This morning I spoke to and with a group of about 100 middle school students – something, by the way, I think everyone involved in politics should do on a regular basis. I love middle and high school classes because the students ask the questions that adults never do – either because adults are worried that the question will sound ignorant or dumb, or because we know too much detail and miss the simple, big picture. Plus, kids that age, on average, have exceptional bullshit detectors. It’s a blast.
My task was to explain, as neutrally and concisely as possible, the government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis, and to take their questions.
We had an hour. I spent the first 10-15 minutes just describing the different structures and why they’re important, how we’d gotten to this point, and what was motivating the different players (Democrats, Republican leadership, Tea Party congresspeople). Then came the questions.
As a focus group, smart middle school students are not a bad stand-in for uninformed, apolitical voters – they know what they hear in the news, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. They just lack the filters of adults. And within their limits of how the world works, they often have a good deal more common sense. And, so, the questions.
A lot of students didn’t get why this couldn’t be resolved (“Can’t the president just make them do it?” “Don’t they know that people are suffering?”) or why other countries never have something like a government shutdown (cue explanations of the strengths and weaknesses of our unique government structure, and the purpose, when it works properly, of checks and balances). Several students had parents who are public employees for the city or county; they were worried that their dads would be laid off. (“Those are separate budgets, so, no – but in the long term they get affected by the money that filters down from the state and feds.”) And so on. After about 20 minutes of listening to this, a small kid up front raises his hand and asks, simply, “Are Republicans stupid?”
Because the teachers wanted me to keep it neutral, I couldn’t directly answer his question either truthfully (“Well, actually, by demographics Tea Party supporters tend to be among the least intelligent, least educated, and most poorly informed segments of our society”) or how I’d answer it publicly (“Scientists have yet to devise a scale that can accurately measure just how stupid some of these people are.”) Instead, it’s a discussion of how different parties have always had different ideologies, values, and priorities, but with the rise of the Internet and separate conservative media outlets like Fox and talk radio, Republicans are now also operating from a different set of facts – like that climate change isn’t happening, or a default wouldn’t be a big deal. That can be because someone’s stupid, but it can also be a product of what they’re exposed to or what it’s convenient to believe – not necessarily a function of intelligence. You wind up pulling a lot of punches.
But yes, Virginia, a lot of these people are mind-blowingly stupid. It’s true.
The reason I mention all this is because these are sorts of questions and conversations, in adult contexts, that polls suggest a lot of adults are also having. People just can’t believe this is happening.
It’s an open question how long the average American political memory lasts, but if the questions of 13-year-olds are any indication, the damage to not just the Tea Party but the Republican brand is going to last even longer than many Democrats think. And that’s if they don’t, you know, trigger a global economic collapse.