On yesterday, Election Day

Yesterday, Nov. 7, was a momentous day. It was the National Day of Northern Catalonia, Leon Trotsky's birthday and the day that the Foo Fighters released "Skin and Bones," their sixth studio album.

Oh, yes, and the midterm elections were yesterday, too.

I must apologize. While newspapers across the nation are today devoting sheets of print to anxious speculation on the future of our republic, I'm trying my best to avoid the subject.

Politics is a wicked temptress — "better than sex" in the words of Hunter S. Thompson (though not, judging by his actions, better than many psychoactive drugs). Aided by the internet and 24-hour news channels, modern politics makes us feel as though the fate of the world hangs by a thread or, perhaps, a chad. It fools us into believing that truth is somehow contingent on a Democratic or Republican victory. It convinces Eliot Spitzer '81, despite an enormous lead in the polls, that it would be a good idea to leave more than 80 automated campaign messages on my answering machine over Fall Break.

The student of politics comes in one of three forms, each with a different approach to current affairs. There are the go-getters who enjoy firm handshakes and discussing the Op-Ed page of The New York Times (American government or international relations), those principally concerned with things like "market formation," "forecasting" and "the Fed" (political economy) and those who take "current affairs" to mean anything after the Napoleonic Wars (political theory).

I situate myself firmly in the third category, less interested in debating possible outcomes of swing counties in eastern Pennsylvania than the theoretical question of whether citizens of Pennsylvania should be allowed to vote at all.

Yesterday's elections are the specialty of those in the first category. We will hear a lot from these students in the coming days. They follow the latest polling data and can often be observed in precept loudly reciting facts from the most recent Thomas Friedman column to the respect and admiration of their peers. I know this is the case because I have observed the following conversation taking place in politics classes at least 45 times in the past two weeks.

POL major 1: It is my understanding from Robert Novak that Barack Obama should run for president in 2008.

POL major 2: But I read that Bob Herbert thinks he lacks experience.

POL major 1: I have also read that. This is a difficult question to answer.

POL major 2: Indeed. Perhaps we should loudly recite these facts in precept to the respect and admiration of our peers.

Though we students of theory poke fun at our opinionated colleagues, we are secretly comforted by the fact that someone actually knows who Robert Novak and Bob Herbert are. No matter how many times you reread Locke's "Treatises" or Rousseau's "Discourses," there is little to be found on whether a black man can be elected president in modern America.

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But when election time rolls around, suddenly everyone wants to join the commentary. Politics becomes the methamphetamine of the masses, and the public gets agitated into a CNN-fueled frenzy.

Professors are also susceptible. Two years ago, I went to my scheduled philosophy lecture in McCosh 50 on the Wednesday following President Bush's reelection. The professor used almost the entire hour to explain how Bush had only won by putting gay marriage referenda on the ballot in states bordering the Mississippi River. It was fun, I guess, watching a philosophy professor become so animated who two days earlier had languidly taught us to doubt the existence of the external world. The only problem was that the scheduled lecture material was Descartes' "Meditations II," a classic text which, as far as I can remember, has little to do with gay marriage.

As a student of political theory, all I can offer today is that we keep things in perspective. Politics are soon forgotten. The individual races that seem so pivotal now will quickly vanish from memory. Nov. 7 will quietly return to the Northern Catalonians. And we'll all emerge, like the late Dr. Thompson, from a drug-induced haze — only to find that Descartes awaits us on the blackboard, while Obama is not yet in the White House. J.R. de Lara is a politics major from Ithaca, N.Y. He can be reached at jdelara@princeton.edu.