Many of you may be preparing to skip the first election in which you are eligible to vote. Congratulations, it's quite the milestone in your life of civic irresponsibility. May I suggest a way to celebrate this momentous occasion? Turn on CNN on election night, and every time Wolf Blitzer or one of his minions says the phrase "best political team on television," take a drink. You'll be plastered, hungover and sober again well before anyone knows who won Florida.
What if you aren't going to skip the election and have actually decided to vote? If we had three parties to select from, who would you choose?
Hypothetically, your choices are an adulterous cripple; a vegetarian, author and war hero; and a raging alcoholic, all up for election. Most of you would select the alcoholic, simply because you can relate to him. Our nation, on the other hand, would undoubtedly choose the war hero. In this analogy, our nation would have elected Adolf Hitler. The losers would have been Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.
There's no reason this scenario cannot or will not happen here in the United States. We suffer from the same affliction the Germans had 80 years ago: an electorate of mediocre intelligence - short-sighted and self-interested. "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter," Churchill once quipped.
The late George Carlin said, "Think of how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that."
The average intelligence of this nation, truly of almost any nation, is mediocre or slightly above.
So who do people elect as their leaders? People of slightly better than mediocre intelligence, because that is who they can relate to.
John Kerry lost because he's incoherent while sober. How the hell could we talk to him after a few rounds? Al Gore lost by wearing suits and giving PowerPoint lectures while Dubya cleared brush in his boots and cowboy hat. Bill Clinton won by feeling your pain. Bob Dole lost by speaking in the third person. George H.W. Bush lost by not knowing that it's the economy, stupid. And Ronald Reagan was "The Gipper," everyone's favorite grandpa. Even by some of his own advisers' accounts, he wasn't that bright, but damn it, he was "The Gipper."
Do you think Americans really want to vote someone smarter than themselves into leadership roles? Why do you think politicians spend so much time trying to convince us they are just like us?
What demographic, then, ultimately selects our leaders? Eighteen to 30-year-olds? The only national campaigns that hinge on our demographic are kicked off during the commercial breaks of every Super Bowl.
How about the 30- to 50-year-old crowd? Maybe. Ultimately, the heart of the American workforce is too worried about paying for their children's college education, their own retirement, credit-card debts, the mortgage they shouldn't have taken out with the Lehman Brothers and the Jones' new lawn mower.
People over the age of 50 decide elections. People who really have no stake in the future of the nation beyond the next two to three, maybe four, presidents.
Those of us with an understanding of the way the world is changing, where the world is going and what our nation needs to get there don't vote. We suffer the choices of the less informed and the antiquated.
There is a reason why Ted Stevens won Senate re-election after revealing his utter ignorance by declaring the Internet is "not a big truck. It's a series of tubes." The people voting - the old and the stupid - also think that the Internet is a series of tubes.
Wes Hunt is a history senior.
