Sen. Kyrsten Sinema plays the media as if it's a lovesick teenager

Scientists looking to better understand human behavior have conducted studies that demonstrate how uncertainty about a person’s feelings toward you will cause you to think more about that person.

This is something teenage boys from my generation (or at least me) learned the hard way.

Once you put aside the psychobabble, what this means, essentially, is that playing hard to get … works.

As it turns out, this concept applies to more than a lovesick 16-year-old wondering if a girl named Gloria likes him or actually like-likes him.

We all know how it goes.

Kyrsten Sinema strings the press along

The notion of unrequited love drives the narratives in novels like “The Great Gatsby” and movies like “Love, Actually.”

But it doesn’t just apply to personal relationships. Lately, we’re seeing the phenomenon manifest itself in the world of national politics and journalism.

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema appears to be having a wonderful time stringing along the press, playing the mysterious Daisy Buchanan to the lovesick national media’s Jay Gatsby.

Most recently, the senator has been featured in lengthy profiles in The Atlantic and The New York Times.

Sinema has been evasive and noncommittal over whether she will run for reelection or not. She decided carefully to whom in the media she’ll talk and when.

Those locally who’ve been critical of her, including me, haven't have much luck, for which one can't exactly fault her.

She claims predictability but acts mysterious

Still, cageyness is catnip to reporters.

Journalists want to explain things. We want to know. Need to know. We are attracted to the elusive. Mesmerized by it.

When the Times reporter asked Sinema when she would make up her mind concerning reelection she answered, “When I’m ready.”

Catnip.

Sinema enjoys playing the role of an enigma. She is a living paradox, telling the Atlantic writer, “I think I’m a highly predictable person” while making sure it is impossible, even for her closest friends, to predict what she will do.

Sinema knows whether she'll run again

The Atlantic reporter writing about her concluded, “Sinema tells me she hasn’t decided yet whether she’ll seek reelection, but she talks like someone who’s not planning on it.”

The New York Times reporter, on the other hand, deduced, “Nothing she said in our conversations left me with the impression that she was putting a few final touches on her senatorial legacy on her way out the door to the private sector.”

'I was always independent': Sinema touts party change

Anyone who has followed Sinema knows she is wicked smart. Smarter that most people. Way smarter than most journalists.

Well, me, anyway.

How will this fly with voters, if she runs?

She told a reporter, "I don’t spend my time in the world of fantasy. I spend my time in the world of the possible.”

And in any profile of her you’ll read that she is meticulous. That she enjoys studying spreadsheets, calculating the odds, putting puzzle pieces together. All of which means that by now Sinema knows whether she’ll run for reelection or not.

She also knows that by not announcing her decision she keeps potential rivals off balance and keeps the press at bay.

As for voters, well, that might be a different story.

As another wickedly smart woman, Mae West, once said, “Don't keep a man guessing too long — he’s sure to find the answer somewhere else.”

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema plays the media like it's a lovesick teenager