Why Older Workers are Better Workers

At a time when high unemployment numbers constantly make the headlines, companies can be selective about whom they want to hire. Older workers  generally don't make the top of lists of potential job candidates for a variety of reasons, some real and some imagined. But with 10,000 baby boomers reaching the age of 65 each day for the next twenty years, hiring companies would do well to re-evaluate this untapped pool of labor, especially once our economy finally gets back on track.

[See Companies with the Most Older Workers.]

According to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, people over the age of 40 are protected against being treated less favorably because of age. As these older workers become a bigger part of the workforce, hiring companies will need to objectively consider the positive and negative aspects of each candidate regardless of age. The good news is that, in many ways, older workers are better workers. Here's why older workers make excellent employees:

More direction. Many young people are still struggling to figure out what they want to do for their career and are getting their first exposure to the corporate world. Older workers generally possess a wealth of knowledge and experience gleaned over years of employment, and have a good idea of how to get the job done.

Less turnover. Older workers are less likely to job hop than younger employees. They typically have lower turnover and are absent less.

[See Older Worker Employment Reaches Record High.]

Experience pays off. Many older workers are experienced at the requirements of the job, and know what works and what does not work. This could allow them to get the job done more efficiently or to produce higher quality results. Contrary to popular belief, older employees do not cost employers more than younger workers, according to Peter Cappelli, coauthor of Managing the Older Worker: How to Prepare for the New Organizational Order. Higher wages are not based on age, but on experience, which often benefits the employer to the point that it is worth paying them at a higher level.

Understand the culture. Older employees know and live the corporate culture because they have been immersed in it for years. You won't find very many of them ignoring the dress code or posting inappropriate messages on Facebook.

Fewer dependents. When it comes to health care coverage, older employees do cost more because they are more likely to have health conditions and seek care. But older employees often no longer have as many dependents to include in the health plan as people with young families, which can actually save the company money.

[See 7 Tips for Working for a Younger Boss.]

Of course, older workers may need to be accommodated in some ways, especially if the job is physically strenuous. Older employees will be increasingly reporting to younger supervisors, which could cause friction that will need to be addressed. Flexible schedules may also be important to some seniors who want to pursue other interests outside a full-time job.

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Baby Boomers Plan Their Retirement Careers

Retirement for the baby boomers is likely to be far different from what their parents experienced. Work will probably be an integral part of everyday life, both to meet financial requirements and to keep busy during an increasing lifespan. Workers approaching retirement should plan now for their pending retirement career.

[See 10 Places to Launch a Second Career in Retirement.]

Most baby boomers (72 percent) say they plan to keep working in some capacity after retirement, according to a 2010 Del Webb survey. The top reason for working in retirement is to ward off boredom and keep busy, while financial necessity came in second. Other reasons for delaying retirement include self-satisfaction and enjoying the job. Some employees are planning to continue working well into the traditional retirement years. A recent Wells Fargo survey found that 25 percent of middle class Americans say they will need to work until at least 80 to live comfortably in retirement.

If seniors will need to work during their retirement years, the nature of the job becomes increasingly important. During our first career we discovered what we are good at, what we like to do, and what we dread doing every day. This knowledge can help us prepare for our second act. Here's how to select a satisfying retirement career:

Aim for a job you enjoy. In a down economy you may be forced to take any available job. But if you are lucky enough to be able to consider a job you might actually enjoy, decide what it would look like. What could you do each day that would make you eager to get out of bed each morning, with great expectations of exciting things to be? It is far better to start the day with an optimistic smile versus an anxious moment.

[See 5 Social Security Changes Coming in 2012.]

Avoid toxic situations. Decide what you would find personally satisfying in a second career and also the tasks you would dread doing. A typical job includes a mix of each, but ideally you want to tip the scale toward what you love.

Test drive your dream job. When you were younger, what did you dream of becoming? Although a ballerina or an astronaut might not be realistic now, think back on what it was you always wanted to do. If a certain career field still intrigues you, try to explore opportunities for a retirement career trying it out.

Play to your strengths. After several decades in the workforce, you probably already know whether you prefer flexibility or routine, independence or supervision, creativity or clearly defined activity, and risk or assurance. Look for a second career that has the characteristics you find most important in a satisfying job.

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The Real Best Places to Retire in 2012

A blizzard of articles give advice about the best places to retire. They generally recommend fleeing the North and heading for the Sunbelt, to places in the Carolinas, Florida, or Arizona. Occasionally they offer a surprise retirement spot in Iowa or Indiana. Sometimes they even tout retirement locales outside the United States.

[See The 10 Best Places to Retire in 2012.]

These articles rely on statistics such as the cost of living or winter temperatures. But they miss the most important thing--the human element. Here are the real best places to retire:

Stay home. As we get older, moving, making new friends, and acclimatizing ourselves to new surroundings gets more difficult. Don't underestimate the value of your current community. Think long and hard before you cut those connections to go off to get a sunburn.

Your hometown likely offers more senior citizen benefits than you think including tax breaks, low-cost transportation, and subsidized meals. We have friends in the outer suburbs of New York who always thought they would retire somewhere warmer. But they finally realized how important their church community was to them and decided to stay put. Now they visit the senior center for a free meal every Thursday night. They walk at the mall two or three mornings a week and stay for coffee with new acquaintances. And they are still active in their church, among the friends they've known for decades.

[See The 10 Sunniest Places to Retire.]

Move near your children. My brother-in-law spent most of his career working around Pittsburgh, Pa. After he retired, he and his wife gathered together all the brochures and ultimately decided to move to Massachusetts. Their daughter lives outside of Boston and their son is in Rhode Island. They moved from a four-bedroom suburban home to a two-bedroom bungalow in their daughter's town. Their yard is smaller, just right for Grandpa to keep an eye on the grandkids while he relaxes on the patio. They've met new friends through their daughter, and they love their new life, in an area often billed as cold and expensive.

Follow your friends. One fellow I know retired to Maryland. Why? His long-time golfing partner retired there a few years earlier. He moved to the same town, joined the same golf club, and soon they were prowling the links together, just like old times. A year later, another friend joined them, who had a relative living nearby, and they all now play golf twice a week.

Their wives, who had known each other casually, are now close friends. They started a bridge club, brought in some other women, and from there developed meaningful connections to the community. These couples now feel as though, as one of the women put it, "We've lived here all our lives."

[See 10 Places to Retire on Social Security Alone.]

Move back home. One friend of mine grew up in El Paso, Texas. She went to college in California, then got married and moved to Washington, D.C. Some 25 years later, her husband died and she felt lost in the big city. She moved back west, to nearby New Mexico, where she started a small business which included some clients in Washington. Now she lives in her beloved mountains and travels to Washington occasionally to see clients.

Another woman grew up outside New York. She got married and moved to Oregon and spent most of her 20s and 30s around Portland. Eventually she got divorced and moved first to California, then Arizona, with a year-long stint in Alaska. But when she retired, she felt the pull of Portland, where she still had friends. To her, that was home. And that's where she moved.

No matter where you end up in retirement, remember that relationships are more important than the weather. The warmest climate can be found amidst the safety and security of family and friends.

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Sexual Activity Deemed Safe for Many Heart Patients by AHA

 The American Heart Association  has released its first scientifically based statement with recommendations for sexual activity for people with heart conditions or cardiovascular disease. The good news for many with heart problems is that sex is safe.

AHA Scientific Statement on Sex and Cardiovascular Disease

For many heart patients, if they are able to walk briskly or climb two flights of stairs without experiencing chest pain, abnormal heartbeats, or shortness of breath, a normal sex life is possible -- after discussing it with their heart doctor, advises the AHA Scientific statement.

In an interview with HeartWire, lead author of the study underlying the AHA Statement on Sex, Dr. Glenn N. Levine of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, explained that not only are these recommendations about sexual activity and heart disease the most comprehensive to date, but also have been compiled and endorsed by experts in a variety of fields including urology, exercise physiology and sexual counseling in addition to cardiologists.

There are many people who, once diagnosed with a heart condition or who have experienced a heart attack, abstain from sexual activity due to fear that engaging in sex could result in a heart attack or death. Levine, via HeartWire, explained that many heart patients -- and their physicians -- are reluctant to address the topic of sexual activity. The AHA Statement on Sex provides guidelines for safe sexual activity not only for cardiologists, but also general practitioners and physicians in other fields.

Facts on Sex and Heart Health/Safety

According to the AHA Statement on Sex, less than 1 percent of heart attacks are caused by sexual activity, with this risk being even lower for heart patients who are physically active. Among that 1 percent, the largest number of heart attacks experienced were among people involved in extramarital sex.

Following a heart attack or coronary bypass surgery, your physician should advise a certain waiting period before beginning to have sex again. He may also advise that you first increase your overall physical health and endurance through recommended exercise programs and recommend an exercise stress test before resuming sexual activity, recommends the AHA Statement on Sex. People with heart conditions should avoid eating a heavy meal or drinking alcohol before sexual activity as well.

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Need to Exercise More? Think How It Will Help You Now

FRIDAY, Jan. 13 (HealthDay News) -- Health and fitness experts have for years tried to entice people to exercise more by flogging long-range benefits such as losing weight or avoiding long-term illness caused by chronic disease.

They might have been going about it all wrong. Research now appears to show that "improve your heart health" may be a less effective message than "feel better now."

A University of Michigan study found that people are more apt to exercise when they're given reasons that apply to their immediate, day-to-day life. For example, telling someone they will have more energy after working out seems to be a more effective motivation than telling them they will be less likely to develop diabetes.

Michelle Segar, the study's lead author, said she believes the results indicate a need to "rebrand" exercise so that health organizations that promote exercise will see better results from their efforts.

"We need to develop new messaging that teaches people that physical activity is a way to reduce their stress in the moment, feel better in the moment, create more energy in the moment," said Segar, a research investigator with the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan. "You're a more patient parent. You enjoy your work more. You don't snap at your spouse as much. The benefits of exercise help you lead a more pleasant and productive life. The messaging needs to go there."

The study focused on a randomly selected set of 385 women, 40 to 60 years old, who were given several questionnaires over the course of a year related to exercise and health.

The women's responses indicated that they valued long-term goals like weight loss as much as short-term goals more directly linked to day-to-day quality of life, such as stress reduction. Nonetheless, Segar and her team found that women who cited short-term factors exercised more often than those who felt long-term goals were most important.

"The women who exercised for quality of life did significantly more exercise than the other two groups," Segar said. Those who exercised based on daily quality of life worked out 15 percent to 34 percent more often, the study found.

This argues strongly for a reassessment of how exercise is promoted, Segar said.

"Health and healthy aging are very abstract," she said. "We may endorse them as important, but the problem lies in the fact that we live very busy, complicated lives. When you're looking at your daily to-do list, how compelling is fitting in exercise for a reason that's far in the future, where you might never notice? If you're exercising to enhance the quality of your daily life because it reduces your stress or improves your mood, you notice those things immediately. And if you don't exercise, you immediately notice you feel worse."

Messages that might resonate better with people who need to exercise more often, she said, include that exercise is a way to:

    * Become a more pleasant member of your family by feeling better.
    * Improve your productivity at work because working out makes your mind more focused.
    * Relieve day-to-day stress.
    * Improve your mood.
    * Enjoy higher levels of energy and vitality.
    * Spend more social time with others.
    * Take time to enjoy the outdoors.

Though those are compelling arguments for exercise, groups might want to think twice before removing long-term goals from their marketing strategies, said Walter Thompson, a professor of exercise science in the department of kinesiology and health at Georgia State University and a spokesman for the American College of Sports Medicine.

Long-term goals like weight loss tend to be measurable, whereas short-term goals like improved energy are largely subjective, Thompson said.

"The problem with the long-term goal is they can get to the 5½-months point and not lose a pound," he said. "That's the argument for the short-term goal. But without a long-term goal, it's hard to come up with short-term goals."

Short-term goals also might not apply to everyone because they're subjective, he added.

"I like to run, but I remember days when I just felt miserable after my run," Thompson said. "If I only looked at short-term goals, if I felt bad one day, I may not do it the second day."

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Belfast rally demands return of British flag

BELFAST (Reuters) - Around 2,000 pro-British loyalists rallied in central Belfast on Saturday for the return of the British flag to the roof of city hall after a vote by Irish nationalist councilors to remove it sparked a week of rioting.

Twenty-eight police officers have been injured in the most widespread pro-British street violence for years in the province as the flag became a rallying point for people who feel there have been too many concessions to Irish nationalists.

Rioters fired bricks and petrol bombs at police and burned out cars overnight, hours after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for calm during a visit to the city and warned the peace process was not yet complete.

Loyalist political parties, who share the protesters' desire to remain part of the United Kingdom, condemned the rioting as did the Irish nationalist parties who they share power with.

Around 2,000 people gathered outside the imposing 19th century Baroque city hall, most waving British flags and many hiding their faces with balaclavas or scarves, prompting some local businesses in the area to close.

'NO SURRENDER'

The crowd cheered when one protester burned an Irish tricolour flag and sang the British national anthem before dispersing. Banners declared "Proud to be British" and "No Surrender."

"This goes on until the flag is back above city hall," said protester William Arthur. "Ulster is British and we will not stand for this".

Hundreds of riot police stood by, but did not intervene.

One police officer was injured during trouble in East Belfast as some of the crowd returned home, police said.

Assistant Chief Constable Will Kerr of the Senior Police Service of Northern Ireland said the disorder orchestrated by loyalist paramilitary groups was putting lives at risk.

"I am urging everyone to be calm, take a step back," he said.

LOYALIST FEARS

At least 3,600 people were killed over three decades as Catholic nationalists seeking union with Ireland fought British security forces and mainly Protestant loyalists determined to remain part of the United Kingdom.

A 1998 peace accord has mostly held, although militant nationalists have stepped up attacks in recent years and community relations remain fragile, with riots erupting every few months.

Monday's council decision means the British flag will be flown over city hall on 17 designated days including public holidays each year, as is the case at the provincial assembly at Stormont in the British-controlled province.

Until then, it had flown above the provincial capital's city hall every day since it opened a century ago, a symbol for many Catholic nationalists of Protestant domination.

Its removal has turned the tables, sparking fears of growing nationalist power.

"It's not just that the flag has come down, loyalists really sense that everything is about concessions," said Peter Shirlow, professor of conflict transformation at Queen's University. "Rightly or wrongly they sense that this is a one way process."

The violence, he said, was a sign that while loyalist paramilitaries have not in the past reacted violently to killings by dissident Irish nationalists, they may in future.

"It's a sign that it's getting harder to maintain the peace process within loyalism," he said. "Whether that breaks down is a different matter, but I think it's harder to hold the line."

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U.S. trade-human rights link tests Obama-Russia ties

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate's passage of legislation to punish Russians who violate human rights is the first big test of the resolve of Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama to improve relations since their election victories.

Obama, who launched a "reset" in relations with Russia less than four years ago, is likely to sign the law even though Moscow sees it as "aggressively unfriendly." Damage to U.S.-Russian relations is all but inevitable.

But there are signs that Putin, who won the presidency despite the biggest protests of his 13-year rule, may want to put the bad blood of a campaign in which he whipped up anti-American sentiment behind him.

"I do not think that this will lead to a serious crisis in Russian-American relations," said Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre think tank.

"(Putin) does not intend to make relations worse, and for this reason the effects of this legislation will be limited," Trenin said.

The Senate approved the "Magnitsky Act" as part of a broader bill to lift a Cold War-era restriction and grant Russia "permanent normal trade relations, " or PNTR, a move that in other circumstances would have been celebrated in both capitals.

A month after Obama's re-election, it could have been the cap on a period during which he signed a landmark nuclear arms deal with Moscow and helped usher Russia into the World Trade Organization after an 18-year membership bid.

Instead, Moscow is furious over the human rights portion of the bill, an unmistakable message to Putin of displeasure with the treatment of Russians who dare challenge the authorities.

The main targets are those allegedly involved in the abuse and death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in jail in 2009 - the victim, colleagues say, of retribution from the same investigators he claimed stole $230 million from the state.

In a Foreign Ministry statement full of righteous anger, Russia called the Senate vote a "performance in the theatre of the absurd" and said the bill would badly cloud the prospects for cooperation between Moscow and Washington.

How big the impact will be is largely up to Putin.

The law injects a dose of poison into a relationship strained by the crisis in Syria and U.S. concerns about the direction Putin has taken since he revealed last year that he would return to the Kremlin after a stint as prime minister.

"It will have a negative impact on the atmosphere, that's for sure," said Samuel Charap, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington.

The bill directs Obama to publish the names of Russians allegedly involved in the abuse and death of Magnitsky, who was jailed in 2008 on tax evasion and fraud charges colleagues say were fabricated by investigators against whom he had given evidence.

Magnitsky, 37, said he was deliberately deprived of the treatment he needed as his health deteriorated painfully in jail, and the Kremlin's own human rights council has said he was probably beaten to death.

The bill would also require the United States to deny visas and freeze the assets of any of those individuals, as well as other human rights violators in Russia not linked to Magnitsky, on a continuing basis.

It is, at least in Russian eyes, almost a textbook example of what Putin dislikes most about the United States: its perceived use of human rights concerns as a geopolitical instrument and the resort to sanctions for punishment.

In a decree signed hours after his inauguration to a six-year third term in May, Putin said he wanted "truly strategic" ties with the United States but they must be based on equality, non-interference and respect for one another's interests.

MUTUAL DOUBTS

Trenin said the law would reinforce Putin's wariness about U.S. intentions, but that he may also want to focus on his long-stated goal of improving economic ties with the United States.

Russia has sought to reassure Americans that Moscow's response to the bill would not affect business dealings.

But late on Friday, Russia imposed restrictions on meat imports from several countries, chief among them the United States, denying the move was a political retribution for the "Magnitsky Act".

In a joint statement on Saturday, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Russia's new requirement for imported beef and pork to be certified free of ractopamine, a feed additive used in the U.S. meat industry but banned in some other countries, appeared to be a violation of Moscow's WTO obligations.

"The United States calls on Russia to suspend these new measures and restore market access for U.S. beef and pork products," Kirk and Vilsack said.

"The United States sought, and Russia committed as part of its WTO accession package, to ensure that it adhere rigorously to WTO requirements and that it would use international (food safety) standards unless it had a risk assessment to justify use of a more stringent standard," they said.

On Saturday, the daily Kommersant reported that the passage of the legislation may freeze the work of some of the 20-plus groups that are part of the bilateral presidential commission set up between Obama and former President Dmitry Medvedev.

The Magnitsky Act is the flip side of the bill to grant Russia PNTR status, which both sides hope, along with Russia's WTO membership, will bolster bilateral trade, which amounted to a paltry $43 billion last year.

"There's a lot that can be done on that, and that is stuff he understands and cares about," Charap said of Putin.

Russia has threatened to retaliate if Obama signs the bill into law. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday that Russia would bar entry for Americans "guilty of crude human rights abuses."

Moscow has also warned it would respond with "asymmetrical" measures, seeming to hint the bill could have a spillover effect into broader areas in which the United States wants Russian cooperation most, such as nuclear arms control and Iran.

But analysts said that was unlikely. They said the law would probably not derail Russian assistance on Afghanistan, or affect diplomacy aimed to curb Iran's nuclear program or deepen disputes over U.S. missile defense and the conflict in Syria.

"It will have a mostly symbolic effect," said Yevgeny Volk, a Russian political analyst.

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Romanians vote in poll that may reopen political spat

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania's prime minister is heading for victory in parliamentary elections on Sunday that could set off another round of a power struggle with the rightist president and complicate talks for a new IMF deal.

Prime Minister Victor Ponta's leftist Social Liberal Union (USL) will win most votes and possibly a clear majority, according to opinion polls. But analysts say President Traian Basescu may use his powers to ask one of his own allies to try to form a government.

Any prolonged period without a new administration in place would unnerve markets and raise questions about how the country would obtain a new International Monetary Fund deal once the current agreement expires in early 2013.

The leu fell to a record low against the euro in August, during an attempt by Ponta to remove the conservative Basescu from office, using tactics which the European Union and United States said undermined the rule of law.

At the time, Basescu said he would never again name Ponta as prime minister. Last week, he said only that he would appoint someone in the best interests of the country.

One possibility would be for Basescu to ask someone other than Ponta from within the Social Liberal Union to become prime minister, using the argument that the USL is not a party, but rather a coalition of different political groups, according to analysts.

If the USL falls short of a majority, he could also ask one of his allies from the Right Romania Alliance (ARD) - in second place in polls with about 20 percent - to try to form a coalition.

"Even if Ponta is elected by voters and nominated by Basescu with a secure majority, scope for damaging discord with Basescu in the medium term remains," said James Goundry, an analyst with IHS Global Insight.

The USL has scored at least 57 percent in three opinion polls published in December.

The former communist country has made progress in some areas since the 1989 revolution that overthrew communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, but lags regional peers Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic and struggles to supply running water and reliable electricity to some of its 19 million people.

Long-term reforms such as privatizations and an overhaul of the health sector have failed to materialize, as the economy struggles to recover from a deep recession.

Romania's complicated electoral system - combining constituencies and proportional representation - favors large parties. The USL has benefited from disenchantment with Basescu and the previous government which pushed through unpopular austerity measures such as salary cuts and higher sales tax.

Less than half of the electorate is likely to vote, according to analysts, due to a deep dissatisfaction with Romania's political class that many voters view as corrupt.

"Romania's political class is all horrible," said Anton Popescu, who lives off a pension of 900 lei ($250) each month. "I have no hope for better times after the election, I just hope it won't be worse than it already is."

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Against backdrop of Harvard power outage, Obama and Romney power players discuss lessons of 2012 campaign

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – David Axelrod was poised to answer a question about Barack Obama’s power failure in the first presidential debate when the lights went out all over Harvard.

The electrical outage last Thursday afternoon provided odd punctuation to the campaign retrospective hosted by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, a quadrennial tradition dating back to 1972. In a combination of the show-must-go-on pluck, Washington-style earnestness and reverence for Harvard, the conference continued in the dark for half an hour before it came to a hasty conclusion with the power still out.

As stirring as it was to watch 9 senior Mitt Romney advisers and 7 top Obama insiders reminisce about the campaign at the same table, there were no blinding revelations from the two-day session. (The IOP had placed an embargo on the proceedings until Monday, when audio tapes of the gathering were released.)

The enduring value of the conference was how it illuminated some of the murkier aspects of Campaign 2012:

Paul Ryan: Matt Rhoades, Romney’s press-shy campaign manager, is not normally a colorful storyteller. But Rhoades described a full bro-mance between Romney and Ryan as the Republican presidential hopeful courted the Wisconsin congressman to be his running mate.

“It’s like talking to your buddy and he’s met a girl and he’s giddy,” Rhoades said of his conversations with Romney about Ryan.

In contrast, Beth Myers, who headed the vice-presidential search for Romney, confessed, “I didn’t know who is was going to be until he told me who it was going to be.”

Clint Eastwood: Under the original schedule, the 82-year-old Hollywood star was slated to deliver his public endorsement of Romney on the third night of the 4-night GOP convention. But Hurricane Isaac forced the Republicans to squeeze the gathering into 3 nights. That gave Eastwood a high-profile prime time spot on the convention’s final night, with memorable results.

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Eastwood had been expected to reprise an anti-Obama riff that he had used at private Republican fund-raisers. Before Eastwood went on stage in Tampa, Romney strategist Russ Schriefer double-checked whether that was indeed the script. “Yup,” said Eastwood, never hinting at the performance to come: an impromptu debate with an empty chair.

As Schriefer explained, conveying the powerlessness of campaign aides when confronted with mega-watt celebrity, “Clint Eastwood – are you going to argue with him?”

Romney Debate Prep: It may be the single most impressive (or exhausting) number of practice sessions in in the half-century history of presidential debates. According to Myers, Romney conducted 16 separate mock debates to get into shape to face Obama. As she put it, “He wanted this to be the Manhattan Project of our campaign.”

Romney Polling: Maybe it was fitting that the unexpected darkness at Harvard precluded an extended discussion of why Romney’s internal surveys were so much more upbeat than public polls – and reality. On Election Day, recalled Romney pollster Neil Newhouse, “I was cautiously optimistic.”

The Romney high command made clear that it never abandoned hope of winning Ohio. Their late forays into Pennsylvania (Romney even made an election-day stop in Pittsburgh) were based on a long-shot bid to win a state that does not encourage early voting and where they thought voters might be open to a last-minute appeal.

The Mormon Factor: Unless I somehow missed it, there was not a single reference during the conference to Romney’s religion. The guiding principle of American politics over the past quarter century in many ways has been – bet on tolerance.

Obama Polling: David Simas, Obama’s top polling analyst, said the president was never behind in the surveys conducted for his reelection campaign. Even though the Obama campaign used three separate polling firms (including one operation that conducted 9,000 telephone interviews on most nights), it concentrated solely on battleground states and ignored national surveys showing a close contest with Romney. Simas said Obama’s lead was almost always in the 2 to 4 percentage point rang in swing states.

Only once did Obama hold a larger advantage. That was during the mid-September period when a bounce from the successful Democratic convention and the unearthing of the inflammatory Romney “47 percent” video expanded Obama’s swing state lead to 6 points. As Simas explained, the major shift was among Republican-leaning independents and white males moving from the Romney camp to undecided. After Obama’s poor performance in the first debate, those voters came back to Romney.

Obama adviser Axelrod was withering in his disdain for media’s obsession with largely meaningless national polling trends. At one point Axelrod snapped, “Everything becomes a big horse-race story – and you guys don’t even know where the horses are.”

Obama’s Ground Game: It is easy to forget that in 2008 Twitter barely existed and Facebook was just entering its period of exponential growth. That is why – as Teddy Goff, the digital director of the president’s campaign explained – Obama this year had a much more potent organizational arsenal than in 2008.

Goff cited one example emblematic of larger truths.

The Obama campaign had cell phone or land-line numbers for only half the voters under 30 who had been targeted as likely supporters of the president. Normally, that would be a crippling problem since young voters are not likely to be home on weekends when Obama volunteers knocked on their doors. But because the Obama team asked its most loyal backers to send in their lists of Facebook friends, the campaign harnessed Facebook contact information on 85 percent of the younger voters they were targeting.

Obama’s Debate Preparation: Axelrod only partly answered the lights-out questions about the first debate (also known as the Debacle in Denver). The biggest issue, he suggested, was that all incumbent presidents have “a why-do-I-have-to-do-this” attitude about debate preparation.

Axelrod also wondered if the campaign had fed Obama too much material to absorb. “We had this inflated lead,” Axelrod joked, “and we wanted to erase it all in one night.”

But Obama was surprisingly slow to realize how devastating his first debate had been. (The Romney camp, by the way, was equally laggard in recognizing the full extent of the damage from the 47-percent tape.)

As Axelrod put it, “I don’t think the president knew it was as negative as it turned out to be.”

The entire Harvard conference was a reminder that, for all the media hype, there are no infallible geniuses in politics. All campaign strategists operate within the fog of politics – and, for the winners, the adroit moments tend to outweigh the obtuse setbacks.

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Lotto fever? Hey, let’s use it to fix the federal budget

So another mega-lottery has come and gone, another spate of news reports and long lines at convenience stores, the same inane question from reporters (“What are you going do with all the money?”), the same closing shots of reporters with their own tickets, promising the chuckling anchors that “with any luck, you won’t be seeing me Monday.”

Left unasked by the reporters is how much money those eager buyers would have had if they’d banked what they spent on lotteries over the years—thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in far too many cases—or whether the spread of state lotteries to 43 states has seen a steady rise in compulsive gambling. (It almost certainly has.)

Left largely unexplored is which states have broken their promises to use the net proceeds from a combined $56 billion in annual lottery ticket sales to increase spending on education, rather than treating the lottery as an apparently painless, voluntary tax in place of the more painful, involuntary variety.

You can (almost) forgive the press for its role as an enabler of the inevitably labeled “lotto fever.” There’s something about the prospect of a humongous sum of money that triggers an almost chemical loss of reason. The result is not simply dropping a few bucks for a ticket in exchange for a few days of fantasies, but waiting on line for an hour or more, and/or spending a painfully large chunk of a painfully small disposable income when the odds of winning are pretty much the same whether you play or not.

All this explains why Voltaire is supposed to have called the lottery “a tax on stupidity.”

And it’s why I’ve come up with an idea to use that stupidity to help solve the federal budget crisis. It’s an idea that taps into the public’s feral hunger for a shot at an immense amount of money, without in any way feeding the destructive aspects of government lotteries.

Here’s how it would work: Starting immediately, Congress and the president would agree to a Taxpayer Lottery. Everyone filing a tax return would be automatically eligible for a series of prizes that would start at $50 million, going up to a cool $1 billion—lump sum, and totally tax-free. There’d be no entry fee, no ticket to buy. If you’re one of the several hundred winners, you win—with one small catch! All winners would have their tax returns audited. (Since every taxpayer is theoretically subject to an audit, there’d be no “right” to exempt yourself from the lottery). If the audit found evidence of substantial tax evasion, you’d lose the prize.

What’s the point of this? The level of tax evasion in the U.S.—not legal avoidance, but illegal evasion—has grown to some $2 trillion a year, according to one recent study. That represents an annual loss to the federal government of $450 to $500 billion a year. My hunch is that the same irrational behavior that leads people to think it’s worth hours of their time and hundreds of their dollars to play a mega-lottery will lead them to be a lot more careful about reporting their real incomes when there’s a chance that evasion will cost them a fortune.

Even if a small percentage of chiselers decided to come clean, it could be worth tens of billions of dollars a year to Washington—with no administrative costs, no need to hire additional IRS agents, no burdensome trials. All that’s needed is that feral hunger for large sums of unearned cash, deeply embedded in human nature. (See, for example, Mark Twain’s "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg.")

Yes, such an idea would do little to persuade rich tax evaders to report their incomes honestly. (I’d want the government to take a portion of the Taxpayer Lottery proceeds to go after the well-heeled crooks, maybe even including some of those responsible for the financial meltdown of the late “aughts.”) But even the most ardent populist can’t rationally cheer the prospect of massive tax evasion, and, as Mitt Romney famously reminded us, a large segment of the population—what is that percentage?—pays no income tax at all.

An incentive like a Taxpayer Lottery, then, imposes no additional cost on citizens, other than a decision to do what the law requires, on the theory that the laws of probability will be magically suspended.

In all modesty, I believe that if this idea is adopted, I can just sit back and wait for the Nobel Economics Prize people to come calling. And by the way, that prize is completely tax-exempt.

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