David’s brow furrowed. “President Bush – the younger one – didn’t come off as very smart, at least to me. How did he win two elections against people with more national experience?”

”Making of the President,” Simon said.

David blanked.

“Book by Theodore H. White about the role of TV and advertising in the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon campaign. Simon paused. “Jesus. What did they assign you to read in college?”

“Blew off college, after a couple quarters; took my computer skills straight into gaming. Old man wasn’t thrilled about that.”

The elders traded glances. Simon smirked. “Anyway, paid and earned television took center stage that year and never left. Watergate so devalued national experience that ‘outsider’ credentials became de rigeur for challengers. Took a serious turn in 1980.”

“When Reagan beat Carter, right?”

“Yes. I was in my junior year when the first debate was televised. I remember Reagan promising to cut taxes, strengthen the military, and balance the budget. I was one of the few people in the room who thought he’d lost the debate. In the eight weeks before he was elected, he was never required to explain exactly how that was going to happen. Turned out ‘B’ movie roles and ‘Death Valley Days’ trumped a nuclear engineering degree from the Naval Academy. His legacy? ‘The Great Communicator’ – in spite of his actual record. The media demanded the messenger.”

“Still doesn’t explain beating Democrats with better resumés. Bush didn’t even sound like Reagan.”

“Didn’t have to. A media consultant named Frank Luntz applied the science of media marketing to political messaging. Found a way to measure focus groups’ emotional reactions to specific words and phrases in TV commercials, over deliberative or cerebral responses to their meaning. ‘Good guy’ ads – plus healthy doses of manufactured commercial and viral sleaze directed at his opponents – kept enough eyes off George W’s qualifications to give him both the nomination and the 1,784 votes in Florida he needed to win by five votes in the Electoral College – with some help from the Supreme Court.”

“But,” David interjected. “Bush had a record, and a war, in 2004.”

“Same recipe – predigested advertising and slander, except the dominate theme was fear instead of ‘feel-good.’ They even dusted off a discredited old bunch that had tried to undermine Senator Kerry in 1972 for criticizing the Southeast Asian war. ‘Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” became ‘swift-boating,’ a synonym for unfounded political attacks. A couple ‘Red’ states provided the margin again and the GOP held onto both houses of Congress until the 2006 mid-terms.”

David leaned toward Simon. “Things seemed pretty bad; wasn’t anyone paying attention?”

Simon laughed. “You made your nut as a gamer, correct? What part of marketing altered reality for profit don’t you understand? Power of advertising, my son.”

“But…that’s different – “

“Why? If you can be persuaded that high-fructose corn syrup is nutritious, you can be convinced that a guy you want to have a beer with should have full access to the nuclear launch codes.”

Noam raised a hand. “We’ll get to that part directly – let’s finish with the next two presidential terms. David?”

“All right. How did an African American win in 2008?”

“Combination of factors,” Noam said. “The Middle East wars at $10 billion a month and fatigue over ideologically-based domestic shenanigans, and resulting failed cover-ups, gave the Dems enough traction to take back the House in 2006, launching a two-year race for the Presidency. Vision, charisma – “

“Don’t forget native intelligence, scholarship, and galvanizing life experiences,” said Antoinette.

“Of course – and an extraordinarily disciplined campaign, especially compared to his two predecessors, took Obama into the final month of the campaign. Then the neoconservatives presented him the same gift they gave Clinton 16 years earlier.”

“What?” said David.

“’It’s the economy, stupid,’” Simon said. “Worst collapse since the Great Depression.”

“Things were pretty good when I checked out. What happened?”

“The ‘dot-com’ bubble that fattened your bank account burst in the first year of Bush II,” Noam said, “then ‘9-11,’ tax cuts, and deficit spending came along. The second bubble was a killer combination of inflated residential real estate values and ‘sub-prime’ lending. Wall Street devised a way to ‘securitize’ questionable mortgages and re-peddle them around the world as lucrative short-term investments. Deficit spending and mounting debt slowed the economy, which depressed property values. Credit evaporated and everybody too deeply invested in funny paper suddenly found themselves cash-poor. Investment houses, banks, insurance companies, and even brick-and-mortar industries fell like dominos. Millions of homes had been foreclosed on by the election.”

“Didn’t the government do anything?”

“What government? The central principles of neo-conservatism, on the Cheney-Rumsfeld continuum from Ford through W, seemed to be that free markets can absorb and correct for everything, including the worst aspects of human behavior – ignorance, hubris, and naked greed, thousands of years of experience to the contrary. Government’s role is restricted to protect them from interference. Unlike their Republican forebears, the latter-day Bushies seemed to be so hypnotized by their own beliefs that they didn’t know how to govern, so they had nothing when Ayn Rand shrugged.”

“Who’s Ayn Rand? Was she in the cabinet?”

Noam stared at David. “I’ll ignore that. At the time, there were enough gray heads around to realize that there are worse things than losing an election. The consequences of market behavior not seen since 1929 left no room for argument. The wagons got circled and an infusion of $1.3 trillion occurred before Obama was sworn in. That amount just about equaled the debt Bush II had run up in eight years.”