Afterglow

I have thrown the last of the glossy full-color political "literature" into the recycle bin, and my telephone has been relatively silent for the last week, no longer bedeviled by pollsters and robots.  It was an exciting season here in Rhode Island, where we rarely get any national attention for our political races.  We're all sorry to have given Linc the heave-ho.  He's a nice guy, and we really needed the seniority to offset our tiny representation in Washington (why do you think we kept Pell in for so damn long?), but something had to be done, and by golly we did it.

It's been fun to read all the post-election analyses and commentary.  Some of it has been ludicrous, some of it thoughtful, some of it triumphant.  I especially enjoyed The Onion's story about how outraged the Republicans were to learn that the Democrats were deliberately trying to persuade people to vote against Republicans.

I did notice a feeling among Democrats that this was a collective return to our senses, that people had had enough, and that they finally were able to see through the Republican spin machine.  I would like to have that feeling, too, but something doesn't ring true about it.  The Republicans have been awfully successful at marketing themselves, coldly and efficiently, and I don't believe that people all of a sudden developed a resistance to that marketing.

It's a common and well-known conceit that each of us thinks of himself as resistant to or unaffected by marketing.  There are even specific marketing techniques that work by taking advantage of this conceit.  Marketing is a science, and it builds on research.  And we have all been willing participants in that research, largely by devoting our time to watching television and then running out to buy stuff.  Believe me, the marketers have us down cold.  We're not that complicated.

So when I read a post by Billmon well before the election, explaining why he thought the Republicans might lose this one, I caught a whiff of truthfulness in what could be taken for an air of cynicism:

The Rovians have always acted as if constant, mind-numbing repetition was an absolute virtue - the key to drowning out any competing message.  But the problem is that this gets really BORING after awhile.  And thanks to the invention of the remote control, modern TV is all about changing the channel as soon as the flickering images fail to entertain.

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There are two things you can do when a series goes stale:  You can shake things up with new characters and new situations, or you can accept that your appeal is now limited to a gradually shrinking core audience and focus your scripts on delivering what diehard fans really want.

The Republicans may have misplayed an important marketing strategy - keeping your brand fresh.  It's true that the Bush brand has been static for five years.  Staying the course is consistent with the reliable, steadfast, righteous cowboy character Bush has been playing.  And maybe we did get bored, or annoyed, and simply switched channels.  Was this the victory of one marketing team over another?  Is it cynical or is it realistic to think this way?  Possibly both.  Still, I'm enjoying the afterglow, like when the Red Sox finally won the World Series.

BC