Michael Zuckerman

Remarks at Morning Prayers

Memorial Church, Harvard University

Saturday, February 18, 2012

“Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)

Good morning, and thank you for being here on, of all mornings, a Saturday morning. When I was still an undergraduate at the College, my attendance record at Saturday Morning Prayers was not exactly something to write home about. (Unless you were writing home to say, “Dear Mrs. Zuckerman, your son needs to start waking up earlier than noon on Saturdays, he’s become a real degenerate.”) So, as we pray this morning, I am thrilled to see each of you, and to be reminded that, through the mercy of God, we occasionally are let off the hook from what Luke 6:38 promises, and find that the measure we give is actually exceeded by the measure we get back.

I am also blessed, this morning, to have a few old friends visiting here in the pews and so, even though they were kind enough to wake up early this morning and come join in this 375-year-old tradition of worship, I am going to take this opportunity to go ahead and embarrass them and pray a little bit about friendship.

My text this morning comes from the Old Testament, from the Book of Ecclesiastes:

“Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)

I chose this text because it calls to mind a story that’s extremely important to me.

The story is my own story, and it begins with a 13-year-old kid who’s pretty angry at the world, who’s lost his father just a year before and who has started spending his time outside of school in less than productive ways. Actually, you’d have to call them criminal ways.

And eventually, without getting into any of the details here in a place of worship, it leads to this 13-year-old kid having to do community service after school. And this kid is still pretty angry at the world, he’s not so optimistic about the future, he feels knocked down and he feels knocked out.

But this kid has a friend – actually he has a few friends. Thanks to one of the friends – and the friend’s mom – he gets set up with this terrific community service partnership between two local organizations, a program that’s going to have him doing art projects and mentoring every week with homeless children who live in the strip motels on Route 1 outside Trenton, NJ.

And another friend – who didn’t get in trouble and didn’t have to do the community service in the first place – tells him, completely unprompted, that he’s going to start volunteering alongside him, that he’s going to accompany him every week, to spend hours with these younger kids on these art projects, just so he doesn’t have to go it alone.

And that’s what the friend does, and every week they meet up and walk into town together, where they’re doing the art projects with the homeless children, and before long it’s the highlight of the week and something they find themselves looking forward to.

And actually those friends are in the pews this morning – Eddie, whose mom helped found the community service program, and Dimitri who volunteered alongside every week – and that experience ends up being such a transformational one for everyone involved – including the 13-year-old kid, who I can now start referring to as myself, because this is the point in the story where I start to fully recognize him again – that it lifted all of us up. It lifted me up, lifted my friend up, hopefully lifted the kids living in the motels up, and lifted us all up, I think, to be helping lift each other up.

And what this story has to do with faith is simply this:

That one of the great mysteries of faith – one of the great joys of faith for many of us here who love the life of the mind – is the effort to try to conceive of the inconceivable, to try to comprehend the incomprehensible, to try to summon up the unsummonable, which is the majesty of God Almighty.

And although we know that we, in this City of Man, are still restricted to seeing only through a glass darkly, for my money, when we think of what God is, of what it is we can do to be most like God, it’s not to try to seize the commanding heights of societal power and influence, or to try to decipher the formulas of the cosmos, or to try to engineer the scientific mechanisms of life and death.

In all those things, we are pretty poor imitators of the God who made this universe with its crashing waves and roaring winds and animals that graze the fields and man himself, whom God is so mindful of (Psalm 8:4) for reasons that pass understanding.

For my money, it is these simple acts of friendship, this walking alongside one another that we hear of in Ecclesiastes, in which we most approach the true majesty of God, in which we come closest to being vessels of His grace, just as we know, from Exodus, that “The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11).

And we hear the same, from our dearly beloved brother the Rev. Peter Gomes, who responded to all those who asked, “Where is God?” by saying that “God is where God is always – by the side of those who need him. He is not in front to lead, not behind to push, not above to protect, but beside us to get us through: ‘Beside us to guide us / Our God with us joining.’”

So as we go forth from here on this Saturday morning, let us go forth full of thanks for those who have walked beside us; let us go forth full of hope for a world that God blesses with His and each other’s companionship; and let us go forth full of joy to be able walk alongside those we meet who, just before we come upon them, still walk alone.

And so let us pray:

Dear Lord our God, our rock and our redeemer,

Our friend in troubled and still waters alike,

Continue to stand beside us and guide us,

That we may lift up our brothers and sisters,

As you lift each of us up, in our own times of falling.

Amen.

* * *

Michael Zuckerman serves as David Gergen’s research assistant. 

Where: Old Havana Sandwich Shop, Durham, NC

Other: This event is free and open to the public. Donations suggested.

Learn more about it at: http://events.triangle.com/durham-nc/events/show/243199285-bcf-speaker-series-the-important-role-of-social-innovation-for-our-countrys-future-with-david-gergen

Where: Great Hall of the State House, Boston, MA

Other: This event is free and open to all LCC members. Chartered buses will be available from sites around the state. The State House is fully accessible.

Learn more about it at: http://www.massculturalcouncil.org/news/lcc_2012_event.asp

Where: Great Hall of the State House, Boston, MA

Other: This event is free and open to all LCC members. Chartered buses will be available from sites around the state. The State House is fully accessible.

Learn more about it at: http://www.massculturalcouncil.org/news/lcc_2012_event.asp

For more than half a year, super PACs and other third-party advertisers have aired misleading attacks against Republican Massachusetts incumbent Sen. Scott Brown and his probable Democratic opponent, professor Elizabeth Warren. (You can see a sample of these ads at FlackCheck.org.).

Read more at: http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/29/opinion/jamieson-tame-super-pacs/index.html

Charleston, South Carolina (CNN) — The cloak of inevitability that Mitt Romney has been wearing — on again, off again — is suddenly and dramatically off again. Just as he seemed poised to wrap up the GOP nomination in South Carolina, Romney has been hit with a triple dose of bad news:

• Newt Gingrich has been surging among South Carolina voters. His strong debate performance Monday night, coupled with Romney’s clumsy responses on his taxes, allowed Gingrich to move up swiftly. This week’s CNN/Time/ORC International poll showed Gingrich cutting the Romney lead, and three polls Thursday morning have Gingrich modestly ahead in the state.

• Rick Perry, in bowing out Thursday, gave a full-throated endorsement of Gingrich. Perry commanded little support in South Carolina, but his departure 48 hours before voting starts will inject fresh energy into the Gingrich campaign.

• Iowa has now released its final count from its caucuses showing that lo and behold, Rick Santorum has the most votes — only a 34-vote difference but enough to give Santorum fresh bragging rights. (Many will always wonder how the trajectory might have changed had Santorum been declared the victor on caucus night.)

Who could have imagined this a week ago? We now have a race on our hands in South Carolina, and CNN’s debate Thursday night in Charleston — the last forum before voting starts — has become a crucial moment.

South Carolina, of course, is only one primary in a long season, so — even if their candidate were to lose here — the Romney forces remain confident about Florida 10 days later and other races to come. By any measure, they are much better prepared for the long haul than every other campaign, which usually spells ultimate victory. And it remains to be seen what Marianne Gingrich, the speaker’s second wife, will revealthat could damage her ex-husband’s candidacy in her interview Thursday on ABC’s “Nightline.”

Still, one senses yet another shift in the political landscape. It’s not just that in the past eight elections (all the way back to Ronald Reagan in 1980), the winner of the South Carolina primary has gone on to become the nominee of the Republican Party. A loss here would carry heavy symbolism for Romney.

But the bigger point is that Romney’s strongest calling card with GOP voters — his electability — has become somewhat diminished of late. A little-noticed Pew poll this week found that over the course of the recent campaign (November to now), Romney’s favorability rating among all registered voters has slipped from 38% to 33% and his overall favorable/unfavorable rating is 33%-47%. In the same survey, President Barack Obama has moved to a 5-point lead over Romney in a head-to-head match, 50%-45%.

The Romney team can point out that in the 2008 campaign, all three top competitors — Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain — saw some slippage in their favorability ratings over the course of the primaries. Goes with the territory, they will say. Then, too, other polls this year show Romney in a dead heat with Obama and running ahead in several key swing states.

Still, heading into this campaign cycle, political pros know that the Obama team has yet to unleash the full fury of its attacks against Romney — attacks they know how to do better than anyone else these days. And it is apparent that in the way the national conversation is changing, the Obama folks — with help from liberal friends in the media — are steering the debate away from jobs toward income inequality.

As nominee, Romney will command much higher ground if the election turns on how to create the most jobs than if it becomes a slugfest over fairness. Watching Romney squirm these past days over his tax returns, Democrats are increasingly confident about trend lines. That’s why it is so important for Romney to find better ways to address his taxes and wealth, starting Thursday night.

The bottom line is that Romney still has the lead position in the race for the Republican nomination. The polls also suggest that he will win South Carolina — that just as McCain won South Carolina in 2008 when avid conservatives in 2008 split their vote between Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson, so now Romney can successfully play divide and conquer against Gingrich and Santorum.

But the momentum here seems to be shifting, and if Romney is bloodied in South Carolina — where he once had a 20-point lead — we are in for a longer, more unpredictable race. Tune in Thursday night!

Read more at: http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/19/opinion/gergen-romney/index.html

(CNN) – Visiting New Hampshire, it appears that Mitt Romney is well poised to sweep through the Granite State, and probably South Carolina and Florida, on toward the nomination. But the campaign here suggests that, as he looks toward November, darkish clouds loom on the horizon.

New Hampshire voters love to surprise, and perhaps they will again this time. Some 37% remain undecided (according to a WMUR/UNHpoll released Friday), and one can never be certain how many independents will vote nor whom they will support — especially with Romney making several unforced errors in the past 48 hours.

Still, he has been a steady front-runner for months: His Massachusetts background makes him nearly a favorite son for many New Hampshire Republicans, and far more than in Iowa, his message of job creation resonates in this hard-hit state. He is almost cruising to victory.

So, the first question the press is asking is not whether he will win but by how much. If his vote total is in the mid-30s or better and he wins by double digits, the media will call it a major victory; if above 40, he will “crush.” Only if he goes below 30, and that seems unlikely, will be he be seriously hurt.

The related question is how others will stack up behind him. If there has been real news so far in New Hampshire, it is the lackluster performance of Rick Santorum. Typically, a candidate who came out of nowhere in Iowa to nearly win (what a difference those eight votes have made) would have built on that momentum in the first primary state. But Santorum appears to have plateaued and may even be fading.

That means the conservatives still don’t have a darling to rally behind in South Carolina, leaving Romney once again to divide and conquer. Meanwhile, the Jon Huntsman team hopes that he can break through to second in New Hampshire or at least be in a tight cluster with Ron Paul. That would give him a chance to compete elsewhere, especially in Florida (where he first planned to have his headquarters).

But the fact that no one is yet challenging Romney for the brass ring this Tuesday means he is closing in rapidly on the nomination. Only one Republican (President Ford in 1976) has ever won back-to-back in Iowa and New Hampshire, and never before has a nonincumbent Republican done it. With a victory in South Carolina, Romney would be 3-0. With most of his rivals already forced to scrimp and save, who could raise enough money to take him on after that?

Even so, one cannot escape the sense in New Hampshire that if he is the nominee, Romney and his team still have serious work to do if they want to defeat President Obama. That was instantly apparent Sunday afternoon when Romney appeared with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey at a rally in Exeter, New Hampshire, drawing one of the biggest crowds of his campaign.

While supportive of their guy, the crowd seemed relatively quiet, almost subdued, a sharp contrast to the electric rallies that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama held four years ago. Granted, the Democrats were locked in a much closer race. But several veterans of New Hampshire politics say that the energy isn’t flowing as it has in years past.

That is consistent with a Pew poll announced Monday that found only 51% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters nationwide rating this year’s candidates as excellent or good, compared to 68% four years ago (and compared to 78% on the Democratic side in 2008).

Another striking (and related) impression on Sunday came with the speaking lineup. Normally, as a special guest, Christie would have taken the microphone first, warmed up the crowd, and then introduced the candidate, who would turn up the juice and send people marching into the night.

Instead, Romney spoke first, delivering a fairly boilerplate homily before handing off to Christie, who delivered a barn-burner (listening, one got the sense the GOP convention keynote may be in his future).

Wisely, the Romney campaign prevented the narrative from becoming “Romney opens for Christie” by asking Ann Romney to close out the evening, which she did so with warmth and grace. Still, the odd sequencing begged the question that has been nagging the former Massachusetts governor for what feels like centuries now: Can he connect with voters strongly enough to win a general election?

The other issue that arises for Romney is whether he can unite his party behind him. We have seen for some time that this is a fractured, motley field of candidates, but, listening to different campaigns (and their voters), it seems clear that, just as importantly, they may well represent a philosophically fracturing party.

More than one united front, the Grand Old Party right now looks more like a group in the midst of a heated battle between at least three camps: the old-line, more moderate “Establishment” Republicans (a group that clearly favors Romney), the growing libertarian movement (exemplified by chief hero Ron Paul), and the more communitarian, religious phalanx of social conservatives (who propelled Santorum to near-victory in Iowa).

What casts the fissures in the party in such sharp relief is how little fondness these groups seem to have for one another: Not only is it easy to imagine a typical Romney voter looking down his nose at a Ron Paul candidacy, but evangelical voters are exactly the type Romney has so singularly struggled with (as Ron Brownstein notes, he even lost ground with them from 2008 to 2012, judging from exit polls), while Paul and Santorum themselves have appearedsubstantially more at odds with one another in the debates than either has been with Romney.

By contrast, the 2008 election on the Democratic side, while hard-fought between Clinton and Obama, was still a rivalry between two groups of voters who, in terms of policy, ultimately agreed on a great deal. Despite the fact that common wisdom deems Democrats the more diverse coalition, there was little doubt that the party’s voters would stand firmly behind whichever nominee was crowned.

As with the 2008 race for the Democrats, Romney’s biggest advantage this cycle is that the various voters punching ballots in the GOP primaries do have one thing in common: They desperately want a new president in the White House. For many evangelicals and libertarians, opposition to Obama will ultimately outweigh distaste for Romney, if he wins the nomination — so he is likely to be competitive as the nominee no matter what. But winning the presidency (especially against a campaigner as able as Obama, who has been shoring up his own base of late) requires generating enthusiasm from voters, and governing well requires generating even more.

Which underscores a serious concern that Romney and the president should share: that either of them, winning in a squeaker, would be hard-pressed to accomplish much with the country, and their parties, as divided as they are. Both parties talk about a country in need of a level of policy change that would traditionally require overwhelming support from voters, but nothing approaching a mandate is in sight.

So even if Romney is on the glide path to the nomination, he still has a lot more work to do. If he wants to challenge Obama and become a successful president, he would need to find a way to unite his ideologically fraying party, and he’s definitely going to need to summon enough fire so that Chris Christie can start opening for him.

Read more at: http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/10/opinion/gergen-romney-road-ahead/index.html

(CNN) – Republicans this year have the best chance of defeating a sitting Democratic president since Ronald Reagan toppled Jimmy Carter more than three decades ago, but Democratic heavyweights are quietly celebrating the fact that, given Tuesday night’s caucus results, that task has just become harder.

For Democrats, the rising fear was that Mitt Romney would storm to victory in Iowa and New Hampshire, not only ending the GOP nomination fight but quickly uniting his party behind a candidate who has consistently shown the greatest potential against President Barack Obama. Romney would have gained the muscularity and glow of a star.

While he did win the caucuses last night and should still sweep New Hampshire, the manner of his victory in Iowa hardly sent a message of strength and unity.

Consider: The percentage of votes that he won was virtually the same as four years ago when he lost Iowa to Mike Huckabee and the actual number of votes was six less. That’s not much progress for a candidate who has been courting Iowans off and on for five years. Moreover, his percentage of votes is the lowest any winner has recorded in the 40-year history of the Iowa caucuses. Republicans did have a respectable turnout of some 122,000 — modestly better than four years ago — but it was not the burst of excitement they had hoped. This is a party that hasn’t yet found its leader.

Where do Republicans go from here in their search for a nominee? There appear to be three possible scenarios:

(1) The probability: Romney marches on to victory in Florida (my guess: 65% likelihood). He retains the best ground game among Republicans — both money and organization — and with so many opponents still in the field, he can play the divide-and-conquer strategy that helped him eke out a victory in Iowa.

Rick Perry’s odd decision to stay in the race was a boon for Romney, whose best path forward is to roll up a double-digit victory in New Hampshire and then, boosted by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (who recently endorsed him), pull off an upset in the Palmetto State 11 days later. He would then be poised to win in Florida — and if that happened, he could achieve what he had hoped early on: to shut down the race. Even if he were to lose South Carolina, he is still in the best position to grind out victories over the long haul.

It is worth remembering that while they had reservations about him, many Iowans voted for Romney because they thought he had the best chance to win and also to turn around the economy. He still has those assets.

Results from a December Gallup poll are also important to Romney’s argument: That poll asked voters to place themselves on an ideological scale of 0-5, running from strong liberal to strong conservative. Strikingly, the average for the public at large was 3.2, to the right of center (2.5). Just as strikingly, voters put Obama at 2.3 and Romney at 3.5. In short, voters saw Romney as being much closer to their point of view than the current president.

(2) The possibility: A more conservative candidate takes it away from Romney (25% likelihood). Conservative activists clearly don’t want Romney and their distaste may be growing. But it will be hard for them to beat him unless they can coalesce behind a single candidate. The man with the best chance of that now is Rick Santorum. He has a chance to capture the media spotlight now and, as he showed in his moving speech after the Iowa caucuses, he has the capacity to connect with voters emotionally as well.

The early signs for him in New Hampshire are encouraging, but by no means overwhelming: Wednesday’s CNN/ORC poll of likely primary voters in New Hampshire who watched the Iowa caucus coverage saw Santorum’s support double from 5% to 10%, drawing mostly from Gingrich, who declined from 12% to 9%. But Romney stayed level at 47% — and unless Santorum can significantly cut Romney’s lead in New Hampshire or pull off another stunning come-from-behind victory in South Carolina (where Santorum is still in the low single digits), it’s hard to see him taking a commanding hold of the alternative-to-Romney mantle.

Another possibility is Gingrich, who, though hobbled by last night’s underwhelming result, still could vault himself back into contention with a dominant march through the South. Polling in South Carolina and Florida has been sparse since the holidays, but as of mid-December he still clung to solid leads in both of those states. That was before his rivals (as well as several of his former colleagues) had fully sharpened their knives for him — and the Gingrich who spoke last night seemed ready to return the favor with a crusade against Romney. Still, if he can channel those frustrations into boffo performances in South Carolina and Florida, he will spring back into contention.

There is likewise the distant possibility that former ambassador to China and Utah governor Jon Huntsman could be the latest candidate to catch fire and could hold the enthusiasm long enough to build a consensus around his candidacy within the party.

The conservative establishment would be willing to adopt him if he were viable — the Washington Post’s George Will and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board have both been charmed by his conservative policy credentials — but his campaign messaging has seemed almost completely to ignore the more conservative wing of the party and his debate performances have been uninspiring.

If he was counting on a rush of exposure in the week leading up to New Hampshire, he likely just forfeited a lot of that attention to the Santorum buzz. Ditto for libertarian hero and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who probably hit his high-water mark in Iowa and will likely see his still-impressive third-place finish eclipsed by the Santorum coverage. All of which leaves us with one other potential alternative:

(3) The long shot: Someone else enters the campaign (10% chance or less). Normally, this late in the game, a new entrant to the contest would be the stuff of science fiction. But conservative voters seem to be singularly dismayed by the choices in front of them: as CNN’s Erick Erickson tweeted last night, “Typical of email I’m getting: ‘If you put a gun to my head and said Romney or Santorum I would say pull the trigger.’”

Who would step into the fray? One hears voters pining for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (unlikely to join, especially after endorsing Romney) and some have floated Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (who endorsed Perry). Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush would be a strong candidate, but that may be a tough sell to Bushed-out voters only four years after the conclusion of his brother’s presidency.

Would a candidate who jumped in this late even have a path to victory? Perhaps. The early primaries and caucuses are richer in symbolic significance than they are in delegates, especially with the new rules prohibiting winner-take-all allotment of delegates in the early states. And even with such a late jump on fundraising and organization-building, a candidate who was able to rack up a string of impressive victories in the middle- and later-term primaries could theoretically build up a big enough head of steam to take the convention by storm while making use of the Internet and earned (read: free) media coverage to play catch-up on money and organization.

The late-entrant scenario is still a dark horse at best, but even the fact that it’s within the realm of possibility underscores the reason Democrats are quietly cheering last night’s outcome: the GOP is still, at best, a party that’s looking for a standard-bearer — or, more dangerously for their 2012 prospects, a disunited collection of smaller groups of voters still pushing their own.

Read more at: http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/04/opinion/gergen-gop-campaign/index.html

ABOUT a year ago, I flew to Singapore to join the writer Malcolm Gladwell, the fashion designer Marc Ecko and the graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister in addressing a group of advertising people on “Marketing to the Child of Tomorrow.” Soon after I arrived, the chief executive of the agency that had invited us took me aside. What he was most interested in, he began — I braced myself for mention of some next-generation stealth campaign — was stillness.

Read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?_r=2

Cambridge, Massachusetts (CNN) – Republican disarray over extending a payroll tax cut has quickly become part of a bigger political story that has been unfolding for months: the resurrection of President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats heading into the 2012 elections.

After the debt ceiling debacle of last summer, the conventional wisdom among many political analysts was that Obama would go the way of President Jimmy Carter, that Republicans would lose a few seats in the House but retain control, and that the GOP would surge into power in the Senate. In short, Republicans were looking for a clean sweep.

Who believes that now? Obama is still highly vulnerable and could lose, but the CNN poll coming out of the field this week reveals a remarkable turnaround, especially in the past month.

In a mid-November survey, when asked which candidate they were more likely to support, registered voters gave Mitt Romney a lead of 4 percentage points over Obama, 51% to 47%. The mid-December survey found an 11-point switch; Obama now has a 52%-45% edge over Romney. Against Newt Gingrich, Obama has a 16-point lead, 56%-40%. (Ironically, the one Republican candidate who does as well against Obama as Romney is Rep Ron Paul, trailing by the same 52%-45% margin.)

It is too early to tell how much Democratic prospects for the Senate and House have improved, but senior Republicans are worried. John King pointed out one straw in the wind Wednesday night on CNN’s “AC360.”: the Massachusetts Senate race, where a poll has shown Democratic populist Elizabeth Warren grabbing an unexpected lead over Republican populist Scott Brown. Only a few months ago, the Brown forces were supremely confident.

Brown has seen how much danger the payroll tax mess can pose for his re-election and was one of the first to condemn House Republicans for rejecting a Senate compromise that had overwhelming, bipartisan support.

For Brown and other GOP candidates in blue and purple states, the hard-liners in the House are playing directly into a narrative that Democrats have been promoting for months: that Washington is broken because the GOP has become hostage to the tea party. With sentiment toward the tea party now running 49%-33% unfavorable in CNN polling, that is potent stuff.

The truth about the breakdown in Washington is much more complicated (Democrats deserve ample blame, too), but Republican congressional leaders have so mishandled the payroll tax issue that they have made it easy for the charge to stick.

As The Wall Street Journal said in its scathing editorial, the GOP has also strengthened Obama’s arguments that he is more on the side of middle-class taxpayers than Republicans are. No wonder the White House is quietly chortling, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is calling on House Republicans to pass the two-month extension.

There are two other major forces at work that have been lifting Democratic hopes. One is the quality of the Republican presidential race. With less than two weeks left before the Iowa caucuses, as The Boston Globe reports Thursday, it is apparent that no one has captured the imagination of GOP voters. We are back to where we started: a sense the field is weak and people wondering whether a Jeb Bush or a Chris Christie will get off the sidelines.

All primary campaigns draw candidates toward the extreme end of their parties, but this year, with so many debates, there has been a danger all along for Republicans that moderates and independents would also be driven off. (In the CNN poll, moderates now give Obama a sizable lead against every GOP candidate.)

The other force driving the change in outlook is Obama himself. What he does best, as we have learned, is campaign. In domestic affairs, he has been far better at that than governing. He and his team apparently made a decision after the debt ceiling fight that he should be much less involved in leading Washington and instead hit the campaign trail. From my perspective, that’s not good for the country — witness how appallingly little has been accomplished this fall on jobs and the deficits — but it seems to be working for his re-election.

None of this is to say that Obama and Democrats have become clear favorites for next fall. The fluidity we have seen among Republican primary voters may well show up in the general electorate. As Romney has been arguing, the GOP is likely to close its ranks more fully once a nominee has been crowned. The improving tone of the economy — also a factor for Obama — could well be short-lived: As The New York Times reported Thursday,economists tend to think that growth could slow again next year. And that dark cloud called the euro zone is still hovering.

Even so, we are witnessing an important change in the political landscape — and it could be lasting. Republicans well remember the mid-1990s when they seized power in Congress and Speaker Newt Gingrich went mano-a-mano with President Bill Clinton. For a while, Gingrich had the upper hand, but Clinton then outmaneuvered him on two governmental shutdowns — and when the momentum turned in Clinton’s favor, he rode it to an easy re-election. No one should doubt that could happen again.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/22/opinion/gergen-obama-resurgence/index.html