Molly Tucker

Come next year, America shall once again plunge into indecision. But this time, comedians shall lead the way in negotiating this electoral mess

There is increasingly little to laugh about in American politics. You’d think that, with the advent of an exciting wildcard election and the end of a universally disastrous Administration, that the American people would be over the moon. For the first time in many elections, the primaries are packed with interesting, viable candidates, ensuring a neck and neck fight to the end. For many, the end of the Bush era symbolizes a new dawn for America, seemingly (and incorrectly) imagining that a new election and a new government will be able to put the country to rights just as easily as Bush put it wrong.

It is interesting, then, that in an arena so full of potential, the candidacy which has generated the most public interest and controversy, and mobilised a whole voting block that had long been given up for lost, was Stephen Colbert’s, a comedian and would-be politician who announced his candidacy (only in South Carolina) on both the Republican and Democratic ballots. Mixed reactions greeted his decision in both the Democrat and Republican camps, ranging from indignation to downright confusion. However, the nation’s neglected young liberal voters embraced his ‘joke’ candidacy with open arms and belly laughs. Sadly, their excitement was short-lived, as the Democrats have refused him from the ballot and the Republicans priced him out with a $30,000 candidacy fee; both parties agreeing for once that what they both wanted was to label Colbert’s attempt as a farce, and one that was vaguely offensive to his more ‘serious’ opponents. While it was clear that Colbert never expected to win, it is less easy to dismiss his campaign as a joke outright, especially in a political climate viewed by many as a mockery.

Stephen Colbert is probably best known for his hugely popular spoof political punditry programme, ‘The Colbert Report’, and his role on the even more popular ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’, a show made famous by the fact that more 18-35 year olds watch it to get their daily dose of news than any other network news station. What the American politicos of both sides fail to understand is that a fact like that is serious; more serious than any opinion their candidate has on Iraq, and has more to tell us about America’s political future than any current Presidential candidate could. The 18-35 age bracket represents a huge chunk of the US population, of whom a majority don’t vote and are viewed as ‘apathetic’ and uninterested; this is a perception which most politicians are happy to subscribe to and a situation they seem to view as beyond their control. To admit that young voter apathy is symptomatic of a much larger problem, that American politicians don’t represent their citizens and that a country where only a third of voters bother to turn up is having serious problems selling democracy to its own people, would be opening a bigger can of worms than either Republicans or Democrats are willing to face.

In actual fact, young Americans are far from indifferent in their opinions, and more importantly, in the way they live their lives. America is the birthplace of the blog, the podcast, and YouTube, all bastions of the opinion of the individual, and more importantly, evidence that the individual cares. For the most part, these ‘individuals’ are young, and their numbers are growing. Forget Gen X: this is Generation Xbox, and politicians should start listening to them. For the first time in decades, young people have a voice, and what they’re saying is that the reason they don’t vote is because there isn’t anyone to vote for.

Until Colbert. It seems that his campaign has faltered, but the positive public reaction to it is no joke, and showed millions of American voters that they aren’t the only ones who think the Presidential race is ridiculous. In a country where comedians read the news and are deemed by the next generation to be more trustworthy than newspapers or politicians, is it so strange that a comedian should run for President?