The math

I've wanted for a while to post about Rove's NPR appearance on 24 October, but was waiting until I had the time to write a nuanced and clever piece on it. However, this being election night, the time is nigh (if not upon us) when either no one in my readership will care what he said, or no one will be able to bear to read it; so, in the window of opportunity left to me, I would like to point to this transcript of his NPR interview by Robert Segal. The particularly lovely point for me (setting aside Segal's gentle claim that Rove was on the "optimistic end of realism") was the following:

ROVE: Yeah. Look, I'm looking at all these, Robert, and adding them up. And I add up to a Republican Senate and a Republican House. You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math, and I'm entitled to the math.

What the transcript doesn't make clear is that Rove perceptibly paused before the final two words -- it was clear that he meant to say "You're entitled to your math, and I'm entitled to my math", but managed to play the sentence in his head before it came out of his mouth (a skill which perhaps those in the current administration might want to cultivate).