Brendan Nyhan

Month: October 2011

  • Perry’s “16th century” gaffe (with audio)

    I attended the post-debate fraternity event last night where Texas governor Rick Perry mistakenly placed the American Revolution in the 16th century: “Our Founding Fathers never meant for Washington, D.C. to be the fount of all wisdom. As a matter of fact they were very much afraid if that because they’d just had this experience

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  • Perry’s challenges in Dartmouth GOP debate

    Going into tonight’s GOP debate at Dartmouth College (where I am a faculty member), the challenge for Rick Perry, as TAP’s Jamelle Bouie notes, is to reassure nervous elites that he’s a capable national-level candidate while attracting support from anti-Romney conservatives who have swung toward Herman Cain: Romney is leading the field with 38 percent

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  • New column on Obama/Truman differences

    I have a new column at Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball on why Harry Truman’s 1948 campaign against the “Do-Nothing Congress” may be a misleading model for President Obama: [T]he dramatic narrative of Truman’s victory doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. As University at Buffalo, SUNY political scientist James Campbell pointed out in 2004 (gated), Truman’s comeback

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  • The unwritten rules of academia

    My friend and former UM RWJ colleague Fabio Rojas, a sociology professor at Indiana University, has a new ebook based on his popular series of Grad School Rulz posts on the Orgtheory blog. If you’re in a Ph.D. program or thinking about pursuing a career in academia, this is a necessary purchase (especially for only

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