QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"If you think about it the more moose get hit by us, the fewer moose there are to get hit by us!"

SCDEC*

As a side note, I've often thought it was odd that people expected foreign policy to be Bush's strong point in this election. If someone had told you in 2000 that George Bush's strength in 2004 would be foreign policy, you would have thought that they were insane.

In 2000, we voted on domestic issues and got someone whose skills were primarily in the domestic policy arena.

I'm not sure that there's much evidence that Bush's skill set has changed since 2000.

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*Same Candidate, Different Election Cycle

TIME TO WARM UP THE TOAST-O-METER?

Even though Steven over at Poliblog won't admit it yet, last night's debate shows that it's time to start warming up the toast-o-meter for Bush. Even Bush supporters like the media stars at Powerline can't muster a lot of enthusiasm for his debate performance last night.

I've rarely had such a positive impression of a presidential debater as I did of Kerry last night.

It's not time to flip the switch on the toast-o-meter yet, of course, given the right's focused media operations (as the folks at Seeing the Forest have been noting for a while). But the signs are good for Kerry.

More importantly, though, Josh Marshall has touched on something that should be especially near and dear to the hearts of ideological conservatives with a theoretical bent. Josh writes:

What occured to me somewhat while I was watching the first time and even more on the second go through was just how long it's been since President Bush had to face someone who disagrees with him or is criticizing.

Every president gets tucked away into a cocoon to some degree. But President Bush does notoriously few press conferences or serious interviews. His townhall meetings are screened so that only supporters show up. And, of course, he hasn't debated anyone since almost exactly four years ago.

Folks who are steeped in political argument of the 17th and 18th century should be alarmed at this description of Bush. Drawing on a history of criticism of political flattery, enlightenment authors argued that it is one of the grave disadvantages of monarchy that the monarch surrounds him- or herself with sycophants who do not have the courage to criticize the monarch's policies. According to the liberal tradition, free speech is supposed to counteract this tendency of monarchical powers to lumber along on the wrong course without internal corrections.

Bush's demeanor last night is further proof for the claim that Bush has fallen into the trap of isolating himself from open, honest, trenchant criticism.

THOMAS GOES A' CANVASSING

Thomas Nephew went canvassing last weekend, and I'm sure he did a better job at it than his typically self-deprecating post would indicate. Here's a taste of his narrative:

I took a deep breath before knocking on the first door; I've done this before, but it was about twenty years ago. Naturally, no one answered, and in fact "N/A" turned out to be the typical result of the day. One difficulty was that we often had addresses, but not apartment numbers; and the doorbells we'd find inside the entrance were often not labeled. We'd write "sorry we missed you!" and the local campaign phone number on a Kerry flier and slip it through the mail slot or under the door. But often people had simply moved -- or in a few cases, had been forced to move: we saw three or four padlocked residences and one that was wrecked and abandoned.

Despite that, the neighborhoods we worked were were pleasant to canvass. There was a block party going on at one street corner and school yard -- a DJ with CD's and loudspeakers, picnic tables in the street, a bouncing tent for kids in the school yard.

For more, go here, early and often.

WASHINGTON SUPREMOS

II expected that the Supreme Court would stay out of election disputes. The argument was pretty simple: the Supremes put their institutional legitimacy at stake in the 2000 election, and their shyness in 2002 was a sign that they were appropriately chastened by what they had wrought.

I was wrong. Today, Election Law Blog author Rick Hasen is quoted by the AP as follows:

many people predicted the court would be a little gun-shy, but the court's been remarkably aggressive in the election area.

Whatever else it does, the fact of my wrongness does two things:

1. suggests that this election season could, in fact, be very interesting from a constitutional election law standpoint, and


2. suggests that the new Washington baseball team (yay!) should be called the WASHINGTON SUPREMOS.