Lord save me, I'm choosing an AP story as Dean Story of the Day.

It was a really bland day--you don't see just how bad journalism in America is until you cull through the three dozen stories about Dean each day, and two days in a row they're all pretty lame--but this one stuck out not because of the writing or research or insights, just because the news in it may in time prove monumental to the 2004 campaign.

When you run for president, the current deal is the feds match the first $250 you get from each donor, as long as you meet certain criteria of raising certain amounts, and as long as you agree to spending caps in each state. (Which you then try to weasel around, like spending your MA money on Boston TV commercials before the NH primary. (You get a much bigger allotment for a bigger state like MA, and it matters a lot less, but beams into those crucial NH homes.) The total spending limit is $45 million for the whole primary season (I believe through the conventions).

Bush was the first person ever to opt out in 2000, forgoing millions in free money to milk his cronies for much more. He did, of course, used it to crush John McCain, with plenty more to use all spring and summer against Gore. This time he's shooting for $200 million, nearly five times what Dean and the Dems could spend.

Dean had promised to participate in the system earlier this year, but he's been raising so much money that he may be changing his mind. Friday, AP reported that he "backed away from his pledge to adhere to spending limits, saying some advisers want to explore opting out of the Watergate-era public financing system because of his sudden fund-raising success."

Dean raised $7.6 million in the second quarter, and reports coming out of his campaign indicate that Q3 will blow that number away. Money-raising tends to accelerate as we approach and especially enter primary season, so if his campaign continues building and he does shoot hurtle toward the nomination, he could easily surpass the $45 million.

Those are big ifs, of course. The issue right now, I think is not so much the primaries, but the fall. If Dean finds himself in a fight to the death in the primaries, he might have to accept the matching funds to spend every dollar he can get his hands on in the short run. But if he pulls away from the pack and thinks he can win the primaries, he'll start thinking about all that dead time between March and September, when Bush will be pulverizing him on the airwaves, and decide he has to forego the fed money to gamble for more the hard way.

All of which indicates one thing about the current system: the caps are definitely too low. What an asinine choice to impose on candidates. It was well-intentioned and worked for awhile, but it needs some first aid.

And one more thing: Dean was not quite forthcoming about the change:

In an interview Thursday, the former Vermont governor said he did not recall promising to accept public financing and the limits that go with it.  . . . "I was asked very early on and I said I intend to take the match," Dean said. "I think what I said is that we weren't looking into that as an option."

However, in a March 7 interview with The Associated Press, Dean committed to accept the taxpayer money. The promise was echoed by a campaign spokesperson.

"We've always been committed to this. Campaign finance reform is just something I believe in," he said in March. Dean also said his position was not based on any political considerations, such as the size of the field or how much money he can raise.

On Friday, however, Dean cited Bush's plans to raise $200 million -- five times the spending limit -- as a reason for keeping his options open.

That's a little disturbing to read. We like you for your honesty Howard. Don't start making us cringe.

Maybe he just forgot. "Forgot"? He has had a lot on his mind.

Way back in the distant past of early July, when I was just getting this blog off the ground, I wrote my first long (1,600-word) essay on gay marriage, and, surprise, Chip and Reichen. I called it "Not Yet! We just met Chip & Reichen" because I think that's the heart of the issue: People won't accept gay marriages in real life until they're used to living with it on TV.

Chip & Reichen were the first husband and husband millions of Americans ever met. And we only met them two months ago. And most of the country has still not met them, because they've been watching Friends or had their TVs off. It's going to take a whole lot more Chip & Reichens before America is ready to swallow the reality already going on around them. What are you waiting for Hollywood? Hopefully the popularity of our gay heroes will speed the growth of those gooey backbones of yours.

I'm happy to report they are popular. And their steady rise in acceptance presents a nice little illustration of  how an endearing gay married couple can win America over gradually.

Back in that July 3rd post, I commented on the popularity tracking on CBS' Amazing Race site: "In spite of their looks, which count for a great deal in these polls--particularly when paired with an agreeable personality, and these guys couldn't be more charming--our little homo couple came in 8th of 12 teams after the first episode. Five weeks later, they've worked their way all the way up to second."

Barely second. It was actually week 5 on the chart, and it shows five teams bunched in the lower 60s, with Chip & Reichen just barely ahead of the pack. Much better than behind the pack, and they had leapt well past two other teams, but they still had a ways to go. Since then they have risen from a 65% rating to 83%, still in second, but way ahead of most of the pack, and first among the teams remaining.

(The chart seems to indicate two other teams ahead of them, but it stops graphing everyone the week after they are eliminated--and many teams get a big sympathy boost that week. Run your cursor over each team and it will give you a numerical readout of their current score.)

Gradually, presumably, viewers got over the jarring "married" tag CBS so aggressively flaunted, and eventually just started admiring Chip & Reichen as people. Sixty years of television, one pair of husbands, gradually winning America over. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to meet a few dozen more.

Newsweek just posted a story by that title 15 minutes ago. They normally don't tip their next issue till late Saturday at the earliest, with web postings Sunday. But they've got it up now as a "web exclusive."

There's a lot of nothing through the first part of the interview (Q/A format), then this:

What would you consider the top problem at home?
       Jobs. It’s a near-term problem. People are still losing jobs, and the recovery, thus far, has been essentially jobless. And all indications are that it will remain that way. The official unemployment rate is 6.2 percent, but if you look at the labor-force participation you can imagine that the actual rate of people unemployed—including those who have simply given up—is substantially higher than that.

Interesting to see him focusing on the domestic side when he's known for foreign policy. That's bright for a couple reasons.

And he's coming out against defense spending. That's a twist:

. . . In terms of the economy itself, the fundamental economic problem has been a lack of aggregate demand. The spark you have seen over the last quarter has been in large part because of increased defense spending. I think there are far more productive ways to use that additional money.
       
       Like what?
       Instead of spending money on the development of Iraqi infrastructure, I would rather see it go into U.S. infrastructure. Helping Iraqi schoolchildren get back into the classroom is a good thing to do, but I would like to see American children achieve more in the classroom.

I didn't expect this either:

How would you improve education here?
       It’s partly a matter of resources and accountability, but it is also matter of good professional teaching skills and proficiency. If you look at how the U.S. Army improved its noncommissioned officer corps after Vietnam, we did it through lots of investment, through leadership development—and that’s what teachers are. ... There are efforts in some school districts to put more resources into professional development like teacher coaches and other programs. We know these principles work, we saw them work with the U.S. Army. I also think there are problems with achievement testing for students. It’s useful but it’s not necessarily definitive.

So you don’t support the use of achievement tests for graduation or class advancement?
       I think it leads to teaching the test and puts enormous restrictions on leadership in classrooms. What you want teachers to be doing is stretching themselves so that every student can live up to his or her full potential year by year, grade by grade. You can’t have a committee legislate that by creating standardized tests. I don’t have any issue with having student performance as part of a system. But we would have to go beyond that too.

And good answer to the charge that he doesn't have political experience. I've always thought that one was silly, and he demonstrates he can put it to rest:

It would depend on how you define political experience. My political experience is in dealing with governments. I dealt with 19 governments in NATO and 20-odd governments that were part of NATO’s Partnership for Peace. I worked with ambassadors and ministers of foreign affairs and ministers of defense and, in some cases, heads of state, in Latin America and Europe and parts of Africa. I dealt extensively with the U.S. Congress, as well as, in some cases, local authorities here and in Europe.

My apologies if you have had trouble accessing this site the past few days. The RadioUserland people who run it for Salon claim it's because one of the Salon blogs, The Julie/Julia Project, was featured in the New York Times this week, getting so much traffic she doubled the normal Salon-blogs usage. That should peter out soon, or they'll figure out the real problem if that's just a smokescreen.

In the meantime, I'm going to drop the number of days appearing on my home page to four (it may take awhile for it to take effect). If you're interested in General Wesley Clark's run, I had a lot on him on Monday, so click there on the calendar, or his name under categories.

And problems have been pretty intermittent: when a page fails to come up for me, it usually works if I try it again a minute later. Please email me or post in the comments any difficulty you have been having. It will help a great deal in solving it. Eventually, I may have to switch providers.

That's my ten-minute assessment. Just watched last night's Queer Eye for the third time. I don't do that. Twice is rare. Why watch something that has already had its affect on you, when you can experience something new?

John is why. And the fab five, and the editing. The editing on this show is amazing. But John really trumps everything. (He's the jack-of-all-trades with the goatee that proposes in the Moroccan tent thingie.) He's more adorable than Jon on Chip & Reichen: just as expressive, but he hits a lot more notes. He ran the whole emotional gamut in a single hour of my viewing.

Proof, once again, that it takes a lot of elements working in synch to pull off the rare great reality show, but casting is the key.

Those goats. Perhaps some day they will say something interesting. (If you don't know I'm talking about The Chip & Reichen show, you probably have no interest in reading this. Either stop reading or start watching fast. If you never heard of the goats, you're missing out on one of the few fine reality shows on TV. Climax next Thursday. )

The goats have been the blandest group since the start. Halfway through the season, a friend pointed out how rarely they were used for voiceovers or (what do you call those post-leg interview inserts?)--presumably because they had so little to say. They were always eyerollers when they did. Very reminiscent of those axiomatic pregame/postgame football interviews: "We need to hold them defense, and score a lot of touchdowns." Oh. Good strategy! Hard to believe they're will to let those plans slip like that on national television.

Now the goats are down to the finals and the producers are forced to show us the dearth of material they have been working with. Actual goat quotes, from the interviews, where they had time to think about it, and presumably we're hearing the highlights:

"Our goal for this leg was to increase our lead. . . Well the presure's constantly on. We've got to get to the finish line first in the last leg. . . We've come into the homestretch. We're confident in that we think we're going to win the race."

Captivating!

But as Meatloaf taught us, two out of three (teams) ain't bad. Every week that passes, I fall deeper into my swoon for Kelly and Jon. Jon is fucking adorable. More on them later today.

And if you're looking for more sites on Chip & Reichen or The Amazing Race, lots of great links here.

If your power went out last night, very sorry to hear that. You missed both The Race and Queer Eye, and you probably have a few bigger problems on your hands right now.

I can't do anything about the bigger problems, but I can let you know CBS is reshowing The Race Saturday (Aug 16), at 9p.m. ET/PT (central and especially mountain are now expected to figure that our for ourselves).

And don't forget, this is the night the Fab Five makes over Leno.

I don't often push petitions, but these two are crucial.

1. A month ago HRC (the Human Rights Campagin) launched its Million for Marriage drive. They are trying to garner a million signatures backing gay marriage. Click to add your name and/or find out more information. They announced today that 131,396 people had signed the petition for civil marriage equality in the first month. We can do better than that. They're also urging you to pass the message on, and to write letters to the editor of your local paper. Think about it.

2. On July 21, SLDN--Servicemember's Legal Defense Network, the main group supporting gay soldiers/sailors/airmen, and advocating the end to Don't Ask, Don't Tell--launched its "Lift The Ban" campaign. Please add your name and check out their organization at LiftTheBan.org.