In what is, apparently, his "33rd annual office pool," legendary NYT columnist William Safire (who now chairs the Dana Foundation) offers a set of multiple-choice questions regarding possible outcomes for the year-to-be. What do you think?Safire -- who, it seems, in 1969, while a Nixon speechwriter, wrote a short speech to be delivered in the event of the Apollo 11 astronauts being stranded on the moon and (a memo prepared by NASA for Nixon and Vice President Agnew that suggested statements in the event of Apollo "crew fatalities" also is part of the linked document) -- instructs us that we either must pick one, all, or none of the options for each question. His answers and mine follow the questionnaire (a word I'll never forget how to spell as it is similar in construction to "personnel," which I once misspelled to be eliminated from a regional spelling bee]).
1. The “O’Connorless Supreme Court” will decide
(a) without reversing Roe v. Wade to uphold laws restricting late-term abortion because they do not impose an “undue burden” on women
(b) that public schools in Seattle and Louisville, in their zeal to prevent re-segregation, have gone too far in using race in selection of students
(c) to reject Massachusetts’ case to force the Environmental Protection Agency to raise auto emissions standards, holding that “global warming” gives the state no standing to sue without new law
2. Dow Jones industrials will
(a) reflect 4 percent economic growth to rise in 2007 to close above 14,000
(b) fall out of bed to 10,000 in what the Republicans will claim is the Democratic recession
(c) soar to 15,000 before ending the year around 14,000
(d) change from a boring numerical index to lively prose opinions in the with-it Wall Street Journal
3. Bipartisan achievement of 110th Congress and Bush White House will be
(a) blue-ribbon Social Security panel providing cover to raise retirement age to 70 for those now under 50
(b) passage of Leahy-Pence shield law permitting whistleblowers to expose corruption to reporters without fear of being ratted out by runaway prosecutors
(c) immigration reform allowing earned citizenship of current illegals and installing 1,700-mile fence named after the nativist Millard Fillmore
(d) substantial minimum-wage increase with reduction but not elimination of “death tax”
4. Congress will override Bush veto of
(a) federal support of stem-cell research
(b) federal negotiation of drug prices
5. The word most often heard in 110th Congress will be
(a) sellout
(b) compromise
(c) subpoena
(d) civility
(e) payback
6. The Oscar for best picture in a year of great pictures will go to
(a) Martin Scorsese’s “Departed”
(b) Paul Greengrass’s “United 93”
(c) Clint Eastwood’s “Letters From Iwo Jima”
(d) Stephen Frears’s “Queen”
(e) Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’s “Little Miss Sunshine”
7. The level of American troops in Iraq at year’s end will be
(a) over 100,000, down from surged 160,000
(b) under 100,000, down from today’s unsurged 140,000
(c) under 80,000 with announced timetable for downsizing in 2008 to 40,000 in secure Iraqi Kurdistan
8. Iraq will be
(a) in full-scale civil war
(b) on the road to shaky democracy with insurgency weakening
(c) split three ways with Kirkuk as capital of Kurdistan
9. Iran at year’s end will be
(a) more intransigent than ever and on the way to matching North Korea’s nuclear weapon
(b) more reasonable after plunge in oil income, anti-terrorism boycott, labor-student unrest and global sanctions
(c) red-faced at double cross from Arab Iraqi Shiites
10. Publishing sleeper-seller will be
(a) “Sacred Games” by Vikram Chandra, a gangster novel like an Indian “Godfather”
(b) Jim Lehrer’s novel “The Phony Marine”
and in non-fiction
(c) “Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries and Deadly Games,” by a retired spook, Tennent Bagley, which refutes C.I.A. groupthink about the molehunter James Angleton being paranoid
(d) “Father’s Day,” by Buzz Bissinger, about his twin sons, one exceptional and the other damaged
11. Internal party struggle will be
(a) John Edwards’s labor-appealing protectionism versus Hillary Clinton’s championing of Nafta-style free trade
(b) John McCain as pro-life versus Rudy Giuliani as pro-choice
(c) cognitive dissonance of anti-bias liberals at bias toward a conservative Mormon candidate
12. Scientific news will be in
(a) neuro-circuitry
(b) deep brain stimulation in treating depression
(c) sequencing the genome of higher apes in studying evolution
(d) vaccine approaches to treatment of Alzheimer’s as well as eradication of malaria
(e) gene duplication to detect mental illness
(f) commercial hype about cranial calisthenics
13. Year-end polls of likely primary voters will have in the lead among Democrats
(a) Clinton
(b) Obama
(c) Edwards
(d) Gore
(e) Richardson-Biden-Dodd-Dean
and among Republicans
(a) McCain
(b) Romney
(c) Giuliani
(d) Gingrich-Rice-Brownback-Hagel
14. Time and chance will happeneth to all predictions if
(a) McCain scampily blows his stack
(b) Clinton freezes over
(c) Romney is brainwashed
(d) Obama loses his cool over press interest in “Rezkogate”
15. Key factor in swing-voter choice of next president will be
(a) experience
(b) freshness
(c) character
(d) name recognition
(e) seizure of health-care issue
(f) Internet organization
My uninformed guesses: 1 (a) 2 (a) 3 (c) 4 (none) 5 (b) 6 (a) 7 (a) 8 (b) 9 (none) 10 (d) 11 (a) 12 (b) 13 (a), (a) 14 (none) 15 (c)
