Mike Rappaport “hates” David Brooks and finds him “a despicable character.”  Why?  He lets John Hinderaker explain:

Brooks . . . knows where his bread is buttered. He makes his living as a “conservative” who can reliably be counted on to sell out conservatives and Republicans at every opportunity.

In this instance, Hinderaker is reacting to Brooks’ characterization of Sarah Palin’s “death panel” hyperbole as “crazy.”

What’s the evidence that Brooks thinks Palin’s straw man is actually solid argumentation?  He doesn’t say. Presumably, Hinderaker (and apparently Rappaport) think it’s something that all good conservatives believe and that, since Brooks represents himself as a conservative, he must believe it, too, but be lying about it.  (That neither Hinderaker or Rappaport think Brooks is really a conservative, let alone a good one, is immaterial, apparently, in their psychoanalysis.)

I see much the same venom from the other side of the aisle toward David Broder.  Even though Broder doesn’t even pretend to be a progressive activist, “Broderism” is a slur word to denounce columnists who take the stance that conservatives sometimes have good points.

It’s as if True Believers presume that everyone else is like them.  It’s fine to be a True Believer on the other side but 90 percent friends are heretics who must be burned at the stake.  It’s simply inconceivable that someone who is generally conservative, as Brooks is, might simply have a different cultural background and not share some of the assumptions of the dominant Social Conservative wing of the movement.  Nor, apparently, does it occur to people for whom Inside the Beltway and elite are slurs that there actually is such as thing as Inside the Beltway elite thinking.

Hinderaker’s assessment is particularly bizarre, too, in its misapprehension of the punditry game — particularly coming from one who plays it so well.  Brooks and Broder are at a decided disadvantage precisely because of their moderation.  While “Crossfire” was canceled some time back, the style it pioneered is the predominant one in the industry.  Charlie Rose-style or Jim Lehrer-style conversation is a fringe relegated to public television; the money is in being the next Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann.

H. Rodgin Cohen, “the leading candidate for Deputy Treasury Secretary, has withdrawn from consideration,” George Stephanoupoulous reports.  He adds, “Cohen had risen to the top after the withdrawal last week of expected deputy treasury secretary pick Annette Nazareth.”

Something’s wrong with this picture.

To be sure, Cohen wasn’t technically an appointee.   Still, as Glenn Reynolds pointed out yesterday, the list of failed appointees is long, including “Chas Freeman, Sanjay Gupta, Annette Nazareth, Tom Daschle, Bill Richardson, Nancy Killefer . . . Judd Gregg . . . [and Anthony] Zinni.”

In our discussion on this topic on last night’s edition of OTB Radio (”Obama’s Appointees Keep Fallin’ Down“) Dave Schuler, who reluctantly voted for Obama despite concerns about his managerial experience, blamed the vetting process whereas I, who reluctantly voted for McCain considering the alternatives, blamed the process itself.

David Broder agrees.  So does Dan Drezner, who asks, “Has the vetting process in DC become too absurd, or are Obama’s subcabinet candidates too thin-skinned?”

Paul Light wrote about the problem last June.  He notes, as I did last night, the sheer scope of the process:

The reality is that the appointments process has been getting later and later with each passing administration. John F. Kennedy had his Cabinet and sub-Cabinet in place by early spring of 1961, Reagan by early fall of 1981, Clinton by early winter of 1992 and George W. Bush by mid-winter of 2002.

There are two reasons for the increasing delay. First, the number of presidential appointees has more than tripled to 3,000-plus over the past 40 years. Roughly 600 of the total are subject to Senate confirmation, which operates on a first-come, first-served basis and can only accommodate so many nominations at a time.

The rest of the 3,000 are “at will” appointees who serve at the president’s pleasure. These alter-ego chiefs of staff and assistant assistants are nearly invisible to the public, but wield enormous influence in the executive branch by acting as closely watched enforcers for the White House agenda. As such, they receive just as much scrutiny in the review process as their much more visible Senate-confirmed bosses.

Second, the process itself is nasty, brutish, and not at all short. Nominees must wait for months as the White House, FBI, IRS, Office of Government Ethics, and Senate inspect the 60 pages of forms that must be filled out on the way to confirmation, including one that still has to be completed by typewriter. The process produces tons of paper, but has almost no bearing on the quality of the nominee.

To be sure, quite a few of the top jobs were filled essentially by acclamation, with several confirmed on or within a week of the inauguration.  But there are simply too many confirmable positions and too much room for lobbying and political backstabbing even on “at will” appointments such as Freeman.

There’s got to be a better way.

I was talking recently with a senior European official, who remarked about the fact that so many European officials were in town anxious to talk to their counterparts in the new administration only to find out that, as Drezner points out in a separate post, there’s nobody in those posts yet.

By contrast, Europeans manage to hold elections and bring in not only the new head of government but a functioning ministry within days.  It’s harder in the United States, since we don’t have a parliamentary system and thus have no shadow government.  But, surely, we could figure out how to appoint 600 people and get them cleared for duty between the second Tuesday in November and noon on January 20th — a period of over ten weeks?

UPDATE: A Senate staffer sends along a floor speech from earlier this week by Lamar Alexander on the subject.  Partly, he blames Obama for trying to do too many things at once.  But he admits that the process needs to be fixed.

The President has brought on himself some of the difficulty of putting together a team. In addition to having too many balls in the air at once, in my opinion, his standards for hiring sometimes seem to have the effect of disqualifying people who know something about the problem from being hired to solve the problem.

But another part of the President’s difficulty in filling jobs — one that has afflicted every President since Watergate — is the maze of investigations and forms that prospective senior officials must complete and the risk they run that they will be trapped and humiliated and disqualified by an unintentional and relatively harmless mistake.

[...]

Washington, DC, has become the only place where you hire a lawyer, an accountant, and an ethics officer before you find a house and put your kid in school.

The motto around here has become: “Innocent until nominated.”

Every legal counsel to every President since Nixon would, I suspect, agree that in the name of effective government, this process needs to be changed. Most have tried to change it, but in Washington style, new regulations pile up on top of old ones, creating a more bewildering maze.

His solution, frankly, is uninspiring:  a blue ribbon committee headed up by Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins.  But the first step in solving a problem is recognizing you have one, so we’re at least 1/100th of the way there.

Photo: Reuters Pictures

The first presidential debate will take place Friday night. David Broder believes the stakes are very high.

McCain, after enjoying a brief boost from the Republican convention and the unveiling of Sarah Palin, has fallen back into his pre-convention position, lagging slightly behind. Obama still is unable to lock down 270 electoral votes because he is falling well short of the lead that Democrats enjoy generically over the Republican opposition this year.

Obama is known for his eloquence, while McCain often struggles even when given a decent script to read. That creates an expectation that the Democrat ought to dominate when the two men are directly compared.

[...]

McCain began his revival last year with a strong performance in a Republican debate in New Hampshire. Throughout the spring, he was usually at least the second-best man on the stage, outdone by the folksy and humorous Mike Huckabee but clearly more comfortable and assertive than Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani and the others.

Other than by Romney, McCain was rarely directly challenged in the way that Obama will test him; the other Republicans paid tribute to his character and treated him with kid gloves. So his struggles to maintain his composure and avoid personal attacks on Romney suggest a potential vulnerability. When Obama bluntly questions McCain’s positions, the Arizona senator may have difficulty staying cool.

On the other hand, Obama did not win the Democratic nomination by dominating the debates. In the early ones, when the stage was full, he lacked the verbal or physical tools to stand out from the crowd. More often than not, it was Hillary Clinton or John Edwards who made the strongest impression on the cameras and the audience. And when Clinton and Obama met one on one, she won most of the confrontations and the subsequent primaries.

The problem with this scoring is that journalists, and elites in general, apply a different system than used by the general public. For example, even though I was a supporter, I thought George W. Bush was clobbered by Al Gore in the debates; the people disagreed. While perhaps the perceptions were colored post hoc by the famous “Saturday Night Live” parodies, most people judge candidates on personality rather than substance. Elites, by contrast, score based on wonkish command of details and crispness of delivery.

Friday’s debate will be on national security, which McCain has sold as his strong suit. While McCain will be graded on a curve on delivery, with Obama’s expectations higher in that regard, the reverse will be true on substance. So long as Obama comes across as competent and likable, he’s fine. McCain is the underdog here and, as the old boxing adage goes, he’s going to need a knockout to win; a tie goes to the champ.

David Broder gets both candidates to agree that the campaign has gotten more bitter than they’d like and is intigued by John McCain’s suggestion, “I think we could have avoided at least some of this if we had agreed to do the town hall meetings.” The early blogospheric response to this has come mostly from Obama supporters who, not surprisingly,  think this is a bizarre fantasy and believe the negativity is almost entirely of McCain’s making.

• Kevin Drum: “In the gamma quadrant, maybe so, but back here at home I’d take a guess that McCain’s hiring of Steve Schmidt had a wee bit more to do with it.”

• John Cole: “You can believe that if you want, just like you can believe the blame for the negative tone of the campaign is shared equally by Obama and McCain, as Broder certainly does. But then, of course, you would probably have to be as foolish as Broder.”

• Creature: “The only thing David Broder accomplishes with his column today is to reveal his bias toward McCain.”

• Shaun Mullen: “Even though McCain reacted negatively to Obama’s counteroffer of two town hall debates and decided there would be none, it is solely Obama’s fault because he did not accept all five. And, as a result of there being no town hall debates, the candidates couldn’t stand on the same stage and become fine friends.”

• Steve Benen: “It’s a classic non sequitur — whether McCain runs a relentlessly negative, substance-free campaign has nothing to do with his proposal for extra debates.”

While Obama has certainly engaged in negative campaigning against McCain, I agree with the above commentators that McCain has run a mostly negative campaign in recent weeks and that Broder’s assumption of equivalence is odd.  Then again, I happen to agree with Dean Barnett, who questions the premise:

What’s most bothersome about such articles aside from their sheer tedium is how spectacularly mistaken they are. American politics ain’t beanbag, and they never have been. Andrew Jackson’s wife was hounded to her death by his political opponents pushing stories about her being a bigamist. (Lucky for them Old Hickory wasn’t the vengeful type.) The 19th century also produced the memorable high-road slogan, “Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa? Gone to the White House Ha-ha-ha.” As Broder was probably around for that campaign, it’s surprising he’s forgotten it.

Since every American presidential campaign has been a negative low-road affair, one might ask if there’s a systemic reason why this is so. And guess what? There is! Politics is one of life’s very rare zero sum games; each vote your opponent gets is one that you won’t. You’re in direct competition with your opponent, and the competition is fierce.

Since securing the nomination, this has been, and remains, Obama’s election to lose.  He’s young, charismatic, exciting, and new and the public seems genuinely desperate to break away from the politics of the past few years.  McCain’s only hope to win is to persuade the public that Obama’s not who he pretends to be and that we need a man of his seasoning during a dangerous time.

While I think the linkage is dramatically oversold, McCain’s probably right that, had the two men been forced to stand side-by-side in a series of freewheeling debates in front of a live audience, the dynamic of the campaign would be different. The argument isn’t that the two men would have become best buds, going out for beers and the occasional ball game afterward, but that it’s simply easier to be negative in television spots than in person.  Yes, he could have done both.  But it’s harder to do that if you’ll soon have to defend your spots to the other guy’s face.

Beyond that, townhall meetings have been McCain’s strength in both his presidential campaigns.  That format would have given him a chance to shift the dynamic of the contest.  (I happen to still believe, as I did when the idea was suggested, that Obama would have likewise excelled in the format.  My parallel prediction that, the “Obama-McCain fall matchup will be relatively issue oriented compared to recent contests,” has sadly proved mistaken.)  Absent that, and especially in light of Obama’s rock star reception on his overseas trip, negative television spots were McCain’s best shot.

The reason candidates, especially trailing candidates, have run negative campaigns over all these years is simple:  They work.  They raise doubts about the opponent with relatively little damage to one’s own image. And it’s much easier to run an attack in 30 seconds than to respond to it.  Conversely, a 30 second spot that’s all hope and sunshine barely moves the dials.

Photo credit: ABC News

David Broder uses Elvin Lm’s book The Anti-Intellectual Presidency to argue not only that presidential speeches have steadily dumbed down over the years, which we might have guessed, but that this dumbs down public policy, too.

In what must have been a heroic effort, he applied standard techniques of content analysis to state papers of every president from Washington to the second Bush. His tool is something called the Flesch readability score — a measure of the average number of words per sentence and the average number of syllables per word. The higher the Flesch score, the simpler to get the meaning.

Applied to the annual State of the Union addresses, the average score has doubled from the first few presidents to the last few. Those “messages were pitched at a college level through most of the 18th and 19th centuries,” Lim says. “They have now come down to an eighth-grade reading level.” The same trend, but more pronounced, is found in inaugural addresses. Their average sentence length has dropped from 60 words to 20.

Simplification has its advantages, if it serves to increase public comprehension. But it comes with a huge risk: The complexity of real-world choices can be, and often is, lost.

[...]

But the problem Lim sees is more than dumbing down. “As presidents have taken the rhetorical path of least resistance by serving up simplistic sentences to citizens, they have correspondingly offered an easily digestible substantive menu devoid of argument and infused with inspirational platitudes, partisan punch lines and emotional and human-interest appeals.”

These trends, too, are charted by Lim. Basically what has happened, he shows, is that rather than seeking to persuade voters by arguing for their policies, presidents increasingly have sought to build trust by identifying themselves with those voters and their “common sense” view of the world. “Whereas all of the presidents through Woodrow Wilson appealed to ‘common sense’ just 11 times in their recorded papers, presidents since Wilson have done so more than 1,600 times,” he writes.

What’s interesting is that the trend started not long before college education would become a normal aspiration for middle class Americans. A far greater percentage of Americans are have university degrees than in Wilson’s day, let alone Washington’s.

One presumes this is just a manifestation of Marshall McLuhan’s observation that “the medium is the message.” Early presidents were addressing an educated elite who would hear their speeches in person or read them some time later. Wilson’s successor, Calvin Coolidge, was “the first president to have his inauguration heard on the radio and the first president to make a radio broadcast.” Harry Truman was the first to be sworn in on television. Ronald Reagan was the first president to serve exclusively in the CNN era of 24/7 news coverage. It’s quite natural that politicians speaking to the masses will speak differently than those addressing the elite.

Beyond that, our everyday language is simply less formal than it once was. Even very educated people, such as attorneys and professors, who can produce impenetrable writing in their professional capacity, tend to speak and write on a much less “sophisticated” level in normal discourse. Whether this is a function of our having been “dumbed down” by television or some combination of other factors is beyond my expertise.

The broader point about the impact on public policy is interesting. I suspect, however, that it’s more a reflection of the expansion of suffrage, the vast increase in the scope of government and the resultant rise of interest groups, and the fact that the debate is condensed into 14 second sound bytes more so than the informality of presidential language that has led to demagoguery.

Pat Lang is more cynical than I am, which is quite a feat.

“Levelling” has become the Zeitgeist. Actually it has been the goal of many for a long, long time. The numbers in the study mentioned above illustrate that trend over centuries. “Elitist” has become a term of absolute condemnation. The downward drift in general education is now undeniable. College audiences are now so poorly informed about general culture that even the simplest references to popular literature, film, etc. are greeted by blank stares. Many audiences at college lectures are difficult to talk to because everything one says is “news to them.”

[...]

Today, outside the elites of a few universities, we have little in the way of intellectual life in this country. We also have little in the way of political life. NBC’s Political Director just referred on MTP to the “Republican Brand.” My. My. Marketing rules.

Again, television is partly to blame, as generations of us have been trained to passively absorb information rather than grapple with it in text form. But much of this is overstated. Yes, the average college student is less intellectual than his 1940’s predecessor. Mostly, though, that’s because so many more people are going to college. So, yes, this is a function of “leveling” but not in a sense of aspiring to the lowest common denominator.

Also, the proliferation of choices has destroyed the concept of “general culture.” Once upon a time, everyone read the same books, watched the same movies, and saw the same television shows. With 300 channels and Netflix, that’s largely gone.

Aaron Brazell is doing some research on the evolution of blogging in recent years and has asked for my input. [Update: The result, "Political Blogging 2.0," is now up.]

I started OTB in January 2003 and have seen a lot of change. I should note at the outset that my experience is almost entirely with the political blogosphere, a tiny fraction of the whole enterprise, and that my observations mostly apply in that realm.

Blogging for Dollars: When I started, even the likes of Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit and the then-independent Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish were hobby blogs. People put up PayPal “tip jars” and, in Sully’s case, held periodic “fund drives” but there was no way to make a living at the enterprise unless you were Mickey Kaus.

Henry Copeland introduced BlogAds in 2002 but it would be some time before it came to fruition. Others would follow. Additionally, dozens of bloggers have “taken the Boeing” and been hired by magazines, think tanks, and other organizations as bloggers or, in some cases, had their blogs absorbed outright.

There’s even a cottage industry, exemplified by Darren Rowse at ProBlogger and Brian Clark’s Copyblogger, of How to Make Money Blogging blogs.

It should be noted that only a relative handful of the millions of blogs out there are making serious income. Then again, those are (mostly) the blogs that have a wide audience. Many have speculated that monetization of blogs would turn us into nothing but small-staff versions of mainstream press, introducing fears about alienating potential advertisers and bringing pressure to write about things that will generate pageviews. Some of that has happened, I think, although indirectly. Certainly, many bloggers (following advice from Rowse, Clark, and others) are altering content to maximize search engine traffic for purposes of driving ad revenue. Then again, people were doing a lot of that even in the hobby blogging days because high SiteMeter numbers were a status symbol and there’s a competitive aspect to the blogging “game.”

Blogging Communties Daily Kos was already one of the more popular blogs when I started. Then, though, it was just Markos doing his takes on the issues plus an interwoven group blog called Political State Report. Soon, though, he introduced his Diaries, allowing readers to set up blogs-within-the-blog. His site traffic exploded and others have followed. This was the basis of what would be dubbed “The Netroots.” Diarists that distinguished themselves moved to the front pages and graduated to their own blogs.

Blogging Activism In early 2003, most of the top tier blogs were right-of-center opinion and observation blogs. Within a year, that had changed radically. Through a combination of the Left forming communities much earlier and with much more success than the Right and the fact that Republicans controlled the White House and Congress and thus energized an angry opposition, sites supporting Democrats — and, mostly, more staunchly “progressive” candidates — began to dominate the political blogosphere.

Blogs, especially on the Left, started raising money — serious money — for political candidates and seeing themselves as major players in the process. An increasing number of the most popular blogs saw themselves as leaders in a Movement rather than as mere commentators on public affairs.

Polarization of the Blogosphere While there are more thoughtful, moderate tone blogs now than ever, the trend has been toward harsh polemics. Many of the top political bloggers have come on to the scene since I started and almost all who have risen to the top have been more Ann Coulter or Michael Moore than George Will or David Broder.

Syndication and Aggregation While Real Simple Syndication (RSS) technology existed when I started OTB, almost no one was actually reading sites that way. Most people were still reading sites via bookmarks or following blogroll links from one site to another. Now, most regular readers are keeping up with blogs through some sort of feed reader and clicking in to the site itself only to participate in the comments section discussion or (in the case of partial feeds) to finish reading entries that interest them.

A related development, which applies mostly to bloggers rather than average readers, is the rise of sites like Memeorandum, which aggregate the stories and blog posts generating the most buzz. This has pushed bloggers away from their old reading lists and into a more homogeneous “Story of the Day” mode. While convenient, it has made the medium more similar than it once was to the mainstream press.

Blogging Goes Mainstream After several years of being a curiosity, people have finally stopped asking “What is a blog, anyway?” Media stories about blogs and bloggers have finally stopped defining the term (usually badly). Further, aside from a hardcore audience of regular visitors to a site, most people read blogs in the same way they read other Web content, accessing individual pages via search referrals or hyperlinks on other pages, and don’t necessarily even understand that they’re at a blog.

Blogger Outreach Bloggers, especially those with a relatively high profile, have increasingly become targets for PR firms, political operatives, and even major media outlets eager to cash in on the buzz. Just about every presidential, congressional, or gubernatorial candidate now has an effort to court bloggers for favorable coverage. We’re also the target of lobbying in a way that the mainstream press isn’t, since we’re in the opinion business.

One outgrowth of this is the hiring of established bloggers, especially activist bloggers, as campaign staff and blogger outreach directors for PR firms. While providing another avenue for bloggers to make a living with their writing skills, it’s a development that has some potential ethical complications. Bloggers who work briefly for a campaign, especially for a controversial candidate, tend to be forever tarred with that association and readers naturally wonder whether they’re getting unvarnished views.

Blog Parasites: Spammers and Scrapers A more insidious way that non-bloggers are trying to cash in on the rise of blogs is using technological means to make money.

The most longstanding is spamming of comment sections and trackback links to game the search engines, getting unearned links to their sites and thus increasing their rankings. This has gotten more sophisticated over time and created a spy-vs-spy game in which the spammers invent new technologies to counter ever-better spam filters. OTB gets thousands a day, almost all of which are caught by our filters. The price we pay, though, is wasted time policing these activities and ever-more-cumbersome measures that make commenting more difficult for site readers.

A more recent phenomenon is the rise of “splogs,” auto-generated blogs that are created by stealing material off of RSS feeds for popular blogs. The splogs make money from unearned page impressions generated by search engines, drawing traffic and money away from sites that actually created the content. Even worse, the splogs often wind up ranked higher in the search engines than the original sites, since the splogs tend to micro-focus on a handful of keywords, and the original sites actually get penalized in the rankings because of “duplicate content.”

UPDATE: Bill Quick, who coined the term “blogosphere,” alludes to another big change in the comments below:

The Rise of the Group Blog: In early 2003, the number of multi-author blogs was tiny. Winds of Change was perhaps the only one wide a wide audience at the time. Now, a large percentage of the top blogs have multiple posters even if, like Daily Pundit and OTB, the blog founder still does most of the posting. Not done well, this can dilute the quality of the blog, especially if the other members are not good writers or there’s no coherent voice. Done well, though, it can provide synergy, bringing together many talented writers who might otherwise not produce enough content to keep a blog viable. Crooked Timber is perhaps the best example.

The Washington Post has offered another round of buyouts to its staff and two of their biggest names, David Broder and Tony Kornheiser, have opted for the cash.

In Broder’s case, it appears to be mostly an accounting move, as he’ll still be doing what he does now, just on a contract basis.

The column you have been running will not change at all, and you will continue to receive it from The Washington Post Writers Group. I will continue to write from the same office in the Post newsroom and will continue to travel the country to wherever politics is happening. You will find me at the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer and on the campaign trail this fall, just as I have been this winter and spring.

As of Jan. 1, I will become a contract employee of The Washington Post Company. For the last two years, the bulk of my reporting has gone into the column, rather than the news pages of the Post. This change will allow me to focus entirely on the column, while freeing up the Post to use its budget for other news-section salaries and expenses.

Kornheiser, it appears, will be gone. He made the announcement on his radio show:

“All I ever wanted to be was a newspaper writer,” he said, which is likely not something that anyone under the age of 30 will ever say again. “This other stuff is great, but I don’t care about it,” he continued. “In my mind that’s what it says on the headstone, it says ‘newspaper guy.’ “

He’s been joking about the possibility on PTI for weeks now, so no real surprise. And, really, while he was a terrific writer in his day, he’s been phoning it in for quite some time. He’s stretched amazingly thin, with numerous TV and radio gigs, and just doesn’t do reporting anymore.

One wonders what other big names will be on the list? The buyout offer ends today. Executive editor Len Downie and ace military correspondent Thomas Ricks are widely rumored to be taking the Post up on it, too.

White House correspondent Peter Baker just jumped ship, too, although for reasons apparently unrelated to the buyout.

As I write this, a bit after 6 am, we don’t know the results of all the Super Tuesday states. What we do know if that Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee did much better than expected but that Hillary Clinton and John McCain strengthened their perception as frontrunners by winning California and New York, the biggest prizes of the night.

Republicans:

ABC News goes with this shocking headline: “McCain Wins California, Huckabee Gets Boost — Romney Vows Campaign Will Go On as GOP Contest Shapes Up as Two-Man Race”

Sen. John McCain cemented his position as the Republican front-runner with his projected win in the California primary — the most delegate-heavy state up for grabs on Super Tuesday, based on ABC News’ exit poll data and partial vote counts.

While many of the biggest states on Super Tuesday went to McCain’s camp, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee also picked up key projected wins in Tennessee and Georgia, as well as leads or projected wins in four other states, based on exit poll data and vote counts.

[...]

The results were more disappointing for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who ABC News projects will win his home state, Colorado, Minnesota and the small prizes of Montana, Utah and the North Dakota and Alaska caucuses. But in a speech delivered from his campaign headquarters in Boston, Romney spoke passionately to a crowd of cheering supporters.

“One thing that is clear is that this campaign is going on!” said Romney.

Earlier in the evening, Huckabee told a crowd at his own campaign’s headquarters in Little Rock, Ark., “Over the past few days a lot of people have been trying to say this is a two-man race, but you know what? It is, and we’re in it!”

The problem with that, though, is that, while Huckabee managed to turn out evangelical support in the South despite having been written off, it’s unclear where his support comes from in the upcoming contests. While the 169 delegates shown on the graphic above (courtesy CNN) may move a bit as the final tallies are calculated, he remain a distant third place with the South mostly out of the way. I just don’t see him getting another 1,023 delegates.

Regardless, Huckabee helped himself big time. Not only did he further demonstrate his appeal to Christian conservatives but he’s run a sunny, humorous campaign and built what, publicly at least, seems to be a warm relationship with John McCain. The prospects of them sharing the ticket have grown.

As for Romney, WaPo’s Jonathan Weisman adds insult to injury with “Romney’s Expenses Per Delegate Top $1M.”

By Republican strategist Alex Vogel’s calculation, Mitt Romney [...] has spent $1.16 million per delegate, a rate that would cost him $1.33 billion to win the nomination.

By contrast, Mike Huckabee’s campaign has been the height of efficiency. Delegates haven’t yet been officially apportioned, but roughly speaking, each $1 million spent by Huckabee has won him 20 delegates.

Over at The Corner, the estimable John O’Sullivan views the results as “a positive rejection of Romney” and suspects it’s confirmation that “many evangelicals would vote for anyone but a Mormon.” Mark Steyn agrees. There’s no doubt anti-Mormonism is a factor. As I’ve noted many times, many evangelicals — and that includes a lot highly educated, successful people, contrary to the media myth — believe Mormonism is a cult.

Mostly, though, I believe Romney just rubs rural America the wrong way in much the same way that Hillary Clinton does. He comes across as “slick” and packaged and insincere. For all their faults, McCain and Huckabee strike most people as genuine.

Democrats:

Wow. There were plenty of indications that Obama was surging. There has been growing anti-Clinton backlash (ironically, mostly aimed at Bill but with Hillary the victim) and quite a few endorsements and other signs that mainstream Democrats were moving toward Obama. California was tightening into a toss-up but Clinton was leading the polls just about everywhere there were polls. Instead, she won Calfornia but he picked off a whole lot of other states.

Once again, ABC News summed it up well with their headline: “Clinton Wins Delegate-Rich States; Obama Takes Most States.”

Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., traded Super Tuesday victories in an expectedly tight Democratic race that has turned into a fierce battle for convention delegates.

Energized, Democratic voters turned out in high numbers as an unprecedented 22 states held Democratic primaries and caucuses, but all those voters in all those states did little to determine a Democratic front-runner.

Obama appears to have won the most states, picking up victories in Illinois, Idaho, Colorado, Minnesota, Connecticut, Utah, North Dakota, Kansas, Delaware, Missouri, Georgia and Alabama, according to analysis of exit polls and the vote count.

Clinton won the delegate-rich states of California and New York, the largest and second-largest states to vote tonight. Clinton has also picked up victories in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Arizona, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arkansas, where she and her husband have deep roots.

MSNBC goes with a similar take: “Clinton wins California, most other big states — But party’s delegate rules mean Democratic race to end up virtually tied.”

Florida and Michigan:

One point that our own Dave Schuler has made repeatedly bears re-emphasis at this time: The fate of Florida and Michigan’s delegates is going to be a huge issue here. Clinton won both of these usually-delegate-rich states handily, albeit in uncontested races. Were their normal slate of delegates in her column, she’d be much further ahead. And, if they somehow get added into the mix later in the game, it’ll have a major impact on the outcome.

Prediction Games:

A couple of states aren’t yet decided but my success rate at predicting Super Tuesday was decidedly less than stellar. To be sure, I had caveats throughout the post that I was just taking a SWAG at several states in the absence of polling. But, still, I got a lot of states wrong, guessing that there would be a lot more coalescing around the frontrunners than we actually saw.

On the Republican side, I allowed that Huckabee could pick off a Southern state or two that I gave to McCain (figuring a lot of Huck’s supporters would satisfice between one of the two “viable” candidates), so I at least covered myself. My biggest problem was underestimating Romney’s support in the Northwest, which I presumed, mostly in the absence of polling data, was likely to go for McCain’s ornery style and maverick message.

Not much better on the Democratic side and for mostly the same reason: I was way off in guessing the attitudes of the Northwest. But, really, I just underestimated Obama’s support across the board.

At least I called California right!

Where We Go From Here:

I don’t see how anyone other than McCain wins the Republican nomination at this point. Romney has plenty of cash to spend but it doesn’t seem to be getting him anywhere. Huckabee is a likable guy that too many of us have underestimated but I just don’t see where he’s going to get another thousand delegates; the map just isn’t his friend at this point.

Most of us thought Hillary Clinton would be the prohibitive favorite this morning. She ain’t. The David Broder conventional wisdom has been that, the longer this race went on, the more it benefited Obama. That sure seems to be the case. He’s clearly the Democrats’ better general election candidate and the guy who seems to appeal most to the base.

Chris Bowers, Ed Morrissey, Steve Bainbridge, and others are talking brokered convention for the Democrats, with potentially ugly results. It’s much more likely now than I’d have ever guessed. Still, I’d be surprised if it comes to that. While it’s true that the Democrats’ bizarre combination of proportional representative primaries and non-democratic superdelegates complicates the process, it’s a two-person race and my guess is that the party coalesces around one of them before long. To the extent that Hillary’s still relying on inevitability, though, she’s in trouble.

Update (Dave Schuler)

I think the honest truth is that Barack Obama needed to do better in California than he did to secure the Democratic nomination. The big states whose primaries are still to be held are Ohio and Texas on March 4 and Pennsylvania on April 22 so I expect that both Clinton and Obama will devote substantial time to them, particularly to Ohio and Pennsylvania. It’ll probably be the most attention that Pennsylvania has received in generations. And, since Ohio is a state that Clinton very much wants to carry in November, I suspect she’ll practically live there, giving the Buckeye State the sort of attention that’s usually reserved for Iowa and New Hampshire.

In Obama’s favor are that he’s tended to do well when he’s had enough time to devote to particular states and that he’s got the money to keep trooping on. In Clinton’s favor are the organization that she’s been building for the last 16 or more years and the superdelegates who are mostly pledged to her. Obama didn’t win big enough yesterday to cause them to bolt.

Remember that there are 796 Democratic superdelegates. That means that the 783 Clinton delegates vs. the 709 Obama delegates (the standings as they’re currently being reported) don’t really tell the whole story. Taking the superdelegates into account and assuming the same pattern of neck-and-neck gaining of delegates by Clinton and Obama in the remaining primaries, Clinton will be the Democrat’s nominee in November.

David Broder argues that a win in New Hampshire would render the Democratic nomination Barack Obama’s to lose. I wouldn’t go quite that far. It would probably give him the momentum to take South Carolina, where Hillary Clinton holds a statistically insignificant lead. Still, she’s absolutely mopping the floor with him in California, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and other major early states right now. (Although, as Dave Schuler noted on OTB Radio Wednesday, the fact that the DNC is penalizing Florida for holding its primary this early could hurt Clinton.) Certainly, she’s not hurting for money to run ad spots.

Moreover, while I acknowledge Obama’s crossover appeal, Broder overstates it geometrically.

Running in two of the “whitest” states in the country, Obama has shown crossover appeal that defies conventional wisdom about the limits an African-American candidate will face.

It is a pattern of his brief political life. When he ran for the Senate in Illinois in 2004, Obama scored well both in small towns and rural areas far from Chicago, and in the Republican-oriented suburbs.

Let’s not forget that he ran against Alan Keyes, a man who’s not only several shades darker than him and a resident of Maryland but a certifiable loon. I wouldn’t extrapolate a whole lot from that victory.

It might be useful to recall that George W. Bush ran in 2000 as “a uniter, not a divider” and cited his ability to work with Democrats as governor. It turned out that Texas Democrats didn’t have much in common with their Washington counterparts.

Race would certainly be a factor in for Obama in a general election campaign, although it’s effects would likely be a wash. Blacks already vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate, so he’s got little margin for improvement there. Presumably, he’d appeal to other “persons of color” and get some bump from that demographic and lose some number of anti-black whites otherwise predisposed to vote Democrat.

Fortunately, Obama will likely rise or fall on his own merits. His chief asset is his youth, vitality, and passion. His chief liability is the flip side of that: whether people will risk turning the country over to someone with so little experience during perilous times.

Photo credit: The Swamp.

Pervez Musharraf has pledged to hold elections in February rather than postponing them for a year as previously announced.

Pakistan’s parliamentary elections will he held by mid-February, a month later than planned, the country’s military ruler said Thursday, a day after President Bush urged him to hold the vote on time.

Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto denounced President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s pledge as insufficient and said he should step down as army chief within a week.

With anger over military rule spreading, the United States and domestic opponents are stepping up pressure on Musharraf to end the emergency rule imposed Saturday, shed his uniform and hold elections as planned in January. Bush, who counts Musharraf as a key ally in the war on terror, telephoned him Wednesday to say he should step down as the military chief and hold the vote on schedule.

And Bhutto, who had been in talks with Musharraf on forming a post-election alliance, added to the pressure by deciding to join protests against the emergency. Authorities reportedly arrested hundreds of her supporters overnight to head off a major rally she is planning near Islamabad on Friday.

Frankly, holding elections in February rather than January is hardly the end of the world. Ideally, however, internal pressures will continue to build and force Musharraf to obey the constitution.

Meanwhile, David Broder reports, India is quite nervous and the whole incident is putting additional strains on U.S.-India relations.

During a visit to New Delhi that happened to coincide with the crisis, I found that Indians were both puzzled and dismayed that the U.S. government seemed so ambivalent about Musharraf’s actions. The Indian press reported, along with U.S. journals, that the Bush administration had sent urgent messages to Musharraf counseling him against the crackdown.

But when he ignored their advice and declared martial law, President Bush and the State Department offered only the mildest reprimands and immediately signaled a willingness to continue to support Musharraf and his regime.

To many here, that made it appear as if democracy was less important to the U.S. government than whatever help Musharraf might supply in fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Well . . . duh. United States national security interests trump our concerns for internal politics of faraway countries. Substitute any other country for “United States” in that sentence and it remains just as true.

If we needed confirmation that silly season is in full swing, we need look no further than David Broder’s wistful column this morning about a possible independent bid by a Michael Bloomberg-Chuck Hagel ticket. Aside from the standard “Washington is gridlocked in partisan battle between two equally spent parties” and people are tired of it mantra, there’s no argument presented as to why these guys would be particularly attractive candidates. Nor is there any scenario offered, plausible or otherwise, as to how they could get anywhere close to 270 Electoral votes.

Basically, Bloomberg has money and both of them have, in their non-ideological, non-partisan way, demonstrated “leadership.” But Mitt Romney fits that bill. And one would think John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Mike Huckabee, and perhaps some other candidates already in the race have had more opportunity to demonstrate leadership than either Bloomberg or Hegel.

But, hey, the punditocracy is already bored with the current crop of candidates, so we have to construct fantasies scenarios that would shake up the race. A fellow can dream, I guess.

UPDATE: Well, Broder has managed to achieve bipartisan consensus, if not in quite the way he had intended.

From the right: Steven Taylor – “Broder Prompts a Question: Does it Get Less Important than the VP Nominee on a Third Party Ticket?”

From the left: Steve Benen – “When silly meets predictable.”

David Broder argues that, despite “out of touch politicians” being crowd pleasing fodder for stump speeches, modern communications have actually made decision makers too responsive to a poorly informed, emotional public’s will.

From Aristotle to Edmund Burke, philosophers have written of the healthy tension that normally exists between the understanding and strategies of leaders and the sentiments and opinions of their people.

In today’s Washington, a badly weakened president and a dangerously compliant congressional leadership are no match for the power of public opinion — magnified and sometimes exaggerated by modern communications and interest group pressure.

[...]

The point is pretty basic. Politicians are wise to heed what people want. But they also have an obligation to weigh for themselves what the country needs. In today’s Washington, the “wants” of people count far more heavily than the nation’s needs.

You can win elections by promising people what they want. But you win your place in history by doing what the country needs done.

This column was written in response to the failure of Congress to pass the immigration reform bill and to renew fast track authority for trade negotiations but it’s a familiar lament. Politicians should be strong and stand up for the national interest regardless of the short term political consequences. That’s Statesmanship.

Yet, as Bernhard points out, what the “national interest” might be on a given issue is merely a matter of opinion. Why is David Broder’s opinion more valuable that that of the masses who organize and call their representatives to express their concerns? And I say that as someone who agrees with Broder on both of the issues in question.

And, amidst a decidedly un-Broderesque tone, BooMan has a point:

Just because THE PEOPLE have a majority opinion on some issue doesn’t make them right. That is why we have all these protections for minority opinions. But you have to be a blithering idiot to be able to look at the current landscape in America and think it is THE PEOPLE that are out of touch right now and not the denizens of the Beltway.

[...]

It is the Beltway types that don’t want to face up to consequences of their profound failures. THE PEOPLE can see the budget numbers, the casualty reports, the failed government services, and the official corruption.

The Progressive Era journalist Walter Lippmann, who invented the modern study of public opinion, was skeptical of governance by the masses. Daniel Schugurensky provides an excellent synopsis of the debate:

For instance, he argued that participatory democracy was unworkable, that the democratic public was a myth, and hence that governance should be delegated exclusively to political representatives and their expert advisors. Based on empirical evidence about the efficacy of political propaganda and mass advertisement to shape people’s ways of thinking, Lippmann contended that public opinion was highly shaped by leaders. Lippmann called this process of manipulation of consciousness ‘the manufacture of consent’, a concept that Noam Chomsky would popularize many years later in his writings. Lippmann argued, first in ‘Public Opinion’ and later in ‘The Phantom Public’, that since ordinary citizens had no sense of objective reality, and since their ideas are merely stereotypes manipulated at will by people at the top, deliberative democracy was an unworkable dogma or impossible dream. In his view, the most feasible alternative to such democracy consisted of a technocracy in which government leaders are guided by experts whose objectives and disinterested knowledge go beyond the narrow views and the parochial self-interests of the average citizens organized in local communities. Lippmann saw advocates of participatory democracy as romantic and nostalgic individuals who idealized the role of the ignorant masses to address public affairs and proposed an unrealistic model for the emerging mass society. He opposed such a model with his own model of ‘democratic realism’ based on political representation and technical expertise.

John Dewey, in his response to Lippmann, first in a review published in The New Republic (1922), and later in his book The Public and its Problems (1927), contended that democracy should not be confined to the enlightenment of administrators or to insiders like industrial leaders, and highlighted the importance of public deliberation in political decision-making. However, he was not an advocate of any type of deliberation. He contended that just letting discussion go, without eliciting facts of any kind, and without appealing to common meanings, was fruitless (Hart 1993). While Dewey did not dispute Lippmann’s claim that social inquiry and policy design can be done by experts, he claimed that all the relevant facts and potential implications of such inquiry and proposed policies should remain a public trust which must not be manipulable by private interests. In The Public and its Problems (p. 365), he admitted that “it is not necessary that the many should have the knowledge and skill to carry on the needed investigations; what is required is that they have the ability to judge of the bearing of the knowledge supplied by others upon common concerns.” For Dewey, once the relevant facts are made public (and in this regards he placed great emphasis on the need of a truly free press), the role of discussion is to determine the exact nature of the common good in that particular situation. Dewey recognized that intervention by the public is not possible without a better organized and educated public, but argued that lack of education, stupidity, and intolerance lead to bad governance not only in democracies, but in monarchies and oligarchies as well. Thus, argues Dewey, the democratic system is not responsible for the poor decisions of the public in local policy-making, such as the prohibition of the teaching of evolution in schools (which Lippmann cited as evidence of the inability of the public to govern). For Dewey, the weaknesses of democracy are symptoms, rather than causes, of the problems of modern society.

While Lippman got it right in terms of the manipulability and thin understanding that the general public has on most issues, Dewey’s conclusions are nonetheless right. It’s undisputable that bureaucrats, White House and Congressional committee staffs, think tankers, and even politicians have more knowledge of the issues than the masses. That’s the nature of professionalism and expertise. It does not, however, follow that those with the most knowledge ought get to decide.

For one thing, the experts seldom agree on complex issues. Indeed, the elite debate on such things as immigration and trade policy at the expert level is remarkably similar to that among non-elites. Sure, the former have more data at their fingertips and can debate the issues more fluidly. But at the end of the day, these issues don’t come down to scientific calculations but priorities, ideologies, and personal experiences.

Experts should not consult public opinion on technical details of carrying out policy. John Q. Public has no earthly idea how many troops we need in Iraq, how to go about allocating scarce Homeland Security dollars, or how many engineers from Pakistan the economy can absorb.

At the same time, there is a wisdom of the crowds at the big picture level. The public judgment on whether continuing a war is worthwhile, whether millions of people from another country should be flooding across the border in violation of our law, or whether we should spend millions on bridges to nowhere should be taken into account. To be sure, they might get it wrong from time to time. Then again, so do the experts.

The dean of the Washington commentariat, David Broder, terms Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “The Democrats’ Gonzales.”

Here’s a Washington political riddle where you fill in the blanks: As Alberto Gonzales is to the Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Democrats — a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance. If you answered ” Harry Reid,” give yourself an A. And join the long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to end.

[...]

This war is lost. But the war can be won. Not since Bill Clinton famously pondered the meaning of the word “is” has a Democratic leader confused things as much as Harry Reid did with his inept discussion of the alternatives in Iraq.

Nor is this the first time Senate Democrats, who chose Reid as their leader over Chris Dodd of Connecticut, have had to ponder the political fallout from one of Reid’s tussles with the language.

Hailed by his staff as “a strong leader who speaks his mind in direct fashion,” Reid is assuredly not a man who misses many opportunities to put his foot in his mouth. In 2005, he attacked Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, as “one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington.”

He called President Bush ” a loser,” then apologized. He said that Bill Frist, then Senate majority leader, had “no institutional integrity” because Frist planned to leave the Senate to fulfill a term-limits pledge. Then he apologized to Frist.

[...]

The Democrats deserve better, and the country needs more, than Harry Reid has offered as Senate majority leader.

Ed Morrissey has several more examples, which he dubs “The Five Myths Of Harry.”

As I’ve noted many times, I always found Reid a likable and honorable fellow and think he’s simply unsuited to play the partisan hack role seemingly required of congressional leaders in recent years. That’s likely a sign of good character but it’s painful to watch. It reminds me of the declining days of George H. W. Bush’s re-election campaign, when a good man befuddled that he was losing to Bill Clinton started referring to his opponents as “bozos.”

However much Reid’s rantings cause Republicans and moderates to scratch their heads, it appears to be a winning strategy with the base. Kevin Hayden scoffs at the notion that Reid needs to be more tactful if he wants to be able to negotiate with the president.

There is nothing ‘essential’ in pursuing the futile exercise of negotiating with a single-minded fool. The only course left for Reid is to keep talking the truth, while Bush’s legislative sycophants keep digging their brown noses deep into his posterior.

Because the bigger war is the war to restore sanity to our government. And Reid is displaying leadership in that effort. It was only last year I doubted that Reid could set aside his centrist values to provide that degree of leadership. And now that he’s doing so, Broder claims he’s confusing everyone. While making it clear that the real solutions must wait ‘until a new president takes office.’

Greg Sargent agrees.

Reid has refused to back down on Iraq while simultaneously maintaining public approval of his approach? He’s also maintained a respectable 46% approval rating — far higher than Bush, who Broder says is on the verge of a comeback. What is it that’s so profoundly threatening about Reid’s success to the Broders of the world?

Of course, standing firm on a politically popular position doesn’t require all that much leadership talent.

Josh Marshall thinks it is Broder, not Reid, who is in over his head.

People think of Broder as the ‘Dean’ of the Washington press corps because of things he did in the 60s and 70s. But the man he is today is much more a product of the long conservative ascendancy of the last three decades — an ascendancy still very much alive in the town’s journalistic and editorial elite. You can hear the animus more and more sharply in this columns as his inability to grasp the political moment becomes more and more clear.

Broder is “conservative” in the same sense as Cokie Roberts or Kevin Drum: He’s a liberal who believes in civility and thoughtful, honest discussion. It may well be, though, that time has passed him by in an era where those on opposite sides of controversial issues are deemed to be traitors or buffoons. Personally, I’m rooting for the return of Broderism.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin adds her thoughts in video format.

Hmmm. (via Steven Taylor)

LAT has a very interesting profile of TPM’s Josh Marshall and the occasional ability of blogs to get ahead of the mainstream press.

In December, Josh Marshall, who owns and runs TPM , posted a short item linking to a news report in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette about the firing of the U.S. attorney for that state. Marshall later followed up, adding that several U.S. attorneys were apparently being replaced and asked his 100,000 or so daily readers to write in if they knew anything about U.S. attorneys being fired in their areas.

For the two months that followed, Talking Points Memo and one of its sister sites, TPM Muckraker, accumulated evidence from around the country on who the axed prosecutors were, and why politics might be behind the firings. The cause was taken up among Democrats in Congress. One senior Justice Department official has resigned, and Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales is now in the media crosshairs.

This isn’t the first time Marshall and Talking Points have led coverage on national issues. In 2002, the site was the first to devote more than just passing mention to then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s claim that the country would have been better off had the segregationist 1948 presidential campaign of Sen. Strom Thurmond succeeded. The subsequent furor cost Lott his leadership position. Similarly, the TPM sites were leaders in chronicling the various scandals associated with Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

All of this from an enterprise whose annual budget probably wouldn’t cover the janitorial costs incurred by a metropolitan daily newspaper. “Hundreds of people out there send clips and other tips,” Marshall said. “There is some real information out there, some real expertise. If you’re not in politics and you know something, you’re not going to call David Broder. With the blog, you develop an intimacy with people. Some of it is perceived, but some of it is real.”

Marshall’s use of his readers to gather information takes advantage of the interactivity that is at the heart of the Internet revolution. The amount of discourse between writers and readers on the Web makes traditional journalists look like hermetic monks.

[...]

“With Abramoff, I was getting a lot more tips than I could handle,” Marshall said. “I thought if I hire two people, pay them, marry them with these tips, what could we do then?” That led to the creation of TPM Muckraker, which has two full-time, salaried reporter-bloggers and is where many of the stories on the U.S. attorneys were originally published.

Few bloggers have the ability to do what Marshall has done at TPM. OTB is reasonably popular, I think it’s fair to say, but doesn’t generate anything like the comment level of major liberal blogs like TPM, Eschaton, and DailyKos.

What Marshall has created is particularly impressive. While DailyKos and MyDD have become major players in organizing young, disaffected liberals, Marshall has created a mini journalism empire, demonstrating the potential of blogging better than just about anyone out there.

He’s not alone, though. PowerLine and Little Green Footballs helped break open the RatherGate scandal, using the same techniques as Marshall–leveraging the archane expertise of an army of readers. Ed Morrissey became the linchpin of breaking open the Gromery kickback scandal in Canada in perhaps the best example of what a dogged one man operation can do.

With notable exceptions like Woodward and Bernstein’s obsession with the Watergate break-in, newspapers and broadcast outlets seldom devote the time and energy to pursue the trails of obscure stories. The advent of blogs have given individuals who become, for lack of a better word, obsessed about various stories to pursue them to the bitter end. More often than not, it turns out that there’s no there there. Sometimes, though, they catch lightning in a bottle.

The blogosphere harnesses the power of individuals in a way that wasn’t possible a decade ago. There are plenty of smart people out there with a lot of specialized expertise or with a particularly interesting way of looking at things that, for a variety of reasons, didn’t go into journalism. Blogs give them a voice.

Glenn Reynolds has dubbed this group an Army of Davids. As Marshall has shown, that army can sometimes use its readership as a tremendous force multiplier, getting additional leads and insights that no one man, no matter how smart and diligent, could ever come up with on his own.

David Broder argues that, like Bill Clinton in 1994, George W. Bush is using the loss of Congress in midterm elections to reassess his tactics and thereby mounting a surprising political comeback. In addition to some deft moves in deflecting the debate over his proposed Iraq troop surge, Broder believes Bush is broadening his support by reaching out and making nice:

He has been far more accessible — and responsive — to the media and public, holding any number of one-on-one interviews, both on and off the record, leading up to Wednesday’s televised news conference. And he has been more candid in his responses than in the past.

While forcefully making his points, he has depersonalized the differences with his critics and opponents. He has not only vouched for the good intentions of congressional Democrats, he has visited them on their home ground, given them opportunities to question him face to face, and repeatedly outlined areas — aside from Iraq — where he says they could work together on legislation: immigration, energy, education, health care, the budget.

Given Nixonian poll numbers and the most unpopular war in more than thirty years, simple regression to the mean should bring Bush’s public standing up. Big Tent Democrat is right, too, that the new majority is likely overplaying its hand, which will bring the president’s relative standing up. To extend Broder’s comparison, Newt Gingrich and company did as much as Bill Clinton to restore the latter’s standing.

Joe Gandelman sees this happening now, as the new congressional majority is forced to take action rather than merely criticize, thus risking alienating their base, moderate voters, or both.

That’s all right, I think. Bill Clinton had two advantages, though over Bush, in his attempt to regain “relevance.” First, Clinton was a great communicator and natural empath who was able to charm his way back into the public’s good graces. Bush has his moments but he’s mostly still incredibly awkward in his public appearances. Second, Clinton was riding the wave of peace and prosperity occasioned by the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the World Wide Web almost at the exact moment he assumed the presidency. Bush inherited a post-bust economy and the 9/11 attacks then got bogged down in a nasty guerrilla-terrorist war in Iraq. Under those conditions, he’s can only bounce so high.