Most of the time I can’t make my mind up whether I’m an anarchist or just an advocate of minimal government. This internal debate usually comes up in November when it comes time to decide whether to participate in the annual selection of state officials.
While buying breakfast this morning I got another reminder of why democracy really scares me. The person taking my order was a young college student for whom this will be his first election voting. He asked me if I’d seen last night’s debate (I watched the Yankees instead), and then proceeded to tell me why he was voting for Republican George W. Bush.
This young, future voter of America politely explained to me that he was certain that George W. Bush had more leadership capabilites than Al Gore, because of his role as Ronald Reagan’s vice-president! The weird thing was the kid clearly wasn’t completely stupid — he knew that on a handful of occasions for very brief periods of time Bush’s father was technically the president, but for some reason he’s convinced the father and son are the same person.
And no, I didn’t disabuse him of this notion. I just noticed to myself as I walked past one of those “make your vote count” that some organization or another put up all over campus, that this young man and many like him are going to help elect the officials who will regulate our lives.
Is it any coincidence that most elections in the United States are held so close to Halloween? I think not — they are truly scary.
(And before you’re too harsh on this young man, I am far more appalled at a much more common attitude among people I talk to about the election who base their votes entirely on surface opinions of the candidate’s personalities. Gore or Bush — take your pick — are alternately either too mean, too nice, rude, shifty looking, too dumb, too bright, caring, aloof, etc., all of which determines whether or not some people will vote for them. Now that’s scary).