They gave high marks to President Clinton, with 59 percent approving and 32 percent disapproving. Not surprisingly, Americans were not paying much attention to what was going on in Washington. And only 2 percent volunteered campaign-finance reform as a top priority. Even hard-core political addicts momentarily abandoned Cokie Roberts in favor of Martha Stewart. Considering that this summer season comes on the heels of an election so dreadfully dull that the Republican candidate for president himself could not feign interest in it, we may be in the middle of the least politically charged moment since the Roaring Twenties.
Every presidential election produces hand-wringing editorials about low voter turnout.
This tradition has become so institutionalized that in 1996, the articles began appearing even before Americans had the chance not to vote. The recent motor-voter law helped put between 7 million and 10 million new voters on the rolls nationwide, but it did little to get them to the polls. More people could vote, but fewer did. At 48.9 percent, this was the lowest voter turnout rate since 1924. The seeds of the dispirited Republican turnout were sown when the party chose to blur its differences with the Democrats.