."

The folks who are hurting, where we have problems and where we can do even better, is small businesses that are having a tough time getting financing; we’ve seen teachers and police officers and firefighters who’ve been laid off — all of which, by the way, when they get laid off spend less money buying goods and going to restaurants and contributing to additional economic growth. 

Here there's a reference to small business — because, apparently, it's good for businesses to do well, but if they do too well and become medium-sized or big, forget it. But even with respect to small business, the idea is that they'd get a trickle down effect if public workers had more money to spend buying goods and going to restaurants. So it's still all about pumping up public employment.

The construction industry is still very weak, and that’s one of the areas where we’ve still seen job losses instead of job gains.

So if we take the steps that I laid out to make sure that we’re not seeing teacher layoffs and we’re not seeing police officer layoffs, and we’re providing small businesses with additional financing and tax breaks for when they hire or if they’re giving raises to their employees; if we refinance housing — or allow homeowners to refinance so they’ve got an extra $3,000 in their pocket so that they can spend money and contribute to further economic growth; if we’re making sure that we’re rebuilding, work that has to be done anyway, deferred maintenance on roads and bridges that could put construction workers back to work — all those things will strengthen the economy, and independent economists estimate it would create an additional million jobs.

Now, you can’t give me a good reason as to why Congress would not act on these items other than politics — because these are traditionally ideas that Democrats and Republicans have supported. So let me be as clear as I can be. The economy needs to be strengthened. That’s why I had a press conference.

I believe that there are a lot of Americans who are hurting right now, which is what I’ve been saying for the last year, two years, three years, what I’ve been saying since I came into office. And the question then is what are we going to do about it? And one of the things that people get so frustrated about is that instead of actually talking about what would help, we get wrapped up in these political games. That’s what we need to put an end to.

So the key right now is for folks — what I’m interested in hearing from Congress and Mr. Romney is what steps are they willing to take right now that are going to make an actual difference. And so far, all we’ve heard are additional tax cuts to the folks who are doing fine, as opposed to taking steps that would actually help deal with the weaknesses in the economy and promote the kind of economic growth that we would all like to see.

All right. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you, guys.

I won't parse all that in detail, but I think he stayed in the hole he'd dug for himself: The answer is federal spending to local government.  And then there's that man over there he's pretending does not exist: Scott Walker!

"Did President Obama Just Make A Blowjob Joke?"

He was speaking at a gay and lesbian fundraiser at L.A.'s Beverly Wilshire. (The "wonderful friend" is Ellen DeGeneres, who once engaged in a pushups contest with Michelle Obama.)

I want to thank my wonderful friend who accepts a little bit of teasing about Michelle beating her in pushups -- (laughter) -- but I think she claims Michelle didn’t go all the way down. (Laughter.) That's what I heard. I just want to set the record straight -- Michelle outdoes me in pushups as well. (Laughter.) So she shouldn’t feel bad. She's an extraordinary talent and she's just a dear, dear friend -- Ellen DeGeneres. Give Ellen a big round of applause.

Take the poll. (Does that sound dirty to you?!) But before you do, consider that Obama has a bone to pick — does that sound dirty to you? — with Bill Clinton right now, and given the strong association between Bill Clinton and blowjobs and the suspicion that Obama is currently pissed at Bill Clinton, he may have been engaging in some subtle jousting with Bill Clinton — does that sound dirty to you? —about the  sexual proclivities of their respective wives.

Did President Obama make a blowjob joke? What's most likely?
	Yes. Completely intentional, with a touch of deniability written in.
	Obama was mindlessly reading what was on the TelePrompTer, comic pauses included.
	No one, not even the speech writer, intended the double meaning.
	It's not a blowjob joke. People are looking for sexual meaning where there is none.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Now, I'm seeing the video, and the analysis — difficult from the text alone — becomes easy:



The look on his face, after he says "That's what I heard," shows very clearly, to me, that Obama did not realize there was a double entendre. He looks troubled in a way that is incongruous with his previous expression. This audience is laughing, and they are laughing too much for the context as he had understood it. He now knows why, and he is imagining other audiences hearing this and attacking him. When I saw that expression on his face, I genuinely felt sorry for him.

ALSO: As several commenters have noted, if it is a joke, it is more of a female-on-female oral sex joke, so the term "blowjob" — used by Buzzfeed at the link — is off.

Obama's Poland gaffe — you know, it was a Poland gaffe that lost the election in 1976 for Gerald Ford.

What Obama said was "Polish death camps," a terrible misstatement, carelessly referring to the geographic location of the camps without noticing the implication that that the Polish people ran those camps.

What Gerald Ford said, in a crucial debate with Jimmy Carter, was: "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, an there never will be under a Ford administration." In a 1989 interview, Jim Lehrer asked "why did you say that?"

There's no question I did not adequately explain what I was thinking. I felt very strongly, and I, of course, do so today, that regardless of the number of Soviet armored divisions in Poland, the Russians would never dominate the Polish spirit. That's what I should have said. I simply left out the fact that at that time in 1976, the Russians had about 10 to 15 divisions in Poland. Well, of course the presence of those divisions indicates a domination physically of the Poles, but despite that military occupation of Poland by the Soviets, it never in any way ever destroyed the strong, nationalistic spirit of the Polish people. And I felt, and of course, I'm pleased now the Poles are going to throw the Russians out And the quicker they do it, the better. And I'm proud of what they're doing, and, of course, I get a little satisfaction that maybe I was right in 1976.

JIM LEHRER: Let's go back at the time you said that. I'm sure you've replayed this in your mind a million times. I don't have to remind you what happened. You gave that answer, and then there was a follow-up, and you repeated it, so my question is did you have any idea that you had said something wrong?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: Not at the time. Not at the time, because as you may remember, I included Yugoslavia, and Hungary, I believe, and Poland in the initial answer, and I said the Soviet Union does not dominate these countries. They're autonomous, and of course, it related to an earlier comment I had made about the Helsinki accord, which had established the borderlines of all the Eastern and Western European countries. So at the time, I did not feel that I had made an error. In retrospect, obviously, the inclusion of a sentence or maybe a phrase would have made all the difference in the world.

JIM LEHRER: When did you realize that you had made a mistake, or at least or do you honestly believe you made a mistake, now, sitting here now?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: Well, I can see that I made a mistake in not adequately explaining what I had in mind. I have never had any doubts, none whatsoever about the strength of the Policy people to throw the Soviet or the Russian forces out, and to reestablish an independent Poland. I felt after the debate was over that I had overall done well because we had pointed out that Mr. Carter had been calling for significant reductions in military expenditures, which, of course, was not the right policy, and I pointed out his lack o experience in foreign policy military decision making. So when I finished the debate, I felt very comfortable. But the press focused in on that one exchange, and I happen to think that most of the press distorted the facts, and overly emphasized something that was not the most substantive issue in the whole debate.

JIM LEHRER: Do you happen to remember that just as the debate was over, when you first talked to your aides, your family, or whatever, did anybody say to you, Mr. President you made a mistake, you did bad on this one statement.

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: The first comments by my staff were that we had done very, very well overall. But then when the press, in their own analysis --

JIM LEHRER: Immediately, you mean right after the debate.

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: The press that were making the post debate analysis focused in on that, and made very adverse comments about my comment. Well, when that press reaction became the dominant one, of course, the whole feeling that I had won this debate overall changed quite dramatically.

JIM LEHRER: How important do you think that was to the outcome of the election?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: It was a factor. As you also know, we ended up losing by only a point and a half, or maybe two points. So any one of a number of problem in the campaign could have made the difference. The second debate might have made a difference. The pardon of President Nixon might have made a difference. The timing of certain economic news that came out in October that indicated we were not doing as well in coming out of the recession if the news we got in because through mid-November on the economy had come in mid-October, I think we would have won, because through November, economic news was good. The October news just before the election was not very good. So any one of a number of three or four problems, difficulties could have made a difference. We only had to change 6,500 votes in Ohio out of 4 million, and about 20,000, as I recall, in Hawaii and we would have won the election.

JIM LEHRER: When you lost the election, did you ever fly back some night by yourself thinking if I just had not said that in that debate about Poland and Eastern Europe, it might have come out differently? Did it haunt you?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: Not at all, Jim. I have always had the attitude, what's gone past you have to forget, and you have to look down the road and build for the future. Of course, Betty and I hated to lose. We did our best. But once the verdict was there by the voters we had no remorse. We didn't sit around and moan and groan. We had a new life to lead, and we started planning whatever our future would be.

By the way, I watched the debate at the time, and I understood what he meant as he said it. I heard how the spinners spun it immediately after the debate and saw how it played in the media and how much it hurt him. If only there had been bloggers back then to push back!