The College Fix

And in the latest report of what people think is news, but shouldn’t really be, (and there’s been a lot of that this year) only 44 percent of American college students approve of President Obama.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be. For two reasons:

First, quick: think of the last time you saw a college student exuding copious amounts of patience. I doubt there will be anything quick about it.

There were about eight million things—okay, I’m slightly exaggerating—that, as a liberal, I think the Obama Administration should have handled or done differently. But, unlike most of my non-addicted-to-politics peers, I’m also painfully aware of why said change has proceeded so slowly.

This from the New York Times:

“The strategy that has brought Senate Republicans where they are today began when they gathered, beaten and dispirited, at the Library of Congress two weeks before Mr. Obama’s inauguration. They had lost seven seats in November, another was teetering, and they were about to go up against an extraordinarily popular new president and an emboldened Democratic Congress.

‘We came in shellshocked,’ said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. ‘There was sort of a feeling of “every man for himself.” Mitch early on in this session came up with a game plan to make us relevant with 40 people. He said if we didn’t stick together on big things, we wouldn’t be relevant.’”

But how many of my fellow college students (or Americans generally for that matter) happened to pick up the NYT that day? How many of us are aware that but for 40 conservative US Senators, we would have much stricter financial regulation, full campaign finance disclosure laws, a robust public option, a solid plan to prevent catastrophic global climate change and we wouldn’t even be discussing an extension of Bush’s billionaire bailout? Not to mention, we could have had a stimulus bill powerful enough to actually move a $14.6 trillion economy back into gear.

At the end of the day, however, the Democrats have been in power since 2006. And the Republicans have proven far more adept at politics than their counterparts. Let’s face it: most college students have more pressing things to worry about than politics. Like getting a job once we get that nice piece of paper, which brings me to my second point:

The unemployment rate for young people (18-24) is 19.1 percent.

I’m currently taking an advanced engineering mathematics course, so I’m—for the first time in my life—going to break out some really (not) complicated math in a practical context.

We’re going to identify two numbers, which I’m going to call economic tolerance ratios. All you have to do is divide the President’s approval rating (from a certain demographic) by the unemployment rate of that same demographic.

A higher score is better, but a low score compared to fairly high approval rating is indicative of a lot of economic tolerance, whereas a low score compared to fairly low unemployment rate would predict less economic tolerance. A perfect score is going to be about 15, assuming 60 percent Presidential approval and 4 percent unemployment. (Two things unlikely to happen anytime before 2020.)

This is the economic tolerance ratio of Americans generally: 45 percent Obama Approval/9.5 percent unemployment = 4.74 out of 15, or about 31 percent.

The economic tolerance ratio of American college students, however, is: 44 percent Obama Approval/19.1 percent unemployment = 2.30 out of 15, or about 15 percent.

What this means, more or less, is that if the general American populace held Obama as accountable for unemployment as we are, his approval rating would be at about 23 percent, compared to our unchanged 44 percent.

Because, seeing as most Americans and college students generally approve of President Obama at virtually the same level, it’s clear that we’re holding out for the guy, and giving him a little bit more slack than our elders, though it seems like it’s not in our economic interest to do so.

And though many have been quick to label ours the “ADD generation,” asserting we’re unable of remembering anything for longer than thirty seconds, let me put it like this: we still have hope.

Zach Wahls is a columnist for the Daily Iowan and a sophomore at the University of Iowa. He is a contributor to the Student Free Press Association.

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