In 1968, the counter-culture was flush with fervor, passion, and glamor. The youth of America were going to stop a war, end inequality, and bring peace, love, and happiness to all. The embodiment of the pacifist, anti-war position was Eugene McCarthy. He mounted such a successful challenge to Lyndon Johnson that Johnson decided not to seek re-election. Hubert Humphrey, a good man and a long time figure of great stature among liberal politicians (who had become invisible as LBJ's VP*) eventually took the Democratic nomination.
Prior to his stint as LBJ's VP, Hubert Humphrey was known as an impassioned liberal who pressed a legislative agenda based on progressive ideas. His one failing as a nominee was that he could not bring himself to completely break with the policies of LBJ. He supported the war in Vietnam and tried to hedge by explaining how he would end the war and bring the troops back home. This did not appeal to the sensibilities of the anti-war absolutists, who wanted the United States out of Vietnam as quickly as possible, whatever the consequences.
(Of note, most of the anti-war protesters were naive young people who did not understand the rationale for a Southeast Asian war and did not want to fight and die for such a distant cause. Unfortunately many of the leaders of the anti-war groups were covertly anti-American and wanted nothing less than an American defeat.)
What happened in Chicago during the Democratic convention was instructive. The disappointment felt by the young idealists at the nomination of Humphrey became transmuted into rage and the battles on the streets of Chicago ensued. The Youth Vote never materialized in the fall. The young handled their disillusionment by withdrawing from the political process and Humphrey lost the election to Richard Nixon. Although Hubert Humphrey had been one of the strongest advocates of liberal policies, ie, he was a true progressive in all areas except in his tepid support of the war, he was scorned as a war monger and considered to be indistinguishable from Richard Nixon by the youth voters.
Young people tend to be idealists. They lack the experiences of disappointment that leaven the desire for Utopian solutions that is ubiquitous in late adolescence and early adulthood. One of the key developmental tasks of late adolescence is to resolve and surrender the powerful regressive wishes to return to a fantasied safer, more encapsulated world where there are no threats and no frustrations. Such fantasies always lie at the heart of Utopian wishes; the young adult must learn to accept that people and the world are imperfect and are unlikely to ever become perfect. Without such an emotional development, young people are particularly prone to become invested in charismatic politicians, who promise all and eschew compromise. It is no surprise that college students have traditionally been among the greatest supporters of those who prove to be totalitarians. (Consider the support among the young for such "great" liberators and leaders as Hitler, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Che, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and a long list of other tyrants.)
In a post this morning, Siggy links to an article which questions the wisdom of relying on and idealizing the "Youth Vote."
One of the stories this campaign season has been the youth vote, and the main story line comes down to this: Obama gives them inspiration. Type “youth vote inspired Obama” into Google and more than 600,000 hits come up.
If the youth vote does jump from its showing in 2004 (a significant increase from 2000), we should applaud 18-to-24-year-olds for their civic growth, and if Obama motivates them to cast their ballots in record numbers, he counts as more than a politician. He’s a leader.
We should pause, however, over the source of the increase in youth civic engagement. It sounds all to the good, and parents and teachers should advance the project of youth voter participation. But inspiration does have a down side, too, one that mentors should discuss with the young, for while it may ensure larger participation, it isn’t the best motivation for voting. Reasons:
...
And five, inspiration dispels one of the fundamental traits of citizenship, namely, mistrust of office holders — mistrust not because of the virtues and vices of the persons, but because of the powers they wield. The founders based the government on, among other things, the seasoned observation that power corrupts. Inspiration obscures the insight. It makes citizens identify with the leader and relax their vigilance, forgetting that the possession of power automatically sets the leader — any leader — more or less at odds with the rights of individuals.
Please read the entire post for the first four reasons; for my purposes, the tension between the inspiration driven surrender to the leader and the necessity of hard work and compromise for governance is of paramount importance.
The immaturity of the youth vote is mirrored by the immaturity of the ideological extremists who demand purity from their candidates and leaders. AJ Strata has long railed against the ideological purists on the conservative side of the aisle, whom he holds partially responsible for the Republicans poor showing in 2006. Today he ponders the ideological purists on the liberal side of the political divide:
Democrats In Trouble, Purity War Rages Against Moderates
Lots of factors led up to the defeat of the GOP in 2006. But one of the big drivers was a severe loss of support from the independents in the middle (not the independents who are closer to the fringes). Bush has governed as a moderate instead of a far right ideologue. And that irritated the “true” conservatives, who lashed out at Bush and other more centrist conservatives (like myself) over many issues. The most egregious was the Amnesty Hypochondriacs who went so far as to call moderates RINOs and Bush El Jorge Bustrada. It was embarrassing and repulsive - and the center swung to the Democrats in 2006.
Now the Democrats face a failed Congress and sport historic low approval ratings to boot. And in their anger the liberal leaders have come up with the same dumb idea the GOP far right did - attack the moderates who give them a governing coalition:
AJ Strata goes on to quote from a Glenn Greenwald article proposing that the Democrats get rid of all the "Blue Dog" (aka conservative) Democrats who have broken ranks with the leadership. AJ concludes:
Yep, those pesky allies who give the radicals the seats of power but who don’t toe the line are a real problem, need to boot them from the party so we can all be pure again. The silliness of this argument is only muted by the fact I have heard it all before from ‘true’ conservatives. Anyone left or right of the fringes is scum and need to be removed. Sadly for them it is us scum who decide which party gets a chance to govern and not screw it up too badly.
The good news is that there are a great many people tired of the vitriol and rage that have characterized our politics for the last 7 years even while we can recognize how easy it is to regress to demonizing one's political opponents and attacking their arguments via the more emotionally satisfying while less rational ad hominem gambit.
There are genuine threats facing our way of life, ranging from the still relatively minor threat of Islamic expansionism to more serious threats emerging from the strains of globalization and the world's failure, thus far, to devise an agreed upon and useful approach to rules and rule breaking in the international arena. Further, our economic over-reliance on debt and the increasing difficulties emerging in managing debt and risk suggests that a world wide economic recession, with all the attendant unrest such a slowdown would incur, remains a real danger. (A depression remains a possibility only if we recieve spectacularly poor management from our politicians; not impossible but unlikely.) The longer term need to move from an oil based energy economy to alternatives also suggests that economic dislocations will be with us for quite some time; if poorly managed by our politicians, resource wars and combustible breakdowns of order in the gap have the potential to place many of the gains of globalization at risk. We are living in dangerous times and need all the brains and ingenuity of as many of us as can contribute to navigate through this period. The demand for perfection and Utopian solutions contains pressures that would tend to atomize our body politic; at this time, we need more than anything for the center to hold.
* The treatment of Hubert Humphrey by LBJ led Tom Lehrer to sing this plaintive tune:
I wonder how many people here tonight remember Hubert Humphrey. He used to be a senator. From time to time you read something about him pinning a medal on somebody or making a speech, or every now and then you read something in one of those Where Are They Now? columns. Whatever became of Deanna Durbin and Hubert Humphrey and so on. This became quite an issue last winter at the time of Winston Churchill's funeral when President Johnson was too ill to go and somebody suggested that he send Hubert and he said "Hubert who?" And all America was singing...
Whatever became of Hubert?
Has anyone heard a thing?
Once he shone on his own,
Now he sits home alone,
And waits for the phone to ring.Once a fiery liberal spirit,
Ah, but now when he speaks he must clear it.
Second fiddle's a hard part, I know,
When they don't even give you a bow."We must protest his treatment," Hubert,
Says each newspaper reader.
As someone remarked to Schubert,
"Take us to your Lieder."(Sorry about that)
Whatever became of Hubert?
We miss you, so tell us please.
Are you sad? Are you cross? Are you gathering moss
While you wait for the boss to sneeze?Does Lyndon, recalling when he was VP,
Say, "I'll do unto you like they did unto me?"
Do you dream about staging a coup?
Hubert, what happened to you?
Recent Comments