What a Difference 4 Decades Make in Political Attitudes

Jane Harman was a 15-year-old University High sophomore in 1960, the last time Democrats held their national convention in Los Angeles. “It was the most interesting event in town,” she recalls. Her boyfriend had connections and a car, so they cruised down to the new Sports Arena from West L.A. to get in on the action.

“It was my personal epiphany,” she says, an “absolutely thrilling” week that inspired her into a political career and eventually a seat in Congress.

The teenage couple wound up roaming the convention floor. The highlight for Harman--

Janie Lakes in those days--was meeting Eleanor Roosevelt. She also chatted briefly with Gov. Pat Brown--”very nice,” she jotted in notes--and stood next to Bobby Kennedy. She landed an usher’s job at John F. Kennedy’s acceptance speech in the Coliseum. “It was fabulous.”

“I realized that this was an honorable and high calling,” Harman says. “I thought they [the politicians] were enormously impressive.”

This was, after all, only 15 years after the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of the greatest and most beloved Americans in history. Dwight D. Eisenhower, a revered war hero, was then president. It had been just seven years since California’s most popular governor, Earl Warren, had left Sacramento to become chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. State government under Pat Brown was embarked on bold, exciting, monumental work.

Politics was exhilarating, and government, despite the usual gripes, was respected.

By contrast, when Democrats convene in 2000 at the new Staples Center, I suspect, millions of Americans will be thinking about taking a shower--after throwing up.

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Harman wonders how many--if any--L.A. teens will be inspired by next year’s convention. How many girls will think it’s fun to spend their boyfriend-time with politicians?

Indeed, how many people even will care enough to click on their TVs?

“The last year, in particular, has been such a turn-off for the country,” she notes.

Harman’s high school boyfriend was Justin Frank, now a professor of psychiatry at George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. “I grew up on politics,” he recalls.

“Those days, you admired politicians. There were some you liked and didn’t like, but you felt passionate about what they stood for, rather than dismissing them in a cynical way. The biggest difference today is the pernicious, pervasive cynicism of young people. And cynicism is the single worst emotion--other than self-pity--that a person can have, because it leads to apathy and avoidance of responsibility and disconnective living.

“People are disconnected because they feel that what happens in the world has nothing to do with them. And that’s just not true.”

Why don’t kids today have political heroes? “All the heroes have been exposed,” observes Bill Ryan, a longtime government teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Sacramento. “There used to be a respect [for politicians]. Today, the students have this general attitude that they all lie, they all cheat. It’s not really any different than their parents’ attitude.”

It’s no mystery what has created the cynicism. The cataclysmic events were Vietnam and Watergate. Also taking a recent toll was a president’s sexual recklessness coupled with an impeachment-obsessed Congress.

Add to that a decades-long barrage of TV attack ads--plus the media’s willingness to publicize a politician’s philandering.

Before the last L.A. convention, 73% of Americans believed they could “trust the government in Washington to do what is right most of the time,” according to the Pew Research Center. Last month, only 31% considered Washington trustworthy. In California, the voter participation rate has steadily fallen from 68.8% in 1960 to 52.6% in the last presidential election.

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“If more politicians talked about things that really mattered, more young people would get engaged,” says Noah Schubert, a UC Berkeley student and spokesman for College Democrats of America.

“Change these conventions,” pleads Harman, who now is out of Congress and about to become a member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. “It’s a turn-off to watch those canned Academy Award exercises--just a bunch of speeches with TelePrompTers.”

In other words, shred the script and hold real debates that lead to decisions. Maybe even let the convention choose the running mate.

And long before that, Democrats should recruit thousands of young volunteers. That could be this convention’s real benefit to California. Inject kids with some political excitement. Inspire new Jane Harmans.