GOP political consultant Alex Castellanos, a UNC-Chapel Hill grad,  was analyzing John McCain's debate performance on CNN Tuesday night, when he made a reference that most Carolina grads would get.

"You don't run the four corners offense you're behind," Castellanos said.

Four corners offense was a strategy developed by Coach Dean Smith at UNC in the early 1960s. It was essentially a way to slow down and hold the ball to run down the clock.

Barack Obama is running ads encouraging young voters to register.

The Democratic presidential candidate has a full-page ad in Wednesday's edition of The Independent, an alternative weekly based in Durham. He's run similar ads in The Daily Tar Heel, the student paper at UNC-Chapel Hill.

The ad shows an oil drop with wind turbines and plant designs inside. "I registered because the future won't run on oil. — Josie K." reads the headline. "Don't get mad. Get registered."

The ads are running with two weeks remaining before the Oct. 10 deadline for new voters to register. They coincide with tours by Obama surrogates on college campuses.

They are a further sign that the Obama campaign hopes to boost the turnout among young voters in North Carolina by a substantial margin this year. 

Thad Beyle says political nicknames can be an effective shorthand.

The UNC-Chapel Hill political science professor said recent ads targeting "Fibber Kay" Hagan and "Status Quo Bev" Perdue can help drive home a central message of their opposition.

"Voters remember those things, and it begins to work in their heads," he said.

On the other hand, he warned that a poorly worded nickname can backfire, making the opponent look mean-spirited and focused on petty issues.

"It could look like they're ducking things like the economy and the issues that make a difference for people out there," he said.

"Fibber Kay" and "Status Quo Bev."

Two top Democratic candidates this year have been given nicknames by their political opponents in negative ads.

Senate candidate Kay Hagan has been tarred "Fibber Kay" by Sen. Elizabeth Dole, while gubernatorial candidate Beverly Perdue went from "Negative Bev" in press releases from Pat McCrory to "Status Quo Bev" in a series of ads by the Republican Governors Association. 

So far, Dole and McCrory have not been similarly nicknamed, although the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has used "Liddy Dole" in two ads.

(The line — "That's not the Liddy Dole I knew" — is meant to imply familiarity and to give voters who may have supported her in the past some psychological cover to oppose her.) 

UNC-Chapel Hill professor Leroy Towns says he can't recall similar nicknames being used in the past, except for "Slick Willie" Clinton in Arkansas.

Prolific blogger Ed Cone, for his part, says the practice "reeks of campaign consultants." 

A century of North Carolina political campaigning is on display at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library.

From Sept. 15 to Jan. 31, the North Carolina Collection Gallery will host “Soapboxes and Tree Stumps: Political Campaigning in North Carolina,” a 250-piece exhibit that examines the period from 1890 to 1990.

On Sept. 25, the free public program “Vote for Me: Campaign Buttons to Town Square Rallies” will feature speakers Lew Powell, forum editor for The Charlotte Observer and Rob Christensen, chief political writer at The News & Observer and author of “The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics.” A reception and exhibit tour starts at 5 p.m., with the program following at 5:45 p.m.

The exhibit includes campaign buttons, ribbons, posters and historic photographs. The gallery is open 9 a.m to 5 p.m weekdays; 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays; and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays.

Bill Bradley will talk up Barack Obama today.

The former New Jersey senator and pro basketball player will speak at the UNC-Chapel Hill student union at 2:30 p.m. today.

He is one of the first major surrogates to appear in North Carolina during the general election season, although Obama had a roster of notable politicians speak on his behalf during the run-up to the May primary. 

Bradley's trip was not entirely for campaign purposes, however.

He is in town to speak on Russia and the Georgian conflict at N.C. State's Stewart Theatre at 6 p.m. The speech is free and open to the public.

He will kick off the college's Millennium Seminar Series, which is run by First Lady Mary Easley.

The U.S. Census Bureau does not define the Southeast.

Still, it does define the "East South Central" and "South Atlantic" regions.

The "East South Central" region includes Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. The "South Atlantic" includes Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C.

That means that the Census Bureau roughly endorses the division of Southeast and Southwest using the Mississippi River, but it uses the older, outmoded definition of the South using the Mason-Dixon line below Pennsylvania.

Other than Johnny Cash, few people consider Maryland, Delaware and D.C. to be Southern.

Retired UNC-Chapel Hill professor John Shelton Reed said the Census Bureau periodically considers cutting Maryland and Delaware out of its Southern classification, but it has so far ended up sticking with it simply because that's how it's always been done.

Is the "Southeast" a Yankee creation?

In a noted essay in the Charlotte Observer in the early 1980s, editor Lew Powell suggested that the use of the term "Southeastern" was an attempt by Northern transplants to re-identify their new surroundings.

Now retired UNC-Chapel Hill professor John Shelton Reed responded to the article in a piece (under the pseudonym J.R. Vanover) for Southern Partisan magazine that attacked the term as a historical dodge (quoted here):

... I am afraid that, increasingly, Southeast is not being used to designate a part of the South, the eastern counterpart of the Southwest. Rather it refers to a major region of the United States — a counterpart to, say, the Northeast. There is a disturbing tendency in these parts to say and to write and even, God help us, to think Southeastern, where formerly we would have said and written and thought Southern.

In a scholarly paper in 1990, Reed and two co-authors found that use of the terms "the South" and "Dixie" had dropped in city phone books over the past two decades.

John Shelton Reed says the Southeast is a concept, not a region.

The retired UNC-Chapel Hill sociology professor said that the Southeastern United States is a loosely defined "post-historical region" centered around Atlanta.

"It's an economy; it's not a culture," he said. "You talk about Southern music and Southern cooking and Southern women. You don't talk about Southeastern music and cooking and women."

As a general rule, Reed said the boundaries do not necessarily follow state borders, but he would use the Mississippi River as the dividing line between the Southeast and the Southwest and the usual borders between the North and South.

That would include: Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

It would leave out Arkansas and Louisiana. He said West Virginia would be a borderline case.

"These boundaries are kind of indistinct," he said. "You don't cross a border, you sort of move into it gradually."

Hat Tip: awbeal 

The UNC think tank that once provided John Edwards a platform to discuss poverty issues is not counting on the former Senator and two-time presidential candidate to return to the fold.

The University of North Carolina Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity was launched in 2005, and Edwards served as its director until he resigned at the end of 2006 to launch his second run at the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, Lorenzo Perez reports.

Edwards' disclosure Friday to ABC's "Nightline" that he had an affair with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter has had no impact on contributions or grants to the nonpartisan center, said Katie Bowler, assistant dean for communications for UNC’s law school.

Edwards has not had a role at the Chapel Hill center since since he left it in 2006, Bowler said.

"He continues to support the ideals of the center, but there’s no expectation that he will be returning," Bowler said.