A political youth

In the 2008 election race, we have seen countless images of politicians shaking hands with heads of labor unions, celebrities and other "important" people whose opinions are then revered as prophecy by uninformed voters.

In this entire grand spectacle, there is a crucial flaw in all the think tank wisdom - all the hired strategists and experts. They have not considered what is their greatest weapon of change: the youth vote.

While the auditoriums seem packed as the candidates shuffle from school to school, not once have we seen a truly in-depth analysis of youth issues by any of the major news outlets. We have not seen any questions raised concerning the youth vote, yet all the pundits rave about all these abnormally different statistics and why this election is "unlike anything we've seen before."

First of all, we don't have an incumbent candidate, so the voters who have the ideology of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" aren't left to their simplistic choice.

Secondly, when all 73.3 million of the underage youths come of voting age, they will be larger than the baby boomers. Add to this the fact that we are currently paying social security we aren't going to see a dime of, and you can understand why a young person would be upset.

Perhaps it's a bit of good old-fashioned anger, watching our generation slowly being written off as the one who got shipped off to fight a war that wasn't of our own creation, the generation who had to watch scandal after scandal break and try to retain some sense of optimism.

Our generation is forced to watch a government become so weak it's cracking at the foundations. Its parties spew such useless rhetoric that issues become second to ego and greed. To all those who have said the youth don't vote, when have we been given a candidate? When have we seen something other than the stereotypical Ivy League big money, old man politician whose connections got him to where he is anyway?

We have seen the myriad of images flooding all the news networks about who said what, or what color his tie was, but I have not once seen a "roundtable" or any other large-scale panel discussion about youth issues, youth turnout or the role of the youth in the election process.

For all the "coverage," there is an overwhelming lack of reporting; for all the insight, an even bigger lack of relativity.

The sad fact is, the political "process" has become such an insular, self absorbed, ego-driven gossip column, that anything real would be lost in all the artificial pageantry.