Line up behind Kerry

Our generation did not pick John Kerry. On Super Tuesday, as the networks reported win after win for the senator from Massachusetts, students who supported Dean, Clark and Edwards sat wearily in front of televisions all over campus. For the first time in our lives, many of us had gotten involved in presidential politics, throwing aside the apathy we have been told defines our generation.

And then our candidates lost, to a man not as charismatic or passionate as his rivals, an insider with an heiress wife, campaigning on a platform of bridging the gap between the poor and the privileged. The networks said voters chose him because he was electable. All across the country, young people questioned the logic of voting for a man because others would support him too, the populace fulfilling its own prophecy and electing a compromise candidate.

We wondered whether compromise wasn't just another word for uninspiring.

In the sea of groups that sprung up to support candidates this fall, there was no Princeton for Kerry, no collection of students galvanized by the sheer force of the man's ideas or personality. Yet, John Kerry is the Democratic nominee for president.

Many students have said that they will vote for him simply because he is not George Bush, that anyone would be preferable to our current president. The men most college students supported for president wanted to make a difference. Merely casting a clothespin vote and moving on would be to abandon our own chance to do just that.

This election is likely to be close and contentious. Already, the Bush campaign has put out millions of dollars in ads trumpeting the president's leadership in times of crisis. The photos of bombed out buildings and plunging stock tickers leave no question that the President and his strategists have come to play.

John Kerry has an uphill battle ahead of him, and he'll have to fight the inimitable and inexplicable Ralph Nader, not to mention the unprecedented war chests of the sitting president. Kerry will need support — and not just of the "he's not Bush" variety. He will need the energetic volunteerism young people provided his opponents in the primary, the people willing to go door to door and hang flyers and make phone calls. He will need what all of us can provide him, merely by showing up, by proving that we really do care about the future of our country.

This year, our generation has a chance to stop complaining and take action. For years, politics has had little to do with us. We were too young for Social Security and tax cuts, and we'd grown up knowing that politics was a dirty word.

Now, the candidates need not only our numbers but our enthusiasm. In return, we can shape the national debate for the next year, demanding that George Bush and John Kerry talk about issues that resonate with us, not just in generalities and platitudes but with specifics, addressing same-sex marriage, school reform, the cost of college and America's role in the global community in a way that makes political discourse worth our time.

They need us now, not just to cast our votes but to energize others who will go to the ballot boxes. We have energy to give, if they can only show us it's worth our while.

In 1992, a columnist for The New York Times wrote on the eve of Bill Clinton's nomination that the time for dreaming of a better contender had passed — that Clinton was our candidate. John Kerry is our Democrat this year. He is not perfect, but he is the choice for those of us who believe that President Bush has demonstrated a remarkable callousness towards the poor, women, students, the unemployed, and citizens of other nations. We could sit this election out or go to the ballot boxes grudgingly, but there is so much more we can do.

When John Kerry won on Super Tuesday, college students were hoping for better: a campaign that would be about the big issues, that would give them a taste of what politics ought to be like. With enough action, we can build that campaign for ourselves. Katherine Reilly is a Wilson School major from Short Hills, N.J. Her column runs on alternate Fridays. She can be reached at kcreilly@princeton.edu.