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I think we in the media tend to make much ado about nothing. Take the heartache over President SBY’s lackluster 100 day performance and how people will go to the streets to demonstrate and show their disapproval of the way things are going in this country. I mean, who are we kidding? What 100 day performance? The man has been at the helm for over five years now and if things couldn’t get done in that time, what hope is there of the man changing his style or ways of doing things in 100 days? Or ever, for that matter.

It is merely a testimony to our optimism and wishful thinking that once we elect someone, we could mould and reform that person to be the object of our desire and make our dreams come true. This is doomed to disappointment. After all, that is why a lot of marriages fail. We wed someone not for the person she or he really is, but for the false expectation we have that the person will either change or remain forever the same.

We also make much of SBY’s so-called approval rating. It’s gone down, according to polling bodies. At this rate and with all the problems his cabinet is facing (particularly the Bank Century case) he will be lucky to make it to the end of his term in five years time. Certainly, he is acting as if everyone is out to get him and constantly whining about it, which doesn’t bolster anyone’s confidence or help boost his image, but look at the numbers.

His popularity has gone down, it’s true. But dropping to about 70 percent is still pretty high and nothing to get paranoid about. In contrast, President Obama’s ratings have gone down to well below 60 percent. That SBY still has this kind of rating after his leadership style of the past five years, knowing his obsession with image and the need for recognition and becoming accustomed to his frustratingly slow and wavering decision-making, just shows we may be making too much of politics in this country. Making a drama out of an ordinary crisis. Creating a storm in a teacup.

As a matter of fact, domestic news and the never-ending political dramas aired practically on a daily basis, are overtaking daytime soap operas and traditional “sinetrons” in terms of television audience interest. To be sure there are more crimes, murders, intrigues, sex scandals, money and power in the daily news than in those run-of-the-mill TV shows. Not to mention the cast of characters paraded before us in all their histrionics.

We have the greasy, hand-rubbing manipulator; the humble, innocent and much beleaguered victim; the loud-mouth; the dignified intellectual; the sly and shady and the just plain stupid — they are all there, like cardboard cutouts in some Shakespearean play, including a wavering Hamlet and a scheming Iago, plus a cynical Shylock thrown in for good measure.

At the end of the day however, politics are turning into just that. Seedy and cringe-inducing, low-level soap operas that are interesting from an audience ratings point of view but don’t have much relevance to anyone’s daily life.

Even the much-hyped mass demonstrations on Jan. 28 turned out to be a damp squib, with many people using the opportunity to stay away and use the traffic excuse to slack off a bit from their busy schedule in the city. Even the targets of the demonstrations, i.e. the president and the veep, were not even around to appreciate the gesture, so the message most likely fell on deaf ears.

On the larger scale of things however, the country’s Fitch ratings of Indonesian banks have gone up a notch, which is good news for investment. Meanwhile, the World Bank says that Indonesia’s economy is on track and this nation is blessed with a healthy demographic dividend for at least the next ten years, which on a global level, along with our positive growth in these lean times, is good news.

What does it mean? It means we are doing okay. Perhaps not by design, but certainly by default or by some fortunate accident, maybe because other countries are not doing so well at the moment, or because the ordinary man on the street can get by quite well if left alone to mind his own business without some silly government regulations to hamper him or some public officials trying to steal his money.

So, my tuppence on this is, with a lot of work to catch up on, we are paying our media-hungry politicians way too much to clown around or be drama queens. I know that putting up with incompetence is a part of the democratic system that we have to live with, but we can be smarter by not getting bogged down in this political morass and losing our perspective on what’s important and what needs to be done.

Although the dirt of politics is good for audience ratings.

Desi Anwar is a senior anchor and writer. She can be contacted at www.desianwar.com and www.dailyavocado.net.