URBAN JOURNAL | BY MARY ANNA TOWLER
Are voters fit to vote? To start this discussion, I turn to the New York Times’ wonderful Gail Collins and her October 8 column. Recapping some of the craziness in this election campaign, Collins brings up Nevada, where, she says, “voters find both candidates so loathsome that neither incumbent Harry Reid nor his Republican opponent, Sharron Angle, wants to come out and campaign.” And then Collins gives us this: “Angle did make an appearance last week at a rally of Tea Party supporters in Mesquite, where she responded to a question about ‘Muslims wanting to take over the United States’ by decrying the fact that Dearborn, Mich., and Frankford, Tex., were governed under Islamic law, called Sharia. Which, of course, they are not.” And then: “The Associated Press, which reported on this event, noted that while Dearborn does at least have ‘a thriving Muslim community,’ it was not clear why Angle picked on Frankford, Tex., which did not seem to have many Muslims, and also went out of existence around 1975.” Sharron Angle could very well be sitting in the United States Senate come next January. So could Christine O’Donnell, who has lied about graduating from college, has said that evolution is a myth, and whose claim to fame is opposing masturbation. Rich Iott, whose pastimes once included participating in Nazi re-enactments, could be representing part of Ohio in the House of Representatives. This is not an issue of the candidates’ approach to governing — whether they favor bank bailouts, tax cuts for the wealthy, cap and trade, abortion rights, or gay marriage. This is an issue of intelligence, of candidates’ intellectual fitness for office. It is also, I’m afraid, an issue of American voters’ fitness for citizenship. Fifty-two percent of Republicans, according to a recent Newsweek poll, believe that Obama “sympathizes with” or “probably sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world.” Democratic voters in South Carolina nominated a complete unknown for Senate — an unemployed man who hadn’t campaigned, has no money, and has been indicted on felony and misdemeanor pornography charges. The reason he won the Democratic primary, apparently, is that he isn’t a politician. What kinds of issues would these folks need to deal with in Congress? Pakistan,
This country needs thoughtful, intelligent legislators — and to get them, it needs thoughtful, intelligent voters.” for one. We don’t trust its leaders, and they don’t trust us. But we’re bound together in the conflict in Afghanistan, where the outcome will affect our own future and that of many parts of the world. We have to have Pakistan’s cooperation if we’re to defeat the Taliban. But Pakistan has been helping the Taliban, who, it figures, could help counter Pakistan’s chief security concern: India. And how about Iran, whose nuclear ambitions continue to be a major concern? Several news media are reporting that Israel intends to try to bomb Iran’s presumed nuclear sites, with or without our blessing. It may very well want not only our blessing but our participation. Will Congress support that? Will it insist on being involved in the decision? Then there’s our energy policy. And the economy. And health care. Education. Immigration…. Increasingly, special interests — with big money — are setting the nation’s agenda and influencing our laws. Will legislators be swayed by them, or by the country’s needs? Adding to the pain: Michael Tomasky’s article in the current issue of the New York Review of Books suggests what some legislators and candidates have in mind: “a series of investigations into the Obama administration, quite possibly leading to another impeachment drama.” Tomasky quotes a Politico report that some Republicans “are quietly gearing up for a possible season of subpoenas not seen since the Clinton wars of the late 1990’s.” This country needs thoughtful, intelligent legislators — and to get them, it needs thoughtful, intelligent voters. You don’t have to have a college degree to be an intelligent voter. You just have to do your homework. There are few indications, though, that most of us are willing to put out the effort.
rochestercitynewspaper.com
City