The Price is Wrong

Sports and Game Show guru JB provides this link from a c. 1983 airing of The Price is Right. You can also guess the date by the appearance of the Los Angeles Raiders.

Note that the prices shown are for a pair of season tickets.

Of course, the Raiders have moved back north. Whatever happened to the Kings?

Post-Mortem cont'd

The great Dr. Victor Davis Hanson provides his analysis on NRO in this piece, What Went Wrong?

Following the 1992 elections, in which the Republicans not only lost the presidency that they'd held for 12 years (and 20 of the previous 24), but could not capture either house of Congress, there were many cries and recriminations. Pete DuPont was a voice of reason at the time, writing that for Republicans and conservatives (not always synonymous) to return to power, they didn't need to move to the left, as some were saying, but become more adept at articulating their agenda.

2008 may be a more comprehensive defeat than 1992, but Hanson's thesis is similar.

I mean it

Seriously, Collinsworth is dreadful. Whoever gave him a job on television should be shot by a firing squad and then forced to apologize.

Thursday Night Pain

The NFL Network is a standing monument to the excesses of American television. But that's another post. Meanwhile, we're forced to watch an important game between the Pats and New Jersey Jest. It's halftime and the Jest are ahead, but my complaints have nothing to do with that:

First, who did Chris Collinsworth pay off to get a job on network television? This guy is awful. I mean, if he ever produces an original thought his head will probably explode. If the NFL Network and NBC won't dump him, maybe somebody can invent a mute button that screens out his voice.

Second, it's somewhat telling that while the Patriots are honoring at halftime perhaps the classiest, most unselfish player ever to wear their uniform (Troy Brown), we don't get to watch -- we can hear some of it, but we can't watch it, because the 17-person halftime panel is interviewing the anti-Troy Brown, Chad "Ocho Cinco" Johnson of those dynamic Cincinnati Bengals.

I wonder if this game is on the radio...

Michael Barone

As usual, Michael Barone -- the walking encyclopedia of American elections -- nails it in his analysis of 2008.

Well, you may not agree that he "nails it," but he says much of the same stuff I was saying. He just says it better.

Final Thoughts

Nearly twenty years ago in the early years of the first Bush administration, I was conversing with a friend who was somewhat older than me, also an evangelical Christian, but something of an old-style liberal originally from Minnesota. He expressed skepticism both about the enduring value of the Reagan years ("did he mortgage your future?" I remember him asking me) and what his successor would amount to.

Nonetheless, he had voted for Bush (senior), noting that in 1988 it had come down to a single issue for him -- abortion.

We haven't heard much (in my view, not enough) about the differences between the candidates on life issues, having been overshadowed in large part by economic-related banter and secondarily (again, a distant second place) by national security. Fair enough -- priorities have changed.

Politics and history move in cycles. Candidates and parties move in and out of power. Eight years of a Republican administration, most of which were accompanied by a Republican congress, combined with the challenges we face today and in the immediate future, and it's easy to understand the desire many have for that ill-defined "change."

But with those challenges in mind, and given the choice between someone with experience building consensus and confronting problems and someone who hasn’t done anything, between a legacy of national service and a resume that would struggle to fill a quarter-page ad, I have a hard time seeing why people would consider the latter.

As an amateur presidential historian, I recognize the importance of intangibles, but substance is needed to back it up. The Bushes had plenty of substance, but communication problems; Clinton was the opposite. Carter had neither. The great ones -- including that guy who allegedly "mortgaged my future" twenty-plus years ago -- had both.

Regardless of the outcome, the Republicans nominated the candidate who probably stood the best chance of winning, and a running mate who energized a previously lukewarm base. Perhaps if John McCain was 52 instead of 72 the dynamics might have been different, but age hasn't been anything more than a subliminal issue in this campaign, so that's hard to gauge.

Anyway, we'll see you on Tuesday. Keep your eyes on Pennsylvania. Hopefully they'll wait and call it after the polls actually close.

Philadelphia Freedom

A quick note to congratulate the 2008 World Series Champions Philadelphia Phillies. They played well down the stretch and through the playoffs and are a deserving winner.

One comment, however -- since when is waiting 28 years (or 25, depending on how you measure) an unbearable long time for a championship? The Red Sox waited 86 years; the White Sox 88 years; the Cubs...well, forget the Cubs, but what about Cleveland? Even the Boston area, which has ruled this decade in sports, went over 15 years (including the entire decade of the 90's) between a professional title of any kind.

Get over your self-inflicted agony. I could do 28 years standing on my head. And during those 28 years you had one of the greatest NCAA champions (Villanova, 1985), a largely relevant NFL team, an appearance or two in the Stanley Cup, and one of the top 5 NBA teams ever (led by one of the greatest players ever). There's been plenty to cheer about in Philadelphia. Enjoy the parade, but don't expect the rest of us to feel any happier with the end of a drought of 28 lousy years.

60 Hours to go

It's a little more than 2 days until Election Day, so a few final thoughts / prognostications before the clock runs out ---

(1) My instinct tells me that this will be one those presidential elections that will see a dramatic shift in the race in the final 48 hours, not unlike 1980. With most polls showing the junior senator from Illinois with something of a lead, I'm guessing we'll either see his opponent eke out a surprising victory, or his messiah-ness run off a landslide of 40+ states. Just my thoughts -- and, for what it's worth, I was right in 2000 (about Florida) and 2004 (about Ohio).

(2) Regardless of the outcome, one wonders how history (not necessarily historians, but history) will judge the second Bush administration. All would agree that mistakes have been made; not all will agree what those mistakes were. It's also important to note that GWB entered office with at least one-third of the population believing in all sincerity and in spite of the evidence that he had stolen the election; and that while others, less hard-core supporters of his opponent professed a willingness to "give him a chance," that honeymoon lasted about 15 or 16 days. For a moment, after 9/11/01, it looked like we might be able to pull together but, again, those inclined to do so were quick to find fault. It may take 40 or 50 years for us to sort this one out.

(3) It is also somewhat curious that while Congress enjoys its lowest approval ratings in several centuries, they seem poised for easy re-election. The current majorities took control over 18 months ago, yet they somehow remain free of any responsibility for whatever crisis we currently find ourselves in. The parallel isn't quite there, but there's some application to the adage that it's easier to fire the manager than get rid of all the players.

(4) The outcome of the presidential election is going to come down to a handful of states -- FL, NC, OH, IN, NV, VA and CO were at one point safely in the McCain camp, but are now (at best) wavering. MI (that's Michigan, not Mississippi or Missouri), PA and tiny NH have an outside chance of going for McCain, but any of this group could go either way. MN, IA and MO might also be in play. The rest are pretty much settled (I'm doing this from memory, so don't shoot me if I leave one out).

This makes me wonder how the networks will report the projected winners from these states as the evening rolls along. I've never been comfortable with networks pulling the trigger the instant the polls close -- if, for no other reason, that people may still be standing in line to vote at that time. I thought they learned their lesson with the Florida fiasco eight years ago.

Anyway, I'll see you at the polls on Tuesday. Just don't expect me to stay up until 2:00 AM on Wednesday. Those days are over.