‘Big Mo’ has just switched uniforms.

—Dandy Don Meredith, football commentator

According to a staple item of conventional wisdom about the politics of presidential nominations, it has become essential for a candidate to perform well early in the primary and caucus season, weighing in with an early victory or, what is probably more important, an unexpectedly strong early showing. Toward that end, serious presidential aspirants now gear up their campaigns years in advance of the first primaries and caucuses, in the belief that in order to stand any chance of being nominated, they must establish from the very outset the viability of their candidacy. Since nomination contests are, in effect, winnowing processes (see, e.g., Matthews, 1978), presidential aspirants who fail to establish their credibility very early in the race may find themselves left at the post, their supporters having forsaken them for other, seemingly more electable candidates. On the other hand, those who do well early in the fray live to fight another day. Indeed, they are likely, according to a related bit of conventional wisdom, to hop aboard a victory bandwagon, with impressive early performances enhancing their support and this increased support in turn bolstering their subsequent performance.

Taken in tandem, the ideas that it is vital to do well early and that doing well becomes self-perpetuating form the keystones of momentum-based interpretations of the presidential nomination process.

I am the first passenger of LAN flight #145 from Miami to Santiago to go through immigration. My brother Andrés is waiting for me in his car just outside the terminal. Two carabineros berate him for illegal parking. I try to argue with them, but Andrés quietly tells me to shut up. “It will be all over by Wednesday,” he tells me, as he hands over his driver's license to the stern officers in green uniforms. They let him go with a warning, and we're off to the new highway that links the airport with Santiago's Barrio Alto. It is one of a number of public works inaugurated in the past few months in a frantic effort to bolster support for the government in the upcoming October 5 plebiscite.

At my brother's home I unpack, and we quickly sit down to look at the tapes of the franja publicitaria, the 15-minute TV programs for the “Yes” and “No” options aired since September 5. They have provided the opposition access to television for the first time in 15 years. Despite the absurd time slot allocated to it (10:45 to 11:15 p.m.), the franja has commanded huge audiences. Between 80 and 90% of all Chileans in urban areas have seen it; about a third watch it every day and another third occasionally. Andres believes the opposition is in good shape for the plebiscite, but he is worried about the negative impact of Volodia Toitelboim's statement.

The subdiscipline of political theory and political philosophy continues to suffer some misunderstanding within political science as a whole. Notwithstanding its renaissance in the last decade, political theory/philosophy is still too often characterized in terms that obscure its roles and functions within the discipline. Political theory/philosophy is often referred to as “normative theory” as a way of distinguishing its concerns with values from the “empirical theory” and research of political science proper. Where the concerns of political theory/philosophy are not just normative, political scientists often characterize it as “speculative theory” to distinguish it from “empirical theory” that can be confirmed or refuted by reference to observable data. The terms of such a distinction suggest, of course, that theories grounded in certainties can and ought to replace the speculative approaches of traditional political thought. And because political theory/philosophy relies heavily on the history of political thought, many see it as part of history and the humanities rather than political science—interesting and necessary for any culturally literate person, but fundamentally distinct from contemporary political research.

Terminological distinctions such as these solidified in an era in which behavioralist agendas shaped subdisciplinary boundaries, and they reflect the influence that neo-positivist views of explanation once had within the discipline. Since that time, however, we have developed more sophisticated understandings of how theory and philosophy relate to empirical research. These developments have in turn affected the way we understand the explanatory concerns of political science, while also expanding political theory/philosophy beyond its traditional boundaries.

A simulation is a working model of a system. Simulations are useful when interaction with real systems is not possible (e.g., giving students a chance to be president) or when mathematical models cannot be solved but only approximated.

One of the many ways that simulations may be described or categorized is in terms of how they may be utilized (such as teaching or research). Another important distinction, completely independent of the first, is whether a simulation is interactive or noninteractive. An interactive simulation involves a set of transactions or turns between or among participants and a computer. The operation of a noninteractive simulation generally involves the setting of values for variables after which the simulation is begun and operates on its own with no user intervention. Simulations may also be distinguished by whether they are based on theory and include little data (e.g., prisoner's dilemma) or whether they are based primarily on empirical data supported more or less rigorously by a theory. They may also be characterized in terms of technical concerns such as whether they model continuous or discrete change.

A feminist presence re-emerged at the 1988 Republican Convention after an eight year hibernation. It was primarily focused on abortion, which still divides the party despite the fact that the far right continues to write the platform on all issues directly affecting women. However, since delegate polls indicated that those going to New Orleans last August distributed themselves on the political spectrum pretty much the way they did in 1984, there was no consensus on what this means for the future of a party headed by George Bush.

Feminists made their first appearance at the hearings before the platform Subcommittee on Family and Community. Unlike the Democrats, the Republicans spend the week before their convention hearing testimony and writing their platform. In 1988 representatives from both NOW and NARAL presented their proposals. This was a “first” for both organizations even though neither Kim Gandy (NOW) nor Kate Michelman (NARAL) expected changes in the platform to result. The National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC), which has co-ordinated past convention activities though its Republican Women's Task Force, did not send any one to New Orleans this year, although New York Congressman Bill Green had spoken for the NWPC at a May 31 Platform Committee hearing in Kansas City. NWPC President Irene Natividad said the NWPC's views were given by New York member Tanya Melich, who officially testified for the New York State Republican Family Committee of which she is the Executive Director.

The 1988 Winter PS contained five essays on textbook censorship. Though they covered a wide variety of topics, they shared a common and very familiar theme. Basically, in one form or another, they depicted and deplored right wing attempts to shape textbooks content and school adoption. O'Connor and Ivers, for example, described the fundamentalist attack on evolution and its advocacy of creationism. Adler discusses how the liberal People For the American Way had led the “counterattack” against organizations such as the Educational Research Analysts, a Texas based group worried about the lack of moral absolutes in sociology textbooks.

To anyone acquainted with intellectual censorship, these tales are yet additional items to be added to thousands just like them. Indeed, there is such regularity to these stories that one might even formulate a near-universal generic school textbook censorship story: truth-seeking textbook author rejected by established publishers as too “controversial” eventually gets book into print but fails anyway due to pressure from intimidating right-wingers cloaked in the mantle of traditional American values. Intolerant jingoism again defeats truth.

These PS articles no doubt paint an accurate picture of political pressure on textbooks. But, they present only a part of the story. They tell us nothing about the pressures on the textbook writer, pressures quite different than the familiar right wing “truth squads” hounding moral relativism from subversive tracts. As one who has written a text-Understanding American Government (Random House)—with separate college and high school editions, I have some experiences in this matter.