Q: How can the wind help you find direction?

A: Sir, the phrase "See which way the wind blows," means figuring out how the general public feels about a particular issue. If we have a sense of what the man on the streets thinks and expects, than we can come out in favor of it and everyone will like you.

A lot of people think that politicians should be leaders and do what they think is right and inspire the American people to follow. Those people lose a lot of elections.

And then their campaign contributors don't get the reduced regulations and favorable laws they paid all that good money to get.

When campaign contributors don't get what they want, they are less likely to contribute in the future, which makes it hard to buy air time, which makes it hard to tell people that you agree with them. If people don't know that you agree with them, why would they vote for you?

But before we can agree with them, we need to figure out what they think. Once we know that, we can pretend to believe whatever they believe, so we can win the election and do the bidding of our generous backers.

We find out what they think with polls and surveys. That's what we mean when we say "See which way the wind blows."

We don't mean the literal wind.

Please take your finger out of the air.

The press has been taking pictures.

And did you really have to choose that finger?