James Fallows

This is what the Internet is for. In response to an item about Andy Williams, and a followup that included a video of the great song Aguas de Março as performed by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Elis Regina, messages like this one arrive. It's from a reader in Japan.

If you love that song, then you should definitely watch this version:

The same song, done by the same two, in almost the same manner.

But what makes this truly special is that it appears to be the actual recording session and the exact take that later went on the record and became one of the most beloved bossa nova songs of all time. I can't absolutely confirm that (for one thing, all of the comments are in Portuguese), but I've heard that album a hundred times and, yes, this is that exact version.

Bless whoever had the foresight to set up the camera.

He's right. I find this version incredibly moving, both for its role in recording history and for the magic between the two performers. Including the last few seconds of the clip.

A number of readers also recommended this video of Elis Regina with a jazz combo. And thanks to TH for this link to the intricate lyrics to Aguas de Março, in Portuguese and English.

To wrap this all up, a note from someone who doesn't have a gripe!

Can I just say that there's at least one reader who got what you meant when you offered that clip of Andy Williams and Jobim as a shorthand summary that might illuminate why Mitt Romney's pre-rock personal style seems out of place in our decidedly post-rock culture?  And, can I ask my fellow readers to get over themselves a little?  Did anyone really think that the point of what you were saying was that Romney could, in any way, be equated with the substance of Jobim's music?  Come on! 

The point, as I see it, is that before Rock, with its aesthetic of outsiderism and its claims to sweaty authenticity, took over the center of the popular music universe*, that center was occupied by music that hewed to entirely different criteria.  These were criteria that, rhetorically, placed greater value on execution than emotion, that at its best preferred cleverness and craft to intellectualism or transcendence. I'm not saying that Jobim's music  fits neatly into this paradigm at all, but that this popular aesthetic made a space on the charts for Jobim's music in a way that a Rock-dominated pop aesthetic wouldn't.  And, Jobim, who was a great, great composer, whose tremendously sophisticated music implies transcendent emotion through its very refusal to pander to the listener by acting that emotion out, was happy enough to pursue that place on the charts by dueting with a pure pop singer like Williams.

The interesting thing about this to me is how someone could, as Romney does, seem so untouched by the cultural shifts that we associate with "the sixties" and the Rock aesthetic.  I suspect it has something to do with money, and something to do with his church, and something to do with his personality.  But, either way, what better way to make the point than by offering a glimpse at music from Romney's coming of age period that was literally untouched by the 60s Rock aesthetic because that aesthetic was still plugging it out on the chitlin circuit.

Maybe you could have made this clearer by choosing a video of Williams without someone like Jobim, but that would have seemed to be just taking a cheap shot at Williams on the occasion of his death.  I like this much better, because it illuminates both Mitt Romney and Andy Williams. 

I know a lot about this stuff, but I didn't know about this performance of this song.  The notion that we can't learn anything by putting Mitt Romney next to Jobim and thinking about the moment in time that they both evoke is foolish.  Yes, Jobim's music is timeless and transcendent, a high human achievement.   But it is also tied mnemonically to a specific cultural and historical time, and is sturdy and substantial enough that using it to evoke that moment does it no harm whatsoever.  Those folks rushing to "defend" Jobim here are actually the ones that are seriously underestimating the power of his compositions.
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*People think this happened with Elvis in the 50s, but those gains weren't really consolidated until the mid-1960s, which is why I use "Rock" instead of "Rock and Roll" throughout this.  I actually wrote a dissertation that argues that, after about 1966, the center of the popular music universe is dominated by what I call unpopular popular music: music that is distinguished in the pop marketplace by its supposed transcendence of the marketplace.  The paradox that the most commercially successful music over the past 4 or 5 decades has also often been the music that posits its own authentic uncommerciality is fascinating to me.  As is the fact that Romney seems like a visitor from a place where this never happened.

Two of the people who were most generous to me in journalism and writing died in the past two days.

Robert Manning was the editor of the Atlantic when I first started here, in 1979. Which is to say, he is the person who hired me. This is a photo of him in that same year, from Mark Feeney's obit today in the Boston Globe. He is in the middle, between John Updike and Justin Kaplan.

I have known, respected, and come very much to like Jim Webb over the course of more than 30 years. We originally met because of deep disagreements about the Vietnam War. He went to Annapolis, served with distinction and bravery as Marine officer, was badly wounded, and then in his novels, movies, essays, and public-affairs work championed the memories and the futures of the people he had served with. I was in college while he was in combat, opposed the war, and deliberately avoided being drafted to serve in it.

Over the years we have come to share similar views about many of America's biggest challenges, from the pernicious new culture of permanent undeclared war to the increasing polarization of the country on many fronts but especially including economic class. I was living in China six years ago when Webb made his surprising but welcome decision to challenge George Allen for the U.S. Senate seat from Virginia. I wrote then that

From a partisan perspective, Webb (who served in Ronald Reagan's administration) is just the kind of candidate the Democrats need: a culturally-conservative populist whose personal and policy toughness no one can possibly doubt. More broadly I think he is the kind of politician the country needs more of: someone getting into politics because he feels so strongly about the issues of the day.

Via Andrew Sullivan, I have just seen (while still out of the country) the video of Webb at a Democratic rally in Virginia talking about the idea that 47% of Americans are "takers." It is no secret that Webb has disagreed frequently with the Obama administration and in many ways is an awkward cultural fit with today's Democratic party. But in speaking for the president and the party, in a crucial swing state, Webb displays the unconcealed moral indignation that, in a good way, has distinguished him through his political and literary career.
 


Passages like the one below might look biting enough on the screen, but you should listen to the way Webb delivers them. This part begins two minutes in and is worth hearing in Webb's own voice:

Those young Marines that I led have grown older now. They've lived lives of courage, both in combat and after their return, where many of them were derided by their own peers for having served. That was a long time ago. They are not bitter. They know what they did. But in receiving veterans' benefits, they are not takers. They were givers, in the ultimate sense of that word. There is a saying among war veterans: "All gave some, some gave all." This is not a culture of dependency. It is a part of a long tradition that gave this country its freedom and independence. They paid, some with their lives, some through wounds and disabilities, some through their emotional scars, some through the lost opportunities and delayed entry into civilian careers which had already begun for many of their peers who did not serve.
 
And not only did they pay. They will not say this, so I will say it for them. They are owed, if nothing else, at least a mention, some word of thanks and respect, when a presidential candidate who is their generational peer makes a speech accepting his party's nomination to be commander-in-chief.

This is a theme straight out of Webb's heart and brain and soul. I remember hearing almost exactly the same views from him when we first met in the late 1970s. We sometimes think about campaigns as if they're all about positioning and micro-strategy and all the rest. But every now and then we see the genuine passions and principles that are at stake.

To my no doubt biased mind -- biased as a friend of Webb's, biased as someone who likes very little of what the current GOP represents -- the passage of Webb's is as powerful a response to the "47 percent" video as this also extremely powerful Obama ad.
 


Again, election campaigns are ludicrous spectacles but occasionally more than that.

Have I mentioned recently that Samuel Popkin's book The Candidate is a very useful guide as the presidential debates draw near and as the campaign enters its final stage? Yes I have, and yes it is. And no, although we're friends, he hasn't actually been paying me royalties. Yet.

I bring it up now because the book touches on the underpublicized reality of presidential politics I described recently in response to Ann Romney's "this is hard" remark. The reality is that in national politics everyone, all the time, is tired and running on fumes. Popkin gives us this scene of candidate Jimmy Carter, who had just turned 52 years old (a year older than Barack Obama is now), in October 1976, a few days before his election victory over Gerald Ford:

"Carter was so exhausted from nonstop campaigning that he read memos and speech drafts lying on his side, with the pages on the floor so he could read them without moving."*

Four years later, Popkin was chosen to play the surrogate Ronald Reagan in Carter's preparations for the 1980 presidential debate. He reminded me recently in an email that he was struck

how people do not ever chit chat when going to Oval Office. When POTUS looks up you say the subject and he either answers or says when to return. When done he looks down and you leave. No wasted emotional energy.

Another reader writes in to say there is an angle of the presidential fatigue story that I missed. I had said that one of Michael Lewis's quotes from Barack Obama, in which Obama said he had to make time for exercise if he hoped to survive, and that he always wore either a gray or a blue suit so as to spare himself needless decision making, rang completely true to me. This reader, a woman who is a lawyer, says:

Clearly true on the incredible physical demands of running for President and serving if elected.  I also remember a great guys-on-the-bus story about Hilary Clinton from the 2008 campaign attesting to her cast-iron constitution.  She was giving a massively fact-filled, one-on-one interview in the campaign plane as it approached a landing, and just kept right on talking, standing up, no friggin' seatbelt for her, as she had been for the previous 20 hours or something.  The reporter was in awe. 

On that note, as to the Obama quote -- Obama, and probably Lewis, pretty clearly don't remember what Hilary said during the 2007-08 nomination race, when he [Obama] made similar remarks about having to exercise.  She said: he has time to exercise, because he doesn't have to spend two hours, every single day, getting his make-up and hair done. 

Backwards and in high heels, indeed.   A female candidate -- even one who would clearly personally prefer to go sans make-up -- will not be accepted without super-careful, professional appearance grooming.  Same with the clothes.  Hilary must dream of just being able to roll into a blue or gray suit.  Instead, she's obliged to have a constantly-rotating wardrobe, with accessories, purely because she's a woman.  In addition, it took her a long time to find a sort of uniform -- those pantsuits -- that would conceal her figure appropriately but also look "fashionable," which no man has to do.  She learned very early, the hard way, that bucking these conventions would get her nowhere-- the no make-up, hippie-glasses, frumpy Wellesley head-of-class look got her called a lesbian, communist, you name it.

Men don't understand that a huge reason professional women rallied to Hilary is that WE get it, and, I really believe, Obama does not.  He truly does not comprehend how much harder it is for a woman in so many ways, let alone just on this one physical issue.  If he did, he wouldn't have approved the quote about exercise and wardrobe.  (All Lewis article quotes were approved.) 

Of course it rings true to you.  Rings true to me, also, but very differently.  I see it as callous, unless he went on to say that's one reason he has it easier than any woman facing similar challenges in her job.  I mean, heck, didn't he see Michelle struggle with this when she was working?  Is he so selfish he missed that?  It may seem trivial, but anything which takes even 30 extra minutes out of every day adds up to a major disadvantage. 

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* Forgive me for quoting the very next sentence in Popkin's book:

"The speechwriters were so close to the breaking point that James Fallows said sardonically that the real threat for their Secret Service detail was not assassins but the possibility a crazed speechwriter would throw Carter out a window."

For anyone who might not yet have seen this: Mike Shannon and Will Feltus, at the Atlantic Media's Hotline site, have provided a psycho-graphic/beer-o-graphic post matching beer preference to political outlook and behavior. Read their post for elaboration, and this related story, but this is the crucial graph:


My no-contest clear favorite among all the beers listed turns out to be the reddest of red-state, high-turnout-Republican preference. And the most purely Democratic beer is one I avoid -- although to be fair, I would take it over most of the other weak-tea alternatives displayed here. And, not to be too catty or snooty about it, but how exactly does anyone tell most of these other beers apart?

To me it is interesting (a) that the winning red-state beer has almost nothing in common with the other beers in its same high-turnout Republican-leaning quadrant, and (b) that another beer from the reportedly right-leaning Sam Adams family was the one chosen by Henry Louis Gates at the famous White House beer summit back in 2009. You do have to wonder how this chart would look if it included any craft or micro-brew products other than Sam Adams, the biggest "micro" brewer of them all. Sierra Nevada? New Belgium? Lagunitas? Flying Dog, and Heavy Seas? Victory or Boulevard or Dogfish Head or Summit? Without going down the long list, it is interesting to speculate on the correlations.

But instead of quibbling over methodology, I will say thank you to the creators of this chart (and to our friends at Hotline) and stick to the "I encompass multitudes" interpretation of the results. Democratic in economic outlook, Republican in beer preference, all-American in loyalties, I take this as new evidence that we can indeed all get along.

On the occasion of the singer Andy Williams's death, I posted a clip of Williams and said that his mid-1960s style and look -- pre-Hendrix, pre-Sgt. Pepper, pre-Pet Sounds -- helped me understand Mitt Romney. More and more Romney comes across to me as a man whose taste and demeanor are from an earlier age, and who doesn't quite know how to convey them to the current audience.

That Williams clip was of a duet with the great Antonio Carlos Jobim. Many readers write in to protest the idea that the Jobim and Romney aesthetics can be linked in even this indirect way. For instance, from a reader in Japan:

I'm taking the liberty of writing you now to comment on your "Andy Williams/Antonio Carlos Jobim" post. I gather it was put up partly in the nature of a tribute to the recently deceased Andy Williams, and I shouldn't nitpick at it--but--as you probably know anyway, you do Jobim a huge disservice by filing him under the inspiration for Mitt Romney's sense of style!

Jobim is up there in the list of greatest composers and performers of the 20th century ("Aguas de Marco," "Se todos fossem iguais a voce" etc. etc.). Andy Williams, nice voice and all, doesn't hold a candle to him. (He was also gorgeous in his younger days, judging by the photographs taken in Brazil, without the extra dose of Brylcreem the Andy Williams Show seems to have applied to him.) Do your readers a favor and post some of the YouTube videos from "Tom Vinicius Toquinho e Miucha," for a treat.

I apologize for jumping down your throat, but I wrote my senior thesis, back when, on Tom Jobim and the singer Elis Regina, and they have a space very close to my heart.

OK, how about this one with Elis Regina, below. Watch it through and tell me that this interaction is not as romantic as anything you have seen -- even if, like me, you don't understand a word they are saying.



My wife will testify that I love Jobim music in general and could listen to the deceptively simple melodies of Aguas de Março or even Samba De Uma Nota Só for a very long time. Not to mention Onda, Insensatez, Saudade, Agua de Beber, Dindi, etc. So there.

And:

In your comment concerning the death of Andy Williams, you showed what was considered to be cool in the pre rock and roll 60's ("Mad Men") era using a clip of Williams singing "Girl from Ipanema" (one of the preeminent Bossa Nova songs) with its composer, Antonio Carlos Jobim.  You then equated Mitt Romney's style (and overall manner) to this era and, by extension, to Bossa Nova.  While I understand (and agree) with the linkage of Romney to the early 60's era, I strongly disagree with linking him to Bossa Nova. 

Having grown up through the 60's and 70's, and having listened to (and liked) much of the rock from that time period, I still think that Bossa Nova (which my Mom introduced me to) is the coolest music there is, with Jobim being the coolest composer.  To me, it's a type of music that transcends the era it was created in.  And, for me, Romney is someone who definitely can't seem to transcend anything, including the early 60's era whose style he seems most in tune with.

If fact, when I think the about the cool, refined, restrained sounds of Bossa Nova, the politician that pops into my head is not Mitt Romney but Barack Obama.  Go figure.

And:

My wife and I are currently at Bourg Le Compte, France on our barge and have limited internet coverage, so I was unable to view the Andy Williams clip. Growing up in that era (I'm 63), I can imagine the blandness (viewed from our time) of the music and the presentation.  However, there was something going on with Brazilian music in the U.S. during this period that I think had an influence on a lot of popular music and culture to this day. 

Tom Jobim (and Sergio Mendez and others) made "foreign" music accessible and and acceptable.  Who could have predicted from this clip that sitar music would through the Beatles become popular not so many years later.  Tastes need to be cultivated and the Jobim's (and to their credit the Sinatra's the William's and others) opened American ears to other types of music.  Williams was popularizing the music and certainly not radical, but the opening of world music to the U.S. market certainly came from this period.  And the breadth of current American musical tastes is better for these early commercial efforts.

That is all. But please do watch that clip above.

I will happen to be there for the next few days too.

Events Thursday evening (a few hours from now) at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne; Friday noon at the Lowy Institute in Sydney; and then Saturday evening and Sunday morning at the Opera House in Sydney, as part of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. I have been in Australia frequently in recent years but probably won't be again for a while, so hope to see you at one of these events. Then back to DC by Sunday night for more campaign-related (and substitute-ref-related) fun, and of course the prelude to the first presidential debate.

It's clear now that Mitt Romney was being funny when he made his crack about rolling down an airplane's windows to let some fresh air in. But in response to that episode, plus my mention that Romney is said to be an uneasy flyer, a reader highlights what I consider the most underappreciated reality of political life. That is simply how exhausting it is, and how important sheer physical stamina turns out to be in having a successful political career.

I was in my mid-20s when I worked and traveled in Jimmy Carter's campaign, and I remember joking bitterly that I felt like I was getting a year older, in a bad way, with every passing day. That was because of the endless sequence of midnight hotel check-ins, wee-hours meetings and deadlines, 5:15am musters for the next stop, and bad food and motorcade bus rides in between. This note, from a reader who is a professor at one of the U.S. military's war colleges, goes on to explain the point:

Part of the job of President is to spend a LOT of time on aircraft, both airplanes and helicopters.  There's no way to avoid doing so, and the rigors of the job mean that you need to able to use the time productively for sleep and getting work done.  You often talk to the press while onboard or immediately after landing.  And you need to look, well, "Presidential" the moment you walk off an aircraft, often to immediately engage in a highly visible public event.

Clearly flying is not such big issue that it significantly impairs Romney, but if flying knocks you down even a little, or just gives you an unhappy day, that's not a small thing for a U.S. President.

This highlights how important the basic physiological demands of the job are.  I'm a small cog in the national security machine, and as a middle-aged cog I've come to peace with it being very unlikely I'll move up from cog to prime mover.  I just couldn't handle it physically.

I need 6 hours of sleep or I get ill pretty quickly; my sleep is easily interrupted by noise, motion, or stress; several weeks a year I'm sneezing, dripping, and hoarse from allergies; my immune system and my gut are only average at fighting off challenges; etc.   In short I'm pretty normal, but a "normal" person can't be on -- looking, sounding, thinking, feeling great -- almost every day, busy 16 hours a day, travelling frequently, meeting vast numbers of strangers, not necessarily having much control over meals and bathroom breaks, all while making stressful decisions, without just falling apart. 

About the best argument I see for the crazy long campaigns we have is to see if the candidate's body is up to the job.

I hadn't thought about it that way, but having been prompted to think about it, I agree. To be clear: this is not a partisan but a human observation. It is amazing that the four people left on the national stage -- Romney, Obama, Ryan, Biden -- bear up as well as they do. Normal people could not stand the strain.

UPDATE: A reader sends in this paragraph from Michael Lewis's profile of Barack Obama in Vanity Fair. No joke, I was thinking of exactly this passage when posting the original item, but at that moment couldn't find it. What Lewis quotes Obama as saying rings absolutely true to me:

This time he covered a lot more ground and was willing to talk about the mundane details of presidential existence. "You have to exercise," he said, for instance. "Or at some point you'll just break down." You also need to remove from your life the day-to-day problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day. "You'll see I wear only gray or blue suits," he said. "I'm trying to pare down decisions. I don't want to make decisions about what I'm eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make." He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one's ability to make further decisions. It's why shopping is so exhausting. "You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can't be going through the day distracted by trivia."

This was the way "cool" cuture came into mainstream American living rooms during the mid 1960s, just before everything blew up. RIP Andy Williams. And of course Antonio Carlos Jobim, who like Williams was in his 30s at the time of this show (and who died nearly 20 years ago).



The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys were all emerging at exactly this time, but they seemed to be part of a different generation, even century, from Andy Williams.

I feel sympathetic to Mitt Romney's sense of style if I imagine him being imprinted in this age -- and surprisingly unruffled by anything that came later.

Last week I had an online back-and-forth about current politics with Josh Barro, of Bloomberg, at the NY magazine site. The most memorable line from the exchange was Barro's, about the descent into dysfunction of California politics: "When you meet with people in the legislature in Sacramento, the most striking thing is how stupid everybody is."

The two larger questions from the discussion were,

• First, whether the GOP's path-to-perdition in California over the past twenty years prefigures the party's course at the national level. In short: a tough anti-immigrant tone led to hostility from Latinos and other minority groups, which in turns has made the GOP uncompetitive in any state-wide races in California.
• And second, whether California's overall predicament is what our whole country must expect. In short: California has an outsized share of the world's most creative, profitable, and influential private companies and institutions, but its public sector is collapsing and unable to address many of the state's major issues.

I note all this as a loyal son of Southern California and a product of its expansive Pat Brown era of investment in public schools, universities, and infrastructure of all sorts.

Readers weigh in. Let's start with a reader from the San Diego area, about the Republicans' situation. Emphasis added in his and the other notes:

I have to say you're right about the California GOP being a microcosm for the national GOP.  One of the reasons for California going with open primaries, with top two vote getters on the November ballot (adopted through the initiative process), is because the GOP would punish any member who stepped out of line and was accused of working with the Democrats.  Same with removing redistricting control from the Legislature. 

Sure, some of this went on with Democrats but nowhere near the extent of the GOP.  Remember, Pete Wilson championed managed growth planning in his early terms as San Diego mayor until he set his sights on running for statewide office. 

Having worked for the County of Orange for 15 years, my take isn't that the California GOP is resigned to losing. It's just that they hold ideological purity higher than election results and have the true believer's faith that if they hold firm their time will come.  I'm sure most of them feel that Schwarzenegger, a moderate, was a disaster...

Today's GOP has many similarities with the communist and other rigid dogma type parties in that they require their members to continually prove their fidelity to the "cause" even if it keeps changing.  When people speak of the GOP moving to the middle, I ask who in their current leadership would you consider moderate...

My guess is that even if Romney loses and the GOP takes a beating in Congressional races, it will be blamed all on Romney not being pure enough which tainted everyone else... Stalin wasn't followed by Gorbachev.  They had to work through a lot of turmoil first.  Don't forget you have Cantor nipping at Boehner's heels.

One more thing on the GOP.  Just because they aren't always in the majority doesn't mean they aren't winning... Just look at how scared many people are these days to identify themselves as Liberal.  This is true here in California.

To use a football metaphor as we're in season, the Right have driven well passed the 50 yard line, close enough if they don't score a touchdown, they'll kick a field goal.  As long as they have more points at the end of the game, how they got them is secondary.  The bottom line is who has been most faithful to the Revolution.

On whether a Romney-Ryan loss this fall would (as Josh Barro suggested) push the national Republicans back toward the center, rather than (as I suspect) even further to the right:

As for the idea that the GOP will somehow awaken from its self induced stupor to field candidates of higher quality or greater intelligence, let me simply remind y'all of how long the Dixiecrat South lived inside its shell before Johnson finally blew it up: 100 years. And that was before the FOX echo chamber.

In the future, the GOP will live solely on the Filibuster or on the hope that it can regain power. Its lasting legacy will be the Judiciary, just as it was for the Federalists (I am a Hamiltonian) and even this too shall pass. As the economy finally rebounds and as the demographic shift finally takes hold, the Democratic President who succeeds Obama in 2016 will have the opportunity to replace Scalia, and Thomas with smart, young liberal justices who will follow in the tradition of the justices appointed to the lower courts by Obama....

Someday, in the very distant future, the recidivist GOP will discover a new Barry Goldwater. And someday, they will discover a new Reagan. But not tomorrow, and not in 2016, 2020, 2024 etc. But, when they do, She will be of Asian descent.

More on what has turned the nation's largest state into the Democrats' most important base:

I'm from California, and Josh Barrow almost nailed it with respect to California. Of course, what he didn't mention was that the GOP's perpetual minority status is largely the result of policies that they themselves pushed (and purchased, via financing voter initiatives) their way into law.

-Term limits insures that legislators are perpetually looking for their next job, and that the concept of constituent service no longer exists in the state. There is no accountability for any bad or corrupt legislation, because by the time the law goes into effect, the lawmakers are different, and thus not responsible. Term limits is the reason that California legislators are *all* stupid. And they are.

- Two-thirds majority rule for budgets and taxes. That single law has paralyzed California government for a generation. And the GOP's major strategy is holding on to that one or those two seats to deny lawmakers the ability to govern. People claim it is Prop 13, and yes, that was damaging, but this one is really the reason why California government fails, in the same way that the Grover Norquist pledge ensures the failure of the US Congress.

- I should add the balanced budget initiative to the list of catastrophic GOP legislation destroying California. It requires the state to spend like a drunken gambler in the good times
-- and there have been some very, very good times -- but when times get hard, with the two-thirds rule, we can't raise any revenue. So, well, they are forced to burn the house down for firewood, and sell off the land to make ends meet. Bad, bad policy.

I could go on, but these three laws are really what is preventing California from being the Golden State that we all knew and loved.

Finally, on what passes for a cheering note, an argument that the national GOP does have some chance of repositioning itself:

I think that the national GOP is the odds on favorite for being "reformed" first [before state-level parties do]. It is difficult for state parties to really form a distinct identity from the national parties nowadays.

I can think of a few conservative states where the local Democratic party is strong (West Virginia, Kentucky Arkansas), but it seems most of those states are former Democratic strongholds (whether from Jim Crow era or New Deal era) that have managed to retain dominance, rather than ones that "reformed" to meet statewide political preferences. It is likely that these states will eventually re-align to be Republican dominated, as have many other formerly Democratic states in the South. (Oklahoma, Louisiana, etc). Will the Democratic party in those states be able to reform to become competitive? It's a hard road to climb to become competitive (rather than to stay competitive). Or will the Utah Democratic party ever really become competitive statewide? Doubtful...

I don't see the California GOP becoming too competitive until A) the National GOP changes and B) California becomes more representative of the country at large in terms of demographics and policy preferences (or more likely, vice versa!)

Of course, if I want to feel better about the local political situation in my original home state of California, I can think about how things go in my current home jurisdiction of Washington DC. Topic for another day.

Through this election season we've heard from Samuel Popkin, of UC San Diego, a political scientist and author of a recent book on how presidents position themselves for election and re-election runs. For previous installments see this and this from back in May, and this and this from August.

Popkin's book pays close attention to Harry Truman's come-from-behind victory in 1948, as I described in an article earlier this year (now expanded in e-book form). The natural question is, How do the come-from-behind prospects look for Mitt Romney?

Every mistake a candidate can make, Romney seems to have made, and the frequency of mis-steps and "off-message" distractions seems to be going up. He's never been ahead of Obama, and members of his own party seem variously to be despairing, calling for radical changes in course, or assuming failure and positioning themselves for 2016. Meanwhile Democrats are afraid of jinxing things by pointing out Romney's continued struggles as the clock ticks down -- and also genuinely worried about vote-suppression efforts.

What can Romney do? How do things stand? Let's Ask Dr. Popkin (emphasis added):

Dear Jim:

Every spring, I open the door for Elijah the prophet at Passover, so I understand Peggy Noonan's hopes for a CEO like James Baker to appear and rescue the Romney campaign from [her words] "rolling calamity."  And every fall, I cringe when the Chargers settle for a field goal near the end zone, so I understand David Brooks's feeling that America needs more entrepreneurial boldness and grandiosity from our presidential candidates.  Yet both Noonan and Brooks are missing key points.

Noonan is romanticizing James Baker's abilities.  True, he was one of the best campaign - and White House - chiefs of staff for the entire post-WW II period I studied writing The Candidate.  But Baker isn't infallible; he couldn't salvage the re-election campaign of his good friend President George H W Bush when he took over in September of 1992, and even a man with Baker's skills would have trouble trying to overcome Mitt Romney's self-inflicted damage.

Brooks is wrong to equate disdain and distrust of Mitt Romney with a decline in America's appreciation for bold entrepreneurs.  Utility magnates were reviled during the Great Depression, but few Americans today take exception to the wealth of cultural heroes like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Sergei Brin and Larry Page.  Americans resent businessmen who take advantage of market dominance to squeeze competitors and extract monopoly rents, but admire innovators who acquire vast fortunes from developing popular new products.

The Romney campaign's recent performance is a case study in mismanagement and poor strategic planning.  Candidates for president must do three jobs at once: audition to be the country's first family, head a startup company that offers a new vision for the future, and act as CEO of a rapidly growing corporation trying to expand its market share.
 
Romney's ongoing problems - as most recently highlighted in the leaked fundraiser video - stem from the combustible combination of his inability to demonstrate concern for the burdens his plans impose on ordinary citizens, coupled with his failure to define a vision that could expand his market share beyond the extreme right.  Let's break these two ideas down:

First, principled pandering is only possible when a candidate begins with core principles.  

All politicians pander, but in order to persuade enough voters that one has the ability to both govern and make policy in a country as diverse as ours, politicians must pander within reasonable limits.  Every politician is tempted to indulge in moon-promising; H L Mencken once said that if a congressman discovered there were cannibals in his district, he'd promise them missionaries.  But unsustainable pandering backfires; candidates with coherent strategies learn that they must often "just say no" to maintain broad credibility. When conservative social activists demanded that Governor George W Bush pledge never to hire gays in his administration, he refused; when Governor Bill Clinton was pushed to rule out the possibility of tax increases, he refused as well.

In order to stay within the limits of credibility, one must be careful in private as well as in public.  Recall candidate Obama's comment about bitter people clinging to their guns and bibles, or Clinton's blithe promise 20 years ago that gays would be able to openly serve in the military.

Stu Spencer said it best years ago, reflecting on his work with Nelson Rockefeller, President Ford and many campaigns with and against Ronald Reagan:  you ask the candidate where they stand and then "You start working them over, coming at them. . . . If you can move them . . . you know that they don't have a very hard-core value system."  A candidate's stand is the political equivalent of a dancer's spot.  To avoid losing her bearings, a dancer focuses on a single spot and returns her focus to that same spot as she spins.  If a candidate knows his stand well enough to keep it in focus, he can dance around his positions, adjusting his rhetoric to the audience and occasion without losing his balance.

So it is not Romney's pandering that surprises me, for this is a political inevitability.  But I am surprised that he has gone about it so clumsily. When I read the transcript of the infamous Romney video Mother Jones released, I am most struck by his lack of political horse sense.  Unless Romney believed his only winning strategy was to be the last candidate standing when the economy collapsed, this was an inept performance.

Second, the GOP Tea Party base is pushing for policies that cannot be defended nationally by a presidential candidate.

The Romney campaign wanted the election to be a referendum on Obama's record on jobs.   Once the Tea Party tail started wagging the elephant, Romney pandered himself into a corner.    Each time the Romney campaign has seemed ready to acknowledge a more centrist idea, the far right yelled and Romney blinked.
 
As a result of the baggage Romney took on during the primaries, the Obama campaign has been able to frame the election as a choice between two futures, and campaign on a defense of stark contrasts on immigration, contraception, healthcare and tax policies...

Voters may accept Mitt Romney's competence, but knowing he is good at using power doesn't mean people will trust him with it.  What in Romney's record or the current performance of the Republican Party will persuade swing voters that Romney should have their proxy in the coming fights over whom and what to tax and who should receive benefits?

When he selected Paul Ryan as his running mate, I expected Romney to make some moderating statements regarding the Ryan budget plan.   It looks like he put Paul Ryan and his budget on the ticket with no advance planning for how they would fill in the blanks and reassure voters.  I have yet to hear anything resembling "we're all in this together" or "united we stand."  Instead, his articulation has differed little from the leaked fund-raiser video, and sounds more like "we are the goose that lays your golden eggs."

Like Saint Augustine with his prayers, politicians know they have to reform, "but not just yet." The Simpson-Bowles Commission itself was a compromise to defer necessary but painful spending cuts and tax increases.  Romney could have attacked the political head-in-the-sand ostriches on both sides of the aisle.  He could have even talked about reopening the discussions.

The only context in which a candidate doesn't have to provide detailed plans is when voters are already certain that either he or his party has what it takes to solve the problems they care about.  In 1968, Richard Nixon didn't have to explain his secret plan for Vietnam or what he would do about riots and unrest across the nation.  Nixon's strong track record on foreign policy spoke for itself and the Republican Party was clearly the party of law and order.  2012 is not like 1968, and Republicans do not have a strong record on job creation or foreign policy right now.  

Even if Romney does win, a civil war among Republicans seems inevitable.  Jeb Bush and Lindsay Graham have already moved away from the once-popular, absolutist no-taxes-ever pledges, and in every state with a sizeable Hispanic population (save Arizona) more centrist Republicans are pushing for sensible immigration reform.  Suddenly, some Republican candidates in battleground states are trumpeting bipartisanship and compromise and distancing themselves from the more extreme positions of Romney and Ryan.

Barring economic collapse, Romney's only shot is to get people to reassess him. 

Prompting reassessment at this late date means finding new information that surprises people and makes them wonder if the case against Romney is badly flawed.  This requires more than a kinder, gentler Romney or a stronger, tougher Romney that out debates the president.   Either people rethink what policies and people he stands for or the election depends solely on who is motivated - and allowed - to vote.

(See update below -- Mitt Romney was apparently joking about rolling the windows down. I count this as support for the "cut him some slack" approach.)

As promised, here is your handy one-stop primer on Mitt Romney's seeming wonderment, after an emergency landing by his wife's plane, why airplane windows can't be opened during flight.

1) Cut Mitt some slack. His wife had been through an upsetting and potentially dangerous episode. However stressed she was, he might have felt even worse -- because he wasn't there, and because of reason #3 below. I'm on record as saying that Mitt Romney is rhetorically at his weakest when forced to improvise or handle unexpected questions or situations. But this one shouldn't count. Any of us, if filmed and recorded 24/7 and especially during stressful situations, could and would say things as inapt.

2) In case you were wondering, in-flight fires really can be bad news. An electrical fire is bad because it can destroy navigation, communication, or control systems, plus producing toxic fumes. Fires in the engine, the fuel system, the wing, or wherever are bad too. Apart from the smoke, you never want to have open flames in vehicles that are, essentially, flying metal tubes full of kerosene. After a multi-fatality Air Canada fire nearly 30 years ago, all sorts of safety regulations were tightened to reduce the risk of fire and to contain the effects if one breaks out. Even for small aircraft, part of pilot training is to memorize the various emergency procedures and work through the checklists involved in coping with a fire.

3) People are afraid of different things, and the reasons aren't purely logical. Some people are afraid of dogs -- or snakes or spiders or rats, or the big needles a doctor uses to give a shot. I don't mind any of those, but (like many people who fly airplanes) I'm a little queasy with heights. I also get nervous in very tight spaces, and I have an irrational fear and dislike of horses -- even though many members of my family were avid riders. It's beyond our rational control. We can be brave in some circumstances and terrified in others, for reasons that have no connection to the objective "danger" involved. Thus John Madden, famous tough guy, would never call Pro Bowl games because the bus he relied on for travel couldn't get him all the way to Hawaii.
 
Here's why I mention this. I have heard over the years, within the flying world, that Mitt Romney views airplanes more or less the way I view horses. He is (I have heard) not a happy or comfortable flyer, and one who can always imagine things going wrong. Fortunately I don't actually have to ride horses -- but he has no choice but to fly, white-knuckled, from one stop to the next. Someone with this outlook would naturally be all the more rattled by an emergency landing. So cut him all the more slack.

3A) Somehow the preceding point makes me think of this classic Twilight Zone moment. Thanks to Capt. David Ryan for the link:
 


4) How airplanes actually work. Gov. Romney's comments revealed factual confusion in two areas: Why you can't get fresh air into an airliner by opening its windows in flight, and where the oxygen inside the plane comes from. I mentioned before that Patrick Smith, of Ask The Pilot, might address these issues on his site. Even better, he just sent me an email with the answers. I turn the floor over to him:

Yes, the windows in an airplane don't "roll down" because, for one, the plane is pressurized, and introducing a suddenly opened window would be somewhere between extremely inconvenient and catastrophically dangerous.

And because, at higher altitudes, there is not enough oxygen to breathe.

The reason a plane is pressurized is to SUPPLY that oxygen.  Oxygen doesn't come from an on-board tank, as many people believe.  It comes from the air itself, which, once the jet is aloft, is drawn in from outside and squeezed back together -- i.e. pressurized -- to replicate conditions close to sea level.  

If there's a loss of cabin pressure, then, yes, you use supplemental onboard oxygen.  Passengers and crew both have separate supplies.

In the case of onboard smoke or fire, introducing oxygen can make a bad situation worse.  Because of this, the cabin masks won't necessarily be deployed, even if heavy smoke is present.  For the pilots, the task is to isolate the SOURCE of the smoke or fire, and deal with it directly, and/or to ventilate the cabin via the pressurization outflow valves or other plumbing.  This varies aircraft to aicraft, procedure to procedure, situation to situation.  It depends.   We have checklists to guide us in such situations, and they can be quite long and involved.

You would THINK, considering how much time Mitt Romney must have spent on planes thus far in his lifetime, that he would have at least a vague grasp of where the oxygen in a plane's cabin comes from, and why the windows don't open.

Or not.  Pressurization is one of those things that few folks understand and that many are afraid of.  Something about the word "pressurization" makes people envision the upper altitudes as a kind of barometric hell.  I've been asked, "If the plane wasn't pressurized, would my eyes pop out?"  Cruising in an airplane is not the same as dropping to the Marianas Trench in a deep-sea diving bell.  

If a malfunction arises, tie on your mask and breathe normally, just as the flight attendants tell you. Those masks are a source of angst, I know, but should they spring from the ceiling, try to resist shrieking or falling into cardiac arrest.  Nothing terrible is going to happen.

Update: And it appears that Romney was making a joke about the whole thing.

I've just re-entered Internet land after 24+ hours out of contact. (Previous two posts were in the queue for publication at set intervals. Thus I didn't see and fix typos in them until just now.) On re-entry I see the news about the possible electrical fire that forced Ann Romney's plane into an emergency landing a few days ago. Plus a mailbox full of queries about Mitt Romney's response to the incident:

"When you have a fire in an aircraft, there's no place to go, exactly, there's no -- and you can't find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a real problem. So it's very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she's safe and sound."

The whole topic of electrical fires in airplanes is more interesting than you'd think. More about it within a few hours. Spoiler: I don't think that Mitt Romney is confused about why airplane windows cannot be opened at high altitude, but I do think that his larger relationship with the world of airborne travel is interesting. In the meantime, I'll use this as an excuse to direct you to Patrick Smith's new Ask the Pilot site. For many years Smith did a successful, instructive, and entertaining "Ask the Pilot" column on Salon, which I read frequently and often directed people toward. He doesn't yet have an item about Air Romney at the new site, but he's a great source for aviation topics generally.

Back in touch in a few hours.

Last week I mentioned (here and here) the bittersweet excitement in California as the space shuttle Endeavour made a farewell fly-by around the state. Now, more correspondents in California chime in with their reactions.

From environs of Edwards Air Force base, site of many scenes from The Right Stuff, a reader sends in the picture at right and the message below:

Just another dispatch from Mojave, Ca, where I can assure you that nearly all the staff of Scaled Composites, as well as many other "New Space" firms, were out on the ramp or on rooftops to watch Endeavor on her retirement lap. I got this shot from the roof of the newly completed Stratolaunch Carrier Aircraft assembly building. There was a round of applause for her as she went by, and much discussion both before and after for what it all meant.

It's my sincere hope that NASA can regain its footing as a preeminent research and exploration agency in the near term, serving to inspire the kids of today like they did for me when growing up. Aerospace seems like a cultural backwater these days, almost as if it's a mature field with all the fun problems already solved.

But we're just a tiny dot in this universe begging to be explored, the sound barrier is hardly tickled these days, someone's going to have to figure out how we're going to fly without fossil fuels... So much more romance than developing the latest backlit screen-thingy.

From a reader in northern California:

This was on the front cover of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat the day after, shot by Ken Porter, a house photographer.



Up until I discovered in college in the '60s that I didn't have the chops for science, I wanted to be an astronomer. I use that wanderlust for fiction now, but nothing inspires me so much as the idea of space travel and the magnificent ingenuity and genius it takes.

The Russian rocket scientist Tsiolkovsky said it best: "The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever.

From a woman I know in southern California:

Another shot of the shuttle -- if you can take it -- that my son-in-law took from his backyard in Alta Dena, CA. He is an aeronautical engineer at JPL and one of the many accomplishments of his young life was to participate in designing some of the mechanical parts of the Curiousity Rover, including the camera mast. This photo shows the shuttle at an altitude of approximately 1,000 feet.

And from a female physicist also in southern California:

Someone from NASA came to speak to my elementary school (in silicon valley). Of course, many kids wanted to become astronauts.

He talked about the things that we needed to do to qualify for astronaut selection and said that there were two paths:
1) become a military pilot--only open to boys
2) earn a PhD in engineering or a physical science--open for both boys and girls, but the only path for girls

My 8 yo self just accepted that girls would have fewer opportunities than boys.

My daughter cannot understand the unfairness that we swallowed and didn't even notice.

From one of my sons, in San Francisco, a photo by one of his friends:

More »

In response to this recent item, plus this, and my original Atlantic article on "Throwing Like a Girl," many readers have weighed in.

As a reminder, the original contention was that throwing a ball, like riding a bicycle, is a skill that nearly anyone (male or female) can learn, but that everyone has to learn or be taught, since the movements and coordination involved are not innate. Gender differences tell us why the strongest male can throw faster than the strongest female. But the male-female gap in average throwing skill really has to do with the fact that little boys are more likely to spend their time throwing rocks and balls. Now, let's go to the readers. The illustration is explained in due course.

Maybe it's one more chapter in the long saga of American exceptionalism.

It's some support, I think, of the idea that throwing is learned, and culturally determined, that many European men -- or anyone, really, who grows up playing soccer -- throw like girls.  In fact, cricket bowlers throw with a different motion than baseball players (or, say, Americans tossing a tennis ball off a court).  The fastest bowlers are a little slower than the fastest pitchers, but not by much.  Moreover, cricket fielders throw slightly different than bowlers, but not quite like American fielders, either.

What's odd is that you would think the act of throwing was something so basic that we were built for it; in this way it's not quite like riding a bicycle.  It's more like, say, running, even kicking (there's no such thing, I don't think, as "kicking like a girl", or if there is it's not as noticeable).  That is, you would think that the motion was more or less natural -- capable of being improved upon, certainly, but roughly inherent.

Curious problem.

More on the curse of the soccer-playing cultures.

This is a topic I'm interested in because my daughter is a high school softball player who throws very well, and because I spent some time teaching her and other girls on her little league softball teams how to throw.  I have also spent time teaching her younger brother and his baseball teammates.  Based on my experience, I would say that throwing is a skill that can be learned equally well by either sex, and that even boys who have picked it up through trial and error (as I did) can improve through repetition of drills that isolate various parts of the kinetic chain and then put it back together. 

Also, fathers aren't throwing in the back yard with their kids enough, at least in my town.  I've seen boys as old as 12 who throw a baseball like they are shot putting an ostrich egg.  At some point, I'm going to start revoking man cards.
 
Watching the Argentine video of men throwing with their off hands was very interesting. [It is here, and if you missed it the first time, be sure to check it out.] They don't throw like girls as much as they throw like people who've never tried to throw anything at all before.  I've often wondered how well boys or men who grow up in soccer dominated countries throw compared to Americans.  We take it for granted that boys will grow up throwing balls as well as rocks, but in most of the world they grow up kicking them instead (I once read an article by a Frenchman extolling the wonders of soccer who asserted that if you give an infant a ball, the first thing it will try to do is kick it - not over here, Pierre, I thought - an American baby will pick it up and throw it).  You are much better travelled than I - how do you think these guys would have done with their dominant hands compared to the average American male?  How well do men throw in China? Have you seen any comparative studies?

I have not seen such studies. But come to think of it, I have not seen that many people in mainland China throwing, as opposed to kicking, balls. Japan and Taiwan, on the other hand, have big baseball traditions and lots of accomplished throwers.

Now, from a Westerner in China here is more on the ever-popular US-China angle.

I wrote a short poem after seeing the Dodgers and Padres play on March 16, 2008, two days after the Lhasa Uprising, in Wukesong. [JF note: this was in the buildup in to the Olympics, at the baseball stadium where the Olympic baseball games were played.] The teams had played on Saturday, the15th, though the PSB [Public Security Bureau] was in a full flutter and had turned the pre-game activities into a disaster; they were worried sick that a gathering of Americans and other international expats would turn the event into a pro-Tibet rally, not understanding that this was baseball. The 16th was a bit more relaxed. And Jet Li was on the mound to throw out the first pitch. I wrote a short poem on his toss.

"The Second Major League
Baseball Game in China

When I saw Jet Li
throw out the first pitch
I thought, man, he throws
just like my sister
threw
the night she hurled
the rock at my head
and took out
the living room clock.
I was lucky.

Then
I kept my mouth shut
too.

I happened to snap a photo of Mr Li's pitch: . His form is not bad, though his left arm isn't fully extended, and his release timing was off    - an "inside the elbow" as you explain in your piece - producing a low velocity arc that barely made it to the catcher. With his natural athletic abilities, I expect that with a few quick lessons Mr. Li would have been throwing quite well. But it drove home the fact that throwing a baseball is a learned skill, one that often pre-dates our memory to recall the actual process. I suspect that my father had the greatest influence on how I ended up learning to throw a ball.

Another soccer casualty.

I read your latest post and agree completely that throwing and most other things can be taught and it often takes a long time to develop the skill that we tend to take for granted because as boys we started very early. When I was in the service in the 60s and still able to associate with guys that has been in WWII and Korea, I was told that the German Potato Masher grenade was designed that way because European sports didn't involve a lot of throwing, and that made sense to me.

The T. Rex angle, from a reader in Florida.

I don't know if this is a localized euphemism, but among various baseball teams on which my 9-year-old boy has played, the term for low-elbow, no-body-rotation throwing has become "throw like T-rex." I've taken to using it myself now that I'm coaching. And I spend a lot of time trying to teach kids to throw. I think you'll agree that's a much better phrase -- more accurately descriptive, harmlessly funny for the kids, and even educational in its way.

I love this woman's point [from this post] about feeling the joy of a body in motion. That's why the hell we do this for our kids/ and to our kids. I have a stutter, and one of the ways I developed confidence as a kid (actually the main way) was I got to be quite good at catching, throwing, and shooting. And I love to this day shooting, catching, throwing -- with anyone. By myself. Went out and took a bunch of jump shots today all alone. I've met more friends through pickup hoops than almost anything else. Athletic confidence, which my parents didn't really have, almost certainly altered my life for the better. If they had not pushed into sports at a young age, who knows how my life would have suffered?

And one the great byproducts of coaching I've found is how much just a little bit of attention can help an awkward kid. A lot. And what incredible fun that is to see happen. You see an awkward kid that you've worked with make a shot or catch a rebound when they could hardly hold the ball when they first started, and it's fantastic. And then getting those kids to compete (and I am pretty competitive) with the bigger, stronger, more coordinated kids and believe in themselves a little is just as gratifying. Forget the score; it's the competing on honest terms that matters. Self-respect.

So you're right and she's right. Anybody can be taught to do these things well enough to enjoy them, well enough to feel themselves getting better. If more coaches cared about competing with the kids they have and helping them get better rather than team-stacking so they can be elite at 9, we'd all be happier.

Coaching has showed me why people still teach despite all the crap that comes with it.

From a mother of a daughter.

I didn't think twice about marrying a guy who throws like a girl because I threw very well and would be the go-to athletic coach parent.

I didn't count on coming down w/ inherited autoimmune arthritis.  I gotta pop some tylenol and teach my girl how to throw.

Thanks for giving me the motivation. She throws even worse than my husband, and I didn't think it was possible for anyone to be worse.  ;-)

From a father of a daughter.

I've been paying attention to the throwing issue. Girls with no brothers tend to throw better than girls who have brothers. Dads with boys spend most of their coaching time with the boys. Dads with only girls spend their coaching time with girls. Very few moms teach kids of either gender how to throw. The big exception: willful girls in mixed-gender families that are madly obsessed with participant sports.

My observations aren't scientific, but I'm near certain anyone who carefully measured would come to the same conclusion.

From another father of a daughter.

I read today's blog entry with great pleasure, as almost nothing raises my hackles as quickly as that loaded phrase. My daughter, you see, plays baseball. Not, as she frequently has to assert, softball. Both spring and fall, she has been the only girl in a 150-player Little League division. She started playing at six because she wanted to follow her brother. At her first practice, she simply refused to throw overhand. It wasn't comfortable, it wasn't natural, and she knew perfectly well she could throw the ball the 15 feet to the coach by tossing it underhand. She also wouldn't even try to catch a gentle return toss, just letting it drop and then retrieving it. Two years later, she throws like a gunslinger and delights in egging me on to throw it ever harder when I send it back at her. So what happened?

The same thing that happens to every other Little League kid. Many of the boys I've coached over the past three years didn't have a lot of baseball exposure at home. Their models, if they have any, are big league players they've seen on TV. When they start, most of them throw "like a girl" (the ones not trying to throw sidearm like a 3B barehanding a groundball).

We don't call it that, of course; we tend to call it "the shotput motion," with the elbow tucked under the throwing hand, the step with the throwing-side foot, and a predictable high arc to the throw. Getting proper mechanics to stick takes roughly two seasons, on average, with wide variability sourced in both athletic and listening ability. The same, I'd imagine, applies to throwing a football, another sport from which girls are typically excluded. Small wonder that many women have horrible throwing mechanics.

The gender essentialism assumption -- that girls just can't throw properly -- does raise its head in Little League at times, sometimes with gratifying results. In one game this past spring, an opposing player hit a clean single to my daughter in right field. As the runner approached first, she had already scooped up the ball, but the first base coach sent the runner to second. Rebekah had plenty of time for a mystified double-take before throwing a rope to second base that easily beat the poor runner, who didn't even bother to slide. Sometimes it's a good thing to be underestimated.

However long she keeps playing baseball, she'll spend the rest of her life occasionally smirking at some poor sap whose assumptions got the better of him. Hopefully enough young men will read your piece that there'll be fewer saps around to be caught out.

That's a limited sampling of what's come in; more after a while. Thanks to all.

On Friday I mentioned some of the excitement across California as the space shuttle Endeavor and its 747 mother ship made low-pass fly-bys in various parts of the state. Here is how it looked from San Francisco.

A woman who works in tech research sends in this message, with emphasis added:

I was about half a mile from where that video was taken (Shoreline Park in Mountain View) and the place was packed.  People had taken their kids and there were tons of people there wearing badges from local tech companies (and riding their very colorful bikes). 

I was with a group of people who took off the morning from the National Labs in Livermore to drive out to MV to see it pass over.  It was truly amazing to see and it was also great to see so many people turn out to say farewell to an important part of our nation's story.

Later that day it flew over several spots in LA, including SpaceX.  [A friend] works there and he said the entire company was in the parking lot, watching it fly over.  I thought it was a fitting "passing of the torch" for the space shuttle to fly over America's next ride to the ISS [International Space Station]. 

The space shuttle program is why so many of us in my generation are engineers and scientists; I wanted to be a mission specialist on the space shuttle for the majority of my
childhood, as did so many of my friends and colleagues.  Now an aerospace engineer, I'm really proud to be part of a continuing tradition of technical excellence in the US.  It warmed my heart to see that people still appreciate that.

We're in a jaded-seeming, beset national mood at the moment. But, seriously, I think that some public leader, some time, will recognize the technological, emotional, and even spiritual payoff in setting our sights on goals as ambitious as those of the space program. Maybe Newt is not going to be the guy, but I admire him for trying.

Ann Romney's exasperated response to an Iowa radio host yesterday was the truest glimpse we've seen of any of the national-level candidates or their spouses this year.

It was also sad, and potentially quite damaging. It's hardly sporting to identify extra problems for the Romney campaign right now, but this one is different from the others and worth examination.

Mrs. Romney's comments were absolutely true. If you missed it (audio link here), this was the moment-of-truth part:

During an interview early this evening with Radio Iowa, Mrs. Romney directly addressed her fellow Republicans who've criticized her husband.

"Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring,"

I have seen candidates and campaigns from various perspectives, and the more I see the more I marvel at anyone's willingness to undergo this process. Here's the best way for normal people to imagine it -- quite apart from the fatigue, the need always to be "on," and the need endlessly to be asking for money. Normal people get upset if even one person, let alone a group of them, really has it in for us. Whoever wins the presidential election will know, and must be at peace with, the reality that many tens of millions of people truly think he's an anti-American phony and wish him ill. Such is political victory!

True as it might have been, Mrs. Romney's "break" was also sad and damaging. Self-pity is doom for candidates. They're asking for the honor of representing and leading us. We expect them to act as if it's a privilege, not a burden. Worse, an admission like this is a tell. Winning campaigns never allow themselves to seem frazzled or put-upon. And Mitt Romney himself has not, or not very much.

It's damaging in one more way, which I'm convinced has an effect even if most voters don't consciously focus on it. We're considering someone for a big, tough job. And if that person or those around him buckle under the stress of campaigning, how will they do in office? People who have worked in politics know for sure something that most other people probably sense. Running for president is hard, but there is one thing harder. That's what happens if you win.
__
And points off for anyone who thought from the headline that this was going to be about Jill Biden.

From someone I know in the high-tech world, this phone-video of the space shuttle Endeavor doing a fly-by near Moffett Field, not far from San Jose, about an hour ago. Among the things I love about this clip is that most of the people you see and hear are Google employees who flocked excitedly out of their offices to watch the flight.



For another video of how the shuttle and its mother-ship 747 get connected, see the photo and clips from the Atlantic's video channel a few months ago.

Bigger point: OK, maybe Newt Gingrich is never going to be president, but I bet that some national leader could get us excited about big, ambitious moves into space again. Just a thought. Thanks to TMF and KCMVB.

UPDATE: From someone in downtown San Francisco just now.

1) Late yesterday I typed my way for about an hour through an online exchange with Bloomberg's Josh Barro, as part of New York magazine's "Instant Politics" series. We started out talking about the current state of the presidential race, but pretty soon we got into the implications for the GOP, in particular, if current projections hold and Mitt Romney does not end up as our 45th president. The transcript is here, and it includes this line-for-the-ages from Barro:

And when you meet with people in the legislature in Sacramento, the most striking thing is how stupid everybody is.

In context, he explains why he is making that point, and why it matters. Short version: I wonder whether the national GOP could be moving itself toward permanent-minority status, in the way the California GOP has done to itself in the post-Prop 187 years. This will be especially so if the reaction to a (hypothesized) Romney-Ryan loss is to say that a "real" conservative, not some Massachusetts "Obamneycare" RINO, would have done much better. Barro is arguing that California is its own unique mess and that the national party is more likely to self-correct and move back toward the center.

2) Frontline is hosting an online discussion leading up to its broadcast of "The Choice 2012," a documentary about the two presidential candidates. The discussion is based on interesting "artifacts" about Obama and Romney, eg an old video of Romney making a pitch as a venture capitalists. The discussion includes a number of experts on both men, plus me. I will be weighing in through the afternoon. FYI.