super . . . uhh . . . tuesday?

the foto finish of the democratic super tuesday primaries sparked a lot of discussion amongst analysts as to whether obama or clinton represented the democratic nominee with greater electability. this was sparked at least in part by obama's assertion at a news conference (on "primary hangover wednesday") that, should he gain the party's nomination, he had no doubt that clinton supporters would back him (just as superman - seen here - apparently (and literally) has), but the reverse was unlikely to prove true. the gist of his remark was to point to the large number of youth and independent voters he has drawn to his campaign, amongst whom "hills" has little traction as a candidate.

the interesting issue for me is not so much whether or not obama's analysis is accurate (though it seems to me to make a fair bit of sense), but rather, the very notion of electability itself. the status of abilities is an interesting philosophical issue involving questions of will or intentionality, desire, environmental conditions, as well as sheer (usually physical) capacity. in the context of health theory, the notion of ability factors prominently in most accounts. health is conceived as the ability to reach apical species goals of survival and reproduction, for example. at a more pedestrian level, the issue of what constitutes a disability is often in play in certain medical ethical deliberations. (incidentally, there are several remarkable real life instances of so-called disabled individuals who have demonstrated (without the use of any prosthetics) to be more than able (paraplegic tony melendez plays guitar with his feet so well he performed for JP II; congenital amputee kyle maynard was a georgia high school wrestling champ) and the recent episode of a south african, oscar pistorious, who with a prosthetic legs has been denied by the olympic committee under their judgment that the prosthetics (called cheetahs) unfairly advantage him!! - where is he supposed to compete, the para-lympics?? give a guy a break!!).

what is interesting about the notion of an ability, however, is that, as we commonly assume, one need not activate it in order to have it. this particular feature of ability leads to a perplexing asymmetry in our notions about it, however. to illustrate: we think that the desert dweller who literally never gets the chance to demonstrate it may nonetheless have the ability to swim; alternately, one may have the ability to swim, but be so terrified of the idea of trying that one never does. thus we are willing to grant abilities even when they are never activated.

now consider the flip side of this. even if an amputee, let's say, never has occasion to utilize the amputated limb to swim, s/he is nevertheless considered disabled since, if the occasion were to arise, s/he simply would not be able to use a missing limb. but notice that even if an occasion typically taken to require a limb is successfully navigated by an amputee, the amputee nevertheless remains disabled. to stick with our example, this is so even if s/he can actually swim (or play the guitar, or wrestle at the championship level). thus, one who never tries but is missing no limbs is able, while the one who tries and succeeds, but who happens to be missing a limb, is, despite that, disabled.

given this paradox, when we talk about electability just what are we talking about? is electability even an ability in the normal sense? we might think not, since it fundamentally seems to depend on the electorate; although we say a nominee is electable or not, it is the citizenry that does the electing. if the candidate has nothing to do with it, why do we attach electability to the candidate? typically, the label refers more or less to the candidate's personality (at least as a candidate (reportedly, "hills" is very warm in person, but one doesn't quite get that sense of her on the campaign trail (her new hampshire diner tears being the notable recent exception) or in her role of ny state senator)). we might think that a candidate's positions are involved as well, but electability is often brought up in cases where a candidate's policy stances and political record are glowing, but his or her personality seems likely to - or simply does - get in the way of the electorate's ability (doh!) to see it.

so when a candidate does in fact have electability (as the just withdrawn romney apparently does not), where is it - what is it? can we make sense of the claim that someone has electability short of that individual actually being elected (in that case, at least, it seems uncontroversial to grant it)? and even then, is the ability in question properly understood as the candidate's or the electorate's or the occasion's (or perhaps all three - the relation between them; if this latter, then this raises interesting issues in the medical case, since on certain occasions those with certain abilities cannot perform them)? whatever it is or isn't, its frustrating that so much emphasis is put on it. otherwise sound candidates get tossed for lacking it while otherwise abysmal candidates get play for allegeldly possessing it (even when they don't end up getting elected). given how muddy a concept it appears to be, how unclear we seem to be about what it actually entails, and the paradoxes to which it seems subject, maybe we'd be better off dispensing with it altogether.