THE END OF POLITICS?
35
Peter Shaw:
When 1 began reading
Partisan Review
in the late 1950s and
early 1960s, 1 imbibed the sense that it was better not to be interested in
electoral politics than to be interested in them. 1 formed myself on that
notion, to my own detriment, for a number of years, and then returned,
to some extent, to a general interest in electoral politics. 1 find myself
looking back at those years with some nostalgia, when 1 hear William
Phillips's introduction, in which the problem is assumed to be that there
is not enough interest in electoral politics. 1 think that in the
Partisan
Review
tradition, it would be right to take a look at this falling-off as
possibly a healthy development. 1 think that two powerful points have
been made tonight, which have to be taken into account: Eric
Breindel's point that disaffection from the political process arises because
there are questions that are taboo; and then Fred Siegel's point that
there are questions that have been removed from the political process be–
cause the courts have taken over a number of pressing issues. 1 would
think that if those two things were not true, then there might be a great
deal more interest in electoral politics at this time.
However, setting that aside, although taking it into account, there
have been two developments in the last twenty-five years that I think ac–
count for the falling off in voter interest - something not necessarily
measured by voter participation. (I think Eric is right that voter turnout
has proved to be higher than one might expect.) One development is the
intrusion upon private life of political and indeed of politicized cultural
concerns that the sixties brought. Virtually everyone in the country was
caught up in politics willy-nilly. This became a major part of experience
in a way that it had not been before. The second development was
something that was ongoing from before the sixties, namely the Cold
War - another thing that intruded itself upon everyone's sensibility and
made everyone necessarily political and concerned about politics. Now
that the cultural issues that once so obtruded themselves have been re–
moved as an arena for effective participation by individual voters, in the
way that Eric and Fred described, and now that the Cold War is over,
the electorate has a right to look again to the private life as something
more important than politics. The electorate indeed has a right to look
at this election as an election in which one is not obliged to ask oneself
the question, "Which of those candidates would I trust with the red
telephone?" or "Which of those candidates do 1 think would fundamen–
tally advance or interfere with the most important cultural and social
concerns that I have?" The latter is not possible because these matters
have been effectively removed from the public arena, for the time being;
and the former is not possible, because of this great change in history,
