Believe me, I know. As a 22-year-old journalist, I’ve spent the last six months interviewing young people about their political attitudes. And time and time again, I’ve found the same thing: we don’t have political attitudes.
No, I don’t mean we’re apathetic. Quite the contrary; many of the people I’ve met have professed an impressive level of social awareness and compassion. The problem is our perception of the political process itself. We see no connection between our concerns and the ballot box. National politics, for my generation, has become irrelevant.
This attitude poses an obvious threat to the health of our democratic process. Defeating such skepticism ought to be a priority in this election year. But as Clinton, MTV and numerous grass-roots campaigns can attest, it’s not easy convincing us that politics matters-mainly because we’ve never seen it matter before.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger once wrote that “common experience precipitates common perceptions and outlooks.” Given my generation’s common experience watching a political process mired in scandal and stagnation, it’s no wonder we share a perception that politicians and particularly presidents-can accomplish nothing significant.
First we had Richard Nixon. He showed us that presidents could be corrupt. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter followed, proving that presidents could be clumsy and ineffectual. Next came Ronald Reagan, who, by example, vindicated his own ideology: the federal government works best when it matters least.
Granted, other generations lived through the ’70s and ’80s, too, without withdrawing from the system as completely as we have. But those generations at least have the benefit of memory. My father can recite John Kennedy’s call for public service. My grandma got a job thanks to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Those of us in our 20s have never seen the federal government do something so inspiring or productive. Indeed, we’ve never seen it work at all.
The solution to our woes is obvious enough. We need some clear examples of affirmative government, designed to meet the progressive yearnings we share. Although politicians and political observers often call us indifferent, the polls show we care a great deal about many social issues (poverty, race relations and the environment come quickly to mind), and it’s high time government got serious about addressing them.
But we don’t always want what we need , and, like a toddler needing medicine, we choke on every campaign that promises us change. We say we want social reform, and then we vote-if at all-to support the status quo (in the ’80s, Reagan and George Bush were most popular with young voters). It makes for a vicious cycle, and that is why changing our attitudes is now such an urgent imperative.
It won’t be easy. Efforts like “Rock the Vote,” a music industry campaign to increase voter registration, have enjoyed only marginal success, largely because they assume a recognition that voting actually matters. Ditto for outreach attempts by various presidential campaigns, which presume young people will pay attention to the candidates long enough to be persuaded.
The only hope, I think, lies in a radical change in the dynamics of this campaign. Engaging young voters can’t be just another campaign tactic; it must become an end in itself. We need a presidential candidate who is a vehicle of empowerment for young voters. We need a candidate who is an agent of “generational change”-an individual whose candidacy represents at least in part an attempt to pass the torch from old to new.
Whether any of the candidates can still become that agent, of course, remains to be seen. George Bush seems too hopelessly wedded to the status quo to play this role credibly. Ross Perot’s grass roots make him a better bet, but his stubborn vagueness and lying make him as much the object of suspicion as adulation.
That leaves Bill Clinton. Clinton is the only candidate targeting young voters in earnest, and he is the only one preaching a specific plan for change (his proposed domestic GI bill is particularly impressive). But even Clinton won’t connect so long as he relies on a middle-class, centrist appeal. If he is serious about engaging young voters, he will have to seek us out, broaden his message and make generational change an explicit cornerstone in his campaign. (It makes even more sense with a young Al Gore on the ticket.)
Generational polities, of course, is hardly an original idea. In the ’80s, strategist Patrick Caddell created similar platforms for Democrats Gary Hart and Joseph Biden. Caddell’s obsession was the baby-boom generation, but there’s no reason a new call for generational change couldn’t sweep up the twentysomething generation as well-and succeed where Hart and Biden left off.
To be fair, politics is a two-way street. If the candidates need to change, so do the voters. Our indifference to polities may be understandable, but it still borders on the hypocritical. If we are truly serious about issues-and if we expect politicians to act accordingly-we must demonstrate that we are equally serious about listening for solutions.
But that will be the easy part. Energy and an open mind are inherent in youth. The question is whether anyone in Washington-or anyone who aspires to be in Washington-has a similar capacity for change.
If the recent past is any indicator, probably no one does-and that should trouble Americans of all ages.
