The Nation's Pulse

...The point of elections is, as every eighth-grader should The Alternative: An American Spectator November 1976 25 know, to get a reading on majority sentiment as to particular issues or candidates...

...Daniel Walker in the primary, may be remembered as the last and possibly most vulgar of the Daley machine lieutenants...

...THE TALKIES by Philip Terzian When the editor of this magazine very kindly invited me to review movies, I told him that I was not certain that I could because I am very largely unhappy about the state of the cinema, have been for some time, and was not at all sure that I should wish to observe at first hand its further decline...

...Sturdy, smooth-faced James R. "Big Jim" Thompson, the Republican contender, is the paradigmatic good-government type...

...Consider: It is virtually a commonplace, particularly in the bicentennial period, to remark on the extraordinary caliber of leadership with which this nation was blessed during its formative years...

...Philip A. Hart...

...Donald W. Riegle holds a slight edge over Republican Rep...

...Crane is the brother of Illinois' popular conservative Congressman, Philip M. Crane...

...Turnout figures are presented as barometers of social and political health...

...By 1972, however, a mere 56% bothered to make a choice between Richard Nixon and the e• professor from South Dakota...

...Mizell lost in the Democratic landslide of 1974 to suburban newspaper publisher Stephen L. Neal, but has an even shot at regaining his seat this year...

...and the lower they go, the more concerned we are supposed to be for the well-being of the Republic...

...The League of Women Voters, in an elecuon-year paperback called Choosing the President, speculates that as many as 75 million adults--or a full one-half of the votingage populace--will stay home this November 2. Usually, recitations of these figures are accompanied by prescriptions designed to reverse the steady decline in turnout, since the average editorialist is likely to view that decline as "disturbing," "alarming," or worse...

...To demonstrate that, in a democracy, opinion should be uniform, that the judgment of consensus is immutable...

...Movies are, for good or ill, a part of our contemporary mythology and intellectual life--indeed many of our most horrifying cultural icons are descended from filmdom--and it might An Introductory Note be useful to watch the spectacle and draw some lessons...

...Rust/aoven t~5 an Indianapolis attorn...

...In any case, each celebration has brought forth an equally ubiquitous and equally nauseating image that is etched indelibly in journalism, in the annals of popular thinking and interpretation...

...The city machines, at least, found this supposition a sound basis on which to act, and learned that alcoholic and/or petty financial inducements were a better cure for apathy than programs designed to alleviate any presumed societal or existential angst among the non-voting populace...

...Why was this movie dull, fraudulent, eloquent...

...Burr Talcott's reelection margins have dwindled to 1% in recent years...

...24 The Aiternat,.ve: An Amer.ican Specrat.gr November !976 ception was justified, and some of the steps taken to remove those obstacles were meritorious: few today mourn the passing of the poll tax, and the defure and de facto disenfranchisement of blacks in the states of the Old Confederacy is a particularly ignoble chapter in the history of our last one hundred years...

...Almost 82% of the voters cast ballots in the election of 1876, when Tilden won the popular vote but lost to Hayes in the Electoral College...

...and that he then reassess his expectations as a potential voter to determine if they are reasonable...

...The evidence of voter laziness is overwhelming...

...it has also spawned a number of dubious actions and proposals...

...And secondly, to the degree that low turnout does reflect a problem, I believe it is a vastly different kind of problem from that which is usually described...

...I do not endorse this particular solution, of course...

...A David Brinkley or an Eric Sevareid will pontificate upon this subject at will--as, for example, during lulls in Convention coverage--and even conservatives have discovered that the term can be turned felicitously to their purposes...

...There is a certain simple logic in all this which is difficult to refute--who, when it comes down to it, wants to defend nonvoting...

...Instead they have become part of the mad process, slavish adherents to trendiness, masters of articulating the obvious, frequently little more than press agents trumpeting for various actors and directors...

...Having said that--and I believe it is significant--I do not at all mean to argue that there is anything good about people staying home from the polls...

...I will, in short, admit that low turnout may be a reflection of something wrong in the body politic...

...but nonetheless it surfaces with a certain regularity throughout the campaign season, usually on slow days when there is little else with which to fill the third slot in the editorial page...

...Where I differ from the conventional wisdom in this field is that I believe that the problem with non-voting does indeed rest with the body politic and the individuals who compose it, and not with the governmental and social systems of which they are constituents...

...U THE NATION'S PULSE & Peter J. Rusthoven Why People Don't Vote: An Unfashionable View This year, as in every election year, a given amount of media commentary is being devoted to the question of why an increasing percentage of eligible Americans don't bother to go to the polls...

...The cult of personality has always been a dominant theme in film and there seems to be no conclusion about who is the hero of movie-making...

...Needless to say, this topic is hardly the stuff of which headlines are made...

...There was also a time when it seemed The New Yorker, in its capsule descriptions of plays, characterized nearly every one as a "biting anti-war satire" when, of course, a pro-war play would have been truly satirical...

...For a considerable period the Left had a certain monopoly on the latter term, using it as a shorthand indictment for all that was wrong with the American system...

...Satire invariably turns into orthodoxy, and happy the man who can tell when...

...But despite his apparent advantages, Crane is said to suffer from poor campaign organization and may allow the flukish Congressional career of David Evans to continue at least for another term...

...Why did I laugh in spite of myself...

...If, on the other hand, one feels "powerless" and "alienated," I suggest that he take another look at precisely how much power the franchise was designed to give him...

...It should be the responsibility of the critic to consider art, judge it, explain his judgment, and perhaps draw some inductive conclusions...

...Call this what you will, but it is hardly "alienation...

...But such feelings are hardly reasonable indictments of the balloting process itself...

...Long before the chesty achievements of Elizabeth Ray, Riegle brought the confessional genre to political puff-prose with his published diary, O Congress/--a work that violated taboo and good taste across party lines...

...But what of the numerous surveys in which non-voters say that they feel powerless, that their vote doesn't make any difference...

...Such feelings of powerlessness as are worthy of attention do not involve the franchise at all...

...The polls almost always record vast numbers in the camp of "No Opinion...

...The effort to remove these obstacles, however, has not only proved inadequate in increasing voting...

...Of late, however, the "alienation" hypothesis has been adopted by any number of individuals who have never read Marx with the fervor of the standard upper-middle-class revolutionary hailing from Scarsdale, N.Y...

...His opponent, Leon Panetta, served in the Nixon Administration as civil rights assistant to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, but was fired from that position reportedly because of his adamant stand in favor of busing...

...Conversely, Calvin Coolidge was chosen for a four-year term--during which he left the country alone and the country did very nicely, thank you--in an election with one of the lowest turnouts in this century...

...Citizen feelings of powerlessness or even "alienation," if you will, may be quite real and quite justified to the extent they rest on governmental interference in the discretion accorded individuals in their private domains...

...The screenwriter...

...Thompson has earned his reputation as a racket-busting Federal district attorney, packing Daley cronies off to prison...

...Other examples, both positive and negative, abound: Warren G. Harding was elevated to the Presidency-an office to which he was marginally, if at all, suited--in the first national election following extension of the vote to the entire distaff half of the population...

...Or, what is worse, they have grown turgidly analytical in a fashion that is almost comically academic: so obsessed with form and function, camera angles, exterior shots, splicing and other technical minutiae that it is nearly impossible to recall they are speaking of something they consider a form of art...

...Kevin Phillips and Paul Blackman, in an American Enterprise Institute study on Electoral Reform and Voter Participation published in 1975, provide an up-to-date account of the downward trends...

...Originally elected as a Republican, the liberal Riegle switched parties in 1973 in a move greeted by mixed reaction from both caucuses...

...Although the post-card registration bill indicates that the voting-is-too-difficult school has not yet seen its demise, the more popular theory today views low turnout as a function of widespread societal malaise or, in the jargon of sophomore sociology, "alienation...

...The case of the Hollywood Ten has given us an episode in the morality play of creativity vs...

...Is this movie a symptom or an idea...

...To what avail...

...26 The Alternative: An American Spectator November 1976...

...Recoil as one might from "simple" explanations for so-called social problems, insufficient attention has been paid to the possibility that non-voting may be more a function of voter laziness, and of unreasonable expectations by voters as to what their ballot "should" accomplish, than of anything else...

...Undoubtedly there are other views as to why suffrage is an underutilized privilege, but the two described above are fairly common, and are probably typical of most others in many respects...

...Similarly, surely no civilized nation of 215 million people can devise a workable system in which every individual's ballot truly "makes a difference...

...Voting is at base a collective exercise, designed to elicit a prevailing view among the citizenry as a whole...

...Two examples might suffice: some years ago the Newsweek reviewer gave Bonnie and Clyde an unfavorable notice and then, realizing he was drastically out of step with the critical community, reversed himself in the following issue...

...Though Howlett bubbles with public optimism--his latest and to date most remarkable pronouncement is that Jimmy Carter will have to run on his coattails--Thompson is considered far ahead...

...commerce (or, in their case, politics vs...

...To a degree, this perPeter .l...

...Secretary of State Michael R. Howlett, the Democrat who upset Gov...

...But at bottom, my reaction to this problem involves what is, in our era, fairly unpopular counsel--to wit, except in cases of race discrimination, the non-voter has no one to blame but himself...

...The probable benefit derived from having unconcerned citizens cast a ballot strikes me as marginal, to say the least...

...Wilmer "Vinegar Bend" Mizell is remembered by baseball fans as the flame-throwing lefty who pitched for the St...

...Democrat Rep...

...His article, "The Telegenic Intellect of Sally Quinn, " appeared in our November 1975 issue...

...Yet our first several Presidents were chosen in an era when the electoral process was more indirect, and the franchise more restricted, than at any time in our history...

...Confident of regain...

...I certainly make no brief for a return to the "white male freeholder" standard which was characteristic of the voter qualification laws of our early national history, but it should be clear that there is no ready correlation between widespread grant and exercise of the franchise and the quality of individuals elected...

...it is not to make individual voters feel "powerful...

...The most startling upset of 1974 was the defeat of Republican old-timer Bill Bray by a 28-year-old parochial school teacher, David W. Evans, in Ir~diana's 6th Congressional District--now the southern suburbs of Indianapolis, once the domain of the Ku Klux Klan...

...and it seems reasonable to suppose that a good many of these worthies are undecided not because they feel anything or anyone has "failed" them, but simply because they couldn't care less...

...Bad weather almost invariably lowers the turnout, as a healthy portion of the electorate seems unwilling to exercise the franchise in anything but sunshine...

...Marvin L. Esch in the contest to succeed retiring Michigan Sen...

...Nonetheless, at the risk of seeming anti-democratic--and with nary a study nor a survey to back me up--I must confess that I find most of this election-year philosophizing on why people don't vote to be singularly off-the-mark...

...In sum, people of widely disparate political philosophies are wont today to lay the blame for low voter turnout on pervasive dissatisfaction with the "system" in general and politicians in particular...

...Over the years I have had to retreat into the expedient of seeking out old (and in many cases very old) favorites for solace, but that is probably a dishonest attitude for a putative fan...

...In the first place, I am not at all convinced that nonvoting is by itself an especially troublesome phenomenon...

...But returning to the hill country of North Carolina, Vinegar Bend wound up from the right and won election in 1968 as a Republican in the Fifth Congressional District...

...One of the basic reasons for having a democratic republic, or so it seems to me, is precisely to insure that no one individual--and certainly not an individual voter--is excessively "powerful" in deciding matters of great import...

...The key factors emphasized by each are, of course, apparent: Non-voting is seen as a serious problem, and moreover, as a problem caused by either specific governmental obstruction or general system-wide unresponsiveness...

...Thus, in the rush to end discrimination in the South, Congress went so far as to require approval by the Attorney General before the election laws of certain states could take effect--a rather imaginative view of Federalism which was upheld by the Supreme Court in Katzenbacb v. Morgan (1966...

...Thus, Phillips and Blackman, in the work mentioned earlier, rightly take federal registration, particularly the post-card variety, to task, but do so in part on the grounds that the " r e a l " problem is "the growing malaise in public attitudes toward government and the existing political parties...

...The answer to this line of reasoning is somewhat more complex, but again I believe that that answer should lead us to the voter, and not to the "system," as the root of the difficulty...

...To be sure, voting should not be a burdensome endeavor, and no doubt it behooves our government and candidates for its offices to arouse voter interest...

...People don't even bother to vote," the argument ran...

...Democracy, after all, means "rule by the people' ' - - a n d if increasing numbers of people don't bother to participate, something must be wrong...

...Howlett has spent his carter hustling votes in the wards of Chicago...

...Rather, they involve another aspect of our particular democratic republic--namely, that part of our political theory which holds that a government should not excessively interfere in the lives of its citizens...

...but more fundamentally, I am not really sure we need any solution designed to woo the apathetic individual to the polling place...

...Those photographs of William Faulkner in sun glasses and Bermuda shorts tapping out the script of The Big Sleep do not explain that he, like Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker and the rest, was in Hollywood as an act of desperation, arguing plot and dialogue with former shoe salesmen...

...Talcott, with a reliably conservative voting record, is a prime target for defeat by liberal and environmentalist groups this year (Talcott holds the distinction of making the environmentalist "Dirty Dozen" list two consecutive years...

...In any event, these various reforms seem to have had little impact on the nationwide trend of ever decreasing electoral participation...

...In short, levels of voter participation are not, in my view, tied very closely either to the caliber of leadership elevated by the democratic process, or to the general health of the nation as a whole...

...Nixon, but does not seem to have made significant headway against Byrd's coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans...

...ing the seat, Republicans this year nominated David Crane, whose professional practice combines psychiatry and law...

...For a long time and, to some extent, even today, supposed "obstacles" to exercise of the franchise were regularly deemed the culprit, the theory being that the problem lay less in voter apathy than in burdensome and occasionally sinister governmental red tape...

...At the moment it is the director, but it has been the actor, the screenwriter, even, in a twisted sense, the producer...

...politics...

...So I must confess to relatively little concern over the statistics on lack of voter participation, and to relatively little sympathy for those who do not vote...

...Here we surely have, do we not, grist for the alienation theorist's mill...

...They have certainly become products of their time: simpleminded, loud, self-consciously fashionable, they are undeniably a characteristic '70s institution...

...However, on reflection, I decided that if anyone should look at them it might as well be me, for I am as irresistibly drawn to chronicling horror as I am to pleasure, and a similar paradox rests in my attitude to film: I like movies in principle, and dislike most that I see...

...If one is too lazy or unconcerned to participate, so be it, and may he disturb us not with his complaints...

...And recently, the Congress has come close to passing a post-card registration bill, which Would thoroughly federalize the election process in the name of expanding exercise of the franchise--and which would also, in the view of more cynical observers, permit the Mayor Daleys of our era to register even more cemeteries and McDonalds as they strive to exceed the 100 + % turnout they have managed in the past for certain urban precincts...

...But it should be noted that the agonies of screenwriters do not inevitably benefit the cause of art, as when the late Philip Terzian, born in 1950, is a graduate of Villanova, a former speechwriter for the Democratic National Committee, and now with The New Republic...

...Louis Cardinals in the 1950s...

...In the lush farmlands and rugged beaches of central California's 16th Congressional District, eight-term Republican Rep...

...ergo, they are alienated, and something-preferably something radical--must be done...

...Spectacle, indeed, and critics have been particularly culpable, for it is they who should be the illuminating influence in film culture...

...Esch, a middle-of-the-road veteran of five terms, does not enjoy the wide recognition of Riegle...

...On its own, the Supreme Court has seen fit to void residency requirements as being in violation of the Constitution--although the case, Dunn v. Blumstein (1972), did permit a 30-day cutoff for registration purposes...

...He should be wary of conventional wisdom, and consider also that culture is a cumulative phenomenon...

...While denying that my own motivation in writing on this subject rests on a similar dearth of alternative topics, I think a word or two on what is commonly called "voter apathy" may not be out of place as the American electorate prepares to select a President, Such discussions inevitably begin with the statistics, and the statistics are certainly revealing enough...

...One major governor's race--that of Illinois--presents the likelihood of a party shift, but it offers a more interesting contrast of style and character than of ideology...

...and predictably enough, we are told that the solution lies in a better system and better politicians, although there is less agreement on precisely what these are in fact...

...In 1900, 73% of the electorate handed McKinley his second win and Bryan his second loss...