Young people aren’t dumb.
They’ve come of age during the era of an increasingly broken political system, marked by scandal, gridlock and pessimism.
Congress’s approval is somewhere around 16 percent, which is bad — even for a branch of the government that was never designed to be especially efficient or beloved.
So you’ll excuse young people for not clamoring to jump in the mess.
It turns out that 90 percent of those between the ages of 13 to 25 say they would not consider running for public office.
That’s based on 4,000 interviews of high school and college students that political scientists Jennifer L. Lawless and Richard Fox conducted for their book, “Running from Office: Why Young Americans are Turned Off to Politics.”
That nine out of 10 young people won’t run for office isn’t that shocking, considering there are 500,000 elected positions in the country, according to Lawless, and nearly 320 million people live here.
But that figure — and their opinions on politics — paints a dismal picture of the esteem with which the next generation of potential leaders holds our government.
“People in politics are two-faced,” “I’d rather milk cows than run for office,” and “It’s about lying, cheating, getting nothing done,” are just some of the responses Lawless and Fox got in their survey.
“When young people think about government, they conjure up images of self-interested, egotistical conservatives fighting self-interested, egotistical liberals in a broken system to the point of paralysis,” Lawless wrote in a recent Brookings blog post.
And they’re right, of course.
But wouldn’t some new blood shake things up? Isn’t the reason young people eschew politics the very reason that they should run?
To be fair, the Maine Legislature does have a few young leaders, but the average age of a member of the Maine State Senate is 61. And for the House, it’s 54. A bill this last session that would have lowered the minimum age for a state legislator to 18 from 21 died over — you guessed it — disagreement between the Democrat-led House and the Republican-led Senate.
Lawless says that the lack of interest among the youth means trouble down the road, since most people who run for office don’t do it on a whim: They start planning at a young age.
Here are a few suggestions from the book.
Create a Model UN for politics
Why not treat politics like it’s a service — such as teaching or volunteering? Lawless cites AmeriCorps and Teach for America as successful examples of groups that have mobilized people to work for a common good.
“Together, these programs send a strong signal that the government values, and American society depends on, public service. If we want to put the next generation on the path to politics, then what better way than by demonstrating that running for office is just as valuable, effective, and noble a form of public service?” she writes.
To that end, she and Fox proposed forming something called the YouLead Initiative, which would work to change how young people view politics through a media campaign highlighting the work of young, interesting politicians who are making a difference.
Then there could be something kind of like Model UN for young would-be politicians, complete with regional and national conferences.
Make political knowledge part of the college entrance process
Besides geometry, European history, or anything else you learn and then immediately forget after the test, schools could judge college applicants based on political knowledge.
“Why not link political aptitude to the college application process, either in the form of a new component to the SAT or ACT, an additional exam, or an essay about public affairs?” Lawless writes. “The vehicle is almost incidental. What matters is that it would force young people to take news and political information seriously.”
Take advantage of the fact that young people can’t stop looking at their phones
If you’re trying to get kids to get into politics, hit them where they live — on their smartphones.
“There’s no activity, time of day, or location that is out of bounds for young people’s smartphone and app use,” Lawless writes. “So, let’s take advantage of the digital world young people inhabit by creating an app that helps them identify political offices and informs them about how to run for them.”
Right now, there is no hub for that kind of information, Lawless says.
The app could be a resource for teachers, or anyone who wants to know more about politics — beyond the latest Washington scandal.
“… Young people who are even the least bit curious about how to run for office would not have to engage in a fact-finding mission,” Lawless writes. “This easy-to-access information would showcase the thousands of electoral opportunities that have nothing to do with dysfunction in Washington, DC.”
