AMERICANS are prolific taste-testers. We are curious. We are game to try. We’ll test-drive cars, savor free samples, and sign up for trial subscriptions. We enjoy flaunting that well-developed capacity to weigh, analyze, and render a decision in one fell swoop. Malcolm Gladwell fleshes out a description of this ability in Blink, his entertaining treatise on “thin slicing.” In any short term encounter, however, Gladwell suggests that we often trade the quality of a deliberative decision for the surety of a quick decision. And sometimes we pay the price for it, as snap judgments based on a sip don’t always match the taste of a real drink.

In the 2008 campaign, potent political strategy combined with more media outlets than any previous election to proliferate these bite-sized impressions. As voters finally put the race to rest, we might consider how the “tasting” process informed our decision. We had more than a year of vetting, but it primarily consisted of calculated image construction in which some were more successful than others. Obama was “hopeful,” “fresh,” and “charismatic.” McCain was “dependable,” “patriotic,” and should you forget at any point, a “maverick.” But our recollection of issues may be a bit less clear. Let’s see: taxes? Er … health care? Something about “drill, baby, drill”? Somebody named Bill Ayers? Joe the Plumber?

A November Zogby poll showed how voters’ taste associations played like a blindfolded flavor game. Nearly 60% of Obama voters didn’t know which party currently controls Congress. 87% of them knew Sarah Palin said she could “see Russia from her house,” but roughly the same percentage could not correctly answer questions about Obama’s strong-arming of opponents in his first election, his associations with Weather Underground, or his admission that his coal policy would intentionally bankrupt the coal industry. In an audio survey of Harlem that went viral, African-American voters supported McCain’s policies when they were attached to Obama’s name.

The numbers show (so far) that high percentages of the people who voted for our new president are politically ill-informed. That doesn’t by any means nullify their choice, but it does cast shadows on the grand narratives of record participation and first-time voting. Sure, lots of people voted for the first time, but did they know what they were choosing? And how did we get to the point that we can endure two long years of learning the candidates and still not really know them?