I have an embarrassing confession to make: I was once a low-information voter. Indeed, I entered the voting booth that Election
Day with only sketchy ideas about some of the candidates based upon
bits and pieces of news I had caught on the fly, and I was still
uncertain as to who was going to get my vote. The incumbent was the
media's favorite but had made a mess of everything. His main challenger
was dismissed as stupid when he wasn't being despised for being evil.
There was a third-party candidate on the ballot who seemed to be my kind
of guy on a tribal identity level. How was I to decide?
The year was 1980. Four months earlier, after six years of clerical and quasi-clerical work following receiving my BA, I had finally landed by first career position in Chicago. Not only had I been charged with helping turn around a troubled operation that couldn't get a handle on rising costs, but I was going to law school four nights a week and on Saturday mornings. I tried to read the local newspaper on my morning commute and over lunch, and I was even able to catch that news feature ABC had recently introduced with the Iranian hostage crisis, Nightline. I actually thought I was very well-informed. In hindsight, the problem was that almost everything I was seeing and reading had been filtered by editors and producers. In 1980, there was no chance for someone with my schedule to see any more than brief snippets of footage of candidates on the stump. Because the debate conflicted with my classes, I wasn't able to watch even any of that. I could read the side-by-side interviews of the candidates print publications would run, but you don't get as much of a feel for the person from such works.
The year was 1980. Four months earlier, after six years of clerical and quasi-clerical work following receiving my BA, I had finally landed by first career position in Chicago. Not only had I been charged with helping turn around a troubled operation that couldn't get a handle on rising costs, but I was going to law school four nights a week and on Saturday mornings. I tried to read the local newspaper on my morning commute and over lunch, and I was even able to catch that news feature ABC had recently introduced with the Iranian hostage crisis, Nightline. I actually thought I was very well-informed. In hindsight, the problem was that almost everything I was seeing and reading had been filtered by editors and producers. In 1980, there was no chance for someone with my schedule to see any more than brief snippets of footage of candidates on the stump. Because the debate conflicted with my classes, I wasn't able to watch even any of that. I could read the side-by-side interviews of the candidates print publications would run, but you don't get as much of a feel for the person from such works.
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