Politics and civics are hard to understand. Students often confuse their facts. Malapropisms and misunderstandings abound, to the amusement and frustration of every teacher.  But one encouraging development has to be young people participating in the political process on the web. Blogging, facebooks and texting have changed the face of American politics forever.

With that in mind brace yourself for  these short answers to typical civics questions about the political process.

• Universal suffrage means that even the illegible get to vote.
• The difference between a king and a president is that a king is the son of his father but a president is not.
• It is possible to get the majority of electoral votes without getting the majority of popular votes. Anyone who can ever understand how this works gets to be president.
• Some of our presidents never did much else and are famous only because they became president.
• The president has the power to appoint and disappoint the members of his cabinet.
• Much has been said about balancing the budget. It has been found that the budget is more talkable than balanceable.
• The campaign is when the candidate tells what he stand for and the election is when the votes tell if they can stand for his being elected.
• Actually, elections are different from politics. Elections come and go while politics are with us all the time.
• The winning candidate is elected and inoculated.
• In January, the president makes his Inaugural Address after he has been sworn at.
• Once he is elected, sometimes the president has to work 24 hours a day until he finds out what he is supposed to do.
• The nominees are usually called candidates or campaigners although I have heard them called other things.
• One of the strictest rules is all dark horses running for  president must be people.
• Popular votes tell who is the most popular. Electoral votes tell who is the most elected.
• A caucus is something people vote in. Sort of a small booth.
• An overwhelming favorite is a candidate that often comes over to the convention and whelms the delegates.
• The jobs of delegates is to resent their states.
• Noncommittal is to be able to talk and talk without saying anything.
• Political science is to try to figure out what makes candidates act that way.
• A split ticket is when you don't like any of them on the ticket so you tear it up.
• When they talk about the most promising presidential candidate, they mean the one who can think of the most things to promise.
• Political strategy is when you don't let people know you have run out of ideas and keep shouting anyway.
• A candidate should always renounce his words carefully.
• We are learning how to make our election results known quicker and  quicker. It is our campaigns we are having trouble getting any shorter.
• Campaigns give us a great deal of happiness by their finally ending.

The original version of this was supposedly circulated in the Boston Globe. If you read this and know where it should be attributed, please let us know by sending an email to information@privateschoolreview.com