Reflection on Voting the Image

So, I got a couple of stern comments a while back when I posted about my disillusionment in the election process in America. Basically, I have a hard time voting not because I think my vote doesn't count, but because I think that one votes not for a candidate but an image concocted by a political machine. Well, an interesting article in this weekend's Parade (yes, we read Parade, give me a break) verified my skepticism.

The most striking quote comes from an Nixon administration internal memo dated around the time of the 1968 Presidential Election. Nixon's image advisor wrote:

The response is to the image, not to the man...It's not what's there that counts, it's what's projected. [The selection of a President] has to be an act of faith...This faith isn't achieved by reason; it's achieved by charisma, by a feeling of trust that can't be argued or reasoned.

At the end of the article, the author cites statistics showing that campaign ad budgets no longer reflect who wins elections, which suggests, according to him, that Americans are beginning to move away from voting based on image. I think this trend reflects more a distrust in political advertisements, and I definitely believe that the image machine is still full functioning giving us nicely manufactured products that bear little resemblance to what kind of President the person will actually be. This is why I have a hard time voting.