Plenty of Reasons for Not Caring

The sun had been up for two hours over Mt. Rose and we’d already filleted and barbecued a three-pound Mackinaw aboard a charter boat trolling the north end of Lake Tahoe. Suddenly--and may the fishing god forgive us--the talk turned to politics.

Since 4:30 a.m., when my daughter and I had met the guide on the dock, all talk had been of fish and catching them--rainbow, kokanee, Mackinaw; outriggers, downriggers; dodgers (flashers), minnows (hook ‘em through the back), kokanee bugs (itsy lures) garnished with a kernel of white corn.

And a certain rookie warden, the latest irritant to sour our guide on government and politics.

The young Nevada officer had been harassing people from the California side of the lake. On July 4, he had boarded the guide’s boat and written him up for fishing in Nevada waters without a Nevada commercial license. He wasn’t fishing commercially, the guide protested; he was pleasure fishing with his wife’s family from New Zealand. A judge threw out the case, but first the guide had to spend a half day in court.

“Arrogance of authority . . . over-regulation.”

*

“How’d you wind up in Washington?” the guide asked my daughter, Karen. She hesitated, preferring to talk about fish. “Politics,” I interjected. “She works for Al Gore, the vice president.”

“Ever see him?” the guide queried. “A lot,” she answered, and then--never missing an opportunity to take the public pulse--asked: “What do you think of him?”

“To be honest,” the guide said, “I don’t have an opinion.”

And it soon became clear that the guide--Lex Moser, 40, a college graduate and former owner of a successful home health care business--had no opinion about any politician. Because, he said, “I just don’t care.”

Here was one of those 82 million American adults--44% of the voting age population--who had not bothered to cast a ballot in the last presidential election. He has no intention of casting one this time either; an articulate, intelligent middle-American repulsed by politics and ambivalent about who runs the country.

“It doesn’t make any difference,” he said. “It doesn’t change my life.

“I used to read two or three newspapers and try to keep up on what was going on in the world. If I was working like a dog, I’d tape the evening news. I even listened to Rush Limbaugh; what a goof.

“It got so everybody was just yelling at each other. What turned me off were all the accusations and contradictions. I’d read about an issue, then later hear it was all a bunch of baloney. I wouldn’t know from day to day if what I was hearing was accurate. I didn’t have the extra time in my life to figure out who was right, to spend on what would turn out to be total baloney anyway.

“The negative ads are complete crap. Keep your trash in the trash; let’s talk about the issues. All this slamming of each other just breaks down the support system for what people are trying to believe in and puts everybody in a downward spiraling mode.”

His alienation has developed over the last decade, Moser said. It began when he owned a company that rented home care equipment--hospital beds, wheelchairs--and became mired in costly red tape trying to get federal reimbursements. He sold out three years ago and bought the fishing boat.

“I’ve ducked from the mainstream,” he said. “I concentrate on raising my family. I enjoy fishing. I wear lots of sunscreen. I don’t get excited about ‘good’ news or ‘bad’ news. I know a lot of people who feel the same way.

“I know that’s horrible,” he continued, reeling in a line and laughing self-consciously at himself. “Pretty redneck, isn’t it?”

*

Later, I told Moser’s story to Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic campaign consultant based in Los Angeles. “There’s no question that what we do as good consultants is damaging to the political process in the long run,” he said. “These negative campaigns just are very unsatisfying and frustrating to voters.

“But in order to win, you have to ‘go negative.’ You just do. It works. It works because people are so frustrated with politicians they believe all that negative stuff. They believe politicians are not much better than pond scum.”

Larry J. Sabato, a University of Virginia political science professor, noted that virtually all the new campaign technologies create voter alienation--vicious direct mail, “push polling,” computer-aided “opposition research.”

“Not surprisingly, most people turn off to some degree,” he said. “I always vote, but I’m turned off.”

In our fishing guide, we’d found a symbol for a significant segment of America. And as the political parties prepare to posture, preen and pander at their national conventions, they should be worried about the Lex Mosers of the country who really don’t care.