At The Corner, Mark Steyn writes that the Clintons were bad for the Democratic Party:
The Clintons’ leadership of the Democratic Party was great for the Clintons, terrible for the Democratic Party: They lost the House, they lost the Senate, they lost state legislatures and governors’ mansions, and in the end Clinton couldn’t even bequeath the White House to his Vice-President in a time of peace and prosperity.
In a 2006 Yale Law Journal article Steve Calabresi and I presented data showing that losing power, even state governorships, as a presidential term progresses is common, not an exception. Essentially, we believe that a President and his party are a lightning rod for everything that goes wrong.
Our article can be downloaded at the bottom of this SSRN page. Particularly relevant are Figures 1 and 2 on page 2617 showing governorships by party since 1936.
UPDATE: I was amused by one of the comments below. Justin says that he knew this in high school. His comment brings to mind my observation of the three possible responses to workshop papers at the Univ. of Chicago Law & Economics Workshop in the early 1990s: (1) it’s wrong; (2) it’s trivial; or (3) it’s already been done (usually coupled with the claim that the critic had already done it himself).
If Justin really knew in high school that the President