THE RECIPE FOR PRESIDENTIAL RE-ELECTION used to be simple: keep employment high and prices low. Indeed, as of the early 1980s, the noted political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset was touting this formula as a potent predictor of electoral outcomes. Just add up the unemployment and inflation rates, he said. If this "misery index" was below 10, thumbs up for the incumbent. If above 10, then it was time to pen the memoirs.
Well, that was then. These days the misery index is just above 8, the lowest in a quarter-century, theoretically signifying a Nirvana-like America. Yet President Clinton spends much of...
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