William Marvel: Tsunamis in Perspective

Much of the superlative commentary about Donald Trump's electoral drubbing last week reflects a significant infusion of historical myopia. That disability often hampers modern journalism, however, and it afflicts the public at large. Given the deteriorating attention to history in public education, that's not difficult to understand. Donald Trump's self-inflicted midterm rebuke was certainly decisive, but it was far from the worst in our history.

We had one other president who served two nonconsecutive terms, and Grover Cleveland's bifurcated administration supplies more comparisons to the Trump epoch than the more honest Grover deserves. As I write, Republicans have already lost seven seats in the Senate and 42 in the House, with a couple of other Senate seats and 20 in the House still undecided. The worst outcome for Republicans would therefore be a loss of nine Senate seats and 62 in the House: Obama lost 63 House seats in 2010, and nine in the Senate in 2014, so those individual numbers are not especially overwhelming, even when combined.