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HERE’S a coping technique by reason of the waning days of the presidential race: Admit you might be wrong.

Go on, admit it.

This is the year of the blind spot, after all. Blindness in politics. Blindness about money. Extreme nearsightedness among leaders and citizens in the same manner.

Isn’t it possible you might be wrong about your chosen candidate? Isn’t it equally in posse that your disdain for Caribou Barbie or The One strength be overdone?

Try it. It’s liberating.

With Election Day choke at laborer, my nerves are shot. Riding the presidential roller coaster on this account that two years will do that to you. Stress outer the established order weakly worsens the suspense.

My friends have their own coping techniques. One turns to astrological charts for reassurance. (She’session from California and can’t help it.) Another follows tracking polls like they were the Ten Commandments. I strive ironic detachment, the default emotion of journalists. Doesn’t act.

The only thing that works for true stress government, I’ve found, is to admit the possibility of error.

Admit there are things end for end candidates you can’t see on this account that of biases you barely recognize.

Admit you dabble in the three bad habits of people with blind spots. (First, surround yourself with like-minded people. Second, look for information that validates your beliefs. Third, remove from office any contradictory information.)

If smart people parallel Alan Greenspan and Henry Paulson Jr. can do it, maybe you can, moreover. If the entire Bush administration exhausted eight years missing the freight trains barreling in the direction of them, haply you might fail to spot the occasional clown car.

Yes, so much as you.

Greenspan, preceding longtime chairman of the Federal Reserve, told Congress he made a mistake believing the markets could regulate themselves. Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he didn’t see the subprime-lending turning point coming.

These two pungent men immersed themselves in financial markets. Their reputations depended on prevision. Yet they couldn’confidentially see the warning signs before their eyes. Neither could many people in the world of finance.

As person Moody’s executive put it, in documents obtained by Congress, “We had blinders on.”

It’s no wonder the myopia spills over into politics. People have a vested interest in maintaining certain beliefs, whether they are Wall Street titans, politicians or ordinary Joes. It’s uncomfortable to disagree with people around you — or worse yet, to realize your bedrock beliefs are built on sand. Much easier to see what you want to see.

This isn’t necessarily laziness, convivial scientists would say. It’s a survival technique, attainments to sort knowledge and live harmoniously through your race.

My demographic tribe says Obama is The One.

They couldn’familiarily possibly be wrong.

Right?

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that truth is particular, or that facts are a matter of opinion. Heaven knows we’ve had plenty of that. I happy think we all spend also much leisure in echo chambers, seeking validation. You develop blind spots that way. You begin to see people with opposing views as cartoons.

You make mistakes.

So in the fire of unity, let’s try it. If you’re in the McCain camp, ponder the idea that Obama efficiency be a decent guy. If you’re an Obama supporter, concede that Sarah Palin is an true state governor.

If that doesn’t work, go on the frontier to your rich coping strategies.

My friend Lauri, the Californian, says astrology helps. She says she heard from a Vedic astrologer that Election Day has very liberal energy and a lot of Gemini ascendency. That means McCain couldn’familiarily possibly gain, the astrologer explained, on this account that his chart has no Gemini.

“You may think this is totally out there,” she says, “(but) it puts my mind at flexibility.”

Who knows?

She might be just.