Two pieces sit under the politics heading, and both were written against a deadline that has long passed: one on the Libya intervention as a repricing of foreign policy consensus, one on a presidential contender and the room Obama left him. They are dated pieces in the useful sense — they record what a careful observer thought while the outcome was still open.
The portal’s continuation of this subject is narrower and duller on purpose. Policy and regulation deals with the published arithmetic of public money: tax lines, statistical formulas, reporting obligations and the schedules that govern them. Election forecasting as such appears only where a market prices it, in economy of the gaming market. Both entries below remain at the column’s own addresses, with its dates and byline intact.
Two things in these pieces have standing successors on the portal. The arithmetic of public money is treated as mechanics in the policy section, where a formula and the body obliged to publish it are named. The business of pricing a political outcome appears only where a regulated market quotes it and a state report records the result. Neither successor forecasts anything. The entries below are listed in publication order, each with the date and byline the snapshot carried.
Every once in a while a pitch comes along that looks like the sweetest, juiciest, fattest pitch you are ever going to see. That is what you wait for.
It has been said that without George W. Bush, Obama would not have been president. There is some truth to that.