New York, New York

TNR's Ryan Lizza was at an interesting party last night:

The best moment of the night came when Rudy Giuliani and McCain took the stage and led the crowd in "New York, New York."

There's some political analysis in Lizza's post (McCain and Giuliani are likely to compete for the GOP nomination in 2008) but all that really takes away from the mental image. Both men have appeared on Saturday Night Live. Giuliani is funnier, but McCain has more stamina.

In any case, I've just finished up The Control Room: How Television Calls the Shots in Presidential Elections by Martin Plissner. Unsurprisingly, Plissner's thesis is that TV has dramatically transformed presidential campaigns. This hasn't been as bad for politics as we all like to think. Plissner was Executive Political Director at CBS until recently and worked for that network since 1963; at times he shows a pretty obvious bias in against the other networks. For the most part, though, it's an absolutely fascinating book—if at one point ominous for Kerry; we learn of Donilon's Law, which states that "A party's chance of winning the presidency varies inversely with the length of time it takes its nominee to clinch the nomination."

He debunks the myth that Kennedy's trashing of Nixon in the 1960 presidential debates was a prime reason for JFK's victory. (I was surprised to learn this.) Of course, we tend to forget that Kennedy won by less than one percent of the vote. The transcripts of Dan Rather getting roughed up at the '68 Chicago Convention. But mostly the book is about minute details. When were the first exit polls conducted? When did the networks first start announcing who had won the nomination before the convention? Who was responsible for the absence of televised presidential debates from 1964 to 1976? To answer these questions would take, well, a book.

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