Guess What? (He's Back For 2009!)

William Safire is back with his prognostication quiz for 2009; use this link to review his 2008 quiz. As this blogger wrote within the 2008 quiz post at the end of 2007: "Pop quizzes, hated by students and loved by teachers (The power-trip was intoxicating amid a chorus of groans.), can appear anywhere. This blog is no sanctuary. If this is a (fair & balanced) current events search and destroy mission, so be it." Actually, if this is a (fair & balanced) future events search-and-destroy mission, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
The Office Pool, 2009
By William Safire

When Dolph Camilli, Brooklyn Dodger star slugger of the 1940s, stepped up to the plate after whiffing ignominiously in his two previous times at bat, we fans in the Ebbets Field bleachers would nod sagely and murmur, “He’s due.”

Last year, in the 34th annual Office Pool in this space, I predicted that the Dow Jones industrial average would break 15,000 in 2008. (Readers whose pick was “recession has brokers selling apples for five euros on Wall Street” won that round.) But this year — I’m due. For each item, choose one, all or none. Only those daring to play now can claim hooting rights later.

1. In Demo-dominated D.C., post-postpartisan tension will pit:
(a) lame-duck Fed chairman Ben Bernanke against Fed chairman-in-waiting Larry Summers and Fed chairman-of-Christmas-past Paul Volcker (a k a “The G.D.P. Deflator”) over an “imperial Fed”
(b) Hillary Clinton at State and trade rep Ron Kirk against Labor’s Hilda Solis over protectionism
(c) Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel against United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, a Zbigniew Brzezinski acolyte, over Mideast policy

2. Springtime for G.M. will lead to:
(a) a slippery-slope series of industrial bailouts exceeding $100 billion
(b) a “pre-pack bankruptcy” auto rescue sweetened by federal pension protection and guarantee of new-car warranties
(c) a multinational merger with troubled Toyota

3. Toughest foreign affairs challenge will come if:
(a) Afghanistan becomes “Obama’s War” or “Obama’s Retreat”
(b) Iraq backslides into chaos after too-early U.S. withdrawal
(c) Depressed Russia moves on Ukraine
(d) India-Pakistan fighting breaks out

4. Oil selling below $50 a barrel will:
(a) threaten President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s June election in Iran
(b) reduce Arab support of Hamas and, in Israel’s February election, help Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud party reach the Tzipping point
(c) be the equivalent of a huge U.S. tax-cut stimulus

5. Best-picture Oscar goes to:
(a) “Doubt”
(b) “Slumdog Millionaire”
(c) “Revolutionary Road”
(d) “Gran Torino”
(e) “Frost/Nixon”

6. The non-fiction sleeper will be:
(a) Power Rules, a Machiavellian view of foreign policy by former diplomat and Times editor Les Gelb
(b)Deep Brain Stimulation, by neuroscience writer Jamie Talan
(c) Bold Endeavors, by financier and infrastructuralist Felix Rohatyn
(d) Losing the News, by Alex Jones
(e) Ponzi Shmonzi: The Bernie Madoff Story, crash-published by a dozen houses
(f) Fiction: Shadow and Light, in 1920s Berlin, by Jonathan Rabb

7. The don’t-ask deficit at year’s end will be:
(a) under $1 trillion, thanks to the new administration’s cutting of waste, fraud and abuse, as well as tax-soaking of the remaining rich
(b) $2 trillion, adding to the inherited Bush bailouts a raising-Keynes handout to shovel-ready contractors
(c) $1,393,665,042,198 and no cents. (Why so specific? A billion is a thousand million, and a trillion is a thousand billion. That’s 10 to the 12th power, or 1 followed by 12 zeroes)

8. In Congress:
(a) House Republicans Eric Cantor and Mike Pence will energize the G.O.P.
(b) Senate Republicans Lindsey Graham and Lamar Alexander will be the fulcrum of a bipartisan “Gang of 20”
(c) among Senate Democrats, Judiciary chairman Pat Leahy’s influence will rise because Supreme Court nominations will take center stage, while Harry Reid’s clout dissipates because of home-state weakness

9. Post-honeymoon journalists and bloody-minded bloggers will dig into:
(a) the jailhouse singing by Chicago’s felonious fixer, Tony (“Who You Callin’ ‘Boneheaded’?”) Rezko, to Dewey-eyed prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to reduce his six-year sentence
(b) suspicion by conspiracy theorists about the unremarked lobbying that led to the expensive renaming, after 72 years, of the Triborough Bridge to the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge just in time for Caroline Kennedy’s campaign for anointment to an open Senate seat
(c) the retaliatory scheme to rename the Brooklyn Bridge the Clintons Bridge

10. The Supreme Court will decide:
(a) in nipple exposure or “fleeting expletives” on live TV, that the F.C.C. exceeded its authority in fining Fox for indecency
(b) that the Federal Election Commission was wrong to censure a moviemaker whose “biopic” was hostile to Hillary Clinton during her campaign
(c) that the appearance of impropriety in financial dealings of a West Virginia judge disqualified him from sitting in a coal-company dispute
(d) that Attorney General John Ashcroft and F.B.I. director Robert Mueller had a “qualified immunity” from being sued for racial profiling in imprisoning suspected terrorists
(e) that in al-Marri v. Pucciarelli, a legal U.S. resident cannot be held indefinitely at Guantánamo

11. Obama philosophy will be regarded as:
(a) proudly liberal on environment and regulation
(b) determinedly centrist on health care, immigration and protectionism
(c) unexpectedly right of center on national security
(d) all over the lot

12. Year-end presidential approval rating will be:
(a) eroding as recovery stalls
(b) soaring after economic turnaround propels Dow above 12,000
(c) sinking but 30 points higher than that of Congress and the news media

My picks: 1 (all); 2 (b); 3 (a); 4 (all); 5 (b) (an uplifting film has an edge in hard times); 6 (d); 7 (b); 8 (c); 9 (b) (diehards will still say, “Take the Triborough to Idlewild”); 10 (all) (I aced the Supremes’ decisions in last year’s pool); 11 (d) 12 (b).

[William Safire, a former Times Op-Ed columnist (1973-2005), is the chairman of the Dana Foundation.

The Dana Foundation is a private philanthropy with principal interests in brain science, immunology, and arts education. Charles A. Dana, a New York State legislator, industrialist and philanthropist, was president of the Dana Foundation from 1950 to 1966 and actively shaped its programs and principles until his death in 1975.

Safire left public relations to join Richard Nixon's campaign in the 1960 White House race, and rejoined Nixon's staff in the 1968 campaign. After Nixon's 1968 victory Safire served as a speechwriter for Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew; he is well known for having created Agnew's famous term, "nattering nabobs of negativism."

Safire joined the New York Times as a political columnist in 1973. In 1978, he won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary on Bert Lance's alleged budgetary irregularities. However, subsequent investigations by Congress could find no wrongdoing.

Since 1995 Safire has served as a member of the Pulitzer Board. After ending his op-ed column in 2005, Safire became the full-time chief executive of the Dana Foundation where he has been chairman since 2000.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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