Hi I'm Incompetent, Buy My Book

I was listening to Fair Game on my ipod. (Get podcasts from their website here) They had Doug Schoen on and he said something... well dumb.

Basically he was on the show promoting the idea that it would be a really good idea to have someone run as a third centerist political party. In and of itself that idea is a really good way to AFFECT the outcome of an election (see Ross Perot, Theodore Roosevelt, etc), but it never results in such a person actually winning anything. Besides which, it doesn't really work ever because while lots of people say they are "independent" or "centerist" that means very different things to different people. Someone who was against legal abortion but in favor of progressive social programs might define themselves as "centerist" but so might a pro-choice libertarian who believed in gay marriage and small government. But those two people don't have anything in common.

Anyway, Faith Saile asked a question like "well, Obama is running in the democratic race, but he's adopted very cooperative inclusive rhetoric, isn't he essentially running a centerist campaign?" and Doug Schoen basically said "well I don't know about his specific policies."

I'm sorry but if you're job is analyzing politics, shouldn't you know the various candidates' platforms? I mean, it's not like Obama is running some highly secretive organization which encrypts all of it's policy proposals with a 144 bit key. He's got a whole website and everything. People have spent a lot of time putting together the policies of candidates and organizing them in a convenient and useful fashion. If you can't be bothered to go to the damn website, why should anyone listen to your opinion? Seriously. Acting like this stuff all doesn't exist because they weren't mentioned in the five speeches you watched isn't helping anyone.

Needless to say I'd encourage everyone to give the book the amount of patronage it so richly deserves (which is to say, none). It probably should also be noted that Mr. Schoen has done polling work for Bloomberg. Third party/independent candidates rarely succeed in actually winning, but they always succeed in spending money on consultants. hmm.

Not that it was especially surprising coming from someone who wrote this, but still...