COLUMN: Blissful ignorance

From Seth Lasser's "For Mass Consumption," Fall '96 From Seth Lasser's "For Mass Consumption," Fall '96At the beginning of every election cycle, the bemoaning of the pitiful number of citizens that vote begins anew. It's common knowledge that even in presidential election years less than half of the American populace exercises its right to vote. During off-year elections, only about a third of "the people" choose to vote. Many who disagree fail to vote for another reason: they feel their single vote doesn't count, for it amount to nothing. They are, in effect, saying that their voices cannot be heard, that they as individuals do not count in the larger entity of the United States. With this in mind, it's not surprising that a Washington Post poll released this month shows that millions of Americans cannot answer basic questions about politics in this country. Only 24 percent of those polled knew both of their senators' names; 22 percent more knew one of them. Between one-third and half of us do not know our congressman's party affiliation. Two-thirds cannot name Bob Dole as the majority leader of the Senate. It is not just the names and positions of elected officials that are unknown to the public; the way in which the American political system works and how the federal government spends the nation's tax dollars remain mysterious to a wide swath of the population. For example, the government spends less than two percent of its income on foreign aid, and this year Congress cut such aid even further. The average guess on aid spending in the poll was that it comprises 26 percent of the federal budget, which people felt was twice as much as the government spends on Medicare. That U.S. senators are elected to six-year terms is unknown to three out of four people in this country; slightly more than half of the sample knew that the Supreme Court has final responsibility for declaring the constitutionality of a law. There is high correlation between a person's political knowledge and the probability that he or she will vote; simply put, the more someone knows about politics, the more likely he or she casts a ballot. Perhaps none of this information is unexpected, for by and large we are well-educated and jaded citizens who possess at least a rudimentary understanding of the political system and landscape. If so, why does it matter that many Americans know little about the processes that drive our nation, that few know the names of the individuals at the top of the governmental pyramid? The fact is that Americans who are less informed have, on average, a gravely different and more negative view of the political situation in the nation and in the world. In the most significant example of this phenomenon, an overwhelming majority of Americans in the lowest third of political knowledge do not believe that the chance of a world war has decreased since the end of the Cold War. The opposite is true for those in the highest third. More than half of those in the least-knowledgeable category feel it would be better for the United States to stay out of world affairs. Apparently, they feel strongly that our nation should bask in the glorious isolation of yore. Very few of those in the high-knowledge category feel the same way. The uneducated or miseducated state of the American populace has direct effects on the decisions our elected officials make. As they attempt to balance the budget, there is only a certain amount of choice in what can be cut. Defense spending makes up a huge portion of the federal government's discretionary spending, yet many Americans do not want it to go down. This poll shows that such beliefs are based, at least in part, on a generally misguided world view. As Campaign '96 heats up, many of us will grow even more disgusted by the negative ads and character attacks that mark all American elections. Less-knowledgeable people who do vote, this study shows, will be far more influenced by issues of "character and caricature" than by the issues of substance that are being furiously debated in Washington, this year more than ever. Is it any wonder that the bulk of campaigning in this day and age is barely related to the policies and questions that truly matter? An exact analysis of the causes of the apathy, poor voter turnout and mud-slinging campaigning is impossible to glean. Perhaps when people are turned off by seemingly-dirty campaigning, they become less likely to vote or even to pay attention to politics. Yet the problem underlying the entire system is the profound lack of knowledge that most Americans have about their government which, for better or for worse, has a tremendous influence on all of our lives. This is the nasty underworld of the American political system -- an uninformed democracy that countless political thinkers have warned against. It is impossible to see a solution to these problems of ignorance and apathy that have become an established fact. They are a part of the American national character, and without fundamental change in our educational system, it is hard to see potential for their alleviation.