We need a mob mentality index. We as a society need a way to measure the many factors that contribute to irrational groupthink, aka mob mentality. If we knew that and watched those numbers, we could at any given time predict the percentage of voters who will vote Republican.
Think about it. Bush took off as a president only after a horribly bloody tragedy, the kind of event that makes humans much less rational and much more prone to violence. His reelection strategy involves invoking this incident as often as possible, and tying it to his other actions in as many ways as possible.
In other words, his strategy is not to offer a rational explanation for his actions. Quite the contrary. His strategy is to cripple our reasoning, to blind us to logic and complex thoughts. His strategy is to hide his actions behind a tragedy that tends to make people abandon reason in favor of more primitive instincts, notably violence and impulsiveness.
Perhaps pollsters could measure the emotional weight of various events (911 would be at the top of the list for this election.) The more weight they hold, the more they will influence the election in favor of the candidate who wields them.
For this election, this allows Bush to obfuscate any logic that Kerry might offer by attacking that logic with rythmic or otherwise instinctively appealing rhetoric. Think "Flip-flop." As long as the flip-flop charge works, Bush can use it to trump any Kerry argument with a much simpler and much more emotionally satisfying response. Not only is Kerry's argument ignored, his character is damaged with each repitition.
And, by lumping the war in Iraq in with the "War on Terror" Bush can cover any mistake as a mistake made in pursuit of a noble (and emotionally weighted) endeavor.
Kerry's only hope is that the emotional impact of 911 is wearing or will wear thin among undecided voters, or that one or more of Bush's actions will make it obvious (even to the logic-impaired) that he is exploiting our national tragedy.
