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Reader question: Please explain “catbird seat”, as in this sentence: He’s the swing voter and sits in the catbird seat. My comments: First of all, he’s “the swing voter” means that his vote swings the election, one way or the other. That means his vote counts, may decide who wins the election and therefore is important to both candidates. Hence, that put this person “in the catbird seat”, i.e. an advantageous position – both candidates covet his vote and therefore would try to please him. And so, catbird seat equals advantage, but allow me to explain. Just the other day, I saw this subtitle from the New Yorker online: House Republicans’ bungling of the payroll tax put the President in the catbird seat... (Obama’s Christmas Present, by John Cassidy, December 22, 2011). That means, by the way, that Republicans messing up things only benefits the Democrats in general and in particular President Barack Obama, who’s running for re-election (hence the Christmas present analogy). Anyways, this New Yorker line is relevant because “Catbird seat” is coined by the New Yorker’s long time cartoonist and humor writer James Thurber (1894-1961), who used the expression, and explained it, in an article of the very same title The Catbird Seat (The New Yorker, Nov. 14, 1942): Mr. Martin bought the pack of Camels on Monday night in the most crowded cigar store on Broadway. It was theatre time and seven or eight men were buying cigarettes. The clerk didn’t even glance at Mr. Martin, who put the pack in his overcoat pocket and went out. If any of the staff at F & S had seen him buy the cigarettes, they would have been astonished, for it was generally known that Mr. Martin did not smoke, and never had. No one saw him. | 
