fast forward to early 2012, i think january 2012, but i think when richard skinner retired, that the deputy ig became the acting inspector general. that would have been back in march of 2011. and continued as acting ig after rosalynn maizer's name was wrawp. withdrawn. and continued as acting ig until, i think, early -- i would say earlier that year. it became apparent that you can't be the acting ig for more than i want to say a couple, 210 days. after about 210 days, the president could have named somebody else, did not, and so he was, by virtue of being deputy ig, remained the person in charge of the agency. now, so all that transpired between march 2011 and we'll say the beginning of last summer, summer of 2013. by that point in time, we'd been more than two years without a senate-confirmed ig. and the white house vetted an unknown individual for the nomination, and that vetting process went forward, and the president was prepared to submit that name. and just before submitting it, the nominee and his or her family decided they weren't going to move from california to washington

i have a couple of papers i did with david dooley on richard skinner in which we tried to look at this in terms of campaign finance networks and found basically the parties are very skilled at co-opting these 527's, which were very much part of the party networks it very much on board with what they were doing and helped them get around some other campaign- finance rules. the parties are very adept at this sort of thing. adapting to new rules, into campaign-finance regimes, and remaining as relevant as ever, if not more so. >> in ohio on tuesday, we had roughly 25% turnout in general election -- granted, it was local races, but 25% turnout increasingly says people are not tuned in, not paying attention. so the parties may be very adept at adapting within that structure, but it seems like a lot of other folks are outside that structure. anybody can jump in. >> it's an odd number year. you're lucky to get 25%. that's great. >> ok. other folks, we have microphones. >> this is for wayne. if you would apply your analysis to 2012 for us, was romney the presumptive nominee based upon your sta