In that dead space
Behind your pretty sky blue eyes
Wishful thinking
There's nothing there

Can't Find Love, by My Friend the Chocolate Cake

The media has an impulse to analyse everything. Not so much by commentary, but rather in the assumption that it can channel public opinion, and in this election, coax those special ones - swinging voters in marginal electorates - to speak their minds. In a slick sequence of sound bites, they believe they can expose the secret pact between voter and ballot box.

In the ideal set up, interviewers hope to cast their lines like fly fishers. What flashy concoction around a hook will entice their subjects? What is the tasty issue of the day to engage a whole stream of voters in a campaign that would otherwise be as soporific as a riverbank on a hot afternoon?

What are the dreams of Australians as they close their eyes each night, subliminal messages swimming in their minds as they drift away? If there are moral doubts about the Howard era, pangs of conscience, these remain well hidden. So far, we find personal opinion expressed only at the most shallow level. It mimics the media's own chatter.

What can be more condescending than the demand that someone reveal his or her judgment in thirty seconds or less? To appear before TV viewers as 'typical' (and therefore average and not too exceptional!). What greater insult than to imply that reporters can reduce the public psyche to a set of questions and answers in which the assumption is already made that the TV presenter is the clever one!

The media makes the fatal error of assuming that moral issues such as the Iraq war can be breezed over as easily as 'kitchen table' concerns. Make no mistake, the public do not merely suffer these demands - they have strategies. It is the strategy of the 'silent majority'. Here, the public play along, give the answers they feel the questioner wants to hear and keep their inner most thoughts well hidden. (See also Opinion polls - the poll(ution) of ideas and debate [0].)

Jean Baudrillard [1] argued that methods to represent public opinion are more like the reverse of true representation. They lead only to imposed decisions taken in the name of the people. We are well used to this misappropriation of public opinion and political will. After all, it is only a short time since the invasion of Iraq took place led by a coalition of power against the spectacularly expressed will of all the peoples.

Opinion polls 'speak' for us and the media shouts at us and for us. And yet here is the paradox of the 'silent majority'. As Baudrillard [2] said:

It isn't a silence which does not speak, it is a silence which refuses to be spoken for in its name. And in this sense, far from being a form of alienation, it is an absolute weapon.

This silence can be a form of “defiant dissent” because the media does not fool the people. We hide our true feelings; and keep silent a part of ourselves that we save for the social, for the private.

This resistance can be the saving of us all during elections. After Howard's policy launch, Ken Lovell over at The Road to Surfdom [3] best expressed the mood of exasperation:

So I'm just fed up with them all. There's an election on Saturday week and we'll see who wins. In the mean time I don't intend to read anything more about it or watch one more mendacious grinning politician promise toys for Christmas that have no hope whatsoever of being delivered.

Is it any wonder that people ambushed by opinion polls or corralled into current affairs pieces also want to run and hide? Their answers may seem dumb. But dumber still is the media posse who believe they can ride out and round up opinions in the name of the people.

Examples can be found if we look at what is laughingly called the 'serious' end of the election coverage. The ABC and SBS assembled groups of 'swinging voters' from marginal electorates. It was all in the vain hope of capturing the mood of the nation.

After viewing ABC Four Corners and SBS Insight, I had that empty room sensation. You know the one - you walk up a dark street to a well-lit house, open the front door and find there is no one at home. On second thought, the blank, white walls of these voters' minds cannot be for real, surely. Rather, as we argue above, there are strategies by which the 'silent majority' remain silent about their true intentions. In effect, they are playing mind games with the media.

The Four Corners program, The Undecided [4], did little more than grab a handful of swinging voters from the electorate of Lindsay [5] and probe them about their recall of sporadic bursts of election ads or TV news items. Here was yet another example of a tired ABC failing to think outside the square. Reporter Jonathan Holmes did not attempt to let his subjects interact with the local community.

One saving grace of Election 07 has been the community forum. In Eden-Monaro [6], GetUp put YouTube to good use so that people could send in questions via the Internet and let the candidates answer before a live audience. Instead of chasing up any such local gatherings, Four Corners kept its subjects sitting awkwardly around the kitchen table. A far better approach would have been to record any opportunity to engage in grass roots politics. Instead, the assumption was that election ads and fragments of daily news were informing them. The result was to show the media watching voters watching the media. Unsurprisingly, the only conclusion was no conclusion.

On SBS, Jenny Brockie's Insight show,  (Part 1The Deciders) [7], repeated some of the faults of the ABC program. Here in the studio was a group chosen from the middle ground of aspirational voters. Not a homeless person or poor student in sight. Again, genuine insight was elusive. Brockie found a reluctance in her subjects to step outside of being “undecided”. As in the Four Corners group, the SBS studio audience was content to scratch the surface of political culture. In one instance, a woman questioned by Brockie said she felt 95% sure she would vote for the Coalition. Brockie followed up by asking what might possibly sway the remaining 5% of her final decision; and the woman replied with “a few little policies”. (Brockie of course was staggered that policies would comprise only 5% of the decision!)

If we refer back to our idea of 'defiant dissent', we can argue that many such answers reflect the trite nature of coverage. The Insight woman's response, seen in the full context of the campaign, was no less dumb than a tabloid headline or dull tone of an attack ad.

The evil of banality is what infects the six weeks of this campaign.

Again, on Insight, a further bizarre exchange occurred when one of the guests said he was not sure whom he voted for last time. As he explained:

I vote and then I let them get on with their job. So I'm happy to have my say and then forget about it until the next election comes around.

He gives no thought to politics between times. Well, why should he do otherwise? We become bored and indifferent to the constant demands to register an opinion. This is why we find satire to be a most effective weapon - it holds up a mirror to absurdity. The delight of The Chaser [8] is to move away from indifference only to declare that the mock event is the only real one.

It may seem that cynics and comics are the only ones with a clear view. Yet if there is to be hope, the only way to begin to engage the public is by deliberative democracy [9].

It is too easy to make patronizing remarks about the fickle and shallow nature of voters. (Janet Albrechtsen liked to compare the appeal of Kevin Rudd to the desire of the masses for a change of car colour.) What is really going on is a war to outwit the opinion managers. For to make someone talk has become a major requirement.

The over quizzed and polled public are playing mind games - going along with the charade. By declining to show its hand, the public will not affirm democracy as spectacle.