LEWISTON — A longtime Maine Democratic operative said Thursday there’s good news and bad news for his party in the upcoming mid-term elections less than two months away.

The good news is that the electorate can be trusted to vote for the right candidates; the bad news: Americans “love divided government.”

That means putting one party in the White House and a different one presiding over Capitol Hill, said Charles Micoleau, chief of staff to former U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie and a former member of the Democratic National Committee.

It also means that voters are likely to cast their ballots after careful deliberation and aren’t easily influenced by the din of campaigns.

“American people, when it comes to voting, are rather remarkable,” Micoleau said during a talk at the Lewiston Public Library as the lead-off speaker in the Great Falls Forum series at the library’s Callahan Hall.

“They have the uncanny ability to follow their instincts and to cut through the rhetoric and sort of do what’s right,” he said. “In my experience, you have to have faith; you’re justified in putting your faith in the electorate.”

Micoleau contrasted the national political climate of 1970 with today’s divisive politics and pointed to Maine politicians in both eras as striking a reasonable and constructive tone.

Four decades ago, Muskie was running for re-election to the U.S. Senate. He and presidential running mate Hubert Humphrey had lost narrowly to Richard Nixon two years earlier. Muskie would mount his own presidential campaign two years later.

The similarities between 1970 and now are striking, Micoleau said.

“People were anxious. They were scared. There was uncertainty and concern about security,” he said. The United States military was still mired in Vietnam.

Economic concerns were paramount. The rate of unemployment between 1968 and 1970 had soared by 33 percent. Inflation was raging; interest rates had skyrocketed.

Nixon was frustrated by his inability to implement policy initiatives around peace, prosperity and safety.

Control of the U.S. Senate, like today, was in the balance, Micoleau said, with Republicans hoping to win a majority. The GOP was seeking to paint Democrats as promoting “permissive behavior.”

On an election eve broadcast, Nixon attacked Democrats, using “very hot rhetoric, waving his arms in a classic campaign style and railing against thugs and hoodlums and appeasement of violence and obscenity shouters.”

The effect of that 15-minute broadcast by the president contrasted sharply with Muskie’s speech, Micoleau said.

Speaking from an armchair in a home in Cape Elizabeth, Muskie made a “reasoned, calm delivery. It was very personal,” Micoleau said.

He quoted from Muskie’s speech:

“These elections of 1970, something has gone wrong. There’s been name-calling and deception of almost unprecedented volume. Honorable men have been slandered and faithful servants of the country have had their motives questioned and their patriotism doubted. The danger from this assault is not that a few more Democrats might be defeated; the country can survive that. The true danger is that the American people will have been deprived of that public debate, that opportunity for clear judgment, which is the heartbeat of the Democratic process.”

The outcome of the 1970 mid-term elections was that there wasn’t much change.

The GOP picked up governorships in California and New York. Only two seats changed in the U.S. Senate and the House changed little, Micoleau said.

Micoleau quoted a columnist in the wake of the 1970 elections, who said that, in the end, voters didn’t get swept up in “panic politics” and were more easily swayed by pocketbook issues.

We’re likely to see that again this time, Micoleau said, four decades later.

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