<< Back 10/23/02 Re-engaging the American electorate By David Teague With an election just two weeks away, the sad state of our nation’s political life is again unfolding in front of us. The airwaves are filled with negative campaign ads, though polls show voters don’t like them. Candidates are manipulating language to make sure they don’t rub anybody the wrong way, while they claim to be much clearer on the issues than their opponents. Some candidates don’t even bother going near counties they want to represent because their research shows they don’t need them to win. Of course, potential voters aren’t particularly interested in meeting them either, as shown by low attendance at political forums. More studies are stacking up that prove how disengaged the public is becoming from political life. Take a new one reported in this past Sunday’s edition of The Washington Post. The Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University had surveyed the political beliefs and behavior of Americans of different ages and created a forecast of future elections based on population patterns and recent voting habits. The study revealed that the number of older Americans who plan to take part in the Nov. 5 election outnumber people under 30 by 2 to 1. If current trends continue, the study found, the number of people 65 and older who vote in mid-term elections is likely to exceed that of young adults by a 4 to 1 ratio by 2022. These are not good numbers for politics as usual. Good. America is in desperate need of some new models of political and civic life. However, I have almost no clue how to move toward a new, better approach, and I have to admit I’m becoming more disengaged myself. In an effort to find something hopeful to get me through Nov. 5, I’ve spent the last week or so doing some reading, so that I might gain a more positive perspective. I found some hope in a book titled The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life, by Michael Schudson, published in 1998 by The Free Press. In it, Schudson argues persuasively that political or civic life in America is not going to hell on a fast train. Instead, Americans are simply trying to find their footing in a new political era, the fourth distinctive era in our history. When America was founded, being a citizen meant being a white male property owner who delegated voting authority to a local gentleman from a well-established family. In the 19th century, the “politics of assent” gave way to the “politics of parties.” Parties conducted elaborate campaigns with enormous meetings and voting day was filled with banter, banners, fighting and drinking. Party ticket peddlers gave voters preprinted tickets to place in the ballot box, then stepped over to the tavern to receive a few dollars from the party for their efforts. At the time, it was called party loyalty. Today its called corruption. The third model of citizenship, the “politics of information,” came in with Progressive reformers. Campaigning became more educational on issues and votes were cast by secret ballot. Today, according to Schudson, we are in the fourth era, a rights revolution in an age of privacy, and civic life has shifted to include a growing list of issues that weren’t being addressed a few decades ago. While the remnants of the first two models still affect political life today, I think most Americans are struggling with the demands of the latter two. The eras of the informed citizen and now the rights-bearing citizen have dramatically changed civic life, and we are seeing the effects of that not only in political campaigns but in courtrooms, community organizations, and a number of other symbols of life as we know it. While each era has been an obvious effort to fix the shortcomings of the previous one, Schudson raises some good points about the downside of the “informed citizen,” which touts the idea that the more educated citizens are, the better citizens they will be. The process of becoming educated, he writes, comes not only from textbooks and other school activities, like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance; but through elections, political parties, the division among federal, state and local jurisdictions, and the First Amendment, among other things. Schudson argues that we can also see this sort of education taking place in other social institutions, like, for example, Little League. When children go out to play Little League, their coach teaches them that the point of Little League is for everyone to learn the game of baseball and for everyone to have fun. Everyone will get to play and every member of the team is just as valuable as any other member. The problem is that a totally different kind of learning begins when the players hit the field. Then, kids receive a more powerful, but unspoken, set of instructions — the pitcher and the catcher are the most important players and only the best players get those spots. The first baseman and the shortstop are the next most important and those slots go to the next best players. And so it goes. Coaches submit their democratic aspirations to the logic of the game, Schudson writes. No one will have any fun if the pitcher can’t get the ball over the plate or the first baseman can’t catch a ball thrown right to her. “What values, then, are the children learning and who is their teacher?” Schudson writes. “In part, the coach teaches. In part, the children teach one another, usually without mincing words. The most unrelenting teacher is the game of baseball itself, to which the coach’s ‘Let’s all just go out there and have fun’ seems a feeble countercurrent.” That’s a good observation. When the baseball analogy is applied to the “informed citizen” political model, the obvious problem is that there are too many alternate truths to counter the noblest truths. In other words, if we seek out more information in order to make the best decisions for our society, we will usually find that there is valid information to support each side of an issue. There are also usually good reasons to vote for a particular candidate, but equally good reasons to vote against them. In presenting the new era, that of the rights-bearing citizen, Schudson cites a 1961 study in which political scientist Robert Dahl found that, for most people, politics lay somewhere in “the outer periphery of attention.” Instead, their lives were driven by primary activities involving food, sex, love, family, work, play, shelter, comfort, friendship and social esteem. Forty years later, Schudson notes, each of those primary activities have become political issues. “Dietary guidelines have become matters of congressional debate, the Center for Science in the Public Interest has attacked the popcorn sold in movie theaters, and a well-organized social movement has put laws against tobacco use on the statue books at local, state, and federal levels,” he writes. “Today, terms like ‘date rape,’ ‘marital rape,’ and ‘battered woman,’ are familiar. ‘Deadbeat dads’ is a political rallying cry ... and state policy about women’s decisions on abortion has fueled the most extensive populist movement of our time. The notions of representation, justice and political participation have extended far beyond the sphere of conventional politics into ‘private’ life.” While Schudson argues that the rights-bearing citizen has done more to enhance democracy than to endanger it, he also acknowledges that our culture is still learning what to do with this era. However, while voter turnout continues to fall, as does participation in organizations like the PTA, Schudson points out that we have identified many other ways of doing politics to replace it. “Women and minorities self-consciously do politics just by turning up, so long as they turn up in positions of authority and responsibility in institutions where women and minorities were once rarely seen,” Schudson writes. “They do politics when they walk into a room, anyone’s moral equals, and expect to be treated accordingly. ... Others do politics when they wear a ‘Thank You For Not Smoking,’ button or when they teach their children to read nutritional labeling at the supermarket or when they join in class-action suits against producers of silicone breast implants, Dalkon shields, or asbestos insulation.” The changes that have made the personal political have been profound, Schudson suggests, arguably more so than the slackening of voter turnout, the decline in PTA membership, or the decreasing willingness of young people to affirm political obligations and political convictions. So where do we go from here? What should we hope for to move us toward a stronger society in the midst of the rights revolution? Maybe we should start with considering some basic definitions of politics. There are at least two textbook definitions that I’m aware of. One talks about the opinions, principles or policies by which someone participates in the government of a state or institution. The other defines politics as “the total complex of relations between people in society.” The rights revolution is pulling us full-tilt toward that second definition, and that is a good thing. One of my favorite stories of racial reconciliation came from a man I heard speak while I was a college student. His story was later included in a Studs Turkel book. He grew up in a poor, rural North Carolina setting and followed several family members into active involvement in the Ku Klux Klan. He later became a KKK leader. During this time he was asked to participate in a school committee and ended up co-chairing with a black woman. The thought infuriated both of them, but they stuck to the task at hand. It opened the door to respect, then friendship. He eventually left the Klan not because it had been outlawed or destroyed, but because his experience had shown him a better way. That, folks, is good politics. It relies less on what government and candidates do and more on what two citizens can do when they listen to and accept each other. Where we find hope in the political process today depends on how much we move towards such relationships with all members of society. In theory, America has always been about that, and sometimes in practice. It is not something we practice enough. It is, however, something to hope for on Nov. 5. (David Teague is a free-lance writer who is also a copy editor for The Smoky Mountain News. He lives in Waynesville and can be reached at bestteague@aol.com)