A Splinter in Your Eye

It's somewhat incidental, but let's hear it for The Economist, which refuses to play by the "rules" when identifying Charles Cook, the elections "guru" who receives an obligatory quote in virtually every story about national campaigns. In its Dec. 24 issue, the weekly ran a piece on George Bush's belated offensive against his Iraq War critics at the end of last year.

"[Bush's] approval ratings have crept back up from the mid-30s to the mid-40s," the writer says, "though Charlie Cook, a political analyst, thinks this is because his supporters have stopped smarting over his abortive bid to put [Harriet Miers] on the Supreme Court."

In contrast, The New York Times' Adam Nagourney-interchangeable, actually, with any Beltway reporter from the Times, Los Angeles Times or Washington Post, writing in the same shorthand-contributed a throwaway article on Jan. 1, assessing the Democrats' chances of taking back the Senate this fall. Nagourney goes to the well: "It's not likely, but I can see the math,' said Jennifer Duffy, an analyst for The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter."

Let's be honest when discussing political analysts, consultants, number-crunchers or anyone else who carves out a very comfortable living catering to those who follow politics. Obviously, Cook doesn't disclose how he personally votes, but I receive his newsletter by e-mail every week and the Democratic slant is unmistakable. Similarly, another "non-partisan" oddsmaker who's quoted more often in conservative publications, the University of Virginia's Larry Sabato, tilts toward the Republicans. Anyone who calls John Zogby, the pollster who reached near-celebrity in the mid-late 90s for his accuracy, has, perhaps because of his Arab loyalties, become completely unreliable. You might as well look to James Carville for a "non-partisan" opinion. And Scott Rasmussen, whose "Rasmussen Report" is prolific, polling daily on Bush's numbers, is almost certainly a Republican.

Gary Sheffield won't play in more than 92 games for the Yanks next year. Carl Pavano will be the team's ace (21-8), while Randy Johnson struggles (12-13). Derek Jeter will hit .274. Miguel Tejada, if traded from the dreadful Orioles, will win an MVP award.

If Jimmy Breslin or Michael Daly were 29 today, they'd be writing for New York Press. Despite the necessity of a copy editor striking "Beautiful!" out of each Breslin column, the remainder of his prose would, in fact, be beautiful.

Frank Rich will quit the Times when Brokeback Mountain fails to win more than a token Oscar.

The Nation's Katha Pollitt, as myopic as ever, will never take back this silly remark from her Jan. 9 column, celebrating the "good things" that happened in 2005. After slamming the "Christian Taliban" and Wal-Mart, Pollitt says the world is becoming more "gay-friendly." That's probably true, and is indeed positive, but that part of her evidence is the success of Capote is condescending. Yes, the late Truman was an unapologetic homosexual before the phrase "gay" was invented in this context, but the movie was brilliant because of the subject, Capote's groundbreaking In Cold Blood and the performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Guaranteed: If Steven Spielberg's abysmal, revisionist Munich wins any major awards, I will puke. Repeatedly.

On New Year's Day, my son and I waited on line for a late-morning showing of Syriana-George Clooney's convoluted anti-American film that made his other 2005 social conscience effort, Good Night, and Good Luck, seem as clear as an "All in the Family" episode-and two fellows behind us were chattering away. When one of them said, "Not that there's anything wrong with that!" I had an uncomfortable flashback to the '90s, when "Seinfeld" inexplicably captivated far too many Americans.

Howard Dean, who lacks the humor of Alex Cockburn, will compare Bush to Hitler and be forced to resign as head of the Democratic National Committee. Speaking of Cockburn, he sure does have crush on Laura Bush. In his Jan. 9 Nation column, Alex writes: "As Hitler did before him, Bush raves on about imagined victories. Spare a thought for the First Lady, who has to endure his demented and possibly drunken harangues over supper. The word around Washington is that he's drinking again." The word around The Nation offices is that although Cockburn gets increasingly eccentric and off-message, writing about John Kerry's "glass jaw, six houses and? silly billionaire wife," he's untouchable, if only to keep subscribers from focusing on the celebrity suck-up jottings of Eric Alterman.

Imagine, if you can stand it, that Alterman produced a movie as popular as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11: His preening and self-importance, already insufferable, would make Moore seem like one of the Berrigan Bros.

The Democratic bosses in Maryland will be rebuffed for their anointment of Paul Sarbanes clone Ben Cardin as U.S. Senate candidate, and the general election race will be historic, with two black men, former Congressman and NAACP president Kweisi Mfume running against Michael Steele, the culturally conservative Lt. Gov. of the state. With voters unable to post their prejudices in the privacy of a voting booth, a black will finally represent Maryland. Steele's the upset winner.

The GOP will lose five seats in the House and three in the Senate.

I've no idea what inside intelligence retired Times columnist William Safire receives-perhaps from his semi-annual séances with Richard Nixon-but his Dec. 30 prediction that Mike Pence will replace Dennis Hastert as Speaker of the House is pretty swell.

Sometime in July, both Pat Buchanan and Taki will convert to Judaism. n

-January 2

Not to dissent from the opinions of virtual god Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, host of The Daily Kos, but when he stated in a Dec. 29 Newsweek online interview that Montana's Conrad Burns is "the most unpopular senator in the country," I have to give credence to the multiple studies that crystal meth is back in vogue. Teddy Kennedy, Bill Frist, Rick Santorum and Barbara Boxer, sure, but Burns? I'm guessing he has a national name recognition lower than Hanley Ramirez.

New York's Chris Smith is a capable political reporter, but this sentence included in his Dec. 26 piece about Tom Suozzi's possible run against Eliot Spitzer was just as annoying as when Times editorialists refer to readers as "ordinary Americans." Smith writes: "People with real lives aren't thinking about the 2006 Democratic gubernatorial primary." Can he spell patronizing? And does this mean that Smith and his colleagues on the campaign trail don't have "real lives"? If so, editor Adam Moss might consider asking his employee to work pro bono, since everything's free in an imaginary world.

But that's a trifle compared to the Times' David Sanger's Jan. 1 vacation report from President Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX. He says, "[Bush] never even ventured into this little town of 600, not even to the cheeseburger joint that he often uses as a political tool to show that he is in touch with his neighbors."

Maybe Bush actually likes cheeseburgers.

Besides, compare that to John Kerry's man-of-the-people statement in January's Esquire. "Last summer I drove across the country with some friends? We were in blue jeans, driving all night in my Ford F-150 truck, trading off behind the wheel, telling stories. Like Jack Kerouac. It was fantastic? We dropped into little diners at odd hours and people were freaked. 'What are you doing here?'"

It is, obviously, a relief that Kerry's ego is intact.