Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day. 

Have you seen an attack ad recently that made you want to vomit? Run away from your television? Turns out those are perfectly natural responses.According to a recent study in the Journal of Advertising, negative campaign ads actually cause physical repulsion in viewers. But here’s what’s even more interesting: the same study found that a viewer's (ahem) uncomfortable gut reaction isn’t bad news for the politician who's trying to win his or her vote. Negative ads tend to induce a stronger emotional reaction--so they leave a longer impression on whoever sees them.

Here’s how the experiment worked: participants watched 30-second Bush and Gore ads from the 2000 campaign with electrodes under their eyes. Those electrodes detected a “startle response”--basically a hard blink, which is indicative of a larger reflexive desire to move away from an unpleasant situation--much more frequently during negative ads than during positive or neutral ones. You might not notice while vegging on the couch, but negative ads actually activate the initial steps of darting away from danger.

Given the stark divergence in the campaigns’ use of negative ads, the research (which was first published in the winter of 2007) feels particularly pertinent now. According to the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin, nearly 100 percent of McCain’s Sept. 28 to Oct. 4 spots were negative, compared to 34 percent of Obama’s. “In an ideal world it would be awesome to just run positive ads," says James Angelini, a communications professor at the University of Delaware and one of the study's authors. "But that might not be the best way to get the attention of some undecided voters." The real difficulty, he says, is creating negative ads that are remembered for what they say about the opponent--not for causing a gut-wrenching reaction among viewers. NEWSWEEK’s Sarah Kliff caught up with Angelini to talk about the biology of negative advertising. Excerpts:

So tell me a bit about what’s going on when we view negative political advertising?
What this boils down to is when we are exposed to any sort of negative stimuli, even think back to ancient man having a tiger come into view, a system gets activated that makes you want to avoid it in order to preserve yourself. Nowadays a tiger isn’t going to walk into our line of sight but negative stimuli, even on the TV, activates that same system. It’s so negative, it makes us feel disgust, and we want to flight.

What exactly is similar about being frightened by a tiger and seeing McCain attack Obama?
It’s a biological thing within us. We want to avoid anything negative, be it some sort of physical harm us or something that just make us feel uncomfortable. We want to avoid any sort of negative emotion and that’s what they do, still invoke negative emotions and activate this cognitive system.

And you found that, as creating memorable advertising goes, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing?
When exposed to a negative thing you want to avoid, you have to pay close attention to it. If you go back to the biology of it, and the idea of watching out for lions, you have to pay close attention for survival. When something elicits such strong emotional reactions, you end up paying attention to it. That helps you remember it later because the content is stored.  

So negative ads are more memorable. Is there a positive way to make political ads memorable? You write that the equivalent, in beer advertising, is “scantily clad models” because they elicit a strong emotional response.
Evolutionarily, our main goal is to eat, and to reproduce. Exposure to something like models, for a certain demographic, can elicit a strong, positive emotional response. I really am not sure if there’s an equivalent in campaign advertising. You can’t have Obama and McCain surrounded by scantily clad women. It’s hard to make the same connection [you can with negative advertising] with a positive ad.

Does that mean negative advertising is the way to go?
Not necessarily. People might remember it more, but how are they going to remember it? Are they remembering this candidate putting out this negative ad, and making them uncomfortable, or are they remembering the attacks launched on the opponent? It’s a fine line. You don’t want to go too negative, and produce that gut reaction against your candidate, but also being negative is going to help you be more memorable. 

Is there any research on the reaction to negative ads that looks at the partisan divide--like how you react to a negative ad by the candidate you support versus their opponent?
We measured that in our participants, how they felt about Bush and how they felt about Gore, and there wasn’t a significant difference in how much they startled.

If Obama or McCain read your study, what should they take away from it?
If Obama and McCain were to run a long series of positive ads, it might not be the best thing. They wouldn’t be that memorable and would probably impact the people who are already voting for them. You have to be aware of the few undecideds and what kind of impression you’re leaving them with. If you attack to hard, they might avoid voting for you because of that natural startle reaction. But if you don’t attack at all they forget your ad. In an ideal world it would be awesome to just run positive ads, but that might not be the best thing to get the attention of some undecided voters.

Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day.

By Mary Charmichael

Barack Obama and John McCain have put forth radical—and radically different—proposals to change the way Americans do, or don't, get health insurance. Is it really possible to make sure everyone's covered? Are the candidates even trying for that? And what lessons can we learn from Massachusetts, which has embarked on its own experiment with universal health care? NEWSWEEK's Mary Carmichael spoke with Katherine Swartz, a professor of health policy and economics at Harvard who studies insurance and recently published an in-depth analysis of the McCain plan:

CARMICHAEL: McCain wants to take away the tax break workers get on health insurance at their jobs, and instead give people who buy their own insurance $2,500 in tax credits. Families would get $5,000. What do you make of this idea?
SWARTZ: The positive part is that it would reduce favoritism in the tax system. If you're unemployed, or if you're with a small employer who doesn't provide health insurance, you don't get any special treatment [taxwise] on insurance now. The bad part is that the tax credit could make it harder for low-income people to get insured. In the current system, a lot of low-income people with jobs are getting insurance they could never afford on their own.

The credit is supposed to help.
But you have to purchase health insurance to get the tax credit, and low-income people still may not be able to do that. For a family, insurance premiums in the nongroup markets are typically above $700 a month, and that's with a deductible of at least $5,000. We're talking $8,400 a year in premium payments, but the tax credit is only for $5,000. You still have to pay $3,400, plus the deductible, before the insurance covers medical expenses. Also, the type of coverage on the individual market typically does not cover as many services as group policies. If you buy your own policy, when you get sick, you are going to pay more out of pocket.

Can you explain McCain's plan to help out people with previously existing conditions by expanding "high-risk pools"?
We've had state-sponsored high-risk pools for several decades, but they cover fewer than 200,000 people. They were set up so insurance companies could essentially cede people who they predicted would have very high health-care costs. At one point McCain said he would subsidize high-risk pools with between $7 billion and $10 billion a year. That would cover maybe 3 million people, which is not much of a dent in the 47 million people without insurance now.

How many people would be insured under McCain's proposals, compared to today?
My colleagues and I have predicted that around 21 million people in the first year would lose access to health insurance because their employers would stop offering it. About 21 million higher-income people would take the tax credits and buy their own insurance. So it would be a wash in the first year. We worry that within five years, more employers would stop offering insurance, and we'd end up with more people uninsured than there are now.

Now let's look at Obama's plan. What exactly is an insurance exchange?
The one he's proposing looks a lot like the Health Connector we have in Massachusetts. It acts as a clearinghouse where people can buy insurance policies that are essentially given the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval by the state. In the Obama plan, there's a minimum set of benefits every plan has to offer, and if your income is below some threshold yet to be specified, you would get a subsidy. Small businesses could also use this exchange to provide health insurance. This has worked very well in Massachusetts.

And his national health plan?
It's basically one more choice offered in the exchange. It sets a floor for what kinds of services the other plans would have to offer. Here's where we have to start thinking about the total cost. If the national plan is quite generous in terms of services covered, the proposal's cost will be more than the campaign is estimating.

In Massachusetts, costs have already gotten out of control.
Costs are higher than expected, but that's partly because the original projections underestimated the number of uninsured people who were eligible for subsidies. It's also partly because health-care costs are rising—and that's the case everywhere.

Obama would also require insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions. Wouldn't insurers raise premiums?
Yes, premiums may be higher. I think people need to consider the alternative—if patients are closed off from coverage, they still go to the ER, and we all pay for that.

Does the Obama plan actually provide universal coverage?
No. It requires that children be covered, but there's no mandate for other individuals. Some adults would continue to be uninsured—roughly 6 percent of the nonelderly, compared with 17 percent now, so many more people would have insurance than do now.

Obama's plan is very ambitious. How on earth can we pay for it?
Given the federal deficit, that's a problem for both plans. McCain's plan is not cheap either. I think it will be hard for either candidate to do much in the next few years.

READ THE REST HERE.

Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day.  

Graham, to the right of McCain (AP Photo / Stephen Savoia)

ST. PAUL, Minn.--Very few people know John McCain as well as Lindsey Graham. An old friend and confidant, the South Carolina senator has spent more time on the trail with the Republican nominee this cycle--from Southern barbecue joints to Midwestern mill towns--than any other politician (and even some McCain staffers). Earlier this afternoon, Graham graciously agreed to give panel of NEWSWEEK reporters and editors an exclusive look inside McCain's hush-hush vice presidential selection process. As has been reported, Graham lobbied McCain hard in the final hours to choose their mutual friend, Sen. Joe Lieberman, whom he believed would be a "transforming pick." But in the end, McCain tapped Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin instead--surprising even Graham, who found out "for sure" only last Friday, the day of the announcement.

For me, the most fascinating part of the conversation came when Graham delved into Palin's positives, framing her first and foremost as "the right persona for what [McCain] want[s] to do" and "a compelling story" rather than someone who's ready to occupy the Oval Office at a moment's notice--effectively admitting, in other words, that she's a campaign pick rather than a governing pick. Indeed, Graham believes that the recent flurry of negative news about Palin--her teen daughter's pregnancy, her husband's DUI, her ancient fishing violation and especially the "questions" about whether having a child with Down syndrome should prevent her from running for veep--will only accentuate that narrative and redound to her (and the GOP's) benefit. "People can relate to her more than they can relate to the other three," he said. "Her story in many ways reflects modern America, and I'm thinking that's going to help us--warts and all." Also worth noting: how aggressively Graham turns the tables on Obama when asked about Palin's inexperience (something we predicted would happen the day she was unveiled). Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What does it tell us about John McCain that he met Sarah Palin twice and offered her the job at the end of the first interview?
Lindsey Graham: I think the basic point here is--I underappreciated it a bit--is that John was committed to making a transforming choice. Pawlenty was by everyone's estimation a safe choice, a solid choice. And if he would've been the pick we would've been talking about an accomplished governor of the state of  Minnesota who stuck with John during difficult times and is a solid conservative. But Tim is Tim.

What do you mean by that?
He's a guy. And at the end of the day John was looking at trying to do something different. Lieberman was one road you could go down. I thought that would be a transforming pick. It would be John telling the country that these are unique times and we're all under siege. Everybody in America is threatened by this radical Islamic movement throughout the world. Joe understands it. Joe has been a great ally. I trust him. Party label don't mean what they used to before the war. That's one story.

You know Senator McCain well. Why did he pick Palin?
With her, I think John was drawn ... and trust me, he's been talking about her for quite awhile in bits and pieces. I think he met her back in February sometime at the governor's conference and mentioned to me how impressed he was with her. If you know anything about John and the appropriators and the battles inside the body this makes perfect sense. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And it just wowed him beyond belief that she would take this group of people on. When you think about it, all the battles between him and Ted [Stevens, the Alaska senator under investigation for corruption] ... he saw in her a lot of himself. The closer we got to having to pick--and the problems you could see going one way versus going the other--I think he was comfortable that she was the right person to send the message he wanted to send.

Did he know enough about her record of reform to be assured? Or was it merely instinct?
I think he knew enough about her confrontations with powerful people in the state to feel like she's the right persona for what I want to do. I don't know if he knew any more about what Tim had done than what she had done. I don't know if he knew any more about what Romney had done in Massachusetts than what she had done. At the end of the day, I think she was ... I honest to God believe it was personal appreciation; chemistry, from the persona that she projects; and what she was willing to do to people in her own party and stand up to corruption. Now compare that to Joe Biden. I love Joe Biden. Everybody likes Joe Biden. But I would argue that he hasn't tried to change the culture in Washington at all when it comes to how we spend money and the way we run the town. Joe Biden is as comfortable as he can be with the way the Congress is operating. We are not.

When did McCain tell you he was going with Palin and what did he say? Tell us about that conversation.
It was pretty late in the process. This was a need-to-know deal. They held this very tight. At the end of the day, it was the reform message that won out. It's the message he feels most comfortable with.

Was it Thursday? They announced it on Friday morning.
I don't know when John made up him mind as to which road to go down, but it was a cliffhanger.

But did you learn Friday morning, the same day everyone else did?
Well, I knew Friday for sure, and we had talks the night before. He held this very close to the vest. I think he was really thinking hard.

What's your sense of where things stand now with all the stuff that's come out over the last day or so?
If this it, we won't be talking about it two weeks from now. Politically, I think what's been accomplished here is that we've energized the base beyond anything I've seen in politics. Not so much just because of her, but for some people [i.e., social conservatives] what didn't happen [i.e., a pro-choice pick]. There's a real sense of relief out there. That said, there are not enough Republicans to win the election. If your model is just to get Republicans fired up, you can't win. They tell me there are about 12 percent of voters who are really undecided. About half of those people are women. With them, I think Governor Palin's personal story is going to connect. When you look at the four people running, I would argue that her story is closer ... that people can relate to her more than they can relate to the other three. Most of us haven't experienced what Joe Biden has experienced. Very few have experienced what John has experienced. And Barack Obama is a unique man--he's had unique experiences. But Governor Palin's story in many ways reflects modern America. I'm thinking that's going to help us--warts and all.

You said "if this is it." That's the big "if" hovering over this convention.
The campaign sent out talking points today about how many pages of forms she filled out and how many lawyers met with her. This idea that John said, "Joe ain't gonna work--what's that lady's name?" That ain't what happened. That's not gonna stick.

But surely your party didn't want to be discussing Palin's daughter's pregnancy on the second day of the convention? What does that say about McCain's management style?
But what is the discussion? Did we know she was pregnant? Yeah, we knew. She knew. It's something that's hard to hide. Would you want to say, here's Governor Palin: great reform governor--and her daughter's pregnant. Is that what you say on the first day? 

Maybe I'm missing something, but what is wrong with what's happening? What if John had said, "No, I'm not going to put you on the ticket because your daughter has this problem"? Most Americans would say, "Whoa, that's unfair." John wouldn't do that. It wouldn't have been right to keep her off the ticket. I think people understand that.

Y'all are playing with fire here if you talk about this too much. You run into the issue of "would you ask this of a man"? Joe Biden lost his wife and his daughter at 29. Was there a real pushback saying, "Joe, you should be home with your two kids that survived"? Joe Biden has proven a couple of things in his life: you can overcome tragedy, raise wonderful kids and be a good senator. Quite frankly, that's what I'm saying. America does not want to hear this. There are elements in America who do, sure, but most Americans have enough going on in their family life--you have a Down syndrome child, the support network for vice president is pretty large. What about the mother and father out there with a Down syndrome child who both have to work? That's where America is at. The idea that she shouldn't go to work because of this is not an option for a lot of people, and they don't want to hear folks say that she should be put in a box and not allowed to fulfill her dreams. The American people can handle this--because a lot of Americans are handling this.

You've focused for years on foreign policy. Are you comfortable that Governor Palin knows enough about world affairs to take over the presidency at a moment's notice?
That's why I want Barack to lose--because I'm not comfortable with him. I'm very comfortable with her. The basic argument that I would make is that John has set the bar very high for Obama. I think that most us would agree, whether we like John or not, that his lengthy experience in the area of foreign policy is right up there at the top with American political leaders. But I think Obama was wrong about Russia and Georgia, he was wrong about Iran and he was wrong about the surge. So when people ask me if she's ready, I say, "Compared to who?" Let's look at what we know about her and what we know about Barack Obama and see if she's as ready as he is. And I would argue absolutely yes. Domestically, she's much closer to where the American people are. She understands energy much better, she's been right on taxes, she's been a true reformer and not a just good speechgiver. And in the arena of foreign policy, she will have John McCain's team around her. Ultimately, she will be able to make these decisions much better than Obama has, because what he has done in decision-making so far has been unnerving. I'd like to have that debate every day between now and Nov. 4. Who's best prepared to be president: Sarah Palin or Barack Obama?

Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day. 

It's not a particularly "grand" time to be a Republican. About 70 percent of Americans disapprove of President George W. Bush's performance. Party identification is at an all-time low. Experts expect the GOP to lose between four and seven seats in the Senate and 10 and 20 seats in the House--giving the Democrats their largest majorities in a generation. And John McCain hasn't led Barack Obama in a single poll since May 3.

Enter Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam. Named by David Brooks of the New York Times as "two of the most promising" of "an emerging "group of young and unpredictable rightward-leaning writers," they're editors at the Atlantic Monthly and co-authors of "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream," released earlier this week. The book--which Brooks calls "the best single roadmap of where the party should and is likely to head"--claims that Republicans can save themselves only by ditching the country club for Sam's Club and emphasizing policies that link economic security to family values. Will it work? Who knows. But at this point, anything is worth a try. Douthat and Salam spoke with Stumper this morning. Excerpts:

So, the Grand Old Party: what went wrong?
DOUTHAT: The broad argument in our book is that the GOP is, in many ways, a victim of its own success. The first half book is basically a history of how the Republican Party won working-class voters, who used to form the heart of the Roosevelt coalition. And we argue, I think fairly uncontroversially, that they won them on a series of issues--welfare, crime, taxes and the Cold War--that don't have nearly the salience today that they had when the Republican Party was coming together under Ronald Reagan. Welfare has been reformed fairly successfully. Crime rates have fallen dramatically. Marginal tax rates are considerably lower than they were in the late 1970s. And obviously the Soviet Union has ceased to exist. So the GOP is sort of at a crossroads where, particularly on domestic policy, its agenda doesn't map onto the concerns of working-class Americans the way it did in the '70s, the '80s and '90s.

People lay blame at the feet of President Bush. Obviously the historical backdrop has changed over time, but how much do the mistakes of the past eight years contribute to the current collapse of the GOP?
SALAM: There have been plenty of other books that have offered a litany of what went wrong with the Bush Administration. We don't disagree. But it's certainly true that 2000 presented Republicans with a rare opportunity. When you look at the rhetorical shifts that George W. Bush made in his campaign, it seemed like the public and certainly the conservative public was receptive to a broad shift in political orientation toward a domestic, reformist agenda. When you look at a lot of the policies that John McCain was pointing to, you saw a willingness to break with some conservative orthodoxy. But no one really seized that mantle, in part because 9-11 presented such an attractive opportunity to go back to the kind of rock-ribbed conservative fundamentals of the Reagan era--namely, national security, this time under the guise of terrorism rather than communism. There was an ability to draw on the classic tropes that this generation of conservative politicians was very familiar with. But I think there could've large-scale Republican realignment had they married that national-security politics to more meat on the bone domestically.

How can Republicans reclaim their majority and find their voice going forward?
DOUTHAT: We think they should create a pro-family party that doesn't abandon the party's commitment to social conservatism. The GOP should remain--and has to remain--a pro-life party. But a lot of the challenges faced by working-class Americans in the modern economy actually flow from issues of family breakdown. It's interesting. If you look at the marriage rates in the 1950s and 1960s across social classes, the upper-middle class, the working class and the poor all got married and divorced at about the same rate. The all had children in wedlock or out of wedlock at about the same rate. That's changed dramatically over the past 50 years. So upper-middle-class Americans are still behaving like bourgeois, 1950s surburbanites. They're getting married, they have low divorce rates, they're very unlike to have children out of wedlock. That's not true for the working class. What you see in the white working class, in fact, is a trajectory that parallels, in alarming ways, what the black working class went through in terms of collapsing marriage rates and out-of-wedlock birth rates in the 1960s and 1970s. So we argue that that's one of the biggest challenges facing the American working class, and it's at the root of a lot of the inequality and a lot of the economic anxiety that are big factors in this election year.

That's interesting. Most people typically think that poverty causes the breakdown of the family, but if I'm reading you correctly, you're saying the reverse.
DOUTHAT: It's not necessarily the reverse, but rather that you can't separate one from the other. It's a cyclical effect. Poverty creates stress that leads to family breakdown, and family breakdown creates stress that leads to poverty. If you look at, for instance, divorce rates in the United States and how divorce interacts with poverty in terms of splitting up incomes...

SALAM: ... It's very straightforward. When you have a young kid, the sort of supervision that raising a kid or more than one kid takes, it certainly helps to have more than one person. That's very basic and very familiar. But if we're talking about people who are going up the economic ladder, it's interesting because what family breakdown does is it makes mobility harder. Let's say you want to finish college. It becomes much, much harder to do that when you don't have another adult in the household. Unless you have those very thick networks that upper-middle-class people take for granted, you're going to have to go into the paid market for child care. Even renting an apartment. All of these workers who are going to Cape Cod, they actually have to rent rooms in hotels because they don't have the savings that they need in order to put a downpayment or make a deposit on an apartment that they rent for the summer. That's something that really exacerbates the cycle of poverty. And when you don't have family breakdown--when you have two parties who can contribute--then you see a very different picture.

DOUTHAT: The GOP is well-positioned to address a lot of these concerns, but it needs to broaden what it means to be a pro-family party.

SALAM: We're not trying to find victims, and we're not trying to point fingers. It's just that policy-makers are paying attention to these interactions across different silos. When you look at the New Deal, they actually had a pretty keen sense of how culture shapes economics and how economics shapes culture. There's this desire to silo these things off. That's Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas" argument: "Oh, these are issues that are just designed to distract you from your real economic interests. Who really cares about marriage? Who really cares about abortion? Who really cares about family values?" And one of the core arguments of this book is, wait a second--actually, those cultural aspects of your life in fact relate to your economic well-being. It's the idea of a conservative politics that is culturally egalitarian and that recognizes government can play a role to help people on the first rungs of the economic ladder.

In your view, how do Democrats typically get this wrong? As a party, they typically seem more in tune, rhetorically at least, with the needs of the working class.
SALAM: Democrats are very reluctant to be judgmental about family structure. They are very uncomfortable saying there's an ideal family structure and that's what we should enshrine in our policies. A big part of what any president can do is occupy the bully pulpit and give a sense of the moral direction of our government and our society. Sure,  that's not enough. But while some Democrats are doing a great job in terms of devising clever policies to aid working families, the problem is that clever policies are only going to take you so far when they're not happening in this broad framework about the value of family values.

But are there really any silver-bullet policies that government can implement to, you know, keep families together?
SALAM: No, not necessarily. But they can reduce some of those burdens and some of that stress.

AFTER THE JUMP: Which Republicans "get it"--and which don't...
 

Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day.

Nate Silver is channeling Nostradamus. As a University of Chicago econ alum slogging through an undemanding post-collegiate consulting gig, he developed a comprehensive historical database that could project the future performance of any pro baseball player by matching him to a comparable predecessor--down to, like, his height, his weight, his career singles and the size of his home stadium. Called PECOTA, it's now recognized as the most accurate baseball forecasting system on the market.

But apparently Silver wasn't satisfied. In October, he started posting anonymously (nom d'écran: "Poblano") at DailyKos, where his detailed district-by-district projections of who would win each Democratic contest (and by how much) soon earned him a massive following. Relying on demographic data from previous primaries and ignoring the usual mishmash of polls, Silver ultimately came within 20 delegates of the final split on Super Tuesday (out of nearly 1,700) and nailed the margins in Indiana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Montana and Kentucky. Taking a break from blogging at FiveThirtyEight.com--not to mention his new duties writing for The Guardian and The New Republic--Silver (whom I profiled in this week's dead-tree Newsweek and who supports Obama) spoke to Stumper about where the McCain-Obama match-up is going next. Excerpts:

So we'll start with an easy question: Who's going to win the election?
Well, if you look at where the polls are right now, it's going to be just as close as it was the last couple of cycles. That said, if anyone wins by a large margin, it's more liable to be Obama. Right now, he's tied with McCain, even though he's losing 20 percent of Democrats to McCain. That number is pretty unprecedented-it's usually about 10 percent. If Obama can get that number down to 15 percent, then that represents a bump of four points overall: you're basically taking two points away from McCain and giving two to Obama. That would represent a landslide compared to recent elections.

The fact is, the fundamentals favor Obama. He is tying McCain among Independents, and there's four-to-three ratio of Democrats to Republicans in terms of voter ID. If those numbers stay the same, he just has to hold his own among Democrats-maybe even losing a few more Democratic voters than John Kerry might have because of race or because some Hillary supporters stay bitter-and he wins. That's especially important states like Ohio where you had big swings at the state level to Democrats, and Hillary picked up the bulk of that support.

Can he win them back? A lot of Clinton supporters say no-they're going to vote for McCain.
I think by the time it gets to September, Hillary die-hard supporters might still not love Obama, but they won't love McCain either. At that point McCain's going to be advertising to his base-Republicans-and Democrats are going to be advertising to theirs. So he's going to look unacceptable to Democrats, even if they supported Hillary. McCain's goal is to win 60 percent of the Independent vote to counteract by the Democrats' edge in party ID, which he'll do by saying Obama is too liberal.

We are talking about this in sort of a macro sense, but it's the electoral college that will decide the election.  It's state by state. Now, I know on your site is keeping track of every state-by-state poll that comes down the pike. How is the map shaping up?  It seems to me that if Obama can pick up New Mexico, Iowa and Colorado, he doesn't have to worry as much about places like Ohio and Florida where he isn't quite as popular as Hillary among Democrats.
Right. Or, if you take the Kerry states, add Ohio-which I think Obama's almost certainly going to win--and then add Colorado and Iowa, then that's a winning map by a few electoral votes for him. Actually, I think it's one of the more likely maps.

If you had to predict a couple of surprises, what would they be?
You want to get exotic? If Obama just won Colorado and Iowa-not Ohio--and picked up one electoral vote from Omaha, in Nebraska, then he would tie 269 to 269. Now, McCain is going to win Nebraska. He'll totally clobber Obama. Republicans usually win the state by 20 points or more. But the thing is, Nebraska divides its electors up by congressional district, and there are two districts out of three where Obama might be competitive. One is the city of Omaha, where Obama is running about 10 points better than the state overall, and the other is focused around Lincoln and the University of Nebraska and borders Iowa, where people seem to love Obama for some reason. He could win one of those districts, and with things being so close, that could be the technicality that decides the election. In light of what happened in Florida in 2000, it would almost be fitting, no? Tying 269-269 by winning the city of Omaha, then having it go to the House, where the Democrats would vote for him. Farfetched, but possible. That one electoral vote could matter.

Any other possible surprises?
Indiana is an interesting state. It's always a state that maybe shouldn't be as red as it is. Like, the Bill Clinton maps from '92 and '96--Bill won in a lot of states where Democrats don't often win. Indiana is a little lake of red in the middle of a lot of blue. It's unusual that it hasn't gone more Democratic. I think part of the reason is that some of these states haven't really had a democrat campaign there for years.  Indiana, they've just written off. It's usually voted Republican, but it's also a state that has a huge manufacturing industry. It has the same concerns that Ohio has. Which is why, I think, our current projections show Obama losing by less than four. North Carolina is another state that might be reasonably competitive; McCain's up by about six in our system. I think in the course of the long Democratic primary campaign, Obama discovered a couple of hidden swing states where he can compete that he otherwise would've written off.

What about Virginia?  That's another one that people toss out there.
I think in four years Virginia is going to kind of a solid blue state, because it's becoming more northern. So while Virginia is a good opportunity for Obama, whether it gets there right away, I don't know.  The western panhandle of Virginia reaches into Appalachia, where he's going to lose pretty badly. But Virginia-along with Missouri, where Obama is also polling pretty well-are going to be the only Southern tossups. But I think he's not likely to win a state like Mississippi, which the campaign says it's targeting. They talk about turning out the African-American vote out in Mississippi, but even if you do that, it's not going to happen. Turnout among African-Americans is pretty good already. 

That said, I'm watching Georgia.  I'm fascinated by it. The polls show Obama trailing McCain by about ten points, but they also have former Congressman Bob Barr drawing six to eight percent. So if Obama can increase African-American turnout and inch up a few points, it seems like he might have a shot.
Don't forget: it's also one of the youngest states in the country. Alaska could be interesting, too.  Thanks to its harsh climate and hard-core industries, it attracts a very hearty, very male population. Historically, there's a lot of affection for third-party candidates in Alaska, so it's a state where Barr could get five or six or seven percent of the vote-which is about how far behind Obama is in the latest polls. It might be enough to tip it. In which case, we'll be up until 4:00 in the morning waiting for the returns from Juneau.

What about the reverse?  We have been talking optimistically about Obama, but what about McCain?  He's more competitive in places like Pennsylvania or New Jersey or Michigan than any other Republican would be.
There are a lot of Independents in Michigan, and they certainly seem to have a lot of affection for John McCain.  They certainly did in 2000, and right now he's leading in our projections by a tiny, tiny margin-one-tenth of one percent. I think that the fact that Obama didn't get to mobilize there in the primary campaign probably hurts him, but that at the end of the day, Michigan leans Democrat. Still, McCain's could win. He's got a special relationship with the state. Wouldn't be interesting if Obama wins Ohio and loses Michigan? That's what our map shows him doing right now. It's one of millions of permutations, but it's possible.

Overall, though, Obama is in a better position than John Kerry was.  In Pennsylvania, Obama has pulled enough ahead now where it's not likely to be supercompetitive. And in states where McCain otherwise might be especially strong-- like in the West-any "native son," regional advantage is probably outweighed at this point by changes in demographics and the local political cultures. Arizona won't be competitive, of course, but those neighboring states-New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada-will be.

Where McCain does better than Bush did, actually, is on the East Coast. He might stay within eight or ten points in Massachusetts, whereas Bush lost by 20. Or Connecticut might be within in seven points But he's not going to do well enough to actually win then. Because it's his strongest region, he gains popular votes--but not necessarily electoral votes.

Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day. This edition is cross-posted from NEWSWEEK's June 16 print issue.

Carlos Javier Ortiz / Rapport for Newsweek

On May 6, expectations were high for Hillary Clinton. After all, the latest polls suggested the former First Lady had built up a 5-point cushion in Indiana and slashed Barack Obama's 20-point lead in North Carolina to 8. But over at FiveThirty Eight.com, an anonymous blogger (nom d'écran: "Poblano") wasn't convinced. Relying on demographic data from previous primaries and ignoring the usual mishmash of polls, the mysterious upstart projected that Clinton would win Indiana by 2 percent and lose North Carolina by 17—a far-less favorable outcome. When the results finally rolled in—1 in Indiana, 15 in North Carolina—Poblano had outperformed every established pollster. Clinton never recovered, but with the National Journal, the Guardian and the New York Post suddenly dissecting or demanding the secrets of his success, Poblano became an Internet sensation. "It was kind of amazing," he says.

It only gets better. For the man behind the blog, outpredicting the experts wasn't anything new—even if outpredicting political experts was. On May 30, Poblano finally revealed his offline name: Nate Silver. Doesn't ring a bell? Chances are you're not a baseball geek. Silver, 30, is already celebrated among ball fans for inventing something called PECOTA. Developed while the University of Chicago econ alum slogged through a post-collegiate consulting gig—"I'm used to not sleeping," he tells NEWSWEEK—PECOTA is now recognized as the most accurate system for forecasting how athletes and teams will perform in the future (down to the number of singles). In 2007, Silver's algorithm enraged at least half of Chicago when it said the White Sox—2005 champs—would post a 72–90 record. Turned out PECOTA was exactly right. For laypeople, the leap from the national pastime to national politics might seem like a stretch. But not for Silver (who posted his first political item on Daily Kos in October). "Baseball and politics are data-driven," he's written. "But a lot of the time, that data might be used badly. In baseball, that may mean looking at a statistic like batting average when things like on-base percentage and slugging percentage are far more correlated with winning ballgames. In politics, that might mean cherry-picking a certain polling result." In other words, different sport—same skill set.

From the start, Silver took pride in myth-busting the MSM, which has tended to reduce 2008's complex calculus—delegate distribution, demographic coalitions—into not-quite-true narratives. Obama has a problem with working-class whites? Actually, he has a problem with Appalachian working-class whites—and not their cousins in Oregon and Wisconsin. And so on. The response was ecstatic, and FiveThirtyEight's daily traffic increased 5,000 percent between March and June. But the main attraction was always Silver's primary predictions. Taking a page from PECOTA—a comprehensive historical database, it projects future performance by matching current players to comparable predecessors—Poblano predicted the results in, say, Pittsburgh by measuring how Clinton and Obama did in demographically similar congressional districts earlier on (once set, their coalitions were remarkably stable). Silver's score wasn't perfect—he underestimated Clinton in Kentucky and South Dakota. But ultimately, he came within 20 delegates of the final split on Super Tuesday (out of nearly 1,700) and 2.5 percent, on average, in the other six post-March primaries. "Nate's work is innovative," says Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com.

So who will win in November? Silver says Obama (full disclosure: he's a supporter). Predicting the Election Day outcome is not like predicting a primary; with no previous head-to-head results to mine, Silver is relying on Census data to balance out the polls. So far, Silver's system shows Obama and McCain splitting the popular vote 50.0 percent to 50.0 percent, with Obama winning the Electoral College 274.4 to 263.6. Today, McCain runs about 10 points better than Bush in parts of the Northeast—his strongest region, comparatively—but it's only enough to swing tiny New Hampshire. The Arizonan's best chance for a big flip? Michigan. Obama, on the other hand, currently swipes Colorado, New Mexico and Iowa from the GOP, and is within striking distance in Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia and even Alaska. And thanks to Nebraska, where electors are awarded by congressional district, Silver even suspects that McCain and Obama could, um, tie. "Right now, Obama's losing the state by 10 points, but that's 10 points better than Dems usually do," he says. "If Obama wins Colorado, Iowa and the city of Omaha, where he's popular, it would end up 269–269 and go to the House of Representatives. Crazier things could happen."

They could. And Silver would probably be the first to know.

NB: This map is a SurveyUSA projection from a few weeks back; I included it here because Thomas Schaller mentioned it in our interview. Based on current polling, Obama is unlikely to lose either Pennsylvania or New Jersey in a general-election battle against John McCain. He currently leads by an average of six points in the former and nine points in the latter, and trails in Virginia by one. Apologies for any confusion.

Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day.

The next--and last--contests on the Democratic primary calendar are Puerto Rico on Sunday and South Dakota and Montana next Tuesday, but you'd hardly know it from tracking Barack Obama's recent travel schedule. Instead of stumping in Sioux Falls and backslapping in Billings, Obama spent Monday hunting for military votes in Las Cruces, N.M. and Tuesday talking about the mortgage crisis in Las Vegas, Nev.; today he lands in Denver and Thornton, Colo. to raise money and tout his education plan. Meanwhile, McCain made all the same stops: Monday in New Mexico, Tuesday in Denver and today in Las Vegas. Welcome to the brewing battle over the Southwest. McCain, an Arizonan, arrives with an edge--but Obama's early swing suggests that he hopes to put at least three of the region's four Republican-leaning states in play. Can he win here? To find out, Stumper talked with Thomas Schaller, the author of 2006's "Whistling Past Dixie," who has argued for years that Democrats should skip the South and turn their attention westward instead. Seems like someone is finally listening. Excerpts:

This week, Obama is stumping in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico. How important is the Southwest to his general-election strategy? Does he need to win there? Can he win there?
The three states you hit on are obviously the most important and the most likely states. They're among the three fastest growing states in the union: Arizona's first and Colorado and Nevada are right behind it. So long-term, they're important states for the Democratic coalition. Short-term, if you can put together the three non-Arizona Southwestern states--Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico--that's 19 electoral votes. Add them to Kerry's 252 electoral votes and you're over 270 [the amount required to win]. That's Obama right there.

There are five ways that Obama can get from Kerry's 252 over the top, and that's one of them. Florida is obviously one. Ohio is one. Then there are what I call the "36th Parallel" strategies: Virginia and West Virginia, or Missouri and Kentucky, both of which are unlikely. I think of all five, Ohio is the most probable--but the Southwest troika is Obama's second most likely path to the White House.

That seems unusual. We usually hear more about Florida and Ohio.
It's interesting that as Obama began to move after North Carolina to a more general-election posture, you'll notice that he started traveling to places that weren't on the upcoming calendar. That included Florida and Michigan for obvious reasons. But he's also been, as you know, recently in Colorado and Nevada. So one of the things that I learned when I was writing the book is that neither Gore nor Kerry spent enough time out there, and Democrats in those states I talked to complained vociferously about that. Kerry did some whistle stops on his train ride out there, but largely he wrote both those states off.  That turned out to be a major mistake, especially in a state like Colorado where he did a lot better than Gore.

Why didn't Kerry make a bigger investment in the West?
I think the problem for Kerry is that he knew he'd have to win all three, because 252 plus 19 gets you 271--which is basically the same as if you only got Ohio instead. So I think they just decided to roll the dice on Ohio. That's not necessarily a bad strategy if you have to make a choice over scarce resources--to one-shot Ohio. You know, the economic situation there is better, in theory, for Dems. But I think the thing that's different this year is that Obama will be loaded for bear, and he's not going to have to make that choice. Obviously, time is a fixed commodity. Every day you spend in one state is a day you can't spend in another. But in terms of resources and campaign staff, field and money, Obama will have no problem going after the Southwest. He has field staff in these states that he more or less left there after the primaries.

So this interminable nominating contest has helped him after all.
Right. And the difference in resources compared with Kerry is going to be very, very dramatic. Not to mention the technical integration, the online stuff.

People have probably forgotten, but the margins in these states were really close in 2004--five points in Colorado, three in Nevada, one in New Mexico.
That's right. There were only twelve states decided by five points or fewer, and eight of them were in the Midwest or Southwest alone, including the three states we just talked about. Now, Arizona is obviously out of play because of McCain and his home court advantage there. What's interesting is if you go back to... remember about seven weeks ago SurveyUSA released head-to-head match-ups of Clinton vs. McCain and Obama vs. McCain [see map above]? They both had enough electoral votes to beat McCain, but their coalitions were different. [NB: Versus McCain, Obama still performs better than Clinton in New Mexico and Colorado.] And the once place that was strikingly different was that Hillary Clinton was losing those states out west to McCain, with the exception of New Mexico, and Obama was winning them. He was winning Colorado and Nevada. What's ironic here is that those were the states she carried in the primaries, except for Colorado. She carried Nevada, she carried New Mexico and she carried Arizona on the strength of the Hispanic vote.

Do you think Obama can win these three states--Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada?
I don't know that he'll win all three, but I think he's going to win two. I think he'll win New Mexico; the Hispanic vote is so big there, and it's trending back toward the Democrats. Bush did pretty well among Hispanics in 2004, about 40 percent, but Republicans fell right back to 29 percent by 2006. Congressional cycles are a little different than presidential cycles, but I suspect that Democratic support for Obama in New Mexico will be at least 65 percent. You get to that threshold and it's at your fingertips. In Colorado, there's Obama's strong showing in the caucuses; there's the changing nature of the population; there's the fact that the Rev. James Dobson early on said that he'd never support McCain. Given Dobson's clout in that state and the fact that Colorado Springs is very powerful there, if you get a little slippage or stay-at-home rate, that'll help give Colorado to Obama. It's a different coalition in Colorado, more driven by Independents in Colorado than New Mexico, which is driven by Latinos. But I think Obama can win both states. Now, that's not enough for him. It gives him 14. It puts him very close. So he's going to need to flip an Iowa or a Missouri or a Kentucky. 

AFTER THE JUMP: OBAMA'S WEAKNESSES AND MCCAIN'S STRENGTHS...
 

Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day. 

In “Alpha Dogs,” London Times editor James Harding investigates the slick and misleading nature of modern political campaigns, and points to a culprit: the Sawyer Miller Group. Founded in the 1970s, the firm pioneered the practice of packaging and selling politicians like consumer goods, and its acolytes have served as backroom strategists in every U.S. presidential contest from Nixon to today. Harding spoke with Newsweek’s Tony Dokoupil. Excerpts:

You call this book an “archaeology of the present.” What did you dig up?
I found that the big ideological differences between the parties and politicians have blurred, while campaign tactics have sharpened. We now live in a tactical age, not an ideological one. Managers, speechwriters, pollsters and get-out-the-vote specialists have more power than we’d like to admit—and a substantial impact on election outcomes. This is the political equivalent of the medium is the message: communication is the candidate.

How is that Sawyer Miller’s fault?
The men at Sawyer Miller pioneered the field of political consulting, turning the age-old whisper into a candidate’s ear into a modern, global industry. Just as the old party machines were losing their clout in picking candidates, they brought the new marketing techniques of Madison Avenue to work in politics. They framed the message; they made over the candidate’s image; they peddled spin; they generally encouraged their people to go negative; they polled relentlessly; they emphasized personal character over policy. And it worked: they won and their techniques have become the standard playbook for any politician seeking high office.

Has democracy been cheapened as a result?
The people at Sawyer Miller started out as idealists. They believed that clever messaging and the savvy use of TV would break politics out of the smoke-filled backrooms and engage people in the national debate as never before. Instead, politicians appeared more slick, more prone to soundbytes and, courtesy of the relentless stage-management, more phony. Across the western democracies, the Sawyer Miller tactics have turned voters off in droves. Television was supposed to make politics more immediate and more intimate. Instead, it seemed to become more insubstantial and insincere. Thanks in no small part to Sawyer Miller, the political contest has become globalized, standardized and predictable. In country after country, elections have become as similar as Starbucks.

Are you thinking of particular cases?
Last year, for instance, British prime minister Gordon Brown confessed that “sometimes people say I’m too serious” and he pledged, “I will not let you down.” Al Gore used the same line in 2000 and it was no coincidence. They had the same speechwriter: Bob Shrum, the American political consultant who worked with David Sawyer on an election in Israel. In 2001, Silvio Berlusconi summed up his agenda as a “Contract with the Italian People.” In fact, it was summed up for him by another student of the Sawyer Miller method, Frank Luntz. He also happened to be the political adviser who helped Newt Gingrich frame the “Contract with America” in 1994. The list goes on.

Do such campaigns favor a certain kind of politician?
Absolutely. It used to be that there were two kinds of politicians, the backroom operator and the out-front showman. Now it’s primarily the latter, the quick, charismatic communicator. People may mourn the passing of the strong, silent LBJ-style politician, and say that American-style campaigns, which reward flash over philosophy, are a loss to politics. People can deride personality politics, but we put great store in character.

What are the most appalling aspects of Sawyer Miller’s legacy?
America’s sadly irresistible formula has been to repackage intellectual arguments inside an emotional appeal, which means that within about a generation and a half, elections have all but abandoned a discussion of policy to being an obsession with personality. Voters want - and deserve - to test the character of their leaders, of course. They may also want to know something of their plans in office...

If we live in an age of tactics, on which tactics does the current U.S. election seem to hinge?
When the national mood is ripe, then ‘time for a change’ is an unstoppable argument. Clearly, it is one of the two key emotional drivers of the 2008 election. All three senators are pitching themselves as the change candidates. The counterweight, though, is Sawyer Miller’s other long-standing obsession: trust. The tactics—the reliance on focus groups, the dogwhistles to specific voting blocs, the campaign ads that play to residual security fears, the “reframing” of language, the military-style organization of the get-out-the-vote operations—these are all techniques designed to play to those two over-riding public sentiments: weariness and fear.

Which American candidate is in most desperate need of a Sawyer Miller makeover?
Funnily enough, the one that has a Sawyer Miller alum at his side, John McCain. He looks most like an old client of David Sawyer and Scott Miller’s, namely John Glenn. A man with a perfect resume for the job, but sorely needing a clearer political message to the public.

If Hillary Clinton were a Sawyer Miller client, what advice do you think they would offer? What about Obama?
I’d tell paraphrase what Sawyer Miller told Kevin White, the Mayor of Boston, when he looked as though he was headed for defeat in the late 1970s: People don’t like you, but they trust you to get the job done. Make the election about competence, not charisma. It seems that Mandy Grunwald, one of the Sawyer Miller stalwarts, is telling Hillary just that. And Obama: Don’t panic. Karl Rove used to say that if your opponent gets inside your head, then they’ve won. Well, the test for Obama now is to stick to his gameplan, not buy into hers.

What do you mean when you say that the Sawyer Miller story is about to repeat itself on the back of the Internet?
My view of politics and the Internet is very unfashionable. Rather than become a great democratizing force, releasing people from big money PR and spin, the Internet will be mastered and managed by the professional political classes. Electronic democracy is being rebooted: the Internet will revolutionize politics in the same surprising, simplifying and ultimately frustrating ways that television did a generation ago.

Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day.

Over the past few months, you've probably heard about Hillary and Bill Clinton's tax returns--but you definitely haven't seen them. Pressed by the Obama campaign to release their full filings from 2000 to 2007--the Illinois senator released his 2006 tax returns last April and posted the rest on his website Tuesday--the Clinton camp has proven recalcitrant. In recent years, candidates have released tax returns during primary season. But in February, Clinton said she wouldn't release hers until after she was the nominee, telling MSNBC that she was "a little busy right now." And although her campaign agreed earlier this month to unveil the information "on or around April 15," it has continued to be circumspect; for example, spokesman Howard Wolfson recently revised the release date to "at least three days before the Pennsylvania primary," which falls on April 22, and is now saying that they'll be out next week.

All the shuffling and stalling has led independent observers to wonder: what are the Clinton's hiding? The answer, according to NEWSWEEK investigative reporter Mark Hosenball: they're not necessarily hiding anything. "The fact that they have been reluctant to release them on the one hand raises an eyebrow and makes you wonder if there's something in there they don't want us to know," he says. "On the other hand, this is the Clintons normal modus operandi with everything. You have to pry disclosures out of them." While you wait to learn how they Clintons have managed the multi-million-dollar fortune they have amassed since leaving the White House, Stumper talked with Hosenball about what--and what not--to expect. Excerpts:

What do we already know about the Clintons' finances?
The only real disclosures that we have presently are financial disclosure statements that Mrs. Clinton is required to file with the Senate, and I believe with the Federal Election Commission (because she's running for president). Every year, she's been required by law and has indeed filed and subsequently made public financial disclosure statements with the Secretary of the Senate's office.

But those financial disclosure statements are not particularly explicit, right?
In some ways they are, and some ways they aren't. For example, they show very detailed records of Bill Clinton's speaking engagements. Where he gives a speech, who hires him to give the speech and how much money he got for the speeches. It's day-by-day and there are pages and pages of this. And it's clear that the guy gets tons of money from speeches, sometimes literally millions of dollars a year. In the financial disclosure statement for calendar year 2005, just the first page: Paradise Island, Bahamas, $150,000; Jewish Federation of Greater L.A., $125,000; CLSA in Hong Kong, that's $100,000; Savage-Rothenberg Productions in Los Angeles, Calif., $250,000 for two speeches. There are pages that list millions of dollars in speeches.

What don't the disclosure statements tell us?
As regards other sources of income--Hillary is required to disclose other sources of income from Bill that they jointly own--she hasn't been particularly forthcoming. For example, she has disclosed over several years on his behalf that he has an interest in one or more investment partnerships under the name of Yucaipa Companies, LLC. Yucaipa is a group of companies headed by one their big pals, a big fundraiser and benefactor for both of them for many years, a California guy by the name of Ron Burkle. The Senate financial disclosure statements says only that Bill's income and the value of his partnerships that he has there is "over $1,000." That's perfectly within the Clintons' legal rights to limit the disclosure to that. In fact, that's all it asks. But it doesn't tell you a lot. Anything over $1,000? That could be a billion dollars--or $1,001.

And when it comes to Bill's income, there are other examples like Yucaipa. I'm looking at Hillary's current Congressional financial disclosures here. Under earned and non-investment income for 2005, it says "Yucaipa Global Opportunities Fund One LLC" and in brackets "spouse," based in Los Angeles, Calif. The type of income is "guaranteed payments to partner" and it says amount "over $1,000." That's pretty opaque. You've got another company in the same category here. It says, "Source of income: infoUSA." Income for spouse, Omaha, Nebraska. Non-employee compensation, which means Bill's some sort of consultant to them: about "over $1,000." Again, it could be billions. There's Random House, presumably for his memoirs. It says "book royalties," and then the amount: "over $1,000." It doesn't tell you very much.

So some income is spelled out in full, and other income is listed as "over $1,000." Which means that when you see the "over $1,000" thing, it's a red flag.
You certainly raise your eyebrow a little bit.

Do you expect the Clintons' tax returns, which come out in mid-April, to be more specific about Bill's income?
The Clintons released their returns when they were in the White House, but they weren't that interesting because it was mainly Bill's presidential salary. So we don't really know.

They could conceivably block out some information?
Absolutely. Look at her White House schedules. [They were recently released with curious deletions.] Almost certainly we'll see figures that indicate what money is salary money, what money is outside money, what money is investment money. But conceivably they could block out the actual identity of the source of money. Even if the IRS requires them to list it, they could conceivably block it out and say we're not going to tell the public that. So besides wanting to know how much money they're getting outside their salaries, I want to know who's giving it to them. When we see that we'll have a much better idea of what this is all about.

Assuming those sources are listed, where do you go next?
The juiciest thing to find would be that, say, Burkle is giving Clinton money on such-and-such day, and then Clinton turns around and does some favor for him. Of course, this is just pure speculation. Bill's partnerships are somewhat opaque in terms of what they hold. [NEWSWEEK reporter] Michal Isikoff and I learned, and in fact reported, that at least one of the partnerships includes information or assests held in partnership with or somehow in connection with an investment vehicle from Dubai which is controlled by the governing family there. As it stands, we don't know what proportion that is, or if Clinton dealt with Dubai. So if there's explicit information in the tax returns that says he got X amount of money in return for dealings with Dubai, that might interesting. And then you go back and match that with what he might or might not have said about Dubai at the time.

Ultimately, you're looking for connections between money received and Bill's behavior.
Exactly. The things that we'll focus on immediately are how much money did the Clintons get and where did the money come from. And then there's fodder there for doing additional investigation as to whether these things match up with some possible favors that they did.

AFTER THE JUMP: THE POTENTIAL POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES FOR HILLARY...

Edwards: Not the best way to convey authenticity.

Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day.

Last month, I stumbled upon an interesting article in--of all places--Time magazine. (Grrrr.) Written by John Cloud, "Synthetic Authenticity" riffed on the latest book by renowned business consultants Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore, who run an Aurora, Ohio, consulting firm called Strategic Horizons. (According to Cloud, they enjoy "an almost cultlike following in the business world because of their ability to accurately predict consumer sentiments." Go figure.) In "Authenticity," as Cloud explains, Pine and Gilmore "argue that the virtualization of life (friends aren't friends unless you "confirm" them on Facebook; reporters are now all bloggers, and vice versa) has led to a deep consumer yearning for the authentic."

This sounded about right to me. It's no mystery that people purchase a product nowadays not only because it's low in cost or high in quality, but because it somehow reflects who they are. (iPhone, anyone?) And it's clear that such consumers are attracted to brands that achieve an aura, however contrived, of authenticity--Starbucks, Apple, Volkswagen. That said, my first thought upon reading Cloud's article wasn't about business. It was (predictably) about politics.

Politicians, of course, are fake. Everyone knows that. But more and more it seems that what they're required to fake is being real. John Edwards represents "Real Change." Mike Huckabee is an "authentic conservative." And John McCain rides his "Straight Talk Express." (George Allen, on the other hand, was too real.) Wondering how our increasing desire for authenticity has influenced the 2008 presidential race--which seems likely to end with a win for one of two candidates, McCain or Barack Obama, who have labored mightily to sell themselves as authentic--I gave Pine and Gilmore a call. Excerpts from our chat:

How have you seen the "authenticity" concept play out this cycle, and how has it been different than previous cycles?
Gilmore: This is the first cycle where authenticity is really in the fore, both in how people view the candidates and how pundits describe the race. You can have hardly any article out there today that doesn't talk about the level of perceived authenticity of this or another candidate. I daresay that in the end, whoever wins is going to be the one whom more voters perceive as authentic.

Pine: I've joked in the past that it seems like every single debate, as soon as they go to the talking heads--and David Gergen stands out most in my mind--the very first soundbite is evaluating them based on authenticity. "I think Mike Huckabee came off as the most real." "I think Hillary came off as most authentic." It's always the first soundbite.

But is that really different than previous cycles? And if so, what accounts for the increasing emphasis on authenticity?
Gilmore: Certainly it's the first time that it's been vocalized to the extent it has. The perception of phon-aticians...

Pine: Did you just say phon-aticians?

[Laughter]

Gilmore: There you go. The perception of politicians being phony has always been there. But now it's being vocalized in a way that parallels what's happening with economic offerings. Consumers want to buy what they perceive to be real. Similarly, in any political offering, voters want to buy what they perceive to be real. There's a correlation here.

What are the cultural reasons for this increasing emphasis on authenticity?
Gilmore: There are a bunch of factors contributing to that desire. First of all, there's the emergence of the experience economy--in an increasingly "unreal" world, people are vacationing at Atlantis and going to American Girl Place and having the Geek Squad repair their computer. That causes a desire for authenticity. Then there's the automation of services. That's the second driver. You call a company and hope to reach a "real person." Life is becoming more and more mediated. Third, the rise of Boomers and the rise of postmodernism also contribute--people believe there is something different or unique about our time. And finally it's the failures of our social institutions. It's there--along with not-for-profits, businesses and religious and educational institutions--that we identify the phoniness of politicians and government as contributing our desire for authenticity. People today don't just want cost or quality, they want real. It's only natural for that desire to extend to our politicians.

They're searching, in other words, for people who contrast what they're bombarded with every day.
Gilmore: Right. In a phony, contrived, mediated world, you have to stand out. And you stand out by rendering yourself authentic.

But isn't "authenticity," as you define it, just another contrivance? For businesses, it's not necessarily being authentic that matters, right? It's conveying authenticity. I'm interested in hearing how you evaluate the presidential candidates as brands.
Gilmore: Most of the candidates who came off as inauthentic were eliminated early on. I did an exercise awhile ago where I decided to go find the number one most-viewed video of each candidate on YouTube. My hypothesis was that the most-viewed video might not reach an overwhelming percentage of the population, but it will be indicative of a sentiment that's more pervasive. It will encapsulate what the populace really thinks of each candidate. So John Edwards' most-watched video. Can you guess?

The one where he's fluffing his hair.
Pine: Exactly. To the tune of "She's So Pretty."

Gilmore: Now, it may have had only 500,000 views, but it's iconic of what the general population thinks of him. Boom, gone--fake. In doing the exercise, I came up with this construct: earlier in the primary season, the Democrats seemed to be proclaiming their own authenticity--"Real Change," the "real" this or that. Whereas the Republicans seemed to be pointing fingers at each other and calling each other fake. The Romney folks posted videos like, "The Real Rudy?" And Giuliani responded with "The Real Mitt?" McCain sort of stayed away from that. As we write in our book, if you're authentic you don't have to say you're authentic. Pointing fingers at somebody else and saying they're fake is the same as saying you're real, and that backfires.

The same thing happened to Edwards, who made "Real Change" his slogan at one point. Thou doth protest too much.
Gilmore: Exactly.

Let's talk about another casualty of the primary process: Mitt Romney. He was unquestionably the savviest businessman of the bunch, and yet some would say that the way he was branded, in terms of conveying authenticity, was completely incompetent. Do you agree?
Pine: His basic problem was the perceived flip-flops. He said one thing to get elected governor of the very liberal state of Massachusetts, but he was saying very different things to get elected in the more conservative party.

Gilmore: When we're talking to businesses about authenticity, we tell them that they have to understand their heritage. Well, his heritage was one that was very difficult for a large portion of the Republican party to swallow--or to believe was credible.

How should Romney have handled his heritage? Was there any way he could've packaged himself to seem authentic? Or was it a fatal flaw?
Pine: There are ways. Ronald Reagan, for example, signed the first abortion bill in California. And when he was running for president, one of the things he did was talk about how much he regretted it. You could see the emotion in doing that.

Gilmore: But in 1976, Reagan had the passage of a dozen years since he'd done that. If in four or eight years Romney had run, with four or eight years of being decidedly pro-life under his belt, he would've seemed more authentic.

Pine: It gets back to one of the points we make about economic offerings: don't say you're authentic, but render yourself authentic. That rendering--particularly if you're trying to change perceptions of yourself--does take a number of years.

Gilmore: In terms of authenticity, I find so interesting Romney's faith speech versus Obama's. Obama's was grounded in a reaction to an actual event--the media uncovering this venom from his pastor. If Romney would've had to react to some footage that had gotten out of a senior Mormon muckety-muck going off the rails, then his speech would've been grounded in, "Hey, I disavow all of this."

But instead it looked like an unprompted political calculation?
Gilmore: Right. Here's the thing: anybody who self-proclaims authenticity in any sphere--politics, business, wherever--is dubious. His speech was self-induced. Obama laid back. He responded to an actual event. That was grounded in reality.

AFTER THE JUMP: OBAMA, CLINTON, AND "AUTHENTICITY" IN THE GENERAL ELECTION...

Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day.

Talk about good timing. A week ago, Cornell law student Gregory S. Parks emailed me a law review article that he had just coauthored with university professor Jeffrey Rachlinski. The subject? "Unconscious race and gender bias in the 2008 election." In addition to their legal studies, both Parks and Rachlinski (whose academic efforts have focused on the influence of human psychology on decision-making by courts, administrative agencies and regulated communities) boast Ph.Ds in psychology. On Monday, I decided to call them up for a chat. The next day, of course, race and gender consumed the national conversation (yet again) when Clinton supporter and former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro told a California newspaper that "if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." Revisiting my conversation with Parks and Rachlinski this morning, I realized that many of the questions we covered--who's battling the more difficult biases? is the 'victim pose' politically helpful? what should we expect in the general election?--are precisely the questions that everyone is asking in the wake of the Ferraro flap. Thus, I defer to the experts:

How about Obama?
R: Obama has a tougher job. The biases against African Americans are just a raw animus in a lot of ways. What you see in the studies is that people associate black with negative imagery, just wholesale, without regard to specific content. Blacks are bad, whites are good. You see it over and over in the unconscious bias literature. So what does he have to fight? He has to fight against being black in a way. He has to have people look at him and associate him with the positive imagery that Americans tend to associate with whites. It's not surprising, then, that his campaign is about very amorphous goals like hope and aspiration. That's the message that can work, because he can't embrace black issues without activating unconscious biases in white voters. That's very difficult to begin with.

AFTER THE JUMP: THE 'VICTIM POSE'

Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day. 

As you've probably heard, the Democratic nominating contest isn't going to end anytime soon. First, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will battle through the remaining primaries and caucuses--and no one will reach the magic 2,025-delegate majority. Then they'll probably redo Florida and Michigan in June. If no nominee emerges, they'll spend the rest of the summer clawing for delegates--a process that won't end until the climatic Denver convention in late August.

Sound divisive? Dastardly? Deranged? Maybe to normal folks like you and me. But to Elaine Kamarck, this is business as usual. A lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Kamarck served as an official in the Clinton Administration from 1993 to 1997 and as a senior policy adviser to Al Gore during his 2000 run. Now she's a superdelegate and a member of the DNC's Rules Committee--which means she has a pair of front-row seats for the loony spectacle that's about to unfold. This morning, Stumper asked Kamarck (a Hillary supporter, yes, but a stickler for the rules above all else) for her take on what's in store for Democrats over the next six months, from pledged-delegate poaching to the possibility that her old boss--the treehugger, not the former prez--will throw his hat in the ring. The road ahead:

Has the Democratic Party gotten itself into a mess?
The only thing that is surprising is that we have two really strong candidates. That's what's throwing everybody into a tizzy. But that doesn't have anything to do with the party. The party has run a process that has been absolutely consistent with the rules. Different campaigns have argued at different times against the rules. A couple of weeks ago, the Obama campaign was arguing that superdelegates ought to vote the way their constituencies vote. That's not in the rules. We're not going to change the rules to make that happen. You may like it, you may not like it, but it's not in the rules. Similarly, the Clinton campaign was arguing to seat Florida and Michigan. Sorry, that's not in the rules. [DNC Chairman] Howard Dean has been quite consistent and quite impartial in saying, "Look, these are the rules, you all agreed to them, there are absolutely no secrets about this, this is the most open party in the history of the United States, and this is what we're going to do." The closeness of this race is absolutely unparalleled, but it doesn't have anything to do with the rules. 

So you think there will be a do-over?
Yes. I think there is a consensus forming around a do-over. There is a provision in the rules for it. We would have to go through a process to do it. The sticking point, of course, would be that in each state the Democrats would have to come up with the money to put on the do-over. Because I don't think taxpayers would have much patience for spending their money on it. But, if they can come up with it in the state, I think they will have a do-over. And that will take at least one piece of this out.

What if Florida and Michigan don't decide the race, though? There will be 80 days between the last primary in June and the convention in August--with no more votes to battle over.
Let me point you in the direction of two prior conventions: the 1976 Republican convention and the 1980 Democratic convention. What happens after Florida and Michigan is that there will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 individuals selected as delegates. If the two campaigns continue, if nobody drops out, they will then turn their focus on those 4,000 people, which includes the superdelegates. And there will be an intense effort to move people from one camp to the other.

We're talking pledged delegates?
Right. The fact of the matter is, there isn't one hell of a huge difference between pledged delegates and superdelegates.

No one is bound.
Right. No one at these conventions is bound. They haven't been bound since 1980. What we will see is each candidate will set up a very elaborate, very expensive war room. They will make sure not only that all their delegates are locked down, but they will try to raid the other candidate's delegates.

This is before the convention?
If they stay in the race, this will be going on all summer.

And it's all behind the scenes?
All behind the scenes, of course.

So what will the media be reporting on?
You will know who these delegates are. You will be calling them up just like you call up superdelegates. You will be tracking rumors that somebody is switching from Hillary to Obama, or Obama to Hillary. You will be trying to cover a complex set of interactions. Believe me, there will be plenty of public posturing, and the campaign will go on. Hillary and Obama will be continually campaigning and trying to convince the public that one of them has the edge, in the hopes of swaying the delegates.

But they won't be trying to convince people to vote for them, right? They'll basically spend nearly three months saying, "This is how you voted, and this is why it means that I won." Doesn't that seem a little absurd?
Well, the people will have voted, and the results will have basically been a draw--which is what happened between Reagan and Ford in 1976. Then the second stage is the delegates. Think of this in stages. Look, this is not an odd part of our American political system. Think of the Constitution. If there is no electoral college winner, what happens? It goes to the House of Representatives. In other words, all political systems have some mechanism for breaking the tie.

AFTER THE JUMP: AL GORE TO THE RESCUE? 

Logo at left; 'Change We Can Believe In' is written in Obama's signature 'Gotham' typeface.

Let's be honest. Barack Obama is not on the verge of clinching the Democratic nomination because of his policy positions--whatever his most evangelical supporters might tell you. If policy was all that mattered this year, Hillary Clinton would've won five or six of the last 11 contests instead of losing them all. When it comes to specifics, there's simply not that much space between the candidates.

Obama's success owes a lot, of course, to his message--the promise to pass Democratic policies by rallying a "coalition for change." But watching Obamamania over the past few weeks, I've become convinced that there's something more subtle at work, too. It's not just the message and the man and the speeches that are swaying Democratic voters--though they are. It's the way the campaign has folded the man and the message and the speeches into a systemic branding effort. Reinforced with a coherent, comprehensive program of fonts, logos, slogans and web design, Obama is the first presidential candidate to be marketed like a high-end consumer brand.* And for folks who don't necessarily need Democratic social programs--upscale voters, young people--I suspect that the novel comfort of that brand affiliation contributes (however subconsciously) to his appeal.

Seeking expert opinion, I tested my hypothesis on leading graphic designer and critic Michael Bierut, who was kind enough to dissect Obama's unprecedented branding campaign--and show me how it's helping his candidacy. Excerpts:

What are the elements of the Obama brand?
To start, he has this way of writing Obama in upper and lowercase in a serif font and juxtaposing it with that "O" symbol he has--the blue ring with red and white stripes disappearing into it, making the white form inside the blue look like what I suppose is meant to be a rising sun. [See photo above]

That's his "logo," right?
Right. A lot of times when he's at a podium what you'll see is, centered right beneath him, at the very top of the blue field that usually says something like "Change You Can Believe In," it'll be just that little symbol, functioning in the same way the Nike swoosh does. People look at that and know what it means, even though it's just an "O" with some stripes in it.

Has any other campaign ever "pulled a Nike"?
Well, Bush did that the last time around with the letter "W," to some degree. You would see somebody with the letter "W" on a bumper sticker, and it would kind of work that way. But Obama has gotten there much quicker and a little more gracefully, if you ask me.

How else is Obama's design different than what has come before--or what rival campaigns are doing?
He's the first candidate, actually, who's had a coherent, top-to-bottom, 360-degree system at work. Whereas, I think it's more more common for politicians to have a bumper-sticker symbol that they just stick on everything and hope that that will carry the day.

The thing that sort of flabbergasts me as a professional graphic designer is that, somewhere along the way, they decided that all their graphics would basically be done in the same typeface, which is this typeface called Gotham. [See "Change We Can Believe In" sign, above] If you look at one of his rallies, every single non-handmade sign is in that font. Every single one of them. And they're all perfectly spaced and perfectly arranged. Trust me. I've done graphics for events --and I know what it takes to have rally after rally without someone saying, "Oh, we ran out of signs, let's do a batch in Arial." It just doesn't seem to happen. There's an absolute level of control that I have trouble achieving with my corporate clients.

Then if you go to the Web site, it's all reflected there too--all the same elements showing up in this clean, smooth, elegant way. It all ties together really, really beautifully as a system. 

Is Obama's stuff on the level with the best commercial brand design?
I think it's just as good or better. I have sophisticated clients who pay me and other people well to try to keep them on the straight and narrow, and they have trouble getting everything set in the same typeface. And he seems to be able to do it in Cleveland and Cincinnati and Houston and San Antonio. Every time you look, all those signs are perfect. Graphic designers like me don't understand how it's happening. It's unprecedented and inconceivable to us. The people in the know are flabbergasted.

What does that say about his campaign?
My feeling, in my own narrow sphere as a professional graphic designer, echoes a little bit what Frank Rich wrote in his column on Sunday, where he was talking about Hillary Clinton's argument that Obama doesn't have the experience to run the country properly, and how you only needed to look at how her own campaign has been managed to see the flaw in that argument. I sort of see the same thing. I'm not sure that the commander-in-chief proves his mettle by getting everyone at his rallies to set their signs in the same typeface, but as someone who knows how hard that is, I'm very impressed.

The specific choices are also made in really good taste and I'd say to certain degree they also philosophically align with what his position is.

What do you see as the "philosophical implications," to use a highfalutin phrase, of Obama's design choices?
There are a couple of levels. There's the close-in parlor game you can play about what all these typefaces actually mean. Gotham was a typeface designed originally for GQ magazine, so it's a sleek, purposefully not fancy, very straightforward, plainspoken font, but done with a great deal of elegance and taste--and drawn from very American sources, by the way. Unlike other sans serif typefaces, it's not German, it's not French, it's not Swiss. It's very American. The serif font that he often uses to write Obama is delicate and nuanced and almost, not feminine exactly, but it's very literary-looking. It looks very conversational and pleasant, as opposed to strident and yelling. It's a persuasive-looking font, I would say. But that's putting these things on couches and pretending they have personalities.

Right. It's sort of hard to imagine in a voter in Cleveland (or a Newsweek political blogger from New York, for that matter) interacting with Obama's design on that level. How does it affect those of us who aren't graphic designers?

CLICK THROUGH FOR MORE... 

Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day.

By now, you've likely seen yesterday's most important numbers: 58 and 41. The first was Barack Obama's share of the vote in the crucial Wisconsin primary; the second, Hillary Clinton's. That 17-point spread immediately transformed Obama, a one-time insurgent candidate, into the presumptive frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. As every pundit pointed out, Obama had beaten Clinton in a state where she had no clear excuse for defeat, setting the stage for showdowns in Texas and Ohio on March 4 and leaving little leeway for further losses.

What was surprising about the results in Wisconsin--especially considering where the race stood a month ago, or even a week ago?
The real effect is we went from polls that showed a small Obama lead to this 17, 18 point ultimate win, and how deep that win is among demographic categories. On the Clinton side, it's how her strongest groups were groups that she managed to only barely win. That, clearly, is the message of yesterday's primary. Obama ran even or even won among Clinton's key supporters--women, middle-aged people, union members, Catholics and core Democrats--while running up huge margins of 20 to 70 points in his strongest demographics: black voters, young voters, etc. If Clinton is going to build a winning coalition in the upcoming states, she's going to have to do a lot better with her "base." Sure, she did okay with them in Wisconsin--but only because she didn't lose them by double digits [like she did with Obama's strongest groups].

Do those shifts--in effect, Obama's poaching of core Clinton supporters--have to do with something specific about the character of the state? Is Wisconsin different in some essential sense from earlier states?
Actually, these differences are largely in line with what we saw in Virginia and Maryland. They seem to be on course with a trajectory of Obama improving across the demographic groups from earlier in the process to Super Tuesday and then in these post-Super Tuesday states, where that improvement has continued. They're consistent with a long-run, rising trajectory for Obama. It's been pretty broad, actually, in terms of the groups Obama has cut into. It's not that Obama is only winning African-Americans or only winning people under 35. This advantage he's been gaining has really been across a whole lot of groups.

Would that cut against the Clinton camp's charge that some of these 10 states that he's won were outliers?
I think it would. You don't look at the states post-Super Tuesday that we have exit polling for and see them stand out as exceptionally different. There is variation in the racial composition, from what turned out to be about 9 percent black last night here in Wisconsin to substantially more than that in Virginia and Maryland. But if you look at other demographics, Wisconsin's not that different from Ohio, for example. And the bottom line is that we've seen these same patterns across states, not just in one or two.

Let's talk specifically about this trend of broad demographic improvement you've been seeing in Obama's numbers.
Sure. Take the white vote, for example. We've seen trends of Obama's share of the white vote going from 24 percent in South Carolina to 31-44 percent on Super Tuesday to now running very close, neck-and-neck with Clinton among whites. As long as Obama does that well among white voters--he actually ended up winning whites by six points here in Wisconsin--then the racial divide that we heard so much about back in January is either effectively a net zero or a very small advantage for Obama.

What about the gender gap?
The gender gap is one of the more interesting and telling ones. Clinton managed to win women by three percent, but she lost men by two-to-one, 66 to 32 percent. Clearly, her campaign has only managed to marginally gain an advantage among women, doing just better than barely breaking even. But whether it's her campaign that has alienated men, or it's Obama's campaign that's attracted them, or whether this also has something to do with latent levels of sexism--men being reluctant to vote for a women--nevertheless the bottom line is that for a group that's nearly half of the Democratic electorate, Clinton has been doing stunningly poorly among male voters. Looking ahead, if she's going to get her campaign back on track, this is a group where she desperately needs to cut down Obama's advantage.

Obama is essentially neutralizing what her campaign thought would be their silver bullet: women.
Right. If it's a three-point advantage for Clinton among women, that's pretty small. And that despite the fact that female turnout, at least as a share of the electorate, went up in Wisconsin from 52 to 57 percent from 2004 to 2008. So something mobilized more women as a portion of the electorate, but Clinton certainly did not win a lion's share of women--only a very small margin. Ultimately if Ohio and Texas are going to be Clinton's firewall, the firewall is constructed out of the bricks of the individual demographic groups. And that means she's going to have to be running far better among many of those groups in those two states than she's been doing the post-Super Tuesday exit polls.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...