| June 30, 2001 ANALYSIS OF BUSH IN 2004 I have a busy job, and a wife and three small children, so my time to write these Rants is very limited, as is my time to follow stories with sufficient depth to write something original. Furthermore, because of the expansion of the internet and cable tv news programs, there is an incredible amount of instant analysis in response to current events. For someone like me, who writes infrequently, the instant analysis is very disheartening, because it is a near certainty that somebody will say or publish something that I was thinking, which means that if I write it down thereafter, my analysis will no longer appear to be original. When Tom Wolfe was writing The Bonfire of the Vanities, he wrote a chapter in which one of his characters is confronted by thugs on a subway, but had to remove the chapter because the Bernard Goetz incident occurred and he believed, probably correctly, that people would think he wrote the chapter after the Goetz incident occurred and he was not being original. I understand where Tom Wolfe was coming from. I say all this because I enjoy writing the Rants, and receive sufficient feedback to optimistically believe that most of the people who receive the Rants enjoy reading the Rants, so I very much want to continue writing. But in order to do so, I am going to have to relax my personal standard concerning the appearance of originality. While I represent to you that everything I write represents independent and original analysis, it is almost certainly going to be the case that, simply as a result of the timing of the Rants, certain things I am going to say may appear old news, if not banal. I can only apologize in advance, especially for this Rant, which is a collection of extremely banal thoughts that have been sitting as a draft for months. Of some importance, I have created a webpage for the Rants: http://www.geocities.com/mrranterandraver/index.html On the website, I have also started to list, to the best of my knowledge and recollection, every book that I have read going back to college. The long-term goal is to create an intellectual autobiography. I have no expectation that anybody actually cares what I read in 1985, but you never know. Anyway, on to the banality. 1. Bill Clinton: So much has been said about Bill over the past several months, so much discussion of his pardons of Marc Rich and others, that I have little to add. Perhaps most apropos, here is what I said on February 20, 1999, several weeks after Bill was acquitted by the Senate in his impeachment trial: "In two years, Clinton will be out of office, we will all take a communal shower and his Presidency is going to go down a memory hole." He may not be down a memory hold, but that is only because of a morbid fascination that has relegated him to a favorite of the National Enquirer. Enough said. I believe we are sufficiently cleansed. 2 . Jim Jeffords. The hand-wringing over Jim Jeffords is comedic. The notion that Jeffords was lost by anybody is stupid. Let's all stipulate that Jeffords is not a conservative and he was uncomfortable in a Republican party that is dominated by conservatives, especially Southern conservatives. However, the Senate Republicans, and George Bush Jr., are no more conservative in 2001 than they were in 2000, when Jeffords ran for reelection as a Republican. So why didn't Jeffords switch parties before? The answer is obvious. When Jeffords ran for reelection in 2000, the Republicans outnumbered the Democrats 55-45, and the expectation was that the Republicans would retain control of the Senate. Therefore, while switching parties would have been principled, it would have been politically stupid from Jeffords' point of view -- why leave the majority for the minority. On the other hand, with the Senate surprisingly split 50-50, and the expectation that Strom Thurmond would not live to see 99, Jeffords -- Mr. Principle -- saw the writing on the wall. If the Democrats were going to become the majority, why not jump ship when your value is at the highest? All is fair in politics, but please spare me the moralizing. Jim Jeffords did what is best for Jim Jeffords, and there is nothing more to the story. 3 . George Bush: One of the great writers and thinkers of the last quarter of the 20th Century is a guy named Bill James. For those of you who do not know, Bill James is a "sabermetrician. According to a commonly accepted definition, "sabermetrics is the scientific research of the available evidence to identify, study and measure forces in professional baseball." Basically, sabermetricians are people who love baseball and baseball statistics, and use statistics to analyze the game of baseball. In any event, back in the 1980s, when I actually followed baseball, James published a book each spring called The Baseball Abstract. In the book, James analyzed and rated every team and every player. He also wrote essays on various baseball topics. It is rather hard to understand without actually readings the Abstracts, but these were incredible books. James would put a common baseball cliche under a microscope, and when he was through, you as the reader had an entirely different understanding of the game. But the Abstracts were more than simply about baseball and statistics. James would interweave observations about non-baseball topics in his writings, and those observations were always interesting and commonsensical. More specifically, James would show how cliches and truths in baseball are analogous to cliches and truths in life. To get a sense of the Abstracts and James writing style, see the following links: http://www.cfmc.com/adamb/sabr/bjames.htm and http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0394758056/customer-reviews/002-9788874-9699261 In James' final yearly Abstract (1988), James listed his most important discoveries, the discoveries that would be most useful to a baseball team. See http://www.baseball1.com/bb-data/bbd-bj1.html. The number one item on his list is the following: "Minor league batting statistics will predict major league batting performance with essentially the same reliability as previous major league statistics." What James was saying is that, once you control for various factors (such as the ballpark where the player played), how a player performed, statistically, in the minor leagues is a pretty good indicator of how a player will perform, statistically, in the major leagues. There is simply no statistical evidence (once you control for various factors), that when a player jumps from the minors to the majors, he is going to do significantly better or worse then he did in the minor league. I believe James' observation is true for life in general. How a student performs in high school (once you control for various factors) is an accurate indicator of how the student will perform in college, which is an accurate indicator how the student will perform post-graduation. There will obviously be the exception that proves the rule -- the C student who gets his act together and becomes an A student in college, but such occurrences are so rare as to be irrelevant. In predicting George Bush's prospects as President, there is no better indicator than how he performed as Governor of Texas. If we look at our recent Presidents, especially those who were Governors, in retrospect we can see than their performance as Governors were excellent indicators of their performances as President. Bill Clinton: Bill Clinton's fundamental problem was precisely that he acted as President as he acted as Governor of Arkansas. What he could get away with in Arkansas he could not get away with in Washington, D.C. George Bush Sr.: His entire career was spent successfully serving the agendas of others. As President, he presided over perhaps the most successful foreign policy period in American history (end of communism in Europe, defeat of Iraq), but was an unsuccessful President precisely because he had no domestic agenda and was reactive. Ronald Reagan: In both California and as President, Reagan was rhetorically very conservative, but in practice very pragmatic, and enjoyed great popularity and success. The list could go on. The point is that in retrospect, the behavior of Presidents is almost always predictable. Presidents do not "rise to the occasion," nor do they disappoint. They act as they always acted. So far, Bush has acted as President precisely as he acted as Governor of Texas. He is doggedly focusing on a just a few goals. He acts as a "big-picture" guy and does not involve himself in the nitty-gritty of policy. He has shown a willingness to compromise to achieve his goals. His rhetoric is conservative, but not confrontational. All very Reaganesque. What this means, assuming that minor league performance is a good predictor of major league performance, is that it is a near certainty Bush will become more popular over time. The Bush now on the national political stage is the same Bush who governed Texas, and the Texas Bush became much more popular the longer he was governor. He barely won in 1994, but dominated in 1998. Bush is the anti-Clinton: the more you know him, the more you like him. The question, however, is whether increased popularity will be enough to reelect Bush in 2004. Unfortunately for Republicans, based upon the results of the 2000 elections, Bush's margin for error in 2004 is almost zero. Just for fun, let's do a little analysis of the 2000 election as a predictor of 2004. As a reminder, a candidate needs 271 votes to win. First, let's assume that Bush will win every state in 2004 in which he received at least 55% of the vote in 2000, and will lose each state in which he received less than 45% of the vote: Bush wins 146 electoral votes from 18 states: Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Georgia (13), Idaho (4), Indiana (12), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Mississippi (7), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Carolina (14), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (8), South Carolina (8), South Dakota (3), Texas (32), Utah (5), and Wyoming (3) Democrat wins 175 electoral votes in 13 states: California (54), Connecticut (8), Delaware (3), D.C. (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (22), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), New Jersey (15), New York (33), Rhode Island (4), and Vermont (3). As you can see, Bush starts out with a big disadvantage because he is not competitive in California, New York and Illinois. He is already behind 30 electoral votes. Next, let's assume that Bush will win each state in which his vote total exceeded the combined vote total for Gore and Nader by at least 3%: Bush wins 60 electoral votes in 7 states: Arizona (8), Arkansas (6), Colorado (8), Louisiana (9), Tennessee (11), Virginia (13), West Virginia (5) These are by no means slam dunks for Bush. In 1996, Clinton won all of these states except for Colorado and Virginia. However, let's be generous. Bush is now up to 206 electoral votes to 175 for the Democrat. What this means is that Bush must now win an additional 65 electoral votes in states in which Gore actually won, or at best in which the combined Gore/Nader vote was within 3% of Bush. What the hell -- let's assume that Bush wins every state in which his vote total exceeded Gore/Nader (even though Clinton won each of these states in 1996): Bush wins 36 electoral votes in 3 states: Missouri (11), Nevada (4), Ohio (21) Bush is now up to 242 electoral votes in 28 states. This means, however, that he still must pick up an additional 29 votes to be President, and the Gore/Nader vote exceeded his vote in all the remaining states. Where are those votes going to come from? Florida (25): Gore/Nader exceeded Bush by 2%. Iowa (7): Gore/Nader exceed Bush by 3%. Michigan (18): Gore/Nader exceeded Bush by 7% Minnesota (10): Gore/Nader exceeded Bush by 7% New Hampshire (4): Gore/Nader exceed Bush by 3% New Mexico (5): Gore/Nader exceeded Bush by 4% Oregon (7): Gore/Nader exceeded Bush by 5% Pennsylvania (23): Gore/Nader exceeded Bush by 7% Washington (11): Gore/Nader exceeded Bush by 9% Wisconsin (11): Gore/Nader exceeded Bush by 4%. In 2000, Bush won because he was able to win two of these states -- Florida and New Hampshire. However, it is clear that Bush has no margin for error. Not only must he win states in which Nader provided the margin of victory, but he has no assurance that Ohio and its 21 electoral votes are a lock. More dramatically, if Bush in 2004 wins every state in which he won 47% of the vote in 2000, he will only add 30 electoral votes. Comparatively, if the Democrat wins every state in which Gore won 47% of the vote, he will add 51 electoral votes, and that doesn't even count Nader voters. The bottom line is that Presidential electoral politics now decisively favor the Democrats, because they are competitive in more states and for more electoral votes than Republicans . Thank you for listening. DBS |