The “mitten” is, of course, Michigan, and today the Republicans there are participating in a primary election. In a welcome change of pace from the past couple of weeks, the media is not treating the contest as the most pivotal event ever to occur in western civilization.
Today the focus is on Mitt Romney, because he hasn’t won a big contest yet (he did win the Wyoming caucus, which hardly anyone noticed) and because his father George was governor of the state for much of the 1960s. It’s illuminating to read up on the New Yorker coverage of George Romney’s infamous 1967 slip that he had been “brainwashed” during a trip to Vietnam two years earlier, which sure did a number on his chances at a presidential bid the next year. Check out the last line of William Whitworth’s Comment from the September 23, 1967, issue:

It seems to us that, in their fascination with Governor Romney’s Vietnam ordeal, the newspapers have ignored something at least equally significant in this episode—that the debate over the war has reached a point at which a prominent moderate Republican seeking his party’s Presidential nomination has publicly declared that the United States should never have entered the war.

Doesn’t that sound like the kind of thing you would read today? Of course, thus far, Mitt has chosen not to emulate dear old dad; his position, as expressed in an April 2007 speech, is that “walking away from Iraq, or dividing it in parts and then walking away would present grave risks to America.”
As it happens, the very same issue has a Letter from Washington by Richard Rovere that also mentions Romney’s catastrophic utterance. It’s interesting to see Rovere grappling with a highly unpopular president and war—within six months, the country would see LBJ withdraw his reelection candidacy, and American forces taken by surprise in the Tet offensive. I don’t draw Iraq/Vietnam comparisons lightly, but the whole thing seems mighty familiar.
On another political topic, the polling debacle in New Hampshire a week ago got me thinking about that profession a bit. It must be bizarre for a politician to have some consultant come in and say, “White males hate your guts” or whatever. I fully expect to get a letter someday informing me that I really need to shore up my numbers among Hispanic professionals over 35.
The man who started it all is George Gallup, and The New Yorker‘s Russell Maloney, who seems to have been a real mainstay at the magazine back in the day—I’ve been running into his name a lot lately—did a bang-up Profile on him in 1940. It’s called “Black Beans and White Beans.” We learn that Gallup was apparently given to quoting Talleyrand to the effect that “the only thing wiser than anybody is everybody.” Paging James Surowiecki!
—Martin Schneider

More dispatches from my short story resolution:
Kay Boyle, “Kroy Wen,” July 25, 1931
Plot: Movie mogul harrasses poor Italians on a cruise.
Noah Webster alert: “repine” means both to complain and to pine.
George Milburn, “The Apostate,” June 4, 1932
Plot: Rotarian learns there’s more to life than the club.
Just wait forty years: “longhairs”
Excellent term of endearment: “you mangy old son of a hoss thief”
Excellent term of abuse: “sourbelly”
Jerome Weidman, “Chutzbah,” February 29, 1936
Plot: Charming boy from the old neighborhood is a bit of a shyster.
Inscrutable reference: Anyone know what “Leevio” means?
Good question: Is this story anti-Semitic?
J.F. Powers, “Death of a Favourite,” July 1, 1950
Plot: Parish priests in Minnesota perform an exorcism on a very unlikely subject.
Worthy of note: Title is likely a Thomas Gray reference.
Hot quotation: “Then they were gone, and after a bit, when they did not return, I supposed they were out killing poultry on the open road.”
Daniel Fuchs, “The Golden West,” July 10, 1954
Plot: Hollywood people suffer during a garden party.
Censorious Shawn alert: “whatsis” used to denote female posterior.
Hot quotation: “Mrs. Ashton was an intensely serious person, and as she lunged and flung herself about, she clearly had no idea of the violent effect the game was having on her bosom.”
A crank would say: The Osterman Weekend without the machine guns. Or possibly L’Avventura on Benzedrine.
Best story: “Death of a Favourite”
—Martin Schneider
Previously: Installment I

I admit it. I’m an Obama man. I was psyched after Iowa, and I was dejected upon hearing the news of Hillary Clinton’s victory this morning (wrong time zone for prime time results). Several hours later, I see the positive side of Clinton’s comeback, and I find myself looking forward to the spirited few weeks of political combat to come.
Not many people saw Clinton’s strong showing yesterday coming, but I did want to salute Hendrik Hertzberg for being one of the very few people to get at least a small part of the story dead right, a mere day after the Iowa result, when the Obamania was at its freshest and most difficult to contravene.
I confess that when I listened to the last installment of the delightful New Yorker podcast “The Campaign Trail”—which usually features The New Yorker‘s Washington correspondent, Ryan Lizza, and executive editor, Dorothy Wickenden (they make a very good team), but the day after Iowa also included Hertzberg, the magazine’s chief political commentator—I made a dismissive clucking sound with my tongue upon hearing Hertzberg’s negative assessment of Obama’s prepared caucus-night speech and praise for Clinton’s “gracious” concession. Just as we learned not to be overhasty about writing any candidate off, we likewise shouldn’t read too much into what was likely a small part of Clinton’s comeback.
But the fact remains, that Hertzberg, both in the podcast and on his blog, may have foreseen Obama’s tendency to turn his movement into a hazy abstraction and Clinton’s newfound need to hunker down and show her more affable side. It’s already difficult to reconstruct how heretical that take seemed on Friday, and Hertzberg deserves credit for not letting the prevailing winds buffet him about.
I hope Hertzberg participates in the next podcast so he can crow over his prescience! (Which he surely won’t.)
—Martin Schneider
Update: I think Karl Rove might be a “Campaign Trail” podcast enthusiast. After Hillary won, his surprisingly trite (and, less surprisingly, racially coded) article in The Wall Street Journal made a similar observation:

And Mr. Obama, in his own way, is often as calculating as Mrs. Clinton. For example, he was the only candidate, Democratic or Republican, to use a teleprompter to deliver his Iowa and New Hampshire election-night speeches. It gave his speeches a quality and clarity that other candidates, speaking from notes or the heart, failed to achieve. But what he gained in polish, he lost in connection.

—MCS

The Millions has just posted a really juicy spreadsheet that a teacher named Frank Kovarik sent in. It’s got basic information on every short story that has appeared in The New Yorker since 2003. I salute Kovarik for his industry and public-spiritedness! I also use Excel to make sense of The Complete New Yorker‘s vastness. Indeed, I think those two just might be the new PB&J, the new franks and beans, the new vodka and tonic. It’s possible I overstate.
I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this data, but I hope that Kovarik elucidates the meaning of the “Rating” column. I suspect it refers to his own personal opinion of the story, on a scale from 1 to 10. If that guess is correct, he sure doesn’t like Roberto Bolaño!
One aspect of this information that has already gotten some attention is the statistics on gender. Obviously, The Complete New Yorker permits comparison across eras, so that’s something I’d like to look into soon. —Martin Schneider