Up close and political
By Matt Meyerhofer
The predominant interpretation of Governor Schwarzenegger's failure in the special election last week was typical party-line politics: "Look! Look! The public is fed up with Republican administration!" But the initial calling and subsequent failure of the special election can be read as more than just an indictment of Republicans; it's a commentary on cynicism towards politics itself.
After all, it's not as if every proposition on the ballot was conservative. Prop. 77 (redistricting) would have done little to help Republicans and Prop. 79 would have expanded prescription drug benefits at the cost of drug manufacturers. These propositions were rejected even more strongly than the clearly conservative ones, such as Prop. 73 which would have required parental notification for abortions.
So what we really saw last week was an indictment of politics itself. To a certain extent this was just frustration with the election itself: "Make the legislature do our legislating!" But it also shows how little Americans want to deal with the political process.
We live in a representative democracy. Government is -- indirectly and directly -- in the hands of the people. Americans need to be reasonably well informed about the political process. Uninformed voters make poor decisions.
If Americans don't make much of their role as participants in a political system then the only motivation to be politically knowledgeable is to the extent that it will materially benefit them. Given how infrequently "one vote" makes the difference, it becomes easy to write off political participation as a waste of time.
On the other hand, if people are genuinely interested in politics instead of merely seeing it through a self-interested cost-benefit framework, then there is a natural drive to stay politically informed. Better policy emerges as a result of this interest, but it isn't the cause for the interest being there in the first place.
All I suggest is this: the reasons why politics are so repugnant to the average American might have as much to do with cultural predispositions as with the actual content of political news. The reasons for these predispositions are varied and complex, but I don't think they are essential or inflexible over time.
The reason I bring all this up is that Santa Clara students offer a particularly acute case of political cynicism. They display total insulation from and ignorance of anything political. And this is especially tragic, since if the university's dual emphasis on knowledge and social justice find their practical unity anywhere at all, it is certainly in power of the political process.
Matt Meyerhofer is a senior English major.