Comedian 1, Psychics 0

America Wants to Know threw out its money on psychics and Gypsy fortune tellers to foresee the 2008 election, when we could have just listened to the comedian in the next office.

Argus Hamilton predicted, on the first day Rudy Giuliani mentioned that he was thinking of running for president, that the former New York City mayor would never in a million years have a chance of becoming the Republican nominee.

We looked at the polls, which showed Giuliani leading all potential opponents by a wide margin, and just laughed.

Argus is very funny.

He was also very right.

Argus said there is a factor at work in American politics that all the pundits and experts miss, and it is this: there are a great many Americans of British descent and no one ever looks at them as an "ethnic" group that will vote, as a group, for one of their own.

But they do.

Every time.

They vote for Anglo-Saxon Methodists and Episcopalians.

Every time.

They wouldn't vote for an Italian Catholic even if he was the last man standing after an anthrax attack.

We just laughed at this and thought it was a hopelessly outdated and ridiculous analysis.

And then the votes came in.

In Iowa, in New Hampshire, in Nevada, in Michigan, in South Carolina and in Florida, Rudy Giuliani finished far back in the pack.

Pundits and experts blamed his strategy, his marriages, his police commissioner, his lack of aggressiveness, and the bad luck that terrorists had failed to attack the country in time to save his candidacy.

Yes, well, maybe.

Or maybe the comedian was right.

It was never going to happen in a million years no matter what Mr. Giuliani did or how he did it, because British-Americans were never going to vote for an Italian Catholic.

Hillary Clinton was interviewed on ABC's Nightline Thursday night, and Cynthia McFadden asked her some softball questions, like what keeps her up at night.

Senator Clinton said the president's State of the Union address kept her up at night, because she was thinking about what she would do to help people when she was president. She said she believes that to whom much is given, much is required.

"Good Methodist girl," Cynthia McFadden said, nodding.

"That's who I am," Senator Clinton responded.

It sounded like an unimportant off-hand comment.

Maybe it wasn't.


Copyright 2008

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