Despite the suspense building in a neck-and-neck contest for the world’s most powerful office, a lot of people are expressing alarm over voter apathy. Not me. Apathy? I don’t care.
Sure, turnout is expected to be low, the doomsayers say. It may be the lowest of all time. But I don’t blame the voters for that. I blame the current times, the current issues and the current candidates.
The times are good. Compared to previous elections (Remember urban riots, “stagflation,” high unemployment, “tent cities,” crack cocaine wars, “angry white males” and “soccer moms”?), the current era does not stir much fear or anger, the two biggest motivations for high voter turnout.
This time the issues are narrow, too narrow to excite very many voters outside of the suburban middle-class, “swing-voter” segment that both major parties’ candidates covet. As a result, much of this campaign has been obsessed with micromanagement, not big issues. It is not whether government should pay for prescription drugs that matters to Democrat Al Gore or Republican George W. Bush. It is how the payment is to be conducted.
Bush’s constantly repeated tax-cut promise may excite his party’s base. Tax cuts are a defining Republican issue. But when many independent voters remain unmoved it might be because they are thinking of another Bush and a broken “no new taxes” promise in 1988.
Which brings us to the candidates. Gore and Bush may be first-class individuals but they make mediocre campaigners. One listens to them and snoozes, hungry for the soaring themes, long-range vision and uplifting optimism of a Ronald Reagan or a Bill Clinton. Both campaigns have been obsessed with “Where’s-mine?” politics. Each offers a menu of goodies they hope will build a winning coalition out of some voting groups while ignoring others.
Gore offers tax breaks according to needs, like sending your kids to college or taking care of an elderly parent. Bush offers a tax break across the board to all taxpayers, whether the country’s long-term needs can afford it or not. Neither asks or addresses the more fundamental question of what direction our nation and the world should be taking on the brink of a new century. And they wonder why young voters are turned off? Only about a third of voting-age Americans below age 30 tend to show up at the polls, compared to two-thirds of those above age 60.
Guess which group gets the most attention from the candidates? Even when the softball question of reaching young voters was put to them in their final debate, Bush and Gore sounded equally clueless. Both used it as a springboard to bounce back into their standard stump speeches.
Gore mentioned campaign-finance reform, Social Security, prescription drugs, the Dingell-Norwood bill for HMO reform. Someone should tell the vice president that Social Security, prescription drugs and HMO reform are not high on most young people’s radar screens. Part of the joy of being young is the belief that you will never get sick.
Bush just as wistfully promised to “change the tone in Washington,” to “shoot straight,” to “set aside the partisan differences,” to “set an agenda that will makes sense” and to “tell the truth.”
Specifics? Forget it. This year’s expected low turnout continues a long-range trend. Tom Patterson, a government professor and co-director of Harvard’s “Vanishing Voter” project says almost every presidential election since 1960 has shown a decline or about the same turnout as the previous one. The exception was 1992, during which the Clinton-Gore campaign made a concerted effort to involve college students and other young voters.
Bush and Gore may have hit on something when they tried to reach young voters by talking about the process, Patterson told me in a telephone interview. The success of renegade candidates like John McCain, Ross Perot, Jesse Ventura and Ralph Nader reflects a widespread dissatisfaction with “the process,” he said. .
Low voter turnout may be a good thing if it exposes the failure of the existing parties to produce candidates who can effectively address changing times and pull in large numbers of new voters.
Still, I plan to vote, anyway. Even if you only annoy the people you are voting against, it is worth it.
———-
E-mail: cptime@aol.com
