LIFE IN THE BUBBLE:

The Blind Side (Rich Karlgaard, 03.01.10, Forbes)

In football or basketball, if two teams of equal talent are separated by only one factor and

--Team A watches Team B's practices and reads its playbook

--Team B watches only itself and reads only its own playbook,

you would reasonably conclude that Team A has a huge advantage.

Something like this exists in American politics today. Going into January's U.S. Senate vote in Massachusetts, Scott Brown's campaign benefited from a phenomenon that's gotten little attention. I'm not talking about Brown's two rather obvious advantages: the rising anger over deficits and unemployment under an all-Democratic federal government that set up conditions for a revolt; and an unusually weak opponent in Martha Coakley. Rather, I'm talking about something akin to my sports analogy. Conservatives, in general, know quite a bit about liberals--their dreams, thinking, habits, tactics, culture, etc. But liberals (blue state and big city ones especially--or what Forbes.com columnist Joel Kotkin calls the "liberal gentry") appear to know little about conservatives.[...]

Here is President Obama's dilemma in a nutshell: He is the most insular President we've ever had. It is impossible to imagine Barack Obama as the liberals' equivalent of Ronald Reagan. Remember that Reagan himself was a Hollywood liberal and union head until the 1950s. Reagan knew how the other side lived and thought. He even liked many liberals. Obama has had no such experience. He has had almost no personal relationships or consequential political dealings with conservatives during his entire life. Exclude donors and he counts few entrepreneurs and businesspeople among his friends. That's a blind side.

That's one of the huge advantages that governors bring to the presidential table, they've dealt with the other party before.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 12, 2010 7:02 AM