Alan Young, who played...

...Wilbur Post, an architect who owned a talking horse in the 1960s sitcom Mister Ed, died at age 96.

According to his obit in the Times, Mr. Young:

...started the rumor that the crew got Ed to “talk” by coating his mouth with peanut butter. Actually, the crew would place a piece of nylon in Ed’s mouth; the horse would then try to remove it by moving his lips, giving the illusion that he was talking...

That's funny; when I was a kid my parents said they did it with "trick photography." (Everything they couldn't explain was done with "trick photography.")

"Oh, Carol, I know" was...

...the line that lyricist Tony Asher originally wrote that Brian Wilson misheard as "Caroline, No," which became the title of this beautiful ballad from the 1966 Beach Boys album Pet Sounds. The song, a collaboration between Asher and Wilson, was about two women, both coincidentally named Carol, for whom the pair still carried a torch.

The song begins with the melancholy lyrics:

Where did your long hair go
Where is the girl I used to know

Asher's contribution was:

...inspired by his former girlfriend, who had moved to New York and cut her hair: "I had recently broken up with my high school sweetheart who was a dancer and had moved to New York to make the big time on Broadway. When I went east to visit her a scant year after the move, she had changed radically. Yes, she had cut her hair. But she was a far more worldly person, not all for the worse. Anyway, her name was Carol."

For Wilson, the song was about a:

...teenage crush on a cheerleader named Carol Mountain. He had been obsessed with the girl as a student, rhapsodizing about her beautiful complexion and long dark hair. By 1966, Wilson had discovered that Mountain was married and still living in their hometown of Hawthorne, not far from his Hollywood home. Though also married, Wilson began to call his unrequited high-school love, who had no inkling of his true feelings until decades later. "He didn't sound drugged or anything, but it was very strange," Mountain told author Peter Ames Carlin. "He'd call at 3 a.m. and want to talk about music. ... But it was nothing inappropriate. It was just a strange thing he was going through, calling and connecting."

Though they didn't meet in person, Wilson grew depressed that the torch he carried for Mountain had begun to dim. "If I saw her today, I'd probably think, 'God, she's lost something,' because growing up does that to people," he explained decades later.

P. S. Those are actually Wilson's dogs, Banana and Louie, barking at the end of the song.

When I first heard...

...that Jonathan Chait had written a piece comparing Hillary Clinton to Harry Truman I thought Daniel Larison had it right with this tweet:

Presiding over a costly foreign war and then leaving office with extremely low approval ratings? Sounds right

But then I read it and particularly liked the last three paragraphs (my emphasis):

There is a model here for Clinton, and not just that a presidency lacking in ecstasy can still deliver the longer-term satisfaction of effective governance. Though the country is not in a 1940s-style crisis, its politics is strained. A passion for conflict and ideological purity defines the Sanders movement on the left; the right is enveloped in reactionary madness. (During Truman’s presidency, that madness took the form of the surreal ascent of pathological liar and demagogue Joseph McCarthy.) Clinton, by rejecting both impulses, has reminded us that she has always been a creature of the middle. An Über-Establishment president leading in anti-Establishment times may, over the long run, come to be seen as commanding the American center — even, perhaps, something like an American consensus.

Truman was a figure of crushing ordinariness, a quality that, over time, came to assume something close to greatness. Clinton gives off a similar sensibility (despite her extraordinary life experience). If you withdraw the presumption of calculation that is attached to her every action, one can see her character aging well through history: a woman who broke into male-dominated fields; a policymaker who is one of the few nerds who are still not cool. It is impossible to predict how Clinton will handle foreign policy, but it is not fanciful to hope that her experience (unusually deep for a president) will enable her to imaginatively face the confounding challenge of radical Islam.

And even if Republicans stymie her domestic initiatives, she might put her imprint on new policies that inspire successors. Clinton has proposed a modernization of the welfare state to include early education and child care. Though Truman’s proposal for universal health insurance failed, the power of his vision remained, and over time its association with Truman added to its grandiosity. And when Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, that evening, he and his aides celebrated its passage on the Truman Balcony.

As I mentioned in a previous post, more people have voted for Mrs. Clinton in this year's primaries -- 13,192,713 -- than any other candidate. It's easy to miss that in a year when two other candidates have gotten so much attention.

(Donald Trump, the modern-day "pathological liar and demagogue Joseph McCarthy," garnered 11,266,422, while the quixotic Bernie Sanders, the modern-day left-winger Henry Wallace, has received 10,158,889.)

Mario Cuomo once famously said, "You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose." Mrs. Clinton would probably not only govern in prose, but she campaigns in prose. And that's her biggest problem.

But I still think, just as in this year's primaries, Hillary will end up with the most votes come November. (The true "Silent Majority" in America will quietly, if not passionately, support her.) I expect she'll both preserve and expand on President Obama's legacy while governing from the center. Mrs. Clinton may not be flashy, like the Donald, or inspirational, like Bernie (or Obama), but I think she's both highly intelligent and highly capable -- not at all "a figure of crushing ordinariness" like Truman -- and will turn out to be a much better president than anyone expects.

And I'll also bet she serves two terms.

"God Only Knows," from...

...the 1966 Beach Boys album Pet Sounds, was not only written in less than an hour, but was also said to be Paul McCartney's all-time favorite song.

Really? "God Only Knows" isn't even my favorite Beach Boys tune, and I'm a big fan.

But the song has gotten all sorts of "ink" on the fiftieth anniversary of the famous album's release. From Rolling Stone:

According to a 2015 Guardian interview, Wilson claims that he and Tony Asher composed the song in just 45 minutes. "We didn't spend a lot of time writing it," confirms Asher. "It came pretty quickly. And Brian spent a lot of time working on what ended up being the instrumental parts of that song. But the part that has lyrics really was one of those things that just kinda came out as a whole."

Author Jim Fusilli theorized that the song's title was born out of a love letter Wilson wrote to his wife Marilyn in 1964, signing off with "Yours until God wants us apart." Whatever the true genesis, this reference to God created a dilemma for the two collaborators. "We had lengthy conversations during the writing of 'God Only Knows,'" remembers Asher. "Because unless you were Kate Smith and you were singing 'God Bless America,' no one thought you could say 'God' in a song. No one had done it, and Brian didn't want to be the first person to try it. He said, 'We'll just never get any airplay.'" Though a handful of Southern radio stations banned the song for blasphemy, it was warmly received nearly everywhere else.

And from Wikipedia:

Brian originally intended to sing lead vocal on "God Only Knows" but after the instrumental portions of the song had been recorded, Brian thought [his younger brother] Carl could impart the message better than he could. Brian reflected in October 1966, "I gave the song to Carl because I was looking for a tenderness and a sweetness which I knew Carl had in himself as well as in his voice. He brought dignity to the song and the words, through him, became not a lyric, but words." At the time, it was rare for Carl to sing lead on a Beach Boys song.

The Name of the Day...

...belongs to Pope McCorkle, "a former Democratic consultant who teaches at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy."

Just when you (and I)...

...thought I was done with the whole Nature vs. Nurture debate, out comes a piece in The Atlantic, "There’s No Such Thing as Free Will: But we’re better off believing in it anyway."

While the author, Stephen Cave, argues that free will is probably a delusion, what will happen to all those institutions that are based on it? (my emphasis):

For centuries, philosophers and theologians have almost unanimously held that civilization as we know it depends on a widespread belief in free will—and that losing this belief could be calamitous. Our codes of ethics, for example, assume that we can freely choose between right and wrong. In the Christian tradition, this is known as “moral liberty”—the capacity to discern and pursue the good, instead of merely being compelled by appetites and desires. The great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant reaffirmed this link between freedom and goodness. If we are not free to choose, he argued, then it would make no sense to say we ought to choose the path of righteousness.
___

In 2002, two psychologists had a simple but brilliant idea: Instead of speculating about what might happen if people lost belief in their capacity to choose, they could run an experiment to find out. Kathleen Vohs, then at the University of Utah, and Jonathan Schooler, of the University of Pittsburgh, asked one group of participants to read a passage arguing that free will was an illusion, and another group to read a passage that was neutral on the topic. Then they subjected the members of each group to a variety of temptations and observed their behavior. Would differences in abstract philosophical beliefs influence people’s decisions?

Yes, indeed. When asked to take a math test, with cheating made easy, the group primed to see free will as illusory proved more likely to take an illicit peek at the answers. When given an opportunity to steal—to take more money than they were due from an envelope of $1 coins—those whose belief in free will had been undermined pilfered more. On a range of measures, Vohs told me, she and Schooler found that “people who are induced to believe less in free will are more likely to behave immorally.”

It seems that when people stop believing they are free agents, they stop seeing themselves as blameworthy for their actions. Consequently, they act less responsibly and give in to their baser instincts. Vohs emphasized that this result is not limited to the contrived conditions of a lab experiment. “You see the same effects with people who naturally believe more or less in free will,” she said.

In another study, for instance, Vohs and colleagues measured the extent to which a group of day laborers believed in free will, then examined their performance on the job by looking at their supervisor’s ratings. Those who believed more strongly that they were in control of their own actions showed up on time for work more frequently and were rated by supervisors as more capable. In fact, belief in free will turned out to be a better predictor of job performance than established measures such as self-professed work ethic.

Another pioneer of research into the psychology of free will, Roy Baumeister of Florida State University, has extended these findings. For example, he and colleagues found that students with a weaker belief in free will were less likely to volunteer their time to help a classmate than were those whose belief in free will was stronger. Likewise, those primed to hold a deterministic view by reading statements like “Science has demonstrated that free will is an illusion” were less likely to give money to a homeless person or lend someone a cellphone.
___

The list goes on: Believing that free will is an illusion has been shown to make people less creative, more likely to conform, less willing to learn from their mistakes, and less grateful toward one another. In every regard, it seems, when we embrace determinism, we indulge our dark side.

Interesting stuff. But what if they have it backwards.

For example, while I had always thought that Catholics were more comfortable with order and discipline, what if those who were more comfortable with order and discipline were more inclined to convert or remain Catholic?

In other words, what if people who are "more likely to behave immorally" are less inclined to believe in free will?

Or those who "showed up on time for work more frequently and were rated by supervisors as more capable" were more inclined to believe "more strongly that they were in control of their own actions"?

Or what if those "less creative, more likely to conform, less willing to learn from their mistakes, and less grateful toward one another" also believe that free will is an illusion?

Maybe there really is no such thing as free will and people are acting according their genes or what has been imprinted on them by the environment.

The debate goes on.

Take a look at this map...

...of the 1964 presidential election. That was a blowout, wasn't it? As you can see, Lyndon Johnson carried Utah, Wyoming and Oklahoma, the three states that gave Mitt Romney his greatest margins in the last election.

Now take a look at this one, from the 1972 election just eight years later:

Another blowout! Except this time it was the Republican's turn. In almost a mirror image, Richard Nixon carried Hawaii, Vermont and New York, President Obama's best states in 2012.

Finally, take a good look at this map from the last election (click on it to enlarge):

Why? Because this year's will probably look a lot like it.

Paul Waldman has a good piece in The Week, "The 2016 race could be a lot closer than you think," in which he argues rather persuasively that, well, the 2016 race could be a lot closer than you think. (But Hillary will still win.) He reasons, and I agree (my emphasis):

The vast majority of Republicans will cast their ballots for Trump, even if he's not the person they wish he would be.

Take my oldest brother and my sister, for example. I can pretty much guarantee that they'll both hold their noses and vote for the Donald. (Even if they don't admit it.)

That means that in a closely divided country, Trump is going to have enough support to stay close with Clinton, even if he has alienated key voting groups and even if he isn't able to mobilize some huge new constituency of angry white people. It's why, in the general election horse race polls, he's only trailing Clinton by a few points.

That's the bad news for those who view a Trump presidency with horror. The good news is that a "close" election can actually be less close than it appears.

Consider 2012. Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by 51-47, around the same size difference as Clinton v. Trump shows now. But Obama won the Electoral College by 332-206. And if you look state by state, it's hard to imagine which of the states Obama won that Trump could move into the Republican column.
___

Nevertheless, given all the beating of breasts and tearing of hair on the Republican side, it might be easy to fall into the trap of thinking this will be a blowout election for Democrats, with Clinton winning by a spectacular margin. That won't happen, because partisan attachments have become so firm that they can survive even the candidacy of Donald Trump. Lots of Republicans have misgivings about him, but as the election goes on they'll find ways to convince themselves that he deserves their votes. That will put a floor on his support — probably somewhere around 45 percent — that it will be almost impossible for him to fall below.

Which means that for the next five and a half months until election day, the polls probably won't show Clinton pulling away — and indeed, you may even see a few showing Trump in the lead. But before you panic, remember that it was always going to be this way.

Here's my prediction five and a half months out: Hillary defeats Trump by a slightly larger margin than Obama beat Romney, say 53 to 47 percent. I'll also say the map looks pretty close to the one from 2012, with the possible exception of North Carolina in the blue column. The Democrats will take back the Senate by about a 52-48 margin and gain 15 or so seats in the House, falling well short of a majority.

It will still be gridlock, but gridlock with a Democrat in the White House. Big difference. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, for example, will be 80 years old in July. That means a President Clinton could appoint two judges (including Antonin Scalia's replacement), tipping the Court into a 6-3 liberal/conservative split.