I usually write about hockey, but I’d like to touch upon an almost equally vicious contest: politics.

There is an idea that I hold as empirical fact:

People buy what they are sold.

Admittedly, we are a consumer driven society. Along with occasionally stumbling on a real value, we are almost all guilty of being sold a bill of goods at one time or another. It therefore only follows that we would become a bit jaded and eventually, given enough failures, apathetic about our ability to make the right choice. Perhaps some of us could even be accused of completely abdicating our responsibility when it comes to making a purchase. At some point we may even give up on exerting any effort to make the right choice and simply allow the most trivial reasons to direct our selection. In other words, we might decide that because we had failed so many times to make the right choice that the only thing we can control is how we feel about our choice and that factor alone should govern and subsequently justify, if necessary, our decision.

And then we are confronted with "the most important election of our lives".

The primaries for the nation’s registered Democrats presented the novel choices of voting for the "first woman" or "first African-American". Indicative perhaps of the fact that votes were cast based on these less than well-reasoned criteria, the emotions ran so high that many speculated as to the degree of discord at their national convention, "Can the loser rally her voting block and salvage the splintered parts for the good of the whole?"

As November 4^th draws near, Davis Entertainment, producers of a string of Eddie Murphy films among others, is enjoying a limited success of their film, The Express: The Ernie Davis Story which chronicles the successful struggle of the first African-American Heisman Trophy winner. The sale of this novelty to the movie-going public is obvious and consumption of this type of product based on this reasoning is faultless. It’s only a movie; buying a ticket won’t effect anyone’s earning potential or America’s ability to stabilize the value of her dollar.

Perhaps the Democratic Party "jumped the shark" when they placed Geraldine Ferraro’s name on the ballot in ’84, but they have more than hedged their bets this time around by giving voters more than one way to flex their emotional muscle. With two novelties to choose from, they may have been wagering that one is less able to contend that their sales pitch is based on the premise of novelty. But it is. And it is blatant. But then it at least displays an evolving education.

When the nation’s first Catholic candidate defeated the Republican incumbent following the novelty of the first televised presidential debate, Democrats were obviously taking notes. For many, Kennedy won in spite of the fact that he was Catholic, but due to the novelty of his charisma in contrast to Nixon’s illness-riddled appearance that swung more than a few votes.

Today the timbre of urban media betrays another factor in this election: the "us against them" attitude. For many this campaign serves up a novel if not completely unexpected opportunity to tic off the list a critical goal on the agenda of the civil rights movement. Many will be going to the polls to vote for something. A candidate one can be passionate about for whatever reason may prove the ultimate novelty.

In contrast, an admittedly informal survey of delegates at the Texas Republican Convention this year in Houston exposed what can only be characterized as a grudging acceptance of the party leadership’s choice of candidate. As McCain’s own mother declared of the Republican base, "I think holding their nose they are going to have to take him." It could then be characterized that many a Republican voter will be voting against the Democratic candidate and his allegedly record-proven plans to further socialism rather than voting for McCain.

Is it ironic that a similar dilemma that faced Senator Clinton in many ways faces Senator McCain? Hilary confronted a constituency that found her policies preferable but her personality barely palatable. McCain now wrestles with his base over his less than conservative record versus his opponent’s declared liberal platform all the while trying to convince them with a little "lipstick" that he’s not a boor.

The question is: which urge is stronger, voting for something or voting against something?

In the end the voters will make their purchase and it may come down to a buy of novelty. When will it dawn on us that the candy that looks so tempting and tasty purchased on impulse at the checkout counter will ultimately cost us even more hours on the tread mill? We owe a lot of time to the treadmill already: we’ve been buying a war from China now for more than a few years, we’ve been buying high-risk loans and entitlements for our less than credit-worthy and we’ve been buying mercurial, if not volatile, alliances overseas. We’ve gotten obese with the expectation that our elected officials will handle these weighty problems. We grow apathetic with anticipation. Perhaps the much-hyped universal healthcare plan will include funding for a drug company to sell us a pill to help us lose the wait.