KEEPING IN THE VOTE | 2006-09-24
I am always hearing that a democracy is healthy when people vote. Those who say that ignore one of the few pieces of Oriental Wisdom that actually makes sense. There is a Chinese curse that says,
"May you live in INTERESTING times."
World War II is interesting. The Civil War is interesting. The Depression makes for interesting reading. But for the people who lived in those "interesting" times, they were a curse.
The presidential election of 1932 was a crushing defeat for President Hoover and his party. It is known for that fact. But what is NOT known is that Hoover got more votes in that election than any other candidate for president had ever gotten before, except for the man who defeated him in 1932.
This is just a matter of arithmetic. Because 1932 was the worst year of the Great Depression, the electorate turned out in unprecendented numbers. Hoover got an unprecendented number of votes, but there were so many total votes that he was crushed at the polls.
But nobody can say that 1932 was a healthy year for America.
When people spoke of healthy democracies and their huge turnout, they were talking about European elections, where almost everybody turned out to vote. Like good Europeans, they did as they were told. But back then Europe was divided into the Northern European countries, where the same party won the election for decades, and Latin countries, where the government rolled over dozens of times in each country, sometimes within three weeks.
When things are going well, the vote goes down.
The vote goes up in interesting times.
Interesting times are not a good sign. They are a curse.