Not-so-straight shooters

Americans, by nature, are a direct people.

We’ll tell you if we like you. We’ll tell you if we don’t like you. We’ll tell you if we think your mother dresses you funny.

This directness is one reason reality shows are so popular. There is no beating around the bush: You’re fired. You’re voted off the island. Get out. Get over it.

“American Idol” is an example. Contestants stand up and sing. Judges tell them straight out that they are good, bad, delusional – or all of the above.

This penchant for being direct also explains Sen. John McCain’s sudden surge in popularity.

McCain is DOA with the Republican base on many issues. But he’s developed traction by giving political reporters rides on his bus and championing himself as being the straightest shooter since John Wayne.

And it seems to be working, despite the fact that everyone knows that anybody who has been in the U.S. Senate for any longer than 10 minutes wouldn’t recognize candor if it took ‘em to lunch.

There are two major American institutions that choose indirectness over directness.

One is the BCS (Bowl Championship Series), the system employed by college football to determine the national champion. Basically, instead of teams deciding the championship on the field, geeks decide the championship on a computer.

The other institution in which Americans take the long way home is the process through which we pick our president.

It began in Iowa at something called the caucuses, where winners were determined by actual, physical blocks of people.

Then it shifted to New Hampshire, a state in which the post-nasal drip is so severe that it leads to mass brain dehydration and the delusion that the self-obsessed population possesses political insight.

Tuesday, Republicans voted in Michigan – another of Mitt Romney’s home states – under rules that allowed just about anyone of any political affiliation to vote on who the Republicans’ nominee should be. If the Democrats had their act together, the GOP nominee could have been anyone from Senator Wide Stance to SpongeBob SquarePants.

Nevada and South Carolina are up next, followed by “Tsunami Tuesday” on Feb. 5, when the nation’s more self-confident states will tell America how it’s going to be (no offense, Chuck Norris).

Somehow, some way, each party eventually ends up with a nominee.

We then go to the general election, where tens of millions of people cast their ballots and the person with the most votes doesn’t necessarily become president.

This determination is actually made by the Supreme Court or the Electoral College, which, one of these years, could be determined college football’s national champion by the BCS.