Idle youth vote.

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THERE'S an old story of an ancient bureaucrat at the British Foreign Office who, after working from 1903 to 1950, reminisced that "year after year the worriers and fretters would come to me with awful predictions of the outbreak of war. I denied it each time. I was wrong only twice."

Well, I'm waiting to be wrong even once about the youth vote. Admittedly, I haven't been at my desk for half a century, but every four years I'm told that this year will be different, this year the vote-rockers will do that voodoo they've never done well, and--this time!--they'll sweep a progressive, youth-oriented, Generation-XYZ-friendly guy into office.

They said it about Howard Dean, and he blew up after the "Deaniacs" failed to turn out. Later they said it about John Kerry; the young people would rise up in anger over an unjust war. In fairness, 2004 saw the biggest surge in young voters in twelve years. But George W. Bush was reelected. Under-30 was the only age demographic that Kerry won. They just didn't matter that much.

In 2000, the new digerati prophesied that Al Gore--the first cyber-savvy candidate, or somesuch--would benefit from the rising up of the Internet generation. Alas, most couldn't be bothered to rise off their couches. Gore beat Bush by a whopping two points among 18-to-29-year-olds. In 1972, the modern fons et origo of youth-vote hype, Democrats were convinced that the lowering of the voting age would yield a progressive tide of first-time voters the likes of which Western man had not seen since the first Greek democrat asked for a show of hands. ...