Citizenship for beginners....

I was a twenty-year old college student when Bush v. Gore monopolized the headlines for the entire month of November. On election night in 2000 I was pulling an all-nighter writing a paper in the computer lab of the university library. I hadn’t paid much attention to the campaigns or any of the debates prior to election night, and I wasn’t moved enough by civic responsibility to actually vote in the election. Nonetheless, as the popular votes were tallied and Electoral College votes stacked higher and higher in two equal piles, I was riveted by the closeness of the counts. I found myself switching back and forth every few minutes from work on my paper to the latest information on CNN.com. When the library flooded with sunlight the next morning, the only clear result of the night’s events was a sub-par, eight-page paper that took fifteen hours to complete. The election results would take much longer, as you may recall.

I took a greater interest in the 2004 election, but only to a point. I followed the lead-up to the 2004 election closely after Kerry was named the Democratic nominee; disillusioned with the Bush administration like much of the country, I didn’t particularly care who defeated Bush as long as someone did. I voted for the first time that November, checking mostly blue boxes for state and local officials about whom I knew next-to-nothing. When I left the voting site I was notified that I had to work in Raleigh the following morning, so I spent Tuesday afternoon driving through Georgia and the Carolinas, listening to conservative talk radio, and sensing that another nail-biter was shaping up. Indeed it had, and in spite of the result, I was encouraged by how mobilized citizens on both sides became in its aftermath.

As 2008's presidential candidates began to emerge from both parties a full twenty-four months before the election, I found that I was already roped in to the drama. I began to show signs of political junkiehood, plowing through a mounting pile of articles on candidates’ stances, fundraising statistics, attendance numbers at stump speeches, and anything else someone saw fit to publish. And if last week’s caucus results are any indication, the last two elections and the ensuing tumultuous terms have had an arresting effect on a lot of other formerly uninterested citizens, particularly younger ones like myself. (to be continued….)