12. Cass Sunstein will wield an inexplicable amount of influence on global politics.

2. Press conferences will become more interesting as world leaders use the Socratic style, answering questions with questions or phrases such as “let’s unpack that”, refusing to let reporters who “haven’t done the reading” off the hook, and generally revealing in excruciating fashion the general ignorance of the media about the topics on which they report.

3. As a result of (2), they’ll get poor media coverage and become unpopular.

4. Speechwriters will have to learn phrases like “disaggregating the paradox of robustness.”

http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2007/08/disaggregating-.html

5. Countries will learn some tough lessons when its leaders approach diplomacy with other countries the way professors approach expedited review with law reviews.

6. When a cabinet member goes down in a scandal, the President’s comments to the press that he was “widely cited” will not be well received.

7. When one country gives another country an ultimatum/deadline to stop nuclear testing or admit inspectors, no one will think it’s a “real” deadline.

8. Elections will change–once the leader of a country has stayed in office for 6 years, the voters will not be asked to decide whether to retain him or not–they’ll have to take their own initiative, and it’ll be difficult.

9. Legislators will frequently try to hold “visiting” posts in the legislatures of more prestigious countries.

10. US News will inadvertently hasten its own demise when it starts ranking countries based on a series of arbitrary and law professors, suddenly armed with the force of the state, will bomb it into oblivion.

I think the key change is that various important publications, such as the census, Economic Indicators, and environmental impact reports, will be handled by 18- and 19-year-olds majoring in appropriate fields of study (here, that’d be perhaps sociology, economics, and environmental science).

Medvedev: 60% essay; 40% multiple choice.