Election Day Musings

A few nights ago, we watched The Candidate, a movie made in 1972 with Robert Redford, about a guy who gets into politics for the right reasons, only to be overtaken by a phalanx of pollsters, media men and pundits.  What was remarkable about the movie was how fresh it seemed.  Apart from a few misplaced sideburns (and the complete absence of cellphones)  - the issues were the same, the soundbites were the same and the sorry smear tactics were - you guessed it - the same.

And on this midterm election day, you have to ask yourself, as the New York Times article did recently, Would You Run? 

At the federal level at least, it's not a very appealing proposition.  Let's face it, politicians usually place high on lists of top ten most despised professions.  Campaigning today involves massive fund raising, taking extreme partisan positions on any issue of importance ("to motivate the base") and digging up as much dirt on your opponent as you can feasibly find so that you can run attack ads aimed at destroying his or her credibility. 

Any candidate worth their salt will have a real desire to fix something very broken in our society (currently, the entire city of Washington DC is apparently deeply fractured, causing long time insiders to campaign on a platform of change).

Yet the reality is, of course, that most Congressmen and women have little or no opportunity, individually, to change much at all.  Instead, they must work collaboratively  - often across the aisle - to achieve any legislation.  Which results in legislative compromise, creating voter disgust, contributing to a whole new wave of candidates who think that they have the answers, and could do a better job.

Perhaps, given this merry-go-round of disillusionment it is not surprising that getting out the vote is such hard work.  Midterm elections typically produce a turnout of less than 40% of the voting age population.  It will be interesting to see if this one is any different. 

But the pollsters and media men and pundits are getting cleverer at manipulating those figures.  Over the weekend, I read a fascinating piece in the Times' Sunday Magazine, about how applying peer pressure can influence turnout.   And today, in the social laboratory that is Facebook, I am seeing it happening in realtime, as an online meter ticks up every time another Facebooker clicks to say that they voted.  The current tally is close to 6.5 million, and it is mesmerizing to watch how fast it is increasing.  

Whatever happens tonight, the political landscape will change.  It could be the carnage that The Onion predicts, or it could be the more measured outcome suggested by Five Thirty Eight.  Either way, by the time many of you are reading this, there will be some new sheriffs in town.

Let's hope that they have a better strategy for politics than going in with all their guns blazing.