The Economist notes that America may be growing tired of "Yes We Can," inevitably dulled by 18 months of excitement about Barack Obama. Which reminds us of the new VW Beatle.
In 1998 Volkswagen released a curvy new take on the Beatle, an egg of sheet metal over the Golf Mk4 platform (leading the few grumpy critics at the time to call the Bug "a Golf in drag"). Consumers drooled. We couldn't get enough; heads turned on highways, cars sold out, VW ran billboards stating "Other Cars Are Beginning to Look Funny" ... yet eventually the love affair stalled.
People always need something new. Keith Rayner and Alexander Pollatsek recently hypothesized, in The Psychology of Reading, that humans are trained to seek the "newness" in communications to help make sense of the world. We are awash in old data and need to find new information to survive -- and if we don't see something new, a sort of "error signal" eventually occurs. Rayner and Pollatsek were assessing how people digest words, but the same holds true for the world at large. New information finds deer, improves crop yields, teaches you how to brew beer, tie knots, build machines, win wars. If you don't find the new, new thing, your competitor does ... and your genetic chance of survival pales.
If you are among the 45% of likely U.S. voters who would now pick Obama, your motive may be his branding as "hope," something new, a breath of fresh air. The campaign is starting to falter, with McCain picking up steam. It may not be the attack ads or the economy or the war or anything more than the fact that after 18 months, something new doesn't seem fresh any longer.
Photo: Pug Father
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