How to Market a Government

Though I thoroughly despise the Bush administration and most issues that they stand for, I honestly have to applaud their unbeleiveable marketing skills. What matters most in elections nowadays is how a candidate and administration is packaged. A candidate is simply a product that we are buying. This is not at all surprising being that we live in the most intensely consumer oriented environment in the entire world.
This past election was simply two products that we had to choose between. When we look on the shelf we look at their package and their ingredients. Bush's packaging was all related to very palpable images that all Americans, no matter how well-educated could understand. It dealt with (the lack of) gay men having sex and fetuses being murdered. Kerry's packaging however, dealt with much more abstract issues such as deficits, social security and budgets. These concepts are not quite as easy to grasp. A picture I draw is one box showing apples and bananas and the other box showing quadratic equations. Since people don't really understand these quadratic formulas, they really can't understand their impact. Since people don't quite understand deficits and the economics of the system, they really don't feel comfortable choosing that product. However, they sure as hell know what apples, bananas, gay men and aborted babies are!

How to win the next election - Put together a great marketing team, pick a decent product and sell the hell out of it to this very malleable audience.