With the Iowa caucuses today, Michael Barone brings up a pertinent point about the seeming weakness of the Republican presidential field:

Has one of our two major parties ever had a weaker field of presidential candidates in a year when its prospects for victory seemed so great? That question was posed to me by another journalist in conversation today.

My answer, after hemming and hawing a bit, was yes: the Democratic party in 1932. Its prospects for victory were excellent by just about any measure. The gross national product had declined by 56% in four years, the unemployment rate had risen from 4% to 24% and banks were failing and wiping out depositors. We don’t know the job approval rating of the incumbent president, Republican Herbert Hoover, since the first random sample poll was not conducted until October 1935, but it surely was a lot lower than Barack Obama’s approval rating today. …

Obviously this was a golden opportunity for the Democratic party. But its field of candidates looked weak at the time. Al Smith was running again, but his Catholicism had cost him many ordinarily Democratic votes in the South and Midwest in 1928 and it seemed possible that it might do so again. House Speaker John Nance Garner was running, an unpleasant figure from the South (which produced no presidents between Zachary Taylor and Lyndon Johnson) whose major policy was to increase taxes at a time of depression. Sharing his Southern background was Harry Byrd, who had served one term as governor of Virginia. Maryland Governor Albert Ritchie was a favorite of Baltimore newspaperman H. L. Mencken but of few others. Former Secretary of War and Cleveland Mayor Newton Baker was seen as a dark horse candidate, but he was a colorless and little known figure.

Of course we all know who the Democrats did nominate, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and we know that Roosevelt turned out to be a great or at least a formidable president (a great wartime president in my view, but certainly undeniably a formidable president whatever you think of his decisions and policies). But that wasn’t clear at the time. He had served seven years as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the Wilson administration and four years as Governor of New York. But many considered him a lightweight, profiting on the fact that he was a distant cousin (his wife Eleanor was a closer cousin) of Theodore Roosevelt, a president considered great enough at that time to be worthy of being depicted on Mount Rushmore and the winner of the largest percentage of the popular vote for president of any candidate between 1820 and 1920. Theodore Roosevelt had written several impressive books (his account of the naval War of 1812 is still considered authoritative) before he was elected president and had resigned as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to serve in combat in the Spanish American war at age 39. Franklin Roosevelt had written no books before 1932 and had stayed in the same civilian post rather than enlist at 38 when the United States entered World War I. Franklin Roosevelt was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1920 when the ticket lost by a 60%-34% margin to the Republican ticket of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, and Roosevelt nearly lost the 1928 governor election to Republican Albert Ottinger. Few journalists espied greatness in him. He was “Roosevelt Minor” to Mencken, who wrote, “No one, in fact, really likes Roosevelt, not even his ostensible friends, and no one quite trusts him.” Walter Lippmann, who supported the Democratic party as editorial page editor of the New York World in the 1920s, and who had known Roosevelt for more than a dozen years, described him as “a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be president.” …

Why did the Democratic party have such a weak field (as people then saw it) in a year when its prospects were so good? One reason is that its last national administration, that of Woodrow Wilson, had left few people behind of presidential caliber; the same might be said for the Republicans this year of the much more recent administration of George W. Bush. Another reason is that Democrats won relatively few elections between 1920 and 1932 and that most of its major elected officials were either Catholics or Southerners, both of whom were widely seen as unelectable (an impression strengthened by Smith’s defeat in 1928). The situation is not quite the same as that of this year’s Republicans, but 2006 and 2008 were harrowing election years for Republicans, leaving them with a field of candidates only one of whom has demonstrated the ability to run ahead of his party any time recently.  …

My point is this. The 2012 Republican field does indeed look weak, at a time of great opportunity for the party. But so did the 1932 Democratic field. We can try to learn as much about these candidates as we can, but we cannot foresee the future. We must hope that at least one of these candidates turns out to have greater strengths and virtues than are now apparent. It’s happened before.

A more recent example (as someone pointed out on Twitter Monday night) is 1992, the election that 18 months earlier seemed a waste of time given George H.W. Bush’s approval ratings after Operation Desert Storm and before people started noticing the economy wasn’t doing so well. New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and 1988 candidate Al Gore decided not to run. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was known only for giving an amazingly long-winded speech at  the 1988 Democratic convention. And yet, thanks to the flaccid economy, H. Ross Perot’s third party run and Clinton’s appeal as a new-generation Democrat (sound familiar?) gave Clinton the election.

Meanwhile, David McElroy has a few things to say about some of the aforementioned last names:

USA Today released its annual poll last week of who Americans admire most. I shouldn’t be disgusted — because I know human nature — but I am disgusted. Topping the list of men is Barack Obama. Topping the list of women is Hillary Clinton.

I’m not making a partisan statement in saying this. My issue isn’t that they’re both Democrats. I’d have felt the same way when it was George W. Bush during his administration. My issue with it its that we deify politicians in this culture — instead of honoring the people who actually achieve things worth doing. …

Take a look at the list and see all the politicians. I’ve colored all the political figures in red. (And, yes, I count Michelle Obama and Laura Bush as politicians. You’d have never heard of them if they weren’t associated with politics.) On the women’s side, 80 percent are politicians and the two remaining choices are entertainers. Why do we admire these people? …

The people we really admire aren’t celebrities, are they? Isn’t it more a matter of a few hundred people in every little place seeing the difference that some man or woman makes? It could be a teacher, a pastor, a co-worker, a friend or scores of different roles. But if we all mention John Smith or Mary Jones — the people we know that we admire — there aren’t enough people who even know those people for them to make the list.

So is there something wrong with Americans to produce such a shallow list? Or are we asking the wrong questions in a media-saturated world? I suspect it’s a little of both. I think most of us have real people in real life who we admire deeply, but those real-life heroes can never make a poll such as this.

But there are some people who truly do admire the Clintons and Bush and Newt Gingrich. (Heaven help us.) I wonder if these are the people who are most engrossed in the media culture. I can’t say for sure, but I suspect those groups would correlate tightly.

I don’t admire the people on these lists. I actively distrust most of them. I’m indifferent about most of the rest. Even someone such as Graham — whose faith is similar to my own — is a mere footnote of the past in my mind.

I admire a few people, but they aren’t people you know. The public obsession with making heroes out of politicians and entertainers — and the media’s complicity in it — is a dangerous thing. As long as we believe these people are the ones to admire, we’re going to keep giving our honor to people who don’t deserve it — rather than the truly admirable people who labor without recognition all around us.

Read Psalm 146:3.