Last night, as DaJuan Summers scored a career-high 24 points across town and as political junkies watched early Super Tuesday results across campus, a small crowd gathered in the SFS Frat House to listen to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll speak about the on-going crisis in Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf’s weaknesses and which 2008 candidates are capable of dealing with Pakistan.

Coll, a staff writer for the New Yorker and a former managing editor of the Washington Post, has been covering Pakistan for 20 years, with his most recent piece, on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, appearing in the Jan. 28 issue of the New Yorker.

Currently, Pakistan’s direction is unclear, Coll said, with the Pakistani Taliban “controlling territory in three-dimensional ways” and Musharraf no longer heading the Pakistani army (”the end of an era”).  “There’s something about that character of this moment … that is new,” he said.

Coll went on to call Musharraf “quite a clumsy politician,” pointing to a press conference in which Musharraf seemed to be inventing the roll he would play in the Pakistani government following his resignation as army chief.  “Are you saying that in the hopes of if you say it, it will be true?” he asked of Musharraf.

Though at one point Coll said he didn’t want to get too wonky, his speech was sprinkled with references and acronyms that would have been lost upon those without familiarity with the region.  Fortunately, the majority of the crowd of 22 (17 guys, only 5 girls) seemed to have little trouble following along as with Coll’s detailed analysis.

Coll also spoke about the U.S.’s relationship with Pakistan, opining that the Pakistani army is much better at managing its relationship with the U.S. than the U.S. is at managing its relationship with the Pakistani army.

“They wake up in the morning and they spend 8 to 10 hours thinking about how to manage [their relationship with the U.S.],” he said.  For the U.S. “at best, it’s a 30 minute item in a 6-hour Iraq day, a 3-hour China day.”

At the end of the event, talk turned to the 2008 election.  When asked which of the candidates was capable of dealing with Pakistan, Coll gave an answer he jokingly called  “mealy-mouthed,” saying that Clinton and McCain both have solid diplomatic experience in South Asia, though he was unsure what McCain’s actual policy would be.  As for Obama, Coll said, “His intuition about our place in the world seems to be sound.”

Then Coll was off to watch the primary returns.  “Boy, this is the most exciting [election] that I can remember,” he said.  “Not on the Republican side, frankly.”

Photo by Sam Sweeney

If political pundits have taught us anything this primary cycle, it’s that we shouldn’t be listening to political pundits.  McCain, now the G.O.P. front-runner, was declared dead over the summer (his campaign, that is—he’s not that old), the press all but pronounced Hillary the Democratic nominee earlier this year, and the New Hampshire Democratic polls were about as wrong as wrong can be.

Fortunately, Mike Madden over at Salon.com has found one indicator that has been consistently spot-on: our very own Georgetown Hoyas.

As it happens, the Hoyas have been a near-perfect predictor of McCain’s fortunes this year. The last time Georgetown lost a game was the night before the Michigan primary, when Pitt beat them 69-60; the next day, Romney beat McCain. The day of the South Carolina primary, where McCain narrowly beat Mike Huckabee to avenge his 2000 loss to George W. Bush, the Hoyas crushed Notre Dame.

Madden wrote this before the Hoyas played last night and before the primary results came in, so he had a little prediction.

So who do the Hoyas play tonight? Big East bottom-dwellers South Florida. Playing in D.C., the Bulls are probably bigger underdogs than Romney is (though his loss to Huckabee in West Virginia, orchestrated by McCain strategists at the last minute, doesn’t bode well for him). If they can pull off the upset, surely Romney can, too. But if the Hoyas hang on to win, as expected, McCain might do the same. Tipoff is at 7:30 p.m. Eastern — just in time for the polls to close.

Prescient, Mr. Madden.

The system will really be put to the test on Saturday though, when the Hoyas play at Louisville and Kansas, Louisiana, and Washington all have their primaries.  Given their recent romps of Marquette and Rutgers, I imagine that Louisville is going to put up quite a fight.  But rest easy, Senator McCain.  No one can stop Big Roy.

Via The Van Buren Boys

So maybe the match-up last night between the best team and the worst team in the Big East should have been a blow-out. But, as JT III said at the press conference after the game, “I don’t know that there is a bad win.” Next up: Louisville on Saturday. That one’s going to be tough.

Photos by Nicole Bush, Staff Photographer

Slate published a short piece by one of its interns, a Georgetown senior and Hoya writer named Alex Joseph. Entitled “Confessions of a young Hillary Clinton supporter,” the crux of the piece is that a lot of college students, particularly at Georgetown, support Barack Obama, and that both Clinton and Obama supporters are astonished that a college-age man would support Clinton. Because Joseph supports Clinton, he’s “practically a social pariah.” Quel Horror!

Now, when I decided, after long consideration, to support Barack Obama in the 2008 primary, the first thing I did was purge any Clinton supporters from my social life, just as I did with all conservatives back in High School when I decided I was a liberal. Same thing when the Voice endorsed Obama a few weeks ago: All the Clinton supporters (and yes, there are a few, and a majority are men) were kicked off the paper!

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