Opinion: Too many Americans apathetic about voting: nearly 40% don't show up at polls

In February 1972, Democratic Maine Sen. Ed Muskie, a candidate for his party's presidential nomination, stood in a snowstorm in New Hampshire to give an impassioned speech defending his wife against sharp comments made by a local newspaper.

Whether it was the sharp wind, or the emotional fervor of his comments is still debated, but the tears observers saw on his cheek doomed his campaign. Opponents alleged that his emotional reaction to harsh words aimed at his wife showed he was not the calm, rational leader the country needed answering the phone at 3 a.m. amid a crisis. In January 2004, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, having just lost the Democratic Iowa Presidential Caucus, famously stood before his supporters hoping to rally them after the disappointing defeat and bellowed forth with a “Yee Ha” that shook the Democratic Presidential Primary race. His campaign never recovered.

Today, the Republican slate of presidential candidates is led by a twice-impeached former president facing over 90 state and federal criminal counts in four jurisdictions. In the latest polling in six battleground states, Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden by 4-10 points, depending on the state, in five of the six. His lead in the Republican primary race is even more commanding. To summarize, 50 years ago a presidential candidate needed only, allegedly, shed a tear to torpedo his campaign. Twenty years ago, your campaign could be dispatched because of an impassioned cheerleading moment. In 2023, you could face the real possibility of being a convicted felon running a campaign from a jail cell and still be the overwhelming favorite.

How did we become so calloused to the nobility and seemingly basic qualifications for electoral public service? Muskie was no lightweight. He was a highly respected legislator, was Hubert Humphrey’s vice-presidential running mate in the 1968 election, served as President Carter’s Secretary of State, and was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Gov. Howard Dean was a serious choice in 2004. He represented a fresh national face on the Democratic primary scene. The fact that these men were quite casually dismissed from serious consideration for the presidency, for trivial momentary glimpses into their humanity, makes Trump’s political resilience all the more baffling. He is not the only Republican politician vilifying immigrants, worshipping big business at the expense of the working class, or praising the nationalism espoused by Russia’s Putin or Hungary’s Orban. Any curious reader of Trump’s life can easily discover his self-built image of a genius businessman is largely a façade.

Lest we travel down the well-trodden road of blaming the swamp of Washington, D.C., let’s not forget that we, the voters, built that swamp through electoral choices. The citizens of the United States are to blame for the politics of this country. We are politically apathetic.

Since 1932, the highest electoral turnout for a presidential election was 62.8% in 1960, the year John Kennedy narrowly defeated sitting Vice President Richard Nixon. Nearly 40% of voting age citizens can’t even be bothered to show up. We have abandoned any notion that character matters to the American voter. Trump is the poster child for this assessment, but not the only member of the club. The list of scandals enveloping the Clinton White House and Hillary’s later run for the Oval Office are legendary, but Bill was re-elected in a landslide in 1996 and Hillary was defeated by an even less noble candidate, Donald Trump.

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We have naively accepted the absurd belief that anything you read on the internet must be true and television and radio media outlets are reporting the news in the Walter Cronkite mold, “That’s the way it is ...” The reality is that most of what is published, or broadcast, is so easily fact checked that it is borderline criminal to repeat it or forward it to your contacts. There is the real rub, we no longer care about facts. The adage that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts is dead.

We cannot continue to achieve our potential as a country if we sit on the electoral sidelines, ignore the character of the people wanting to govern us, or continue to be ignorant and lazy consumers of information. We can be better. Let’s not fail our future and that of the next generations.

Brad Gutierrez, Ph.D. is a retired U.S. Air Force combat pilot, professor of Political Science, military diplomat, and senior public policy civil servant. He is currently a woodworker and non-fiction writer based in Marshall.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: How is Trump facing 90 criminal counts leading presidential polls?