Month: July 2008

McCain’s Sloppy Attacks

By Patrick Appel
Dickerson thinks McCain’s attack on Obama over gas prices shows a lack of discipline:

McCain is attacking too much and indiscriminately. The barrage undermines his brand, takes time away from telling voters what he might do for them, and looks awfully old-timey in a year when voters want a new brand. He should go on the offensive, yes, but in targeted forays…Perhaps McCain could go after Obama more often and more vehemently, as the goaders would have it, if he were better at it. But most of the time he’s not. When he’s angry, he can be withering, but that’s usually in private. Plus, he’s not angry that often. When he attacks Obama on tax cuts or energy, he sounds as if he’s phoning it in. Voters get nothing to grab onto or legitimately fear. For McCain, who likes to have fun campaigning, the negativity doesn’t look as if it’s all that fun.

Pre-Emptive Pardons

By Patrick Appel
Jacob Leibenluft looks at the extent of Bush’s pardoning powers:

If someone hasn’t yet been charged with a crime, how does the president know what to pardon them for? As in Nixon’s case, President Bush could issue a pardon that applies generally to any crimes that may have been committed within a certain range of dates. More likely, a pardon could apply only to actions surrounding a single policy or place—say, the detention or interrogation of suspected al-Qaida members.

Yes, No, Maybe

By Patrick Appel
Making choices is hard work:

…what types of actions exhaust executive function and affect subsequent decision-making? Until recently, researchers focused on activities that involved the exertion of self-control or the regulation of attention. For instance, it’s long been recognized that strenuous cognitive tasks—such as taking the SAT—can make it harder to focus later on. But recent results suggests that these taxing mental activities may be much broader in scope-and may even involve the very common activity of making choices itself. In a series of experiments and field studies, University of Minnesota psychologist Kathleen Vohs and colleagues repeatedly demonstrate that the mere act of making a selection may deplete executive resources.

For example, in one study the researchers found that participants who made more choices in a mall were less likely to persist and do well in solving simple algebra problems. In another task in the same study, students who had to mark preferences about the courses they would take to satisfy their degree requirements were much more likely to procrastinate on preparing for an important test. Instead of studying, these "tired" minds engaged in distracting leisure activities.

Why is making a determination so taxing? Evidence implicates two important components: commitment and tradeoff resolution. The first is predicated on the notion that committing to a given course requires switching from a state of deliberation to one of implementation. In other words, you have to make a transition from thinking about options to actually following through on a decision. This switch, according to Vohs, requires executive resources. In a parallel investigation, Yale University professor Nathan Novemsky and his colleagues suggest that the mere act of resolving tradeoffs may be depleting. For example, in one study, the scientists show that people who had to rate the attractiveness of different options were much less depleted than those who had to actually make choices between the very same options.

“Friends Of Abe”

by Chris Bodenner
Conservatives in Hollywood have gone underground. With his trademark hyperbole, David Horowitz:

"There’s a kind of … intellectual terror in this town. People are terrorized; they’re afraid to say what they think. So what Gary [Sinise] is doing to provide aid and comfort to its victims is admirable, and I applaud him for it."

From The Candidate’s Mouth

By Patrick Appel
Joe Klein responds to McCain saying "Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign":

This is the ninth presidential campaign I’ve covered. I can’t remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency…Smart politicians leave the scurrilous stuff to their aides; in fact, a McCain spokesman expressed these words almost exactly on July 14. There is a reason why politicians who want to be President don’t say these sort of things: It isn’t presidential. A President exists in the straitjacket of literality. His words mean something. So John McCain has to literally believe that Barack Obama would "rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." I can’t imagine that he does. He popped off, out of frustration.

Ben Smith tries to find a historical parallel with little luck.