The Selling Point of Our Lives

It's been said that you can sell a President to the American public, much like you do a box of Kix. This sounds so cynical, very few people want to believe it. Yet poll after poll shows that many Americans spend little time actually deciding who to vote for, why, and for what reason.

PBS' Frontline recently interviewed the man who knows how to get the data that campaigns use to help sell their candidates. Frank Lutz is quite candid in his assessment of how and why Americans select their candidates. Consider the following:

We [the voters] decide based on how people look; we decide based on how people sound; we decide based on how people are dressed. We decide based on their passion. If I respond to you quietly, the viewer at home is going to have a different reaction than if I respond to you with emotion and with passion and I wave my arms around. Somebody like this is an intellectual; somebody like this is a freak. But that's how we make up our minds. Look, this is about the real-life decisions of real-life Americans, who to vote for, what to buy, what to agree with, what to think, how to act. This is the way it is.

Remember, this guy wouldn't be the most successful campaign consultant in Washington today if he didn't produce results. Whether you beleive he is right or wrong, whether you want to believe him, the winning results are incontestable.