Mitt Romney: The First Quantum Candidate

What’s the Latest Development?

When Mitt Romney’s senior campaign adviser told the world his candidate’s political views are ‘like an Etch-a-Sketch’, American politics underwent a revolution analogous only to the discovery of quantum mechanics. Previously, politicians behaved according to Newtonian politicking laws where “a candidate’s position on an issue tends to stay at rest until an outside force—the Tea Party, say, or a six-figure credit line at Tiffany—compels him to alter his stance, at a speed commensurate with the size of the force (usually large) and in inverse proportion to the depth of his beliefs (invariably negligible).”

What’s the Big Idea?

The quantum world operates according to rules that go against every day experience. So does Mitt Romney. The principle of complementarity states that light is simultaneously a particle and a wave. Romney is both a liberal and conservative, not one after the other, as his critics charge, but at the same time. According to the uncertainty principle, no human can simultaneously know “both what Romney’s current position is and where that position will be at some future date. This is known as the ‘principle uncertainty principle.'” The quantum world is strange but true, political scientists assure us. 

Photo credit: shutterstock.com