Just How Stupid is the American Voter?

by Rick Shenkman
(New York: Basic Books, 2008)
Hardcover, 210 Pages, Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780465077717, US$25.00

From the Cover: Americans of all political stripes are heading into the 2008 election hungry for change, convinced that something has gone terribly wrong with American politics. Democrats and Republicans offer different explanations for America's unhappy state: Republicans blame Democrats for waging partisan attacks on the war in Iraq and almost every other aspect of Bush's agenda. Democrats, in turn, blame the Bush administration for its lies, manipulations, and secrecy. But Democrats and Republicans do seem to agree on one thing: However far we've fallen, the American people are entirely blameless. In Just How Stupid Are We?, best-selling historian Rick Shenkman takes aim at our great national piety: the wisdom of the American people. The hard truth is that American democracy is more direct than ever-but voters are misusing their political power and neglecting their responsibilities. Americans are paying less and less attention to politics at a time when they need to pay much more. Television has dumbed politics down to the basest possible level, while the real workings of politics have become vastly more complicated. As a consequence, today's voters are far less equipped than their grandparents were to grapple with the challenges facing the nation-and thus far more susceptible to soothing myths, bumper sticker slogans, and raw emotional appeals. Shenkman offers concrete proposals for reforming our institutions-the government, the media, civic organizations, political parties-to make them work better for the American people. But first, Shenkman argues, we must reform ourselves.

My Review: I first heard about this book when, to promote it, Rick Shenkman appeared on The Daily Show. His description of the book and his argument of just how stupid we really are intrigued me and so I searched for it at my local library but not really expecting them to have it, this is-after all-Provo, Utah ... the Heart of Conservative America. Imagine my surprise, then, that it was "On Order" at the Provo Library. (I was the first person in line, though. Again, this is Provo, where something like 90% of voters vote a straight Republican ticket without even thinking about it, so why would they care about the "Truth" about the American voter?)

Anyway, when it finally came in, I needed something to blow through that was better written than Steinmeyer's biography of Charles Fort was and, honestly, I found it in Just How Stupid Are We?. Shenkman's book is an investigation into the American Voter and a deconstruction of the American myth that "We the People" know what we are doing. The fact is, all too often, we don't. As Shenkman points out, more Americans can name the five members of the Simpsons family than the five rights in the First Amendment. (Between my wife and I we got four of them, but can name all five Simpsons without even thinking. [My three-year-old son can too, much to my eternal and mutual pride and shame.])

While Shenkman's book is mostly aimed at the ways in which the stupidity of the American voter have manifested themselves in the two terms of the current Bush Administration, he also makes a broader argument, talking about how politics have changed in the last fifty years and how television in particular has reduced politics and politicians to sound bites thus making the American voter less likely to research a particular issue, policy or politician and just rely on the evening or cable news to tell them what to think about politics (which in a world obsessed with whether or not Britney is wearing panties or if Lindsey Lohan will ever find true love is a pretty scary prospect). Shenkman also discusses the fact that in spite of all of the access that Generations X, Y, Z (and whatever other lettered generations are out there) to large quantities of information, the quality of that information, particularly as it relates to politics, is not what it should be.

I read this book with my "angry eyes" on because in the last four years I decided that the choices I was making politically were not well-informed and not intelligent, and since the birth of my son and daughter and the change in my parenting politics, I decided that I needed to become better informed about the decisions that my elected representatives were making. I still am not as informed as I should be (I can tell you who one of my two state senators is, but not who my representatives in the House are) but I am getting better, just ask my wife (I wasn't even a registered voter when we were married in 1999). Shenkman's book has helped me see where I was deficient in my political knowledge, where I could crib, and where I as knowledgeable enough.

Just How Stupid Are We? is an important book and one that every registered voter in America should pick up and read, in my opinion, because after reading it, I have come to be quite afraid at the type of voters that our system is encouraging, and that-friends and neighbors-is a scary prospect, considering we are, supposedly, the "Champions of Democracy" in the world.