COMMENTARY | For those who wonder that with economic malaise persisting and the Middle East going up in flames, why anyone would still support President Obama, Howard Stern sent operatives to Harlem and asked Obama supporters some leading questions.
What resulted was Jay Leno’s “Jay Walking” in which the “Tonight Show” host demonstrates how little Southern Californians known about anything on steroids.
Mind it was rather unfair to ask people whether Mitt Romney is Muslim (and black and pro choice) or Barack Obama is a Mormon (and pro life and anti gay marriage). The leading and deceptive questions preyed on the sort of people who do not watch a lot of cable TV or surf the Internet.
Of course the choice question was whether Obama made the right decision by choosing Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate and whether he selected him because he was black.
And no one knew that Osama bin Laden was already dead.
The conclusion is that John McCain has a shot of winning this time around, but only if he drops Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Mind, this was not a representative sample of Obama voters. Leno could likely do the same thing in the mostly white stomping grounds he operates in and find the same sorts of people. Low information voters constitute a problem that transcends race or any other classification.
Still, the exercise, as funny and as cringe-inducing as it is at the same time, has a larger and sobering point. There are a lot of people who are voting who have no earthly idea of what is going on. What can be done about it practically is something of a conundrum.
Limiting the franchise to people who could pass a current events/civics/American history test is almost certainly a political non-starter. Even if one could guarantee that that the standard would apply to everyone, with plenty of coaching and multiple chances to pass, any proposal along those lines would be demagogued to death. This is even though according to Newsweek roughly 38 percent of Americans flunked a simple civics/American history test.
The price of universal democracy is that, sadly, even ignorant people are allowed to vote. Too many politicians rely on this fact to stay in office.
