Each election cycle, the youth attempts to rally itself from political apathy and inaction into a force powerful enough to demand the attention of our nation's policymakers. With recent disappointedly low turnout figures, and in spite of P. Diddy's stark ultimatum to "vote or die," America's youth has failed to "rock the vote." Last Friday, the Dartmouth Editorial Board justly railed against the political idleness that plagues American students ("Casting an Informed Vote," Nov. 3).
However, apathy alone does not account for the feeble youth participation in modern politics. Instead, the character of modern politics plays an important role. Dartmouth students have experienced enough elections to become turned off to "politics as usual" -- the negative campaigning, personal innuendo and "spin."
From ending the Vietnam War to the birth of environmentalism to petitioning Fox to bring back "Family Guy," the strong tradition of youth activism in the United States has produced real change in the world. Students today dream the same big ideas as our parents' generation did 30 years ago. How many Dartmouth students grew up wanting to fight hunger, cure disease or maybe even restore sound fiscal discipline to Washington, D.C.? At the same time, I have had numerous conversations with classmates who wish to improve the "state of the union" through legislation, only to qualify their enthusiasm with "I could never run for office. Politics are too brutal." The idealism of students has not changed. Rather, the tone of the political landscape has.
In recent years, politics has grown increasingly petty and frustrating. Unfortunately, politics and policy are forever intertwined. A necessary precursor to "saving the world," electioneering turns students off. While countless Americans grow up with the bright-eyed dreams of becoming doctors, teachers or scientists to help people, no student (at least anyone who was not picked last at recess) aspires to be the next Karl Rove and slime candidates with half-truths and dusty skeletons in closets.
Why are idealistic youth frustrated with politics? In the same piece that rallied Dartmouth to political participation, the Editorial Board itself inadvertently provided an explanation why students are disillusioned with politics. Referring to the botched joke in which Senator Kerry tried to insult the IQ of President Bush, the Dartmouth Editorial Board effectively shot-gunned a can of "the Kool Aid," declaring, "Senator John Kerry's remarks this past week may have been offensive, but there was a grain of truth in them..." After reading Kerry's prepared remarks, any objective eye could realize that the senator did not intend to brazenly insult the intelligence of American soldiers. In spite of this reality, the White House and mass media turned his untimely verbal gaffe into a distracting media firestorm. The tools of the "Information Age" that allow campaigns to reach more voters in more ways quicker than ever before can just as easily be used for spreading misinformation. Like a metal ball in a pinball machine, Kerry's remarks bounced back and forth between conservative blogs, 24-hour news cable networks, print media, Rush Limbaugh's talk radio show and YouTube more than enough times to transform the "botched joke" into an intentional anti-American slur. In such an environment, stemming from both sides of the aisle, all too often the truth frustratingly becomes a casualty in politics.
The Kerry episode demonstrates that the marriage of modern media and politics has diminished the level of substance, and increased the amount of "spin," in campaigns. Substantial debate about the policies that will influence the world that our generation inherits, not the personal lives of candidates, matters to the youth. Despite the United States suffering its 100th death in Iraq for the month, the artificial outrage from Kerry's bungle dominated the next several days of media coverage in the last week of Campaign 2006. In 2004, while the United States was fighting in Iraq, the two presidential campaigns re-fought the Vietnam War while Governor Bush's former alcoholism and alleged collegiate cocaine use saturated "Indecision 2000."
Negative campaigning and personal attacks continue in modern politics because they work -- but only because voters let them work. The only thing more disconcerting than the state of modern politics is the state of the nation and world today. Such serious times require independent-minded voters to step up and demand more than "politics as usual."
