PANTING AFTER YOUTH

Do you think Americans are ignorant and apathetic about the election?" asks the pollster. "I don't know, and I don't care," answers the citizen, slamming the door.

Old joke, new reality. The electorate lost interest in the 1996 campaign early on. Convention ratings were down 40 percent. In 1992, 90 million-plus viewers managed to dial in to the televised presidential and vice- presidential debates; this year, the figures were in the range of 60 to 70 million.

In the annals of apathy, however, the hotly desired "youth vote" deserves special recognition. When the campaign year began, both Democratic and Republican party operatives were mildly optimistic about the Election Day turnout from the "Generation X" cohort, even though voting is strongly correlated with age -- the older the voter, the more likely a trip to the polls. Still, the sheer raw "youth numbers" were alluring; the 60 million Americans between 18 and 34 represent almost one in every four potential voters. Moreover, four out of five of these young people identified themselves as "independents," which means they're up for grabs every election cycle.

Well, grab this. At the beginning of the campaign year, an organization called Rock the Vote worked alongside the MTV network to get young Americans to register (see "Rock the Leftist Vote," THE WEEKLY STANDARD, July 29, 1996). While Rock the Vote radio and TV spots urged listeners to register and vote, a sleek MTV bus toured college campuses and suburban malls, blasting out rock numbers, distributing registration forms, telling crowds to "Choose or Lose." In 1992, a first-time, largely larky effort by Rock the Vote signed up some 350,000 new voters. This year, the volume was pumped up higher. MTV and Rock the Vote boasted strong brand-name recognition. Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich gave interviews to MTV political reporter Tabitha Soren; Sheryl Crow and Robin Williams enlisted in the Rock the Vote ad campaign. The Choose or Lose bus was a cool statement in itself: interiors by Todd Oldham, images and sounds on the multiple video monitors and oversized speakers courtesy of Hootie and the Blowfish, Primitive Radio Gods, and Metallica.

Yet the number of newly registered "youth voters" is not much higher than in 1992, despite a larger potential pool -- some 3 million Americans have turned 18 each year in the mid-1990s -- and the ease of registration under the new motor-voter law.

Once again, presumed grown-ups lost it -- nonsensically thinking that any group as large and amorphous as Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 could have common political interests, even with the mediagenic "Gen X" designation. Rock the Vote directed its TV appeals not so much to young people's idealistic hopes as to a kind of naked generation-ism. "You don't let other people choose your music," went the rant on the emblematic Rock the Vote spot, "why let them choose your future?" Talk about reductive arguments: After all those years of Dad telling you to turn down the stereo, now you can fight back.

In fact, the actual lives and voting records of young Americans explode the pop image of rebellious youth in ripped jeans and turned-backward baseball caps. The kids in the caps are more likely to be 15. By 20 they're shopping at J. Crew or Express. By 30, they've got 401(k) plans -- 58 percent of them in one (admittedly) upper-end group sampled last year by Roper Starch Worldwide. While the performers on MTV's videos party on, the network's sales department quietly hustles new advertising business with demographic charts claiming that almost half of the audience is in pajamas by 11, rises early, and earns $ 40,000 per.

Unsurprisingly, those young voters who responded at all to campaign appeals leaned toward such middle-class issues as jobs, crime, and the cost of education. In other words, "youth" has tended to vote a lot like older Americans. In the 1980s, among the strongest supporters of Ronald Reagan and George Bush were younger voters (when they managed to show up at the polls). In 1992, with Gen X turnout slightly higher -- 43 percent of registered 18 to 34-year-olds voted, compared with around 40 percent in Reagan's two election campaigns -- the "youth vote" tilted toward Clinton (Cool Bill, in shades, playing his sax on Arsenio Hall's show).

For both the Republicans and Democrats, the 1996 youth drive was a lot like their "adult" campaign efforts: in the case of the GOP, ill-conceived when not inept; for the Democrats, a conscious diminuendo (don't rock anything this year). The Rock the Vote registration party at the University of San Diego after the last Clinton-Dole debate underlined the ambivalence of the two parties about being too closely identified with the network of Beavis and Butt-Head. Clinton skipped the fun, sending instead the Peter Pan-like George Stephanopoulos. Bob and Elizabeth Dole showed up with . . . Gerald Ford, now 83.

The obsession with the youth vote finds a parallel in the obsession of TV executives with viewers who are 18 to 34 years old. Well before the 1996 campaign began, a number of news organizations independently came to the conclusion that they had to do something extra to entice young Americans into the media tent. ABC News hired 29-year-old Anderson Cooper as a correspondent with what he calls a "mandate" to tell stories other reporters weren't telling, focusing on voices not usually heard, all in a style not usually seen. Cooper says he doesn't want to be known only as "the Generation X reporter." "That seems really cheesy to me," Cooper says. "I don't know any difference between telling a story to a young person and telling a story to an older person."

Oh? But during the campaign ABC sent Cooper around the country to do a five- part series, "Across a Generation," about American twentysomethings who "face a future of uncertainty about identity, work, personal and political commitment." Cooper used a Hi-8 camera "to achieve a more intimate feel" in the interviews, then edited the film with MTV-style jump cuts and sharp angles, "like an old family movie." The visual result is nothing if not arresting, but the overall meaning is a bit harder to read. The series leads off with Mollie, 24. Mollie wants to teach elementary school, but, Cooper's voice-over explains, she's still looking after two years. Her father, a math teacher, graduated from college in 1966 and had three job offers. "Like many of her generation," Cooper reports, "she's a college graduate, unemployed, and disillusioned."

The home-movie feel and the artful lighting create a wave of empathy for Mollie, and then the viewer's disillusion sets in. We're thinking how tough it is for Gen Xers until another Cooper voiceover informs us that, while "in many cities there's a shortage of teachers, Mollie wants a suburban school." Ohhh . . .

The most direct Gen X push was mounted at CNN. At the start of the campaign season, the cable network brought in Vassar grad and former New York Post reporter Jonathan Karl, 28, to be a political correspondent "specializing in covering the issues and concerns of Generation X," in the words of the CNN press release. CNN also signed up Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, 29, and Farai Chideya, 28, to offer commentary on CNN's "Inside Politics" program. Fitzpatrick is a Republican pollster; Chideya, formerly at Newsweek, was hired by Time last month. In the editor's note announcing her appointment, Chideya said she hates the Gen X label but is resigned to using it "with a smirk in my voice."

Chideya's first piece in Time tried to explain her generation's apparent lack of interest in politics and current events. While Chideya herself cited Pew Research Center figures showing how network news viewing has declined by almost one-third among 18 to 29-year-olds in the past year alone, she still found some good tidings hidden in the numbers. Yes, only one in five Gen Xers may watch Dan or Tom or Peter, but they nevertheless glom on to "news" about politics from Letterman, Leno, and other late-night TV sages. "Don't assume just because someone doesn't know who Boutros Boutros-Ghali is, that he or she is stupid," Chideya says in an interview. "Young people have knowledge"; it just may be "a different base of knowledge."

Chideya argues that the typical news story leaves out the under-30-year- olds: "If it's an education piece, teachers are interviewed, administrators are interviewed. Students have to be interviewed, too." In a health-care piece, the younger uninsured audience ought to be covered. News stories on television can be shot to attract younger viewers -- in a style that "looks and feels funkier" -- without cutting back on substance. The real downer is to be boring.

On CNN, a Jonathan Karl report is likely to look like any other hardnews segment: establishing shot, background interviews, closer. At the end of a piece on the voting habits of twentysomething Seattle men and women, Karl did his stand-up with the Space Needle in the background; he wore a turtleneck rather than a tie. The report was substantive, informed, intelligent. "I think the worst way to try to appeal to a young audience is to say, "Okay, this is your Gen X minute of the week,'" Karl avers.

The ambivalence about "what youth wants" is bound to continue as long as clueless news chieftains -- and out-of-it politicians, for that matter -- think that the easiest way to appeal to young Americans is through tokenism and the dumbing down and tarting up of political coverage. As long as that lugubrious beat goes on, both the young and the old will tune out.

Edwin Diamond is a journalist and director of the News Study Group at NYU. Donaldson-Evans and Ginsberg are members of the Group. Nancy Hochman provided additional reporting and research.