The unusually productive lame duck session of Congress that wrapped up just before Christmas, I wrote at the time, symbolized how much our political culture has learned from 1994, when Democrats were hit with a midterm drubbing almost identical to the one they suffered this past fall.

That ’94 debacle, at least initially, terrified Bill Clinton and his fellow Democrats into a state of paralysis. Sixteen years later, though, Barack Obama simply acknowledged the “shellacking,” went back to work, and soon found himself signing the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and extracting an unexpected $300 billion in stimulus through a compromise with Republicans. No one was seriously questioning his relevance as president, and even conservatives were willing to concede that his odds of winning reelection in 2012 were still pretty good, despite the massive midterm losses.

The difference, of course, is that everyone in politics today is familiar with the story of Clinton’s fairly rapid post-’94 recovery. They know better than to write off Obama, who actually scores slightly better in polling now than Clinton did at this same point in his presidency.

I bring this all up because it’s the first thing I thought about earlier this week when news broke that Jeb Bush isn’t ruling out running for president … in 2016. Of course, there won’t be a Republican nomination for Bush to pursue in ’16 if a Republican unseats Obama in ’12, but what was striking about his comments and the reaction they generated is that no one seemed too hung up on this point. The contrast to late ’94 and early ’95 is striking. Back then, if a major Republican ruled out running for the presidency in 1996, no one was interested in speculating on whether that Republican might simply be waiting to run in 2000. Clinton, everyone knew, was a dead man walking. If you were a major Republican and you aspired to the presidency, you would have to run in 1996; to sit the race out would be to give up on the White House for good.

One way of interpreting Bush’s statement, then, is that he — like many Republicans, especially if you talk to them privately — understands that Obama (for now, at least) is more likely than not to win a second term in 2012. So if Bush, who is 57 now, really does want to be president, it’s probably a smart gamble to wait. The urgency that he would have been feeling back in late 1994 and 1995 — if you don’t run now, you’ll regret it forever! — is missing.

To be fair, there are other reasons Bush might be ruling out a ’12 run; maybe he just wants more distance from his brother’s tenure, or maybe he really isn’t that interested in being president. And even if Bush and other Republicans do privately believe that Obama is a good bet for ’12, a lot can change between now and then. Bill Clinton, don’t forget, probably wouldn’t have become president if every Democratic heavyweight hadn’t concluded in 1991 that George H.W. Bush would be unbeatable in 1992.

But Bush is also not the only Republican making noise about ’16; Chris Christie and his camp are sending the same message. Like Bush, Christie may have other reasons to wait; he was just sworn in as governor a year ago (a job he spent nearly a decade positioning himself for), and he knows that he probably can’t return from a losing national campaign in ’12 and win a second term in Trenton in 2013. But if more ambitious Republicans start sending the same signals — especially given how wide open the ’12 GOP field seems — it will be strong evidence that deep inside, Republicans are sensing that 2012 will be an Obama year.

• In case you missed it today, the conservative American Spectator magazine published a piece by Jeffrey Lord arguing that Shirley Sherrod is a liar. Lord says Sherrod’s relative Bobby Hall wasn’t lynched, because he was simply beaten to death and not specifically hanged. No one really knows why this noxious bullshit was written or published. Including other Spectator contributors.
• Alvin Greene is the most-covered midterm candidate in the nation, because America loves a sick spectacle. And because of South Carolina.
• Rasmussen shows McCain up 20 points on Hayworth.
• Jeb Bush is out there raising money and plotting to rule us all.
• Daily Caller violates basic standard of journalistic ethics.
• Harold Ford wrote a book! And in this book, it looks like he occasionally writes in ALL CAPS. (It also looks like this was supposed to maybe be his campaign quickie memoir, back when he was still going to run for Senate from New York.)
• The GOP will never let this stupid New Black Panther Party thing go.
• Would the Americans with Disabilities Act pass today? Well, for one thing, I imagine Ben Nelson would refuse to vote for it until people from Nebraska also got their own parking spaces.

A Kentucky Democrat running for U.S. Senate says former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is tarnishing his family legacy by appearing at a fundraiser on behalf of Republican Rand Paul.

Bush is set to attend a fundraiser for Paul’s U.S. Senate campaign in Louisville on Monday, the 20th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Jack Conway says Bush is helping a candidate that doesn’t fully support the act, which was signed into law by Bush’s father, former Republican President George H.W. Bush.

Paul campaign manager Jesse Benton said Conway is distorting Paul’s position on the act. Paul said earlier this year that he doesn’t want to repeal the law, but that it can create hardships for small businesses forced to install elevators.

A call to Jeb Bush’s Miami office wasn’t immediately returned.

• An LGBT magazine in Minnesota outed a local minister as a closeted homosexual. But their methods — they reported on his participation in a 12-step program — are a bit questionable. Furthermore, as Tom Scocca writes, is the minister “hypocritical” if he’s fighting against homosexuality in society and in himself?
• The Washington Times photoshops a turban on Elena Kagan because she is a scary evil Muslim liberal communist fascist Maoist terrorist etc. etc.
• The great Spencer Ackerman is moving to Wired’s Danger Room blog.
• The owners of oil pipelines are collecting phantom income taxes that they do not actually pay. From you!
• For some reason, Politico cut a line from a story that accidentally demonstrated why so much DC journalism sucks.
• The New Republic started a blog where Dissent’s Michael Kazin and the National Review’s Jim Manzi criticize TNR from the left and right, respectively. So psyched!
• Our healthcare system still sucks and we are still paying a lot of money for it.
• Republicans have a demographics problem.
• Jeb Bush is ready for 2012!

President Obama can rest a little easier tonight, as a new poll shows him leading potential Republican opponents in 2012.

Yes, of course, that election is three years away, and it’s absurdly early to be talking about it, much less polling on it. But this survey — conducted by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm — does have some interesting results beyond the topline.

First of all, it does appear that Obama’s rebounding after a difficult summer, expanding his lead against the various potential challengers.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush remains cursed by his last name: He’s always seemed smarter and more politically savvy than his brother, and were it not for the stigma of the second Bush administration, he’d be one of the GOP’s leading lights right now, if not its presidential candidate last year. And he’s still able to diagnose one of his party’s biggest problems right now.

Speaking to Tucker Carlson about the current state of the Republican Party for an interview published in Esquire, Bush put his finger on the single issue that could end up crippling the GOP to come, the lack of Hispanic support and the active denigration of Hispanics by some of the louder voices on the right.