Campaign Blog: News & Updates

» NYT Mag: Vote Like Thy Neighbor (Bill Galston, Pietro Nivola)

Reading this article serves as my reminder to pick up Bill Bishop's long-anticipated book on political self-segregation. I'm a sceptic of his thesis (you can review the Statesman's archives for some detail on this), but I'm curious enough to see what there may be to the research that's gone into this. For the diehard enough, there's also the Brookings variation that the authors of this article allude to (Part 1, Part II) ... to which, I've only found time to review but a small part of this work.

The question marks I take into this idea is that if you look at some examples in this great state of Texas, there are some curious datapoints that aren't immediately answered by Bishop's theory that we're all moving next door to folks who vote like us.

One, is Dallas County. In reviewing the precinct-level data for the 2006 outcomes, I was a bit surprised at how Democratic the northern part of the county has grown. Part of that culminated in the election of Allen Vaught as State Rep. But you've also seen the Irving/Dallas seat formerly held by Steve Wolens now represented by Rafael Anchia - a sign that the Hispanic migration in the area is now culminating in strength at the ballot box. These showings have yet to migrate all the way north into Collin County, but even if you look at parts of Plano, the pattern is there. Now, there may be something to Bishop's thesis in that the pattern seems geographically continuous. Put another way, a precinct seems more likely to grow Democratic or Republican if it is situated next to a precinct that has a supermajority of same.

Another is Williamson County. The conventional wisdom - as captured by Burka (who else?) - is that this is all due to Austinites moving to the 'burbs and securely packing their "liberal values" with them. I think that's entirely too reductionist to be accepted. Yes, there is some migration of this pattern, and there's no doubt that it accounts for a part of this. But the plural of anecdote isn't data. The drivers for population movement to the suburbs seems to get overlooked in that shorthand. For instance - among the reasons you commonly hear of people that move to the suburbs are the schools. Last I checked, that's a critical role of government ... and one that is presently driving a wedge between GOP activists who disapprove of public education in greater numbers than traditional Democrats. Fort Bend County is another instance of this, albeit one behind the curve witnessed in Williamson. Still ... again, the patterns are relatively contiguous in terms of geography. Sugar Land extends from Missouri City and Houston ... WilCo extends from Austin.

The final question is Travis County. The county that voted for Bush over Gore and Kerry over Bush. There's a part of me that hates to view this trend in terms of county-level data, but it tends to be the most consistent over time. As one who's had recent fun with precinct-level data, it'd be a major pain to try and do a more extensive job ... at least out of this one-man data shop.

So with those questions, there isn't exactly a complete refutation of Bishop's argument. But it's enough in my mind to go in as a skeptic. Brookings covers numerous examples of societal forces that drive polarization - forces that operate relatively independently of geography. I'll be interested to see how that gets incorporated into Bishop's book.

But as one who's looked at Harris County on a precinct-basis from 1990 on, what strikes me about Harris County is that there is what might be categorized as a wave pattern that responds to the political cycle at any given time. For instance, the area that goes up Highway 290 and southwest along 59 are areas I've highlighted in the past as areas that recede and regroup as Democratic precincts. That indicates an inate level of Democratic strength in those areas (which may support Bishop), but it also demonstrates that geography is by no means destiny (and therefore refute Bishop).

ADD-ON: Forgot to add this as a Harris County question. But, on a broader scale, it would be curious to see how Bishop handles the question of Harris County being a one-time Democratic county at the local level (say, 1972-1990), only to flip to a one-party Republican county, and now back to a resurgence as a possible swing back to the Democratic column over the coming few years. I guess, in part, that's no different than the swing precincts that wax and wane red or blue. But the forces that drive this are maybe easier to distill at a county level - migration, immigration, economic growth varying by region, etc ....

Not certain yet, but I believe I may be headed out of town for most of the day. So, instead of offering up some well-formulated pithy thoughts, I'll simply offer up a short list of must-reads and some tunage to get through the day.

» NYT: For the Democrats, Signs of a Possible Changing of the Guard (Adam Nagourney)

» Chron/NYT: Amputee goat finds a friend in amputee animal activist

» Prospect: The Elusive Politics of Reform (Ezra Klein)

» Newsweek: The Rise of the Rest (Fareed Zakaria)

Sadly, no summer dates for Patty Smyth/Scandal in this area. Bummer.

» NYT: '88 Campaign Offers a Lesson in Using Symbols as Bludgeons

Mr. Obama, of Illinois, has promised a different politics, one that rises above the fray and the distractions of wedge issues. As Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for Salon, recently put it, "The entire Obama campaign is predicated on the belief that it is no longer 1988."

That's certainly the gamble of the Obama campaign. The one good thing he's got going for him (assuming the nomination) is that the underlying environment of this cycle make it a particularly toxic time to be a Republican. Unpopular, mismanaged war? Check. Demonstrable incompetence at nearly all levels of operation? Check. Not exactly a good time to ask for four more years of the same old policies.

Kristol opines a bit on the GOP angle of this. Admittedly, his suggestion of a McCain-Jindal ticket would make things interesting. But would it help matters any? His datapoint doesn't look promising:

Another McCain staffer called my attention to this finding in the latest Fox News poll: McCain led Obama in the straight match-up, 46 to 43. Voters were then asked to choose between two tickets, McCain-Romney vs. Obama-Clinton. Obama-Clinton won 47 to 41.

It's a stretch to assume that even a McCain-Jindal combo would minimize that sort of damage.

»Chron: NASA employees big spenders on government credit (Chase Davis)

NASA employees have used government credit cards to ring up iPods, video games and even clothes from the agency's own gift shop, while at other times using the cards in ways that sidestep competitive bidding rules, federal documents and a Chronicle review of agency records show.

The review comes at a time when Congress is considering tightening purchase card regulations across government, after a federal report last month that found widespread abuse in government credit card programs, including charges that did not follow policies to prevent waste and fraud.

Private sector businesses aren't immune to corruption and waste, but I'm curious how something like this would go over at a shareholders meeting.

Just a reminder ... it's not a good year for Republicans. You'd have to go all the way back to 1972 for the last time a Dem won this seat and then it was a pro-segregation, John Birth version of Democrat (John Rarick).

Ed Emmett heads to India rather than participate in a statewide hurricane preparedness drill. Here's how one GOP partisan defends the move:

Do people really think a governmental body cannot function if the leader is not present? Do people really think that if a hurricane was forecasted for a potential Gulf Coast landfall, Judge Emmett wouldn't have cancelled his trip?

A rather bold set of questions to ask about hurricanes in this post-Katrina era. Then again, I guess there's a certain level where she may have a point ... it could very well be that county government would be more efficient and effective if Ed Emmett were just out of the way. I guess my question would be along the lines of "So why do you plan on voting for someone who's so utterly unnecessary?"

Oh, and remind me what the standard critique of Mayor Lee Brown was back in the day? What was his nickname? Hmmm ... maybe it's something about the (R) next to Emmett's name that wards off any hint of criticism in his case.

» Chron: Contractors invested in NASA funding fight (Chase Davis)

I wonder if this is the sort of thing that was meant to inspire schoolkids to take more math & science classes ...

Our folks in Washington reported today that a contingent of 30 U.S. Representatives led by Stafford Democrat Nick Lampson has asked Congress to boost NASA's funding by $2 billion to help close the five-year gap between the retirement of the space shuttle and NASA's return to manned spaceflight.

Lampson, whose district includes Johnson Space Center, has been crusading on NASA's behalf for months, even arranging trips for fellow congressmen to take in a space shuttle launch in Florida earlier this year.

As part of his push, Lampson wrote a letter, signed by 29 other representatives, urging House leadership to get behind the NASA budget boost.

A quick look at federal contracting records shows that of the 30 members who signed the letter - Lampson included - 26 represent districts that received NASA-related contract business in 2007. Of those, 14 did at least $1 million in contracting work for the space agency. Lampson's district leads the way with more than $2 billion.

Four of the congressmen also represent districts that received NASA grant funding in 2006.

House leadership has its investment too. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, represents a district that took in more than $402 million in NASA contracts last year.

If all NASA is these days is a bureaucratic special interest clamoring for more tax dollars to put private sector satellites in space, reading things like this only convince me more that the agency needs to be retired off to the private sector where they can fight for dollars in the real world instead.

Watching the video on this story about Mississippi's special election runoff between Travis Childers (D) and Greg Davis (R), I'm reminded that there are still people who believe there's a liberal media out there. Heck, it's even a CBS affiliate. Aren't they supposed to be in cahoots and helping to push "the agenda"?

Instead, you get a GOP candidate pushing his story as-is, with not a single reporter asking him on camera whether he thinks it's Childers' place to denounce every dumb statement that someone in the world says.

(h/t: Tapper)

» NYT: Bowling 1, Health Care 0 (Elizabeth Edwards)

I've not been among those to track the mutterings of Elizabeth Edwards since she gained some amount of cult hero status during the Presidential campaign. But there's more than enough contained in this op-ed to not echo it here:

Watching the campaign unfold, I saw how the press gravitated toward a narrative template for the campaign, searching out characters as if for a novel: on one side, a self-described 9/11 hero with a colorful personal life, a former senator who had played a president in the movies, a genuine war hero with a stunning wife and an intriguing temperament, and a handsome governor with a beautiful family and a high school sweetheart as his bride. And on the other side, a senator who had been first lady, a young African-American senator with an Ivy League diploma, a Hispanic governor with a self-deprecating sense of humor and even a former senator from the South standing loyally beside his ill wife. Issues that could make a difference in the lives of Americans didn't fit into the narrative template and, therefore, took a back seat to these superficialities.

News is different from other programming on television or other content in print. It is essential to an informed electorate. And an informed electorate is essential to freedom itself. But as long as corporations to which news gathering is not the primary source of income or expertise get to decide what information about the candidates "sells," we are not functioning as well as we could if we had the engaged, skeptical press we deserve.

....

If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we will have to demand it. Not by screaming out our windows as in the movie "Network" but by talking calmly, repeatedly, constantly in the ears of those in whom we have entrusted this enormous responsibility. Do your job, so we can -- as voters -- do ours.

At least some of us who decry the shoddy coverage of media outlets in our area do so for the reasons stated above. The depth of the coverage is shallow, the nature of it lends more heat than light, and the business forces at work in the industry don't exactly help. That's not to be confused with the critics who demand that media outlets simply cater to their ideological dogma.

Winds of Change blogs my point for me ....

This morning there was a blogger conference call with Bill Carr, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Military Personnel Policy - the guy in charge of military recruiting.

The topic was the flurry of news stories early this week about the rise in the numbers of 'waivers' for enlistees - in which people with past criminal activity are allowed to enlist, in spite of rules to the contrary.

How could you not trust the objectivity of a blogger who gets conference call access with a Deputy Undersecretary? Clearly just another blogger who arrived at his own conclusions independent of anything else going on around him.

Josh wonders ...

As you know, on Sunday the Times published a blockbuster article detailing how the Pentagon has used a mix of control of access, defense contracts and more to get network "military analysts" to spout Pentagon talking points in their on-camera analysis. In some cases they even appear to have gotten the analysts to report back to them on what news stories the nets had coming down the pike.

Anybody notice any of the networks -- broadcast or cable -- picking up the story?

Indeed, the silence heard on the matter is stunning. And it shows another angle of how the myth of a liberal media falls apart upon even cursory inspection. Barstow's report noted that several of the analysts were pressured to parrot talking points, in part because they savored the access to the Pentagon. Apparently that goes in another direction ... the media outlets themselves savor the inside info from the Pentagon as well. To lose access is to have an inferior "news" show compared to the outlet that uses analysts with better spoon-feeding capabilities.

Of course, there's also the "whole can of worms" approach to view this issue. It's not just the Pentagon-to-analyst talking points industry that risks getting unraveled. It's every industry that has lobbyists spoon-feeding their talking points to the media for predominantly government clients. Kinda like the Houston Chronicle did with a Douglas MacKinnon op-ed (no longer online, so here's a cache of it). To the untrained eye, you might not know that MacKinnon's plea for a bigger NASA budget is coming from someone who's firm lobbies for Raytheon ... a NASA contractor. It might be fine if that were disclosed. But it wasn't. So maybe that's why many in the media are a bit slow to pick up the charge on astroturf opinion leaders.

Once more, the workload intervenes with the blogging. So I'm behind on a few must-reads from the weekend. So what better reason than to add to the list of things I wish I had more time to blog about. With a little luck, tonight might be a good excuse for catching up while watching the PA returns.

» DMN: Does Perry get it? (William McKenzie)
McKenzie offers a brief and simplistic way of understanding the historic changes in Texas leadership. But he at least glances a narrative that I don't think many others have touched on yet.

» Chron: Guiding growth will be a key issue in '09 mayoral tilt (Mike Snyder)
I'll probably reserve a ton of comment on this for now. But it does feel incredibly unusual to have a sense that there's not one single mayoral candidate that I'm really optimistic about for 2009.

» Jeff Balke: Houston's "New" Rock Alternative?
Jeff reminds me why I don't listen to radio anymore. And about the only show I would have a need to listen to for anything, I can listen to online. Otherwise, podcasts and K-Greg get me through just fine. Yeah, the music's not terribly new ... but it still rocks.

» National Journal: New Media as the Message (Alexis Simendinger)
I think this is even slightly more poignant than Brownstein's article. A few of the highlights are Kathleen Hall Jamieson's point that a tech-centric approach doesn't necessarily benefit any candidate, you have to have an audience that it's relevant for. Secondly, that use of the tools for governance is quite separate than their use for campaigning. At least for now, I guess. I suspect we'll see them used more as tools for governance in the future. It's just a matter of something coming along that's effective for that.

Amazing how childlike behavior can be such a tough habit to drop. bH's Anne Linehan has the latest variation of it with her hate-on for Peter Wang, who she deems a "busybody" ... presumably as a pejorative. According to Anne's incredibly objective take, Peter's "nanny-state mindset" that single-occupancy vehicles are overly relied on in American culture would represent a "nightmare" if his "like-minded friends start running things."

Yeah, because Anne's like-minded Presidential administration has just been a spectacular success at running things. Seriously, is this a smart game for local Republican bloggers to be engaging in? Better to stick to the WMD hunt.

... well, that or just grow up.

For the record, I merely grazed Peter's op-ed in the Chron back here. Personally, I don't take offense at someone stating an honest opinion, whether it's that more folks should consider public transportation or drive as gleefully as they wish in their H2. Peter makes his case; Anne retorts with the type of childish namecalling that is sadly a trademark for local Republican blogging these days.

*sigh*

A few lengthy reads for the day/week/whatever ... I'm still cobbling together a few random thoughts on each, but for now, some linkage:

» NYT: Behind Analysts, the Pentagon's Hidden Hand (David Barstow)

» National Journal: The First 21st-Century Campaign (Ron Brownstein)

I'm sure I'll chip in more than the two cents I'm allowed to offer when time permits tomorrow. While they're both fascinating reads, I think there's a mix of newsworthiness and overstatement that's worth sorting out and reconfiguring.

SIDENOTE: If you're still in need of reading material, Sullivan digs up a link to a classic James Fallows article from the Atlantic, entitled "Why Americans Hate the Media." It's definitely got a 90s vibe to it, but it reminds me all too well of the case that some of us saw in the 90s re: media bias, and why we refuse to accept the simplistic (not to mention, unfounded) "liberal bias" myth that some folks cling to.

SIDENOTE 2.0: Heilbrunn makes it three must-reads ...

» World Affairs: Rank-Breakers: The Anatomy of an Industry (Jacob Heilbrunn)

Read up.

Two good reads in The Atlantic:

» He's Not Joking (Josh Green)
Josh looks at the Al Franken Senate campaign in Minnesota, highlighting the transition from satirist to political candidate. Obviously, Franken notes the strength of that connection:

"A satirist looks at a situation and sees the inconsistencies and hypocrisies, and he cuts through the baloney and gets to the truth," he often says when confronted by skeptics. "I think that's pretty good training for the Senate, don't you?"

That, of course, is the question that's ultimately before Minnesota voters. Franken, at his finest, promises to be something of a Wellstone 2.0 for Minnesota. And since he's running against the guy who replaced Wellstone in the Senate (on the heels of his tragic death), the storyline looks rich for the campaign.

What I don't think Green paid enough attention to in this article is the strength of Norm Coleman as a campaigner. I remember watching highlights of the 2002 campaign and thought Coleman to be every bit Wellstone's equal in terms of charisma, energy, and presentation. And as the current MN Governor, Tim Pawlenty, demonstrates ... it's not a cinch that Democrats win in this state even in the best of years for Democrats to be on the ballot.

» Mr. Conservative (Jonathan Rauch)
This just follows my own argument that Republicans and conservatism are increasingly becoming two different entities. Not that it'll stop Republicans from trying to identify themselves as conservative, mind you. Rauch focuses on the Burkean origins of conservatism and how far the current mold of Republicans falls apart from his model. The frame of his article obviously centers around the currently impending nomination of John McCain as the party standard-bearer. For years, Republicans have tried to tar McCain as liberal, some Democrats have daydreamed that he actually was, but McCain himself has always painted himself as a true representation of Reagan-style conservatism (and by some ounce of logic, closer to the Burkean model than George Bush represents). It ought to be interesting to see how that argument holds up in the course of a Presidential campaign.

» DailyKOS: The Cult of the Professional (Devilstower)

By means of adding to the Chris Matthews article earlier, this strikes me as a worthwhile tangent when it comes to the changes in media today.

It's not the blogs that have caused faith in the media to decline. It's not Wikipedia which has led to a diminished respect for facts and research. The fault doesn't lie with the amateurs. It's squarely in the court of the professionals.

By this I don't mean to engage in a "Judy Miller Attack," placing the blame on those who gather and report the news. Keen is quite correct to point out that many -- most -- reporters are both knowledgeable about their subject areas and courageous in their efforts to gather information. As someone who never held a reporting position higher than $5-a-story stringer to a small town weekly, I feel both awe and gratitude for the people who place their careers and bodies in harm's way to see that I get news from halfway around the world. There are a few bad apples (and sour Picklers) in the barrel, but most reporters are in fact both capable and objective.

That's not enough. Keen's attempts to defend the traditional media by stating that reporters are good is like trying to sell a Yugo by boasting of its high-quality tires.

The media -- newspapers, radio, and television -- is not made up of reporters running on a sparkling field of journalistic integrity. Those reporters are instead embedded in a machine intended to do the one thing that Mr. Keen sets as the mark of professionalism -- make money. And the way the media has chosen to make money over the last few decades is, perversely, by devaluing their own product. The clearest illustration of this can be found in three massive changes that have affected news over the last two decades: the increase in radio pundits, the establishment of the Fox News Network, and the reaction of the remainder of the media to the first two events.

» NYT Mag: The Aria of Chris Matthews (Mark Leibovich)

While this article is ostensibly about Chris Matthews, it's also about the changing nature of cable news. And that includes the impact that John Stewart and Stephen Colbert have had on it.

I've been a news junkie for a number of years now - I can trace my beginnings either to bugging my dad to subscribe to both the Chronicle and the Post during a political campaign cycle or to being fixated with CSPAN (well, that and HBO) in the early days of cable. I feel like I've at least semi-Gumped my way through the era of Firing Line, the McLaughlin Group, Crossfire, MSNBC-CNBC-Fox News-CNN-etc, and now the era of Comedy Central being a leading political news carrier of the day. Leibovich captures at least some of this transformation in the career trajectory of Chris Matthews.

Matthews possesses at least a few qualities that would otherwise endear me to his style: "Also, Matthews added, Carson 'had babes on the show.'" But there's also a lot that ultimately leads me to discount him, as the article's reference to this interview attests to:

But hey, read the whole thing for yourself. It's a small dose of industry navel-gazing, but it at least glancingly captures some of what's driving the change in the way political news is transmitted these day. I recall at least one of my marketing classes in the early 90s where some of this trend was originated. The characterizations of it have since ranged from "cynical" to "sophisticated" consumers who no longer respond to much of the over-packaged pitches of the past (substitute "pitches" for "talking points" and you go from product marketing to political marketing in a hurry). My own sense is that there's a market for folks who just want to be dealt with honestly and the market of politics is having a hell of a time catching up to producing "goods" that meet that demand.

Matthews is certainly symptomatic of the old approach: accept my worldview or get shouted down; add a dose of conventional wisdom with a twist of CW that's long since disproven; and mix gently with a style that evokes an unhealthy sense of certainty ... entirely unwarranted. And when in doubt, use laughter as a defense mechanism and write a book or two about how great politics is.

I'm more curious to see how the post-Stewart/Colbert/Olberman trend evolves. Eventually, there'll be a conservative/Republican response to it. And who knows, they might be every bit as effective as those three. But how long does their model hold? And would a Republican version not chip away at the model that Fox News tries to impart into the news discourse? Check back in five years and we'll all see for ourselves.

Money clip:

Cable political coverage has changed, however, and so has the sensibility that viewers -- particularly young ones -- expect from it. Matthews's bombast is radically at odds with the wry, antipolitical style fashioned by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert or the cutting and finely tuned cynicism of Matthews's MSNBC co-worker Keith Olbermann. These hosts betray none of the reverence for politics or the rituals of Washington that Matthews does. On the contrary, they appeal to the eye-rolling tendencies of a cooler, highly educated urban cohort of the electorate that mostly dismisses an exuberant political animal like Matthews as annoyingly antiquated, like the ranting uncle at the Thanksgiving table whom the kids have learned to tune out.

Nothing illustrated Matthews's discordance with the new cable ethos better than an eviscerating interview he suffered through last fall at the hands of Stewart himself. Matthews went on the "The Daily Show" to promote his book "Life's a Campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me About Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation and Success." The book essentially advertises itself as a guidebook for readers wishing to apply the lessons of winning politicians to succeeding in life. "People don't mind being used; they mind being discarded" is the title of one chapter. "A self-hurt book" and "a recipe for sadness" Stewart called it, and the interview was all squirms from there. "This strikes me as artifice," Stewart said. "If you live by this book, your life will be strategy, and if your life is strategy, you will be unhappy."

Matthews accused Stewart of "trashing my book."

"I'm not trashing your book," Stewart protested. "I'm trashing your philosophy of life."

Matthews told me that the interview was a painful experience. Not only did Stewart humiliate him, but the interview exposed an essential truth that people by and large don't want to hear advice from politicians, a breed that, in many ways, has defined Matthews's value system. "I think Stewart was right in that he caught the drift of antipolitics," Matthews said.

So has Olbermann, the host of MSNBC's "Countdown." While Matthews is clearly a stalwart on the MSNBC menu, he is hardly a flavor of the month, or the year. Olbermann is. "Countdown," on at 8, is getting good ratings, usually second in its slot to "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News. Olbermann draws considerably more viewers than Matthews -- about one million a night, compared with 660,000 for the 7 p.m. broadcast of "Hardball" (which typically runs third in its time slots after Fox News and CNN but is up in the ratings this year). There is a view within the TV industry that MSNBC is positioning itself as the younger, edgier, left-tilting cable network, and no one there embodies this ideal better than Olbermann. NBC executives have been promoting him heavily, and three network officials asked me why I was writing about Matthews and not Olbermann.

Part of this can be viewed purely through a bottom-line lens. Matthews's contract expires next year, and NBC officials clearly would like to renew it for considerably less than the $5 million a year he is making now. Whether it's a formal talking point or not, NBC officials seem bent on conveying the message that they could get the same ratings, or better ones, for considerably less money.

But the broader issue involves whether Matthews is a man trapped in a tired caricature. And it touches on the future of his archetype in general -- in other words, whither the cable blowhard? The "What happens to Chris" question -- a hot topic at NBC these days -- infuses the Matthews story with a kind of "lion in winter" urgency, if not poignancy. It also goes to the core of how Matthews sees himself, how cable news is changing and how Americans perceive of and consume their politics.

Seriously? Marc Campos is berating his fellow Dems for the relative quiet on Hubert Vo's spate of bad news? The guy who did such a "masterful" job with Carol Alvarado's issues as Mayor Pro Tem? You've gotta be kidding me.

» Chron: Fight back, Houston, and let's carpool (Peter Wang)

Another blogger graduates to the Chronicle Op/Ed pages. This time, it's Peter Wang advocating carpooling. Hey, I'm doing my part by hopping on Metro every day. ;-)

Whited laments on the "slickification of politics" that results from "consultants and strategists" who "refine ... soundbites and talking points for public consumption" that sometimes seem untrue (to him, presumably).

Then at his other blog, his Spring-based co-blogger apparently adopts the royal "we" to refine a soundbite that is completely untrue for the sake of venting her hate-on for the mayor of a city she doesn't live in.

You'd think he at least reads his own blogs. But I guess it's more important that others do as he says, not as "they" do.