CONVENTIONAL THINKING

If I'm not fooling myself -- which is always a possibility, of course -- the coming forward of a meaningful Democratic rival to President Obama is right on top of us.

Lately veteran journalist Jeff Greenfield gave us a lengthy rendition of the familiar incumbents-can't-be-dumped chant, which ended on the incongruous note that if things don't improve for him Mr. Obama may be the first chief exec since Chester Alan Arthur to be denied renomination. (Well, which is it?)

Another veteran journalist, Eleanor Clift, wrote that the Dems are too terrified of the Repubs to risk weakening their man and that as a result nothing is going to be done despite the liberals' discontent and outrage. She added that anyone who went after the first black president would be viewed as an enemy by the black community and so would be left without political prospects.

Let's consider that last point. Nobody has been hurt as badly by the failed economy as blacks have, and nobody will suffer more from the assistance cutbacks that Mr. Obama has just agreed to. To say that blacks will vote their race rather than their vital interests strikes me as cynical and even racist. Were I a white candidate opposing the president, I would make Harlem one of my first stops and would expect to make hay there.

Yes, polls right now -- when there is no challenger -- say that most Dems and a high percentage of blacks want the prez again. But give us another option with a name and a face and a stirring message and I think that paradigm will quickly be replaced. A little shaking up and something that has been held on the surface only by inertia will sink to the bottom, while something unforeseen rises to the top.

Clift talked to Ralph Nader, who has sent out letters to 150 people he sees as prospective candidates. He told her that nobody thinks any of them could pull an upset in the primaries but that they could prod Mr. Obama to the left. I am glad that he is active, but the kind of candidacy he envisions would be a wasted effort. Someone who means to fight for what we stand for without winning is not an alternative to Mr. Obama but is Mr. Obama. Nothing is going to make a difference except with a person of the type who can and will lead and do joyous battle and make every effort to seize the nomination and go after a specific mandate.

Political realists "know" that nothing can be that hasn't been before. If they were right, no novelties would have come along. No one from the Deep South and no movie actor and no black aspirant would have gotten to the White House, because these things were unprecedented.

Let's look at the cases we keep reading about in which a party lost after its president met with a serious challenge, which are cited to "prove" that the same thing would happen again:

>Could the GOP have held on had the pols renominated Chet Arthur? I'd say no. It was entrenched and it stank of corruption. The opaque accidental president was both a champion spoilsman and a recent foe of the spoils system; that turn-about left him with few friends in either camp. Grover Cleveland had reform credentials ("We love him for the enemies he has made"), and the Democrats' hour had come.

>Could William Howard Taft have been favored again if Teddy Roosevelt hadn't sought to deny him a second term? I'd judge not. Progressivism was at its high water mark and Taft was a conservative and had disappointed the people's expectations.

>Would Harry Truman have gotten another nod if he had run and Estes Kefauver hadn't? Not conceivably. Harry was flagrantly unpopular; Ike would have plowed him under.

>Could Lyndon Johnson have made it if he hadn't bowed out and if Gene McCarthy had stayed home? No, I'm convinced the Dems were better off with Hubert Humphrey, who in part succeeded in distancing himself from LBJ's base-dividing war policy, something that the top guy himself couldn't have done.

>Would Jerry Ford have beaten Jimmy Carter had Ronald Reagan not tried to unhorse him? That's dubious. The Nixon pardon had slackened public trust in him. More importantly, his was a stalled administration in a time of widespread dissatisfaction over a weak economy, so that people felt they had nothing to lose by switching.

>The latter evaluation applies also to Mr. Carter, in opposition to whom Ted Kennedy had vainly struggled to overcome the legacy of Chappaquiddick, without which he might have been victorious.

>It applies as well to George H.W. Bush, who was beset, albeit weakly, by Pat Buchanan.

Those are the relevant instances. It seems to me that in every one of them the party was up against it regardless of whether an alternative candidate emerged. Contrary to the experts, I think anxiety over impending defeat did much to produce the challenge, rather than the challenge being what produced the defeat.

And now is different from those times, anyway. It has gotten steadily easier to mount a real revolt against a displeasing chief executive. YouTube and Facebook have rendered organizing and fund-raising not only easy but potentially even spontaneous!

We are told that we must have either the Republicans or a president who will not stand up to them. Are we really such chumps as to settle for that? I continue to predict that we won't. Barry Goldwater's old slogan, "A Choice, Not An Echo", recommends itself to us.

There has to be somebody credible in this huge and oh-so-varied country, who will make a bid, even at the sacrifice of comfort and privacy, to revive our economy and restore our democratic heritage. (There are only about a quarter million energetic lawyers who could do it.)

Pray that I'm right about what's going to happen, now on the cusp of a potentially momentous moment in our history.