Where My Mind has Wandered

Giuliani Banking on Snow in July

The idea that Rudy Giuliani would rise to victory with a wave of support from the large number of retired New Yorkers living in Florida always struck me as absurd. New Yorkers don't like Giuliani.

Another proof point for this assertion greeted us the morning of January 22 in the form of a brutal article in the New York Times by Michael Powell and Russ Buettner. Front page, above the fold, in the premier top-left corner of the national edition. The article eviscerated Giuliani, painting him as a vindictive man drunk with power. A man who valued loyalty above all else and would viscously attack anyone he felt crossed him, even if it meant violating the boundaries of civil conduct, and even the law itself.

"As mayor, he made the vengeful roundhouse an instrument of government, clipping anyone who crossed him."

After seven years Americans have grown weary of "my way or the highway, I'm the decider and law is subject to my interpretation" leadership. But I don't think this was even about national politics. This was local, this was personal.

Despite what the right-wing media machine might lead you to believe, the New York Times is more than a liberal paper, it is the American newspaper. It has the third highest print circulation and is the number one online newspaper in the United States. For the New York Times to level such a blow on Giuliani days before his Waterloo says something. It says, like most New Yorkers, they don't like him.

The ex-pat New Yorkers living in Florida read the New York Times. Just in case the steady glare of the sun dulled their memories of Giuliani over the years, the paper was going to remind them.

When the paper endorsed McCain for Republican Party primaries with an editorial on January 25 it described Giuliani in this manner:

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking.

Maureen Dowd wrote Giuliani's preemptive second political obituary for the paper a few days later on January 27.

It figured that he would snowbird his strategy, taking his New York subtext of blacks-want-to-mug-you-and-I-can-protect-you down to Florida and switching it to Arabs-want-to-kill-you-and-I-can-save-you.

And I wasn’t surprised that he continued to run on fear and divisiveness, zeroing in on Florida the way he used to target Staten Island, Bay Ridge, Queens and parts of Manhattan where the elderly lived. Hizzoner always focused on those who supported him and ignored those who didn’t.

We can only hope there is no act three, but if there is you can be sure that New York will have its say.

Next Bubble Reprise

Last September I pondered what the next bubble would be for the U.S. economy. More people have spoken to me about that post than any other I've made.

In the post I mentioned a friend who was planning on farming hay as a crop because she saw a shortage of hay as a growing trend. It wasn't something I could validate, but it sounded plausible. Last week I was speaking with a colleague about the post and I got a little validation. She lives in the St. Louis metro area and owns horses, and she has noticed that hay is becoming harder and harder to find. In fact, the local rumor mill has it that one of the primary local suppliers is hoarding hay (out of a desire to make profits or a concern over running out I did not ask).

That led to a search, and sure enough, hay shortage. There's this line from the Mississippi State University Office of Agricultural News:

Livestock producers saw it coming, but the hay shortage is forcing some tough decisions that may have long-term repercussions on the health, performance and profitability of their animals.

Hay shortages are not new, they come and go. And the current shortage seems to track back to a dry summer in 1996. Herd animals all across the country were slaughtered due to a lack of feed. Do a search for hay shortage and you will find more than a quarter million results.

Rainfall has a big impact on hay yields, but so does that amount of land dedicated to growing grasses. As long as the green gas bubble continues to build there is going to be less financial incentive to plant grass. Farmers also used corn as a feed-substitute during hay shortages, but with ethanol production driving up corn prices that is no longer an affordable alternative.

Our economy can defy simple answers. It doesn't mean you don't act, change is good and needed. But having everyone suddenly rush to one side of the boat gets us all wet. So ethanol crops are still a candidate for the next bubble, but I am keeping my eye out for others.

Search Volume as a Gauge of Popularity

In her profile of tennis star and celebrity Maria Sharapova for the New York Times, writer Karen Crouse cites Sharapova's volume of Yahoo! searches as proof of her popularity.

Last year, she was the second-most-popular sports entity among Yahoo searchers, behind Nascar and ahead of the Boston Red Sox, David Beckham and Serena Williams.

No doubt search volume isn't a bad indicator, but according to ComScore as of September 2007 Google has a 57 percent share of the search market, more than Yahoo!'s 23.7 percent. So why pull the statistic from Yahoo! vs. Google? Google doesn't make it easy to get that information, while Yahoo! provides a handy dashboard that allows you to follow search popularity like the stock market, even showing daily change and the biggest movers. It is just a glimpse of their data set, but it is smart marketing on the part of Yahoo!

Google, ever the pure developer, has some great stuff in this area as well but it is hidden in Google Labs. Try and find it from their home page and let me know how long it took you. You may be better of searching for it. One of my favorite tools, Google Trends, tells a different, and more detailed story. In 2007 David Beckham far outperformed Maria Sharapova in global search volume except in Pakistan and India, where Sharapova outperformed. She is particularly popular in Delhi. Google Trends also indicates where news coverage coincides with spikes in search volume. In January, June, and September search volume for Sharapova outperformed Beckham, which no surprise coincides with Wimbledon, the French Open, and the U.S. Open.

There are other online indicators of individual popularity. One is simply how much content on the Internet is dedicated to the person in question. A fun tool for exploring that is Google Fight. Enter two names and see them fight it out for dominance.

Google Fight shows us another view. More people may search for Maria Sharapova on Yahoo!, but she only generates 313,000 search results on Google. Serena Williams generates 3.3 million, and David Beckham 9.5 million.

It is a copy and paste world, and when people quote statistics it is important to understand the source. In this case it doesn't impact the story one bit. Sharapova is more popular on Yahoo!, but she isn't more searched for globally.

Giuliani ... No Surprise So Far

When I look at polling data I am drawn to a candidate's unfavorable score among their own party. For me it is a very telling statistic. And Rudy Giuliani, even at times when he has had high favorability ratings over the past year, has also had a pretty high unfavorable ratings among Republicans.  It is easy not to like him, and many people don't. (The pollingreport.com has great favorability data on Guiliani over time, although not much by party affiliation.)

When Giuliani ran for mayor of New York in 1993 he did so as a law and order candidate, playing on his experience as a U.S. District Attorney. New York responded well to his tough demeanor. A little snarl was a welcome thing at the time, and Mayor Dinkins had worn out his welcome. Giuliani also was a pretty moderate Republican, a political breed that still exists in small pockets on the coasts, so he was able to attract some independent voters. When he barely won the election by just more than 50,000 votes he became the first Republican mayor of New York in 28 years.

Perhaps American's are tired of W's angry squint, but the snarl just doesn't play in the current environment. And sadly, a moderate Republican, particularly from New York, isn't going to rally the party's ultra-conservative core.

Giuliani's re-election campaign in 1997 was successful but he faced a very weak challenge from Ruth Messinger. Giuliani won 59 percent of the vote, but voter turnout also hit a 12-year low. People weren't coming to the polls to support him, they just weren't inspired by the competition. We'll never know if he could have won a third mayoral race, term limits made sure of that. His 2000 Senate campaign violently imploded in April and May of 1999. Barring September 11th his political career was likely over.

After September 11th Giuliani became a national figure. The rest of the country viewed him very differently than the population of New York did. He wasn't popular on September 10, he was very unpopular. The nation created a different story for him, one that gave him a second career. He became popular in a symbolic, rather than tangible way. Now we are back to reality, the old Rudy Giuliani that New Yorkers know. They guy it was very easy not to like. From day one I've said "there is no way this guy gets elected President." But then again, I said that about the squinting dunce from Texas.