Mark T.R. Donohue is the opinion editor for UWIRE, the leading syndicate for student-generated content. His column follows collegiate columnists' opinions on the 2008 election.
Writing a column rounding up student views on the 2008 election is a bit of a challenge, if not for the reasons you might expect. By and large the columnists I read are pretty good writers, and some of them have useful and even novel insights into the electoral sausagemaking process.
As we've skirted ever closer to to the point where actual voting is going to take place, the tone of the pieces I'm reading hasn't moved any closer to acknowledging it. Why do most of the college writers addressing the field continue to treat matters as if we were still in the presidential "silly season," where stuff like haircuts, wardrobe choices, and knowing Chuck Norris matters more than legitimate policy? I don't think it's because these writers aren't capable of presenting such analysis. I think it's more the product of their self-doubt over how much difference they and the peers they are addressing can make in the system.
In my role as the opinion editor for UWIRE, I read about fifty election-themed columns and editorials a week. It's a task that if approached in the wrong spirit could really make a person cynical, but on the whole since the pre-9/11 days of my own college newspaper apprenticeship, university journalists have become far more politically engaged and a good deal more varied and original in their opinions on the topic. However, while college columnists care more about the presidential race than they did in 1996 or 2000, from my reading it seems as if they feel no more confident about their own ability to effect change on the process.
This leads to some interesting examples of cognitive dissonance. For example, every few days I will scan a new piece that bemoans the lack of voter turnout among the college-aged and other young adults. Just about as frequently, I'll be sent a story that begs, pleads, cajoles, or outright orders Republicans to stop being so driven by Christian values. The point that seldom makes either type of article is that unlike most nineteen-year-old self-styled atheist intellectuals, evangelicals vote - reliably and usually with one voice. Trying to persuade a candidate running in a popular election to change their opinion on principle, when doing so will likely result in their defeat, seems like a passive-aggressive way of claiming the whole political system doesn't work. Strongly worded open letters aren't going to keep the religious right from voting their conscience - why aren't I seeing more appeals using the menace of those scary Jesus people as a lever to get the iPod/text-message generation to register? Seems odd.
The trouble is that youthful apathy towards the election process is such an old story that the college-aged see it more as a permanent reality than a disturbing trend. This is also why university editorial pages show so much sympathy for outright radical protest types who aim to undermine procedural democracy far more than the prayer-in-school people ever have. And it's also why these columnists continue to send me pieces about Giuliani's lisp, Obama's inhalation, and Hillary's cleavage-baring blouse. To begin acknowledging the issues would be the beginning of the end - an end that for the generation raised under the George W. Bush administration seems a foregone conclusion. If you start lining up the candidates between liberal and conservative poles, then take an educated guess about where the pulse of the mythical Average American is these days, then from a lot of these writers' perspectives you've just spoiled the whole ending, which is supposed to be a year away still. If you consider the 2003-04 primary process, which saw a lot of politicans with youthful appeal get ground into dust by machine candidates, you can see why they are leery.
The trouble with this thinking is that college students, as much as they might like to imagine otherwise, aren't a closed system apart from the rest of the nation. 18-to-24-year-old voters need to try to work within the system, because it's going to be many years yet before they are in any position to make sweeping changes.