Getting Out the Vote: a New Family Value

Another year, another mood, it would have been too corny. Dad and 20-year-old daughter getting together with their absentee ballots in hand and having a heart-to-heart about an election ?

Yeah, well, get real. It happened, not only here, but I’m betting that similar scenes went on across this great nation of ours, like some sort of new wave Manifest Destiny.

How’s that for cornball? How’s that for turning the conventional wisdom on its (or Perot’s) ears? Politics matters again.

“I felt really good about it,” says our 20-year-old, one Allison Benis, college student and first-time voter.

“It was important. It was almost like sitting down and talking about a college decision or something. I’m glad I got to share it with my dad. It was like we were voting about the future together, about what we thought our future should be.”

And this is a woman who never gave a thought to politics before. She’s one of millions, connected suddenly, and she likes how that feels.

Allison says when Bill Clinton went on MTV it was sort of like a hand was reaching out to her, a hand without any liver spots, and that sent her a message. The message was: You count. Finally, at last.

“George Bush just seemed to have no credibility anymore and no life in him, whereas Clinton seems so alive,” Allison says. “Bush just seems too old for this country. To put him back there would be like putting some skeleton in the White House.”

I ran into Allison on Election Day between classes at Orange Coast College, and she, like everybody else I’d been talking to, was dying to know how it was all going to come out. There was excitement and suspense in the air, and it was no hangover from Halloween.

Allison calls it an “in-your-face” political activism that’s everywhere she goes. But it’s, you know, cool.

For the first time ever, she and her friends are talking politics, instead of the usual movies, music, guys and “Where are we going dancing tonight?”

“It’s very in vogue,” she says. “If you don’t vote, you’d be ridiculed. There is peer pressure to do it, but it’s a positive thing. It’s trendy, but it’s a good trend--instead of getting loaded or getting your nose pierced.”

I have no doubt that this is exactly how millions of other Americans are expressing this same sentiment in towns and cities across the land.

“I’d be really, really upset if Bush gets elected,” Allison goes on. “That frightens me--because of his stand on abortion, gay rights and his moves to narrow the separation of church and state and because of his obsession with military arms. That’s everything that I’m against.”

No, Allison Benis does not speak for young America as a whole, but my suspicion is she speaks for a sizable chunk. Voting is suddenly hip, but the trend also betrays fear.

Suddenly, it is young people’s future that has not seemed secure; the old folks have screwed up.

And Allison has worries that are closer to home. She wants to teach high school kids one day, but she wants a husband and family too. She worries about balance and divorce, but she is not giving up on the dream of “having it all.”

“For me, my father influenced me more than Marilyn Quayle ever could,” she says. “He taught me that I should definitely have a career and not to let any man support me.”

The old feminist slogan, “The personal is political,” never resonated so clearly.

In a more universal sense, too, Allison says her first cast ballot has left an indelible mark. On the day after the election, she was elated that the rest of the country also felt it was time for new start. Yes, she will vote again--and again.

“Now I feel that I do have a voice,” she says. “I definitely feel more connected to the government and the country.”

And Max Benis, a retired physician who raised Allison single-handedly for 18 years, was on his own post-election high. His daughter spoke wisely and chose well, even if she needs to remind him occasionally to allow her to make her own mistakes.

“So I tell her, ‘OK, I just hope your mistakes are small,’ ” he says.

Max, too, was charged up about his idea of voting absentee. This way, people would have time to read the ballot propositions and candidates’ positions and digest what they mean.

“People could come together with their absentee ballots and discuss the issues and then mark their ballots right there,” he says. “This would really be good for some of the youngsters. They could have a voting club!”

So how cornball is that ?

My vote: not at all. Just call it hope.