Stephen Den Beste has discovered
Stephen Den Beste has discovered a perfect analogy that describes how the press has been handling its war coverage: point spreads. No, seriously, it really makes a lot of sense:
But the reporters are also engaging in the same kind of phony handicapping that goes on in coverage of the primaries. Yeah, the Americans are moving their columns and only facing minor harassment, and the Iraqis are getting their columns destroyed, but the point is that the Americans were supposed to do even better than that. Irrespective of the absolute situation, they didn't beat the point spread. They didn't do as well as they should have.Imagine a football game. And Texas is supposed to beat Baylor by 56 points. But for whatever reason, Texas doesn't beat the spread. Maybe they were up 35-0 at the half, and Mack Brown decided to give the starters a break. The second and third strings muster only another two touchdowns in the second half. Or, even if the first string stays in, maybe they hold back because they don't want to expose themselves to unnecessary injury. So they only score 49 points. You can come up with about a dozen or so reasons why Texas might not beat the spread, but still completely defeat the inferior Baylor football team. But if they don't win by at least 56 points, the win will still feel like a loss to some people.
The gist seems to be that the pre-game expectations are, to some degree, arbitrary and only relevant in terms of how the outcome is perceived. While I don't think Bush/Rumsfeld/&Co ever said this war would be a cakewalk, I think it's safe to say that they didn't adequately prepare the expectations battlefield before launching the war (and I'm guessing that there was a large part of them that hoped it would be a cakewalk, so I can understand why they didn't sufficiently talk down the expectations for this war). Anyway, these expectations are important. I'd rather see us play down the possibilities of easy victory, and then sock it to 'em, than the other way around.
Posted by Matt at March 30, 2003 9:18 PM
