If you watch the news today with any frequency, you cannot help but get a feeling of déjà vu. There are several issues which the news media delights in discussing — abortion, gun rights, Iraq, immigration and same-sex marriage are examples of a few — and a vastly disproportionate amount of time is spent on them. Debates on Iraq are a constant occurrence, and every so often a new controversy pertaining to another of these topics will arise, providing fuel for a sometimes months-long media extravaganza. This sort of topic comprises a good majority of cable news and a slightly less significant proportion of nearly all other media. A large subset of the public, as a result, is lead to believe that these are the issues that truly matter.
Issues which have a tendency to become overly politicized generally lie on moral faults, rather than empirical ones. A person who believes abortion is wrong, for instance, does so because he has an emotional objection to it, not a rational one. He feels that terminating an embryo is tantamount to murder, and no evidence that an embryo is more similar to an amoeba than a human will sway him. The gun advocate feels that the right to own a gun is inalienable; no statistics suggesting that fewer guns correlate with fewer gun deaths will change this. Likewise, an anti-gun advocate will not be moved by the argument that the Second Amendment explicitly protects gun rights. The reason for this cognitive dissonance is that moral beliefs are felt with far more depth than intellectual ones. The Republican Party has exploited this tendency to great success in the past few decades.
More than anything else, the 2000 and 2004 elections were won on a moral values platform. Despite President Bush’s scandalous first term, the Republican Party was able to say the right things to impress upon the public that they were the party who stood for ethical truth. Many who voted on Nov. 7 disgustedly cast a Republican ticket only to vote against John Kerry — who seemed to stand for nothing at all.
The Republicans invoked moral superiority on nearly every single-issue topic, and Kerry was too inarticulate to marshal a counter-response or bring the debate to issues that matter. His moral fiber was viciously attacked, and he acquired a reputation for indecisiveness that he never quite managed to rid himself of. The real issues of the election — the budget crisis, the tax cuts and the Iraq war — went nearly unmentioned throughout the entire campaign only to resurface in 2006, three years too late.
The preferred electoral method of the single-issue voter is a straight party ticket. Having affixed his entire political outlook on a few topics, the single-issue voter has full confidence in anyone advocating his views.
The deeper implications of a party’s policies go unnoticed or else are greatly unimportant compared with the issue our voter has attached himself to. When confronted with arguments against his side, the single-issue voter’s mind will close. He will repeat whatever catch-phrase his party is currently popularizing and refuse to concede an iota to the other side. His stance is a moral one, and it is not one he can easily be talked out of.
Single-issue and straight-party voting are some of the many factors contributing to the current decay of our democracy. They are both a cause and effect of political laziness. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of this, and the effects are apparent. Each party has made its position on the single-issue topics abundantly clear and uses its frequent reiteration as a rallying point. Other issues are often not given the discussion due to them, and the result is the divestment of the populace from actual policy making. This has allowed governments past and present to act almost with impunity, so long as they appease the single-issue voters.
The problem of the single-issue is as old as democracy itself, and its eradication does not seem very probable. The solution begins with the individual. It is the responsibility of every voting citizen to carefully consider the implications of the vote he or she casts. Basing all political decisions on a few specialized topics is tantamount to disenfranchising yourself, as you are, in effect, voting blind. As long as the media is run by mega-conglomerates, so long will it attempt to muddy the political waters and descend into petty party politics. But the citizen need not descend with it. The information required to make an educated vote is out there. It is merely a matter of seizing it.
Pavan Vangipuram is a State News columnist and chemical engineering junior. Reach him at vangipu1@msu.edu.
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