Kerry needs to can the jokes, talk about issues

Often when I’m talking about politics with my friends — or listening to them talk about politics — I hear similar things from all of them. I hear them say that they don’t really like President George W. Bush, but they also do not like Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry. I cannot help but agree with them.

From news stories I’ve read my friends and I certainly aren’t alone in this assessment of Kerry and Bush. A recent Newsweek/GENEXT poll found that 45 percent of voters age 18 to 29 plan to vote for Kerry, while 42 percent plan to vote for Bush. In this same poll in February, Kerry was leading Bush 56 percent to 42 percent among voters ages 18 to 29. Many young voters would vote for a drunken pirate before they voted for Bush. Fifty-three percent of young voters in this poll disapprove of President Bush’s handling of foreign policy issues and 54 percent of them disapprove of Bush’s handling of the economy. But clearly, of the young voters dissatisfied with President Bush, not all of them wish to jump on the John Kerry bandwagon. Even some of those on Kerry’s bandwagon could change their minds before the election.

The reason for Kerry’s loss of support has a lot to do with Kerry’s campaign personality. It has very little to do with Ralph Nader. A recent article in the Los Angeles Times described some of John Kerry’s visits to college campuses in the nation. During a speech at the University of New Hampshire, Kerry opened his remarks with something a typical politician would say. Kerry joked (and I use that term loosely), “I promise one of the first things that I will do as president of the United States is issue an executive order pardoning you for anything you did on spring break.” The crowd managed weak laughter.

As a young voter, the first thing I thought after reading that remark was lame. Making a bad joke like that does not connect with young voters because it seems like something a professor or a politician should say. Kerry needs to break out of the image of a typical flip-flopping politician to attract young voters. He needs to stop trying to make bad jokes. And for that matter, stop riding motorcycles onto “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno as he did during the Democratic primary season.

For Kerry to appeal to young voters he needs to tell us about the issues that impact our present and future, and how he’ll handle them better than Bush has. According to the Los Angeles Times, in many of Kerry’s college speeches he’s almost skipped over his plan to make college more affordable. Many young people care about their future and Kerry should tailor his speeches to cause more young voters to care about their futures. Kerry needs a vision and needs to tell young voters how it is a better vision than Bush’s vision. He needs to talk more about issues such as abortion, the environment, education, etc, and let young voters know that he’ll manage these issues better than Bush has done. To Kerry’s credit, he recently has begun to mention some of these issues. However, he has not yet done enough to inspire young voters to rally behind him.

One young voter in New York City described one of Kerry’s speeches as “…sort of a canned stump speech. I think he just needs to break out of that a little bit more.” If young voters have this image of Kerry in November, it will be tough for him to win the White House. Young voters could be a potential gold mine for Kerry’s presidential campaign. However, Kerry has only scratched the surface of this gold mine. To do this, he needs to get to the point, and think about his attitudes towards politicians during his college years. I’m sure Kerry despised some political practices in his college days. If he can do all this, he will attract more voters of all ages to his candidacy.