Political Animals?

The best thing I read all last week was this article by Louis Menand on public opinion. (The second best thing was a Times magazine article on a performance artist who masquerades as a preacher and spouts off about materialism, but it's no longer on line, so we have to move on.)

Menand brings up the depressing topic of voters and how they make their decision about who to vote for. In 1964, Philip Converse concluded that only a small margin of Americans have any coherent political perspective. Most people just vote based on how well they did that year. Another scholar recently found that many voters based their decision in the Gore/Bush election on if their county was dry or not. Access to pubs or lack of access may have turned 7 states in that election.

Other sobering statistics that Menand rattles off:
- 70% of Americans cannot name their senator or congressman
- 49% believe that the President can suspend the constitution
- 30% can name an issue to explain their vote
- 20% hold consistent opinions over time.

He concludes with this quote from Robert Putnam:
"Most men are not political animals. The world of public affairs is not their world.. It is alien to them -- possibly benevolent, more probably threatening, but nearly always alien. Most men are not interested in politics. Most do not participate in politics."

(There is a lot more in the article, so check it out.)

I've taught Introduction to American Politics at a city university many times. Most of the students in the class don't intend on being majors, so that first day, I face 50+ of the most disinterested faces that you've even seen. They are busy checking out the girl with the halter top in the front row, thinking about going out that night, and noticing that I carry the most beat up backpack. They're thinking about everything but politics.

Those disinterested masses is why most experienced professors foist this class off on adjuncts and junior faculty. Actually, I like teaching it.

The first few weeks are usually tough, because these students don't care and are uninformed, but as the class progresses, things improve. I teach them about the process of making laws and define all the terms for them. And then we do pro and con on different issues -- affirmative action, campaign finance reform, death penalty, prayer in school. And then they surprise themselves. They do have opinions. I make them learn the name of their local congressman and then call the office to find out answers to questions. By the end of the class, class debates escalate into fights and ten new students declare themselves to be political science majors.

I agree with Putnam that men are not political animals naturally. But teach them how the system works and give them courage to speak their mind, then they are hooked for life. At least, I hope so.

Comments

[beautiful]

Nothing brings home the poignancy of politics like not actually being able to vote. As a non-citizen, I get unreasonably cranky at students & friends who don't bother to vote. It's such a privilege (sorry if that sounds old-fashioned!). I have to say that voting rights is one of the few things that makes me consider a move from permanent resident to citizen. Grumble.

[Another Damned Medievalist]

This is one of the reasons why I never want to give up teaching the first part of Western Civ. I love teaching Artistotle and the Old Oligarch and Sophocles and Xenophon. And then Livy and Polybios. Getting students to understand the relationship of the Greeks to their respective poleis and the importance of citizenship in the Greco-Roman world just thrills me.

[Robin]

Check out Mass MOCA at http://www.massmoca.org. The preacher was just here showing his documentary last weekend! I'd wanted to see it, but couldn't fit it in our schedule.

[fling93]

I wonder if economists get equally as rankled that consumers often don't make purchases and decisions that really maximize their utility. The consequences of all these decisions in aggregate probably have just as big (if not bigger) effect on our lives.

[Russell Arben Fox]

I guess it depends on how you define "political." Is the average man or woman involved in politics, or wants to be? No. But are they political, in the sense that they can only be what they when there exists some kind of public life? Absolutely.

Your Introduction to American Politics class sounds like one I'd enjoy, Laura. I've no doubt you teach it well. I really should move my introductory American government classes more in the direction of a general political class; while there's a lot I can do to make elections and certain aspects of the Constitution relevant and interesting, wading through the chapters on the media and the bureaucracy are always such a pain.

My favorite introductory class is Political Ideologies, which I'm always refining. It's fun to see one's students come to recognize their own opinions and ideas for what they; it's even better (though obviously much more rare) to see them follow an argument and begin to think for themselves, to see conclusions open up as they try to put their own intellectual house into some sort of coherent order, usually for the first time ever. Liberal, conservative, socialist, anarchist? Republican, Democrat, communitarian, libertarian? Admittedly, for most of those who take the class such terms go in one ear and out the other; but for a portion of every class at least (sometimes large, sometimes small), they're a (self-)revelation.

I'll be looking for you in Chicago!

[Chris Lawrence]

"Another scholar recently found that many voters based their decision in the Gore/Bush election on if their county was dry or not. Access to pubs or lack of access may have turned 7 states in that election."

That sounds suspiciously like a spurious correlation; dry counties would tend to be more conservative and more religious, and thus more likely to contain voters who support conservative candidates.

(Hmm, reading the article, it looks like it was weather patterns, not alcohol, that determined "dryness" in the study. Ok, I can buy that as a causal mechanism, but I still want to read the article.)

Amen on the value of teaching intro; it's been fun so far this year, and probably the most fun of my three classes so far. Of course, it helps that I'm teaching smart kids who might actually be inclined to read the book without me having to force them to (unlike my experience at a state university).

[Laura]

yeah, chris, I described the wrong kind of "dryness." Shows you where my priorities are. I would probably vote some asshole out of office, if I couldn't get a drink.

See many of you this weekend!