Henrietta Hay's Column

If I hear once again some pompous politician pontificating that, "We the peepul must reclaim the power. We must put the power back in the hands of the grass roots peepul," I am going to throw a shoe through the TV screen.

First of all, the only the peepul he is talking about are those that agree with him. Secondly most of us wouldn't know a grass root if we got hit in the face with it. Third, most of us don't give a damn. And four, most of us have never read the constitution.

Probably we can be forgiven for the last item. Its pretty boring reading, but it's not real smart to talk about returning to it without knowing what it says. When the men who hammered it out chose a republican form of government, they may have been on a time warp to the 1990's and realized that a pure democracy in 1996 would be utter chaos. Some days I think we're approaching it anyway.

The only real power of the peepul is the ballot, and we are throwing it away. Generally less than half of us bother to vote in a presidential election. This year we find ourselves in a real Catch 22. The Congressional antics this past year, along with the dog and pony show called a presidential election are turning people off at the very time that citizen knowledge and understanding are most desperately needed.

The Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University recently surveyed some 1500 randomly selected adults about politics and the political system. Richard Morin, writing in the Post says that, "Knowing basic facts about politics does matter...information is one of democracy's golden keys. Without basic facts about the players and the rules of the game, Americans tune out politics and turn off to voting."

Over half the people interviewed did not know the name of either of their Senators. Only 24 percent could name both. Quick -- who are Colorado's two Senators? Only 33 percent knew the name of their district's Representative in the House, although over half knew which party he/she belonged to.

Over a third of those interviewed did not know whether the governor of their state is a Republican or a Democrat. Nearly half could not name the majority leader of the Senate or the speaker of the House. So much for the information age.

The survey found that men know more about politics than women. Whites know more facts about politics than blacks and rich people are better informed than poor. Republicans are better informed than Democrats, and better educated Americans know far more than those with less formal schooling.

The survey divided the respondents into three groups based on the number of questions they answered correctly. Here's where it gets scary. Only one out of four of the less politically informed Americans bothered to vote in 1994, and those who did vote often didn't know what they were voting for. In this group, according to political scientist Michael Carpini of Barnard College, "there was virtually no relationship between the political issues that . . . they said matter the most to them and the positions of the candidates they voted for on those issues." The peepul with the least political knowledge are ripe to be led around the nose by the demagogues, fanatics and single-issue politicians.

The survey found that less politically informed Americans are more fearful of war, more fearful of international involvement and more likely to see no need for government or the private sector to help minorities, viewing that as reverse discrimination.

According to the Post, the information gap is affecting how politics is practiced, dumbing down democracy and making political campaigns increasingly negative and character-based. Political scientist Samuel Popkin of the University of California says that for the less knowledgeable voters, all politics is reduced to character and caricature. Politicians are divided into heroes and villains and major policy debates become clashes between good and evil.

After eight decades of watching the political scene I am still naive enough to believe it can work. But with this kind of universal political ignorance, this is no time to put the Power back in the Hands of the Grassroots Peepul