Choosing the president has little to do with qualifications.  The vast majority of the electorate (informed or uninformed, intelligent or dumb, educated or not, rich or poor) has little sense of what the president does, let alone what would make one person more qualified for that job than some other person.   Instead it’s all about which candidate can set the more favorable context and who can frame the decision voters face.

I have my own personal biases as to what I think the president ought to do, but I can’t be sure.  Watching West Wing and living in DC doesn’t make me qualified to judge.  Now there are certain well documented decisions the president makes that have long-term consequences.  These include selecting the senior leadership of government agencies, nominating judges, negotiating agreements with other countries, and acting as the commander in chief.  But few of us know much about any of this. 

Electioneering then is only marginally related to the candidates qualifications.  Instead it’s an old fashioned war of cognitive biases.  The first one is simple: choose your battlefield — frame the decision.  The candidate who can define the issues of the election to his/her advantage has an enormous advantage.  This is where money comes in.  The money allows a candidate to build a machine of influencers in two ways:  you engage the influencers in the media (talking heads, journalists, show hosts) by sending out messages that are easy to digest and it allows you to engage a community of supporters that are out there angling for money every which way.  A person who pays money to a campaign not only helps keep the machine going, but is also much more likely to try to engage someone else to vote for the candidate.

The second cognitive bias is the mere recognition bias.  We like what we know, even when we don’t know what we like.  So a candidate that is recognized by the electorate — even if that recognition is only vaguely positive – is more likely to be elected.   So getting out early and establishing a positive context with the candidates name and image is critical in national races. 

Now as any old election hand knows, national races are not won only by appealing to the base of one’s own party.  They are won just as much by depressing the turnout of the opposing candidates own party, and by appealing to the uncommitted and non-partisan voters.  This brings the money back into the picture: creating a negative context around the opponent.   As the election draws nearer and more undecided voters start to pay attention, the opportunity to influence the candidate’s context is the greatest.  At this point races will usually turn to absolute mud.

Given the preceding analysis, it is obvious why John McCain’s ill received Paris Hilton/Britney Spears ad was sheer election influencing genius.  At this early point in the race the facts are irrelevant.  Prior to Barack Obama’s world tour the bar had been set low by his handlers and he easily cleared it.  To deflate the positive press and throw up sufficient doubt, the McCain camp simply needed to puncture the positive with sustained negative talk.  The point wasn’t to strike out and make a serious point about Obama being on par with Mlles Hilton and Spears — it was only to establish a counterweighing negative conversation around Obama.  And the ads, repeated a million times over and ridiculed by most, didn’t reflect nearly as negatively on McCain (except for some political junkies) as they effectively halted the victory lap of Obama.  Changing the frame of the conversation, and establishing a negative context was the mission — accomplished.