The Obama Youth Jan 8

By Ari Kaufman

As America steamrolls through the doldrums of a bitter cold winter, the presidential primary season is heating up with each passing week. But with the recent "historic" triumph by Barack Obama in Iowa, it begs the question of how close this novice will actually get to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when all is said, done, counted and perhaps protested.

The night of the Iowa caucuses, my fiancée and I visited one of her college-aged acquaintances to see pictures from her holiday trip to Prague. This girl, apolitical but an Obama supporter to the core, was forced to turn off MTV and The Style Network for the evening while we watched CNN and Fox for the polling results.

As it appeared more and more like Barack Hussein Obama would prevail and CNN's analysts reacted with glee, I muttered "What a country. This empty suit has not made three salient points in his 11 month campaign and here we are."

Suddenly, a roommate popped out---the religious Christian from a military family who has an Israel flag in her room---and agreed with me, which led to 20 minutes of the most erudite discourse I have ever had with a 22 year-old girl. She regaled me with her stories of summer ROTC training in El Paso, her support of Mitt Romney and her anger over the mainstream media. To say this was a breath of fresh air would be an understatement. All this time her roommate (our friend), daughter of a schoolteacher who actually chaired the Dennis Kucinich campaign in Indiana, rolled her eyes and went back to gushing over Europe.

During the conversation though, one comment caught my attention, though did not surprise me. She noted that in her senior level Political Science class at Indiana University, she took an unscientific poll and concluded that no more than ten percent of her classmates could name all six of the major presidential candidates. These "students" all have blackberrys, I-pods, wireless laptops and abundant free time, but somehow that info keeps eluding them. I told her I would be more shocked if I had not studied and written about the appalling state (and biases) of today's educational system for nearly three years now since my resignation from teaching.

But alas, minus the information and knowledge to cast an informed vote, Obama is overwhelmingly their man. Is ignorance bliss? Is he promising to show up at the next keg party, or put new soda machines in the cafeterias? Maybe petting zoos? After all, Lynn University in Boca Raton, FLA, used some of the $40,000 per year they charge in tuition to hire a petting zoo to be on campus during Final Week so students could "relax" and "relieve stress."

The feel good mentality is currently wafting through college campuses at the same rate and fervency as the tendentious political crusades in the classrooms have for decades. One glaring example is that despite the best efforts of many for balance, many schools like the University of Iowa now have registered Democrats sitting in 27 of their 27 history professorships.

Chairman of the History Department at the US Marine Corps University, Mark Moyar, wrote in the National Review back in October---after he his application to Iowa did not even advance past the initial screening of resumes since it was clear he had a conservative tilt---"Rarely have the hypocrisy and mendacity of academia been so thoroughly exposed as in the history department’s damage-control campaign."

While my fiancée was wrapping up her collegiate experience during the 2004 campaign, she was inundated with the "Vote or Die" and "Slacker Uprising" Tours that Michael Moore, P Diddy, Kirsten Dunst, Ashley Judd and other "geo-political scholars" brought to campus to rouse support for John Kerry. Professors cancelled class; no alternative events were permitted.

Nonetheless, or likely as a result, in 2008, the freshman senator from Illinois is undoubtedly the trendy candidate of choice for the young and the well-rested (since most collegians rarely arise befor