From young voters, a lack of commitment
LONE PINE, Calif. -- Edward Grandstaff got the hood of his car from a junkyard, torn from the wreck of a 1991 Mercury Tracer. The rest of his car is a 1993 Ford Escort. This two-toned clunker has been his covered wagon for a journey of discovery, a six-month road trip crisscrossing the country in search of himself. He has spent nights under the stars, taken back roads to hidden towns, dropped in on friends of friends, and engaged them in conversations about religion and philosophy.
"Hey, I'm homeless, jobless, and uninsured -- if you are a Democratic presidential candidate I will trade an opportunistic photo op for a couple bucks -- wadda you say?" he wrote on Threadbare.net, the website where he chronicles his adventures.
Grandstaff is an engineer in his mid-20s from Indiana who earnestly talks about searching for meaning in life. He quit his job and took to the road last spring when his college chums started getting married. He realized he didn't want to settle down until he had lived a bit more.
A few decades ago, Grandstaff's exuberance and commitment to making a better world would have marked him as a type, the youthful idealist, if only because there were many Edward Grandstaffs out there searching the blue highways for America's destiny.
But these days, most of the highways are choked with commuters, and many of the byways have been eaten by sprawl. There are still many people exploring America's back roads, but they tend to be older, folks in their 50s and 60s enjoying the freedom of early retirement.
The contrast between Grandstaff and much of his generation was apparent at CNN's Rock the Vote debate last week, in which Democratic presidential candidates in shirtsleeves and black turtlenecks tried to connect with Boston-area students and young professionals.
Many of the 20-somethings served up questions best suited for a reality television dating show: Have you ever smoked marijuana? What were you like when you were 20?
These questions seemed drawn from the same well of boredom that might lead a tired tourist to want to ask a pompous guide whether she ever swam naked in the ocean. Whatever the answers, the real revelation was how checked out of the process such questions make the questioners seem.
One woman stepped forward to ask the candidates, with a suppressed giggle, which of their fellow hopefuls they would most like to party with, reminding them that that person might be called upon "to hold your hair" if you throw up from drinking too much or "be your wingman" to rescue you from any unwise flirtations.
Funny stuff, but here's a question for her: Will that party question really help you make up your mind who should be president?
As entertaining as it was, the Rock the Vote encounter was a missed opportunity, because many people in their 20s have yet to assert any discernible stake in this campaign, except, of course, those fighting in Iraq.
Other age groups pop up pretty regularly at candidates' stump speeches. Presidential contenders talk about school testing for teenagers, the high-tech lost generation in their 30s, the baby boomers whose coming retirements might stress the system, the elderly who are suffering under the high cost of prescription drugs.
It's tempting to think about what Grandstaff might have said to the candidates. Maybe he would ask whether they had ever changed their minds about a matter of policy and what made them do it.
Consider this entry from his Web log: "A thanks goes to the guy/gal who challenged my foreign policy post on the 4th of this month. That is exactly the type of response/critique I need in my quest to be able to better perceive different sides of issues that affect the world."
And to his own generation, maybe he would stress that the public policy arena is not a game show and that the burden isn't wholly on the contestants to capture the attention of young voters.
Once a young person really commits himself to understanding the world, there's no telling where wisdom can be found.
For Grandstaff, who had earlier expressed misgivings with some aspects of the military, one revelation came in Buffalo, Wyo., when he bought a used pair of cowboy boots and slapped down $20 to ride a bucking bronco at Johnson County Lion's Club Rodeo. The more experienced riders, some as young as 17, took him under their wing. Then, a young girl sang the national anthem, and the whole crowd joined in.
"I was struck by a feeling of nationalism I rarely have felt," he wrote. "I remember thinking how proud I am to live in this country and that I would be proud to fight alongside the guys standing there as the anthem wrapped up."
For Grandstaff, the road goes on. He hopes to be in St. Louis for Thanksgiving and then maybe head south. He'll go as far as the `93 Ford Escort will take him and perhaps farther still. 