Myths About Those Civic-Minded Voters

An excellent editorial from the Washington Post on September 7 -- addressing the topic that no one dares talk about -- the appauling ignorance of the American public.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/05/AR2008090502666.html

5 Myths About Those Civic-Minded, Deeply Informed Voters


By Rick ShenkmanSunday, September 7, 2008; Page B05

One thing both Democrats and Republicans agreed about in their vastly different conventions: The American voter will not only decide but decide wisely. But does the electorate really know what it's talking about? Plenty of things are hurting American democracy -- gridlock, negative campaigning, special interests -- but one factor lies at the root of all the others, and nobody dares to discuss it. American voters, who are hiring the people who'll run a superpower democracy, are grossly ignorant. Here are a few particularly bogus claims about their supposed savvy.

Some Highlights:

1) Our voters are pretty smart:

......According to an August 2006 Zogby poll, only two in five Americans know that we have three branches of government and can name them.....six in ten young people would not find Iraq on the map.....fewer than halp of all Americans know who Karl Marx was or which war the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought in.....and worse, just 49 percent of Americans know that the only country ever to use a nuclear weapon in a war is their own.

2) Bill O'Reilly's viewers are dumber than Jon Stewart's:

Liberals wish. But a 2007 Pew survey found that the knowlege levels of viewers (of the two shows) is comparable, with about 54 percent of the shows' politicized viewers scoring in the "high knowledge" category.

3) If you just give Americans the facts, they'll be able to draw the right conclusions:

Unfortunately, no. ......just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, after smonths of unsubtle hinting from the Bush administration, some 60 percent of Americans came to believe that Iraq was behind the Sept. 11 attacks......and even after the 9/11 Commission reported that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with it, some 50 percent of Americans still insisted that he did.

4) Voters today are smarter than they used to be:

Actually,....in some categories, they score lower. In the 1950's, only 10 percent of voters were incapable of citing any ways in which the two major parties differed.....by the 1970s, that number had jumped to nearly 30 percent. What's deplorable and incomprehensible: education levels are far higher today......

5) Young voters are paying a lot of attention to the news:

Again, no. 60 percent followed the news of 9/11 (40 percent weren't??) Only 32 percent said they followed the anthrax attacks .... How many young people read newspapers....just 20%. And the Internet? Only 11 percent of the young report that they regularly surf the Internet for news.