In 30 days it will be December 30th in the US. We will be flying over the Pacific Ocean that day, and since we’ll cross the date line, that means we’ll arrive in Tokyo on New Year’s Eve. And when I get there, thanks to my Japanese class, I’ll be ready to say あけまして おめでと ございます(akemashite omedeto gozaimasu - happy new year! - that’s the phonetic Hiragana - I don’t know the Kanji). Although, it’s my understanding that they don’t use this phrase until it’s actually the 1st. The class has gone really well. It’s a non-intensive introductory class, so I am far, far from fluent. But I believe I’ll be able to handle basic tasks like ordering food and letting a taxi driver know where I want to go.
I’ve been supplementing my classroom learning with Manga-jin magazine. It’s been out of print for almost 10 years, but back issues are still available. It contains Japanese manga (comics) with detailed English translations. I’ve picked up some great phrases that would never come up in class, like “otosan nobori” (daddy climbing - something Eidan does routinely). Here’s an example from the magazine.
We leave Philly for RI on the 22nd, to spend Christmas with my family, and we have an awful lot to do before we go (we fly from Boston to SF on the 28th, and then leave for Tokyo on the 30th). Our “to do” list keeps getting longer as we keep thinking of more things we have to take care of (figure out just how little we can get away with packing for a 6 month stay, cancel the car insurance, bring our tax documents so we can do our taxes in April, etc., etc., etc.). All our paperwork came through today for our visas, which is nice, because it means we can actually go (we’ll be there too long to just use tourist visas).
There really are no words to describe this video, so I’ll just say: watch and enjoy (it’s kind of long, so depending on the speed of your connection, it may take a minute or so to start up).
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Yesterday Rich Lowry at NRO put together a fairly good summary of the ill-informed conventional wisdom that’s taking root about the elections (and this also goes to show that I can agree with a conservative columnist). I’d say the only thing Lowry missed was the conclusion by the punditry that the voters were calling for bipartisanship and no “slash and burn” politics from the Democrats (in particular, I recall Brian Williams on NBC saying this over and over again on election night). The only problem with that assertion is there’s nothing in the exit polls to support it. Instead, the polls show intense frustration with how the Republicans have managed their one-party rule of Washington for the past several years. So much so that, for example, Lincoln Chafee (the moderate Republican Senator from Rhode Island) went down to defeat despite going into the election with a 63% approval rating. Asserting that this somehow translates into a public outcry for bipartisanship is simply a non-sequitur. That is, the public may or may not crave bipartisanship, but its not something you can divine from the exit polls, because they were not asked that question.
This sort of thing isn’t new. The conventional wisdom from the 2004 election was even more wrong. Virtually all the maninstream media pundits then - and still to this day - labeled it the “values” election. You have to go to The Economist - a British news magazine - to learn that interpretation of the exit polls was simply wrong. “Values” actually mattered less in 2004 than in previous elections:
Moreover, that 22% share [of the 2004 electorate that cited moral issues as their top voting concern] is much lower than it was in the two previous presidential elections, in 2000 and 1996. Then, 35% and 40%, respectively, put moral or ethical issues top, and a further 14% and 9% put abortion first, an option that was not given in 2004. Thus, in those two elections, about half the electorate said they voted on moral matters; this time, only a fifth did.
If anything, the thing that sets apart 2004 is the public’s concern about terrorism, which didn’t show up in the polls prior to 9/11 (I haven’t checked, but I’d be surprised if terrorism was even listed as a choice in the polls before 9/11). Since the exit polls only allow voters to name one top issue, the lower percentage of those citing moral issues in 2004 can be attributed to the rise of terrorism as a concern. But since “values” still beat out terrorism and the economy by a few percentage points, the pundits decided that “values” was the new big issue, even though it mattered far less overall than it had in the two prior Presidential election years.
The “six year itch” is the commonly held belief that the President’s party always loses big in the sixth year of a Presidency, and in midterm elections in general. This was repeated endlessly on TV on election night by Republicans and reporters alike. This supposed axiom of US politics considers the results of midterm elections as some sort of celestial event, fixed in the stars, somehow unrelated to the record of the incumbent party. Many have tried to minimize the significance of Tuesday’s Democratic victories by arguing that the number of seats they gained is below the historical average for 6th year elections (see, for example Charles Krauthammer’s latest column).
Looking at the numbers since WWII, two things are apparent. One is that the supposed “six year itch” has not applied to the most recent pair of two term Presidents prior to Bush: the Republicans lost only a handful of seats in ‘86 under Reagan, and the Democrats gained seats in ‘98 under Clinton. The other is that gains and losses in the House for the President’s party in midterm elections appear more related to Presidential popularity than anything else. In cases where Presidents had popularity ratings in the 60% range, the losses were minor, or they even experienced gains. It’s when you see Presidential popularity in the 40% range that significant losses occur for his party in the House. Eisenhower is one exception - in 1958 the Republicans lost big because of a deep recession and foreign policy concerns (mainly the Soviet launch of Sputnik and civil war in Cuba). Eisenhower, with his iconic status from WWII, maintained his personal popularity despite these concerns, but his party did not. Ford is another exception, but the ‘74 election was in the wake of Watergate and Nixon’s resignation, which is clearly an unusual situation.
Looking at recent history, the generalization you can make about midterm elections is that the results for the President’s party are usually associated with the popularity of the President. Major sixth year losses are not a foregone conclusion governed by some divine rule of politics beyond mortal control. With the exceptionally low approval ratings of Bush and the Republican-led Congress going into the election, their subsequent losses are a clear rebuke of Bush and Republican policies.
If anything, the election results understate the public mood: with the aid of sophisticated computer modeling and marketing data, and unprecedented redistricting between census reports, the Republican House had the most gerrymandered districts since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 (the Act outlawed purely racially based gerrymandering, but not partisan gerrymandering). Gerrymandering serves as a bulwark against shifts in public sentiment, so it was actually remarkable to see as much House turnover as we did on Tuesday.
In the wake of the elections, I can’t resist writing about politics again. Bush on the Republicans’ losses in the midterm election:
“I thought when it was all said and done, the American people would understand the importance of taxes and the importance of security,” the president said. “But the people have spoken, and now it’s time for us to move on.”
When Bush goes off script like this, he has a habit of revealing a lot more about his own state of mind than he realizes. I’m not sure what’s the more astounding aspect of this statement. It seems to indicate that he actually believes his own cartoonish rhetoric about the Democrats, and it shows a real contempt for the American people. The obvious implication is that the Republicans would have fared better in the elections if only the American people were smart enough to agree with his Wise and Correct understanding of the issues.
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There’s a saying that the oldest child is the father’s child, and the next child is the mother’s. That’s definitely true with our boys. When Kai was an infant and a toddler, Maria often felt a bit left out, as Kai always glommed on to me. Now, with Eidan, the shoe is on the other foot. And it’s even more pronounced with him, because he’s more openly affectionate than Kai was. Maria is regularly peppered with hugs and kisses throughout the day. And me? I get nuthin. Well, once a week or so I’ll get a hug, but that’s about it.
An interesting aspect of this is that Eidan is very friendly with men. He’ll happily run up to men who are strangers, and he’ll gladly let any man pick him up. But, other than Mommy, he doesn’t like women to get close to him. This was frustrating for my sisters and my mother when we went to visit this summer. Eidan warmed up to them eventually, but he was instantly friendly with my father and brother. Maria is the only woman for him. I’m sure that’ll change by the time he’s a teenager 
The last time I wrote about Eidan I reported that he said his first word - “no.” He stopped saying “no” after just a few days, and hasn’t said it since. But he’s added “hi” and “bye” to his vocabulary, along with vigorous waving. What’s freaky about this is that he says “hi” and “bye” in a low, raspy voice. It’s not at all what you’d expect from a baby - hearing these words come out amidst his usual stream of babble is a bit startling - it’s like suddenly hearing your dog start talking.
Yesterday he said “shoes” and pointed out the window. He knows “shoes” means its time to go outside, and there’s nothing he loves more than being outside.
I can’t emphasize enough what a terror Eidan has become. I have now come to fully understand and appreciate the sportscaster phrase “you can’t stop him, you can only hope to contain him.” He literally runs around the house with the sole goal of creating as much chaos as possible: laundry flies out of the bathroom and down the stairs, books fly off shelves, toys and food are thrown everywhere. And for him, it is all sheer joy. The weather turning colder is going to be a big problem for us. The back yard is the best place for his exuberance. There may not be much left of our house if he has to stay in it for days on end, when it becomes too cold to play outside.
