August 31, 2004
It was breakfast time on the first day of the Republican National Convention (at least for those in professional wrestling). On the floor of the convention, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), a former wrestling coach, had Sen. John Kerry in a verbal headlock, accusing him of being wishy-washy before our morning coffee even was cold.
As the evening parties simmered at a respectable hum that one would expect of an air conditioned Republican event, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani put a leg-lock on Sen. Kerry from the convention floor.
The Smackdown Your Vote! crew – returning convention vets CEO Linda McMahon, Big Show, Ivory and me, along with Shawn Michaels and Mark Henry – are here in New York City, taking all of this in first-hand as we work to inspire young people to vote during this first day of the Grand Old Party’s 2004 convention in the Big Apple.
The talk inside Madison Square Garden is tough and negative, as compared to the positive mood, at least among many of the younger delegates we have spent time with on Sunday and Monday. Frustrating to me is the lack of effort to educate younger voters like me on the issues I care about.
Sunday night, the WWE Smackdown Your Vote! Superstars hit the Roseland Ballroom in NYC. The party was “hosted” by the Bush twins, but they were primarily having a smaller party with friends protected by a phalanx of Secret Service agents and staff. Members of the media are totally fascinated over the twins. Questions I was asked ranged from insightful and provocative by the Associated Press writer to the suggestive: “What’s the fascination with the Bush twins?” (wink, wink; nudge, nudge) That crap was asked twice by the smarmy pretty boy talking head from a TV entertainment info show, who deserved either a beating or job retraining.
After the party I returned to my hotel room. I popped on the old TV to catch up on the news. I found the MTV Music Awards. Low and behold, across the stage walked Alexandra and Vanessa Kerry. I perked up, figuring that in front of that audience, maybe they would say something worth listening to. They opened with a “get out the vote” message, which sounded great to me, being a dedicated Smackdown Your Vote! spokesperson. Then, I cringed in pain when they said those words I’ve grown to loathe, “We hope you vote for our dad.”
Because of the obvious bias of the source of that message, one thing has become very clear: When “vote for my dad” is uttered with the proper enunciation and inflection, it produces the most meaningless sentiment in the English language. I became annoyed, but not bitter. It is insulting to young people for the children of politicians to ask young voters to simply “vote for my dad” without giving us one reason to do so. Obviously, some of my peers at the MTV awards agreed, because there were as many jeers as cheers at this presentation.
Sure enough, it got worse for me when the Bush twins showed up on the screen behind the Kerry daughters and said the same damn thing. Get out the vote (mental thumbs up) and vote for my dad (mental hand in the shape of a gun shooting myself in the head).
What happened next turned up my frustration level. In adding to their “get out the vote” message, Jenna Bush told the viewers to “get educated” and get to the polls. The statement itself is nothing bad, and there is nothing wrong with her saying it. But how does a young, under-informed, possibly disenfranchised, or maybe just new to the process voter watching the MTV Video Awards actually “get educated” when very few who have access to the media seem interested in educating, particularly the political parties.
According to what Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) told me on the floor of the Republican convention yesterday, this is not a new struggle. Even Sen. Frist, who is also a well-educated medical doctor, did not vote as a young person. He told me he did not believe his vote counted. I took this as a message of hope for young voters of today. Clearly, Sen. Frist has changed his ways, becoming very active in public service and voting regularly. Hey, it’s okay to not have voted yet in your life – every election is a new opportunity.
Where will young people find this inspiration? Why does it take a political wrestling column (albeit the most read one on the web) to be the one to tell these stories, when they can be readily told by those with access to a larger media platform?
In my last two columns, I argued that the Bush and Kerry campaigns were missing a tremendous opportunity to energize young voters in America by censoring the two pair of daughters, limiting their message to, “vote for my dad.” Likewise, not having both political parties and candidates talk more frequently about issues important to young voters, and how they have fought through their feelings of political impotence when they were ages 18-30, misses a tremendous opportunity.
Young people are disenfranchised because we are treated like imbeciles by political campaigns (“vote for my dad” is the ultimate example of this). We get treated like idiots by the media (the Swift Boat controversy being a great example of this insulting news coverage the media thinks resembles interesting political discourse). Saying ‘get educated” without helping to educate younger voters is highly hypocritical and most certainly not the answer. The overwhelming focus on the negative by the campaigns and the media make matters worse.
The WWE is trying to educate our fans through our development of the 18-30 VIP, and our Internet posting of the Bush and Kerry campaigns’ respective responses. This isn’t rocket science. Clearly, there is a political civic education gap. Through our VIP and our Smackdown Your Vote! campaign, the WWE is getting considerable attention and respect for helping to fill that gap. It if takes the WWE to bring substance to the election, it’s pretty clear that political parties and politicians are dropping the ball on that front.
To their credit, Sen. Kerry, President Bush and a few others have responded to the Smackdown Your Vote! VIP. Many more candidates need to do so, and they should be encouraged by their political parties to do so. And YOU should encourage them, too. These candidates should then talk more frequently about how they feel on these issues so that younger voters see that these candidates care. That would be a good start.
Many believe the low youth turnout occurs because the political process, along with the media coverage of it, serves to alienate people new to the process. The parties seem to be making a greater effort to reach out to younger voters, but it’s outreach without much substance.
Smackdown Your Vote! will continue to fight these lame trends among politicians and many people in the media. We will praise those who talk about the issues and treat young voters seriously. And we will continue to put the smackdown on those who do otherwise.
So far, neither political party’s conventions have scored too terribly well on the youth voter front. As the campaigns gear up for their post-Labor Day sprint to the election-day finish, I hope things will improve. I’m not holding my breath.
So, I ask again, where will young voters find inspiration?
When I asked Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mt.) on the floor of the Republican convention whether all this negativity would chase young voters away from the voting booth, he said:
“I hope not. Fight your way through this because it doesn’t make any difference where you go. Somebody is going to be negative.”
The deeper I get into this process, the more I realize you do have to fight a bit to stay positive all the way to Election Day. I know that after the past few days, I feel like pledging not to vote for someone simply because they’ve convinced their kids to ask us to do so.
What Conrad Burns continued to say is what really matters.
“We need to move forward to protect those freedoms, those rights, and those opportunities that I had as a young man coming out of the Depression.”
That’s a message I can believe in. Doing what I can with my voice and my vote to join the same battle every young generation fights in their own way. Leaving the world a better place for my children and grandchildren: these are the reasons why my vote matters today.
The young delegates and volunteers at this convention hear that message. The 400,000 peaceful protesters that cared enough to show up and march on Sunday hear that message. This is a great time for the rest of us to get on board. Just “fight through” the negative, because there’s a lot of positive to be found, and more positive yet to be accomplished.
More of my convention adventures in New York City on Wednesday at noon.
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