But issues may be incidental and sidestep the most essential force in the nation's political experience over the last century: the visceral shoot-from-the-gut American voter.

A January 2008 New York Times column by David Brooks offered this view as well. Dubbing many presidential election theories "bogus," Brooks wrote about "the unconscious cognition" that influences voters' evaluations of a candidate's character or intelligence.

"After seeing a candidate for 100 milliseconds, voters make certain sorts of judgments based on expressiveness, facial structure, carriage and attitude," he added.

This phenomenon, while true of the entire voting population, is particularly relevant for impressionable first-time ballot-boxers. One voter-to-be, a UCLA sophomore, recently told the school's paper that she is likely to vote for President Obama because "he's optimistic, charismatic . . . and good-looking."

Certainly, social psychologists might narrow my "smile approach" to explore related variables -- like height and physical attractiveness -- that also contribute to the reactions of voters.

But long before 2012, American forefather Thomas Paine possibly articulated the most precocious insight into the common-sense outlook of his nation's would-be voter. "I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection," he wrote in "The Crisis" during the Revolutionary War.

Across cultural boundaries, smiles abound as a powerful universal language and a mechanism to find common humanity and values in friends as well as strangers.

For presidential candidates at least, the children's fable appears true: When you smile at the world, the world smiles back -- something that prospective GOP contenders would be wise to make note of in their campaign to unseat President Obama.