Editorial

It's not even so much that the candidates themselves are sometimes indistinguishable from one another, nor that they are so scripted that when you see Tom Bruggere, you think, built a business in his living room; when you see Gordon Smith, you think, the Senate is no place for an apprenticeship; when you see Clinton/Gore, you think, bridge to the future; and when you think Dole/Kemp, you think, 15 percent. It's that none of those terms mean anything especially to college students.

All of these candidates have spent a great deal of time talking about each other and about issues like entitlements, character and taxes. To people our age, entitlements are a pipe dream. Senator Ron Wyden commented that more college students think they'll see Elvis than think they'll see an entitlement check. And yet he and others all keep working hard on keeping their promise to seniors, forgetting that those who pay for it--us--are not likely to see those same dollars come back to us.

Character is a superfluous issue to most people. Look to the public opinion polls showing Clinton so far ahead of Dole. Whitewater, Gennifer Flowers, TravelGate, inappropriate use of FBI files, Hillary's ever-changing hair styles and their cost don't seem to sway voters away from these people. Somehow, voters have found something in the Clinton/Gore ticket that speaks to them. In a generation like ours, brought up in the Information Age and thoroughly jaded toward issues of character for presidents past and present, focusing on character seems ridiculous. Our friends smoke pot and they inhale, they cheat on their significant others and lie about it, and yet, they still find ways to trust each other.

Taxes. Well, they start with your first job and continue for every one after that, and if you leave anything to your children, you'll pay taxes on that. Any candidate that promises tax cuts endears themselves immediately to the voter. It's other issues that shape the vote.

Oddly enough, this isn't unlike our own student government elections, except that 40 percent vote instead of 14, and there is more money at stake than 137 dollars per term. But they spend more time talking about each other than anything else. They promise to cut our tuition and can't. They promise to represent everyone on campus and can't. They promise to not be ASUO insiders and can't. The funny part about it is that they don't bother to cut our tax. They often advocate for the opposite.

So, no wonder students are so involved in politics and yet are so cynical about it. We watch kids grow up from Hall Monitor to ASUO President to Governor and so on, knowing that we might be able to get something out of it, that we might be able to get our views represented, and yet thoroughly resolved to the fact that the people running have no idea what they're talking about.

In an election year like this one, our student government toadies get plenty of study material in both lying to us and lying to themselves. It's best just to join Misanthropes for Beer.