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OCTOBER 28, 2004 - Page 5 POLITICS Both parties can Votingisforchurnnps Play Ball BiUAN PAITERSON Fahrenheit 9/11, and that will shed some light on your politi- COEDITOR cal quagmire. You see it, and all it does is make you realize that Are you having trouble Michael Moore is just as much picking a candidate this elec- of an idiot as Bush tion sea- So you ask your profes- son? sors about the candidates, but Are you they turn out to be more liberal so torn than your friends are. b, e - Then just for fun you look tween up past election results in K err y Maryland, and it turns out the and state has gone with the Demo- Bush crat in the last three elections. that you Gore won in Maryland deci- h a v e sively back in 2000 and there's thought about resorting to no reason to think anyone has At city park in Westminster Democrats and Re- Nader? Well, there is an ob- publicans faced off in a bipartisan softball game to raise vious solution that is staring changed their mind about Bush during the last four years. political awareness. The Democrats won the contest you in the face; just don't 17-16with the help of four McDaniel students, Katie vote. Ultimately the process of Hickey, Frank lngeUis, Ken Bertkau, and Suzanne Gil- Maybe you think Bush becoming an informed voter is too confusing, so why bother? bert (Pictured below from left to right). Ingellis played is an idiot, or that Kerry is a Democrats- 17 catcher for the team (left) while Gilbert (above) and liar, and maybe you just can't If you're not informed, then there's no reason to vote. Republicans- 16 the rest of the students helped patrol the outfield. The see the difference between In a recent interview with students are all part of the Carroll County Democrats, the two. a group that campaigns for Kerry in the county. Com- You watched the de- Rolling Stolle, pop culture lumi- piled by Brian Patterson Co Editor bates, but they didn't help nary Matt Stone, co-creator of any. South Park and Team America: World Po/ice, said, "If you don't They both agreed that know what you're talking Sad dam Hussein was a about, there's no shame in not threat, but were vague about voting ... They say if you don't how to end the conflict. TIley vote, you can't bitch. But you both want to hunt down and can bitch all you want. This is stop terrorism, but how? America." They talked about cre- There you have it. Leave ating jobs and tax policies, the voting to your friends, pro- but economics is too hard to fessors, the political science understand. majors, Michael Moore, and P. Kerry belie~es that Diddy. On election night just sit "America's best days are back and let the drama unfold. ahead of us ... [and] that the Don't vote, complain future belongs to freedom, about the political process, and not to fear." Bush said he wait until there's an election "won't change [his] core val- with a dear favorite to cast your ues." Hmm, that didn't help vote. Actually if there's a clear much. favorite your vote wouldn't You ask your friends make a difference anyhow, so what they think, but all you there still isn't any reason to get is blind political rhetoric. think your vote will make a dif- They suggest you go see ference. Superfluous debates don't help the swing voter MIKE HABEGGER had stomped Bush. On the .one hand, there plan to vote for actually de- In announcing "winners" STAFF WRITER Shortly after the debate, was the view that Bush had serves to be there? Does he and by arguing over these dec- Icame back to my room and once again shown that he deserve to be the president larations, we have infringed on read a message Ireceived on loved his country more, and because he was able to fool undecided voter's rights. On the heels of the Presi- AIM from my Bush-support- was more personable. There the most people? Do we want When it comes to crunch time dential Debates, students will ing friend proclaiming the was the opposing view that to elect a great spell-binder? and they have to make a deci- cast their end of the race, that Bush had Kerry did well because he The trend of differing sion, are they voting on their vat e s undoubtedly won used facts, statistics, and for- perceptions perpetuates itself own opinion or the opinion that with the Objective college stu- mulaic rhetoric to criticize throughout campus, and de- was created inside them by out- impres- dents may be asking them- the Bush administration, pending on who the unde- side forces? The obscenely dif- sions left selves, What is the signifi- whereas Bush gave vague cided student-voter's friends fering views from both sides do by those cance of these perceptions, answers that played to emo- are, hta/her opinion can be not aid the decision making debates and how do they influence, tions, not to the intellectual created. An undecided indi- process for these voters, per- fresh in reflect and determine the out- self. The undecided party vidual who stands at the haps even rendering them the i r come of an election? was just that, undecided. hands of resolute Bush sup- unenthused to vote at all. mind's After the final deba te What the Bush-sup- porters is likely to side with This phenomenon of un- Most of last Wednesday, I learned porters took away from the their friends on the matter of thinking displayed through these stu- much more. I watched the debate was that Bush was a who won the debates. The people's perceptions of the re- dents have already made up debates in the common room very nice guy, and Kerry was same is true for Kerry sup- cent presidential debates re- their minds about who they with an equal representation a pessimistic lecturer. They porters. flects a trend in America. All will vote for,apparently render- of Bush and Kerry support- also assumed that the Ameri- The point is that most citizens who believe them- ing the debates superfluous. ers, as well as the undecided can public would buy into student-voters turn a deaf ear selves informed are becoming But are they? contingent. While the polls Bush's personality more be- and blind eye towards the so divided in their thinking that I watched the first debate following the debate had cause the public is too debates. If the deafness and it is hard to separate fact from amongst Kerry supporters in Bush and Kerry dead-locked. "dumb" and uninformed. blindness was not applied to fiction. Radicals from both the Pub. What did I find? Ex- the potential voters in the If this is your view of the entire debate, it most cer- sides have stopped listening to cept for a few lonely Bush sup- room J was sitting had much the American political sys- tainly was employed for the other side, and even worse, porters, all who attended more radical opinions of how tem, then how can you be what the "other" candidate have begun to stop listening to strongly believed that Kerry the debate went. I sure' that the candidate you articulated. their own side.