The Inevitably Unnecessary Reminder

Exams due tomorrow, posted to your blog between 9:45-10:00 PM only.

Rise of the Machines

NYT meets SkyNet?

Already, complex algorithms — programming often placed under the over-colorful umbrella of "artificial intelligence" — are used to gather content for Web sites like Google News, which serves up a wide selection of journalism online, without much intervention from actual journalists. Hamilton sees a not-too-distant future in which that process would be extended, with algorithms mining information from multiple sources and using it to write parts of articles or even entire personalized news stories.

Hamilton offers a theoretical example, taking off from EveryBlock, the set of Web sites masterminded by Adrian Holovaty, one of the true pioneers of database journalism and a former innovation editor at washingtonpost.com. If you live in one of the 11 American cities EveryBlock covers, you now can enter your address, and the site gives you civic information (think building permits, police reports and so on), news reports, blog items and other Web-based information, such as consumer reviews and photos, all connected to your immediate geographic neighborhood. In the not-too-distant future, Hamilton suggests, an algorithm could take information from EveryBlock and other database inputs and actually write articles personalized to your neighborhood and your interests, giving you, for example, a story about crime in your neighborhood this week and whether it has increased or decreased in relation to a month or a year ago.

Very, Very Snarky

Glenn Greenwald on Politico's Top 10 Political Scoops of 2008.

"I used to think the internet was an old wives' tale!"

This is some of what you have learned this semester. . . . .



h/t Sullivan

Golden Duke Nominees: Ads

Happy Festivus

Commence with the Airing of Grievances in comments. . . .

On Online Commentary and Political Debate

"Could We Uncover Watergate Today?"

From the WaPo:

Reporters working today on a story such as Watergate would be unlikely to be left relatively alone, along with their sources, for as long as Bob and Carl were. Now, from day one, the story would be all over the Internet, and hordes of reporters and bloggers would immediately join the chase. The story would become fodder for around-the-clock argument among the blowhards on cable television and the Internet. Opinion polls would be constantly stirring up and measuring the public's reaction.

So the conspiracy and the cover-up would unravel much more quickly -- and their political impact would probably be felt much sooner. Nixon was re-elected five months after the burglary in 1972, and Watergate was not much of an issue during the campaign. That would not happen today.

In an age when the media have been turned upside-down by the biggest shifts in audiences and economic models since the advent of television, my two biggest questions about whether we could still pursue a story like Watergate center on resources and verification. Many Americans, including opinion leaders in Washington and elsewhere, simply didn't or wouldn't believe The Washington Post's reporting about Watergate during its early months -- not until we were joined by the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS News, Judge John J. Sirica, the Senate Watergate committee and the special Watergate prosecutor.

In today's cacophonous media world, in which news, rumor, opinion and infotainment from every kind of source are jumbled together and often presented indiscriminately, how would such an improbable-sounding story ever get verified?

As newsrooms rapidly shrink, will they still have the resources, steadily amassed by newspapers since Watergate, for investigative reporting that takes months and even years of sustained work.

Thanks for Saying Nothing

Tesasers:

The paradox of this scene was that the Obama campaign’s communications strategy was predicated in part on an aggressive indifference to this insider set. Staff members were encouraged to ignore new Web sites like The Page, written by Time’s Mark Halperin, and Politico, both of which had gained instant cachet among the Washington smarty-pants set. “If Politico and Halperin say we’re winning, we’re losing,” Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, would repeat mantralike around headquarters. He said his least favorite words in the English language were, “I saw someone on cable say this. . . .”

. . . . . There was a sense among Obama’s communications team that not only did they have a gifted candidate to ride but also that they had figured out new ways to maximize their advantages. The campaign highlighted its mastery of new political media that included a vast database of e-mail addresses and an ability to quickly put up Web sites and use blogs, online video and text messaging. They viewed themselves as “game changers” (the 2008 cliché for innovators), avatars of a New Way organization that had more in common with a Silicon Valley start-up — think Google or YouTube — than with any traditional political campaign that came before it.

. . . . . In one semifamous vignette, Bush’s communications team was holding a quiet celebration in the Roosevelt Room a few days after his re-election in 2004. The president stopped by to thank everyone for their efforts and then singled out McClellan, his robotically on-message front man. “I want to especially thank Scotty,” the president said. “I want to thank Scotty for saying” — and he paused — “nothing.”

. . . . . .

In the course of the campaign, the Obama team showcased a number of new-media applications designed to project a sense of open-book communications to the public. They promoted the fact that the campaign made major announcements — like Obama’s selection of Biden — by communicating “directly” with voters who provided their e-mail and text addresses.

If Obama was attacked by a rival, the campaign would not just push back by traditional means (arguing their case with reporters) but also by putting up their own Web sites like fightthesmears.com. This allowed the campaign not only to defend itself but also to draw more coverage to how innovative and responsive it was. “You would get a press hit each time you’d roll out a Web site, which in itself became a narrative,” Sevugan said.

In recent weeks, the incoming president has begun delivering a weekly video address online — the Obama version of the traditional weekly radio address. Plouffe has initiated a kind of online suggestion box, where voters are invited to write in and discuss the issues they are most concerned about.

There has been much speculation about how the new administration might deploy the Obama campaign’s massive voter database. People have theorized that it could be a way for the White House to skirt the traditional media “filter,” just as Ronald Reagan — and in a different way, George W. Bush — would “go over the heads” of the Washington elite and speak directly to the people through televised news conferences or outlets like conservative talk radio. “The massive list of energized activists is the biggest stick Obama will carry in Washington,” the liberal blogger Ari Melber wrote on The Nation’s Web site. “It enables direct communication at a remarkable scale. . . . To put it another way, the list dwarfs the audience of all the nightly cable-news shows combined.”

Plouffe said the list could be used to invite grass-roots participation in government or to build support for the administration’s policies. “We’ll see whether it works or not,” he said. “It’s never been tried before.”

. . . .The idea that Obama has benefited from an extended journalistic valentine breeds great impatience from his advisers. They argue that good press follows naturally onto winning campaigns — and that the efforts of Clinton and McCain yielded deservedly bad press. “Part of our coverage ended up being better in both instances; we ended up running better campaigns,” Gibbs said. “We had a narrative that was probably better.”

Read the, as they say, whole thing.

Democracy & Inequality

The APSA Report I mentioned. Worth a read.

Question of the Day

Courtesy of the Washington Monthly:

If six media figures joining Democratic campaigns is proof that reporters are liberal, are seven loyal Bushies joining news outlets proof that major media outlets are conservative?

Timely as Tonight's Discussion

Yglesias on the paper paper.

UPDATE: From the New Yorker article Yglesias references:

Even now, papers often display a “not invented here” mentality, treating their sites as walled gardens, devoid of links to other news outlets. From a print perspective, that’s understandable: why would you advertise good work that’s being done elsewhere? But it’s an approach that makes no sense on the Web.

These mistakes have been undeniably costly, but they’re not the whole story. The peculiar fact about the current crisis is that even as big papers have become less profitable they’ve arguably become more popular. The blogosphere, much of which piggybacks on traditional journalism’s content, has magnified the reach of newspapers, and although papers now face far more scrutiny, this is a kind of backhanded compliment to their continued relevance. Usually, when an industry runs into the kind of trouble that Levitt was talking about, it’s because people are abandoning its products. But people don’t use the Times less than they did a decade ago. They use it more. The difference is that today they don’t have to pay for it. The real problem for newspapers, in other words, isn’t the Internet; it’s us. We want access to everything, we want it now, and we want it for free. That’s a consumer’s dream, but eventually it’s going to collide with reality: if newspapers’ profits vanish, so will their product.

Does that mean newspapers are doomed? Not necessarily. There are many possible futures one can imagine for them, from becoming foundation-run nonprofits to relying on reader donations to that old standby the deep-pocketed patron. It’s even possible that a few papers will be able to earn enough money online to make the traditional ad-supported strategy work. But it would not be shocking if, sometime soon, there were big American cities that had no local newspaper; more important, we’re almost sure to see a sharp decline in the volume and variety of content that newspapers collectively produce. For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime—intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on—and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can’t last. Soon enough, we’re going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is.

Yawning and Fuming

Sullivan and Greenwald gang up on The Media.

A Shout Out

to Right from the Left Coast. Read this before class tonight.

On Net Neutrality

Ruh-ro:

The celebrated openness of the Internet -- network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic -- is quietly losing powerful defenders.

Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers.

At risk is a principle known as network neutrality: Cable and phone companies that operate the data pipelines are supposed to treat all traffic the same -- nobody is supposed to jump the line.

Read the rest.

Online-Offline Communications

Good fodder for tomorrow's discussion, here.

Nominations are Open

for TPM's Golden Dukes Awards.  Perhaps some of you might want to offer nominations for Sleaziest Campaign Ad or Best Election Season Fib?

Post Mortem

from Nate.

UPDATE:  A very different kind of post mortem, on Obama's rhetoric and classical rhetorical tropes.

How Would We Know?

This is a very good question indeed, and worth our attention, perhaps both online and in class. As Steven writes, "does a front runner receive additional positive media coverage because of his front-runner status and how does this [a]ffect election coverage?" We might productively think of this as an effort to trace feedback effects. How would we go about it?

Gillmor Discussion Fodder

"Sometimes, the change is enough to make your head spin. This is one of those moments."

$750 Million

From the AP via TPM:

Barack Obama's presidential campaign raised $104 million in the weeks around Election Day, a grand finale to a successful bid that shattered fundraising records.

Overall, Obama raised nearly $750 million during his odyssey to the presidency, according to reports being filed with the Federal Election Commission. The reporting period covered Oct. 15 to Nov. 24.

The campaign said more than 1 million contributors donated during the period, with more than half donating for the first time. Throughout the campaign, more than 3.95 million contributors gave to the eventual president-elect, his campaign said.

The Democrat's fundraising and his spending eclipsed that of his Republican rival, John McCain. Obama was the first presidential candidate since the campaign finance reforms of the 1970s to raise private donations during the general election. McCain opted to accept public financing. That limited him to $84 million to spend from the beginning of September.

By comparison, Obama spent $315 million since Sept. 1, a huge disparity that McCain tried to narrow by relying on millions of dollars worth of help from the Republican National Committee.

. . . .

Overall, the institute found that Obama collected about 26 percent of his total haul from people who gave less than $200 — about the same as President George W. Bush did in his 2004 campaign, but less than Democrat Howard Dean's small-donor take of 38 percent in his unsuccessful primary bid that year.

And like other campaigns, Obama's relied for nearly half of its fundraising on big donors, those who gave $1,000 or more, a finding that "should make one think twice before describing small donors as the financial engine of the Obama campaign," the institute reported.

For Discussion Tonight

Jon Stewart Answers the Question

Will he be able to mock a Democratic administration and its press coverage?

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

MSNBC Replaces Fox News

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Equal Opportunity Stupidity

The White House Press Corps: New administration, same pathology?

UPDATE: More here, confirming much of what we've been discussing about character-driven narratives in lieu of substantive analysis.

Final Exam -Draft Q

"Without examining the media, we cannot comprehend American politics."

Respond to this claim with particular (though not exclusive) attention to the 2008 election. Include an evaluation of how that actual performance comports with your normative vision of the role of media in a democratic polity, and suggest how we might bridge whatever gaps you identify between the ideal and the real.

Present your argument and analysis with links to sources, embedded images, and video; and support your claims by reference to materials we have read (including those that I have posted to this blog), viewed, and discussed over the course of the semester.

That is, make an argument and defend it.

Post your approximately 3,500-word response on your blog only between 9:45-10:00 PM on December 31.

POST comments in, er, Comments.

Final Exam

If you haven't already, go to The Lion's Den and weigh in on the final exam question. We'll discuss it a bit tonight, and try to finalize by Wednesday.

Another Piece of Suggestive Evidence

for the profit-seeking model of media behavior? Even Murdoch loathes O'Reilley?

Blogs Victorious?

Short of an admission from Brennan, how might we get some purchase on why he withdrew?

Indy Media Me

You knew me when. . . . . .

UPDATE:  Some radio me

We Just Can't Quit You

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

The Daily Show's Best Sarah Palin Moments

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Are You Smarter Than A. . . . . .

ISI Civics Quiz. How did you do?

Democracy Can Be Fun

More from Sullivan worth stealing: which of these Minnesota ballots should count, and for whom???

Oooh, a New Silly Web Toy

via Sullivan, go here, type in your blog address, and it tells you what personality type you are.  It's science-y!  Here's the results for CrankyDoc's:

The responsible and hardworking type. They are especially attuned to the details of life and are careful about getting the facts right. Conservative by nature they are often reluctant to take any risks whatsoever. The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be let alone and to be able to work int heir own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do it.

Hmmmm. . . . . .

A Little Berube

on (a) History and (b) the relationship (sort of) between Theory and Agency.  Plus, a link to a funny YouTube.

This Might Not Be Awful

"The IFC Media Project"

New News?

Brash young upstarts annoy sour old newspaper people.  Okay, that's my headline, not the NYT's.  Still. . . . .

Behind the Scenes

of the Obama campaign, and some insight into their message/media strategy.

Generations

The Jennifer Hochschild piece I mentioned yesterday.

Update

For those of you who were not present tonight (ahem), a reminder that class will not meet on Wednesday, so that I can be here, and here, and here. On Monday, November 17th we will cover readings scheduled for both the 12th and 17th. The following people volunteered, or were volunteered, to assume responsibility for presenting the readings to the class:

Leighly, Ch. 4 -- Matt
Bennett, Lawrence and Livingston -- Mordy
Kaplan -- Daniel K.
Popkin -- Daniel G.
Chs. 1-5 in McChesney -- Steven P. and Josh

How Much Did You Give?

Simian Confinement

I've pointed you all to The Monkey Cage on a few occasions, and do so again now: there have been some terrific posts that are engaged in some systematic, thoughful post-election analysis. The methodological tools being used are a bit above your pay grade, to be sure, but the approach can nonetheless serve as a model of what rigorous, evidence-based analysis can look like. The comment threads are worth popping into, too.

Reminder

For Monday, in addition to the brief article on BCRA (McCain-Feingold) (Raymond J. La Raja, “From Bad to Worse: The Unraveling of the Campaign Finance System,” The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics 6, no. 1 (2008) [E-RESERVES]), spend some quality time at opensecrets.org.

Think about what you find there, post about it, and be prepared to offer some summary and analysis of campiagn finance trends and outcomes for this, now completed, election cycle. Okay, nearly completed (see: AK, MN, GA, MO).

For more online resources, scroll down and see the listings on the right-hand column for "Election Law and $$$." (See esp. CQ Moneyline).

Voting Machines

Well, this isn't good.

Deeper Than it May Appear

as is often the case with The Onion

Cool Maps

HERE

Themes

We have talked some about the discipline, competence, and sophistication of the Obama campaign machinery. We have talked less about the consistency with which the campaign told a story and hammered upon a narrative. To wit: think about last night's speech, and its rhetorical touchstones, and then take another look/listen to this now-iconic video from Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am, riffing on Obama's January 8 NH Primary speech. It is, dare I say, Reaganesque. UPDATE: And note the shift in tone last night, and the very different cadence the "Yes, We Can" refrain takes: from peroration to somber determination (start least night's speech below at about (9:00).

"You've never seen anything like this on television"

Perhaps there is a reason?



UPDATE: Hmmm. . . more embedding problems. Link here.
UPDATE II: Apparently fixed.

Pollsters' Predictions

One early summary, from Washington Monthly:

POLLSTERS CAN EXHALE.... The presidential election offered a test for a lot of institutions, but professional pollsters had to realize that if Barack Obama came up short last night, not only would Americans question pollsters forever more, but we would probably start to look askance at the very idea of random statistical sampling.

As it turns out, they can relax.

The final Pollster.com report on the national popular vote showed Obama leading with 52% support. Based on the results that are currently available, Obama won with 52% support.

Indeed, looking over that interactive map that some of us have been obsessing over for quite a while, the polling averages really didn't get any states wrong at all. Arguably, the only state where the numbers were really off base was North Dakota, which turned out to be less competitive than expected, but that's a pretty inconsequential demerit in an otherwise impressive showing.

I'd add, by the way, that the final DailyKos/Research 2000 poll showed Obama leading McCain nationally 51% to 46%, while the final Rasmussen poll showed Obama up 52% to 46%. Both can take a bow not only for having nailed the final result, but also for beating their rivals.

And speaking of polls and impressive showings, how did Nate Silver and fivethirtyeight do? Nate's final projections showed Obama winning with 348 electoral votes and 52.3% of the popular vote. As of this morning's count, Obama has 349 electoral votes and 52% of the popular vote.

We're going to wonder how we got through elections without him.

Stepping Back

We've buried ourselves, for good reasons, in lots of micro-level analysis. But there is, to state what should be obvious, a much larger narrative here. Here's one take:

UPDATE: Rats. Embedding Wonkiness. Go here.

Poll Closing Times

The Poll Tax is Still With Us

A Concise Column

Recapping the election. (h/t A. Sullivan)

Don't Get Pwned

How to evaluate data on "The Youth Vote."

Nate Says. . . . .

Here's where to watch:

This is beginning to look like a five-state election. Those states are Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada. Essentially all relevant electoral scenarios involve some combination of these five states.

I should caution that by far the most likely scenario is that Obama wins some relatively decisive victory of anywhere from 3-12 points in the popular vote. If Obama wins the popular vote by anything in this range, he will find plenty of blue territory, accumulating somewhere between 300-400 electoral votes. The electoral math will matter very little.

We can probably assume, however, that IF the national polls tighten significantly (and to reiterate, the likelihood is that they will NOT), McCain will edge out a victory in North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, North Dakota, Montana, Georgia, and Missouri; put those states in the McCain column for the time being. Likewise, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa all appear safe for Obama, even in the case of significant tightening. Put those in the Obama column.

That leaves our five states in play. The victory conditions for Obama involving these five states proceed something as follows:

1. Win Pennsylvania and ANY ONE of Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, or Nevada*
2. Win Ohio and EITHER Colorado OR Virginia.
3. Win Colorado AND Virginia AND Nevada.

(* Nevada produces a 269-269 tie, which would probably be resolved for Obama in the House of Represenatives.)

Now, suppose you think that Colorado is already in the bag for Obama because of his large edge in early voting there. We can then simplify the victory conditions as follows:

1. Win Pennsylvania
2. Win Ohio
3. Win Virginia AND Nevada

That's basically what it comes down to, although I'm sure each campaign would claim that there are a larger number of states in play.

"The 2/3 of the Iceberg You Can't See"

It's a Media class, so we've been focusing on the effects of media on the campaign, and starting tomorrow I'll ask you to begin to explain precisely how and why both Big Media and New Media have mattered to the outcome. But this clip offers a reminder about the "below-the-radar" activity -- the activity that, arguably, is the principal reason Clinton lost the Democratic Primary to Obama (Nate Silver has been all over this, of course):

Where is Your Election News Coming From?

New from Pew:

Many more Americans are turning to the internet for campaign news this year as the web becomes a key source of election news. Television remains the dominant source, but the percent who say they get most of their campaign news from the internet has tripled since October 2004 (from 10% then to 33% now).

While use of the web has seen considerable growth, the percentage of Americans relying on TV and newspapers for campaign news has remained relatively flat since 2004. The internet now rivals newspapers as a main source for campaign news. And with so much interest in the election next week, the public's use of the internet as a campaign news source is up even since the primaries earlier this year. In March, 26% cited the internet as a main source for election news, while the percentages citing television and newspapers remain largely unchanged.

Read the rest.

I'm Perplexed

as others are. What's the goal of this McCain ad? Couldn't it just as easily, with a few tweaks, be an Obama ad instead? What am I missing?

One Small Chunk of Data

Speaking to my point about the "undemocratic" nature of the Electoral College, via Matt Ygelsias:



UPDATE: The larger picture:

Worst Ads of the Season?

Politico says it's these.

A Much More Precise Electoral Map

from the NYT

Election Night Update

Okay, this will shock you all, I realize, but I have run into a Gigantor-sized bureaucratic fol-de-rol in trying to get something set up for election night. So how's this for an alternative plan: I'll end my Tuesday night class a bit early (we'll set a time this coming week), and we can head over to my apartment (about ten blocks north). I've two TVs in separate rooms, so we can bounce back and forth. And if you can find someplace not terribly expensive for Kosher food, we'll order in, and it will be on me. I'll ask you guys to be responsible for beverages, and paper/plastic cups and plates (or we can pick them up on the way). This is not ideal, I know, but it seems our best alternative without too much mishigos (spelling?). How's this sound? (Brief reply in comments).

"The Weirdness of Campaign Reporting"

Newsweek's Michael Hastings via Ezra Klein. With just a little Hunter S. Thompson.

We're Number 36! We're Number 36!

Press Freedom Index, 2008

Bias?

From a new study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism:

• Coverage of Obama began in the negative after the conventions, but the tone switched with the changing direction of the polls. The most positive stories about him were those that were most political -- focused on polling, the electoral map and tactics.
• For McCain, coverage began positively, but turned sharply negative with McCain's reaction to the crisis in the financial markets. As he took increasingly bold steps in an effort to reverse the direction of the polls, the coverage only worsened. Attempts to turn the dialogue away from the economy through attacks on Obama's character did hurt Obama's media coverage, but McCain's was even more negative.
• Coverage of Palin, in the end, was more negative than positive. In all, 39% of Palin stories carried a negative tone, while 28% were positive and 33% were neutral. Contrary to what some critics have suggested, little of the coverage was about Palin's personal life (5%).
• Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden was nearly the invisible man. His coverage enjoyed just one large moment, the vice presidential debate, which also provided the only positive or neutral contribution to his coverage. Aside from that week, the limited coverage he did receive was far more negative than Palin's, and nearly as negative as McCain's.
• The economy was hardly a singular lens through which the media perceived the race. Though it was the No. 1 campaign topic overall, in five out of the six weeks analyzed, other topics drew more media attention, and the economy accounted for not much more of the campaign newshole (18%) than did assessments of the candidates in the four debates (17%).
• Horse race reporting, once again, made up the majority of coverage, but less so than earlier in the contest or in previous elections. Since the conventions ended, 53% of the newshole studied has focused on political matters, particularly tactics, strategy and polling -- twice the coverage focused on policy (20%). The focus on tactics and horse race increased in the last three weeks as both campaigns became more negative in their rhetoric.

Read the rest HERE.

Deep Geek Blogging

Pull up your socks -- I'm back. I'll pop in and comment on your newly-posted bloggy goodness within the next few days, but meanwhile, take a look at this nice, very different kind of fact-checking, via the political scientists at The Monkey Cage. Fun fact: one Dutch graduate student offered me an exegesis on how Heroes offers a keen window into American culture. Hmmmm. . . .

Blog Pause

Okay, I'm off. Back next week. Posting will be light, at best, though I will try to pop in periodically. Meanwhile, play nice, keep reading, keep watching, keep thinking, and post wise, insightful, professionally-formatted things. I'll probably not see the final debate, so tell me what I missed, especially as it relates to the media coverage.

Brave New World

Virtual ads.

"The Irrational Electorate"

Larry Bartels, reviewing questions and literature that should now be familiar. Worth your time.

Goodbye to All That?

Nate Silver on the "Bradley Effect"

More Kathleen Hall Jamieson

on Bill Moyers Journal.

A Whole 'Nother Kind of Debate

On Wednesday, October 29, 7:30 PM, in Weissberg Commons, the YC and SCW Political Science Society will host a debate with representatives from the McCain and Obama campaigns. I will serve as moderator. Questions will be drawn from those submitted by students: send yours (YU students only, please) to: yuelections@gmail.com.

I'd be especially grateful for some questions that stand a chance of provoking more than stump-speech responses or sound bite answers. And those that go beyond the very narrow range of matters subject to public discourse so far. And, of course, questions about media and the campaigns.

Pass along the e-mail address to your friends, as well.

Fake Advice to the Next Fake President

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

"The Haunting of the Present by the Past"

Trailer for new BBC documentary, "The American Future: A History"

Man in the Arena and Dr. No

If Ever I Need a Press Spokeperson

Please remind me not to hire this guy:

Effete, Pointy-Headed Intellectuals at Work

Non-media edition. Berkeley economist Brad De Long, prepping for class, modeling what Hofstadter meant by "intellectual":

Now I have to think about my Great Depression lectures: what have I learned from the financial crisis of the past fourteen months that should change what I think about the Great Depression? And how should I change what I think?

Self-Incriminating Evidence

re: something I said earlier tonight:

But, in this election year, the most interesting current or former state legislator is undoubtedly Senator Barack Obama from Illinois. While the National Journal has rated him the most liberal member of the Senate in 2007, the methodology that generated this result is suspect (as it was in 2004). I’d turn instead to the results of the far superior Poole-Rosenthal NOMINATE ideal point estimation algorithm, which finds Obama to be one of the more, but not the most, liberal Senators (just slightly to the left of Senator Clinton).

But what about Obama’s service in the Illinois General Assembly representing Hyde Park? How liberal was he then? So far, it’s been quite difficult to tell. Of course, both sides of the political debate have strong incentives to spin his record; the Democrats want to portray him as more centrist, the Republicans more liberal. During the primary campaign, Clinton attempted to critique Obama as insufficiently liberal, pointing to his voting “present” on a number of controversial topics.

So what’s the truth? The answer: Obama as an Illinois state senator was very liberal, but there were others substantially more liberal still. Of all 295 incumbents who served from 1996-2004 in Illinois, State Senator Obama ranked in the 14th percentile on my liberalism scale. In the Democratic party, he ranked in the 27th percentile. Comparing Obama to all incumbent state legislators in the United States in the mid 1990s to the mid 2000’s, he was in the top 11th percentile. He was about as liberal as James Meeks, pastor and Illinois state Senator. Obama was more liberal than Emil Jones, the president of the Senate and one of Obama’s political mentors, is not as liberal as his protege, ranking in the middle of his party for liberalism, and in the top quarter of the Legislature as a whole. Michael Madigan, the Speaker of the Assembly, is slightly more liberal than Obama, ranking in the top 16 percent of his party and in the top 8 percent of the legislature as a whole.

Uses (and Misuses?) of Local Media

Bloomberg and Term Limits:

As for Mr. Bloomberg, a packed press corps asked whether there wasn’t something undemocratic about his effort to persuade the City Council to whisk away term limits — which the public voted for twice — and engineer a third term. Sure, he likes the job, and sure, he’s very good at it, but there is that will-of-the-people thing.

Mr. Bloomberg said that he understood the situation and did not take the people’s verdict lightly. “But as newspaper editorialists and others have pointed out,” he said, “the current law denies voters the right to choose who to vote for — at a time when our economy is in turmoil and the Council is a democratically elected representative body.”

It is no coincidence that Mr. Bloomberg cited voices from the city’s opinion leaders. With a fiscal crisis at hand, the business leaders of New York has already held a private referendum and decided who the next mayor should be. So in spite of his rather breathtaking grab for another term, there will be no opprobrium forthcoming from the editorial pages of the city’s newspapers.

Before Mr. Bloomberg took this controversial step — remember when Rudolph W. Giuliani got clobbered for seeking three more months in office after Sept. 11? — he made the rounds and locked up the support of the editorial pages of The New York Post, The New York Times and The Daily News, three city newspapers not known for moving in lock step.

The Daily News had to do something of a backflip, having frantically opposed any effort to change limits. The New York Times has historically opposed term limits for city offices, so it was less of a walk.

The New York Post was far and away the most enthusiastic: On Sept. 30, the day after the Dow dropped a historic 777 points, the far bigger headline on the cover of The Post nonetheless belonged to “Mike the III.”

To set the stage, the mayor had spent the last month making plain his interest in staying put at City Hall. He did not post a Web site or drop items in various blogs, but instead called Howard J. Rubenstein, a master of the city’s power grid. Meetings were set up with the owners of the daily newspapers, as well as with potential opponents and the city’s corporate overlords.

It was a gambit that would not have been out of place in the 1970s — or the 1870s, for that matter. This being a Bloomberg administration, there were no smoke-filled rooms, but there was definitely the sense that issues of civic moment were being handled in private environs.

Oddest Chart of the Day

from the NYT:

Inevitably

More Pointy-Headed Goodness

The Economist polls economists on candidates' economic policies.

James Baldwin and Barack Obama

Speaking of pointy-headed intellectuals, Colm Toibin in the New York Review of Books. Worth your time, especially, perhaps, for you English Major-types.

On Palin

I have avoided saying too much about Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin because (a) there is hardly a shortage of discussion and debate about her, (b) it is difficult to make any observations without sounding like a partisan, which I've no interest in, and most importantly, (c) I've had a hard time making sense for myself of what her nomination "means." I'm still working on it, but some formative thoughts:

Palin, on the one hand, is an almost logical product of the post-1964 political history Rick Perlsetin recounts in Nixonland -- a politics that builds an electoral majority through the division of parts of the electorate against each other, and that seeks to do so by tapping into social and class-based resentment; envy; bitterness over slights real and perceived; and, most saliently, through fear: fear of exclusion (of not being among the "in" crowd) on the one hand, and the cultivation of fear among the public to gain adherents, on the other.

That so much of Nixon's rise (and Reagan's, importantly) can be traced to the successful tapping of racial fear and resentment seems of note as we live through the first contest in which the possibility of a black President is real, if perhaps still not addressed in any direct or forthright manner. (Who would have thought that with Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee, we would talk so very little about race in America -- that's, of course, in part because the Obama campaign is itself afraid to discuss it).

This is often talked about in language of a "culture war," but it's almost always more than that, and at least as much about economics -- and about class -- as it is about "hot-button" social issues. More broadly, Palin's nomination has once again sought to frame the election as a battle between "average" Americans and out-of-touch "elites."

But there's something that extends beyond the merely tactical here, and seems to tap into something deeper and more enduring. Perhaps inevitably, Richard Hofstadter's great book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, has been much on my mind. For with Palin, what seems to me most salient is not -- let us be frank -- her rather profound ignorance of American history, political institutions, or matters of public policy, both foreign and domestic; much more interesting to me is the (implied?) claim that this is, in contemporary parlance, a feature, not a bug. Her ignorance, her inexperience, her insularity, her lack of nuance and intellectual sophistication, her failure to travel broad, all of this is a virtue -- for thereby can she see that there is "a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street there, brought to Washington, DC." It's time, she has suggested, that an ordinary American finally have a shot at the Vice Presidency.

As Hofstadter writes of the larger phenomenon, and the denigration of expertise:

Intellectuals, it may be held, are pretentious, conceited, effeminate, and snobbish; and very likely immoral, dangerous, and subversive. The plain sense of the common man [sic], especially if tested by success in some demanding line of practical work, is an altogether adequate substitute for, if not actually much superior to, formal knowledge and expertise acquired in the schools.

But, he continues a few pages later:

It seems clear that those who have some quarrel with intellect are almost always ambivalent about it: they mix respect and awe with suspicion and resentment.

And still later, I think getting to the nub:

Intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege.

For Hofstadter, who was writing in the wake of McCarthyism, that period of anti-intellectualism was a reaction to the government-by-experts of FDR's New Deal and, to a lesser extent, JFK. It's an anger and bitterness born of frustration and the fear of exclusion. As with Nixon, it's both real (as a personal reaction to exclusion) and then turned into a tool -- resentment used to cultivate resentment, and to build allegiance.

It is, we might even venture to say, akin to other Fundamentalisms -- a reaction to a host of forces we associate with Modernity. In this way it is not, I suspect, mere coincidence that the least intellectually curious (or playful, in Hofstadter's language) of contemporary politicians -- Palin and President George W. Bush, most notably -- are also among the most radical in their public recourse to religion. It's part of what Hofstadter calls "The Evangelical Spirit." It helps, in part, make some sense of the certitude of Bush, even (or especially?) in the face of contrary evidence, and of Palin, too. When asked to join the ticket, Palin told Charlie Gibson that she didn't hesitate, didn't even blink. To have paused, to have weighed the pros and cons, to have contemplated the sheer enormity of it, would have been, in the anti-intellectual wordlview, weak and effeminate. Reflection and contemplation are themselves suspect.

I'm not sure this is hanging together, but I'll forge on for a bit more before surrender. There's one more piece to this puzzle, and I want to talk about it as cynicism. Not your run-of-the-mill cynicism (oh, all politicians are corrupt in their own way), but something deeper and more dangerous, something that's revealed as increasing numbers of Republicans/conservatives distance themselves from Palin: whether Palin (or Bush) is aware of the depth of her own ignorance is an open question, but it is surely known by leaders in the McCain campaign. Do they truly believe that she is capable of stepping in to function as President? They can't. But they choose not to care in order to achieve political power. She is merely a tool, in that regard, a means toward an end. But a willing accomplice.

What creates conditions of cognitive dissonance so great, however, that such an effort may potentially fail is this: Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, whatever their partisan affiliation or their policy preferences, have demonstrated themselves to be intellectuals; they are technocrats, they are experts, they are, let it be said, elites. And if ever there were circumstances in which people seem to appreciate the value of pointy-headed intellectuals, it would seem to be now. Who would like to make the argument that because, say, they are raising a passel of children, can manage a complex household budget, and are able to see Wall Street from their apartment that they are, therefore, suitably qualified to replace the Chairman of the Federal Reserve or the Secretary of the Treasury? It's silly, of course, not to mention dangerous. But this is, after all, the argument that Palin is making in respect to assuming the role of Vice President of the United States.

Surely it need not be partisan to also acknowledge the sheer silliness of that claim? And what does it say about the state of American politics that the reaction to Palin is not more along the lines of this classic reaction to another Vice Presidential candidate, Sprio Agnew? (But, of course, Nixon and Agnew won. . . . .)

What's Wrong with the National Press, #548

From the NYT:

The Palins reported taxable income in 2007 of $166,080, consisting largely of Ms. Palin’s salary as governor. . . in 2006, the couple reported taxable income of $127,869, which consisted mainly of Mr. Palin’s income from BP Exploration Alaska and an income of less than $5,000 for Ms. Palin from the State of Alaska before she was elected governor. . . . Yet for a couple with modest incomes, the Palins have amassed a sizable portfolio that consists mainly of retirement investments and real estate.

Such incomes place the family at over three times or over two times the median family income, respectively, and firmly within the top 20% of all households nationally. But for Leslie Wayne and her editors at the NYT, these are "modest" incomes.

Ad Spending

Good overview, with links to new ads.

Maybe in Ohio, But Not in America!

Homer votes, in an episode supposedly slated to air November 2.

Hot Off the Presses

Election prediction model edition of PS: Political Science and Politics. See esp. Lewis-Black and Tien to start.

Not So Negative?

Buell and Sigelman:

Our measure of negative campaigning is the attack propensity score, which simply states the percentage of all campaign statements that attacked the opponents. Here’s the year-by-year breakdown for each party:

Democrats Republicans
1960 65.6% 45.0%
1964 64.6% 66.3%
1968 57.1% 49.6%
1972 64.1% 49.7%
1976 47.2% 41.6%
1980 54.5% 58.6%
1984 66.0% 38.7%
1988 61.5% 57.5%
1992 59.6% 65.8%
1996 51.8% 48.4%
2000 36.7% 53.2%
2004 71.9% 52.9%
2008 45.6% 37.5%

. . . . Bottom line: Although the 2008 presidential campaign has already emerged as one of the oddest in modern times, its negativity is unusual only by virtue of being less, not more, in evidence.

Take a look at the article; but what this approach doesn't measure is the degree or quality of negativity, merely the crude quantity of negative messages. I wonder if there's any research that gets at that kind of question (that is: surely not all attacks or all lies are created equal). I need to take another look at the book (not handy at the moment), but I don't think that they distinguish between "attack" and "contrast" statements or ads. . . .

UPDATE: Compare with this

In Honor of Andrew P

(whose class I made watch this over and over and over again as I argued that it may be one of the best political ads ever. . . )

Hey, Where is Everybody?

Holidays notwithstanding, I'm surprised not to see commentary on the first Presidential Debate. So, maybe you can offer some thoughts about that and tonight's VP debate together? The tee vee blather about "what each candidate MUST do" and the talking-heads chatter about the supposedly careful line Biden MUST walk are interesting. Well, at least to me. And it's interesting how much impact the Couric interview(s) seems to be having on pundits -- and, some polling suggests, voters? Any new ads catching your attention? Any wise observations about how the financial crisis is affecting the campaign narrative(s)? Fell free to use this as a Debates open thread.

A Reminder

Monday, October 6 (meeting in Admissions conference room, 1st Floor Furst)

Mordy presents Chs. 5-7 in Leighley

Daniel K. presents Chs. 6-10 in West, Air Wars

Volunteer to present? Joshua Green, “Dumb and Dumber: Why are Campaign Commercials So Bad?” The Atlantic (July/August 2004), at http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/07/green.htm

Assignments:

1. Posting images, text, and (especially) video to your own blog, reflect upon any of the past campaigns discussed in West and compare them with the current campaign

2. Post comments on at least two of your colleagues’ blogs

No Bradley Effect?

No Whitman Effect. Just a Leader's Effect? New analysis.

Spolier Alert!

Widely covered, and mocked -- victory declared before debate itself. But there's a serious point here (I know, I always ruin things with "serious points." So sue me). We talk about "spin," or, more recently, "truthiness." This is actually a quite powerful example. There is, given the nature of our Presdiential Debates, no objectively true answer to the question "who won the debate." In part, it's because that's a lousy question, making, quite literally, a game of it. Each campaign will therefore offer its own answer and, shockingly, will usually declare that their candidate clearly "won." It's just not typically quite so transparent. So, when you watch the debate (rebroadcast tomorrow, but will likely be available online), don't think in win/lose terms. Think about more substantive questions: evaluate BO and JM's breadth and depth of knowledge, compare their policy positions, or their approach to governance and management; make judgments about their consistency, their intellectual honesty, their. . . . you get the idea. Oh, and evaluate the framing, and the depth and seriousness of the questions the moderator poses. And perhaps blog-down (like write down?) your reactions BEFORE reading or viewing any of the commentary that will inundate us. I have little doubt that your observations can be more insightful, and useful, than 86.789 percent of what will appear on the teevee and in the intertubes.

In Your Genes?

From the journal all the kids love, The Journal of Politics:

Fowler, Baker, and Dawes (2008) recently showed in two independent studies of twins that voter turnout has very high heritability. Here we investigate two specific genes that may contribute to variation in voting behavior. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we show that individuals with a polymorphism of the MAOA gene are significantly more likely to have voted in the 2004 presidential election. We also find evidence that an association between a polymorphism of the 5HTT gene and voter turnout is moderated by religious attendance. These are the first results ever to link specific genes to political behavior.

Full article here.

Debate Prep

And They Were Doing So Well

Go take a look at this ad "factcheck" article in the NYT. Go ahead. I'll wait. Okay, back? Good. Decent enough piece, all in all: reviews the claims made in recent Obama ads, and evaluates them against the, you know, evidence. But then they write this:

In all, Mr. Obama has released at least five commercials that have been criticized as misleading or untruthful against Mr. McCain’s positions in the past two weeks. Mr. Obama drew complaints from many of the independent fact-checking groups and editorial writers who just two weeks ago were criticizing Mr. McCain for producing a large share of this year’s untruthful spots (“Pants on Fire,” the fact-checking Web site PolitiFact.com wrote of Mr. Obama’s advertisement invoking Mr. Limbaugh; “False!” FactCheck.org said of his commercial on Social Security.)

Why write "at least five commercials that have been criticized as misleading or untruthful"?

What's wrong with saying "Mr. Obama has released at least five commercials that are misleading or untruthful," if that's the conclusion they have reached?

Because it's the NYT and they don't think that it's their job to pass judgment. Except when it apparently is. Like, say, in an article evaluating the truthfulness of political ads.

Sigh.

From the Makers of the Mighty Ducks, and Syriana. . .

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Rich, Historical Contexty Goodness

From Phil Klinker.

Yet More

More

Ads in the News

Poor Polling?

So, this week we have some suggestive evidence that thanks to racism, polls may overstate Obama's real advantage by as much as six percentage points, and some suggestive evidence that thanks to cell phone users, polls may overstate McCain's advantage by as much as 2.8 points. (Though Nate Silver offers a caution about the former.) If both of these things are true (and we can't say with any certainty that they are), the net effect is an overstatement of Obama's support by 3.2 percentage points. I therefore haul out some old advice: (1) take all polling with many grains of salt; (2) look at state-by-state polling data, not the all-but-meaningless national numbers; and (3) look for multiple-day rolling averages to filter out more of the statistical noise.

Some Ads for Wednesday

Republicans, Democrats and the Economy

Here's one quick overview of the Larry Bartels research I referenced earlier. As I noted, the findings are powerful, but the causation is still a puzzle.

Cognitive Science Spoils Everything

This is your brain on politics. Robert Burton:

Last week, I jokingly asked a health club acquaintance whether he would change his mind about his choice for president if presented with sufficient facts that contradicted his present beliefs. He responded with utter confidence. "Absolutely not," he said. "No new facts will change my mind because I know that these facts are correct."

. . . . .Feelings of absolute certainty and utter conviction are not rational deliberate conclusions; they are involuntary mental sensations generated by the brain. Like other powerful mental states such as love, anger and fear, they are extraordinarily difficult to dislodge through rational arguments. Just as it's nearly impossible to reason with someone who's enraged and combative, refuting or diminishing one's sense of certainty is extraordinarily difficult. Certainty is neither created by nor dispelled by reason.

. . . . Worse, our ability to assess political candidates is particularly questionable when we have any strong feeling about them. An oft-quoted fMRI study by Emory psychologist Drew Westen illustrates how little conscious reason is involved in political decision-making.

Westen asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate negative (defamatory) information about their 2004 presidential choice. Areas of the brain (prefrontal cortex) normally engaged during reasoning failed to show increased activation. Instead, the limbic system -- the center for emotional processing -- lit up dramatically. According to Westen, both Republicans and Democrats "reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted" (cognitive dissonance).

In other words, we are as bad at judging ourselves as we are at judging others. Most cognitive scientists now believe that the majority of our thoughts originate in the areas of the brain inaccessible to conscious introspection. These beginnings of thoughts arrive in consciousness already colored with inherent bias. No two people see the world alike. Each of our perceptions is filtered through our genetic predispositions, inherent biologic differences and idiosyncratic life experiences. Your red is not my red. These differences extend to the very building blocks of thoughts; each of us will look at any given question from his own predispositions. Thinking may be as idiosyncratic as fingerprints.

As a result, we are all plagued by bias, self-deceit and poor character judgment.

Or, as I've become fond of saying, "You can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into."