(Syracuse Airport) Public Agenda’s president, Ruth Wooden, writes, “Neither Third-Party Candidate nor Leadership Alone Can Solve the Problem.” The “problem” that she has in mind is destructive partisanship, but one could define it more generally as dysfunctional politics. Fortunately, some citizens are at work organizing public deliberation and public-spirited advocacy during this campaign season.

Public Agenda itself is an example. The organization “advocates for a greater reliance on public dialogue to come to agreement on difficult issues.” As Wooden writes, “Until leaders invest trust in the American people, create more opportunities for average citizens to explore issues from multiple points of view and help them confront the facts of our nation’s greatest challenges through dialogue, our government will remain shackled by political maneuvering and gamesmanship.” Check out the Public Agenda “Primer on Public Engagement.”

Mobilize.org just pulled off its Party for the Presidency, a gathering of 150 young people from around the United States who developed the “Democracy 2.0 agenda” to guide their advocacy over the next year. See this coverage in the Huffington Post.

The Study Circles Resource Center, a key organization in the movement for deliberative citizenship, is about to relaunch itself as “Everyday Democracy.” As one of many activities connected to the relaunch, the Center is starting an Everyday Democracy Book Club, run by Frances Moore Lappé.

And then there’s the November Fifth Coalition, which is gearing up for a significant statement about how you can be involved.

(Gate 44, Washington National Airport): In December and January, I’ve taken 20 separate flight segments for family reasons and/or business. Two flights have been canceled outright and at least another eight have been seriously delayed. I guess nothing could be more boring than complaints about “the airlines.” Still, I wonder:

1. Does anyone review an airline’s decision to cancel, rather than delay, a flight? I presume that a delay costs the airline more money, because it has to be pay overtime and perhaps divert an airplane. A cancellation, however, costs the passengers much more–not only time, but also cash for wasted airport parking, ground transportation, food, etc. Canceling a flight that could instead be delayed–thereby shifting costs to the customer–should be penalized. Right now, we can’t even get reliable information about why flights are canceled.

2. What’s wrong with the market as a whole? Why doesn’t a competitive market produce more reliable service, at least by some of the major carriers? This is not a rhetorical question–I believe that markets sometimes work and sometimes don’t, and we should be able to diagnose the reason for failure in this case.

On a couple of occasions, I have fantasized about massive civil disobedience by passengers. For example, one morning, I pictured the enormous line for check-in at Dulles sitting down and refusing to budge until the airline started to issue apologies and vouchers. But the difference between a sit-in and ordinary service would have been difficult to detect.

Contrary to what I wrote yesterday, today’s newspapers provide a bumper crop of positive stories about young voters in New Hampshire. David Nitkin in the Baltimore Sun captured the message I would most like to convey:

Voters under age 30, taking part in their first or second presidential election, belong to a deeply involved generation that volunteers at higher rates than their elders, said Peter Levine, director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, at the University of Maryland, College Park.

But as they head to the polls, it is not clear whether younger voters are forging lifetime habits or are satisfied with their options.

“The big question has been, would they see voting as a helpful way to do anything about these issues?” said Levine, who surveyed 400 college students last year. “I think that they are ready to get the pitch, but they are not yet sold on the idea that the political system is the way to solve their problems.”

We have tracked young voters since 2001. In fact, CIRCLE is the only organization that provides estimates of youth turnout immediately after elections. The exit polls reveal what percentage of voters were young, but we calculate what percentage of young people voted.

We do not do this because we think that youth voting is intrinsically valuable or profoundly interesting, but because we believe that it is good for democracy–and for young people–if we can connect them to political and social institutions while they are young. Drawing attention to them as voters may encourage the press and politicians to pay attention to them, to listen to their views, and to address their issues. In turn, that attention may stimulate youth engagement with public institutions.

Thus it was very exciting when all the nation’s major newspapers suddenly had prominent–often lead–articles on youth voting right after the Iowa caususes. Indeed, the statistics were startling: 65,000 young Iowans had caucused, at least three times as many as in any recent year. But in 2004, we also saw a very substantial increase in youth turnout in the general election (up 12 points compared to 2000). Yet youth turnout was widely described as disappointing that year. Yesterday in New Hampshire, the youth turnout increase was amazing, with 84,000 under-30s going to the polls. Yet I haven’t yet seen too much discussion of that increase in the media.

The reason is clear. In Iowa, young people turned out strong and backed the winner. In 2004, they turned out strong but voted for Kerry, who lost. In New Hampshire yesterday, they practically doubled their turnout but voted for Obama, who lost. (Actually, the under-25s chose Obama but the 25-29s went for Clinton). Most reporters are interested in who wins. They therefore presume the following argument: Youth voted for X; X lost; ergo, youth turnout was disappointing.

At one level, I understand this. Who wins the presidency is a momentous question. But it is not the only question to ask about an election. The enormous expansion of the electorate in Iowa and New Hampshire has been a beautiful thing to watch, quite apart from who won. Besides, the horse-race frame can actually cause factual errors, as when the AP reported in 2004 that youth turnout had declined. At this point, I’m just a little concerned that youth will again be described as fickle or irrelevant, because the candidate who “needs” their vote (see Ben Adler in the Politico) happened to place second in New Hampshire.

PS I just stumbled on Ezra Klein’s very thoughtful reflections on covering the horse race and what that can do to one’s sense of reality.