VP Debate Thought Experiment

Let me ask you something.  How many times have you gone to a movie based on its glowing review only to find that it totally sucked, or perhaps vice versa, reading a bad review but finding that the movie was quite enjoyable?  It's happened to all of us at least once.  And it's not just movies.  We've done it with restaurants, television, music, theater, books, even sports.  Seriously, how many people root for the Dallas Cowboys not because they like them, but because we've been told for the last 20 year's that they're "America's Team"?  How many people fell for the Bush administration's claims that Iraq had "Weapons of Mass Destruction".  Of course we like to think that we're not this maleable, but in reality very few of us are capable of formulate our own opinion on things of importance.  So we ask others for their opinion, and we act based on those opinions.