Emotional year
Democratic turnout in the party’s 2004 presidential primaries was low, the third-lowest on record.
Low enough that only 5 percent of eligible Americans participated in the selection of Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry as presumptive nominee to face President Bush in November.
Mr. Bush can’t laugh. Republican presidential-primary turnout was the lowest on record.
Fortunately, we learn that turnout levels in presidential primaries are not a predictor of general-election turnout.
In fact, given major issues of concern among Americans today, the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate is predicting a “comparatively high” turnout this November — greater than in 2000 and 1996, and perhaps exceeding the 58 percent turnout of 1992.
“It is virtually inconceivable that general election turnout will not go up in 2004, likely to be equal or higher than the level reached in 1992,” says CSAE director Curtis B. Gans, who cites the “strong emotions” Americans are feeling today about the future path of their country.
“The public will be called upon to adjudicate deep differences in almost every area of public concern,” says Mr. Gans. “Both same-sex marriages and the upcoming trial of Saddam Hussein are likely to be sideshows buried in a major national debate over the direction of the nation in both the domestic and foreign arenas.”
That said, it remains unlikely that voter turnout in the upcoming presidential election will reach the mid-60 percent levels of the 1960s.
“Too much has happened over the past 40 years to depress civic engagement,” explains Mr. Gans, blaming an erosion of trust in political leadership and the execrable conduct of political campaigns, as well as a decline in civic education and the fragmentation of American society.
Survival tools
We had to laugh when former Education Secretary Bill Bennett’s interview with Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey on a recent “Morning in America” broadcast turned to the left wing’s condemnation of the USA Patriot Act.
Mr. Bennett said it occurred to him that the Patriot Act — which allows the intelligence field and criminal investigators to share information and compare notes to keep Americans safe from al Qaeda-types — is used as a “synecdoche” in certain societal settings.
“It’s like saying ’McCarthy’ or ’Reagan’ in another period — where you say the word and people shiver and shake,” Mr. Bennett cited as examples. “But in fact there are few if any civil liberties violations that have been cited because of the Patriot Act, do I have that right?”
“I’m not aware of a single case of a documented abuse of anyone’s rights because of the Patriot Act,” replied Mr. Comey, who recalled addressing one such audience of skeptics on New York City’s Upper West Side.
“And I said, when you stand there with your glass of chablis, or whatever you drink in Manhattan, and someone says ’Isn’t the Patriot Act evil?’ — before you nod your head, do me a favor, ask the speaker what do you mean specifically.
“Because the angle is in the details, it is so important and so ordinary,” Mr. Comey said. “Because if people will only demand the details, they will understand why we can’t do away with these tools.”
Drug sentence
Another black eye for the nation’s capital, this latest shiner delivered on the Senate floor by Sen. Mike DeWine, Ohio Republican, who discovered a “very shocking and troubling situation” in the District’s juvenile detention center known as Oak Hill.
As chairman of the Appropriations District of Columbia subcommittee, Mr. DeWine recently paid a call to the center to make certain it was meeting the needs of the detainees it serves.
He emerged to say “this place simply needs to be shut down once and for all.”
Illegal-drug use — marijuana to PCP — is so rampant inside the facility, the senator revealed this week, that “some youths entering Oak Hill drug-free actually started taking drugs once they were inside.”
Interior games
Apparently some folks don’t have enough to do at the Interior Department.
One bureaucrat was observed the other day rolling a large janitorial cart in front of the 7200 corridor men’s bathroom, thus blocking egress from that water closet.
For some reason this deed was done immediately after the National Park Service’s chief of communications, David Barna, entered the bathroom.
While the cart may have slowed Mr. Barna down, it was only a momentary blockage.
• John McCaslin, whose column is nationally syndicated, can be reached at 202/636-3284 or jmccaslin@washingtontimes.com.
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