Howard Dean-Democratic National Committee chairman, 2004 presidential hopeful and source of the infamous “Dean Scream”-was here at Saint Louis University, behind Griesedieck Complex on Saturday, Sept. 6.

The 100 (or so) St. Louisians who showed up at that time and place understood the importance of Dean’s visit.

But 12,000 enrolled SLU students, 350,000 St. Louis residents and 2.8 million metro-area dwellers didn’t understand, and missed out on this political celebrity’s Midtown appearance.

Several hundred people should have attended Dean’s speech at SLU. Instead, a handful of political junkies and bystanders stopped long enough to figure out who sang Dean’s background music, en route to Subway.

Maybe Dean’s visit was too short-notice-it was officially announced on Tuesday, Sept. 2, four days before he arrived.

Maybe SLU students didn’t understand Dean’s appeal. Most undergraduates are just reaching the voting age. Do they remember Dean? Maybe they didn’t realize that listening to him last Saturday meant coming face-to-face with a political party.

It is more likely that SLU students neither knew nor cared why Dean deserved a glance through windows of Gries between “America’s Next Top Model” reruns, or between biology homework and a nap.

SLU’s low tide of support for Dean’s visit may be attributed to any number of excuses-none of them valid. Even if students have already made up their minds about this batch of presidential politics; even if they’re tired of the smear campaigns; even if they couldn’t pick Dean out of a criminal line-up; they should have come, if only to learn.

Where were the political scientists, communication gurus and SGA senators? This was rhetoric in action. Where were the business school stars and financial whiz-kids? They could have come to critique Dean’s take on the economy. Where were the pilots, engineers and premed library dwellers? This man dished on party policy that might affect their professional lives.

Dean’s speech was a case study. It was theory in action, theory made real, just across the street.

True, Dean is not a protagonist in upcoming U.S. political drama. He’s not Obama or Biden, McCain or Palin. But that doesn’t mean he should have been ignored.

Presidential politics are more like a series than a sitcom. Voters must stick to self-education and see through politicized jargon to make the right choices.

So let’s cling to the issues, avoid the drama and ramp up our attention spans. If we follow new developments on the way to new leadership, especially those so close to home, we can learn something.

We can finally stop observing politics and start acting.