Personality in Politics

What brings the kids to the polls?

The 2004 election brought the most age 18-34 year old prospective voters (41-46 %) to the polls since 1992 (38-53%).  And then in the 2008 election, even more 18-34 year-olds came out to vote (41-48%).  So my question is, what was so special about these years?

was it the Economy? Kids see their parents or their friends lose their jobs so they start paying attention to the candidates?  The Economy was at an all time low in 1992 so I would say this is a possibility except that in 1996 and 2004 the unemployment rate was almost the exact same, but the percentage of 18-20 year-olds voting went from 31% to 41%.  I think a better idea would be to look at the candidates themselves.

1992 was Clinton versus the incumbent George H. W. Bush.  2004 was John Kerry versus the incumbent George W. Bush. 2008 was John McCain versus Barrack Obama.  What do all of these three elections have in common? At least one candidate with a personality.

When Bill Clinton was campaigning he appeared on a variety of shows for younger audiences including a live appearance on MTV and famously playing the Saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show.  Also Clinton had admitted to smoking Marijuana (but not inhaling).  Some older voters may have been turned off by Clinton's over the top personality but it apparently went over well with young voters.

In 2004, kids came to the polls to vote not for the personality, but to vote against him.   George W. Bush was seen as illegitimate after the 2000 election, and for a variety of reasons (including a strong accent, and his response to the 9-11 attacks) people saw him as a poor leader.  On shows like SNL that are popular among younger audiences, he was the butt of every joke.  It was easy to cast the vote against Bush, so young people did so in swarms.

2008 there was a personality on both sides.  John McCain was an  older man which could already alienate young voters, but his bigger problem was that he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate.  Palin is a very intelligent women who has experience running a state, but many young audiences were distracted by her strong Alaskan accent.  I remember how fast Sarah Palin jokes began to circulate during that election.

But I doubt that young voters would make the decision to vote just because they think the other candidate talks funny.  More likely the increase in young voters was a result of people voting for Obama.  Although White voter participation actually went down from 2004 to 2008, Black voter participation rate went up 4 percent overall.  When a young charismatic African America runs for President, young voter participation increases.

So what holds back young voters from going to polls on the years when there isn't a big personality?  Why don't kids exercise their voting power as often?  I think it's simply too hard for that 10 percent of the population to decide who to vote for when there isn't a big personality.

Kids are often (unfortunately), uninterested in Politics; they don't see how elections are applicable to them.  And candidates don't always make clear to young voters why it is important that they vote. In 1992, 2004, and 2008 it was not only made clear why kids should vote, but it was made clear why they should vote. Kids watching MTV saw their candidate and they said well shoot, if everyone else is voting, I should too.

It is looking like Obama currently has the young voters on his side. In a survey done by YouGov of 2,000 20-29 year-old Americans, 80 percent said  they thought that Obama would win. But the question of whether Obama will be able to bring the same amount of young voters out on November 6 is a different Question.

Kids don't always take the time to decide who will be the better President so if voting isn't an easy decision, they will decide not to vote.  Personally, I don't think this is such a bad thing.  Everyone should exercise their voting power but if they don't care about the outcome, or if they don't understand what the candidates are really about, I would rather they stay home instead of going out and voting for the guy who smoked pot.

Why Generation Y?

What do I call my generation? 

In the wide history of the world, it has not been hugely important to name generations because people born as far as a century apart could still lead a similar life.  In the last 150 years however, life has been changing very fast and the world that I am growing up in, the world that I am accustomed to, is far different from that of my grandparents, or parents.

The reason why Generations matter so much, is that the time which someone is born, decides the world in which they grow up in. And the world that we grow up in, decides the people we become.  This is best explained by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. 

Gladwell points out that from the 75 richest people in History, 14 are Americans born between 1831 and 1840.   This list includes the likes of John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan; all people who are known to be extremely successful.  I’m sure they were all hard-workers and extremely intelligent people, yet the characteristic that they all have in common is their birth date.

 

The industrial revolution took place in the 1860’s and these 14 people were at the precise right age when it happened: they were old enough that they had the intelligence to take advantage of the growing economy, and they were young enough that they were willing to take risks and be entrepreneurial.

I am sure there are men as smart as J.P. Morgan in every Generation, but Morgan was born at the right time and likely had some lucky circumstances that led him to be successful.  I take the stance of Nurture when I say that these people would not have been nearly as successful if not for their circumstances. 

So what circumstances shape us?  This question is really hard to answer because my generation has not really grown up yet.  We have not reached our potential and we won’t for a few years.   To see the effects of a generation’s circumstances, it is easier for us to look to the past.

My Grandparents were born around the 1920’s-1940’s.  They happened to be too young to fight in WW2 and too old to fight in Vietnam.  Throughout their lives though, whether WWII, the Cold War, Vietnam or Korea, they lived in a time of War. 

My parents actually come from two different generations.  They are only separate by 5 years but my Dad is really a Baby Boomer and my Mom is more of Generation X. 

The Baby Boomers grew up in the Bipolar world.   They saw the communists as evil and they often lived in fear of a Russian takeover.  This environment created two great things: nationalism (as a result of having one common enemy), and great science fiction novels and movies.

Generation X is really just the name of the generation that came after the Baby Boomers. Generation X did not grow up with the hardships of war.  They saw economic strife but they also saw great success stories.  My Mom (and Dad) saw the cold war come to an end. They saw Ronald Reagan lower inflation, raise employment and lower taxes to record lows.  Generation X saw the great economic expansion of the 1990s under Clinton.  They were also the ones who lived through the personal Computer Revolution.

Generation X saw a life of optimism and went on to believe that it is possible to end wars and create peace and solve problems.

My Dad sort of falls into this category but he grew up during the hard parts of the Cold War as well.  He still has that telltale love for science fiction and anti-communist mentality to him.

But we are a different generation.  People have called us different things: 90’s kids, Generation Y, the Millennials, Generation Me.  We have been called Selfish, Lazy, and Ignorant of the world around us.  But kids are called these things all the time.

 

Our true Definition is yet to come but for the remainder of this blog, I will consider us to be Generation Y.   Why Generation Y? It is an unbiased description.  Generation X got its name because they were the Generation unknown. They weren't Baby Boomers anymore but people didn't know what to call them. 

Y comes after X so we are simply

the next Generation.

Our Future

I'm a kid.
I'm 17 years old.  I don't know where I am going to go to college next year.  I can almost grow a goatee.  Almost.

I lived through the first years of my life confident in (or possibly just ignorant of) the state of my future.  Possibly as a result of growing up in the North Shore suburbs of Chicago, I have never been very worried.  In light of recent events however (economic crisis, partisan gridlock, environmental deterioration), I am starting to question how secure my future is.

The Native Americans attempt to live in a way that ensures sustainability of the world for seven generations.   Back when Native Americans held the power, though, America was a completely different place.  In their world, the future was rather controllable; if a tribesman didn't go against his clan, learned how to hunt or gather, and didn't take too much from the land, he could be pretty sure that his children and his children's children would be able to live the same life as he did.

Today however, we are in the midst of the information revolution, and technology is growing at a faster rate than ever.  As technology moves faster than we can keep up with, it feels that we, as individuals, have less control over our future.  In the digital age, we can no longer just pick berries and pass on the same life to our kids.

And yet throughout the U.S.'s history, technology has been growing at extreme rates.  And in spite of this, America has held the ideal that every generation will be better off than the next (at least in the sense that our kids will be better off than ourselves).

In this country, kids grow up learning and believing the American Dream: that we can work hard, make it big and create a better life for our kids. The truth of this ideal (which our country was built on and thrives upon), is now up for question.

My generation grows up in a time where we have only a blurry view of the future.  Will human-driven automobiles be obsolete? Will kids still attend a physical university? Could there be another full scale war?  Will America still be a superpower?

These are the questions that my generation's decisions will answer and yet, as significant as these questions are to me, I feel a little out of the loop.  This blog is an attempt to discover the world my generation will create.  To do this I will look both to the past...
How have societies traditionally treated their children and how does that affect the adults they become?

....and to the present state of kids in our society:
What are the kid's doing today and what world will we expect for us tomorrow?

We are not the generation of our parents.  We are different.  What will things be like when we're in charge?