The New Hampshire Primary Surprise

As I write this, major media outlets are very busy being surprised at the outcome of the Democratic primary in New Hampshire. It's reported that the campaigns of Senators Clinton and Obama are also busy being rather surprised at the fortunes of their candidates. To me, the most surprising thing about this all this is that anyone is surprised that the pundits, the polls, and the predictions in that race proved to be less than accurate. After all, didn't they all just finish being surprised that Obama took the Iowa caucuses?

Oh, I'm not exactly blaming the pundits and the pollsters for being wrong again. The truth is, human beings are future predicting machines. Economists predict the unemployment rate; investors predict the price of oil; voters predict who would be a good president; lovers predict long-lasting happiness on their wedding days; gamblers predict who'll win the Super Bowl; pessimists predict that things will continue to get worse, while optimists predict that things can only get better. Indeed the scientific method on which most of Western society rests starts with a prediction--a testable hypothesis. It would be pretty unrealistic of me to think that political pundits would stop predicting the outcome of elections.

After all, astrologers make predictions, too. At least some of them do (and I'm one of them). But all of us human prediction machines, including me, fall victim to a basic glitch built into the way we perceive things. And that is, we believe in trends. We can't help it; we just do. When Senator Clinton was on top in the polls, pundits couldn't for the life of themselves coerce themselves into believing she would do anything other than win. When Senator Obama won the Iowa caucuses, pundits couldn't help but believe that the trend would continue and that he'd prevail in New Hampshire.

It is so easy and convenient for our overtaxed little brains to fall into the rut of believing that "as it's going now, so will it go in the future." We do projections and analyses, and we extrapolate the current trends into the future, predict the consequences of global warming if it continues at the current rate, and we go on and on, personally and professionally, believing that if things are going great today they'll be just peachy tomorrow--or that if something's bad today it will be equally negative next week. It all seems so logical to believe that things will continue to go in the direction they're currently traveling.

Logical and wrong.

Today's caucus winner isn't necessarily tomorrow's top vote-getter. Yesterday's housing boom is today's housing slump. Heroes fall; scapegoats resurrect themselves; change happens, and past performance does not necessarily predict future results. Life is a continual series of surprises. Reversals, turnabouts, shifts, and detours are at least as much a norm as steady predictability.

One of the reasons I admire the ancient wisdom of astrology so much is that it has figured out these fundamental things about life that we regular people have such a hard time wrapping our minds around. Astrology actually has the surprise factor built into its calculations. It has a planet of surprise in its arsenal of symbols (Uranus). It predicts that semi-annual surprises will occur in the form of eclipses, not exactly like clockwork, but close enough to give those in the know a clue. It notes that shifts in trends occur pretty darn reliably and correlates them with the periodicity of planetary shifts from one sign to another. Astrologers figured out a long time ago that the road may be narrow but it is never straight. Stuff happens.

One of my great pleasures as an astrologer is to tell people that today's heartache could be tomorrow's joy. That last year's love life drought could be next year's romantic abundance. That stuff changes. That you and I and the country and even the world can change. That surprise is built into the system. That we can even make educated guesses as to when those surprises will occur and how long trends will take to play out.

Senator Obama is appealing to voters by encouraging them to hope. Senator Clinton has been countering his idealistic message by warning voters that hope is sometimes just a rest stop on the journey to disappointment. Both are right. Sometimes hope is just a layover on the road to having your dreams dashed. But then again having your dreams dashed is sometimes just a layover on the trip to getting more than you ever imagined possible.

From an astrological point of view, the 2008 US election has surprise built into its very bones. The SuperTuesday primary on February 5 butts right up against the surprise factor of the February 6 eclipse, and all the candidates can be affected by information and revelations they are not even close to anticipating today. Some will undoubtedly be affected more than others, but our nation has conveniently and accidentally scheduled things to allow itself the maximum potential for shocks and thrills. The election itself in November takes place when the planet of surprise (Uranus) faces off in mighty confrontation with the planet that hates surprises (Saturn). As Bette Davis said, "fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride."

And that's the beautiful thing about all this. It's the endless human capacity for surprise that keeps us going. Because no matter how much tender faith we put in our polls and our projections and our gloomy or hope-filled predictions, we always know, deep in our bones, that something unexpected can happen. That's why we root for the underdog, why we watch until the end of the movie to see how the story turns out, why we vote; it's even why we get up in the morning. Without surprise, there'd be no reason to ever try to accomplish anything. A life of complete predictability would not only be boring; it would deprive our decisions of all meaning. We'd die as a species without the glorious suspense of knowing that a surprise could always be lurking just around the corner.

So here's hoping that this election holds just enough potential surprise up its sleeves to make you believe that your decisions do have meaning--and that just maybe one of these candidates will take us on the twisty journey toward getting our country to where we truly want it to be.