Happy March Madness, Kossacks!
Yesterday, President Obama filled out his NCAA men's basketball bracket on ESPN. He picked three #1 seeds to make the Final Four (the other being #2 Memphis), with North Carolina emerging as the champion. You can view the bracket here.
The President makes his selections.
They're safe picks, and probably match those of many people involved in office pools around the country. UNC is a really good team and college basketball fans have every reason to think they could come out on top.
However, it's been interesting reading around the blogosphere about whether or not the President's bracket is at all politically motivated -- in much the same way that people speculated he backed the Steelers over the Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII solely because Pennsylvania voted for him, because McCain is from Arizona, and because of his ties to Steelers owner (and new ambassador to Ireland) Dan Rooney, and not because Obama happens to be a football fan who thought the Steelers were a better team.
Nate Silver weighs in on Obama's bracket:
There are 63 games in the men's tournament. In one case, two teams from the same state (Louisville and Morehead State, both from Kentucky) are set to square off. In the other 62 games, Obama has the team from the state which was closer in the November election advancing 35 times (56% of the total).
.......
Although Obama did not pick very many upsets, just about every time he did it tended to favor the team from the swingier state. With that said, there are a couple of upsets that Obama could have reasonably picked but didn't, such as #3-seeded Missouri over #2-seeded Memphis or #2-seeded Michigan State over top seed Louisville.
But yes: the President does appear to have been mixing his hoops with his politics. Will the nation ever recover?
Nate is, of course, being facetious. But it sure looks like the President is gearing up for his 2012 re-election campaign by picking teams from the swing states. Look for him to back the University of Missouri in 2010, Indiana University in 2011, and the University of Florida in 2012 (of course, since he doesn't want to anger Florida State fans, he'll pick them for the college football national championship in the same year).
Another thoroughly enjoyable read was this article from Chris Good in The Atlantic. Here's a money passage:
For starters, Obama is conservative. Maybe not slash spending and overturn Roe v. Wade conservative, but cautious and risk averse. His UNC pick is shared by many, and his Final Four are Louisville, Pittsburgh, UNC, and Memphis--all 1 seeds aside from Memphis, whom many have predicted to beat Connecticut. He's picked a total of three upsets in the first round (not counting his two predictions for 9 seeds to beat 8 seeds), his most notable being a win for VCU (11) over UCLA (6) in the East region and another for Temple (11) over Arizona State (6) in the South. Aside from a Maryland (10) victory over Cal (7) in the West--a pick many are making--that's it. The only thing risky about these picks is that they may cost Obama some support in California in 2012--and he's probably not worried about that.
It's no wonder the president siding with the received wisdom, playing it relatively safe: after all, we're in a crisis, and this is no time to take chances. If Obama were to pick, say, 13-seeded Cleveland State to beat 4-seeded Wake Forest, and underdog Akron to make the Elite Eight (saying, perhaps, "I think the Mid America Conference is due to make a splash), the stock market might dip 200 points tomorrow.
And no one wants that.
That's right. The Prez doesn't f**k around. Stick to what works, don't be a maverick (MAN do I hate that phrase by now) and pick #12 seeds to go all the way. If some mid-Major Cinderella team comes in and crashes the party, then bully for them, but you won't be called some college basketball guru for selecting your teams that way -- you'd be called lucky. Of course, you'd be lucky if you got all four teams in the Final Four right anyway, but less so than if you made wildly unconventional picks.
Oh and guess what? There are some wingnut crazies who weigh in on this too! Whoda thunk it? I won't link to them, but you'll have to trust me on what they said. I looked it up. Here's what right-winger Debbie Schlussel had to say:
Well, I'm so glad we have a Commander-in-Chief who has his priorities straight. As the economy continues to sink ever lower, President Barack Hussein Obama is acting like a distracted kid in a candy store, instead of a President of a country in major distress. While Americans continue to lose their jobs en mass, stock and housing values continue to plummet, the mortgage crisis continues, and there are signs that gas will rise to $4 a gallon by year's end, Obama is on ESPN picking his final four NCAA basketball tournament semi-finalists and appearing on Jay Leno. Look at me, I'm the Prez. This is, like, waaaaay totally cool.
OMG! I am, like, totally ROFLERS right now, Debbie! The Prez filling out a bracket for 10 minutes is, like, TOTALLY distracting! GOSH! Just like those other "distractions" away from the economy that the "Democrat Party" is up to! And Debbie knows what she's talking about when it comes to distractions, since she's written all about the secret radical Muslim ties of our 44th President.
Not to be outdone, a nutjob named Allahpundit wrote the following over at Michelle Malkin's blog Hot Air, which was featured on its front page just yesterday:
Something new for your "What if Bush did it?" file. Texas Rainmaker tipped me to it last night but I ignored it, figuring some White House staffer just filled out a bracket for Obama and handed it off to ESPN. Tain’t so. Watch him go round by round by round. Is this what he was busy doing the last few weeks instead of checking up on AIG? Besides strategizing about Rush Limbaugh, I mean.
A new CNN poll finds 55 percent already complaining that The One’s taken on too much and needs to focus on the economy. This won’t help his numbers.
Yep, the "doing too much" theme creeped its way into this frantabulous piece of writing. Similar bizarre freeper ravings can be found over at Free Republic. No word on whether Allahpundit threw a hissy fit when George Bush was throwing out the first pitch at a Nationals game, or attending an Army-Navy football game (which I think takes a couple more hours than filling out a bracket....whatever), or celebrating John McCain's birthday while New Orleans was drowning.
Hell, even Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski complained that Obama should be focusing on the economy, and not his Final Four bracket. Guess Coach K was miffed that Obama didn't pick them.
Anyway, it's good to see that everybody is excited for the NCAA tournament. I'm personally hoping for a #16 seed to knock off a #1 in the first round, even if it causes my own brackets to go up in flames (come ON, Morehead State!). But if nothing else, hopefully I won't embarrass myself in the $5 office pool I have running with my friends from grad school. I just know that the person who'll end up winning it will have picked teams based on which uniform colors he or she liked.
Thanks for reading, and enjoy March Madness!
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Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo