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Last year, while Arizona was doing its annual bad impression of late fall and early winter, my roommate and I sat in front of the television, shooting the bull and watching CNN (and the Weather Channel, praying for rain or at least temperatures that resem ble cold).
If you kept up on the news last year at about that time, you probably remember the "budget impasse" Congress experienced with itself and President Clinton. Before the moment when the whole thing exploded across the headlines, I'd never really understood w hy this nation would be ecstatic to have 50 percent of its eligible voters show up on Election Day. Shouldn't we, bastion of democracy, leader of the free world, blah, blah and all the rest, aim for close to 100 percent, rather than the roughly 30 percent or so we get? Why would anyone willingly pass on the chance to alter the destiny of the nation?
At that moment, as I watched Republicans and Democrats fire at each other across party lines, the answer came to me: It doesn't matter; it's all just a waste of time.
Or, at least, that's apparently how well over half of the eligible voters in our nation think. On a university campus, where political activism is probably stronger than anywhere except retirement homes, it's easy to lose track of the fact that the studen t body and associated faculty do not represent the moods and opinions of the nation.
It's easy to lose track of the fact that adults in the 18- to 25-year-old demographic are actually so apathetic that MTV, what a friend of mine once described as "slacker garbage with a broadcasting license," has actually geared up to push for increased v oter turnout in that same age group. "Rock the Vote" is the music industry's cry and the title of their similar drive. You have to figure that things are bad when a business sector that has glorified indifference and heroin use for over half a decade actu ally finds the nation at large apathetic.
Of course, people are not apathetic without reason. There is a common perception that lawmakers, especially incumbent lawmakers, are generally cut off from the mainstream of American life. The facts seem to bear this out. The 1994 congressional election, with the sudden loss of tenure of so many incumbents, was an indication that the nation at large was tired of the then-current group of lawmakers and politicians. Yet, as the budget impasse and the continued party strife have shown, the more things change , the more they stay the same.
All the incentives to productivity we allow our national legislators to accrue, such as automatic cost of living adjustments for congressmen's incomes to correct for inflation, incomes that begin above a hundred thousand dollars per year, free medical car e and free long distance, have done nothing to break the bickering and gridlock that have become staples of American politics. These are good reasons to give up on the electoral process altogether.
Fear not, though. I have a solution to this dilemma.
Put the elected members of our national government into large dormitories, so that they are, in effect, forced to get along and live together. One dorm would be for the House of Representatives, another for the Senate, and force the White House to be the dorm for the President and his staff. If you've ever lived in a dorm, you'll know that sharing a bathroom with six other people forces a mood of compromise on the bathers.
Just imagine how the Senate Hall, for example, would sound at dinner time: "Sen. Kennedy, please pass the buttered peas."
"Only if you pass the clam chowdah and vote for the new gun control bill, Senatah D'Amato."
If Sen. D'Amato really wants those peas, he'll compromise, and maybe he and Kennedy will both get something to eat, and the legislative process will actually work.
Chris Badeaux is an English junior. His column, 'Cynic on Parade,' appears every other Friday.
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