Choices, Choices...

Living by the Numbers

It was only minutes ago that Barack Obama was far enough ahead in the polls to take some time off during the first debate.  The latest polls post-debate reveal that the same people who were not only planning to vote for the President but who considered him such things as more in touch, more likable, more human, etc., have now all swung Romney's way.  I understand the race is not over by any means, and I have not begun to check out the polling numbers for individual states (although I see that Romney is leading the President 49& to 48% in Ohio).  Tomorrow, the VP debate could have some impact on the polls.  And who knows what will transpire after the next two presidential debates.

This only suggests that the American public is as fickle as we would expect any group of people to be.  I always like to give as example the monumental switch in Jesus' favorability rating from Palm Sunday to Good Friday six days later.  There was less than a week between Hosanna and Crucify.  Jesus' mission was a heavenly one.  The President, unfortunately, needs the public to go fickle again.  This is not so easy, although if I were Romney, I would not get too overjoyed-- the public giveth and the public taketh away.

How can this turn be explained?  

Not a whole lot of room for information or thinking about it

The main reason is that the American public is now a well-seasoned group of consumers.  Every time a purchase is made or an Internet site is searched, info is collected to assess that person's wants and desires, i.e. the product that would satisfy his or her wants and desires.  And the public has bought in.  We want to be pleased.  We want toys.  We want fast.  We want things that elicit a "Wow!" from friends and an envious grimace from enemies.  We have had Barack Obama for four years;  in consumerville that is an unbelievably long time.  We upgrade computers after around four or five years; we get the latest phone ever year or less; we change out conventional Starbucks morning beverage every month.  Because of the unlimited variety of products to switch to, we will never be lacking in the ability to buy something new and different.  

Obama knew as much when his entire first campaign was run under the heading of CHANGE.  McCain was old, and not the good antique old that you would love to display in a position of prominence in your home.  He was the second hand yard sale kind for which you pay next to nothing out of sympathy for the seller.

Mommy, do we have to get the black one again?

And perhaps even I could feel that the public wanted to get on the Romney band wagon, straining at the proverbial bits.  When the product was first introduced, however, it did not have that something human or at least humanoid that consumers wanted.  At the debate, they got two hours of human behavior out of Romney, plenty to discard any negative opinions they had held before.  This time the Romney company was out to demonstrate just how human and normal human their product could be-- they were not worried about what the product had said or done in the past.  They knew that consumers do not care about the past; it's now they want.  The fact that the product that appeared on the debate stage looked like Romney, but did not think or speak like Romney was inconsequential.  It was that moment that mattered.  Here  was a product available for just one free vote that would not give a tax break to the wealthy, had no idea of any tax incentive for moving businesses overseas, was so in favor of federal regulation of business that he would crack down on anyone who opened up a bank in his or her garage; someone who told us we were all created by the same God and that without the government we were adult enough to eliminate the plight of those were were less fortunate; and that since we were no longer children but adults, we should not be embarrassed to give the smack down to Big Bird.  

I don't care if you do win; I'm gonna
stick this sunflower so far up your...

The rest of us were left scratching our heads that someone had the ability to lie so comprehensively and without mitigation in so public a forum.  We were shouting to our televisions, "What about what you said before..."  And even as we are thinking that his words might come back to haunt him, we are now shaking our heads today at the new polling numbers.

It should also be noted that many of our white consumers (men and women) really wanted to exchange this black product for a whiter one.  Contrary to what they thought, it just didn't go with their typical lifestyle.  Of course, many of these feel good about themselves for giving the black product a chance to begin with.  The results were good but nowhere near the kind of miraculous that would have been necessary not to trade him in.  Of course these consumers experienced some initial hesitancy because the white product only came in Mormon and they wanted the Christian version they were used to.  But now that the debates have given them reason to believe that the Mormon white will work just as well as the Christian white, they are ready to vote.  Just give us the white-- and if you don't have Mormon, give us the Catholic instead...same difference.  

Mitt looks so much better to us now!

Of interest is of course what we will all of us get with this white product.  No matter what the labels currently say, there is one thing you can count on-- no new ideas.  We will have four years in which supply side economics will fail once again to get the country out of a deficit and back to work, not to mention ever getting buying power up or anywhere close to where our take home wages can buy us more goods than they did decades ago.  

Get it now! Get it often!

Democracy has been influenced so much by the innovations in technology and the emergence of the quickly gratified consumer that it probably does not work as well as it did when real information had to be obtained with effort-- getting a newspaper, buying a journal, going to hear a candidate speak in public, getting involved in campaigns, reading a newspaper or a journal.  Too much comes in too easily.  And so I find myself thinking-- regardless of who ends up being the product of choice-- that the only thing that saves us from real revolutionary change is the mollification of the masses with enough gimmicks that leave most people so mentally soporific that they could care less about the details and with those instant tests of a product's morality (moral if the tester turns red; red if pro choice and anti gay marriage) that allow people to feel good and confident about their choices.  

One of the greatest thinkers and writers of all time is also one who is barely read anymore-- Thomas Carlyle.  Although he was good friends with John Stuart Mill, he was adamantly against Mill's philosophy of rule by the people.  Carlyle pronounced that democracy was despair.  I was so upset with Mr. Carlyle when I first read him as an undergraduate:  he was so right it seemed about everything else.  But is he really wrong?  

Even now voters are voting not to retain judges in Iowa and Florida not because of incompetence (for which the election process was designed) but because they are activist, i.e. not willing to uphold conservative standards of behavior.  Do people really have the ability to choose something as important as political leaders-- probably not.  Not only that, the choices we end up having to make are probably far     worse than ever.  I still believe in democracy:  it's better than the alternatives.   


In the end, no one should put many eggs in their political basket.  Save most of them for those things that nourish your spirit and your mind, and you will find that you will not have to depend on the ignorance and uncertainly of anyone else.  You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.  Even if you are the only one.