by Rob Runyan

WASHINGTON – As Barack Obama looked out on the thousands of young faces in the crowd gathered in Grant Park on Tuesday night in Chicago, he might have been tempted to embrace his true rock star status with his inaugural crowd surf. After all, it was young voters who put him on their shoulders earlier that day.

Huge margins for Obama in the 18-to-29-year-old voting group handed him some key states that turned a potential barn burner into an electoral landslide. Young voters largely quieted the skeptics who doubted their impact in 2008.

But what about their impact in 2009?

Groups such as the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement and the League of Young Voters have stressed the importance of keeping young Americans interested in politics beyond Nov. 4.

Back in September Liz Rincon of the Pennsylvania League of Young Voters told me: “They’ll be excited about this [election], but we’re here to make sure they stay engaged and really build a voting bloc out of these folks.”

But that hasn’t always happened in the past. In 1992, a strong youth vote helped President Clinton to the White House.

“But then that was the beginning of 10 years of decline in youth turnout,” said Peter Levine, CIRCLE’s director. “The 1992 excitement did not sustain itself.”

Part of that may have stemmed from the fact that while Clinton carried the youth vote, it was by a much smaller margin. There were still many who went for President George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot who were disappointed in the result and thus disinclined to stay involved.

So what could make this time different?

Obama. Yes he can.

Young conservatives may find this year’s result disappointing, but the reality is there are a lot more young people who feel they came out on top this time around. There will be an opportunity to carry that extraordinary support throughout Obama’s administration.

“I think one of the most intriguing possibilities is if President Obama uses those tens of thousands of active young people as a corps for pushing for legislative change,” Levine said, “so that he uses them to advocate for things like global warming legislation, which is very important to many of those activists.”

But it’s important that young Americans who want to effect change know how to do that beyond their vote. That’s why organizations like the Hip Hop Caucus, a nonpartisan group dedicated to mobilizing the noncollege youth vote, decided to use “Respect My Vote” for their campaign.

That emphasized the post-election importance of holding politicians accountable to the youth vote, said the Rev. Lennox Yearwood, president of Hip Hop Caucus. Greater transparency and accessibility in government for young people will go a long way toward accomplishing that, he said.

“Politics is now fun,” Yearwood said. “They’re going to want to be involved.”

How do you keep the 34 percent of young voters who didn’t vote for Obama involved?

That could be trickier.

Experts will continue to debate whether 2008’s youth turnout was exceptional because of Obama or if he did exceptionally well because of the climate in 2008. But there were still about 8 million young Americans who came out to vote, but were not swayed to his camp by either.

Obama spoke to that group Tuesday night when he said, “I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president, too.”

If he is to follow through on that promise then he’d do well to consider nonpartisan means of encouraging youth engagement.

One vehicle for that is a bill called the “Serve America” Act, according to Levine. The bill, which Obama supported on the campaign trail, would provide 250,000 Americans with a chance to serve for a year in a variety of government and private organizations in exchange for money for college or loan forgiveness.

It’s with these programs and other proposals to come that Obama can help to sustain political enthusiasm in all young people – not just through his stay in the White House but for elections and administrations to come.

Obama’s campaign set a precedent with young voters sure to be chased in the future. His administration could determine whether that’s possible.

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