One example of how the divergence squeezes candidates came in 2000, when most voters approved of President Bill Clinton’s work, but most had an “unfavorable” view of his post-impeachment character. That flummoxed Al Gore’s campaign when it thought about how to handle Clinton. According to Gore campaign vets like Bob Shrum, Clinton was toxic in states that he’d won twice and where the economy was booming, like Iowa.

Since Sarah Palin doesn’t have a job outside of her book tour, her “favorable” rating is all she has. Not only is it lower than Barack Obama’s favorable rating, it’s lower than a credible national candidate can really stand — Republicans argued that Hillary Rodham Clinton might be unelectable as a presidential candidate when her “unfavorable” rating was a good 10 points lower than Palin’s.

Here’s a revealing moment on Fox News yesterday, after former President Bill Clinton met with Senate Democrats on health care and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) talked it over with Neil Cavuto. The host asked the senator about Clinton’s pitch, and how he reminded Democrats of the negative effects of reform’s failure in 1994.

DEMINT: I think it’s about 50-50 chance here in the Senate. They are going to try to rush something through. Those folks who met with Bill Clinton need to remember what happened when he tried to pass Hillarycare. That was when 1994 ushered in a long Republican majority. And I’m afraid that…

CAVUTO: By the way, he said apparently that happened because they didn’t do anything.

DEMINT: Well, I hope they don’t do anything again.

It’s important to point out that DeMint has proposed his own health care legislation–he did so months ago, and his position is that he wants Congress to tackle health care, just not this way. But DeMint is also the Republican who framed health care as Obama’s “Waterloo,” and has made the obvious point that a Democratic failure to pass what the president wants would devastate the party and its base.

“In 2008, we held our presidential election on Sept. 15,” Clinton said. “When the Bush administration decided not to help Lehman Bros … McCain’s chances of winning an election went from 1-in-4 to 1-in-50. The election ended Sept. 15.”

Debating whether the government should have let Lehman fail is a worthy pursuit, and one best debated by economists and policymakers still probing the near-collapse of the country’s financial system. For Clinton, however, it’s a different matter. Blaming Lehman keeps Clinton from giving any credit to Obama for winning on the merits of his campaign. It helps take the focus even further away from Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful primary campaign, and Bill Clinton’s own role in stirring up controversies that detracted from her effort.

Coming from a more neutral observer, these kind of comments about Lehman might be worth pondering further. Coming from Clinton, they sound more like self-serving revisionist history.

“He’s talking about generalities and concepts, but he has not said, ‘This is what I’m for,’” Peterson said. “In order to get something done, it’s going to take the president to come forward and say, ‘This is it, this is where we start.’”

Funny, though, that this approach was precisely the factor so often blamed for the failure of the Clinton administration to pass its own sweeping health care reforms in 1993 and 1994. No doubt that, before choosing to allow Congress the freedom to craft Washington’s health reform bill this year, Obama had consulted with his secretary of state, his chief of staff, and probably even Bill Clinton himself. It’s strange now to have the same Congress that had blasted the Clintons for being pushy with details is now going after Obama for being too vague.

That Obama is reportedly planning to announce detailed demands later this month is indication that he’s nimble enough to change strategies mid-stream. Whether the switch comes too late has yet to be seen.

But then he went on to say, as Glenn Greenwald tweeted yesterday, that “I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture that we ratified under President Reagan.”

Now, once you acknowledge that the CIA, at the direction of senior cabinet officials, violated international humanitarian law that requires the United States to prosecute the perpetrators, the only way to justify not investigating is to say that the executive branch of government is above the law — or, put more pragmatically, that it’s politically too messy to investigate senior leaders in the U.S. government.

Republicans didn’t hesitate to investigate when it involved Democratic President Bill Clinton, however, or to bring charges against him for lying about a personal matter. And Congress didn’t turn its backs on the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, which led to 14 senior officials charged with crimes, and 11 convictions. And of course the Watergate affair led to the indictment and conviction of senior Nixon administration officials, and impeachment charges against the president. Congressional investigations of sitting and past administrations are far from unprecedented.

So how does McCain explain why we ought to forget the whole torture problem — which led to the deaths of a still-unknown number of detainees in custody, some of whom the CIA still can’t account for — even as he acknowledges that it violated international treaties that legally obligate us to prosecute?

“I think these interrogations helped al-Qaeda recruit,” McCain said yesterday, adding: “the damage that it did to America’s reputation in the world we’re still on the way to repairing.”

Even setting aside the legal requirements, as a practical matter, a public acknowledgment and investigation would seem to be the only way to repair that damages.

As McCain put it: “This is an ideological struggle as well as a physical one.”

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Revelation one: John Edwards, who at that point was several months into his career-killing affair with Rielle Hunter, told Kennedy that it would be “right for the party” if he endorsed him.

I know you’ll do that and when you do what’s right for the party you will be with me. It can make all the difference. We can win this. I’ll win Iowa.

Revelation two: Bill Clinton definitely lost Kennedy after his attacks on Obama, but what really got Kennedy angry was when Clinton claimed that his wife was not really voting for a war in Iraq by voting for the 2002 resolution. Clinton “cited the support for the resolution by Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel.”

Kennedy, who had led the opposition to the war, was furious. “It was a vote for war,” he said firmly. “I was there. I said it at the time. That resolution was a vote for war. Everybody understood it.”

Revelation three isn’t as big of a surprise. When Kennedy endorsed Obama, “his endorsement came with conditions. Kennedy wanted a commitment from Obama that as president he would push for universal health care. He wanted it to be a first priority of an Obama administration. Obama agreed.”

That 72-19 “no” margin is pretty massive, but it’s good to know that 30 percent of Republicans worry that Clinton might have put more people in danger.

“You really ought to go to one of those congressional health care meetings,” Clinton snapped. “They’d love to have you.”

After launching into a protracted defense of the process back in 1993, Clinton said that conservative opponents of health care reform were protesting now at town halls because “they know they have no chance to beat health care this time unless” they frighten swing-district Democrats.

“They don’t have the filibuster this time,” Clinton said. In 1993 and 1994, “Bob Dole was running for president,” and all Republicans needed was for “Bill Kristol to write that memo” telling them to slow it down.

Good morning, everybody.  I want to just make a brief comment about the fact that the two young journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, are safely back with their families.  We are obviously extraordinarily relieved.  I had an opportunity to speak with the families yesterday once we knew that they were on the plane.

The reunion that we’ve all seen on television I think is a source of happiness not only for the families but for the entire country.

I want to thank President Bill Clinton — I had a chance to talk to him — for the extraordinary humanitarian effort that resulted in the release of the two journalists. I want to thank Vice President Al Gore who worked tirelessly in order to achieve a positive outcome.

I think that not only is this White House obviously extraordinarily happy, but all Americans should be grateful to both former President Clinton and Vice President Gore for their extraordinary work. And my hope is, is that the families that have been reunited can enjoy the next several days and weeks, understanding that because of the efforts of President Clinton and Gore, they are able to be with each other once again.

So we are very pleased with the outcome, and I’m hopeful that the families are going to be able to get some good time together in the next few days.

Thank you very much.

Look! He didn’t deny that the former president’s diplomacy rewarded North Korean behavior!

Let’s see: the United States got back two imprisoned Americans. The North Koreans got a photo op with former President Bill Clinton. Right now, Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, Lee and Ling are finishing up remarks on a Los Angeles tarmac. There is no sense in which this outcome is “better” for North Korea. If Bolton wants to sit down with the Lee and Ling families and tell them that their daughters’ freedom wasn’t worth a few snapped pictures, that’s his right, but I wonder what their response would be.

Perhaps a better way of thinking of the situation is that there really are cases where diplomacy can succeed at minimal cost. If North Korea feels like it won something by the Clinton visit, fine. No minimally serious cost/benefit assessment can result in a conclusion that the United States lost more than it gained here. Letting the North feel like it gained something when it didn’t isn’t rewarding bad behavior. It’s basic diplomatic savvy.