Cynicism draining democracy’s lifeblood

When former United States President Barack Obama spoke to students at the University of Illinois a few days ago, the last third of his hour-long address was devoted to a single message – vote.

“Don’t tell me your vote doesn’t matter,” he said at one point in his address. “Don’t boo, vote.”

“Vote not just for Senators and Representative, but for Mayors and Sheriffs and State Legislators.”

“You’ve got to vote”, repeated over and over.

Australians, with a compulsory voting system that goes back for almost a century, have to remind themselves that in most other countries of the world, not voting is an option that large chunks of the electorates regularly take.

Those who choose to sit on their hands on election day can have just as much effect on the result — and be just as responsible for it — as those who perform their democratic responsibilities.

In countries that hold voluntary elections (leaving aside the rigged polls of various authoritarian states) a good turnout is 80 per cent. In the United States it can slip to around 50 per cent.

Elections for the European Parliament in Strasbourg are notorious for low turnouts — less than 30 per cent in some constituencies.

In his speech Obama listed two dangers to democracy — indifference and cynicism.

Indifference is well known and to a great extent understandable. People have other priorities: Looking after the family, worrying about mortgage payments, saving up for that first overseas holiday.

They get so bound up in these issues they forget it is the activities of government that so often affect them, but celebrity gossip and televised sport are easier on the mind than politics and politicians.

Cynicism is different.

It is the drain down which idealism pours. It destroys hope and belief that things can be changed. It is the cancer of those who think about and passionately want things to be different.

As Obama so clearly put it:

“The more cynical people are about government and the angrier and more dispirited they are about the prospects for change, the more likely the powerful are able to maintain their power.

“The biggest threat to our democracy is cynicism — a cynicism that's led too many people to turn away from politics and stay home on election day.”

Ironically, idealism can be the fertile ground in which cynicism grows because  devotion to a leader, or a system, often disappoints when that leader falls short, or the system fails to provide exactly what the idealist wanted.

The hardest thing to accept is that history is long; human life is short and the best that any one of us can hope for is to move a few steps along the road towards our ideals before handing on for someone else to take the next few steps, and so on.

It is so natural to want it all, to grow impatient with individuals and governments that don’t quite match up, and so switch off. 

But as Obama says, that is surrendering to those who have no ideals, except self- interest. It plays into the hands of populists with their simple answers to complex questions, which in the end always prove to be no answers at all.

So vote — for men and women who don’t claim to have all the answers, but who promise to do their best to find them.

It is a vote that will never be wasted.