I cast my vote in my first presidential election yesterday. I won't lie and say I wasn't excited. It was a very cool, very powerful filling filling in the little bubble on my North Carolina ballot. I'm sure you can guess just which bubble that was.

But as Election Day looms closer, and as more and more people start realizing they have to make a choice, I just wanted to share three brief points I'd like to make to every young voter. No, I'm not telling you who to vote for; I'm just imploring you to think.

1. Sketch out some rough idea for the proper role of the government and the proper relationship between state and citizen. Seriously. My student paper endorsed four liberal Democrats and then, in a surprise move, a libertarian. What. The. Ever-loving. Hell. Picking among politicians without an overarching theory of government is like trying to write a paper without a thesis. It doesn't work, you make scattershot choices, and the outcome is always ugly.

I would argue that the best government is that which governs least, that individuals are the most qualified to make choices affecting their lives, and that most problems government regulation attempts to solve are problems created by past government regulation. Therefore, I vote Republican. Even though if my vote isn't going to the limited-government candidate of my dreams, comparatively he/she is better than the alternative.

2. The presidential election is neither the only nor--dare I say it--the most important election in which you will cast a ballot on November 4. This may be shocking, but there will be lots of other races on the ticket. If you can't make yourself care about (read: take the time to research all of them), do yourself a favor and prioritize: Senate, House, governor. Congress writes national laws; the governor controls the direction and priorities of your state. Spend some time researching them. Please.

3. Push yourself to imagine both costs and benefits of campaign promises. Yes, in an ideal world, everyone would have whatever homes, health care, retirement plans, ponies, puppies, and (hybrid) cars they pleased. But we live in an imperfect world with nearly infinite competing possibilities and no omniscient being directing the division of our (sadly) finite resources. So, yes, it's nice to promise the things that people want but it's nicer still to be honest and admit we'll never get it all right and we'll never get everything people want to them.

Voting Republican doesn't mean I want to kick people out of their homes, I want to deprive the poor of health care, or that I want to make college so expensive that it becomes a privilege for privileged classes. What it does mean is that I want many of the same things the Left does, but I just think that in the absence of an omniscient being, it's awfully presumptive to think the government's going to do any better.

After some time suffering from an unknown form of vile pestilence--and a great deal of time spent Twittering frantically about #dontgo--I have something to say that isn't energy policy-related. Mainly because thinking about energy policy would require me to not feel as though I've been hit by a truck. (A big truck symbolic of the excess in America's materialistic consumer culture as it sucks down gasoline. Also known as my dream car.) But I digress.

I've spent a great deal of time learning about subtle "-isms." You know what I mean. The racism, sexism, classism, anthropocentrism, and other nasty prejudices that undergird our (non-)great society. But they do their work subtlely. So only people skilled in the fine art of detecting such problems can bring them to our attention (see: Group of 88 in the Duke lacrosse case).

Well what name should this earn as an -ism? 

There's a subtle art in selecting photos and videos of George Bush and Dick Cheney to reinforce the pop culture storyline of Bush as the dumb monkey/frat boy/puppet/redneck and Cheney as evil overlord/Darth Vader/puppetmaster/exasperated handler. The photo above from Jonathan Martin's blog at Politico is just one more example. For a post about Bush and Cheney speaking the first night of the Republican convention, was this photo really the best--or most relevant--Martin could use?

It's not that I think the media should portray sitting presidents in glowing light and in beautiful portraits. But it's quite another when nearly every photo I see (and Martin's just popped at me this morning) plays into the hands of this storyline.

Republicans have lost pop culture and "cool," and to a large extent, I think that's why they've (really, we've) lost the youth vote. It's tiring day after day to engage with opposite-minded friends as well as the media. And popular humor. And popular culture at large.

We can't control it. We can just call it how it is. Oh, and be slyly amused that being privy to The Great War-Mongering Republican/Big Business/Big Oil/Big Everything Machine is the most counterculture move of all.

The last panel I sat in on at RightOnline today was “Shaping the Future: Youth Politics and New Media.” Getting teens and twenty-somethings involved in politics is a challenge. But getting teens and twenty-somethings interested (and involved) in Republican politics and activism often seems to be a nearly impossible task. So, in other words, good luck to the panelists.

My kudos for best points go to Ethan Eilon, College Republicans executive director, and Soren Dayton, modern media and political consultant. Ethan explained how 18- to 25-year-olds have largely been untapped by campaigns because they’re tough to reach. Few in that age group (if any) have landlines and most don’t have the same address for more than six months. Without a phone number or address, these people are “invisible” to a campaign. But with the advent of the internet—and young people moving their lives online—there is finally an “efficient and consistent” way to reach them.

Soren continued on a message that I heard in several Friday panels: modern media (i.e. the web) has not changed the fundamentals of politics, just the medium. The internet is not the “silver bullet” to end problems with voter outreach—especially youth voter outreach. The rules of politics are still the same. You go out, you meet people, you talk to people, and hopefully you convince people to agree with you.

So what does that mean for the Republican battle to win back the youth vote?

Politics is a game for perception—for better or for worse.

That’s why I cringe when I read things that make Republicans seem, well, so damn old and out of touch. Case in point is John McCain and the vast, mysterious World Wide Web. McCain says that he “is learning to get online” and “watches” Drudge (double cringe). But he doesn’t email because he “never the felt particular need.”

Is this a voting issue? I don’t think so. But comments like this are irksome and, more importantly, troublesome for Republicans. If you’re on this blog, you get it. You get technology; you get the internet. At least to some degree. If you’re on this blog and you’re under twenty (or, better yet, under fifteen), you’re probably smirking too. This guy wants to be the leader of the free world in the twenty-first century, to tackle some of the most complex problems the world has ever seen…and Microsoft Outlook would totally flummox him. Don't even get started on Gmail, AIM, Facebook, or "the Google."

The Ugly: In the 2006 mid-term Congressional elections, 58 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds voted for Democratic candidates. Only 37 percent voted for Republicans. The only upshot is, hey, we voted! (source)

The Bad: In 2006, 48 percent of us identified with the Democratic Party. In contrast, 35 percent identified with the Republicans. That gap is the largest in the past 20 years. This really is the least Republican generation. (source)

The Good: Generation Next might as well keep repeating the political identity of "socially liberally, fiscally conservative." We're liberal pretty much across the board on social policy, but we don't think business is bad (in fact, we're called pro-business) and we even liked the idea of privatizing Social Security in 2006. (source)

But it gets better.