The Only Thing that’s Sure About 2008 is that Nothing’s for Sure.

“The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.” - John Kenneth Galbraith

This election cycle has truly been a roller-coaster and isn’t even over yet. Clinton’s big wins of Ohio and Texas have demonstrated yet again that conventional wisdom has been completely thrown out the window this year.

Let’s review some of the fallacies that conventional wisdom has brought us this election cycle:

Up until about November or December of 2007, Rudy Giuliani was the clear front-runner for the Republican nomination. The conventional wisdom was that Rudy was the only Republican that could beat Clinton and was therefore the clear choice for the Republicans in 2008. He had a huge lead in the national polls and until the primaries actually started, had a credible plan and a clear path to the Republican nomination. Not only that, but he had the name recognition that other candidates did not have. That apparently didn’t pan out.

Up until around January 2008, John McCain’s aspirations for the Republican nomination, much less the office of the Presidency, had been declared dead on arrival. He was running low in the polls, had almost ran out of money, and the party base loathes him. Today he stands as the Republican nominee. Conventional wisdom again fails.

Conventional wisdom once held that Hillary Clinton was the anointed nominee, and then Barack Hussein Obama burst onto the scene and became the inevitable Democratic nominee. Conventional wisdom again fails.

New Hampshire was supposed to be an enormous victory for Barack Obama. Clinton was rumored to hope to merely close the gap. Instead, she won New Hampshire and “found her voice”.

After Obama’s stunning series of victories and until two weeks ago, Clinton’s campaign was generally held to be dead. Then she won Texas and Ohio, breathing new life into her campaign and again proving the conventional wisdom wrong.

There are many examples of this throughout this campaign; one only needs to turn on the television to see more conventional wisdom in action. However, 2008 has made it clear that politics can be like a well-aged prostitute. It takes years to learn her tricks and nuances. She is also cruel, laughing at you when you are naked. But you keep coming back, because you love her and she is the only prostitute you can afford. Conventional wisdom has been off-base this year and naked predictions have been proven false. Politics is addicting and yet people fall into accepting and espousing the convenient, affordable conventional wisdom.

What does the rest of 2008 hold? In truth, the only thing that one can be sure about this year, is that nothing’s for sure and conventional wisdom is unreliable.