I Dream Of Presidents

This site was featured in the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town last week, so it doesn’t really need me to steer anybody in its direction, but I just think it’s such a damn interesting idea.

It’s called http://www.metaphysicalpoll.com/, formerly known as IDreamOfHillaryIDreamOfBarack until it began to include John McCain, and it’s a blog devoted to the unconscious creepings of the three Presidential hopefuls. Sheila Heti, the compiler of the site, is a Canadian who’s turned in some decent fiction.

But here, she’s venturing into something very modern. As presidential candidates veer into the realm of celebrity — do we really have any other name for explaining the hysteria around Obama? — they embed themselves in the culture that, if Freud was right, provides us our symbols in our dream state.

Take a look.