Blackburn: The World Series of campaigns

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Organized baseball folks just love to quote Jacques Barzun, a certified intellectual, who said, "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game."

He wrote that in 1954, when there were only 16 major-league teams, the World Series was the only postseason event, and we had not come to the time when nearly half of all Americans reflexively hate or fear a new president. But it is still true today, adjusted for differences.

On Tuesday, we end the longest presidential campaign to date. Barack Obama has been talking about when "we started 22 months ago" as if two years of repeating himself is something to be proud of. The World Series ended last week in the worst possible weather conditions because the baseball season also lasts too long for Philadelphia. (OK, OK, a blizzard would have been worse. But you can't physically start a game in a blizzard. You can, and they did, start a game last week in sleet that left it possible to play but made it impossible to play well.)

Why is the summer game played when the frost is on the pumpkin? Why does it take our candidates longer to get from New Hampshire to New Jersey than it takes other countries to nominate, campaign and elect?

The answer is money and entertainment. Big-league baseball, which never had enough competent pitchers for 16 teams when that's all there were, expanded into any city willing to soak the taxpayers to build a stadium and become "big-league." Then it needed playoffs to keep interest alive longer, but that extended the season and made Major League Baseball more like a youth sports league where everyone gets a trophy.

Two more words: television contracts. With the premier games deep in football season, baseball has to play at times convenient to the network, not to the "realities of the game" as Barzun knew them. But the money is good, and the show must go on, so the reality changes.

Politicians are also part of a show. Trapped in a doctor's office, one could hear a cable network go from John McCain live to Joe Biden live. Neither said anything he hadn't said the day before and the day before that. Crowds at Obama's and Sarah Palin's rallies are sprinkled with people whose behavior labels them as fans, if not groupies. We have seen that before, though.

When the campaigns began, McCain was for staying and surging in Iraq, and Obama stood for "let's go home." That was to be the issue. All these months later, the surge has worked militarily but failed politically in Baghdad, and the Bush administration is talking about coming home. Obama wanted to fight in Pakistan, and McCain didn't want to talk about it in public. Now, the Bush administration fights in Pakistan and talks about it.

While babies were being born, learning to walk and starting to date, the campaigns droned on. Last week, both candidates spoke as if it were still two years ago and the economy still manageable. The reality of the economic game is that enormous changes are happening. When the senators plotted economic strategy, no one would have predicted that a Republican administration would "invest" in banks and an insurance company and talk about absorbing home mortgages and "investing" in failing auto companies. It would not have been credible.

It remains so incredible to a time-warped McCain that he throws the "socialism" spitball at his opponent even though the country's main commissar is a former Goldman Sachs chief whom President Bush picked to run the Treasury Department.

Reality is that the baseball championship was decided in a game that started on Tuesday and ended on Thursday. The 2008 campaign has been so similar to that saga that you need to study one to figure out the other.

Tom Blackburn is a former member of The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board.