Hold your nose and mark the box, touch the screen or hang the chad.
Some points to ponder.
From Readback - WSJ.com
Is Political Judgment Innate?
Walter Lippmann Wasn't So Sure
Maybe democracy isn't such a great idea after all.
"Every other year, a fraction of America's eligible voters go to the polls. Some of them haven't paid much attention to current events and cast their ballots based on prejudice, stereotypes or narrow self-interest. Even voters who genuinely try to study the issues usually have access to only a small part of the information they need to make a reasoned choice.
Is political judgment really innate? Should the votes of the apathetic and the well-informed count the same in managing the "illimitable complexity of society"? "You cannot take more political wisdom out of human beings than there is in them," argued Walter Lippmann in his provocative and challenging 1922 essay, "Public Opinion."
Mr. Lippmann raised the politically incorrect possibility that universal suffrage, regardless of a voter's knowledge or willingness to entertain opposing arguments, may not be the best way to run a government. Even Thomas Jefferson, that most egalitarian of the founding fathers, had "all sorts of private reservations" about everyone being "equally fitted to govern." The democratic ideologues were adamant: "The free man was a legislator and administrator by nature," Mr. Lippmann wrote. "[The founding fathers] could not stop to explain that a human soul might not yet have, or indeed might never have, this technical equipment. …They insisted that a reasoned righteousness welled up spontaneously out of the mass of men."
When Mr. Lippmann wrote "Public Opinion" shortly after World War I, rapid advances in communication and transportation were remaking America from a nation of isolated and largely self-sufficient small towns to a complex grid of economic and social interconnections.
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and
"Our access to information is obstructed and uncertain, and our apprehension is deeply controlled by stereotypes," Mr. Lippmann said. "We are concerned in public affairs, but immersed in our private ones. The time and attention are limited that we can spare for the labor of not taking opinions for granted, and we are subject to constant interruption."
As determined as some voters might be to learn the facts and open their minds, larger forces conspire to keep them blinkered. The media can try to keep the public informed but not at the risk of boring them -- newspapers have to resell themselves everyday. "The press is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of the darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone."
Political leaders -- some? many? most? -- also prefer to keep issues simple, black and white. It is hard to mobilize millions of people to support abstract goals thousands of miles away. To get anything accomplished, leaders have to manufacture consent by controlling and massaging the information they pass along to their constituents. "Every official is in some degree a censor," Mr. Lippmann wrote. "And since no one can suppress information … without some notion of what he wishes the public to know, every leader is in some degree a propagandist."
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So what are we to do?
For at least a day, I "sorta" wish I was a Texan - I'd have Kinky as a choice:
Austin Bay Blog � She could go Kinky:
"...bumper sticker caught my eye: “Under Republicans, man exploits man. Under Democrats, it’s just the opposite.”"
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When I go to vote Tuesday, I know some local issues that I'm passionate about, some that I'm indifferent about. As for candidates, one of my hard rules is that if they are unopposed, they don't get my vote ... why encourage them?
I wasn't at the time but could well be today :
The Doc Searls Weblog : Friday, November 3, 2006:
"If you're an old-style Goldwater conservative, I think you'll have little choice but to kick the current GOP in the posterior next Tuesday."
Out of my pocket and out of my bedroom ...
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