In the Booth

We all thought we were very smart, but it happened very slowly, and we didn't notice until it was so far underway that there was nothing to do but to participate. Or maybe none of us was very smart and it happened more quickly and thoroughly than anything like it ought to happen. Whichever way, it seemed at first like the full flowering of democracy. We had friends who complained about the length, duration, and expense of campaigns, but after a long interval of apparent apathy, wasn't it commendable--shouldn't we have been congratulating ourselves?--that this process had once again captured the popular imagination? People were excited again. People felt that they were beginning to crack through the barriers and barbed wire (metaphorical, of course!) set up by the gatekeepers to power.

We didn't notice how attenuated it had all become. The preliminary contests began at earlier and earlier dates, and we cavilled about it a little, feeling that it violated some ineffable rule of common sense, but we were made complacent by the daily tick of results and polls. It seemed that every day some state was selecting someone. Then, while we were distracted by who was up and who was down, a few of us began to feel that the contests themselves were multiplying. How many states were there? Didn't that one vote already? We were distracted. It was difficult to be sure. Sometimes a prior contest was tinged or tainted by an obscure violation of an abstruse rule and had to be done over. Sometimes the results of a later contest overturned the decision of a preceding one.

Someone was always in the lead, or someone was always coming from behind, or someone was dropping out, or someone was throwing his hat into the ring. The results of one election determined who would carry momentum into the next election, and we expected that we would go to the polls and confirm the frontrunner, except when we surprised ourselves and someone surged out of the field. Then we confirmed the strength of the comeback, or we confirmed that the comeback was ephemeral. We weren't quite certain when it happened, but somehow we forgot when was the last time anyone won. All the old calendars were recalibrated to the pace and preponderance of campaigns, and the schedules of campaigns were calibrated to other campaigns, and somehow, somewhere along the way we forgot what year it was or what season, what the election was for or why anyone was running. At some point, we thought it had become mandatory to participate in the process. We couldn't be sure, but we felt it was probably safer to show up. Somehow the rate of participation always increased, and somehow the importance of each vote was greater than the last. When was the last time anyone went to work, or ate other than a boxed lunch? We are all pretty sure that someone is still in charge, but we aren't quite sure of what.