"Political March Madness": Enlightening and Maddening

Marty Kaplan is the first pundit to point out at length the nonsense of today's mainstream (or rather "mainscream") media, which covers every flip, flap, and flop of presidential contenders.

It is disturbing how media influences polls, how polls then influence voters, yet voters still do not settle for one candidate. Do we really want our government being decided by the opimnions logged on Facebook or fired off on Twitter?

These sound bites are certainly biting away at our political discourse. I still cannot believe that ABC political correspondent Jake Taper would press Congressman Ron Paul about slanderous allegations connecting him to a long-gone newspaper about 9-11 conspiracy theories. It was the mainstream media that kept former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman's campaign alive. All of these GOP debates -- nothing but extended press releases littered with talking points. Who needs this madness? I cannot be bothered to watch political candidates rehash and rehearse the same lines over and over again. No matter how much Mitt Romney dresses up his resume, he will always be perceived as a Massachusetts flip-flop moderate, and anathema to vast majority of GOP voters. No amount of spin can clear up the uncanny character of a politician who changes his views to win votes.

Indeed, human beings love narratives, and with the expansive amount of technology making up-to-the-minute story-telling even more minute (and ultimately secondary), it is no wonder that the attention spans of many voters hinges and switches so capriciously.

I do see a silver lining to the stormy clouds of political discourse crowding our future election years. Republican strategist Matthew Dowd has pointed out that Super-Cap advertising has whittled down the effect of campaign ads. As the narrative shifts ever so quickly and arbitrarily, individual political hucksters and pundits will forgo the up-to-date follow-up from the mainstream outlets. We will have no choice but to analyze issues for ourselves, for the multiplicity of information will be too daunting for us to accept passively.