I must have quoted this a hundred times — a line attributed to Aaron Wildavsky, the late, distinguished political scientist from Berkeley: “One story is an anecdote; two stories are data.” Okay, have a couple of stories for you — but I don’t claim they’re data. Just kind of interesting.

A man from California wrote to say that he was talking with a local radio host — a woman of about 70 who told him, “This November, for the first time in my life, I’m going to vote straight Republican. I know they spend too much, too. But they won’t be as out of control as what we have now. We have to do something.”

Our reader said, “Jay, this is the spirit of the Tea Party: people who pay every tax, vote in every election, do jury duty, never call 9-1-1, never complain, never protest — and who have now reached the point of saying, ‘Enough.’ Can I say that, when the radio host told me what she did, I felt a thrill go up my leg?”

Another man wrote,

Jay,
Every June I need to buy three birthday cards, which I did over the weekend. I remember that, last year, there were six or so birthday cards in the Humor section praising President Obama. The punch lines were on the order of, “Wow, isn’t he great?”
This year it was a little different. There were only three birthday cards in the Humor section featuring President Obama. And they were all like this: a picture of him at a podium, with the punch line inside, “Some things are scarier than birthdays.”
FWIW, I’m still predicting he’s going to win reelection in 2012. But six birthday cards praising him to three birthday cards making fun of him — what a difference a year makes!

Sounds like the topic of a Ph.D. dissertation, or at least an undergraduate thesis. Wonder what Professor Wildavsky would think.