Happy Birthday, Political Machine! Part 1

Actually, I'm a couple of days late. It was a year ago last Wednesday that The Political Machine went live. The way the political news cycle spins these days, I sometimes feel nostalgic talking about the past few weeks, let alone a whole year.

David Knowles wrote the inaugural post, about Chuck Norris, but it was his sophomore effort that I found amusing. It was called Hillary Hard to Beat. He was right.

When we first started, we were divided up into various "beats," mine being congress. My first effort was a post about SCHIP called "Does the President Hate Children?" The headline was a poke at those Fox News lower-third graphics that asked ridiculous questions, like "Democrats: Warming Satan's Heart?"

Eventually, the "beats" dissolved, as the election ate everything. A happy side-effect of this is that the world was spared any more bad puns about SCHIP and ENDA. You might say it put an ENDA to all of that bullSCHIP.

It has been a year of a lot of firsts. Here is part 1 of my typically disorganized, grabasstic look back on the most interesting year of my life, and arguably, the life of American politics.

Looking back over that first month of stories, I realized that it's October, time for silly Halloween stories. My own first contribution to the genre, Rudy Ghoul-iani or Hell-ary Clinton?, reflects a bygone era when Hills and Hizzoner were practically considered the presumptive nominees. I made the story dumb on purpose, to cushion the obvious intent of the poll; to give people an opportunity to mock Hillary Clinton. It was the first inkling I had of what she was up against.

My other Halloween post, about phobia-fighting nasal spray (I'm not kidding), contains one of my personally favorite lines: "Who knew our own personal boogiemen were, literally, boogiemen?"

November

David Knowles kicked things off by identifying, early on, a theme of the Clinton campaign whose effects are still being felt today. From Hillary's Hangover:

So, on the one hand, she'll proudly claim Karl Rove is "obsessed" with her, and taunt the GOP to bring everything they've got. On the other, those awful bullying men of the Democratic party should be ashamed of themselves. Yes, evidently there's also a vast left wing male conspiracy (and yes, I am familiar with the concept of the patriarchy).

Dennis Kucinich copped to spotting a UFO, Joe Biden faced the music from Eric Schultzke for his support of the Iraq invasion, GI Joe renounced his citizenship, Barack Obama did SNL, Ron Paul had a bang-up Guy Fawkes Day, and John McCain mounted a comeback on the strength of his immigration flip. He also got a big kick out of a supporter calling Hillary Clinton a "bitch."

Hillary Clinton became embroiled in Plantgate, got swift-kidded, and secured the coveted Fabio endorsement.

I scored my first big interview, with Brave New Films' Robert Greenwald, and took my first shot at original reporting. Interviewing the subjects of news stories was an eye-opening experience for me. When face-to-face with a real live person, it becomes a lot harder to pigeonhole.

December

David Knowles again played Nostradamus, highlighting candidates' discharges of ocular saline. The crying game would come to play a big part in the New Hampshire primary, or at least it would be granted the credit.

On the Republican side, the names Rudy, Huckabee, and Romney still meant something, and John McCain was kind of a longshot.

I finally figured out that if you write about the election, people will actually read your stories. I wrote a piece satirizing attacks on Hillary Clinton, and began my series analyzing candidates' platforms.
December also saw the birth of an unbeatable political Kiss of Death: The Tommy Christopher endorsement. I bestowed my first on Senator Chris Dodd.

As the year drew to a close, we all waited with anticipation for the Iowa caucuses, the starter's pistol in an amazing race. Then, things got really interesting.