Grown-ups on the stage

Tonight's debate is remarkably civil and substantive. CNN's Bill Schneider, who's live-blogging it, calls it a "grown-up debate," especially compared to the Republicans last night. He's right. But doesn't Obama, who's behind in the polls in many states, need to throw a haymaker?

My guess is that Obama, not having any particularly good choices (check out these poll numbers), has decided that he has to hope voters are looking for a reason to vote against Clinton — and that, by coming off as presidential, he'll give it to them.

The one-on-one format gives this an entirely different feel — it's actually approaching a conversation about policy rather than a mindless recitation of soundbites. So far, no sign of Borat.

It looks like they're going to close with Iraq. Obama just criticized "the mindset that got us into Iraq in the first place," so we could get some heat.

The Clintons' Kazakhstan problem

The New York Times fronts an absolutely brutal story today about Bill Clinton's dubious dealings on behalf of a Canadian mining mogul.

According to the article, by Jo Becker and Don Van Natta Jr., the mogul, Frank Giustra, unexpectedly won a lucrative uranium-mining deal in Kazakhstan after Clinton flew to that country with him in 2005 and schmoozed the human-rights-abusing dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Giustra then turned around and donated $31 million to Clinton's charitable foundation, with a pledge to give $100 million more.

There's also an account of Bill Clinton's and Giustra's somehow not able to remember meeting with the head of Kazakhstan's state-controlled uranium agency, Kazatomprom, at the Clintons' home, in Chappaqua, N.Y., until confronted with evidence. Here's a lowlight:

"You are correct that I asked the president to meet with the head of Kazatomprom," Mr. Giustra said. "Mr. Dzhakishev [the head of the uranium agency] asked me in February 2007 to set up a meeting with former President Clinton to discuss the future of the nuclear energy industry." Mr. Giustra said the meeting "escaped my memory until you raised it."

That's perfectly understandable, of course. I mean, any of us could forget about meeting with a former U.S. president and the guy who was about to make us many millions of dollars richer, right? Admit it: You probably can't remember what you had for breakfast this morning.

The story raises the question of how happy Hillary Clinton is with this, as she has been an outspoken critic of Nazarbayev. But she certainly can't distance herself from her husband's shenanigans given that she's ultimately responsible for unleashing him to attack Barack Obama during the past few weeks. It is the Clintons who've created the impression that they're running for co-president, so his baggage is now hers as well. (Not that it ever wasn't.)

But there's an additional point of interest here, and that involves timing. This is, of course, a perfectly legitimate story, and the Times deserves a lot of credit for ferreting it out. Tonight we'll see the most crucial debate of the campaign, as Clinton and Obama go at it one-on-one on CNN at 8 p.m. I suspect that this story will be a big part of the debate. And from there, it could dominate coverage right through Super Tuesday.

As we know, the Times has already endorsed Hillary Clinton. Today's story may have far more of an effect on the outcome. Whether by accident or design, the news side has sent a clear message that it's more relevant and more important than the paper's opinionmongers.

Not a great night for McCain

I wasn't going to post during the debate. But I dozed off, and woke up to watch McCain and Romney going at it on the timetables McCain says Romney advocated to withdraw from the war in Iraq. McCain seems petulant and petty tonight, his contempt for Romney barely disguised. McCain's not telling the truth about Romney, and he all but admitted it, justifying it by pointing to the millions of dollars Romney spent on negative ads aimed at McCain and Huckabee.

Responding to a question about whether Romney was qualified to be commander-in-chief, McCain made a crack about Romney's experience selling and buying companies and eliminating people's jobs.

Huckabee's whining incessantly about not getting equal time. He's lucky he's up there. It's not as if anyone has voted for him lately. And Ron Paul is even luckier.

The governor's loaded dice

I like to stay away from debates over what kinds of benefits may or may not flow from Gov. Deval Patrick's three-casino proposal. My reasoning is simple: casinos are bad news for a whole host of reasons, including traffic, crime and predicted increases in the divorce and suicide rates. If it turns out that Patrick's rosy promises of tax revenues and jobs turn out to be true, well, I'm still against it.

Nevertheless, it's worth noting that there's considerable evidence that the numbers really don't add up. The latest example is Steve Bailey's column in today's Globe, in which Bailey notes that the governor has promised four or times as many construction jobs as were created by the Big Dig, which was only the largest public-works project in the history of the known universe.

A more in-depth analysis of the numbers is provided in CommonWealth Magazine by Phil Primack. His story is proof, really, that there are no good numbers — and that as others, most prominently the Weekly Dig, have reported, Patrick has mainly adopted the assumptions of Clyde Barrow, a UMass Dartmouth researcher who is staunchly pro-casino. Primack's story is must reading for anyone looking for a comprehensive overview of the numbers.

If the Legislature is unwilling to kill Patrick's proposal outright, then at the very least it ought to commission an independent study. Legislators in the middle might be surprised at how little we're going to get out of this, especially compared with how much we're going to be hurt.

Revisiting the Google Times

Google executive David Eun says it's not going to happen. That is, Google isn't going to buy the New York Times Co.

Of pitchers and Patriots

This Sunday we can finally get that Super Bowl thing over with and start talking about baseball. Spring training's just a few weeks away. Two quick hits this morning:

• I'm actually glad that Johan Santana has gone to the Mets, preferring to watch the Red Sox win (or lose) with the kids. As Tom Werner says, at least he's not going to the Yankees. And I know Pedro's near the end of his career, but can he handle not being the Man?
  
• Roger Clemens' protestations of innocence don't add up, but he's made them so vehemently that I had decided to suspend judgment. But if Andy Pettitte is ready to say Clemens used steroids and human growth hormone, it's lights out.

Oh, one other thing. Go Pats.

A huge step forward for McCain

Democratic leaders must be unhappy tonight. By designating John McCain, finally, as the frontrunner, Florida Republicans have given a huge boost to the strongest candidate who could be nominated in terms of appealing to independents and conservative Democrats. McCain's hardcore support for the war in Iraq may be poison in November. But he's far more likely to expand his vote beyond the Republican base than Mitt Romney.

At 71, McCain is an old-fashioned guy. He's wearing a hideous tie (no, not the one in the photo), and he began his speech by talking to the folks in the room, not the television cameras — reminiscing about his naval training in Pensacola, introducing Gov. Charlie Crist, Sen. Mel Martinez and several members of Congress. He also hailed Rudy Giuliani, who's likely to endorse him this week. That will be huge, as it will unite moderate Republicans around one candidate.

Now he's giving his stump speech, aimed at solidifying his shaky support among conservatives. "I am as proud today to be a Republican conservative as I was then," he said, repeating his frequent line of being a "foot soldier in the Reagan revolution." Essentially it's a list of conservative nostrums aimed at trying to unite his party, complete with a whack at judges, always popular with the red-meat crowd.

"We have a ways to go, but we're getting close," he said in closing. "And for that you have my profound thanks."

Live-blogging note: When I don't edit myself, I tend to write "huge" a lot, don't I?

Photo (cc) by marcn. Some rights reserved.

Romney speaks

Romney's speaking now. By all rights, he should be just about out of it now. But it's a strange year, so who knows? He seems nervous and upset, but that doesn't necessary presage a pullout.

One of the more unusual findings I saw on CNN tonight was that McCain beat Romney solidly among voters for whom the economy is their most important concern. The economy has been Romney's mantra since Michigan, but it didn't work in Florida.

Romney: "I think it's time for the politicians to leave Washington and the citizens to take over." He's running through his usual talking points, bashing "Hillarycare" and teachers unions. He's for families and the military. And George W. Bush. But he really sounds like he's straining — very different from Giuliani a few moments ago. Then, Giuliani had known for weeks that he was going to lose.

I can't imagine he's going to quit quite yet. He's got money, and, as Huckabee continues to fade, he might pick up the evangelicals.

But it looks like the Republicans finally have a frontrunner, and it's not Mitt Romney.

Closer than it looks

It's now McCain, 35 percent, and Romney, 31 percent, but they still won't call it. What's going on? Take a look at this map from WashingtonPost.com. Most All (that's a lake!) of the untallied counties are from the Panhandle. This is going to get tighter.

Oh, and now the word is that Giuliani is going to pull out and endorse McCain. And here we go — the AP and Fox just called it for McCain.

Does Florida look like America?

This is pretty amazing. Forty percent of Democrats who voted in the Florida primary were 60 and older. Among Republicans: 44 percent. Only 9 percent of Democrats are under 30, and only 7 percent of Republicans. Not sure how that plays out in the Republican primary, but it certainly hurts Obama, who got pasted tonight in the no-delegate beauty contest.

A Fox in CNN's chicken house

So I'm trying to watch the live stream from Giuliani headquarters at CNNPolitics.com. Instead, I'm listening to the audio from the Fox News Channel; the screen is black. Brit Hume just kicked it over to Mike Huckabee's speech. Back to you, Wolf!

McCain, 34; Romney, 31

But no indication of where the votes are coming from. Presumably, Romney's going to do better in the conservative Florida Panhandle, where the polls closed an hour later. So, uh, maybe I'll just watch for a while.

Questions about a tragedy

My heart goes out to Globe sports columnist Bob Ryan and his family. Ryan's son, Keith, was found dead in Pakistan yesterday. Bryan Marquard has a warm, well-rounded portrait of Keith Ryan in the Globe, and online sports-media columnist David Scott offers a tribute.

Ryan's death is being cast as a suicide, but Mike Underwood's story in the Herald raises another possibility. Here is the article that Underwood is apparently referring to, from the Pakistani paper Dawn. An excerpt:

The [U.S.] embassy said no "foul play" was involved, but senior police officers thought otherwise.

They said it was too early to determine from the bullet wound in the skull of Mr Keith Ryan whether it was a case of suicide or homicide.

The article goes on to say that there is some forensic evidence suggesting that murder was more likely than suicide, and that a full post-mortem will be conducted in Germany.

Keith Ryan was working as a U.S. agent in one of the most dangerous areas in the world. Regardless of whether this was a suicide or a homicide, he died in service to his country.

Finneran jumps the shark

Tom Finneran is on the air this morning, broadcasting from the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Which means that WRKO (AM 680) has already blown it. Program director Jason Wolfe should have hired a security guard to keep Finneran away from the microphone if that's what it took to prevent the born-again lobbyist from using the public airwaves today.

I only listened for a few minutes so I could verify that (1) Finneran was doing his show and (2) he wasn't talking about his lobbyist deal, reported today by Frank Phillips of the Globe. So I don't know if the matter came up earlier in the broadcast. What I do know is that this is exactly what his critics predicted would happen when Finneran was hired, amid much ballyhoo and controversy, to take the 6-to-10 a.m. slot.

I like Finneran, even if I think his reign as Massachusetts House speaker was heavy-handed and occasionally abusive. I think his conviction on obstruction-of-justice charges was a travesty. I appreciate his efforts to establish a civil, substantive tone on his radio program, "Finneran's Forum." But though talk-show hosts don't owe us much, they certainly owe us their independence. Now that's gone.

According to Phillips' story, Finneran the lobbyist is representing the state troopers union. How on earth can Finneran the talk-show host discuss public safety if he's in the tank to a major player?

A word about ethics: No reputable news organization would allow a journalist to do this, whether he or she is a straight-news reporter or an opinion-monger. It's not about objectivity, something that's undesirable in columnists and talk-show hosts alike. Rather, the principle is that your opinions can't be bought and paid for.

Yes, I understand that the ethical standards for talk-show hosts are different from those of journalists. (No self-respecting journalist, for instance, would read advertisements, which is part of the job description for talk-show hosts.) But there are areas where the ethics of these two very different media jobs coincide, and this is one of them. If Finneran were to criticize Gov. Deval Patrick's public-safety policies, for instance, how can we know whether his opinion is sincere or if, instead, he's grinding the union's axe?

It's possible — maybe even probable — that Finneran is looking beyond his talk-radio career. The show's been dull, and one of the main reasons is that Mr. Speaker all too often sounds like he's trying to maintain his political viability. His ratings have been painfully low. Perhaps he and management already have an understanding that when his contract runs out, he's going to move on.

But this is an outrage. If Finneran plans to embark on a lobbying career, let him do it today. And let someone who's not bought and paid for take his place at WRKO.

Break glass in case of emergency

File this away. The Globe's Alex Beam has a terrific column on Barack Obama's minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who's "controversial" for reasons that are not entirely clear. If Obama keeps doing well, Wright will no doubt be depicted as a cross between Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. Not that I like Wright's views regarding Israel. But, as Beam notes, they are no different from those of some mainline Protestant denominations.

Speaking of Farrakhan: John Doherty offers some information I wish I'd known and that I wish Beam had told us.

Did McCain overreach?

John McCain, already sucking wind in Florida, may have hurt himself in the area that's his greatest strength — his reputation for "straight talk." Check out the headline on this AP story: "Romney didn't say what McCain says he said on withdrawing from Iraq." By mischaracterizing Romney's position, he's succeeded in taking the spotlight off Romney's own tenuous relationship with the truth.

The multimedia journalist

It wasn't long ago that a local reporter could head out on an assignment with nothing more than a notebook and a pen. Maybe a camera, but only if there were no photographers available. But those days are rapidly drawing to a close.

Take, for instance, Cathryn Keefe O'Hare, a longtime print and radio reporter who's been editor of the Danvers Herald since 2000. The Herald is part of the GateHouse Media chain, which is pushing its journalists to supplement their stories with videos for its Wicked Local sites. O'Hare shot video for the first time last Memorial Day. Now she does it regularly.

For a Flickr slideshow of O'Hare shooting and editing her story, click on the photo above.

Last Monday I met her at the Danversport Yacht Club for the eighth annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Awards Dinner. It was a routine assignment — take some notes, write it up. It was also a good opportunity for her to put together a video package. And for me to tag along and watch how she does it.

O'Hare wielded a Casio Exilim ex5600, a tiny, relatively inexpensive piece of technology that shoots still photos, video and audio. She had a simple goal: to ask some of the 450 people who were on hand why they had chosen to attend and what King's message meant to them. She shot in ambient light, which, as you'll see, was good enough, if not perfect. Audio is recorded through a microphone in the front of the camera.

O'Hare still finds being a multimedia journalist a challenge. She stands on her tip-toes when interviewing people taller than she. A couple of interviews proved to be unusable. "It's more stressful than just taking notes," she says. But she got sufficient material to put together a nice video supplement to her print story.

Three days later I met her in the local GateHouse newsroom in Beverly, where she was editing her clips into a news video. She used Microsoft's Windows Movie Maker, a free program that lets you cut extraneous material out of the clips, piece them together in any order you like, and add transitions, titles and an extra soundtrack. (The Macintosh equivalent is iMovie.) O'Hare spliced in music from the Follow Hymn Interfaith Choir, which had performed on Monday, to supplement the interviews.

To read O'Hare's story and watch her video, click on the YouTube graphic above.

Finished videos are uploaded to YouTube and then embedded on the Danvers Herald site. O'Hare still hasn't figured out how to do that, so she leaves it to one of the regional managing editors, Peter Chianca.

"The thing that remains true, whether it's in print journalism or the Internet or video, you have to tell a story," says O'Hare. "And you have to tell it as true as you can make it. And you have to try to speak for those people who can't tell their story."

To listen to an audio interview with O'Hare, click here.

To watch other videos from the Danvers Herald, click here.

The Kennedys and the Clintons

It's hard to imagine that anyone would base his or her vote on what a Kennedy says. (Especially this one!) Still, it's pretty interesting that both Caroline Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy would endorse Barack Obama on the same weekend.

Caroline Kennedy's choice, which she reveals in an op-ed piece for the New York Times, is all the more impressive because she submitted it before last night's South Carolina blowout. For all she knew, her op-ed was going to appear on a very good day for Hillary Clinton — that is, the day after a narrow loss in South Carolina and bulging leads in most other states. Whatever the opposite is of inevitable, that's how Obama was starting to look, and Kennedy endorsed him anyway. As it turns out, she looks prescient.

As for Ted Kennedy, I have to assume his endorsement has been in the works for some time, and that he's been waiting for the moment when it would have maximum effect. With Super Tuesday coming up on Feb. 5, and with Massachusetts being a part of it, now's the time. I'm surprised by Kennedy's choice. The Clintons have always been wildly popular here, and Kennedy seemed to have enjoyed a good relationship with them. Did something happen? Or does he simply find Obama too impressive not to support?

With Sen. John Kerry and Gov. Deval Patrick also supporting Obama, that's the trifecta for the state's top three elected officials. House Speaker Sal DiMasi's endorsement of Clinton isn't looking all that significant right now.

Predictions, always futile, have been especially so this year. But I can confidently predict this: The next few days are going to be the roughest of Clinton's campaign, regardless of whether she has a happy Super Tuesday or not.

Photo (cc) by toastiest. Some rights reserved.

More Clinton-bashing on MSNBC

As Hillary Clinton was about to begin her speech, Joe Scarborough and Margaret Carlson started tut-tutting that Clinton would not congratulate Barack Obama for his victory, that the Clintons somehow don't play by the same rules as everyone else. I mean, they were really getting into it, all venomous smiles.

Naturally, one of the first things Clinton did was congratulate Obama.

A great speech

Obama just finished. Is there more to being president than giving a great speech? Well, sure. But I don't think I've heard a politician in my lifetime who can move a crowd the way Obama does. To inspire may not be enough, but it's a necessary start.

Obama's best speech yet?

As we all know, he always gives a great speech. But it strikes me that, tonight, he's being unusually effective in putting some flesh on the bones of his "change" message. No, he's not being much more specific than usual. But he's at least making a thematic case that old-fashioned partisanship is holding back progress on issues from health care to the high cost of a college education.

Yet another big surprise

On CNN, Carl Bernstein just supplied the story line for at least the next few days: "Bill Clinton is a huge loser in this." Wow. Barack Obama, 54 percent; Hillary Clinton, 27 percent. The Clinton camp was reportedly prepared to declare moral victory if they could find a way to lose by less than 10 percent percentage points [Thanks, Mike_B1]. Instead, Obama beat her by two to one.

Could you imagine what people would be saying if the polls in South Carolina had been this wrong in Clinton's favor? And will someone (i.e., Obama) finally get some momentum out of a primary victory during this weird election year?

Dan Rea's radio days

I've got a profile of Dan Rea in the new issue of CommonWealth Magazine. Rea, a longtime television reporter at WBZ-TV (Channel 4), is now the host of the talk show once helmed by the late David Brudnoy and Paul Sullivan at WBZ Radio (AM 1030). "NightSide with Dan Rea" is an oasis of civility in the talk-radio wars. But can it work in today's caustic environment?

Rea's got some tough things to say about the state of local TV news, telling me, "It was very clear to me that there was a direction of television news that was not going to be reversed, and I wasn't quite sure that I wanted to continue doing television news as I was doing it." He added:

Local television news is one of the great purveyors of racism of our time. They don't understand that. But if you are somebody who lives out in one of the 128 or 495 suburbs, and never have a reason to really interact with people of color, the only time you’re going to see young black males is when they're being arraigned, they're being arrested, or they're dying in the street. We ignore the 99 percent of the kids in that community who are trying to do the right thing, trying to go to school, trying to participate in community programs and athletics.

Rea is probably best known for his years-long efforts on behalf of Joseph Salvati, wrongly convicted of murder because of the false testimony of a government-protected witness.

Globe denies layoff story

Globe spokesman Al Larkin calls the Metro report "factually incorrect," according to accounts by the Phoenix's Adam Reilly and the Herald's Christine McConville, although he doesn't rule out the possibility of some layoffs.

Credit where it's due: Looks like Lisa van der Pool of the Boston Business Journal was the first to report the Globe's denial. Meanwhile, in today's Metro, Saul Williams says he stands by his story. (9:40 a.m.)

Can the Globe really lay off "hundreds"?

This item in Metro Boston looks pretty alarming. But if the Boston Globe lays off "hundreds," as Metro claims, wouldn't that pretty much empty out the building? And wasn't it just yesterday that Joe Keohane reported at Boston Daily that the Globe had messed up a story about downsizing at Metro? And aren't the Globe and Metro corporate cousins? And isn't it a full moon tonight? (Close.)

The Newspaper Guild is taking the Metro report seriously. This one obviously bears watching. But I'm skeptical about the prospect of "hundreds of layoffs" — and I hope I'm proven right, given what it would mean for journalism (and journalists) in Boston.

(Not) banned in West Roxbury

Anti-gay activist Robert Joyce is trying to get my old paper, the Boston Phoenix, banned in West Roxbury, the Roslindale Transcript reports. Joyce says he doesn't like the Phoenix's adult-oriented classified ads, although he adds that it would be OK if escort services offered chicken dinners.

One of Joyce's targets, liquor store owner Gary Park, says Joyce threatened him if he continued to carry the Phoenix. Jessica Smith writes:

"He [Joyce] walked in here and instead of talking like a gentleman, he started making threats and giving me ultimatums," said Park.

The threats include promises of a protest. Joyce said that while the group has yet to apply for a permit to protest, his organization was looking for volunteers to hold signs and to organize such an event. Still, that did not sway the man who owns Gary’s Liquors.

Park said he does not intend to stop carrying the publication that he has had in his store for years and is available for free all over the commonwealth.

"Mr. Joyce has way too much time on his hands. He should be helping homeless people and the elderly. If he doesn't like the paper, then don't come pick it up," said Park, who stressed that his business caters to individuals who are age 21 and older.

Someone should tell Joyce that picking up a copy of the Phoenix every week is not mandatory. Although I recommend it.

By the way, the name of Joyce's organization is the delightfully Orwellian Support Community Decency Inc. (Via Universal Hub, which also links to this story in the West Roxbury Bulletin.)

Googling the New York Times

In my latest for the Guardian, I expand on John Ellis' intriguing idea that Google ought to consider buying the New York Times Co.

More bad news for casino proponents

Another day, another round-up of news suggesting that Gov. Deval Patrick's proposal to build three gambling casinos in Massachusetts, and a bid by the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe to construct the world's largest casino in Middleborough, are as happening as Fred Thompson's presidential campaign. This morning we consider four developments.

1. In the Herald, Dave Wedge reports that revenue from three casinos in Detroit is dropping like a rock, with tax money for the state of Michigan falling by $10 million over the past year. Wedge quotes a Detroit autoworker named Mark Hauswirth thusly: "They ruin the city. People blow all their money. It don't help nobody but the people who own them." Hauswirth knows whereof he speaks: Wedge interviewed him at, yes, a casino.

Are analogies fair? I don't know. Building three casinos in a depressed city like Detroit is hardly the same as spreading them out in a relatively prosperous state like Massachusetts. But local casino critics like state Rep. Dan Bosley have been warning us that casinos don't generate anywhere near as much money as proponents like to think. The Detroit experience definitely falls in line with that.

2. House Speaker Sal DiMasi disses Patrick big-time in today's Globe, telling reporter Matt Viser that he's endorsing Hillary Clinton for president because Barack Obama is too inexperienced — just like Patrick.

"I think Massachusetts will look at it to find out what they can see in Obama with respect to what they did with their vote for Governor Patrick," DiMasi is quoted as saying. "To be perfectly honest, I really don't want my president to be in there in a learning process for the first six months to a year. It's too important."

I've heard the Obama-Patrick comparison many times, and I find it borderline offensive. What do they have in common other than a political consultant (David Axelrod) and, oh yes, the fact that they are both African-American? But Media Nation is in tea leaf-reading mode today. And the leaves tell me that DiMasi has decided to take the gloves off after a period of relative calm. Since DiMasi has already made it clear that he opposes Patrick's casino plan, his outspokenness suggests that he won't mind killing it once and for all.

3. The Globe's Frank Phillips informs us that Patrick "has set up a novel political fund-raising system that allows him to skirt the state's campaign finance law by channeling big contributions through the state Democratic Party, which, in turn, has paid off hundreds of thousands of dollars of the governor's political expenses."

If this were a big deal, I'd expect that Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause of Massachusetts, would be upset. Instead, Phillips writes that Wilmot "found nothing about Patrick's strategy that prompted alarm." Still, it places Patrick on the defense once again, hampering his ability to move his agenda forward. When it comes to casinos, that's a good thing.

4. Finally, it turns out that the proposed site of the Middleborough casino may be the home of a rare species of turtle called the northern red-bellied cooter. Gladys Kravitz explains why it matters — although Alicia Elwell, writing in the Brockton Enterprise, reports that maybe the turtle doesn't live there after all.

Much wrangling ahead, you can be sure.

More powerful than Googlezon!*

One of my favorite bomb-tossers, John Ellis, has uncorked a doozy. In a column for the Web site RealClearMarkets, Ellis proposes that Google make an offer to the New York Times Co. that it can't refuse. Ellis' arguments:

• Mega-wealthy Google could easily afford to buy the Times Co., the price of which will only keep dropping.
• Even though the Times Co.'s controlling stock is owned by members of the Sulzberger family, who don't want to sell, there's a point beyond which the family can no longer screw other shareholders.
• Rupert Murdoch seems determined to transform the Wall Street Journal into a serious competitor to the Times on all kinds of news, not just financial — and he can afford to run the Journal at a loss.
• Google, like Murdoch, doesn't need to turn a profit with a small investment like the Times — but may make money anyway if it can leverage Times content across multiple platforms.
• Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. isn't getting it done, and has been in charge for so long now that it seems clear that's not going to change.

Ellis, a former Boston Globe columnist, offers some provocation for us locals as well, suggesting that Google could get the price down to a mere $3 billion or so by selling off the Times Co.'s other properties, including the Globe, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and its share of the Red Sox and of New England Sports Network. (If the right buyer for the Globe can be found? Go ahead, make my day. But that's a big if.)

Ellis' piece is a suggestion, not a prediction. Still, it's worth noting that in October 2006, when it looked as though a group headed by retired General Electric chairman Jack Welch might buy the Globe, Ellis wrote: "Mr. Sulzberger would be a fool, of course, to sell the Globe to anyone at this juncture."

He was exactly right. Which raises the question of whether Times Co. executives now would be fools not to sell the Globe.

Ellis' proposal is logical, if unlikely to happen. But given that all of our great news organizations are going to have to find new, once-unthinkable ways of surviving, I can imagine a worse fate for the Times than landing in the arms of Google, which generally, though not always, lives up to its "don't be evil" philosophy. Better Google than Murdoch, certainly. (Via Romenesko.)

*Click here for reference.

An ugly Democratic split

My former Boston Phoenix colleague Al Giordano, on leave from the Narco News Bulletin, has been blogging the presidential campaign this winter. He's got a particularly detailed and perceptive post on the Nevada Democratic caucuses, in which he offers some thoughts — backed up by first-hand reporting — on the increasingly ugly split between pro-Obama African-Americans and pro-Clinton Latinos. Giordano writes:

Now, I'm a connoisseur of ugliness in all its forms, I find it mostly entertaining, but the part of yesterday's caucus that was so ugly as to be distressing was to see the Hispanic and black communities so polarized: The Clinton caucusers were predominantly Hispanic-American and the Obama caucusers were predominantly African-American — most on both sides were women — and they shouted and taunted each other with boos, cat-calls, hisses, thumbs down, and at one point one man on the Obama side began chanting, "I did not have sex with that woman!"

He concludes: "Frankly, unless events conspire during this 2008 Democratic primary process to reverse those truly ugly developments, any Democrat that thinks that November is already won is a fool that is not to be taken seriously from here on out." (Thanks to Media Nation reader C.M.)

News as community

Good news for North Shore and Merrimack Valley news junkies. Starting Feb. 1, the Eagle-Tribune papers will open up their Web sites and provide all content for free. Currently, you have to be a paid subscriber to the print edition. The papers include four dailies, the Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, the Daily News of Newburyport, the Salem News and the Gloucester Times.
Here's the announcement.

What's interesting about this isn't that you'll no longer have to pay. It's that company executives have embraced the open Web, and now understand that there's more value to be had — and more money to be made — by building online communities around their journalism.

They've been moving in that direction for some time with projects like RallyNorth.net, a separate site dedicated to high school sports and, more recently, the addition of Witches Brew, the Salem High School newspaper. Add in the blogs and multimedia features that are being integrated into the site, and you have a pretty good example of the "news as a conversation" model.

The Eagle-Tribune model is regional, as befits the four papers' mission. GateHouse Media, which publishes weeklies in just about every community in Eastern Massachusetts (as well as a few dailies), takes a more hyperlocal approach with its Wicked Local sites. Here is the chain's site for Danvers, which also happens to be one of the towns that the Salem News covers.

Slowly but surely, the news business is reinventing itself.

Good deed, unfortunate twist

Michael Paulson reports in today's Globe that billionaire developer Thomas Flatley has sold a $14 million office building to the Archdiocese of Boston for less than $100. It's a feel-good story about a dedicated Catholic giving back to his church.

But if I lived in Braintree, I might have a different reaction. Though Paulson's story doesn't say, I would imagine that the property will now become tax-exempt. With an assessed value of $14 million and a commercial tax rate (MS Word) of $18.97, the building has been bringing in some $265,000 per year in tax revenue. So that's a pretty big hit.

Time for DiMasi to just say no

House Speaker Sal DiMasi can save Deval Patrick's governorship. He can do it by sending the governor's casino-gambling plan to the floor as soon as possible and then killing it once and for all. Patrick will thank him some day — say, in 2010, if he chooses to run for re-election.

Patrick's obsession with casinos and the money they will purportedly bring has reached a dangerous stage. As Frank Phillips reports in today's Globe, and Casey Ross in the Herald, Patrick made longstanding rumors come true by including non-existent casino revenue in his budget proposal for the fiscal year that will begin next July.

I am not going to get into a debate over whether or not the state needs the money. Casino gambling's social ills have been well-documented, and would be exceedingly bad news for the state. DiMasi has dropped numerous hints that he wants to defeat Patrick's three-casino plan, but has been wary of acting too abruptly — perhaps sensitive to comments he made early in Patrick's term that were seen as disrespectful. Well, it would be better for all concerned, including Patrick, to put this sorry chapter behind us once and for all.

If there's a budget gap, some combination of spending cuts and tax increases will take care of that. It is not up to those of us who oppose casino gambling and the crime, addiction, divorces and suicides they create to solve the state's fiscal problems. The state and local tax burden in Massachusetts is in the middle of the pack nationally, so the problem can't be so horrible that reasonable people shouldn't be able to solve it.

I also had to laugh when I read that Patrick proposes to use gambling revenues to offset an anticipated shortfall in state Lottery receipts. Casino gambling will almost certainly do considerable harm to the Lottery, making this nothing more than a shell game.

Mr. Speaker, just kill it now.

Last Republicans standing

It is with some amazement that I find myself thinking of Mitt Romney as one of the last two Republicans standing — and as the person who might at this point be the favorite to win the nomination. Yes, just last night I said that John McCain probably had a clearer path than anyone else. But I've been rethinking that.

First, let me deal with the also-rans, all of whom are pretty much done at this point.

• Mike Huckabee. It ended last night for the good reverend. If he can't ride the Confederate flag and his bizarre equation of homosexuality and bestiality to victory in South Carolina, he certainly can't do it anywhere else.
• Fred Thompson. Dead man walking or dead man withdrawing — it's up to him.
• Rudy Giuliani. Wasn't he supposed to be running for president? Of the United States, not just Florida?
  
• Ron Paul. He'll keep getting whatever he's getting.

So we've basically got a two-man race between McCain and Romney, which was pretty hard to imagine after Romney lost New Hampshire. I didn't hear any squawking last October when Ryan Lizza wrote in the New Yorker that Romney's only chance was to win Iowa and New Hampshire, then hope for momentum. He lost both, of course, and has won only one competitive state — Michigan. Yet he's very much alive.

Consider that McCain has won two hard-fought primaries, New Hampshire and South Carolina, but has yet to win a plurality of Republicans anywhere. As Adam Nagourney observes in the New York Times today, many of the upcoming primaries are for Republicans only.

Consider, too, that conservatives have been split among Romney, Huckabee and Thompson. Not anymore.

Add to this Romney's personal fortune and his willingness to say absolutely anything to get elected, and he may very well have the edge.

Finally, check out Jeff Jacoby's column in today's Globe. Jacoby, a conservative who's been mocking Romney since 1994, is appalled at Romney's attempt to don the cloak of Ronald Reagan.

Photo (cc) by Joe Crimmings. Some rights reserved.

A GOP frontrunner?

John McCain certainly looks like one tonight. His speech was much more passionate and direct than the one he gave in New Hampshire, and, for Republicans, there is no more important a prize than South Carolina.

Anything could happen, but right now the least surprising outcome would be McCain's winning Florida and then wrapping up the nomination on Super Tuesday or shortly thereafter. Certainly Mitt Romney seems to be the only obstacle still standing in his way.

I know, I know. Pretty obvious stuff, eh? Well, at least I'm only giving you 15 seconds of it. The cable nets have been at it all night.

Mitt Romney and the truth

Reporters don't like to call politicians liars, even when they lie. We tend to use euphemisms — "at odds with the facts" being a favorite. But Mitt Romney is a liar — a flagrant repeat offender. Everyone knows it, and the press doesn't quite know what to do about it.

Yesterday, Associated Press reporter Glen Johnson couldn't take it anymore, interrupting Romney when he said, "I don't have lobbyists running my campaign. I don't have lobbyists that are tied to my —"

"That's not true," Johnson interjected. "Ron Kaufman's a lobbyist." Kaufman, a longtime Massachusetts politico and a lobbyist, has been heavily involved in Romney's campaign.

If you watch the video, you'll see that Romney tries to hang his argument on a technicality, saying that Kaufman isn't "running" his campaign. But it is simply a matter of objective fact that Kaufman is "tied" to Romney's campaign (as Romney started to say), and at a very high level.

I know Johnson a bit. He's a professional. Perhaps he shouldn't have leaped in quite as aggressively as he did yesterday, but how much of this garbage can he be expected to listen to? And do watch the video all the way to the end. You don't want to miss Romney and his spokesman, Eric Ferhnstrom, trying to intimidate Johnson for doing his job.

Just two prominent other examples of Romney's lies that you probably already know about:

• At a televised debate in New Hampshire, John McCain complained that Romney had described his illegal-immigration proposal as "amnesty" in a television commercial. Romney's response: "I don't describe your plan as amnesty in my ad. I don't call it amnesty." Well, yes he did.
  
• As David Bernstein recently revealed in the Boston Phoenix, Romney's oft-repeated claim that his father, George Romney, had marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is not true. Some Romney defenders, including Jay Severin of WTKK (96.9 FM), continue to insist that Romney only meant it metaphorically. But the Romney campaign knew better, producing two eyewitnesses who claimed — falsely — that they had seen the elder Romney and King walking side by side in Grosse Pointe, Mich., in 1963. And this 1978 quote from the Mittster would seem to be beyond parsing: "My father and I marched with Martin Luther King Jr. through the streets of Detroit."

Of course, the entire reason that Romney has suddenly reassumed his former persona as a skilled business executive is that Republicans found his late embrace of right-wing social issues to be utterly unbelievable, as the Globe's Scot Lehigh notes today.

Even as a liberal media critic, I don't like calling Romney a liar. But Romney is proving to be something of an ethical test for journalists. When a candidate lies repeatedly, as Romney has, should a journalist maintain objectivity and refrain from saying the obvious? Or does he or she have an ethical obligation to point out that the liar is lying again? I'd argue the latter.

Scott Allen Miller, who saved me the trouble of tracking down the video, weighs in usefully.

More lobbyists: Bernstein's got 'em. (Via the Outraged Liberal.)

Something happened (II)

No one will ever confuse Media Nation with Patriots Country. I am the most casual of football fans. They're playing sometime this weekend, right? Uh ... the Chargers? OK. I'll watch the second half. If I'm around. I mean, I want them to win, but this isn't baseball.

So it's not fevered fandom that leads me to say the anti-violence group Jane Doe Inc. is all wrong in calling for the Patriots to bench Randy Moss, as Jessica Van Sack reports in today's Herald. Yes, of course, he's innocent unless proven guilty. That goes without saying.

But this goes beyond that. The situation involving Moss is truly ambiguous. We have no idea of what really happened, of course. But the version being put out by Moss' lawyers (Globe coverage here; Herald here) is not implausible. We need to let this play out. And to let Moss play.

The slower the better

Jason Schwartz, blogging for Boston Magazine, thinks it's "obscene" that the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs doesn't have Internet access, thus slowing down its work in deciding whether the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe can open the world's largest casino in Middleborough.

I think it's great.

Something happened

In the Globe, Christopher Gasper writes that Patriots star receiver Randy Moss says it was "an accident." In the Herald, Karen Guregian has a little more, reporting that Moss told her his female friend had suffered a "slight injury." Both papers report Moss' assertion that he did nothing wrong.

But there's an allegation of violence against a woman, a restraining order and the certainty that we're going to learn much more in the days and weeks ahead. Ugh.

Ron Paul's ghostwriter

Julian Sanchez and David Weigel, writing at Reason Online, say the identity of the person who authored racist, homophobic screeds in Ron Paul's newsletters is an open secret. They identify him as Llewellyn Rockwell Jr., Paul's former congressional chief of staff, who promoted a strategy aimed at fusing the libertarian right with paleoconservatives.

Rockwell denied the allegation when contacted by The New Republic, and he refused to talk with Reason. But Sanchez and Weigel have gathered a lot of material. And as they say, Paul's "new supporters, many of whom are first encountering libertarian ideas through the Ron Paul Revolution, deserve a far more frank explanation than the campaign has as yet provided of how their candidate's name ended up atop so many ugly words."

The truth about Ron Paul

In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at Ron Paul's past association with racist, homophobic newsletters, as well as persistent rumors that he continues to dally with some of the more fragrant elements of the extreme right. What is the truth? It's time for the major media to dig in and find out.

Big changes at Bay Windows

Bay Windows editor and FOMN (Friend of Media Nation) Susan Ryan-Vollmar is leaving the weekly newspaper and taking a top communications job with the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation.

Susan, with whom I had the pleasure to work at the Boston Phoenix for a number of years, will be succeeded by Laura Kiritsy. Like Susan, Kiritsy will edit both Bay Windows, which covers the gay-and-lesbian community in Greater Boston, and an affiliated neighborhood weekly, the South End News.

Here is the press release:

Bay Windows and South End News co-publishers Sue O'Connell and Jeff Coakley are pleased to announce that Laura Kiritsy has been named editor-in-chief for both newspapers. Former editor Susan Ryan-Vollmar will formally step down next week to take a position with the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation.

Kiritsy has been with the company since 2000. In 2002 she was named Associate Editor. Kiritsy's tenure has been distinguished with important coverage of Beacon Hill politics. During the 2004 Constitutional Convention — the first of many to deal with the issue of civil marriage rights — Kiritsy broke the news of state Rep. Cheryl Coakley-Rivera's decision to come out publicly. She also broke the news of state Rep. Gene O'Flaherty and state Rep. John Rogers's decisions to oppose any attempts to amend the state constitution to ban the marriages of same-sex couples. Her ongoing coverage of the New Hampshire presidential primary received national attention.

In 2004 she was awarded the Sarah Petit Memorial Award for Excellence in LGBT Media by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. She also holds three awards for excellence in coverage of social issues and general news from the New England Press Association.

"Laura is uniquely qualified to edit both of our newspapers," said co-publisher Jeff Coakley. "Her work is a critical component of what we do, and we're looking forward to what she will accomplish with both papers and their websites."

"Her weekly column on politics is a must-read for local activists and political insiders," said co-publisher Sue O'Connell, who added that Kiritsy planned to continue writing the column.

Kiritsy said she was "honored" to be named editor-in-chief of Bay Windows and South End News. "I look forward to continuing the tradition of commitment to quality community journalism that has long distinguished both papers."

Ryan-Vollmar was editor-in-chief of both papers for three years. During that time Bay Windows and South End News won 14 editorial awards from the New England Press Association including a special award for Bay Windows's extensive coverage of the civil marriage rights debate.

"Susan Ryan-Vollmar raised the bar on what could be accomplished by a small, independently-owned publication covering a crucial local issue — gay marriage — that also held national importance," said O'Connell. "Her work on the historic same-sex marriage battle was the best in the country."

Bay Windows is New England's largest weekly newspaper serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. South End News is a general-interest newspaper serving the South End neighborhood in Boston.

At the Phoenix, Susan was instrumental in overseeing Kristen Lombardi's groundbreaking coverage of Cardinal Bernard Law's involvement in the pedophile-priest scandal, as well as the Phoenix's own coverage of same-sex marriage.

She also excelled in finding my ledes, usually buried about three-quarters of the way into a 3,000-word piece.

Susan's move is a huge loss to the local media scene, but also a great opportunity for Laura, whom I do not know well, but who's clearly accomplished a lot in the past few years.

Not mutually exclusive

Dean Barnett writes in today's New York Times:

The Mitt Romney I got to know was warm and likable. He had an electric intelligence. He was unfailingly decent. He was totally committed to his family. He treated everyone with respect and kindness.

If you're like most politically attuned Americans, you probably don't agree with my description of Mr. Romney. You may consider him to be the personification of political ambition. You possibly believe he will say anything to get elected president. You might even consider him one of the least honorable politicians in the country.

I'm not sure why Barnett thinks that these two propositions are mutually exclusive. I've never thought Romney was anything other than a smart, good person with a terrific family. He'd make a great neighbor. Sure, he has these weird delusions that he and his father marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but those are harmless.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I've ever seen a presidential candidate as eager to reinvent himself on every issue in order to pander for a few more votes. The latest: his ridiculous promises to reinvent the auto industry in Michigan, which just so happens to be holding a primary today.

Mitt Romney: Nice guy, pandering pol. Not the first, but more blatant than most.

Let there be light

Like most people, Media Nation is slowly moving to fluorescent light bulbs. But what I can't figure out is this: Why do some bulbs give off a nice, warm (metaphorically speaking), incandescent-looking glow, while others are cold and blue? I haven't been able to figure out how to tell the difference based on brand or any listed features. Does anyone have advice?

Update: Problem solved, thanks to the Media Nation brain trust.

Fake outrage over a non-issue (II)

A New York Times/CBS News national poll of Democrats and Republicans shows that the constant drumbeat over illegal immigration simply isn't registering.

According to the underlying data (PDF), just 5 percent believe that immigration is the most important problem facing the country — well behind war and Iraq (a cumulative 22 percent) and the economy (20 percent), and slightly behind health care (7 percent).

When asked what kind of change they most want to see the next president bring about, reducing illegal immigration (4 percent of respondents) was again well down on the list, behind improving the economy (20 percent), dealing with the war in Iraq (14 percent), improving health care (6 percent) and helping the middle class (5 percent).

Just to reinforce the point, John McCain — perceived as taking the least draconian stand on illegal immigration of any Republican presidential candidate — now gets the highest favorability ratings.

As Globe columnist Joan Vennochi points out, even though Gov. Deval Patrick is taking a political risk with his not-quite-proposal to extend in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants, Patrick is well aware that immigrant-bashing has proved to be a loser of an issue.

Herald columnist Peter Gelzinis makes the same observation, writing:

Do you think Gov. Deval Patrick would be floating the idea of lowering state college tuition rates for illegal immigrants at this moment if Mitt Romney's $40 million "illegal alien" screed had carried him to victory in Iowa and New Hampshire?

I don't think so. Deval may be a moonbat, but he did manage to graduate from the same law school as Willard.

Gelzinis also notes that Patrick's Republican opponent for the governorship in 2006, Kerry Healey, made a huge deal of illegal immigration. Healey, of course, became the first Republican candidate to lose a governor's race in Massachusetts since 1986.

Politicians make a huge mistake when they confuse what they hear on talk radio with what most average Americans have on their minds.

Original sin and the Big Dig

The importance of Sean Murphy's story in yesterday's Globe is that it reinforces a gnawing fear many of us experience every time we drive through the O'Neill Tunnel — that today may be the day all hell breaks loose, and that we'll be buried alive under tons of water-logged dirt.

Am I being overly dramatic? Perhaps. Officials whom Murphy interviewed seek to assure us that the ongoing mini-flood inside the tunnel is no threat to safety. But when we learn that "state officials acknowledged there is already surface rusting on 10 percent of the massive steel girders in the ceiling," it's hard to believe those reassurances.

The picture I take away from this is that of government officials knowing they have a potential catastrophe on their hands and having absolutely no idea of what to do about it. Even if you could close it and start over — and think about the incredible disruption to the region's economy — where would you ever find the money?

The original sin was revealed in this 2004 story, by then-Globe reporter Raphael Lewis with an assist from Murphy. A watertight tunnel required a proven, two-layer approach — a tube within a tube, essentially. But once the tunnel designers realized they didn't have room to do it right, they decided to do it wrong, and to brag about how smart and innovative they were. Thus we have a single tube, leaking from the sides and the top.

Moving forward, the incentives are all wrong. Especially during these early years of the Big Dig, the odds of catastrophic failure are no doubt pretty long. Officialdom has every reason to kick the can down the road, reasonably secure in the knowledge that we can get by for now. If Gov. Deval Patrick were to take drastic, disruptive action without a compelling reason, he'd be excoriated for creating a one-man recession.

Yet who knows what the truth is? It's likely that even those studying the tunnel most closely don't know whether it will last 25 years, the timeline in Murphy's story, or 25 months. (And how do you like that 25-year figure? If it had opened in 1982, which doesn't seem that long ago to me, we'd be looking at replacing it now.)

Even though the problem was unrelated to the leaks, we've all known since Melina Del Valle was crushed to death that something had gone horribly wrong with the Big Dig. In the absence of any good ideas for fixing it, we'll all be playing Massachusetts Roulette every time we drive through it.

There may come a time, if it hasn't already arrived, that the Big Dig will be viewed as the most blatant example of government incompetence in our history. And before you start sharpening your ideological swords, it's unclear whether the problem was too much government or not enough. Certainly there should have been far more oversight of Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, the private partnership given carte blanche to design and build the project.

What a disaster.

Photo (cc) by Scutter. Some rights reserved.

Hoyt's mixed bag on Kristol

New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt's column on the hiring of William Kristol is disappointing, but entertaining nevertheless.

It's disappointing because he quotes the most unhinged, illiterate e-mails the Times has received so that he can claim that at least some Kristol-bashers are nothing but ignorant haters, and because he blows right past the criticism that Kristol "is an activist with the potential to embarrass The Times with his outside involvements." Well, yeah. That's disqualifying, or at least it ought to be.

But Hoyt is right on the money in flogging Kristol for publicly urging that the Times be prosecuted for committing the sin of journalism against the Bush administration. And he's touchingly naive in saying that Kristol's refusal to talk to him was "an odd stance for someone who presumably will want others to talk to him for his column."

Does Hoyt really think Kristol is going to do any reporting?

Last word on the Bradley effect?

If you haven't read John Judis' analysis at The New Republic yet, you should. Judis has looked at the numbers from New Hampshire and found that 57 percent of those voting in the Democratic primary were women — substantially more than the 53 percent that had been predicted. Change that assumption, and you'd have had poll numbers within the margin of error. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Where are those college students?

I just got an e-mail from a long-time correspondent who reminded me of something that the cable pundits should have known Tuesday night. Remember when they were saying that Obama still had a chance because the college towns hadn't reported? Well, guys, the semester hasn't started yet.

I overlooked that because classes started at Northeastern last week. But we're on an unusual schedule. Very few other schools start until next week, or in some cases even later. Shouldn't the folks who make the big bucks have figured that out?

Fake outrage over a non-issue

The talk shows are already going nuts over Gov. Deval Patrick's statement that he may issue an executive order allowing illegal immigrants who live in Massachusetts to pay the in-state tuition rate at public colleges or universities (Globe story here; Herald story here).

But Lt. Gov. Tim Murray, appearing this morning on Tom Finneran's show on WRKO (AM 680), said at least twice that such immigrants would be eligible only if they can document that they are in the process of seeking legal status. He also said there would only be about 400 or 500 eligible kids.

Not a big deal. Then again, we already know that anger over illegal immigration is one of those phony issues that doesn't extend much beyond Talk Show Nation. Just ask Mitt Romney how his tough-guy talk played in Iowa and New Hampshire.

More on the (Tom) Bradley effect

Over at Hub Blog, Jay Fitzgerald has a good post linking to two commentaries by pollsters. In the New York Times, Andrew Kohut argues that a subtle version of the Bradley effect may have made Barack Obama's support in New Hampshire look stronger than it was — lower-income white voters who might tend to reject a black candidate are also less likely to answer polling questions in the first place.

But John Zogby, in the Huffington Post, says (at least I think this is what he's saying) that the pollsters didn't get it wrong so much as they ran out of time. Uh, OK.

Cheap laugh, false charge

On tonight's Fox News debate, Fred Thompson just said the reason you can tell the war in Iraq is going well is that you read so little about it in the New York Times.

Here you go, Senator. And if you can find another news organization doing this much coverage, let me know.

More on the Bradley effect

Only this time I'm talking about Bill, not Tom. Robert David Sullivan, one of my editors at CommonWealth Magazine, has analyzed the results of the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama contest in New Hampshire and finds an eerie resemblance to the 2000 Democratic primary between Al Gore and Bill Bradley.

Apparently the archetype is more important than the person. I can't see much resemblance between Hillary Clinton and Al Gore, but each appealed to New Hampshire's more traditional Democrats. And the smug, self-regarding Bradley couldn't be more different from the electrifying Obama (OK, Obama is a bit self-regarding, too), but both had their base among the affluent, the well-educated and the young.

Robert does things with maps and stats that I can barely comprehend, but he makes a plausible case that the way to win a Democratic primary in New Hampshire is to go after the party regulars. Among other things, unlike young people and independents, they can always be counted on to vote.

Random thoughts on N.H.

So what do you care what I think? Like everyone else, I believed the polls and figured Barack Obama was going to win New Hampshire by 10 points — and then run away with the Democratic nomination. In retrospect, Hillary Clinton's victory makes sense. (It always does in retrospect, doesn't it?) Why? A few thoughts.

1. The gender card. No, I'm not going to say what you think I'm going to say. The gender card was not played so much by Clinton as by her enemies, especially among the media commentariat. I was struck by something Robin Young said on WBUR (90.9 FM) this morning. During the last few days of the campaign, she said, it seemed as though the media were really piling on, gleefully predicting Clinton's demise and all but calling her a "bitch." (Young didn't actually use the word.)

The result may have been that women in New Hampshire were offended enough to cast their votes for Clinton, whereas in Iowa they largely supported Obama. It wasn't a huge leap for them to do so, given that the polls showed they had supported Clinton for months, and had only briefly considered switching to Obama at the end. It didn't help that some of the more idiotic commentators all but accused her of faking tears on Monday.

2. A real primary. Following Clinton's defeat in Iowa, her supporters tried to claim that the boutique nature of the Iowa caucuses had worked against their candidate. The caucuses are custom-made for the sort of affluent, well-educated liberal activists who've comprised Obama's base from day one. The idea was that middle- and lower-income working people are less likely to blow an evening at their local caucus. For one thing, they might be working.

Everyone snickered, of course. But it may be that the Clintonistas were right.

3. Depth of support. One aspect to the race that the media completely missed was the longstanding affection New Hampshire Democrats have for the Clintons. When you see polls showing Clinton losing by a double-digit margin, it's hard to remember that. In the end, though, the idea that voters would abandon her solely on the basis of Obama's Iowa victory was ludicrous, even if it didn't seem that way until the results started coming in.

4. The Bradley effect. Maybe. Probably not, though I raised it as an issue last night. But I do hope some enterprising soul spends some time examining the entrails of all the exit polling from New Hampshire.

Howard Kurtz expertly assesses the media lowlights:

This was delicious. The coverage had been so out of control there was speculation about when Hillary might have to drop out. Polls giving Obama an 8- or 10-point lead were accepted as fact. The news surrounding the former first lady had been uniformly negative for days. She's done everything wrong, Obama has done everything right. She got too emotional in the diner. People just didn't like her. She campaigned in boring prose and Obama in soaring poetry (to use her analogy). Bill was hurting her. A campaign shakeup was on the way. An era was ending. Some pundits were predicting a 20-point Obama margin.

And then the voters actually went to the polls.

The result: Dewey Defeats Truman.

Will the media ever learn? Will they ever just cover this stuff instead of framing everything within the context of what they think (and hope) is going to happen next? I'm not talking about columnists, commentators or — perish the thought! — bloggers. I'm talking about straight-news reporters who spent five days swooning over Obama as the New New Thing, only to learn that they had missed the story once again.

So, do you want another prediction? I think Clinton has regained most, if not all, of her momentum as the inevitable nominee. If Obama wins the South Carolina primary on Jan. 19 — which he certainly could, given that half the state's Democratic electorate is African-American — then he could be right back in it. But who really knows?

As Jay Fitzgerald says, channeling Bill Parcells, "That's why we play the games."

Photo — obviously not from last night — (cc) by Llima. Some rights reserved.

Times' robot goes green

Toward the end of a New York Times story on Hillary Clinton's comeback this morning appears this sentence: "In Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton is facing an opponent who has been lifted on the wind of nationwide anti-Washington climate change." So go ahead — click on "climate change." Looks like some artificial stupidity at work.

Clinton and Obama

I'm watching Hillary Clinton's speech right now, and the atmospherics are interesting. The crowd behind her is much younger than the one that was with her in Iowa, which shows that she learned from Barack Obama's event last week. For that matter, she looks younger. So does Bill.

Obama's speech was characteristically excellent, but it differed little from the one he delivered in Iowa. For that matter, it differed little from the one he might have given if he'd won tonight. Could he have been unprepared for defeat?

Clinton's speech, at least in a surface kind of way, makes me think of McCain's — pedestrian, but warm enough to compensate. Clinton does not often strike people as warm, so this could prove to be pretty effective.

She's promising "to end the war in Iraq the right way," a mild shot at Obama's unqualified pledge to bring the troops home.

She's really pushing the youth thing: "I want to thank the young people in New Hampshire who came out. They asked the hard questions, and they voted their hearts and minds. And I really appreciate it."

So now what? She survived a near-death experience and won New Hampshire, the first and arguably the most important primary. Clearly nobody knows anything, least of all me. I'll point out only that for the past year, Clinton has seemed like the inevitable nominee with the exception of just the past five days. Now she's the inevitable nominee once again. Unless and until she isn't.

The AP calls it for Clinton

Here's the story. But CNN is holding out.

McCain's speech

Warm but stilted. John McCain is far better interacting with a crowd or giving interviews than he is delivering a speech. He always sounds like he's reading it, and he never sounds like he's totally into it. He gave a perfectly fine speech tonight, but he didn't take advantage of the moment quite to the degree he could have.

I thought Mitt Romney's speech was better than usual. Is he finished? It's hard to believe otherwise. Back in October, Ryan Lizza wrote in the New Yorker:

[Romney] must win the early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, states where he has been leading in the polls, and create enough momentum and media attention to carry him through to February 5th, when some twenty states will vote — including New York and California, where Romney is barely known.

He held a huge lead in both states for months, then blew it at the end. He is, as the pundits are pointing out, the only Massachusetts governor or senator ever to lose the New Hampshire primary.

I'm sure Romney will continue at least until Super Tuesday, Feb. 5. But I've got to believe that it's over.

The Obama effect

Is it possible that Barack Obama is falling victim to the Bradley effect? The Bradley effect takes its name from Tom Bradley, the African-American mayor of Los Angeles who was comfortably ahead in the polls in the 1982 California governor's race.

Bradley ended up losing to a white Republican, George Deukmejian. It turned out that a small but decisive proportion of white voters had told pollsters they were planning to vote for Bradley but in fact ended up voting for Deukmejian. Some speculated that those white voters had lied to pollsters because they didn't want to be perceived as racists.

Obviously you can vote for Hillary Clinton without being a racist. But the results so far certainly don't jibe with the polls.

Obama could still win, especially since the college towns' votes haven't been counted yet.

On second thought: O-Fish-L, in his inimitable way, argues that it's not likely Obama suffered from the Bradley effect in a Democratic primary — especially in New Hampshire, whose Democrats are overwhelmingly liberal.

Tight race, wrong party

Well, this is unexpected. But isn't it always? Right now, it looks like John McCain will defeat Mitt Romney by a comfortable margin in New Hampshire, which is a slight surprise. But Hillary Clinton is ahead of Barack Obama, with the outcome too close to call — a larger surprise. Strap yourselves in.

Outrageous

Jim Rice is passed over for the Hall of Fame again. Goose Gossage, who did make it, says:

Just from what I know and facing these guys, I think Jim Rice does belong in the Hall of Fame and I've said that all along. No hitter scared me, but Jim Rice came the closest. What a tremendous hitter he was. He made that whole Boston lineup a better lineup.

No kidding. I understand that Rice is a marginal candidate. But he had a fine career, and in the late 1970s he was the most devastating hitter in baseball.

McCain widens lead (or not)

For what it's worth — and it's probably not worth much, given the volatility of such things — Zogby is reporting that John McCain is now leading Mitt Romney in New Hampshire by a margin of 36 percent to 27 percent, up from 34 percent to 29 percent in the previous tracking poll. This could mean that McCain has managed to stop Romney's mini-comeback. More likely it means nothing at all.

Enough for Obama and McCain?

If the turnout predictions reported by Boston.com's James Pindell turn out to be accurate — or, as he thinks, prove to be on the low side — then there should be enough independent votes out there to float Barack Obama and John McCain. Pundits have been looking at the independent vote as a zero-sum game, and as Obama has risen, McCain has dropped back a bit closer to Mitt Romney. But that may not be the way things work out.

Channeling no one but himself

New York Times reporter Michael Powell asserts that John McCain is borrowing rhetoric from Barack Obama. Yet in his only example, he shows that McCain is borrowing from himself:

Mr. McCain admits to admiring Mr. Obama's appeal as a "wonderful thing" and has taken to borrowing a line or three. He has been channeling Mr. Obama, calling on Americans to "serve a cause greater than their self-interest," a theme from his campaign in 2000.

Indeed it is a theme from McCain's 2000 campaign. So why does Powell say that McCain is "channeling Mr. Obama"?

Heading south in the North Country

In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at what went wrong for Mitt Romney. The favorite in Iowa and New Hampshire barely a month ago, it now looks like it could be all but over when the polls close tomorrow night.

What do I know, anyway?

I watched the Fox News Republican debate earlier this evening, and was surprised to see that Frank Luntz's focus group thought Mitt Romney was the big winner. I thought Romney came off as petulant and twerpy for the first hour-plus, though he did warm up a bit toward the end.

Update: This might explain the Luntz crowd's reaction. Or maybe they're just professional undecideds. (Via Mickey Kaus.)