May 18, 2012
I used to be baffled at the drive for anonymous political spending. If the purpose of the expenditure really is charitable, why would one hide one’s largesse? And on the other hand if it’s really an attempt to buy elected offices, why would one want to conceal the identity of the purchaser? After all if you stay hidden how will your newly purchased serfs know to take your calls?
Now at last I have an answer: large donors are just as dumb as any other random activist and as such think...
April 13, 2012
The immediate aftermath of the AIG collapse in 2008 gave me two strong feelings: financial survival, and the desire to find votes to blame it on Republicans. Such is the life of a researcher.
It was late in the cycle, when researchers don’t have much to do anyway, so I set to work. I brainstormed with colleagues, set some staff on figuring it out, and spent several days poring through the congressional record.
I found nothing.
And that’s the problem with running against Wall Street these days. Prior to 2008, financial services was the LEAST...
April 11, 2012
It would be nice if the higher the office the less ridiculous the campaign statements. Alas, stupidity is an equal opportunity affliction:
On a Romney campaign surrogates conference call to bash President Barack Obama’s stewardship of the economy Wednesday morning, officials faced a series of questions about the campaign’s recent argument that 92 percent of jobs lost during the recession were held by women.
That was dumb, and...
March 29, 2012
Another cycle, another “dark art” restrospective on research.
As retrospectives go, it’s a pretty good one. They cover the landmarks- LBJ’s “Daisy,” Reagan’s “Bear,” Bush’s Willie Horton ad. American Bridge presents an excellent and straightforward context for the trade: voters simply don’t have time to review candidates’ records, so we do it for them.
Of course, no process story on research would be complete without an ample helping of...
March 19, 2012
Research successes may make for good campaigns, but for true insight the epic fact-checking failures always win. The recent debacle over Mike Daisey’s Foxconn monologue has a lot to love in that regard: lies, Chinese translation, and of course iPhones. I especially liked Jack Schafer’s summary :
I’m still waiting for somebody who got caught lying while practicing journalism to say why he did it. I have my theory: 1)...
February 21, 2012
Alan Huffman and Michael Rejebian are not researchers. They are jokes. I pity the people who paid them for campaign work.
Case in point: last night’s visit to the Daily Show:
Stewart: “Have you done research on a candidate, 200 pages on him, and you thought to yourself, pretty decent guy, but here’s this one thing we found, I can see how this is going to crush him, how do you deal with- and you watch that being done. How do you deal with that?…I’m talking...
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