Has it really been two weeks since I last posted? It doesn't seem like it.

Some scattered thoughts on what I've read in the political blogs over the past month:

Someone (I forget who) posed and enthustiastically approed the idea that Obama, if elected, might nominate Russ Feingold to be his attorney general. I would like that, too — not so much because I like Feingold himself (though I do) but because I like what I expect he would do as attorney general. I'd be just as happy if whoever the attorney general is (and of whichever party), his first announcement is to pledge that, with the support of his president, his department's top priority will be to restore due process and rule of law to the federal government by rebuilding the constitutional checks and balances that have been eroded over the past 16 years.

Others have tossed around the idea that Obama, if elected, might form a "cabinet of rivals", alluding to President Lincoln's cabinet. (Andrew Sullivan, in particular, loves comparing Obama to Lincoln.) I find the comparison unconvincing. It falls apart because the Democratic Party today just isn't factionally divided like the young Republican Party was in 1860. Aside from Clinton, who exactly are Obama's rivals within the party? John Edwards? Joe Biden? Chris Dodd? Al Gore? Howard Dean? None of these, nor even Clinton, is really a rival to Obama in the same sense that Seward, Chase, Bates or Cameron was to Lincoln. And because of that, the significance of bringing such "rivals" into his cabinet diminishes to almost nothing.

What's more intriguing to me is that, as I understand the theory (and I haven't read Doris Kearns Goodwin's book, which I suspect is what many have in mind), a big part of the reason Lincoln did bring his Republican opponents into his cabinet is because he understood that the nation was in a particularly dismal state which would necessitate some very hard decisions by the president. That being the case, he wanted to make sure that his primary potential critics were inside the tent, not outside. Essentially, he wanted to force them to shoulder part of the responsibility for what had to be done.

If Obama really were to form a "cabinet of rivals" might it not suggest a similar attitude? If Obama thinks that the country is headed for bad times and can only be saved by some drastic and unpopular moves, that might be sufficient reason to get all his political opponents on board with him. But again, I don't think the comparison really holds, because the political alignments just don't match 1960.

I'm surprised we've heard so little this election season about how bad things are going to be for the next president. Typically there's a group of partisans arguing, "We'd be better off to lose this year. Things are going to be bad, so better to let the other party take the blame for it and try again in four years." I always hate that sentiment, since it implies that you care more about scoring popularity points for your team than actually making the nation better. If the country is headed to hell in a handbasket, isn't that all the more reason to want to take over and try to do something about it, even if it does mean being unpopular?

But if there were ever a year to be scared off of the presidency, I would think it would be 2008. (And therefore it's a credit to all the candidates in both parties who did run.) It's commonplace to the point of banality to observe that in the past eight years our national account has gone from surplus to the largest debt in history. That's not even counting all the unfunded liabilities off-budget, the decline of the dollar, and other squandered resources. But so far the conclusion to be drawn from these facts is typically, "That proves Bush is bad, and therefore you should vote Democrat," rather than, "That proves that whoever succeeds Bush is facing four years of unremitting disaster, and what the hell is he going to do about it?"

Among the squandered resources that don't appear on the government's balance sheet are national goodwill and military resources. The military may look fine now, but just as petroleum reserves are depleted if you pump all the deposits dry, so are military reserves. Today's forces are exhausted from overuse and the nation's capacity to recruit in the near future is even more drastically reduced.

One of the arguments against Sen Webb's new G.I. Bill is that it calls for extra domestic spending that we simply can't afford. I favor frugality as much as the next guy — quite a bit more than the next guy, in fact — but I don't agree. I do agree that we can't afford it, but the G.I. Bill is not to blame for the extra expense. The expense has already been incurred. The resource is already depleted, and unless you prefer to just do without from now on, it must be replenished. To blame the G.I. Bill for extra spending is sort of like drinking all the milk and leaving the empty carton in the refrigerator, then calling the next guy profligate for spending money on a new carton.

Postscript: When Benzene last looked at running mates for Obama, I listed Evan Bayh as most likely, with Bill Richardson also a reasonable guess. Nearly two months later, my position has evolved: I don't consider Richardson likely at all now, and although I don't think Bayh is out of consideration he's no longer my pick as most likely.

If I had to put money on just one name to predict, now I think I'd go with Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer. That's not based on careful analysis, just my hunch that he's a really good fit. I haven't been following the veepstakes carefully (is it my imagination, or has the news media been unusually quiet on what is normally such a popular topic?) but my general sense is that Schweitzer is near the middle of most lists but rarely near the top, though like all running mate mentionees he has a small cohort of promoters. I suppose you can count me in that cohort now.

4:00:53 PM  [permalink]  comment []  

Quirky questions about words pop into my head from time to time. Here's two I've been pondering lately.

1. What is the seven-syllable word most commonly used in ordinary conversation?

As I puzzle over this, it seems that seven syllables is something of a milestone. I can come up with numerous six-syllable words that are reasonably common, but the seventh is tough. It's not that seven-syllable words don't exist, nor that you can't think of any — especially if you're generous with prefixes and suffixes — but most of them aren't the sort of things that often come up in conversation. Sure, you may know about polyunsaturated fats or microencephalitis, but how often do you discuss them?

2. What word is most often misspelled by writers who otherwise generally have very good spelling?

By "most often", I mean most appearances in misspelled form, not highest ratio of wrong spelling to right. So a misspelled hapax legomenon (but how would you know?) doesn't win the contest with a 100% score.

The restrictive clause means I want to ignore the great legions of sloppy writing in which misspellings are rife and consider only writing which is reviewed with care by a competent speller, whether the original writer or the editor. In such writing, what misspelling most often sneaks past the defenses nonetheless?

I have candidates for both, but I'm interested in what words my readers think up. So that your thoughts aren't muddied by my own, I'll list my candidates in the special invisible print we invented for the Harry Potter book reviews. Here's a sample you can try:

This is special magic invisible type. If you can see this without selecting it, the magic does not work on your browser.

To see it, use your cursor to select the invisible words.

The best I come up with for question 1 is infinitesimally, but I'm not convinced it's best. Can you do better?

For question 2, I think minuscule must surely be the favorite, though accommodate (along with closely related accommodation(s)) is also a contender.

11:21:46 PM  [permalink]  comment []  

I am a forest creature. This month I've been doing something I ought to have done a long time ago: I'm exploring all the nearby local parks. There are several of them, and nearly all of them are foresty. A few of them are large enough to get lost in, but small enough that you don't stay lost for too long, which is perfect.

This afternoon on the way home from work I stopped by Hamlin Park, right here in Shoreline. Shoreline is the next city north of Seattle, where I now live. It was incorporated in 1995, made up of all the leftover unincorporated lands north of the city line and south of the county line. This incorporation threw together several distinct communities, some of which are quite old. Development has filled in all the gaps, so the populated areas are continuous now, but several miniature "downtowns" are still easily recognizable.

Near Shoreline's eastern edge is Hamlin Park's 72 acres, roughly three-quarters of which are forested (the other quarter being playgrounds, baseball fields, parking lots, and the like). I've driven past it dozens of times, but I didn't venture inside until today.

My park visits are investigatory in nature. Three things struck me about this one. First, it's an unusually roomy forest. There are plenty of tall trees, but very little understory. The trails are wide to the point of incoherence, and it's easy to roam around without following a trail at all. One could play frisbee here. Second, though I don't know if this evening was typical, I noted a particularly high dog-to-human ratio among fellow visitors, nearly 1:1.

After wandering semi-aimlessly through the trees, I emerged at a different end from where I went in. Walking back toward where my car was parked I passed the playground area, near which I noticed what looked like two very large cannons. Upon closer investigation, I found they are ship guns. One of them, according to the plaque, fired the first shot at the battle of Manila Bay in 1898. I wonder how they found their way to Shoreline.

9:48:49 PM  [permalink]  comment []  

Four days later, there seems to be a backlash against the excessive praising of Tim Russert that has dominated the news media for several days. Jason points me to this column on Slate as a good example.

Enh. I can't say I've been at all bothered by it. I hear that the cable news stations have been all Russert for hours on end. But I wouldn't know, since I don't actually watch cable news for hours on end (not even close). Nor do I check in several times a day to notice that they're still at it.

Ultimately, I don't find this any more shocking than when the cable news stations binge on the O.J. trial, or Britney Spears' rehab, or Paris Hilton's week in jail. Russert is no different. He gets coverage because he's a celebrity recognized by a large audience. That he's a celebrity among social classes that consider themselves superior to those who are more familiar with Paris and Britney does not impress me as a significant distinction.

Do I think it's stupid that the news media binged on Russert all weekend? Well, sure ... but I pretty much always think the news is stupid.

Now that a decent interval has passed, I can link the the article I alluded to on Friday. That's Matthew Yglesias, writing in December 2007. If you follow the link and read, you can draw your own conclusion. For those who don't care to: The general gist is that Russert's interviewing style on Meet the Press is stupid and represents what's wrong with political journalism today. I quite agree.

Months ago, I read a serious analysis of the dynamics and economics of the news business. (Alas, I don't remember where.) Among the observations was that a TV journalist's career success is strongly correlated to how well-known he is to the audience, which in turn is strongly correlated to how much face time he gets. When you watch an interview on TV, if most of what you see are is person being interviewed, you won't remember the journalist so much. If more of your time is devoted to watching and hearing the interviewer talk, he'll be more recognizable next time. The latter probably does not make for a better interview, but it does make for a better chance of the journalist getting more gigs.

Quite likely, some ambitious journalists are well aware of this and they make a concerted effort to maximize their face time in furtherance of their careers. But even if they don't do it on purpose, the result is the same. If some journalists tend to hog the screen just by natural inclination, those hogs are going to become better-known; that will get them more gigs, which will make them even more well-known, driving out the meeker journalists who prefer to let the interviewee do most of the talking.

This is why we have a news media full of obnoxious TV journalists who hound their guests with stupid and unanswerable "gotcha" questions. This is why, on the rare occasion that a guest actually tries to explain something with more than one sentence, the interviewer loudly interrupts, "Stop dodging the question, Senator. Give me an answer, yes or no!" This interruption is essential to the interviewer's viability as a journalist. Without it, the camera might stay off him for more than ten precious seconds.

With that in mind, I want to make a deal with the journalists: Let's agree that from now on the TV cameras will always be pointed at the guy who isn't talking. I realize that's stupid. Obviously, I'd rather see the facial expression of the person who is saying something. But if that's the price we have to pay to get journalists to shut the hell up and let the guest talk, it would be worth it.

11:21:22 PM  [permalink]  comment []  

On the radio (baseball) and online, I heard and saw the news that Tim Russert passed away today. Online I followed some of the links and skimmed some of the stories. The political blogs are packed with seemingly everyone writing a little tribute. Unsurprisingly, the tributes are glowingly positive, reminding us of everything wonderful about Tim Russert. Reading only today's stories, if one didn't know better, one would think he was the greatest journalist of all times.

But of course one does know better, so it's clear enough what's happening. Like anyone else, Russert had his good qualities and his bad qualities, but on a day like today we focus only on the good. You don't have to go back very far to find other stories, from when he was still alive, criticizing his flaws or using him as an example of much that is wrong with political journalism — some of them probably from the same writers praising him today.

This is as it should be. Common decency is important, and you don't say unkind things about a guy on the day he dies. There is certainly a time and a place for a tough critique of Russert's style of journalism — the Washington Monthly published a good one last December — but only an insensitive clod would think that time is now.

Although I wouldn't change it, I'm intrigued by the larger message this sends to readers of the news. For this phenomenon does not apply only to well-known celebrities like Russert. It applies to everyone. You don't say bad things about a person right after he dies. Certainly not in public, or to a reporter.

The news is filled with stories of people who died — vehicular accidents, crime victims, untimely medical failures. Typically these stories are accompanied by little interviews with the people who knew the deceased. "He was such a wonderful guy. Everyone loved him." That's the sort of thing you usually hear.

But it is a truism that most people are not above average. Surely a large and virtually random sample of unfortunate victims will encompass the whole range from good to bad. What happens when an unpleasant person dies and his acquaintances are interviewed? Will you ever hear someone say this?

or this?

Of course you won't. It might be more honest, but it's not right. You hate to kick a guy when he's down, and no one would be so churlish to kick a guy when he just died. Or even if someone did, the reporter wouldn't use the quote. Just like the journalists praising Tim Russert today, you'll forget your differences and remember the good things. Even if you dislike a guy, you'll still find something nice to say; and if you felt neutral about him, you'll be even nicer still. And in the unlikely event that someone is so irredeemably bad that there's nothing good to remember about him, you'll keep your mouth shut.

The result is that every person who dies will appear a few degrees nicer in his obituary than he would otherwise. That's great if you know him. What if you don't know him? What if you read or watch the news every day and in the course of a year you hear about two hundred strangers who died various unfortunate deaths?

We sometimes hear about how news coverage makes people irrationally fearful of crimes or accidents because the news focus makes them seem more common than they actually are. A subtler effect is that the news makes the victims of these crimes and accidents seems like a more worthy class of people than they really are, with the resulting vague sense that bad things happen disproportionately to good people. They don't.

11:19:54 PM  [permalink]  comment []  

A sign I pass every morning on my short drive to work reads,

I'm pretty sure the intended message is to encourage the reader to fight that which is boring (or perhaps fight the general sense that everything is boring), and the place to do it is at this store, which happens to be a Value Village thrift store — but there are so many possible ways to parse those three words, my mind boggles at trying to catalog them all.

11:22:28 PM  [permalink]  comment []  

Gelmo is a statistician, not an editor. His native habitat is academia, but he sometimes writes for the general public. (Well, no, not quite the general public, but at least that segment of the public that likes to read about politics.)

Last week he offered a short post with a list of stock phrases his fellow academics should consider excising from their papers:

We editors have similar lists for non-academics. My personal favorite is "needless to say", a phrase which can never be both correct and necessary. If what follows really is needless to say, then don't say it!

11:50:51 PM  [permalink]  comment []