With all the weighty talk these days of troop levels, economic stimulus and health care reform, it is slightly surreal to recall a time not long ago when super delegates and Ohio plumbers dominated the headlines.

Yet as former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe illustrates in his new book The Audacity to Win, the 2008 presidential race left a deep imprint on American politics that won’t soon be forgotten. So with Obama’s stirring election victory in the rearview, we th0ught it would be fun to test your memory of the historic campaign. Take a shot at our brief quiz based on Plouffe’s new book to see how much you recall.

[Posted by Elena Sytcheva]

The buzz today is that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is thinking of retiring at the end of the court’s current term — as good an excuse as any to ask: How well do you  know the Supreme Court and the nine justices who decide the law of the land? Take this quiz and find out. (The answers are adapted from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin.)

1. Who was the architect behind the design of One First Street?

2. Which recent Supreme Court justice had neither a cell phone nor a television?

3. Which Supreme Court justice has a passion for international travel?

4. Which former Supreme Court justices had the closest friendships?

5. Who is the only Supreme Court justice appointed by Gerald R. Ford?

6. Which former Supreme Court justice demanded her law clerks replicate her style of living, even for the holidays?

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Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell is a sharp and entertaining examination of the economic, political, and psychic cost of our mania for low price. We’ll be posting on it throughout the week. Meanwhile, here’s a mini-quiz: can you put a name to the quotes listed here (they’re taken from the book)? Answers below.

1. “I do not prize the word “cheap.” It is not a badge of honor.”

2. “If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.”

3. “Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure—attractively packaged but inferior in content.”

4. “We must have cheap labor or we cannot sell cheap goods. When a clerk gets so good she can earn better wages elsewhere, let her go.”

5. “Cheap Merchandise means cheap men, and cheap men mean a cheap country, and that is not the kind of Government our fathers founded, and that is not the kind their sons mean to maintain.”

6. “Having a sale every day is a bad idea, but retailers are afraid to stop.”

7. “Despite his resolute belief in progress, des Pereires had always detested standardization…From the very start he was bitterly opposed to it…He foresaw that the death of craftsmanship would inevitably shrink the human personality.”

8. “No One Will Bother You.”

9. “I’m not convinced you’re going to have the same immediate desire to go back to consumption and debt. A lot of young people have learned what it’s like when you’re living on the edge and bad times come. Their appetite is now towards more about living things differently.”

10. “I’m going to eat too much, but I’m never going to pay too much.”

11. “Look, I know that Americans have a hard time accepting that sweatshops can help people.”

12. “A cheap price is a shortcut to being cheated.”

13. “The frugal man has the advantage over the man of pleasure in facilities for self-improvement, for doing his duty to his country, and for securing general happiness.”
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