David J. Williams

The Romans understood that politics is a particularly weird/brutal kind of sport (check out Tom Holland’s brilliant Rubicon for specific analogies vis-a-vis chariot racing), and they wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest by our presidential debates, where a single false move could cost a candidate the election. Neither candidate made such a move last night; indeed, Jim Lehrer’s decision to open things up at the start paradoxically seemed to make both Obama and McCain more careful in navigating their way forward. Which made for a somewhat boring first 15 minutes as the two men gingerly maneuvered around each other, neither wanting to start debating the specifics of a bailout bill that changes with every passing day . . .

But hey.  I just read John Scalzi’s latest post, and he’s got all sorts of advice for those who would comment on the debate, in particular the injunction to STAY AWAY FROM VIOLENT SPORTS ANALOGIES.  (Yawn.)  Though I do think he raises a good point in wondering why the “real people” scored the debate so differently from the pundits.  John thinks that’s because the voters are concerned with “steak not sizzle”; I gotta admit that’s news to me.  Because I didn’t hear a whole lot of substance last night.  What we got was the standard thing we get in every debate:  two candidates eager to allow the American people to continue in their delusion that fiscal questions can be addressed without hard decisions vis-a-vis military spending and entitlements.

No, I think the gap between the pundits (who rated the debate as even) and the independent voter/focus groups (most of whom scored it for Obama) has nothing to do with what was said and everything to do with what was seen.  Obama simply looked more presidential; he looked McCain in the eye, he didn’t cringe when the other guy was talking, and his posture was confident throughout.  McCain couldn’t even make eye contact in the initial handshake, and that says volumes to the voters.  Palin said she watched Tina Fey impersonate her with the sound down; anyone who did that to this debate knows exactly who won, and why.

McCain’s done nothing so far but (potentially) gum up the works of the bailout package, and now he’s going to be heading to Mississippi after all. His dashing back and forth (along with his fake campaign suspension) may look like a far cry from statemanship, but that doesn’t mean he’s not capable of winning the debate tonight and regaining the momentum his campaign was enjoying only a couple of weeks back.  Here’s what to look for when the two candidates get in the ring:

Soundbites beat speeches:  Obama is going to have to curtail his tendency to come across as pedantic, and that’s not going to be easy for him.  McCain is definitely more likely to say the line that wins (or loses) the debate, particularly because:

Debates tend to turn on (often unscripted) moments:  something that Reagan knew all about (“I’m paying for this mike”).  An off the cuff response (or what looks like it) can be all that people remember twenty minutes (or twenty years) later.

Watch the emotion: Obama has the edge on this one.  If he can get McCain angry, he’s won.

What the hell are they discussing?: No debate has ever been held under stranger circumstances.  Obstensibly this is a foreign policy debate, but how far will moderator Jim Lehrer tilt the entire thing toward the economy?  (And yet, Pakistan and the U.S. were #$# SHOOTING at each other yesterday. . . proof that the prez will indeed have to worry about multiple things.)  And to what extent will the debate reference McCain’s actions across the last few days?

Keep an eye on Capitol Hill:  It’s still entirely conceivable that McCain can show up tonight able to “claim” credit for a bailout deal.  And if it doesn’t happen that way, it won’t be because he didn’t do everything in his power to ensure it.

Bottom line: it’s highly likely McCain will attempt some kind of surprise maneuver/ambush.  His campaign has been full of them so far, and tonight won’t be an exception.  This is gonna be interesting.

First of all, the “suspension” is nothing of the kind. McCain’s surrogates will continue to stump for him, the 527 ads like this one will continue, and so will the massive undercurrent of email invective insinuating that Obama’s a Muslim, that he hates Christianity, etc., etc. Sure, I know McCain can claim he’s not directly linked to any of this: but that’s the point.  You can’t just turn a presidential campaign OFF.  Except as an exercise in political theater.

Second, McCain’s move will take the oft-heard “Obama’s playing politics with the issues” argument to reductio ad absurdum levels, since it literally will no longer be possible for Obama to discuss the issues (ANY issues) without getting accused by the GOP of playing politics.  Meanwhile McCain can grandstand all he wants.

Third, while the suspension is an act of total cynicism, it may actually work.  But don’t look to today’s polls/tea-leaves to see whether it is.  We’re entering uncharted waters now, and God only knows how all the intrigue on Capitol Hill across the next few days is going to look to confused centrist voters.  They may yet hail McCain as a statesman.

3bluedudes.com has a fascinating article on what’s arguably the worst electoral situation of all: each candidate gets 269 electoral votes apiece. In which case the election would move to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation would get one vote, meaning that New York and North Dakota would be on equal footing and the political wrangling would be absolutely off the charts. And since the Senate picks the VP, we could even conceivably see a president from one party and a VP from another.  Assuming the country didn’t disintegrate into civil war in the meantime.

What’s of particular interest to me as a D.C. resident is the ambiguous role of the nation’s capital in such a scenario. D.C. gets 3 electoral votes, but has a non-voting presence in the House.  (well, they get to vote in committees, as long as their “vote” isn’t the decisive one).  So would D.C. be allowed to play a part in a House election?  Turns out it’s up to the Supreme Court.  And their verdict’s easy to predict.

Pakistan has now ordered its troops to kill any U.S. soldiers crossing the Afghan border. The media barely gave that a yawn, and the campaigns haven’t even registered it, because they’ve been too busy talking about mooses and pigs. Nonetheless, the situation over there is going critical. Ostensibly our ally in the war on terror, Pakistan has been playing every end against the middle for a while now; their Northwest tribal areas are the central bastion of the Taliban, not to mention (in all likelihood) Bin Laden himself. But those areas are about as remote and ungoverned as any place on Earth is, and the current Pakistani government enjoys no popular support whatsoever for encroaching on them.

Enter the Americans.  Who raided the Northwest areas in force last week (which was what triggered the shoot to kill orders), and who now face a classic Catch-22.  They can either (a) not go into Pakistan, and thus never win in Afghanistan (or catch Bin Laden), or (b) go into Pakistan and get shot at and potentially start yet another war.  Finesse will be called for, all the more so given that Pakistani politics in the wake of the fall of Musharraf is rapidly becoming anyone’s game to win.  And American encroachments hold the potential to radicalize those politics very quickly.  An outright jihadist takeover is an entirely plausible scenario.

In short, it’s hard to overestimate just how big of a disaster this could become.  Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world.  And it has nuclear weapons.  Bin Laden must be doing handstands in his cave right now.

As the candidates enter the final stretch, the big elephant on the table (no pun intended) continues to be vote fraud. In many ways, 2004 was just as problematic an election as 2000: in particular, there’s ample evidence that Ohio was stolen, and that if this hadn’t happened, Kerry would be in the White House (Remember all those exit polls that showed Kerry winning?  Well, they may have been quite accurate.)

The public’s denial on this issue runs deep indeed: who wants to admit that democracy isn’t just in crisis, but that it’s already failing? Scientists at UC released the results of a study last week showing how easy it is to hack voting machines; in fact, Diebold (the most notorious of the manufacturers of those wonderful gizmos) admitted earlier this year that its machines do in fact contain a glitch . . . but that safeguards will be in place to prevent it from impacting the 08 election.  (It’s tough to write that with a straight face.)

All of which is very worrying indeed, particularly given that the GOP has already started a massive effort to start fucking with the vote by disenfranchising as many people as possible.  Sure, it may be the Rovian tactics and the smears that get all the headlines, but let’s face it:  there’s no better way to win elections than to rig them.  Keep it up for a few more elections, and there won’t BE any more elections.  And I’m starting to think that’s exactly the way a lot of people want it.

Lehman’s roadkill. Merrill Lynch has run for cover. And it looks like Washington Mutual is probably next, along with God knows who else. The best analogy I can think of to describe what’s happening involves a really big set of cookie jars, hundreds of hungry monkeys, and a complicated light system that only incrementally reveals who has their hand in which jar, and just how many cookies they’ve already consumed. The point being that we still don’t know how deep this goes, and if that isn’t an argument for a total reform of the entire joke that our financial system has become, I have no idea what is.

It will also be interesting to see if the disaster that the economy is becoming finally makes its way into the presidential campaign.  Both candidates have talked a lot about the economy, sure, but neither has even begun to level with the American people about just how bad this is getting.  The New Model McCain is unlikely to venture anywhere near THAT discussion, of course, but Obama is going to have to.  Explaining in precise terms how this is all part of the mess the GOP has created while avoiding pointing out to the average citizen how his/her own spendthrift habits is also part of the problem . . . that’s the fine line that Obama is going to have to walk.  As for McCain, he can only hope the attacks on Palin intensify while everybody forgets about all those pesky issues that actually matter.

Today I’m participating in a Query Letter Project, orchestrated by fellow scribe Joshua Palmatier. The (very cool) idea being, of course, to showcase the letter that cracked open the door for each of us. I’ve written previously about the limits of query letters (at least for me), but they’re an essential, unavoidable part of the game.  So herein follows the iteration of the query-letter I was starting to use when superagent Jenny Rappaport answered my prayers.  Would this letter have gotten me anywhere if she hadn’t?  You be the judge.

Dear XXXXX:

I recently completed a 110,000-word science fiction novel, The Mirrored Heavens, and thought you might be interested in representing it.

October 1, 2110:  terrorist strike-force Autumn Rain’s destruction of the Phoenix Skyhook leaves Earth’s superpowers on the brink of total war.  Swept up in the race to stop the Rain’s next attack are:

Claire Haskell, the data-thief who must work with the man who was her first love, even as she starts to suspect that her handlers are shaping her memories of that love to serve agendas of their own.

Strom Carson, the operative assigned to hunt down his onetime mentor, a legendary assassin believed to be in league with the Rain and last seen on the Moon, deep in the wastelands of the lunar South Pole mountains.

Lyle Spencer, the mercenary who escapes from the ultimate prison with the secret of the Rain—only to learn too late that some things have no price.

I co-wrote Vancouver, BC-based Relic Entertainment’s computer game Homeworld (1999), which won Best Original Storyline from Eurogamer, and Game of the Year from PC Gamer.  In addition, I was a contributing writer on Homeworld 2 (2003), and have written business publications for a Washington, DC-based firm.

XXXX, I appreciate your consideration of this query, and look forward to hearing from you.

FINIS

And here’s links to the other participants.  Definitely work checking out:

Paul Crilley
Chris Dolley
Diana Pharaoh Francis
Gregory Frost
Simon Haynes
Jacqueline Kessler
Glenda Larke
John Levitt
Joshua Palmatier
Janni Lee Simner
Maria V. Snyder
Jennifer Stevenson
Edward Willett

Today we keep the silence.

Well, okay . . . the bestseller list at Borderlands Bookstore in San Francisco. But still: the book was first (!) on the July trade paperback list, and then came in fourth for the month of August, tying with Warren Ellis’ CROOKED LITTLE VEIN! (A tie with Warren #$# Ellis! Can life get any stranger than this? Hopefully the answer’s yes, and I’ll *steamroller* him next time around.)

At any rate, here’s a link, but I’m posting the entire July list as well, as it’s pretty interesting. Very cool to see that Richard Morgan’s ALTERED CARBON just keeps on selling. And I’ve heard a lot of good things about WJW’s IMPLIED SPACES. Can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.

(And thanks to Alan and Jude and all at Borderlands for being such incredible advocates for what I’ve written.)

Top Sellers At Borderlands

Hardcover:
1. Toll the Hounds by Steven Erikson
2. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
3. Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik
4. Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross
5. Implied Spaces by Walter John Williams
6. Escapement by Jay Lake
7. Jhegaala by Steven Brust
8. The Man With the Iron Heart by Harry Turtledove
9. The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong
10. Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr

Mass Market:
1. The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy
2. The Devil You Know by Mike Carey
3. The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar
4. Ha’Penny by Jo Walton
5. Snake Agent by Liz Williams
6. Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan
7. Mainspring by Jay Lake
8. Shadows Return by Lynn Flewelling
9. Valiant: The Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell
10. Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder tie with
The Margarets by Sheri S. Tepper

Trade Paperback:
1. Mirrored Heavens by David J. Williams
2. Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan
3. Spook Country by William Gibson
4. Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
5. The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie tie with
The Word of God by Thomas Disch