Selling their votes

A lot of notice has been taken of the poll of NYU students which showed that they'd be willing to sell their vote for varying amounts.

Only 20 percent said they'd exchange their vote for an iPod touch.

But 66 percent said they'd forfeit their vote for a free ride to NYU. And half said they'd give up the right to vote forever for $1 million.

But they also overwhelmingly lauded the importance of voting.

Ninety percent of the students who said they'd give up their vote for the money also said they consider voting "very important" or "somewhat important"; only 10 percent said it was "not important."

Also, 70.5 percent said they believe that one vote can make a difference — including 70 percent of the students who said they'd give up their vote for free tuition.

While, on one hand, it's distressing to think of people being willing to sell what so many fought and even died to gain, it's also a sign of either their cynicism or contentment with the system. It isn't irrational for someone to believe that their individual vote doesn't make a difference. After all, we haven't had Florida recounts very often in our electoral history. And some could say that an individual vote in New York wouldn't count very much. The state is so overwhelmingly Democratic that the Democrats don't need any one vote and the Republicans won't be able to make good use of it. However, New York just said good bye to a nominal Republican governor. And New York City famously elected a Republican mayor. So don't be so sure that the state will stay as thoroughly blue in the future as it is now. However, right now, the students probably are right to doubt the importance of their own vote.

I have always thought that the moaning over our relatively lower voter participation rate is a sign of general contentment. If people were really as furious as the pundits keep telling us they are, they'd be showing up in higher numbers to vote and wouldn't need millions spent trying to get them to the polls. Perhaps these students aren't as angry as the journalists portray them.

And for people tut-tutting over those who would be willing to sell their votes for an iPod Touch, college tuition or a million dollars, I'd ask how many have sold their votes for promises about Social Security or universal health care?

Amity Shlaes has demonstrated in her book, The Forgotten Man (which I'm listening to now on audio and really enjoying)

one legacy of FDR's victory in 1936 was the creation of interest group politics with the federal government targeting various groups just in time to win a landslide for FDR in the fall election.

WHAT MAKES the current field of candidates so timid? It is clear listening to figures from both parties this year that they still believe Social Security is untouchable. This despite the fact that bringing Social Security into solvency is a relatively easy task. When it comes to the more serious fiscal burdens upon our grandchildren, the candidates are likewise timid. This despite the fact that those burdens only become heavier as we delay. We speak of 2008 as an election year, but it is also the year when the tide of Social Security cash begins to recede with the retirement of Baby Boomers.

But where is the origin of the problem? Traditionally historians have focused on the slow rise of American progressivism over the past century and a half. I’m going to do something different, and undertake an almost artificial exercise. Here I will compress history and argue that this destructive hesitation comes out of a single political campaign, the presidential campaign of 1936. This campaign marked the virtual end of old-fashioned American federalism and the rise of a new kind of politics. It was 1936 more than any other campaign that created modern interest groups and taught us that Washington should subsidize them.

Does selling your vote for college tuition or a million dollars make less sense than selling your vote for your promised largess from the federal government? I don't think so.