ELECTION OBSESSION

Rudolph Giuliani is ahead of Hillary Clinton in every poll listed by ReaClearPolitics.com, as of 2-21-07, but the real question is why any of us should be this worked up about the election which is still almost two years away.
Peggy Noonan, of the Wall Street Journal, is always thoughtful, whether you agree with her views or not. And in a recent editorial, she pondered the subject, quite eloquently.
According to Noonan, in her 2-16 opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal section: "Part of the reason is structural: A technological revolution spawned a media revolution; new media is determined to win the day, old media is desperate to keep up. Large investments are at stake. Competition forces its own dynamism; everyone's filing, live, on cable, on the Internet, from Manchester, N.H., or Ames, Iowa. The chatter is everywhere."
In other words, we're inundated with data, opinions, facts, figures, and sound bytes from the time we wake up until we go to sleep. And in some cases, this stuff seems to weave its way into our dreams.
But, according to Noonan, there is a bit more to it than just the fact that we're exposed to media lunacy.
Now, it gets interesting. Noonan thinks that we're losing touch with reality, noting that you can't find any innocent people on T.V. to interview any more. Everyone seems to speak "in perfect sound bites," and to "cry on cue."
Stick with me here. Noonan's early conclusion is dismay because "it's another stepping away from the real. Artifice detaches us even from ourselves."
Noonan then writes that during a conversation with a minister, the holy man quoted a spiritual genius as saying: '"All the problems in the world are caused by man's inability to sit quietly in a room by himself."'
She then works her case further by noting that we are all becoming media fanatics because the media has fooled us into losing ourselves in the midst of the distractions that surround us, while taking us away from what's really important. We want the distraction "not because it's crucial but because it distracts us from the crucial. It takes our minds away from what is most important. Who you are, for instance, or what we are about. It's a great relief not to think about the important. It's a relief to focus on factoids."
So what does this have to do with the election? According to Noonan, it's all that's left to us. "By obsessing on the presidential race--and I mean here not only journalists and editors and professional schmoozers but normal humans--by turning our attention to the contests for the nomination and focusing on it and pondering how our neighbors experience Edwards or McCain, we help convince ourselves that the next guy can solve it all. The next president will save us. That's why it's so important, because the next president will turn it all around. We like thinking this. And I don't blame us. I like thinking it too. Even though I know it isn't true. Because our next president will not have magical powers."