Expectations Game

As the Republican convention nears, someone in the Kerry campaign has distributed some interesting statistics from past presidential races:

* The average winning incumbent has had a job approval rating of 60%. Indeed, every incumbent who has won reelection has had his job approval in the mid-50’s or higher at this point. In recent polling, Bush’s average approval rating has been 48%. President Bush must emerge from his convention having dramatically altered public perception of his performance in office.
* In recent years, when incumbents have gone on to victory, 52% of voters, on average, said the country was on the right track. Now, just 37% think things are moving in the right direction. Thus, President Bush must convince the electorate that the nation is in much better shape than voters now believe to be the case. Every incumbent who has gone on to be reelected has had a double-digit lead at this point.
* Following their conventions, the average elected incumbent has held a 16-point lead, while winning incumbents have led by an average of 27 points. Bush will need a very substantial bounce to reach the mark set by his successful predecessors.
* Incumbents have enjoyed an average bounce in the vote margin of 8 points.
* On average, incumbents’ share of the two-party vote has declined by 4 points between their convention and Election Day.
President Bush has the opportunity to achieve an average, or even greater, bounce from his convention. Typically, elected incumbents go into their conventions with a 9-point lead, while incumbents who have gone on to win enter their conventions with a 21-point lead. Most current polls show the race quite close. This gives the president substantial room to bounce. By contrast, Senator Kerry entered his convention in a far stronger position than the average challenger. The average challenger goes into his convention 16 points behind, while Senator Kerry entered his convention with a 1-2 point lead. This gave Senator Kerry much less room to bounce.

Obviously the point here is to point out that the typical incumbent receives a much larger bounce from their convention than Bush is going to receive, thus downplaying the impact of the GOP convention.
I suspect Bush will receive roughly the same type of convention bounce as Kerry got last month–not a very large one. Unless there’s a significant event which shakes up the race, I expect it to remain close (margin of errorish) into October. Ultimately, the winner may open up some space between the loser, but that break probably won’t come until late in the campaign.

Boring

No matter how much the media tries to play up the Iraqi soccer team human interest story, the bottom line is–it’s still soccer. And thus very hard to watch.

Olympic Property

Strange note from a Sally Jenkins column criticizing for a Bush 2004 ad for exploiting the Olympics:

“In 1972 there were 40 democracies in the world, today 120,” says a narrator as flags of all countries wave over a stadium. “Freedom is spreading throughout the world like a sunrise. And this Olympics, there will be two more free nations. And two fewer terrorist regimes.”
The USOC is reviewing the ad and considering whether to ask the campaign to pull it, as an infringement of its exclusive rights to the Olympics. The IOC charter states that the Olympic word, symbol and concept belong exclusively to the IOC (and to the USOC in the United States) and should not be used for political purposes.

Looks like another case of property rights being stretched too far. I can buy the USOC wanting to protect its symbol–they have too or it will lose exclusive rights to the trademark. But wanting to block someone from using the word “Olympics”? And what’s the “concept” which they supposedly have enforceable property rights over?
If they could get away with it, I suspect the IOC would try to forbid people from talking about the games without permission.

Questions, Questions

I don’t think this is the biggest issue going. But if the media is going to air people questioning the size of Kerry’s shrapnel 35 years ago, we might as well be talking about these questions too:

–Why did Bush, described by some of his fellow officers as a talented and enthusiastic pilot, stop flying fighter jets in the spring of 1972 and fail to take an annual physical exam required of all pilots?
–What explains the apparent gap in the president’s Guard service in 1972-73, a period when commanders in Texas and Alabama say they never saw him report for duty and records show no pay to Bush when he was supposed to be on duty in Alabama?
–Did Bush receive preferential treatment in getting into the Guard and securing a coveted pilot slot despite poor qualifying scores and arrests, but no convictions, for stealing a Christmas wreath and rowdiness at a football game during his college years?

We won’t find out answers with records remaining sealed and this type of thing going on:

Since February, the White House has banned all Guard and military commanders outside the Pentagon from commenting on Bush’s records or service. Requests for information must go to the Pentagon’s Freedom of Information Act office.

Of course many of these FOIA requests don’t go anywhere without an accompanying lawsuit, which delays the process for months. But I guess that’s the point; November is less than three months away. And if we can keep the focus on John Kerry’s bleeding, it will be here before we know it.

Objectivity

Sadly, this fairly well summarizes where TV news is at today:

That kind of air-kiss coverage is typical of cable news, where the premium is on speed and spirited banter rather than painstaking accuracy. But it has grown into a lazy habit: anchors do not referee – they act as if their reportage is fair and accurate as long as they have two opposing spokesmen on any issue.

As long as the news is putting on two sides to the argument, it is being “fair and balanced.” Reporters need not do the research necessary to sort through which points are credible and which aren’t. Just frame the debate as a he said/he said type issue and give both sides an opportunity to do some shouting.
UPDATE: Atrios has the transcript of the Daily Show segment which covered this ground last night.
Related reading–E.J. Dionne:

Alas, this is the classic course a smear campaign takes. A group throws up accusations that, when subjected to scrutiny, prove to be full of holes. Supporters of the attack campaign say that, well, those charges may not pan out, but there must be something here. Let’s just keep attacking.
The media have to do more than “he said/he said” reporting. If the charges don’t hold up, they don’t hold up. And, yes, now that John Kerry’s life during his twenties has been put at the heart of this campaign just over two months from Election Day, the media owe the country a comparable review of what Bush was doing at the same time and the same age.
If all the stories about what Kerry did in Vietnam are not balanced by serious scrutiny of Bush in the Vietnam years, the media will be capitulating to a right-wing smear campaign. Surely our nation’s editors and producers don’t want to send a signal that all you have to do to set the media’s agenda is spend a half-million bucks on television ads.

Well, we hope they don’t. But that’s exactly what has happened this month.

Working Overtime To Figure Out Overtime

For months the White House has been attempting to peddle the so-called “FairPay Overtime Initiative” as a step to “simplify” overtime rules.
Interesting that with these simple rules, the Department of Labor has set up a web page to help people understand them, complete with guides and “training” videos.
Moreover, based on the sample coverage I’ve seen today, hardly anyone in the news media appears to understand how the new regulations apply.