Four bad excuses for losing the election.

Back in the days when the Democrats were the perpetual losers of presidential elections, they developed a formidable ability to psyche themselves into believing that the fault lay elsewhere. When Jimmy Carter went down in 1980, it was economic forces beyond his control and rotten luck in Iran. In 1984 and 1988, it was a serendipitously healthy economy that favored Republicans. Democrats always complained of a charismatically challenged nominee, or Reagan's magic dust, or Lee Atwater's slime-ball tactics. As manifested by voters' continuing refusal to give Republicans control of Congress, they reasoned, the people obviously liked what Democrats stood for. The people just had a funny way of expressing it. For some dogmatic Democrats, it seemed, any explanation would do except the obvious one--that the party wasn't speaking for a majority of voters at the national level.

As with so much else in politics, the traditional roles are now reversed. Today, it is the Republicans who are on a quest to rationalize political failure. A few go so far as to argue that the GOP is winning even as it appears to be losing. Grover Norquist, who is the president of an anti-tax organization and an adviser to Newt Gingrich, compares the 1996 election to the Battle of the Bulge, in which Germany inflicted losses on the Allies, but weakened itself to a point where it could soon be defeated. The Democrat-Nazi analogy is an added bonus.

Denial is, according to psychocliché, one of the stages of dealing with death. But what of the stations of denial? Conservatives are now ignoring reality with the help of four principal excuses.

1 It was all Dole's fault.

Charles Krauthammer makes this case in the post-election issue of the Weekly Standard. ("No Excuses, No Alibis," declares the editors' self-congratulatory headline, as if pinning the entire blame on one scapegoat deserves a medal for intellectual valor.) "The reason for the Republican defeat is to be found not in the economy, not in the opponent, not in the stars, but in the candidates," Krauthammer writes. "The most important fact about the 1996 presidential campaign for Republicans is that but for Dole (and Kemp), it was winnable." Dole, according to Krauthammer, failed to make Clinton administration corruption seem like a valid issue, and missed his chance to exploit affirmative action. Tony Snow, a former speechwriter to George Bush, also makes this argument in his column. "Bob Dole, stranded in the thickets of his ineloquence, settled on the theme of: Whatever," Snow complains.

Certainly Dole was a weak candidate, as was Mondale, as was Dukakis, and as was Bush, both when he won in 1988 and when he lost in 1992 (his speechwriter, one Tony Snow, failing to extricate him from his own verbal briar patch). But to put all the blame on Dole presumes that there was some other Republican candidate who might have presented a more formidable challenge to Clinton. Would that be Phil Gramm? Steve Forbes? In the early phase of conservative lament over Dole's hopelessness, most Republican pundits were pining for ... Jack Kemp. But even the great white hope Lamar Alexander would have faced the same situation Dole had to deal with: a damaging but untouchable GOP abortion plank and guilt by association with the Gingrich Congress.

2 It was due to circumstances beyond our control.

Republicans suddenly sound like a bunch of Marxist economic determinists. "Tuesday's presidential election was won back in January, when the economy, which seemed headed for zero or even negative growth, suddenly turned around," writes James K. Glassman, the conservative Washington Post columnist. "Economy is destiny." Others make an even broader structural argument. "It was Clinton's good fortune to run for re-election in a generally satisfied country," write Ramesh Ponnuru, Rich Lowry, and Kate O'Beirne in the National Review. In the words of Fred Barnes, offering an alternative explanation to Krauthammer's in the Standard: "In a period of peace and prosperity--such as now--an incumbent president is all but certain to be reelected. It's that simple."

That simple? Peace and prosperity? As recently as four years ago, pundits were explaining George Bush's defeat after winning the Gulf (and arguably the Cold) War--delivering not just "peace" but victory--by likening it to Churchill's defeat by British voters after World War II: Peace gave people the security to try someone new. As for "prosperity," Republicans certainly didn't attribute their victories of 1984 and 1988 to a fortuitously good economy. In those ancient days, they thought the president deserved some credit for the state of the economy. They also insisted that larger ideological tides were at work.

3 If you squint, it looks like we won.