A Tainted Legacy

IT HAS BEEN an almost Diogenesian task of late to find a Reagan backer on campus who can rationalize support for the President with arguments that: (1) do not smugly dismiss Walter F. Mondale as a "wimp"; (2) are more sophisticated than "I want a job;" and (3) do not include the words "optimism," "patriotism," "Olympics," "standing tall," or--and this is the killer--"What difference does it make?"

Ask a Mondale supporter, of which luckily there are some left, and you will hear fears about nuclear safety, arguments for a government that plays a positive role in the betterment of society, a return to a modicum of morality in our dealings with allies, or, from the less thoughtful, the now-hackneyed invocation of the "fairness issue."

Ask a Reagan supporter and you will, at best, hear the argument that Reagan has created a genuine recovery and, at worst, be faced with a catty smile and a refusal to discuss such a trivial issue.

The big step to the right by mulct of the 18-24 age group, of course, has not suffered from a dearth of scrutiny by the national media, and by the Reagan campaign, which has attempted to identify itself with such working class pop idols as Bruce Springsteen and John Cougar Mellencamp.

The Reagan campaign, far from tackling issues of real importance to students, like educational aid, problems of discrimination, and military involvement abroad, has invariably translated national problems into sports metaphors that make the U.S. invasion of Grenada seem like Bob Welch striking out Reggie Jackson in the '78 World Series and turn our Olympic success into an argument for additional billions of Pentagon spending.

This of course is nothing new Politicians, including Mondale, attempt to translate policy proposals into terms that relate directly to whatever sector of the electorate they are wooing. But what is both surprising and worrysome is that Reagan youth, especially at Harvard, are so willing to embrace what they know are superficialities: television images, fleeting moods, and pat phrases ("America is standing tall") that defy cogent analysis.

There are rational defenses for the President, arguments put forth in conservative journals and by Republican columnists. But these arguments, which are for the most part well-known do not find a voice on campus; not from The Salient, the conservative newspaper, not from Reagan's student supporters, and not in The Crimson, in which editors for the first time in recent memory signed a dissenting opinion for a Republican candidate.

In a broader sense, the anti-intellectual nature of support for the President among voters aged 18-24 is a result of the fact that our generation is the first to live and die by the media eye. We are the first generation raised entirely in a culture that reacts more strongly to "wimp," "loser," and "macho" than to substantive policy discussions, that bases its decisions and learns the news in media bites rather than in in-depth studies, and that is more concerned with style and image than any generation before us.

These are not the only reasons young Americans have turned to the right. The oft-used argument that young voters go Republican because their only experience of Democratic leadership is Jimmy Carter is certainly valid, but it does not address our generation's serious problems, problems being brought to the fore by the manner in which we will indicate our generation's will come November 6.

TO ANSWER the question campus Republicans appear unable to answer for themselves, young people support Reagan for a variety of emotional and non-intellectual reasons. Among them: feeling secure with a macho president; knowing their expected affluence will not be touched by a laisse-faire president; having a leader who does not demand more from them than that they prosper, multiply, and maybe pray.

Is this something defensible in the intellectual arena of Harvard? Of course not. But there will come a day when our generation will be accountable for its beliefs and actions. What will we do then?