William Safire

Predictions: Flawed but fun

By WILLIAM SAFIRE The New York Times

Thursday, January 1, 2004

In last year’s office pool, for the second year running, I accurately predicted the Oscar winner for best picture.

Forget all of the other predictions, which were varying degrees of mistaken; I shoulda been a film critic.

The multiple choices include one, all or none. My picks are down below.

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1) Next tyranny to feel the force of U.S. liberation: a) North Korea; b) Iran; c) Syria; d) Venezuela.

2) Iraq will a) split up, like all Gaul, into three parts; b) defeat the insurgents and emerge a rudimentary democracy; c) succumb to a Sunni coup.

3) First to fall from power will be a) Little China’s Chen Shui- bian, whose two-China campaign oratory on Taiwan is asking for trouble with Big China; b) Pakistan’s Perez Musharraf, double- crossed by his Islamist military; c) the United States’ George W. Bush, after abandoning fiscal restraint; d) Russia’s Vladimir Putin as his electorate miraculously awakens; e) Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

4) Long-overdue exoneration will come to embattled media megastar a) Martha Stewart; b) Michael Jackson; c) Kenneth Lay; d) Pete Rose.

5) The economy will a) see a booming 13,000 Dow and 3,000 Nasdaq; b) grow more slowly as a weakening dollar drives up interest rates; c) be rocked by the abuse of manipulative derivatives in hedge funds.

6) The fiction bestseller will be a) “Retribution” by Jilliane Hoffman; b) “Confessions of a Bigamist” by Kate Lehrer; c) “Flying Crows” by Jim Lehrer (presumably one of Kate’s husbands).

7) The non-fiction sleeper will be a) “Inside — A Public and Private Life” by Joseph Califano Jr.; b) Carl Zimmer’s brainy “Soul Made Flesh”; c) Michael Korda’s biography of U.S. Grant; d) Gertrude Himmelfarb’s “The Roads to Modernity.”

8) The scientific advance of the year will be a) age retardation enhanced by memory protection; b) a single pill combining erectile dysfunction treatment with a fast-acting aphrodisiac; c) neuroscientists’ creation of a unified field theory of the brain; d) the awakening of geneticists to the liberating study of bioethics.

9) Best Picture Oscar: a) Anthony Minghella’s “Cold Mountain”; b) Edward Zwick’s “The Last Samurai”; c) Clint Eastwood’s “Mystic River”; d) Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation”; e) Gary Ross’ “Seabiscuit.” (This is the category I’m good at.)

10) Bush’s domestic initiative will be a) Social Security personal accounts; b) community college scholarships; c) a moon colony; d) snowmobile restrictions in Florida parks.

11) The U.S. Supreme Court a) will decide that the rights of alien detainees in Guantanamo have not been violated; b) will deadlock, 4-4 (Scalia recused) in the Pledge of Allegiance case, thereby temporarily affirming the 9th Circuit decision declaring “under God” in the pledge unconstitutional; c) in Tennessee vs. Lane, will uphold a state’s immunity to lawsuits, limiting federal power in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

12) Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean will

a) sweep Iowa and New Hampshire and breeze to a boring nomination; b) lose to Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) in Iowa and do worse than expected in New Hampshire, leading to a long race; c) transform himself into the centrist, affable “new Dean”; d) angrily bolt and form a third party if the nomination is denied him.

13) The “October surprise” affecting the U.S. election will be a) the capture of Osama bin Laden in Yemen; b) the daring escape of Saddam Hussein; c) a major terror attack in the United States; d) finding a buried bag of anthrax in Tikrit.

14) Debating Vice President Dick Cheney on TV will be the Democratic running mate a) Wes Clark; b) Bob Graham; c) Bill Richardson; d) Dianne Feinstein; e) John Edwards; f) Carl Levin.

15) The next secretary of state will be a) Richard Holbrooke; b) L. Paul Bremer; c) Donald Rumsfeld; d) John Kerry.

16) Israel, staunchly supported during the U.S. election year, will a) build its security barrier including the Ariel salient and the Jordan Valley; b) undermine Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat by negotiating territory with Syria after its president quiets Hezbollah in occupied Lebanon; c) close down illegal outposts before “redeploying” settlers out of Gaza.

My picks: 1) none; 2) b; 3) e (I’ve made this yearly prediction for three decades, and now is not the time to stop; 4) a; 5) all; 6) b; 7) a; 8) d; 9) c (Make my day, Clint); 10) b; 11) all; 12) b; 13) c; 14) b; 15) b; 16) all.

The last one is pure, unsourced thumbsucking; Ariel Sharon didn’t return my call.

William Safire is a columnist for The New York Times. His e-mail address is safire@nytimes.com