March Madness
Basketball and Hardball. It's March and time to get mad!
We are about two weeks away from Selection Sunday, the annual event where the NCAA college basketball tournament participants are announced. Soon, you will lose $20 to the lady in accounting who doesn’t know Duke from the Dukes or the conference in which the University of Arizona plays.
Right now, plenty of teams are sweating being on that “Tournament Bubble”—will they or won’t they make what is affectionately known as “The Dance?” There’s fun drama leading up to the 68 teams that are picked. But I usually turn it off when commentators start talking about teams that should have made it in. It’s annoying. No one cares.
March is also the time of year when drama is turned up in our political sphere. Remember, March 4 used to be Inauguration Day, which changed in the 1930s when we passed that lame 20th Amendment to the Constitution?
Plenty of crazy stuff happens in March, especially when a new administration comes in. Just look at President Trump’s speech at the Joint Session of Congress, earlier this week. The Speaker of the House threw out members of Congress for their “lack of decorum,” while the President ranted and raged like a monologue from a WWE scene.
It’s the Madness of March. But since I’m coming off vacation, let’s have some fun with the similarities between basketball and the presidency.
The Upsets
When Jimmy Carter took office in 1977, his approval ratings soared to 67% in February and hit a high of 75% by March 21. It was like he built an insurmountable lead in the game's first five minutes. Just draining threes, while his opposition simply turned the ball over and couldn’t make a thing.
Post-March 21 saw those ratings plummet. By March 1978, Carter only had an approval rating of 50%. The other team got discipline, a few breaks went their way, and momentum swung. You could argue that Jimmy C got teed up a few times, and then by 1979, he was below 50%.
Despite that wild popularity as the country moved on from Watergate, Carter lost badly.
The Comebacks
Nothing says comeback like when you were shot on the second to last day in March, just months into your administration. And as frightening as that day was for me, President Reagan and his team implemented a steady dose of fundamentals that saw him make it back and win and land a pretty good ranking at the end of the season.
Bill Clinton’s tenure got off to a rocky start even before tipoff, but what amounted to calling three timeouts in the first few minutes when he tried to figure out an Attorney General who didn’t hire illegal immigrants to babysit their kids. Clinton settled down, perhaps not, but he did enough and overcame bad bench play to secure two terms.
Call a Time Out
When Joe Biden took over in 2021, he was the reserve needed for a team that had seen many players foul out. He needed to roll out the vaccine to overcome that full-court press of COVID-19, and it felt like those moments when your team gets back into the game by hitting a big shot and immediately calls a timeout.
He was pulled from the game, rightly or wrongly, and the team lost big time. Then the commentators took turns trying to explain why.
Can We Get a Review Please
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Instant Replay stinks. But I feel like we needed it back in March 2001, when President George W. Bush was in office and trying to get everything “back to normal.” Maybe reviewing some things, like the building of worldwide terrorism, would have helped. Bush might have pushed the game into overtime when calls went his way on Weapons of Mass Destruction and Iraq was tied to Al-Qaeda, but in the end, we all lost when we failed to stop and look to the monitors.
The Full Court Press
Trump is unique because he is coming into March as the new administration for a second time. Both times, he has put out his full-court press. In 2017, there were travel bans and an attempt to repeal Obamacare. This time, it’s handing democracy over to Elon Musk and yelling at democratically elected presidents fighting for their country’s lives.
With a new Vice President transfer, Trump has added to his firepower. Never mind his defense—he doesn’t have any. He will work the refs, blame everyone for his poor shooting, and throw the entire team under the bus after he eventually flames out and loses.
So March is here. My school has about a 50/50 shot of making the Dance this year. If we miss it, that’s two years in a row, which is not good. However, the current situation in DC is also not good. I’m not sure moving into April is going to help. But I will keep praying.
I'm grateful to be back after a little over a week on vacation with Anonymous to our favorite spot. We read a lot – I knocked out three books, which is a minor miracle, while Anonymous tackled a biography of Katharine Graham, who used to own the hometown newspaper.
We spent time with friends, and this year, those friends are now engaged, which made the trip more fun.
It feels weird to be on a vacation while DC burns, but taking a break is important. I’m not sure what else we are supposed to do, breaking into the House Chamber to yell at Trump doesn’t seem like a solid plan. I’m not sure that moves the needle anyway. But we took the break and made it home very late on Wednesday, and we were greeted by our boy, Blue, who was just as excited to see us as we were him.
I’ll work over the weekend to produce the essays I missed over the past few weeks. I also need to unpack. How long does it reasonably take someone to unpack? Do you do it immediately, like Anonymous, or does it take you three weeks like me?
I’ll be back on Monday, getting back into the groove. I appreciate your support!
Okay,
Chris
