Quiet Declarations

I’ll now play the part of the hapless self-doubter attempting to save face and toss out a few counter-arguments to my own positions. Pollsters have been around a long time and their methodology isn’t always as suspect as we think — while one poll within the margin of error might be suspect, several dozen independent polls within the margin of error every day for months is actually pretty credible. Much to my surprise, there’s been no evidence thus far of an October Surprise. Perhaps in this election the candidates have already thrown everything including the kitchen sink, and anything that could leak has leaked. And it’s entirely possible that Ohio and Florida voters will matter far less to the final outcome than the lawyers representing them.

Perhaps things aren’t even as polarized as we are sometimes made to believe — no, wait, we are that polarized as a whole, but at least some individuals aren’t so bad about it. The Tampa Tribune is not endorsing any candidate, and neither is the libertarian-esque DetroitNews.Com [hat tip: Jacob]. Moderate liberal-ish writer Christopher Hitchens slightly endorses Bush in the ultra-liberal magazine The Nation, while moderate conservative-ish pundit Andrew Sullivan somberly endorses Kerry in the neoliberal magazine The New Republic. And by the way, I recognize some might argue that since both of these respected pundits are middle-of-the-road hawks, I’m being unbalanced by not really offering any anti-war endorsements. I respectfully disagree — the anti-war cause has no major candidate in this race, and if you’re voting for Kerry because you’re anti-war then I think you stopped paying attention to the issues sometime prior to the last election.

But these opinions all come from commentators or news sources, and don’t capture the mood of the average voter. It has been said that by and large people ultimately vote in their self-interest. This hypothesis makes sense for really rich voters getting tax breaks or really poor voters that could get additional direct assistance, many of whom are essentially voting their pocketbooks. But what about, for example, a median income voter who gets a negligible tax break if any, lives in a fairly decent school district, goes to church occasionally but really isn’t all that religious, and votes mainly out of a sense of civic duty? Isn’t this a far more common description? What affects their lives? What’s in their self-interest? What drives them to such partisanship?

Well, I don’t know, but naturally I have a thought about it. I think their self-interest revolves around what they have to put up with. They might be voting against a candidate as much for how much they dislike watching him on the evening news as for his stance on issues, or perhaps they are even voting not against a candidate but against his annoying supporters. Is it conceivable that for many of these people the only way the election impacts their lives is through conversations and interactions with others, and that their self-interest lies in making sure the candidate of the people they dislike the most loses? How many people do you know whose self-interest is to ensure that the people who are constantly annoying them — those crazy Bible-thumping Bushies or those rabid peacenik Kerryites — don’t have any reason to gloat?

So the moral of this post is basically this: what do we know really? I mean, we develop all these cool political theories, but political science, like economics, is a social science at heart. And as with all social sciences, we are forced to concede that these theories depend entirely on human rationality, conveniently ignoring for the purposes of statistical analysis that this phrase is in fact an oxymoron.

So, if there are no undecideds, how do the campaign strategies play out during the final nine days? Nobody knows for sure — though Karl Rove probably knows better than most. But let me briefly point out the three factors I’ll be watching most closely down the stretch:

1) Courting the college. Now that the number of tossup states is down to about 12, most of which were Gore states in 2000, the math is becoming much clearer. Barring a seismic shift in voter perceptions Bush will not win Pennsylvania, but if Bush holds Ohio and Florida he still wins under nearly every scenario. If Kerry wins Ohio OR Florida, Bush’s odds diminish considerably but he can still win by taking a combination of two or three former Gore states (the most likely include Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa, with a slimmer possibility of New Mexico). If Kerry wins Ohio AND Florida, a Kerry victory is virtually assured.

2) The famed “October Surprise”. Campaigns hate and fear it because they don’t know what sort of assault the other side will mount, yet like a failed missle crisis they feel compelled to launch this weapon in the name of mutually assured destruction. Will it be a positive surprise such as “finding” Bin Laden, as the conspiracy theorists have mused? How about a negative surprise reminiscent of Bush’s drunk driving record in 2000 or, more recently, Schwarzenegger’s groping incidents? Also, the tragic possibility exists that the terrorists will attempt to mount a surprise of their own.

3) Mobilizing the troops. Since Bush and Kerry have known for months that two or three states would make all the difference, they’ve taken the liberty of bombarding these states with a barrage of campaigning the likes of which the world had never seen until now. Minds are made up, but polling is unreliable. Nobody knows how many new black voters will show up at the voting booths, how many young voters with cell phones instead of land lines were uncounted in the polls, or whether this renewed focus on voter registration will translate to voter participation. What the campaigns can control, however, are their armies of paid and volunteer staff in every precinct of the battleground states to mobilize turnout. Most of the issues I just mentioned will break for Kerry, but on the most significant issue — the ground game — the most effectively designed battle plan will win. James Carville once said, “You know what they call a candidate who’s counting on a lot of new voters? A loser.” But he may eat his words this election, and we don’t yet know whether he’ll be happy about it.

It’s unfortunate that both candidates have announced they’ll claim victory and let the courts decide if the election is too close, because as much as I enjoy talking about it I’m kind of ready for a break. Mount St. Helens tried to distract us from election season, but at this point I think anything short of Krakatoa scale will be relegated to page 3. The Washington Post has a fantastic op-ed story pleading against Bush v. Kerry for the sake of judicial integrity, but I’m pleading against it for the sake of personal sanity. And as those who know me will attest, sanity is in my opinion far more important.

My belief that there are no undecided voters has definitely been tested this week, not only by numerous friends but also by just about every political commentator on television. I stand irresponsibly firm in my opinion, and here’s why. In order for a voter to claim the title of undecided, this voter must have weighed the information he/she possesses and still be conflicted about which candidate is worthy of election. None of those people exist, but here are some examples of people we misidentify as undecideds who do exist:

Am I playing a game of semantics here? Yes, but with good reason. There are different strategies that prove effective for dealing with each of these groups. Candidates want to motivate new voters to the polls; they want to fill uninformed voters with compelling new facts (read: October surprise) right before the election; for most of the rest the best strategy is probably just to get them really pissed off. Undecided voters are different — they tend to respond poorly to bullying, prefer debate formats, and be simultaeously too smart to be bamboozled yet not smart enough to truly grasp the intricacies of the position differences. In short, swaying undecideds sucks a whole lot. Good thing there aren’t any.

Score: Titans 3, Vikings 20

Let me tell you something you already knew: the Titans are just not a good team so far this year. I don’t know what voodoo magic they performed to dominate against Brett Farve on Monday Night Football, but their only other win was against the completely hapless Dolphins. In my opinion, here are the 3 main causes of the Titans’ fall from grace:

1) Injuries. The Titans have 17 players injured, including 12 starters and pretty much the entire offensive line and linebacker corps. In fact, I think we had both starting defensive ends injured today too. You should get props for beating any team (except Miami) with your second string. But except for that one fluke game, no said props thus far for the Titans.

2) Run Defense. Or lack thereof, I should say. Their pass defense certainly isn’t good enough to beat the likes of David Carr, Byron Leftwich, and especially Peyton Manning if the run defense can’t be trusted to keep the other team from breaking multiple double-digit runs every game. Apparently losing their entire defensive line in the offseason mattered after all.

3) Young Players. Of the 53 men on the roster 12 are rookies and 31 have played 3 years or less. That’s ridiculous. The good news is the Titans should be amazing in a couple of years; the bad news is until their salary cap woes end I think we may have to resign ourselves to the fact that they’re going to seriously suck.

Can the Titans recover? Not really. Sure, I think the Fisher system is good enough to win a few more games — but with the Jaguars, Jets, and Steelers all poised for a run at the wild card it won’t be enough to make the playoffs unless some serious upending happens in the second half of the season.

Next Game: Cincinnati (2-4) at Tennessee (2-5) Sun 10/31

The more newspaper endorsements I read, the more convinced I am of my previous point. While the perceptions of each side may well be based on elements such as partisan rhetoric, scare tactics, and election strategy in general, the battle lines in this election have been drawn based on fundamentally different criteria for choosing a president. While I’m open to suggestions, my inclination is still to label these sides principle vs. practice. It should be noted that the parties representing these two sides have wholly reversed since the pre-Reagan years, when Democrats laid out unrealistically ambitious goals for achieving an American dream as defined by progressive ideology and Republicans accused their opponents of abandoning discipline and realism in favor of utopian pipe dreams. (I pull parts of this argument from the theory that the neoconservative movement was born from disaffected pro-war Democrats during Vietnam, on which I hope to pontificate in a future post.)

I offer as examples two new endorsements, differently reasoned than the Times and Tribune, that nonetheless prove the point just as effectively. Denver’s Rocky Mountain News offers a less weighty argument for supporting President Bush than that of the Tribune but is no less explicit in its rationale:

America is a huge, energetic, resourceful nation whose fate does not hinge on the policies of one man. The question is which candidate’s vision is more likely to make us safer, freer and more prosperous than his rival’s. For us, the answer is George W. Bush.

Conversely, the Washington Post conducts a far more balanced and weighty deliberation than the Times‘ full-scale assault, yet arrives at Senator Kerry on similar grounds:

[W]e find much to criticize in Mr. Bush’s term but also more than a few things to admire. We find much to admire in Mr. Kerry’s life of service, knowledge of the world and positions on a range of issues — but also some things that give us pause. On balance, though, we believe Mr. Kerry, with his promise of resoluteness tempered by wisdom and open-mindedness, has staked a stronger claim on the nation’s trust to lead for the next four years.

Again it seems to me that for one side it’s about this single �ber-issue of believing the vision is both correct and righteous at heart, while for the other side it’s about weighing respect for — or legitimacy of — this vision against what has been accomplished in practice. But incidentally, I would hate to think that any voter is being swayed by the number of newspaper endorsements. Editorial (or publisher, as the case may be) biases are just as prevalent as the biases of their readerships, and these biases clearly sit at the core of their arguments just as experiences and prior opinions prejudice the way each of us assimilates information. Take this excerpt from the same Post editorial as an example:

On many other issues, Mr. Kerry has the better approach. He has a workable plan to provide health insurance to more Americans; the 45 million uninsured represent a shameful abdication that appears not to have concerned Mr. Bush one whit…. A Kerry judiciary — and the next president is likely to make a significant mark on the Supreme Court — would be more hospitable to civil rights, abortion rights and the right to privacy.

Ahh, there’s the bias. No writer who wasn’t already leaning progressive would have been that careless (or intentional) in choice of terms. Or how about this piece from the Denver editorial:

Nor are we hopeful the president will successfully push some elements of his domestic agenda far in a second term given the likely makeup of Congress. Yet at least his agenda remains attractive as a goal. The president’s ideal of an “ownership society” is no mere slogan. It is reflected in his embrace of health-savings accounts and self-directed pension investments for younger workers, as well as in his support of tax, regulatory and (usually) trade policies that promote growth and an entrepreneurial culture.

Wait a second — the paper’s editors are writing this story? Oh, I’m sorry, editorials go on the opinion page and these internalized predispositions would never impact a balanced assessment of each candidate based on the objective facts.

So yeah, I’m more than a little concerned about getting a balanced shake from these editorials, just as I believe there are no truly undecided voters out there capable of giving both candidates an equally fair shake. But I do think that endorsements are extremely useful for the following reason: an editorial tends to be a concise and well-reasoned opinion professed in unison by a group of knowledgeable, educated, articulate people. And ultimately they have to weigh the same issues as you and I, internal bias and all.

Ideologically speaking, in my opinion this is a pretty decent description of what’s happening right now in this presidential election. Allow me to attempt an illustration. Following are the New York Times endorsement of Senator Kerry and the Chicago Tribune (free subscription required) endorsement of President Bush. The contrast is positively striking. The heart of the Times endorsement is one of the most scathing and unapologetic point-by-point skewerings of the Bush administration that I’ve read from a reputable source. It distracts from its central message by lavishing more praise upon Kerry than any rational actor could find believable, but could not be clearer in its belief that the administration has been on the wrong side of every single decision made in the last 4 years. The Tribune endorsement of Bush is, ironically, a far more nuanced weighing of the pros and cons resulting in the heavy conclusion that only Bush truly understands in his soul the nature of the war on terror. It acknowledges administrative failures in strategy implementation but suggests that struggles in practice are excusable if the principles are sound.

As I finished reading these two endorsements, something occurred to me: supporters of these two sides don’t understand one another at all. This seems to hold true even among moderates. For example, Gregory Djerejian offers a lengthy but extremely well-reasoned pro-Bush argument. The most successful criticisms of such an argument, such as Dan Drezner’s rationale for his Kerry endorsement, center not on whether the argument is right or wrong but contend instead that the critical issue has been completely misidentified as principled resolve when in fact it’s failures of practice. Tom Friedman offers the foreign policy specific version of this argument:

In British politics there used to be a standard test for candidates for prime minister: Would you want to go on a tiger hunt with this person? That is, would this candidate kill the tiger or try to reason with the tiger? Graham Allison, the Harvard international relations professor who just published a book called “Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe,” said to me the other day that the tiger hunt is even more relevant in America today.

“The big question about Kerry is, Will he pull the trigger?” Mr. Allison said. “And the big question about Bush is, Can he aim? With Bush, we know he can pull the trigger, but it’s like he shot himself in the foot - and the tiger is still out there. It’s the tiger who needs to be shot, not us.”

Try as some might to typecast the other side as such, we don’t live in a nation where all the smart people vote one way and all the dumb people vote the other way. It’s not good vs. evil either, though plenty from both sides may believe it and the candidates may play on that garbage. If everyone really thought Kerry was right on all the issues, Bush has made so many mistakes that this election would be a Democratic landslide. If everyone really thought Bush had done a good job in practice, the perception of Kerry as opportunistic rather than principled would put this election securely in Republican hands. But the candidates have created caricatures of each other that lampoon the central choice as principle vs. practice, and as the Times and Tribune editorials demonstrate, people who side with one tend to be rather unsympathetic to those who’ve chosen the other.

Score: Titans 10, Texans 20

I started doing these game recaps back when I thought I could be cynical or funny… this game was neither cynical nor funny. It was a decimation. Steve McNair was 19 of 41 with 4 interceptions? Good grief. I suppose I should cut my team a little slack — our offense is down to 3 wide receivers and has lost two starting guards, our top two tight ends, and our starting running back to injury. But it doesn’t make finishing our inter-division home schedule 0-3 any more palatable for our starters should they return. Tsk tsk.

Next Game: Tennessee (2-4) at Minnesota (4-1) Sun 10/24

I’ve used several posts now to lay out a case for something that I feel I should now come back and reiterate. Certainly the choices in this presidential race are stark ones, but I believe in far too many cases voters are themselves degenerating into polarization by simply believing exactly what they want to believe regardless of the facts at hand. Then, with the help of increasingly polarized television, radio, and internet media sources, these voters search and invariably find some justification for whatever belief they held from the onset. And for those who would claim this theory reeks of intellectual elitism, I will in fact argue that the self-identified “educated class” — which probably includes myself and nearly every reader of this site — are the principal culprits of this travesty.

There are two competing theories regarding undecided voters in this election. The first theory posits that there are a bunch of voters who have generally made up their mind about Iraq, defense, the economy, and social values, but for whom the order of prioritization for these issues is still very in play. Data supporting this theory consists largely of opinion poll swings after the conventions and the debates suggesting that listeners were changing their votes based on what they heard. The second argument, which I support, asserts that virtually no likely voters are undecided and they haven’t been for months. The aforementioned opinion polls are fluid because how a voter “feels” when the pollster calls changes with the wind, but that ultimately in this climate and with this access to information temporarily conflicted voters don’t have to look very hard to find some fact somewhere that merely confirms their prior expectations. The Electoral Vote Predictor has a nice little editorial illustrating this very point. Pending a significant event of some sort (e.g. Bush performing far more dismally than expected in the first debate) post-debate polls run very close to pre-debate expectations.

So great, we’re through all the debates and back where we were nearly a year ago in the polls. Pending a major October surprise such as a terrorist attack or finding Bin Laden, this election has now become quite predictable. The electoral math is pretty simple at this point: if Bush holds both Ohio and Florida, it will be extremely difficult for him to lose. If Kerry takes one of these states, it becomes highly likely he’ll win. About the same as predicted a year ago. So does all the political positioning matter? Does a gay marriage amendment and the Swift Boat Vets and calling each other liar and flip-flopper and stubborn and liberal matter? Of course it does — positioning helps to define the attack lines voters use when they beat each other upside the head every day with their preexisting positions, and it helps to define the defense lines voters use when they break into a hysterical rant against said positions in retaliation for said beating. This increases resolve and it energizes the base, which impacts turnout and reshapes the political map.

But in my humble opinion, there are no undecideds. Maybe some voter out there is weighing Kerry vs. Badarnik or Nader vs. not voting or something along these lines, but in Kerry vs. Bush? Nope, no undecideds. Notwithstanding a catastrophic event, it’s as simple as this: try as you might with facts, fiction, logic, or emotion no minds are being changed in the next three weeks, and very few minds have even been changed in the last few months. This is not my preference — indeed it reflects most poorly on the educated class because we expect better of ourselves — but it’s what we’ve got, case closed, end of story. Happy voting.

So, now we’ve got three debates under our belts, this last one centering on domestic issues. Anybody change their mind? No? I didn’t think so.

Factwise I heard tons of strangely calculated statistics that are impossible for the average voter to verify — who would know which candidate was telling the truth? Domestic debates tend to involve spouting every slanted, skewed number the campaigns can come up with, and then accusing the other candidate of lying if the numbers conflict. In fact, I think the candidates were cutting each other about a trillion dollars of slack on some of the economic answers because it really mattered that little to the viewer. In terms of social issues the differences were far more striking in both style and substance. However, for the most part social issues didn’t come up until the second half, and I’ll be very interested to see not only how many people watched the third debate at all, but how many people stuck around for the good parts instead of switching to the baseball playoffs.

Let’s talk about style. Kerry, in my opinion, delivered an equally solid performance as his first two debates. He’s clearly a skilled debater, an experienced public speaker, and a well-prepped candidate for these types of venues. i think he may have won the night on substance, but it wasn’t as clear as I thought it would be because of the number confusion on economic issues. For Bush, stylistically and substantively I believe this was his best debate. He spoke very personally, particularly in the last 30 minutes, and came across as far more genuine and at ease with his answers to questions on social issues than did his opponent.

I’ve long argued that Kerry is the least important player in this race. His job is to convince anti-Bush liberals and disgruntled moderates that he can fill in for a few years should they succeed in ousting the current occupant. The debate line about Kerry offering a litany of complaints rather than a distinct and workable series of plans is true, but that’s okay because it’s part of the strategy. Kerry needs to keep the focus on what he can accuse Bush of doing wrong, not open himself up to additional scrutiny. All in all, Kerry did an excellent job through the debates of reassuring his more tentative supporters that he can stand in as president if necessary.

As for Bush, I would contend that the single most statistically significant incident of either candidate during the debate series was Bush’s dismal performance in the first round. It was perhaps the first time moderate Bush supporters became truly uneasy about their candidate, and Kerry was effective enough at demonstrating leadership to pick up some of those votes. As a result, Bush’s biggest problem in the past two weeks has been convincing people that the first debate was a fluke. Bush has done two major things to attempt to remedy this problem. First, Bush has switched his attacks on Kerry from a “flip-flopper” strategy to a “liberal Massachusetts senator” strategy in order to energize the base. Second, Bush has bounced back with strong performances in the second and third debates, and in particular may have won back a few economically-disgruntled social conservatives with several heartfelt answers toward the end.

I believe a truly undecided voter who didn’t see the first two debates would likely call the third one a draw — but this is irrelevant really since the person I just described doesn’t exist. Bush comes across as resolute to his supporters and arrogant to his opponents, while Kerry comes across as articulate to his supporters and pompous to his opponents. As a result, when the debaters get stylistically close and it comes down to differences on issues that are based on unreliable or undecipherable evidence, I think voters just go ahead and support whoever they were going to support to begin with. I’m not saying anything new here, but I’m repeating it because I think these sorts of divides matter much more than the actual substantive performances of the candidates. In other words, that people see what they want to see may be the only real story of this debate series.

Score: Titans 48, Chargers 27

I’ll reserve lengthier entries for games where I’m in attendance, but let me just say that this was a dominating Monday Night Football win at storied Lambeau Field. Hopefully this rights the ship after some pitiful defeats, but we’ll see…

Next Game: Houston (2-3) at Tennessee (2-3) Sun 10/17

It’s time for a disciplined rant about the debilitations of mal-reflective voting. This is a condition in which people who might otherwise know the difference between a reason-first mentality and a passion-first mentality readily disregard this knowledge as a result of being either excessively arrogant or excessively duped. Sometimes both. It was first discovered in Ancient Greece approximately 5 minutes after the birth of democracy and has expanded to what might now be called a pandemic.

The most common symptom of mal-reflective voting is the tendency to make a major voting decision based on an utterly stupid and indefensible reason that in all likelihood is based on emotion at the expense of credible fact, and then later attempt to defend this decision using any and all dumbed-down or inapplicable versions of hindsight arguments. Later-stage symptoms may include attempts to sway fellow voters with insults or screaming contests, blanket challenges to the intelligence of any and all dissenters, frenzied panic attacks or conversation-halting seizures whenever the vote in question is discussed, and blind acceptance of all arguments that support the initial voting decision even if the arguments completely contract each other and/or the initial rationale.

Attempts to identify likely carriers or victims of this disease have largely failed. Variables with no significant impact include age, gender, socioeconomic status, party affiliation, social behavior, or country of origin. There does seem to be, however, a surprising association between level of education and vulnerability. Research is ongoing, but in the meantime, here are some behavioral suggestions that have been shown to reduce the likelihood of succumbing to mal-reflective voting disorder:

Finally, think. No matter how many dubious and partially legitimate arguments one has, if they are entirely independent of one another and collectively point nowhere then they are useless. A set of numbers and operators in a row with no rhyme or reason is just a set of numbers and operators; if they’re not in proper order they cannot an equation make, and even if they did form an equation it still needs to be proven correct in order to matter. An emotional response is fine when it’s well-grounded, but when it comes to voting it’s the foundation in reason that keeps us in check — not the other way around. Losing sight of the rationale in your own life might just affect you, but losing sight of the rationale when you’re voting impacts all of us.

If you’ve checked your vitals for at least one of the above reasons, I’ll consider myself in good company. The danger isn’t catching a symptom once in a while, because it’s happened to all of us at one time or another. The danger is not recognizing the symptoms — or worse, failing to acknowledge the disease at all. If you’ve pronounced yourself healthy, I look forward to future conversations. To the rest, best wishes and get well soon.

Due to my travel schedule and consequently getting a bit behind at work I’ve done virtually no political reading in the last 4 days, which is the blogging equivalent of holding my breath until I turn blue. As a result of my brief absence, I missed out on a major conspiracy theory and had to be tipped by a friend. I’m all caught up effective today, and having done my homework I’ll now happily take on the topic full force.

One of the most dangerous aspects of blogs is the disturbing tendancy for low-level partisans with agendas to draw massive attention to rumors long before they can be proven or disproven. Such was the case for the Kerry Swift Boat story, and thus far such is the case for the notion that Bush was wired during the Miami debate.

Here’s the back story. Apparently a strange bulge in the back of Bush’s coat has fueled preexisting suspicions by unabashed partisans that Bush gets his talking points through some kind of radio transmitter. The Guardian picked up the story shortly after The Salon first ran it. CNN and The New York Times have both reported only the campaign’s dismissal of the notion thus far. Even mainstream left-leaning bloggers Wonkette and Kos, while paying the rumors lip service, remain highly skeptical of the conspiracy theorist conclusions.

Briefly and forcefully, this is an absolutely classic case of don’t believe everything you read on the internet — or, perhaps more accurately, don’t believe everything your partisan friend tells you they read on the internet. Yes, I think this whole thing is utterly stupid, and here’s why:

(1) The main conspiracy website, www.isbushwired.com, contradicts itself with its own outlandish claims. It originally asserted that Bush was too stupid to respond to his own “Ask President Bush” Q&A rallies (which are already full of supporters asking softball questions) and therefore used a transmitter, but Bush doesn’t even wear a jacket during those rallies. The website also points out how difficult it is to listen to the earpiece without moving one’s eyes, and to argue that Bush is stupid enough to need the earpiece but smart enough to keep his eyes from moving during an entire debate (when in fact body language is even more of a Bush weakness than intelligence) is clearly to contradict oneself for the sole point of perpetuating a dubious claim.

(2) There were how many cameras on Bush and Kerry at the debate? Filming every move for how long? And this entire conspiracy, having been proven completely devoid of intellectual merit or practicality, is being held up entirely by a photo of a suit wrinkle that could just as easily be explained away as a tailoring issue? Puhleease. As just discussed, this tenuous and ill-reasoned conspiracy theory was floating about long before one gift-wrapped photo reinvigorated the moron theorists.

(3) Given how much more coherent Bush was in the second debate than the first, when I first heard of the theory I honestly found it to be a plausible notion that Karl Rove wired Bush so he wouldn’t perform as badly as he did in the first one and tank the whole election in one fell swoop. But then I discovered the theory applies to the first debate, not the second! To put it plainly, this is simply inconceivable — all Bush did was repeat the same four lines throughout the first debate anyway, and rest assured that awful performance can’t be blamed on Rove. So for argument’s sake let’s make the stretch assumption that Bush has not only been wearing a radio transmitter for certain public events but that he was actually dumb enough to wear one during the debate for whatever reason. In that event I will eat my hat for having so forcefully denied the claim, but even in that instance I will still refuse to believe the guy supposedly feeding lines into the earpiece was a guy dumber than Bush that Rove hired to execute a crappy debate performance with no useful facts or rhetorical devices beyond exactly what we would have expected from the President in the first place.

I’ve never denied in person, and indeed have conceded in print, that I’m biased by my hatred of conspiracy theories and partisan hacks, but even bias aside this one seems open-and-shut. Why would Rove outsource Bush’s debate answers to an even worse debater than Bush? Why would any credible Bush opponent deny Bush himself the honor of such a miserable failure at the Miami debate? Why would even the most openly partisan of the popular mainstream bloggers rush to distance themselves from such a juicy story unless they found it both lacking in merit and destructive to their original claims that Bush is unintelligent in his own right?

And the most important question of all: why would I devote this much time to such a poorly-constructed theory? Because I owe it to the friend who tipped me to return the favor, and because I feel compelled to prove that there is no limit to what subjects I’ll adopt in the name of procrastination.

Since I was on the road en route to Ohio Friday night, I had the more unusual experience of listening to the second presidential debate on the radio. Surprisingly the reception was excellent the entire drive, dispelling my previous belief that all non-country stations are blacked out in Kentucky. I’ve since had the chance to see clips of the debate on television, and of course to read a number of articles, but should you find my comments significantly different from your perceptions I’d be interested to hear whether you think the radio-television contrast had anything to do wtih it.

After chiding President Bush relentlessly for his unprepared and uninspiring performance in the first debate, he was clearly much improved in the second. I suspect this can be attributed to three factors: he’s far more comfortable in the town hall format, Karl Rove probably threatened to fire the entire prep team after the last debate, and Bush is himself a fierce competitor who can handle insults from the opposition but probably took them far more personally coming in unison from the analysts (not to mention the voters, if an 8-point drop means anything at this stage of the race). This is not to say that Kerry did poorly — in fact I think he did quite well in a format many believed would make him look stiff and uncomfortable — but at the time I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Bush impressed more people simply by his astronomical improvement from the first debate. Note the qualifier though: at the time.

In contrast to my personal opinion, my post-debate reading suggests that the plurality in most polls favored Kerry slightly in the second debate. My shot-in-the-dark guess is this comes from confirmed expectations: people who watched the first debate decided (as did I) that Kerry was a better debater in general, and consequently in the second and much closer debate these viewers sided with their expectations. This phenomenon isn’t limited to the average voter, mind you — most bloggers took the easy way out and used “better articulation of the issues” as an excuse to award a narrow win to their preferred candidate. I call it the easy way out because most bloggers have a reasonably articulate command of their side of the issues, and will naturally consider their side’s argument the more well-reasoned absent its earth-shattering destruction by the other side. As for the cable analysts, I agree with their general assessment that Bush let the polls get close again with a terrible first performance, righted his ship with the second but certainly didn’t break away, and now all eyes are on the third and final debate to see if it breaks the stalemate.

Unlike the first debate in which image comparisons were the dominant factor, my favorite aspect of both the vice presidential debate and the second presidential debate came in refocusing the sides on the issues. I believe the average voter who watched either of these debates, and espcially Friday’s Bush-Kerry contest, came away with a much more distinct awareness of the differences between the two sides. Now, this is not to say that practically speaking their actual presidencies would be all that different — like my libertarian friends I don’t see any productive changes in debt management, federal entitlement programs, or military spending from either administration — but unfortunately presidential campaigns are always about the legitimacy of past actions and unproven ideas for the future. Game theorists and those who want to vote based on rational expectations, not just on rhetoric, for what the future might be like under each candidate will find few like-minded voters at the polls in November. But conceding this point, at least both candidates are doing a much better job of defining themselves — and occasionally defining each other — than has been done up to this point. I’m looking forward to Number 3.

My friend John and I have just returned from a road trip to Columbus this weekend to see some friends and make good on an offer for some free tickets to the Ohio State-Wisconsin game. This is my third trip to Ohio, and after giving it a couple of chances to redeem itself I’m now prepared to pass judgment.

I’ve always felt that Ohio had more syllables than it deserved, and in spite of having a great time there this weekend I nonetheless consider my feeling validated. Some inordinately beautiful weather and the fall colors on the drive saved the state from being the statewide version of Buffalo — flat, cloudy, and gray — that it was on my last two visits. I’m confident that Ohio will never live down to the reputation of, say, a Gary, Indiana, but I’ve seen parts of Cincinnati that make me think this remains a lingering aspiration.

The football game was quite a lot of fun, in spite of the home team losing (not that I care about Big Ten football really). They have all these weird unoriginal cheers like OHIO! and O-H-I-O! and GO-OHIO! that give the impression of far more state spirit than I suspect actually exists outside of the stadium. I was thoroughly impressed, however, by the 15,000 people who packed the basketball arena for the ritual pre-game marching band concert over two hours prior to game time.

On the return trip home, John and I caught two tourist attractions that we’ve been meaning to experience: Hofbrauhaus Newport and Skyline Chili. The Hofbrauhaus lived up to the rather menial expectations we had for an “authentic” German restaurant located so far from Munich: good atmosphere and good beer. As for Skyline Chili, I was impressed by what seemed like a fast and innovative idea for a restaurant chain but very disappointed in their mediocre chili. I know I’m going to get criticism from certain friends with strong opinions about the place, but really, my mom makes much better chili and I’ll invite you over if you don’t believe me. I’m not saying a fast food establishment has to beat home cooking, but one that gets as many testimonials as I’ve heard has to at least put up a fight.

Two October trips down, one to go. We both needed this trip: I haven’t been on the road since June and for John it’s been more than a year. What’s next? Well, I’m back in Nashville for two weeks before heading down to Baton Rouge to watch LSU pummel Vanderbilt in football. Speaking of: what the hell was this?

[Update 10/11/04: On that last question, Joe Biddle explains.]

The liberal sports media has in all its bias shown only passing interest in this new and damning evidence that the Oakland Raiders are an unequivocal part of the Axis of Evil. Critics argue that the connection between the Raiders and Evil is tenuous at best and far less open-and-shut than the Baltimore Ravens, whose history of association with illegal activity involving players like Crack Dealer Jamal Lewis and Murderer Ray Lewis is lengthy and well-documented. While conceding that there is no smoking gun, I nonetheless contend that the Raider Nation has for many years demonstrated an illicit pattern of behavior, that it shows no signs of reversing said pattern of behavior in spite of punitive measures ranging from an ass-beating in a Super Bowl by their own former coach to an ass-beating by the lowly Texans. Also, they now employ Warren Sapp.

Some may wonder whether we have the capacity to fight Evil on two fronts, two coasts, two conferences even. But to these girlie-men I say whaveva and give them the hand. The Raiders, like the Ravens, deserve to be hated, and in the name of all that is Good and Right in this world we must ensure that they are brought to justice. Thank you and go Titans.