This whole voting thing seems pretty cool.
You follow the candidates for a few months, hear them throw not-so-subtle darts at each other, watch them comically backtrack for the sake of running a "clean campaign" and then repeat. And the whole time, you can seem holier-than-thou to all your friends when you find out they were watching the game during the last debate. I could get into this.
And I have. In between trips to the various sports Web sites that are my normal Web agenda, I've been making my way over to CNN's site (after all, CNN equals politics.) I labor through the pretty work of The New York Times - partly because it's a requirement for a class, partly to appear "in the know," whatever that means - in an attempt to absorb some of that hard-to-find "information" I always hear about. I even took one of those flyers the activist drones are always handing out on the West Mall. (I'm not exactly sure what I did with it, though.) The plan was to bone up on my current events, know enough to make myself feel pretty politically savvy and show up to the voting booth on March 4 with my chest sticking out, feeling real democratic.
That was the plan, anyway.
Through my daily pretentious endeavors to feel "informed," I came to a quick conclusion: You can read election coverage in the paper all day; it doesn't necessarily mean you're any more informed on issues than the guy who's following the Roger Clemens fiasco more than the travels of Barack Obama. Most stories I've read pretended to offer election coverage and did little more than provide analysis on campaign strategy, frequently saving actual policy stances for the one or two lines near the end of the article.
I'm very aware of how Obama is outspending Hillary Clinton in recent weeks, but as far as how the two differ on the issue of gas prices, not so much.
This media tactic - covering the election in terms of a competition as opposed to a debate of current issues - leaves me with little actual knowledge to go on come voting time. Instead, I'm left with the vague personality assessments that the candidates have given themselves (Clinton is about experience, while Obama is about change). As opposed to making a decision on who's the better man or woman for the job, I'm forced to choose who I like more.
Thank you national news media, I appreciate that.
In the end, it amounts to one question: Which is worse, a vote that is cast for reasons not involving the issues, or a vote not cast at all?
I've been taught since grade school that the strength of a democracy was the fact that the power came from the citizens through voting. But common sense tells me if those citizens have little knowledge of what's going on around them, they're likely to be duped and inaccurately distribute that power.
This voting thing was supposed to be easy. No one told me that hard-to-answer theory questions would be a part of the test. White is a journalism sophomore and senior sports writer for The Daily Texan.
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