SYNDICATED COLUMN: Smart Young People Who Snub Politics Are Smart

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Smart Young People Reject Public Service — Because They’re Smart.

America’s best and brightest don’t go into politics.

(By which we mean mainstream two-party corporate politics. Democrats, Republicans, Washington. Politics as activism, as the ongoing debate over how we should live our lives, remains of great interest to young people.)

Mediocrity among the members of the political class is often cited as a reason for government’s ineptitude, its inability/unwillingness to address the great problems we face today: climate change, soaring income inequality, the Third Worldification of America. If we had smarter, more charismatic politicians, the reasoning goes, we’d get smarter, more effective problem-solving.

Forget it. The word from the trenches of academia is that that’s not going to change. Millennials just aren’t interested.

A national survey of 4200 high school and college students conducted last year found that only 11% might consider running for political office. Most young people say they want nothing to do with a career in government.

We don’t know how that number compares to the past. As Fareed Zakaria points out, “Americans have always been suspicious of government. Talented young people don’t dream of becoming great bureaucrats.”

Still, like other mainstream media types, Zakaria thinks disinterest in public service has increased. “The New Deal and World War II might have changed that for a while, but over the past 30 years, anti-government attitudes have risen substantially,” he says.

Young people think politicians can’t/don’t make much of a positive impact in people’s lives. In a poll of 18- to 29-year-olds, Harvard’s Institute of Politics found a 5% increase, to a third, in the portion of young adults who believe that “political involvement rarely has any tangible results.” When asked about the statement “politics today are no longer able to meet the challenges our country is facing,” 47% agree and 16% disagree.

I was thinking about this a few weeks ago while researching a column about the possible presidential candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016. First lady, senator, secretary of state — Clinton is one of the most successful political figures of our time. Yet what has she actually accomplished? How has she changed the life of the average American? Where is the big feather in her foreign policy cap? She’s been busy, but she hasn’t done anything historical — and the same could be said of almost all her peers.

Future coulda-been bests and brightests are paying attention to Washingtonian disfunction. “How deep is the disengagement?” Ron Fournier asked in The Atlantic. “I spent two days at Harvard, and couldn’t find a single student whose career goal is Washington or elective office. One wouldn’t expect to hear this at the Kennedy School of Government.

Which prompts two questions:

Why are the young eschewing politics?

Can we do anything to make a career in politics/government more appealing?

Zakaria offers a “why”: “The ever-increasing obstacles — disclosure forms, conflict-of-interest concerns, political vetting — dissuade and knock out good candidates.”

I disagree. Getting exposed for financial or other improprieties is a concern for some political prospects in their 50s or 60s. But the most that your average 21-year-old college senior has to worry about getting outted over is drug use, and if current trends continue, no one is going to care about that in a few years. After all, George W. Bush and President Obama  both used cocaine.

Not long ago I was approached by an Important Democratic Party Official about running for Congress. After he saw a talk I gave to a group of high school students, he pronounced himself so impressed that wouldn’t stop calling me. The party needs you, he said. So does your country.

Heady words. And I’m at least as egotistical as the next bear. So I looked into it.

I wasn’t concerned about personal disclosures. I’d be running as far to the left as you can in today’s Democratic Party; my district is very liberal on social issues. Whatever came out wasn’t bound to hurt my prospects. Anyway, I have a theory about political strategy: your opponents can’t use your deeds against you. They can exploit your denial of those deeds. Candidates who reveal their own skeletons find the electorate much more forgiving than when they’re uncovered by their opponent’s “opposition research” team.

Money would have been a major issue. You need at least $1 million to fund a Congressional campaign. It’s easiest if you have it yourself, and if you have rich friends willing to bankroll you. I don’t.

This is a grim system we have. “Wealthy candidates who try to buy office with their own money tend to lose, but in order to set up a campaign, you have to know a lot of wealthy people and wealthy special interests — and that’s something that most of us are not privy to,” Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, told CBS News.

I might have been able to sell out to local business interests in exchange for favor chits to be cashed in later. But then, why run in the first place? For me, the point of running for Congress is to have a chance to change things for the better.

Washington has plenty of you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours corruption as it is. (I’m talking to you, Former Treasury Secretary/Warburg Pincus President Timothy Geithner.) They don’t need more from me.

The money thing is pretty much insurmountable.

Even presupposing a dramatic upturn in my finances (Powerball win? Selling a kidney to a desperate Internet billionaire? Kickstarter?), there’s the question of what I could accomplish in Congress. This is assuming, of course, that I win. Half of candidates lose, with nothing to show for their million-plus bucks.

Like the kids at Harvard, I can’t think of a single Congressman or, for that matter, Senator, who has managed to achieve much for the working class, or the environment, or anything big, since, well — my entire life. And I’m 50. As a political junkie, I would have heard of something.

Senator Ted Kennedy was one of my political heroes. I worked for two of his presidential campaigns. But let’s be honest. What was his greatest political accomplishment? Probably the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. A nice piece of law to be sure, but a small-bore one — and hardly worth spending decades of your life sitting through endless boring meetings.

And that’s what you do in Congress. You sit on your ass waiting for a chance to talk to people who are waiting for you to shut up so they can talk.

To an empty chamber.

Perhaps I should amend this: politics makes sense for right-wingers.

Republicans have radically transformed American society in recent years: legalized torture, extraordinary rendition, Guantánamo concentration camp, preemptive warfare, the doctrine of the unitary executive, sweeping tax cuts for the ultrarich and yes, even Obamacare — that one was dreamed up by the right-wing Heritage Foundation.

Liberals and progressives, on the other hand…there’s not much for us in the world of mainstream politics.

If we want leftie — most young people are — bright young things to enter public service, public service is going to have to change first. Obviously, that doesn’t seem likely. So if you’re a smart, energetic young person who wants to change the world, there’s still a place to do that.

Not in Congress.

In the streets.

(Ted Rall’s website is rall.com. Go there to join the Ted Rall Subscription Service and receive all of Ted’s cartoons and columns by email.)

COPYRIGHT 2013 TED RALL

6 Comments.

  • alex_the_tired
    November 29, 2013 8:01 AM

    Holy Hell, Ted. The turkey must have left you in a stupor.

    Do you know why we have “alternative theories” in the biology text books? Because Ethel Biblethump and her concerned citizens brigade figured out something all the bright young things did not: The seven (or nine or 11) people on the school board are the ones who decide what text books are used. These are small-potatoes posts that fly under the radar in most people’s political awareness, but they’re the ones that have all the power because they can go in very small incremental steps. So crackpot delusion theory becomes major political talking point. The U.S. is the ONLY first-world country that discusses Intelligent Design as an “alternative” to Darwin.

    And it isn’t just these pissant school board posts. Ever see the documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated?” The people who make the decisions about film ratings (life or death for a film) are, for the most part, exactly like the people who sniff their noses and decide that well, everyone really ought to have exposure to religion, sex is dirty, and can’t the gays just stop? If only we had forced public prayer, everything would be fine.

    The smart young things are missing the obvious. You want to change the corrupt government? Then you have to show up for the pissant school board meetings. You have to obtain the connections and associations with those people who can put you on the film-ratings board. You have to vote in the former stripper who understands that no health coverage is a much bigger problem that two boys wanting to take each other to prom. And those people have to be able to stand up and SHOUT DOWN the other side. Because that’s how the other side wins; the lefties and the progressives are too busy treating everything like an academic debate about the finer points of non-Aristotelian conceptualizations of Hegel’s minor premises.

    • “Holy Hell, Ted. The turkey must have left you in a stupor.”

      So you believe Ted will “see the light” if only you insult and “shout” him down a little more?

  • Running for national office is only something people who aspire to be public personalities do. You don’t run for office to change things. The legislation isn’t written, nor even read, by congresspersons. Corporations and lobbyist organizations (like ALEC) write the legislation based upon corporate interests, then get their actors (meaning, congresspersons) to flog it to the public and get it passed. The role of the public servant is to just whip up support for legislation that usually is not in their best interest. Like NAFTA, like the Clean Air Act, and so on. Their job is to be an actor and spokesperson for corporate legislation. Who really wants to do that? Only narcissists and sociopaths.

    Change? I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Most Americans don’t want change, even the one’s that say they do. Change, real change — is hard, messy and requires sacrifice. That’s not what most Americans want. They just want more stuff, more pizza and beer, more porn, more sports, more Prada, etc … Just keep that stuff coming and enough jobs/safety need to breathe, and the masses of asses are content.

  • As Gore Vidal said, In America we don’t have politics; we have elections.

  • Backwards as usual, Ted. The left is going to have to change their shitty attitudes drastically before they will get public service to change one iota.

    Until they grasp that, they will continue to be marginalized.

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