Starting with Carter over Ford in 1976, governors – sitting or former – have won six of the last seven presidential elections. In all but one case (Reagan over Carter in 1980), the loser has come from Congress or the White House.

That’s quite a record, one that hardly can be credited to sparkling personality or, given the three-to-three tie between Democrats and Republicans, party affiliation. Something else gives governors a leg up in presidential politics. A glimpse of that something is evident at the National Governors Association winter meeting now under way in Washington.

Nearly every state is experiencing extreme financial distress. Budgets are strained, tempers are short, federal mandates are unmet and, with Republicans holding a slim 26-24 edge in |governorships, the conditions for the NGA meeting to disintegrate in partisanship are nearly perfect. It nearly did, until that special something governors do kicked in.

They realized that what they have in common is more important than their differences, that making real progress on real issues is preferable to posturing and squabbling. So, while a few Democratic governors continued to blame the Bush White House for all their grief and a few Republicans held fast to their view that big-government liberals were at fault, most decided to work on what actually can be fixed.

Medicare and Medicaid shortfalls are killing state budgets, so the governors are backing a consensus resolution calling for specific changes in the structure of federal funding, a timetable for increases and, to help control the single greatest cost increase, a prescription-drug benefit. Not perfect solutions, but attainable improvements.

A similar practicality is at work in the governors’ other policy proposals. The partisan brawl that nearly erupted Sunday started with some Democrats accusing the White House of callous disregard for the states’ plight and demanding substantial federal aid for unspecified purposes and some Republicans accusing the other side of wanting free money to blow on new programs. By the end of the day, the governors had agreed on some very specific purposes – at least $9 billion to meet mandates related to homeland security, the No Child Left Behind education reform act and, that decades-long federal shortchanging for special education, with its unmet promise of 40 percent reimbursement.

Of course, some hard feelings remain. A few Democrats are complaining that the White House is too closely orchestrating President Bush’s meeting with the governors, a few Republicans say they will withhold their states’ dues payments if the NGA does not restore the bipartisanship for which it is famous. Most governors, however, seem to favor actually getting something done, which may explain why they do so well when they run for president.