Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Musings From 30,000 Feet

So I’m sitting in seat 16D heading to Milwaukee from Boston. I don’t know how I got onto this mental tangent, but I thought of a great idea for a blog post and seeing as I’m not picking up any Wi-Fi up here, I can’t surf the internet aimlessly anyway. Pretty much the only thing I can do is word process. So here it goes:

The 2008 Presidential election can essentially be boiled down to this: Stephen Curry drains threes from the outside, drives hard to the hole, and can’t be stopped by anything short of a full court triple-team en route to leading Davidson on an unexpectedly deep NCAA tourney run. The New York Yankees put together an absolute dream team that can’t be beat on paper, only to collapse due to external distractions, infighting, and a general lack of chemistry. Brett Favre, the aging gunslinger, comes back to the NFL, albeit wearing a darker hue of green and playing a much more conservative, conventional game. In a surprise move, Favre’s Jet’s acquire Terrell Owens who insists that the Jets buy him a newer, nicer helmet and throw in some retro jerseys. Although football fans everywhere follow the Owens saga with rapt attention, few would have him actually playing for their team.

OK, that last story may have been completely untrue, but who knows, maybe next year. The similarities between the sagas of our politicians and our sports teams are eerie. For every story about A-Rod and Madonna affairs, we can get one about Eliot Spitzer or John Edwards. I could go to espn.com and read Todd McShay’s analysis of the 2010 NFL draft class, or I could read Nate Silver’s amazing number-based political analyses of the 2010 midterms on fivethirtyeight.com. I can put together the ultimate fantasy football team, although drafting Tom Brady would have killed me this year, or I could enter my speculations on cabinet posts on washingtonpost.com.

As much as we overanalyze Ocho Cinco Johnson’s body language on the sideline after two consecutive possessions without a pass thrown his way, we overanalyze the body language of Barack Obama towards John McCain on the Senate floor. The only thing more complicated than the Bowl Championship Series formula is the Democratic National Committee’s method of appropriating convention delegates and the notion of the superdelegate in general. In 2016, when the Democratic Party Nominating Tournament adds a play in game, it will have as many candidates as the NCAA Tournament has teams. I’ve got Bucknell pulling off a huge upset in their first round match-up against Hillary Clinton, becoming the first sixteen seed to take down a number one.

A preferred criticism of our modern democracy is that the two party system polarizes the country, dividing Republicans against Democrats and helps to create an artificial horserace effect. If that’s true, is it even such a bad thing? This year’s election boasted some of the juiciest story lines and irrelevant stories in recent memory. John King’s magic board illustrated and magnified the horserace effect like never before. And yet we saw the highest turnout in a Presidential election since 1968.

OK. They just told me to stow all my electronic devices, so I’m just going to cut it off here. I think I’ve said enough. I’ll post this when I get home. In fact, if you’re reading this right now and are in the greater Milwaukee area, give me a call because I have arrived back at my house.
Out.

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