Picking A President

After nearly a year of supposed debates formatted like low grade television quiz shows, moderated by talking-heads asking inane and pointlessly irrelevant gotcha questions targeting the minutia of personal histories; dutifully followed by an army of pollsters, who daily report their statistical finding like variations in the weather, we are finally approaching a point of alleged decision-making in the winnowing process of selecting the presidential candidates who will compete for the presidency of the United States in a general election to be held in November of 2008.

The first narrowing of the field will result from a series of coffee klatches held by the matrons and patriots of Iowa. Shortly following these conclaves the minions of the maple syrup belt, the live free or die bunch; New Hampshire, will be polled and report their collective wisdom as to which two of the various political marathoners would, in their inspired judgment, best lead the country.

What is seldom discussed is that these two states will have seven and four electoral votes respectively to cast in the general election which requires the winner to aggregate at least 270 electoral votes out of a possible 538.

Just why these two venues have a primacy in the selective process has never been made clear; nevertheless, the coverage of the approach to these events has been broadcasted daily by the media, overwhelming virtually all other news of significance, and dissected by the pundits with excruciating repetitiveness.

A change in the daily fortunes of the candidates as reflected by a change of a point or two in the polling is seized upon as if a cataclysmic event had occurred.

All of this has blunted my ability to evidence any continued interest in the process. I am reminded that in the field of neurology there are studies of a phenomena various called sensory adaptation or tactile adaptation, a process whereby the nervous system begins to pay progressively less attention to a nerve being stimulated if the stimulation is excessively prolonged. Might this be a fair analogy of what's wrong with our presidential primary process and do we really need campaigns which last for two years ?

Randy Ludacer
Lake Placid