In 1963, President John F. Kennedy told an audience at Vanderbilt University, "The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all."

All I can say is, we must be one insecure nation.

Opinion polls are pretty consistent on this one. As a people, Americans tend to know very little about politics or their own system of government. An essay recently published by the CATO Institute, written by Ilya Somin, an assistant professor of law at George Mason University, brought together results from a lot of different surveys to prove the point. Here's a sampling:

• A whopping 70 percent of Americans either didn't know Congress passed a Medicare prescription drug benefit or thought the measure had failed.

• Fully 75 percent didn't know the Bush administration said Saddam Hussein was not involved in the 9/11 attacks.

• Only 22 percent said they knew at least a "fair amount" about the European Union.

• Even though the unemployment rate is lower today than the average rate for the past 30 years, only 22 percent were aware of it.

These results are fairly consistent with past surveys. In 2000, the National Election Survey found that only 4 percent could name a second candidate for the House of Representatives from their district, and only 15 percent could name just one. And in 1964, most people believed the Soviet Union was a member of NATO.

So much for government "of the people." Sort of makes you want to change to an aristocracy, or to a government run by a knowledgable few, doesn't it? Given how most readers of this column tend to be better informed than the average, we could form our own little ruling society (so long as I get to be the chairman).

Actually, according to Somin, we're already there. The elite rule in the United States by default. But Somin doesn't blame the voters. He says the problem is a government that has grown so large no lay person can possibly get a handle on it. He outlines this problem impressively. The president's Cabinet contains 15 departments, each with its subdivisions and agencies. The executive branch alone contains 54 regulatory agencies. Who can keep track of it all, let alone understand it and evaluate how well it is being run?

And so, this election season is dominated more by what may or may not have happened 30 or more years ago on a Swift boat in Vietnam or in the National Guard than by specifics about the federal budget. The campaigns are about generalities or vague accusations that one candidate changes his positions, or that we ought to feel safer under one man's leadership than another.

I suspect in some ways Americans approach a general election the way they approach the Olympics. A year before the 2002 Games in Salt Lake, I was assigned to cover long-track speed-skating. I traveled to a few events in different parts of the country to get to know the athletes. At these, people like Derek Parra and Chris Witty would skate around with virtually no public attention. In their spare time, they wandered your neighborhood Home Depot in orange aprons, waiting on people who were more interested in bathroom fixtures than world records. But when the Olympics began, they suddenly became stars feted on late-night talk shows and followed by adoring crowds.