Not since Bill Clinton proclaimed his preference for boxer
shorts has political television been this juicy. Unfortunately,
juiciness doesn’t necessarily equal substance.
Last Tuesday, CNN aired its “Rock the Vote” town
hall debate, featuring an audience comprised solely of 18 to 30
year-olds. The purpose was to promote a connection between eight
democratic presidential candidates and America’s young voting
population via a hip and open forum (Dick Gephardt was a no show).
Throughout the 90-minute program, candidates fielded questions from
the young audience ““ topics included anything from their
preference for Macs or PCs to the issue of drug use.
“Which of you are ready to admit to having used marijuana
in the past?” asked CNN moderator Anderson Cooper, quoting a
viewer’s e-mail question, during the program. Unlike Clinton,
some of these candidates did inhale. Not only that, they were
prepared to fess up.
Al Sharpton, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Lieberman and Wesley Clark
denied ever having smoked up, while Howard Dean, John Kerry and
John Edwards all admitted to past use. Senator Carol Moseley Braun
declined to comment, but we all know what that means (wink,
wink).
It’s great that we know who has and hasn’t indulged
in marijuana use, and that Al Sharpton prefers Macs, but what did
young voters really learn about the candidates? Not much, I regret.
The evening was certainly entertaining, especially for the hordes
of college students known to play drinking games during such
debates, but the program still left me sorely dissatisfied. What
should have been an opportunity for the candidates to genuinely
reach our voting bracket (in all our apathy) was instead nothing
more than the same old political rhetoric disguised in flashy Gen-Y
packaging.
For instance, throughout the program each candidate aired his or
her own videotaped presentation, designed to demonstrate how hip
and “in” they could be. Howard Dean’s video
featured generic hip-hop beats over a montage of campaign footage,
followed by the tagline: “You have the power to take back
your country.” The effect of these presentations was probably
to turn away more young voters than not.
The candidates may not realize it, but one of the many reasons
youngsters are so apathetic toward politics is that we can tell
when we’re being pandered to and courted. In addition to the
glitzy video presentations, it was obvious Kucinich and Clark were
trying hard to vie for our attention through their donning of
Matrix-inspired Neo get-ups. To think that showy videos and tacky
outfits are enough to win our votes gives us much less credit than
we deserve.
Further, despite Cooper warning the candidates, “When you
say your stock phrases, somebody (at a college campus) downs a shot
“¦ so tonight, let’s try to keep things real,”
these phrases still abounded, severely undermining any substantive
debate that might have been.
General Clark still invoked his military service. Dean still
boasted of Vermont’s approval of gay civil unions. And
Edwards yet again spoke about growing up in a small North Carolina
town. Despite this, I think Lieberman took the cake for the most
contrived statement of the evening when he asserted: “I want
to bring (the country) back and keep it alive for your generation
so that one of you can be here one day, running for president of
the United States.”
Ultimately, CNN’s “Rock the Vote” probably did
very little to sway young voters in any particular direction.
Certainly not in the same way knowing whether Al Sharpton wears
boxers or briefs would have.
Dang is a third-year business student. E-mail him at
ndang@media.ucla.edu.