Sample images from Caruso's study. Photo copyright PNAS.

When it comes to the policies and politics of Barack Obama, it's no secret that liberals and conservatives don't see eye to eye. But according to behavioral sciencist Eugene Caruso of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, these differences in perspective may literally be a difference in perception. In a new study, Caruso and colleagues Emily Balcetis of New York University and Nicole Mead of Tillberg University asked a group of undergraduates which of a series of photographs of Obama--some of them secretly lightened and darkened--best represented who he is as a person. The results were striking: while self-described liberals tended to pick the digitally lightened photos of the president, self-described conservative students more frequently picked the darkened images. The more one agrees with a politician, in other words, the lighter his skin tone seems; the less you agree, the darker it becomes. To discuss how political affinities influence perception--and how politicians and the press could take advantage of these findings--NEWSWEEK's Andrew Romano spoke to Caruso. Excerpts:

How did the study actually work?
Essentially we were interested in whether political party influences how people literally see the world, and how they may see different depictions of candidates as representative of who they really are. So to test this we gathered up a bunch of photos of Barack Obama and digitally altered them to create a version where his skin tone appeared a bit lighter and a version where his skin tone was a bit darker than it appeared in the original photograph. And then we just showed people several different photos and asked them to rate each one on how much they represented who he really is. What we found was that participants who told us that they had a liberal political orientation rated the lightened photographs as more representative of Obama than the darkened photographs, whereas participants who told us they had a more conservative ideology rated the darkened photographs as more representative of Obama than the lightened ones.

So how much of a difference between self-identified liberals and self-identified conservatives did you find in the results?
It’s a little bit hard to quantify the difference because they were just rating on a 7-point scale of representativeness. So to make it a bit more concrete we looked, for each participant, at which photo they rated as the most representative. They gave us three different ratings—say 1, 4 and 6—and we picked the photo that they gave the highest number to. From there we saw that liberals were about five times as likely to rate a lightened version of Obama as the most representative compared to a darkened version, whereas conservatives were about twice as likely to rate a darkened version as most representative compared to the lightened version.

I’m no expert here, but you’re confident that it’s the skin tone that changes “representativeness” in the eyes of the voter, as opposed to something else about the photographs—like pose, or background, or facial expression?
That’s a great question. What we did was essentially take three different photos with three different poses, and created for each photo a lightened and a darkened version. And then we randomly selected the combination of pose and skin tone that we showed each participant.

So your findings about “representativeness” were consistent across poses—the conservative will be twice as likely to say a “darkened” Obama was representative, regardless of which image of Obama was being darkened?
Right. We were experimentally able to isolate the effect of skin tone because some people saw a lightened version of pose #1 and others saw a darkened version of pose #1—and independent of the pose the lightened versions seemed most representative to liberals and the darkened most representative to conservatives.

Were you surprised by the results?
A little bit. Some of my research deals with how people who have different views on a subject are able to try to understand the views of someone on the other side, and the general finding is that people aren’t particularly good at really coming to understand the perspective of someone with whom they disagree. Beyond that, though, I got interested in this notion of whether our beliefs can actually affect the way we see the world—of whether they can actually affect our perception of objects or people in our environment. And it turns out they can.

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Since he dropped out of the California governor’s race last month, where has San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom been? That’s exactly what local TV news reporter Hank Plante asked the mayor last week during an interview—one of the few he has given over the past month. Newsom answered with the amount of San Francisco’s current deficit—$522 million—as reason for having ducked out of public view. But Plante wasn’t buying it. He challenged Newsom on a staff shake-up, including several resignations from senior staff. Then there were questions about an off-the-radar weekend getaway Newsom took to Hawaii without telling key members of his staff. And then about why he had missed so many important public appearances. By the time Plante got around to asking about the deficit, a clearly agitated Newsom was done being patient. Leaving the room, he shook his head and grinned at the camera, declaring “off the record” how "amazingly disappointed" he was in the questioning.

They are calling it the Manhattan Declaration, a 4,700-word manifesto reaching into scripture and signed by 148 Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical leaders. It was released this afternoon at a press conference in Washington, D.C., and is designed to draw a line in the sand across three issues they argue are non-negotiable despite the law: the sanctity of human life, the institution of marriage as being between a man and woman, and religious freedom.

Signers of the Declaration pledge to "...not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act,” nor will signers “bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships” or “treat them as marriages.” The list of backers reads like a who’s who of the pro-life movement, and the document essentially argues that supporters of the movement deserve conscience rights.

If it's not Mike Bloomberg, it's his predecessor. The New York Daily News reports that Rudy Giuliani is going to run for the Senate in 2010 and that he may use that as a stepping stone to a presidential run in 2012. Over at The Atlantic Chris Good claims that "Giuliani will make a formidable Senate candidate, should he run—in fact, if he enters the race, he will likely become the frontrunner," noting that he polls ahead of incumbent Kirsten Gillibrand.

Repeat after me, punditariat: the mayoralty of New York is a stepping stone to nothing.

Exhibit A:

Consider, men and women of the jury

The evidence of displaced fury.

Rage flung like a prisoner’s feces

Against the walls.  The human species

Unique in all biology

Kills for ideology.

By Jeremy Herb

Between online gambling and the countless ESPN reruns of the World Series of Poker, poker has become a mainstream "sport." Gambling experts say 10 to 15 million Americans wager $100 billion on the internet each year, and more than 6,000 paid $10,000 to enter this year's World Series main event. The online gambling industry - made up of offshore companies - earns somewhere between $6 and $10 billion in the U.S. annually. But it's a poker game of politics, not cards, that will decide the fate of online gaming in the U.S.

The battle rests on a bill that was passed in the final hours of the 2006 Republican-controlled Congress, when Sen. Bill Frist tacked it onto a port security bill. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) forbids banks from accepting illegal Internet gambling transactions. In essence, it prevents would be players from using their debit or credit cards-a standard for online payments-for Internet gambling. Those who support Internet gambling, led by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, are making a final plea to the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve to push back the law for one year, giving them time to repeal it. In response, Sen. John Kyl and Rep. Spencer Bachus wrote a letter to Geithner and Bernanke urging them to enforce the Dec. 1 deadline. The Treasury and Fed have yet to make a decision, according to a Federal Reserve official.

If President Obama was looking for another way to differentiate himself from President Bush, he just found it. When it comes to sports, you might recall Bush as an avid mountain biker. He also showed off some lightening-quick reflexes that one time that would give him an edge in dodgeball, and certainly fencing. Obama’s forté so far has been shooting hoops. Now add to the list, football. Check out this PSA that will run during several football games on Thanksgiving Day that encourages kids to get more exercise. Between spliced footage of kids running and doing jumping jacks, Obama makes a cameo on the White House lawn, tossing around the old pigskin. An ordinary game of catch, right? Not quite. The whole spot comes off as rather moving, almost epic, but not because of Obama or his receiving skills. Producers slowed down the footage so much that a short-range pass from New Orleans’s Saints quarterback Drew Brees to Obama ends up looking like a Sports Center highlight. Then, add in some dramatic background music and the receiver-in-chief almost looks qualified for a Heisman. Of course that would be premature. First we would need to see his end-zone dance.

As his hopes of winning the congressional election in New York's 23rd district fade, conservative candidate Doug Hoffman is clearly getting desperate. Today he's blaming his loss on "ACORN, the unions, and the Democratic party" who he alleges, without a shred of evidence, tampered with votes to rig the election against him. Never mind that ACORN told David Weigel that they didn't have volunteers in the area, or that it largely operates in poor urban communities, which NY-23 is not. For conservatives, ACORN is shorthand for the evils of the left.

On the heels of that news, Public Policy Polling released this shocking nugget on its blog: "a 52% majority of GOP voters nationally think that ACORN stole the Presidential election for Barack Obama last year, with only 27% granting that he won it legitimately." Say what? More than half of Republican respondents believe the president was elected fraudulently! That's a stunningly high number. It's disturbing, not only as a demonstrable lack of faith in America's democracy but as an expression of wanton ignorance. Worse, it illustrates the effectiveness of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, et al., alongside a well-funded "Stop ACORN" campaign, in creating an atmosphere where unquestioned lies become received wisdom.

Yesterday, political strategist Mark McKinnon made the case that Sarah Palin's popularity could create an opening for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to run for president in 2012. Well, that's original. Too bad it's preposterous. Katie raises two of the correct counterpoints: Bloomberg is uninspiring, and his Wall Street background doesn't seem like such a strong suit these days. But, she says, "McKinnon's argument shouldn't be discounted, and my quibbles aren't insurmountable hurdles for someone like Bloomberg."

Actually, McKinnon's argument should be dismissed out of hand, as there is no rationale for a third-party candidacy on the political, or policy, merits.

While the Senate toned down the House's language on abortion restrictions, it may have ratcheted things up with another controversial reproductive-health issue: abstinence-only education. Sec. 2954 of the Senate health-reform bill, released Wednesday evening, restores funding for abstinence education. 

Their provision would restore a program called Title V, which, since the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, has allocated a yearly $50 million in grants to abstinence-only education programs. Obama let the program lapse in June, leaving some abstinence-only groups in dire straits. So in September, Sen. Orrin Hatch offered an amendment to restore Title V via heath-care reform, which (much to the outrage of liberal groups) just squeaked through the Senate Finance Committee with a 12–11 vote. A similar amendment, offered in the House by Rep. Terry Lee from Nebraska, died in committee.

Over at The Daily Beast today, political strategist Mark McKinnon makes a compelling argument for why the 2012 election could be tailor-made for NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. McKinnon is one of the sharpest minds around when it comes to understanding the mood of the electorate. McKinnon knows how to sell winning candidates, which is why I think the case he builds for Bloomberg is a serious one. Bloomberg is a true centrist who has racked up a swag of political achievements in New York—and he has a ton of cash. Dropping $1 billion on a presidential campaign would barely cause a ripple in his ocean of Benjamins. And he appeals to the growing bloc of independent voters. But, after reading McKinnon's analysis, I've got a couple of lingering questions.

First, how will his background in financial services play to an electorate weary of Wall Street misadventures? To be sure, it's been a very long time since Bloomberg was directly involved in trading and banking. Most of his cash piled up when he started offering IT and media services to the financial sector. But Wall Street is already enough of a myth to most voters. They may not have the patience to distinguish between the greedy bankers who broke the economy and the folks that provided the information that helped them carry out the devastating deeds. They may just see a really, really, ridiculously rich guy who made his money on Wall Street.