By Stillman Brown
My areas of expertise are thin, scraggly, and can’t support much more than weeds. This week I find myself drawn towards a subject about which I am singularly unqualified to pontificate upon: politics. I’ve been eating and farting politics for the past month, and besides girls, it’s all I want to talk about. I’m saturated. I have to squeeze out some commentary.
I am an emotional voter. This is not to say I don’t educate myself about the issues and the candidates. I listen, evaluate, weigh, and research (casually). I read the news like it’s donuts and I’m a cop. I frown thoughtfully. But when it comes down to decision time, I have to go with the person who best expresses my worldview, and who wants the same things I want. Put another way, I vote for whoever feels right.
Some may ridicule me for voting emotionally. That’s ok. I will direct them to another area of my expertise: the study of cognitive bias in voting behavior. I’m pretty sure there are studies showing that most people make choices this way. Who we vote for isn’t so much a product of meticulous research and economic consideration, but an overall sense that they represent us, are like us, see the world in a similar way. It’s an imperfect calculus based on subjective measurements of the gut, and like John Cusak says in High Fidelity, “I’ve been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I’ve come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.”
Meditators have a special tool in all this. Investigative practice can get down to the root emotion behind a supposedly intellectual choice. I can say, “Obama has really good ideas about education,” but I’m not drawn to him for that reason. I like him because he’s centered, because he did community activism work in Chicago, and because he’s visibly comfortable in his own skin. He doesn’t wear Fake like a power tie (which makes him the anti-Romney). This, of course, is just my opinion, unscientific and gut-derived. I take some consolation, however, in knowing that my preference is instinctive and only partially informed by fact.
For a lot of people voting is private, like underwear choice. I’ve found it can be like the men’s room: no talking, no eye contact, all business. In 2004, I asked my friend Andy who he voted for and he was offended. “It’s private,” he said tersely, and that was the end of it. I’ve since been told it’s not polite to ask people who they voted for, which, I suppose, is related to the old social rule against talking about politics at the dinner table. My Expert’s instinct tells me something other than the avoidance of a faux pas is at work here. Was this benign social rule created because political preference exposes our core, or somehow opens up an otherwise private vulnerability? For example, I find many tenants of the modern conservative movement repellent, so I can understand why a close friend, knowing this about me, wouldn’t want to tell me he voted for Bush twice.
Whatever happens on Tsunami Super Holy Shit Tuesday, or in the general election, I’ve made my choice. Does it bother me that, on some level, my decision is like a kid with his nose against the window of a toy store (“I want the blue one!”)? No. It doesn’t. I just hope he wins.
Update: Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama in the New York Times editorial page speaks to the powerful but nebulous sense of excitement I get about him. She says it instead of circling around it!
Update 2: Props to Dorothy for this article by David Brooks that supports my expertise.
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