DO NOT LISTEN TO PREDICTIONS

For as many years as I believed my parents knew better than I. I believed that TV political pundits also knew more than I. Indeed they do have more information. However, they are mostly unable to use that information to predict the entire political system. Beyond that, they are hampered by their own wish to appear ‘pundit-like’, to please their bosses, and like the legislature, to assure their continued employment.

To that end, also like the legislators, they pretend to speak for the average American with whom they long ago lost any contact they may have once had before they became victims of the Peter Principle. (“In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.") from Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in a humorous book which also introduced the "salutary science of Hierarchiology" "inadvertently founded" by Peter, their book in 1968 The Peter Principle, the principle has real validity.

The Audacity of Hope could better have been written about the predictions made publicly on the McLaughlin Hour for years, few of which came to pass. Those made by the self-described 'experts' for all major media outlets on newspaper, air or TV fare no better. There was a time when they could say anything and get away with it, but no more. Today there is a visual and audio recording of everything uttered. McCain has tried to lie his way out of things denying he has said what the media can play back, almost instantaneously, that which they accurately claim he said, leaving his denial a mere flap of his lips. So far, that fact has not quite sunk into the brains of some of the politicians and pundits. Cheney seems to be one of the worst at maintaining he never said what he did say, with abounding proof on archived TV files to the contrary. For those schooled in never admitting they lied and never taking responsibility for their actions, technology seems to be catching up to them.

If we assume that McCain actually has forgotten what he has predicted, promised or said, we enter another sphere of confusion. McCain's brain is 72 years of age while Obama's is 46 or so. In either case, whether he is fabricating that he never said something or indeed has actually forgotten, it is not a positive sign for the brain functioning of the President of the most powerful nation in the world.

So I am left with a real question. Will the pundits be as anxious to make a prediction with such vehemence in face of the likelihood that it may not come to pass if they know it will be played over and over to the country at large, win or lose?