498 Why an old computer game can't pick a president

Over at Tech Central, Nelson Hernandez Jr. explains why Douglas Kern's recent article ("President Elect - 2004") using the model of Commodore 64-era political game President Elect 1988 to predict the upcoming election, will not work in 2004. He gives numerous thoughtful explanations of the differences in time and culture, but I thought this paragraph particularly worth the whole article.

“. . . this election has seemed less about articulated policy issues and political ideology than any in the past. To editorialize, political campaigns are now more about entertainment and political theater because substantive, intellectual discussions of complex public policy topics result in poor television ratings and apparently have no positive effect on "swing voter" behavior. Try to imagine the show-stopping absurdity of Bush and Kerry earnestly arguing the particularities of an issue as technical and specific as the fate of the islands Quemoy and Matsu (as Kennedy and Nixon did in 1960) and you get a sense of how far we have come toward presidential politics becoming just a high-stakes reality television show, where the tactical objective is to simply to entertain, titillate and seduce the fickle "swing voter". “

If not Kerry, who? Hernandez offers Gephardt.

“My sense is that none of the Democrats who ran this year would have been likely to defeat Bush under the above circumstances. I think Dick Gephardt would have presented the most formidable opponent: he could have picked up a few close Midwestern states (e.g. Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota) while retaining all the states Kerry will win this year. In addition he would have been more likeable, less liberal and less vulnerable to attack than Kerry. Combined with moderate-to-conservative running mate from a battleground state capable of definitively swinging his home state into the Democratic column, and this election would have been very tight indeed. But even the optimal ticket (from a purely tactical standpoint) from the roster of candidates that ran this year would not have offered the Democrats a cakewalk.”

The entire article is here.