“Elections are at most the tip of the political iceberg. They simplify and organize opinion, and under ordinary circumstances they provide an unambiguous outcome, but at the price of obscuring the existential variety of political experience and opinion…The meaning of an election lies in the relation between electoral quantities and human qualities, convention and nature. Elections, in other words, are occasions for narration, and the need to tell their stories rightly poses a decisive test for our political life and art.” (McWilliams, The Politics of Disappointment)