More on the game of expectation
GWB showed (again and again) that the best thing that could ever happened to you is people having low expectations of you. It might be degrading at times at first. But then, if you do something right (just right, not spectacular), people are easily impressed. And people are just as forgiving for your mistakes.
In this election, two (relatively) small parties gained a large (again relatively) increase of votes prompting a lot of press coverages. I think this is a bit unfair, because people now expect more of them, while the parties that have more votes actually can govern with low expectations.
Of course expectation is built out of reputation. But reputation alone is not enough (maybe even worthless) in doing the actual job. You have to have necessary number of seats to make a difference in parliament for example.
I’m actually worried with people making a big deal out of the relatively large increase, when the actual number is still rather small, instead of focusing on 40 or more percent of votes still in the hand of the two major parties. I don’t know if this is done in purpose to build different levels of expectations which will lead to different perceptions of accountability.