The End of Apathy

They were thrashing about under the unforgiving eye of the television camera, the men who are supposed to tell the people what's up, the keepers of the inside line and the reliable source. They were confounded, and they needed to find reasons to save face—the pollsters flopped, the voters flipped, the candidate emoted. They came back to that again and again, that moment in a New Hampshire diner when the legendarily composed Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke with quavering voice and glistening eye of the grueling task of running for president. Was it spontaneous? Was it calculated? Did it speak to women, turn off men? Why had the polls and pundits been so wrong about the people?

Voters have taken over the presidential election, refusing to conform to what is expected or predicted. There's a technical term for this: it's called participatory democracy. There is no longer a Democratic front runner, and the Republican field is wide open for the first time in modern memory. When Americans last selected a president, the race ended with an ideological barbed-wire fence all over the electoral map. This time around, at least so far, it's quite a different story.

In the Democratic contest, Americans crossed two monumental divides, those of race and gender prejudice. Many male voters supported Senator Clinton, and many white voters Barack Obama. Exit polls in New Hampshire found that she was considered best qualified to be commander in chief, while he was found to be most likable. It is difficult to communicate to young people how revolutionary that is to those of us who spent our formative years assuming that white Christian men ran the world by birthright—but only if they had never been divorced, taken an antidepressant or shed a tear in public.

When I asked my 19-year-old daughter if anyone on her Ohio campus was supporting Hillary Clinton, she said no. "She reminds us of our mothers," she added. One of the reasons so many young people easily embraced Obama and easily wrote off Clinton is because of the diverse society they take for granted. His race was no bar and her gender was no gift. And there had always been a castor-oil element of the support for Clinton, a sense that you should take her because she would be good for you. Castor oil can't compete with champagne, especially if you're young.

But after one night in Iowa turned her from winner to write-off, Senator Clinton set about engaging those young voters, and their mothers, too. Although the pundits emphasized her emoto-moment, it may well have been her ire during the Saturday debate that made a greater impact, when she argued heatedly that a desire for change is no substitute for action. She did two things public women are never supposed to do: she blew up, and she broke down. And she won. Was it because female voters could relate? Was it because Democrats thought she might be a match for Sen. John McCain, the Republican winner? Was it a contrarian reaction to the lionizing of Obama in Iowa, or to the polls that predicted her defeat? All we now know unequivocally is that we do not know anything unequivocally, except this: if this race degenerates into the kind of disinformation campaign that has disgusted Americans in the past, they will be angrier than ever before. They will have earned that right. Because that is the other great divide voters have bridged. The turnout tells the tale—American apathy of seasons past has given way to civic engagement. More than 70 percent of voters told pollsters recently that they were following the election closely.

If this informed interest continues, negativity and slick slogans just won't play. The candidates who prevail will have to turn their energies to bridging divisions, not simply defining differences. The younger generation believes baby boomers have broken with the old familiar compact to step aside and open the pathways to promotion; their support of Senator Obama is one way of saying, "It's our turn," and other candidates from both parties will have to address that. Obama's opponents must acknowledge how important the rise of an African-American star is in the political firmament, and Clinton's must be certain not to minimize the power of a female contender; because of their presence in the race, the white men of the field must make a convincing argument of inclusion. Everyone should vow to make this a clean fight, in which policy differences are not couched as moral failings. When Americans talk about change, they're talking about not just the conduct of our government but that of our elections.