On our recent trip to Prague and ?eský Krumlov, we took lots of photos of places that are mobbed with tourists. Like everyone else, we would often wait until crowds parted a little to snap our pictures, showing either empty spaces or our own family, surrounded by old buildings. Other visitors sometimes politely stopped to allow us to shoot pictures without them in the frame.

All this bothers me a bit. We’re erasing one another from our images, creating ghost towns out of crowded old cities and depopulating our natural wonders. It might be interesting to make a photo essay out of the tourists, or at least to write about their behavior in relation to the objects they observe. (I did a bit of that once in Madrid.)

Here are two recent articles suggesting that Barack Obama’s strong appeal to youth may alienate older voters:

• Alec MacGillis in the Washington Post (8/12): “When Gene Rutherford, 65, tries to make sense of the meteoric rise of Barack Obama, and the rampant enthusiasm for him among younger Americans, he thinks of the local mall, where as director of operations he often deals with teenagers. ‘Kids today have been given everything they want, and don’t have to work for it. They have no respect for authority,’ said Rutherford, standing at the bar at the Elks lodge here. ‘They’ll make remarks right to the face of the [mall] cops. I get to the point where I want to do something,” he said, cocking a fist as if to threaten a punch. ‘But the police say we can’t, that we just have to stand there.’ It makes him worry for the country.”
• Peter Feld in Advertising Age: “Mr. Obama’s brand management, unprecedented in presidential politics, shows pitch-perfect understanding of the keys to appealing to the youngest voters. …His success, it seems, is a result of both product and the branding behind it. The qualities he projects — a cool, smooth aura, the communal values of hope and unity, his teeming crowds and his campaign’s seamless graphics — are the essence of appealing to millennials. [But] Mr. Obama’s packaging might discomfit older generations.”

These articles ring true to me. They explain and–to some extent–excuse the McCain ads that link Obama to Britney and Paris. The ads that were used against Rep. Harold Ford Jr. in 2006 were racist; they stoked white sexual fears by suggesting that a black candidate might have sex with a young white woman. But the McCain ads in this cycle don’t sexually link Obama to Britney and Paris; they equate him with those two celebrities. The charge is that he is merely “cool”–attractive, popular, and good on TV–and that he doesn’t deserve to be a leader or a role-model. McCain is trying to turn Obama’s popularity with hip young people into a liability by invoking legitimate discomfort with our media-obsessed, superficial, pop culture.

But the ads are fundamentally unfair. Obama himself is a very serious guy–not a superficial celeb but an intellectual and a social activist. Moreover, his core young supporters are not superficial and media-obsessed. Something like 15 percent of young Americans voted for him in the primary. (25 percent voted, but some chose another candidate.) We know that they were disproportionately college students, and I suspect they were disproportionately “civic”–experienced with volunteering, political discussions, and membership in voluntary groups.

That means that they were not the young folks who bother Mr. Rutherford by hanging around malls in Lancaster County (PA) and hassling security guards. In fact, young people who are alienated from adult life and hang around malls have little voice in politics and government. They hardly voted in the primaries, and no one is talking about their issues.

The core Obama supporters are unlikely to think much of Paris and Britney. Their tastes in music and entertainment are probably much more socially-conscious, multicultural, and sophisticated. Nor are they disrespectful of authority and tradition. One of the hallmarks of young social activists today is politeness. They are close to their parents and deferential (sometimes to a fault) around people like professors and business leaders.

An opportunity arises for Obama because he offers answers to the problems that bother Mr. Rutherford and other older Americans. First, Obama is not a youth phenomenon. He is an intergenerational figure: a parent and an experienced college teacher and community organizer with roots in churches and service programs. Second, the kinds of programs he most passionately supports are the ones that connect youth to older people. They are antidotes to the problem of teenagers hanging round malls. And third, his moral and spiritual beliefs allow him to criticize the superficial, commercial, and sexist aspects of youth culture with authenticity. (By the way, most of the young people who support him will share that critique.)

Walking along a street in Prague, I overheard an American say loudly, “They all eat lunch at 1 o’clock here. It’s because of Communism–the inefficiency still exists.” I hadn’t realized that getting lunch at 1 made you a commie, but now I’m sure to eat mine before 12:30 pm.

Seriously … visiting a recently communist country makes you think about the legacies of that system. And it was an awful regime. “The people” never owned the means of production; a few thugs controlled all the valuable stuff and used it for their own benefit. The story of Milada Horáková, a feminist, socialist, and democrat who was judicially murdered by the regime, serves as a fitting summary.

But it’s not as if communism was the first authoritarian system in the country. The Nazi occupation lasted from 1939-1945. The Austrian Empire ruled from to 1620 to 1918. Even older and more consistent was feudalism, a system under which serfs were bound to the land and required to give their surplus produce to landlords who were also their political and judicial rulers. Serfdom was abolished in 1781 but its effects lingered. If one wants to feel a glimmer of sympathy for communism, it’s worth thinking about the serfs who paid for the State Castle of ?eský Krumlov and so many other “stately homes.” My photo shows only the corridor from the residential quarters to the baroque theater, built over an enormous ravine for the convenience of the resident Eggenberg family. They and their successors owned all this property not because of their creativity and industry, but because their distant ancestors had wielded big swords.

Of course, the solution to feudalism was not communism, but democratic and legal land reform, which the inter-war Czechoslovak government undertook. At that point, the State Castle became a public asset, and a charming one. But it is worth noting that communists were not the first to monopolize power in their own interests.

For readers who follow this blog out of an interest in youth voting, a must-read post is Charles Franklin’s at Pollster.com. His graphs are illuminating and detailed. He acknowledges that mobilizing young voters in 2004 made a significant difference to their turnout and kept Kerry in the game. But he argues that young voters always vote at such low rates that it is better to campaign to the elderly. Besides, older voters–contrary to their reputation for being set in the ways–actually swing more from Democrats to Republicans, which makes them prime targets for outreach.

To be sure, older voters are prime targets. No one would advise a campaign otherwise. The question is where an extra dollar of campaign money makes the most difference. I would not be surprised if the marginal impact is actually greater among the young. Youth voting rose proportionally in 2004 and made a difference in the campaign. That happened despite very modest levels of investment in youth voting by the Democratic Party and nominee. It’s quite plausible that each dollar spent on youth paid off quite nicely. (See our estimates of cost-effectiveness here; although unfortunately we cannot compare impact by age group.)

(The following is an imaginary speech by the Democratic nominee): “John McCain has been running ads associating me with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. He has been criticized for those ads, but I believe they reflect a deep concern that I share with him.

“Modern celebrity culture is a terrible thing. I can hardly believe that my daughters, growing up two generations after the height of the women’s movement, should be exposed to relentless news about someone who happens to be thin, blond, rich, deliberately uneducated past high school, without any apparent interest in a regular job, and who intentionally acts dim and vapid in order to appear attractive. I sometimes feel as if we have slipped 50 years backward.

“And I can hardly believe the appetite for news about Paris and Britney–and now Angelina and Beyonce–when there are wars going on, and the earth’s climate is shifting dangerously, and our people are losing jobs and health coverage. Not only are there serious problems to read about; there are also wonderful people doing amazing things to solve our problems. They work together at the grassroots level, leading organizations, cleaning up the environment, mentoring kids, creating art and culture. But these real, active citizens get one thousandth of the attention of a single Hollywood star breakup.

“The celebrity culture is sexualized to a point that threatens anyone who tries to raise children to be responsible and caring human beings. It is superficial and wasteful. It is spiritually bankrupt. It is fundamentally undemocratic in its fascination with heiresses and moguls. It is obsessed with personal behavior, especially sexuality, to the exclusion of social issues and institutions; and it sets ridiculously low standards for personal ethics.

“I recognize that my family and I are in some danger of being sucked into the celebrity culture. By definition, the presidential nominee of a major party is famous. In today’s climate, becoming famous means that suddenly the public is interested in our personal lives. I was never a celebrity until I ran for president. It is exciting for us, but also troubling. At some fundamental level, it feels wrong. I know from years of community organizing, college teaching, and working in a legislature that what really matters is not what celebrity gossip is about. Real work is done by serious people working together out of the limelight, not by a few people who have become famous for being rich and sexually active.

“The government cannot ban or censor celebrity culture. It can support local civic engagement, education, and arts as alternatives. And our leaders can speak out against the culture. In this, I would gladly join my Republican opponent.”

[I have written before, in my own voice, about celebrity culture and politics, and about Princess Diana as a case study.]