IF you are honestly torn between eating a thick, juicy porterhouse steak and gnawing on a month-dead raccoon, you are not considered a gourmet. Generally, we do not expect a person who walks into a theater halfway through the film to be the most knowledgeable about what’s happening in the movie. Few parents would ask someone to remove their child’s appendix if that person couldn’t tell the difference between a scalpel and an ice-cream scoop. In other words, in no sphere of human activity do we automatically associate indecision, laziness, and ignorance with shrewdness, commitment, and expertise.
No sphere, that is, but one. In American politics today, undecided voters are revered as the most virtuous and committed of citizens. Campaigns pander to them, which is understandable; their votes are political gold. But what does it say about the American media that they treat the least engaged and least serious voters with the highest regard? Read the newspapers and you will see statements by these voters combed over for significance, every bit as lovingly as the ancient Roman soothsayers would try to make sense of animal entrails. An example from the Boston Globe: “One day [undecided voter Sandra Nicka is] for Gore (her mother called from California to say he’d protect the environment), the next day it’s Bush (she thinks he’s funny) … ‘If I had
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