The Curious Mind of the American Voter

Politics is an odd activity, filled with useless crusades for moral and physical control we never seem to realize last no longer than our time spent on the campaign. The winners are few and the losers are numerous. Unfortunately, the losers tend to be the voters and participants in this game; so many mistake America for a democracy, which, in fact, it is not. God help us if our system of government ever changes to fit that misconception.

The rules of the game are simple for the voter, but for the strategist and politician, it can be a nightmare. This is particularly true in America because even though a political landscape is always bound to shift, in the U.S. it doesn’t happen every couple of decades; it likes to go through this evolutionary process during the course of a single presidency. It only took four years of Hoover to launch the Democrats on their path to stardom. It only took four years of Carter to give birth to a new conservatism. It only took four years of Adams to murder conventional federalism. And, perhaps most impactful, it only took eight years of Obama to completely reshape the Republican Party.