Well, what follows from Bill Luse is painfully sobering:
I've been taking an informal sampling of students' opinions, and I can assure you that McCain's having been tortured beyond endurance in a Vietnamese prison camp exercises their sympathies in the same way that a yawn enervates the jaws...
"Voting for him would be like voting for Bush all over again." (If you think those media soundbites have no effect, you're wrong. Heads are full of them, and it's easier than thinking.)
But, I point out, you didn't vote for Bush. You were too young four years ago. Well, yeah, but...They're not bothered by an inability to respond. They know what they want. Desire, enthusiasm is all.
My favorite entrance pollees were those who had written research papers against abortion. "Who you votin' for?"
"Obama."
"You do realize that he and you are on opposite sides of this issue."
"Well, I'm not voting for him for that reason."
"But you said here that abortion is murder. Is there some issue more important than that?" Well, no, but...
Some of them are aghast that Obama is one of a very few senators who voted against the partial birth abortion ban (though a few ask, "What's that?"). They actually don't know this about him. And yet I sense no movement.
Another says, "What about the economy? Why does everything come back to abortion?" I say I guess it doesn't, if you consider money more important than life. She gives me a strange look.
Says another, "Oh, I'd never get one myself. Besides which my mother would kill me. But I don't really care what other people do." That, I say, is a prescription for moral chaos. She shrugs.
There was one girl of Latin derivation, Puerto Rican I think, to whom I'd like to pay tribute. All of her friends are voting for Obama. When she tells them she's voting for McCain, they start yelling at her, calling her crazy, insane, a traitor. A traitor to what? she asks. To your race. But I'm not black! she protests. And besides, what's race got to do with it? Well, McCain's white. She stands her ground, but I can tell her feelings have been hurt. I tell her I hope she gets to keep her friends, but if doing so means sacrificing her principles, maybe they aren't worth keeping. She says she's not budging. They won't change her. Man, sometimes you never know what's hiding behind those faces.
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