Young Americans, young Americans

Yet, as Haley White’s column on this page points out, youth turnout this year was roughly half that of the general population figure. Estimates for the entire population cluster around 40 percent, whereas youth turnout was a dismal 20 percent.

Moving beyond turnout, the underlying problem that must be addressed is disenchantment with electoral politics. Disenchantment is present in all age groups, and turnout is but one indicator suggesting that it is particularly pervasive among young voters. This sentiment is misplaced, but it risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Jon Stewart’s pre-election “Rally to Restore Sanity,” co-hosted with satirist Stephen Colbert, symbolized this outlook. As one of my friends put it, 47 years ago young people rallied on the National Mall to end segregation. This year, 215,000 people rallied for no apparent reason, except to see two comedians tell us that politics was messy.

Stewart holds great appeal with young viewers, but with such appeal comes great influence. His show revolves around clips of politicians and political commentators that are designed to provoke incredulous laughter. (President George W. Bush just said “nu-kyu-lar” again! Dick Cheney looks like an evil villain!) Watch enough, and you develop a resigned cynicism that politics could ever actually solve anything.

Then you could flip on MSNBC and see Keith Olbermann pillorying a Republican as “Worst Person in the World” or a latter-day McCarthy. If you switched to a conservative outlet, you might see the same thing from the other side. And if you listened to Spanish-language media, you might hear President Barack Obama branding political opponents as “enemies.” (The White House since walked back that comment.)

There’s a tendency to see this environment and reject elections, perhaps more so on an Ivy League campus. Politics is messy, slow-moving, sometimes wrong and sometimes un-intellectual. Parties seem to espouse extreme positions, based on principle more than pragmatism. Politicians are simply self-serving twits looking to stash some cash in their freezer, or at least win reelection. (Ironically, these observations are as exaggerated as the partisanship they decry.)

This disenchantment produces different effects. Some would take up the flag of Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879, calling for more bureaucrats to make decisions in place of elected officials. Of course, we have a massive regulatory state today — if you think the Obamacare bill was huge, just wait for the regulations to be written by the bureaucrats — and the cynicism remains. Others literally rally with Stewart to call on voters and politicians to “work together.” If that means a willingness to compromise after spirited debate, that’s a good fix. But if it means trying to avoid disagreeing at all, it misses the point.

I’m all for restoring sanity to our political discourse, but I just don’t agree it’s quite as insane as the cynics make it out to be. Politics would be stupid if there wasn’t disagreement. But two people can disagree on everything without vilifying each other. Politics won’t stop being slow, messy, frustrating and occasionally lacking in logic or insight. And partisanship is a necessary feature of that.

The next two years will likely be filled with tension between Republicans in the House of Representatives and Democrats in the Senate and the Oval Office. The word “gridlock” seems to be preferred by the mainstream media. But viewed without cynicism, this is precisely the beauty of American politics. Representatives like Eric Cantor, R-Va., or Paul Ryan, R-Wis., will disagree with their Democratic colleagues, but don’t mistake principles and partisanship for paralysis. This is the system at work.

This disenchantment will actually kill American politics if we try to remove disagreement or give up on the system entirely. To paraphrase the Old Spice pitchman, look at Greece. Now back at the United States. Now look at California. Now back at the United States. Right now, there’s no fear that the U.S. government will collapse. But if we keep worsening the entitlement problem, raising taxes and spending like there’s no tomorrow, there might not be one. The only way politicians will get that message is if voters — and young voters in particular — send it.

We’re lucky that the best system ever devised for letting men be free and prosperous is already in place. We just have to take it seriously, frustrations and all, plunge ahead, and make it work.

Brian Lipshutz is a politics major from Lafayette Hill, Pa. He can be reached at lipshutz@princeton.edu.