In 2010, we’ll finally see grown-ups in the voting booth
[How many people caught the fact that I put the wrong year in the post caption (2008, instead of 2010, which I’ve now written in)? As I’m sure you’ve noticed before, I have problems with numbers. This is why I’m not an economist. What’s the excuse the Democrats have for their budget failures?]
The year 1920 marked the first time that American women got the vote in a federal election. That same year, Warren Gamaliel Harding won the vote. He was a disastrous president. Although a very likable guy, even he knew that he was a dim bulb. His presidency was marked by a level of corruption that America didn’t see again until the Clinton and Obama presidencies. Incidentally, women voted for him in droves. He was the lady-killer candidate, the handsome man who wooed these women who, for the first time, could vote.
Just to tell you how times have changed, this was what 1920s “sexy” candidate looked like:
He wouldn’t sell well now, but he was hot, hot, hot back then.
The year 2008 marked the first time that America’s youth was galvanized to vote. They too got the hot, hot, hot sexy candidate:
It wasn’t only the hitherto apathetic millenialists who voted. Other people who had not previously taken their voting rights seriously — that would be minorities — also piled into the polling places. As with the star-struck youngsters, minorities, even the more mature ones, didn’t think through the ramifications of an Obama presidency. Instead, they voted for him because he was hot, hot, hot and black.
None of these new voters represented a thoughtful electorate. They were, instead, committed to the electoral equivalent of a one night stand with the sexy quarterback. And as most people discover after the one-night stand with the sexy quarterback, they’d been well and truly . . . well, you know.
Obama’s presidency, like Harding’s, has been a disaster. It’s been marked by bad decisions (although we haven’t been as resilient as post WWI America, which was roaring through, not falling down), and exceptional degrees of corruption.
In both 1920 and 2008, the elections were marked by unusual frivolity. The people who turned out to vote were new to the concept and they were not thinking seriously. They were capable of serious thought — well, at least the women and older minorities were; I have my doubts about today’s untried, spoiled young people — but they didn’t bother. They were excited and sex/race sold.
Of course, the morning after always arrives, and you have to take stock. You can try to drown out that cheap, used feeling you have by behaving in exactly the same behavior in the hope of a different outcome; you can repent and try to undo the harm; or you can just slink away, pretend it never happened, and not do it again.
The 2010 election is going to be marked by the last two approaches. The voters who could have been mature, and weren’t, have repented and will try to correct the situation. The young’uns, the ones who were never serious, will fade into the woodwork and wait until they actually grow up before they vote again. Pat Sajak puts it best:
I’m not what you’d call a Pollyanna. In fact, I’m pretty sure if something can go wrong, it will. As for the glass being half empty or half full, I not only come down on the half-empty side, I’m pretty certain there’s a crack in the bottom of the glass that will drain the whole thing dry. Despite all that, I’m growing more and more convinced that November’s elections will mark an extraordinarily important turning point in the relationship between the government and the governed, and not simply because the Democrats are likely to have their clocks cleaned. Despite the efforts of the Left and their cohorts in the press to paint their opponents as ignorant, hate-mongering racists, this is shaping up to be a serious election in which serious people are weighing serious issues. It’s not about slogans and personalities and trivialities; it’s about deficits and government power and the Constitution and the courts and scores of other important issues. In short, we’re about to have a grown-up election.
