Professors encourage voter participation: ‘The world’s hope is in the mail’

Portland State’s Political Science Department hosted a roundtable discussion forum last night about the 2008 Presidential Election, with a panel that consisted of four political science faculty members.

The roundtable was held by the department in order to provide an “informed discussion about the upcoming election” for students as well as the general public, as well as to explore the election’s international implications, according to the event posting.

The panel included department chair Dr. Melody Rose, future Executive Director of the Western Political Science Association Richard Clucas, assistant professor Christopher Shortell and Director of the School of Government Ron Tammen.

Kori Allen, a former Portland State political science major and current employee of Coldwater Capital Management, moderated the roundtable.

Each panel member spoke briefly on their particular topic of expertise or interest, before the last 40 minutes were left to questions from the audience.

Both Shortell and Rose discussed the potential re-emergence of Democratic popularity unseen in the U.S. since the late 1960s and ’70s, and Clucas called 2008 “the year of the Democrats.”

Rose opened with a light joke about Saturday Night Live, before speaking about the election through the lens of one particular state, Virginia. She called for the audience to begin paying attention to Virginia, and called this election one that was both “re-aligning” and “a very historical, critical moment” for America.

Rose reiterated how important it was that the innumerous amounts of young people across the country actually show up to vote, now that they’ve registered.

Shortell focused on the importance of the next president’s role in the opportunity to potentially nominate a new justice to the Supreme Court.

Several votes in the Supreme Court have been close 5-4 votes on important issues, such as “campaign finance, the Clean Air Act and abortion,” shedding light on the sway that the next Supreme Court nominee could hold.

“Each of those areas of law could be reshaped by a new justice,” said Shortell.

Shortell also touched on the congressional races and said, according to current projections, Democrats stand to pick up “30 to 40 seats” in the House of Representatives, which would be, “the largest Democratic majority since the late 1970s.”

Shortell also noted that Oregon Republican senatorial incumbent Gordon Smith is trailing in the polls, along with other typically Republican seats in the Senate.

Clucas encouraged students to intern in the Oregon state Legislature, now a new Senior Capstone option through the political science department.

Touching on international issues, Tammen said that a recent survey asked Americans to list in order of importance 14 different issues, and that 83 percent believed “improving our international public standing,” was the most important on the list.

In 20 out of 26 countries surveyed, Tammen added, the U.S. was found to have a “mostly worldwide negative influence,” including our supposed allies in Canada, Latin America and the Middle East.

Israel, Iran and North Korea were the only three to rank lower than the U.S.

“To a significant portion of the world, we are the axis of evil,” said Tammen.

Bringing the discussion back to the current presidential election, Tammen said “all is not lost,” and pointed out that similar studies indicate that people around the world have “marginally large trust in Barack Obama to do the right thing.”

Before conclusion of the forum a few potential problems in the way Americans see politics were discussed.

“People don’t understand ballot initiatives,” said Clucas, a statement received by several nods in the audience.

Rose said that as a nation, Americans hold a “contemporary view of politics as entertainment,” and that in regards to political discourse we have “lost the art of rhetoric.”

Debates have become more focused on the practice of “disagreement as destruction,” said Rose.

Each speaker in turn emphasized how this election represented a crucial and momentous point in our history as a nation, while expressing general belief that the Democrats were most likely to emerge as the victors this election year.

“The answer to the world’s hope is in the mail,” Temmen concluded, reiterating the importance of the outcome of the vote this fall–being one that will not only have great impact on a national level, but will reverberate throughout the entire world.