Don't Rock the Vote

WORLD WRESTLING Federation star The Rock has challenged George W. Bush and Al Gore to appear on the WWF's weekly Smackdown! program, watched, the organization claims, by some 14 million young voters. "You have approximately three weeks to decide to join us at Smackdown!," The Rock thundered a few weeks ago in Washington, "approximately three weeks to show that you do, indeed, care about the youth of America."

Forget the preposterous notion that candidates who can never stop talking about "the children" don't also care about "the youth." The Rock is going to get stood up for a better reason -- he may have 14 million viewers, but it's highly unlikely even half of them will vote. And that's not the candidates' fault.

Both campaigns have made efforts to attract young voters. Each is blessed with an attractive young relative to rally the troops. Karenna Gore Schiff has traveled the country giving speeches on her father's behalf and imploring young people to go to the polls in November. Likewise, George P. Bush, the governor's nephew, has been trying to convince Gen Xers that his uncle is a new kind of Republican, more familiar with their issues than were the elderly GOP nominees of recent memory.

Proponents of targeted youth out-reach whine that those efforts aren't enough. They complain that senior citizens command a disproportionate amount of the candidates' time and money, arguing that young people won't vote unless they're paid more attention. But that gets the cause and effect backwards: Candidates pay attention to groups who vote. The AARP crowd is fawned over by politicians because it reliably goes to the polls in droves.

In 1972, the first presidential election after 18 year-olds were given the right to vote, only 50 percent of young adults (ages 18-24) went to the polls. And the numbers have gone down ever since. In 1992, 43 percent of young adults voted, a post-1972 peak. (The third-party Perot excitement raised participation levels among all age groups that year.) In the 1996 election, when the outcome was a foregone conclusion, fewer than a third of 18- to 24-year-olds cast ballots.

The trends this year don't look any better. A poll commissioned by MTV finds that just a third of 18 to 24-year-olds plan to vote on November 7. That's probably a good thing, since the same survey indicates that 25 percent of young people can't name the major-party presidential candidates and 70 percent are unable to identify the running mates.

Meanwhile, the number of people over age 45 who vote has hovered between 65 and 70 percent in every presidential election since 1972. But while they would probably get one if they asked, senior citizens have never agitated for an "elderly debate" in Sun City. Like working mothers, union officials, and every other member of a sought-after demographic group, seniors watch the debates or nightly news programs to get information about the campaign. And if all else fails, they're inundated by ads.

In April, a "youth" group called Third Millennium released a report detailing the trends in political advertising throughout the 2000 primaries. The results were unsurprising. Evening news programs attracted the lion's share of advertising buys, followed by morning news and talk programs. Third Millennium's beef: Young people don't watch these shows enough, so they're not being exposed to the presidential race. Their preferred solution: Presidential candidates should spend more advertising dollars on programs that attract 18- to 34-year-olds, mainly sitcoms.

But that's just special pleading. Third Millennium's own research helps show why candidates don't do that. According to the group's Neglection 2000 report, "Of all the candidates running, it appears Bill Bradley was more willing to take chances on young adults with his ad buys." The problem is obvious. Bradley never came close to winning. Voters watch the news, and competitive campaigns know how to target voters.

Of course, Bush and Gore have both generated publicity by visiting late night TV shows, which attract predominantly young audiences. And Gore recently appeared on an MTV Choose or Lose special. But if MTV executives are really as concerned as they claim about politically educating young people, why didn't they air any of the debates this fall? Because, MTV vice president Stephen Friedman argues, young voters had "all these other venues" on which to watch the debate. And besides, "the debates are not the best way to" get young people involved in the process because "[the candidates] are not really speaking to their issues."

Really? Any young voter who watched the first two debates heard Al Gore's proposal to make up to $ 10,000 of college tuition tax deductible, and George W. Bush's plan to help young workers build private investment portfolios through Social Security. They would have heard both men discuss their views on abortion, the environment, and gay rights. In last week's St. Louis face-off, Gore and Bush specifically explained how they would try to attract more young people to the political process: Gore through campaign finance reform; Bush through trust and civility. Friedman admits that these are exactly the kinds of issues Gore was asked about in his MTV appearance, but he insists there's still not enough emphasis on how policy proposals will affect young adults.

How much is enough? It's hard to avoid concluding that what the youth-vote lobby is really after is the kind of "attention" that translates into higher ratings and more political ad dollars for the likes of MTV and the WWF. If there really is a youth bloc worth extra attention from the candidates, young voters will first have to prove it by tearing themselves away from their TVs long enough to vote.

Edmund Walsh is an editorial assistant at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.