I have come to appreciate Mr. De Bree’s accounting prowess and good judgment.
Certainly the polls he cites make a valid point.
We all know that we should think more clearly and deeply before arriving at our views, and base them on facts – not by “falling in love” with a face and a candidate who is super confident and reassuring in his or her certainty.
I suspect that it is our easy way out to go along with our friends or our previous party identification, if we vote at all.
The important question is: why do we not examine our candidates and positions more closely?
I believe this is because our two-party system narrows our thinking and our choices. The contest reduces to something like a horse race, forcing the voter to choose “the lesser of two evils” or to walk away from the process entirely.
If parties and candidates truly represented the different strains in our thinking as citizens, I think it would challenge us to put more effort into thinking about issues and which candidates truly reflect our interests.
The media would need to be a serious source of information for us.