Julian Zelizer With all the strange political doings these days — a wild campaign season, Republican senators falling from grace in Alaska and in airport men’s rooms, Democratic governors engaged in shakedowns and ‘ho-downs — wouldn’t you like to have a political historian stashed in the next room so you could whip him out, the way Woody Allen did with . . .
To call Rod Blagojevich‘s alleged crimes lunacy is to give the moon a bad name. So I won’t even ponder here what led him to do what he is said to have done. Blagojevich earned a brief mention in Freakonomics, in a section arguing that having a lot of books at home doesn’t cause children to do better at school. . . .
Ross Perot We recently solicited your questions for Ross Perot. You asked him about third-party candidates, the national debt, what kind of car he drives, and “why do guys from Texas with the initials R.P. have so much integrity?” (We’re pretty sure that last one was a reference to our earlier Q&A with Ron Paul.) Perot doesn’t have an answer . . .
Ron Paul When we solicited your questions for Congressman Ron Paul shortly after the election, so many questions came in that we split Paul’s answers into two batches, the first of which was published last week. Here is the second. Like the first batch, they are well-considered and interesting throughout; they will surely make many readers continue to wish fervently . . .
Do you love the smell of libertarianism in the morning? If so, today is a good day for you. Ron Paul Last week we solicited your questions for Congressman Ron Paul. There was such a big response (more than 400 comments) that we have split Paul’s answers into two batches, the first of which is posted below. Thanks to Paul . . .
My last three posts have shown that conservatives are generally a lot happier than liberals; that religion is a major factor in this; and that worldview matters a lot as well. But I have employed some minor sleight-of-hand in all this, lumping together “liberals” into a big group and “conservatives” into another. This is not the only way to separate . . .
Photo: Callista Gingrich, Gingrich Productions Last week, we solicited your questions for Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House whose latest book is “Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works.” His answers, below, are comprehensive, measured, and often fascinating. I think this is easily one of the best Q&A’s we’ve had on this blog. . . .
That is the question asked by the economists Barry Eichengreen (Berkeley) and Douglas A. Irwin (Dartmouth) in an NBER working paper called “International Economic Policy: Was There a Bush Doctrine?” When it comes to foreign economic policy, their answer is an emphatic “no.” From their abstract: While many political scientists and diplomatic historians see the Bush presidency as a distinctive . . .
Astute readers of this blog know that we have an abiding interest in the economics of prostitution. One of the people who will be featured in our next book is a high-end call girl who goes by the name of Allie. Without giving away much detail here, let me just say that Allie is a very bright and attractive blonde . . .
If we judge politicians by what they buy, then Eliot Spitzer has clearly violated the public’s trust: he purchased the services of a high-priced prostitute, and may well end his political career as a result. But what if we judge politicians by what they sell? On this score, Spitzer may be one of the few politicians who has not prostituted . . .
Photo: Callista Gingrich, Gingrich Productions Readers of a certain age may think of Newt Gingrich as a book critic, prolific author, and regular TV guest. But before that, he was one of the most powerful politicians in the land. A former history professor at West Georgia College, Gingrich was a long-serving congressman who, in 1994, masterminded the Contract with America, . . .
Last week, we asked for your vote to decide the best of the top five entries to our “6-word motto for the U.S.” contest. As promised, we tallied the votes received in the first 48 hours after posting. There was a clear winner: Our Worst Critics Prefer to Stay (194 votes) Here are the runners-up: Caution! Experiment in Progress Since . . .
We ran a contest recently asking you to come up with a new six-word motto for the U.S. Your response was quite strong, with more than 1,200 replies to date. Anyone looking for a good snapshot of public sentiment during this most interesting election year would do well to scroll through the comments: they are pretty damn illuminating, and not . . .
Justin Wolfers‘s recent post on “sounding presidential” reminded me that there is another sense in which a candidate might sound presidential. It turns out that almost all presidents have had first names with stressed first syllables – think WILL-iam, or RICH-ard. One-syllable names are also stressed when you say the candidate’s entire name – think BILL CLIN-ton or GEORGE BUSH. . . .
In Freakonomics, we argued that campaign spending matters a lot less than people think. Mitt Romney‘s presidential campaign would seem to offer a fresh bit of evidence in favor of our theory. Viewed in this light, Hillary Clinton‘s decision to loan her campaign $5 million looks like the wrong move. It isn’t the money that is boosting Obama. Rather, it’s . . .
A new Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby Poll has Mitt Romney ahead of John McCain by 37 percent to 34 percent in a poll of 1185 likely Republican voters in California (2.9 percent margin of error). But what is the probability that more likely voters in the state actually support Romney? Given the 2.9 percent margin of error, it’s possible that Romney just got . . .
The odds are pretty good that if you are a reader of this blog, you’ll have the opportunity to vote today in one of the Super (Duper) Tuesday primaries. Here are today’s Democratic primaries and here are the Republican primaries. Two Novembers ago, we wrote a column headlined “Why Vote?” that discussed the rationality of voting. One point we made . . .
Inspired by a recent trip to London, this recent Times article about England’s reluctant search for a national motto (suggestions range from “No Motto Please, We’re British” to “One Mighty Empire, Slightly Used”), as well as by this new book on six-word memoirs (which we teased not long ago here), I invite you all to attempt the following: Write a . . .
Coming into this very long, harried, and intensely reordered presidential primary season, there was a lot of talk about how poorly the nominating process serves the electorate. The common argument seemed to be that the acceleration and clustering of states’ primaries would create a chaos from which no electoral good would come. I’d like to suggest an opposing view: this . . .
My family has a tradition of reading the “I Have a Dream” speech on Martin Luther King Jr.‘s birthday. We pass it around, with each person reading one sentence. So in honor of today’s holiday, here’s a question about the speech: what is the second-most-used figure of speech or metaphor in the speech itself (“I Have a Dream” being the . . .
In earlier posts here and here, I wrote that I was going on TV to talk about an issue that’s been missing from the presidential campaign. And that issue is … Crime. A lot of you guessed correctly; a lot of you named other issues that have also been very quiet. I think the fact that the candidates aren’t spending . . .
Yesterday, I wrote here that I was scheduled to appear on Good Morning America today to talk about an issue that’s virtually absent from the presidential campaign. You responded in force with guesses about what the issue is, and several of you guessed right. But there is a reason I used that phrase, “scheduled to appear” — because with TV, . . .
I am scheduled to appear on Good Morning America tomorrow (Wednesday, Jan. 16) at about 8:30 EST to talk about one issue that is, almost bizarrely, missing from all the campaign talk. It’s a subject that has figured prominently in past campaigns. Any guesses? (Addendum: I’ll post the answer sometime tomorrow late a.m./early afternoon.)
We’ve covered the history of dirty politics in the U.S. here at Freakonomics. But what about the modern state of affairs? Allen Raymond knows a thing or two about bending the rules in the electoral process. A former G.O.P. political operative who served as chief of staff to a co-chairman of the Republican National Committee and supervised numerous election victories, . . .
We’ve written quite a few times about the helter-skelter path that nuclear power has taken in this country; see this Times column, this supporting evidence, and this blog post for a quick summary. Here, from today’s Times, is an assessment of nuclear power that has a good deal in common with ours: “All careful analysis confirms that the risk of . . .
Warning: what follows is a long blog post, perhaps better suited for a newspaper or magazine, and it will at times require your close attention. But I believe it is easily one of the best quorums we’ve ever published here. I’d like to thank all the participants for their thoughtful, well-considered, and fascinating answers, and for taking the time to . . .
A few observations about last night’s surprise result in the New Hampshire primary. Let me draw on the thoughts outlined in my column for the Wall Street Journal. First, red faces all around for the political prognosticators: Judging by the pre-vote polls and prediction markets, the Democratic primary in New Hampshire created one of the most surprising upsets in U.S. . . .
45 percent of Chicago doctors recommend placebos, survey says. What’s the secret to China’s economic success? “Five Myths About How Americans Vote.” Which science topics are the presidential candidates dodging?
The art and practice of political data mining. (Hat tip: Chris Masse) CalTech scientist works to develop more efficient, less costly fuel cell. (Earlier) Spam made up 90% of e-mails delivered to big companies in November. (Earlier) LeverageCard.com offers increased options for gift card recipients. (Earlier)
The Harvard economist (and blogger) Greg Mankiw has written an excellent primer on the Federal Reserve’s power to influence the economy, making much of the the fact that the Fed is politically independent and can therefore afford to ignore public sentiment more than politicians can. His piece got me thinking about what a lot of people have been thinking for . . .