I read part of the Federalist Papers for the first time this week -- Hamilton on the need for a navy -- for my Ideas in American FP class, so I think it's safe to say it was never a big part of my young adult education. If we talked about it in a US history class once upon a time, it apparently didn't make a great impression. We must've talked about these things at some point in high school, but I was always impatient to learn more contemporary history than stuff happening back in the 1700s, which (together with an unhealthy interest in post-apocalyptic cinema) lead me to do an independent study on the Cold War my senior year, which led to me going off to Boston instead of becoming some sort of comic book artist, which was my other big thing in high school. Despite being an IR major, the last class specifically devoted to theories of government I've taken would've been a semester of US Government my senior year in high school (which evidentally didn't make much of an impact, since I'm not sure I could even summarize it for you like prak's managed to ... more structural, this is the legislative branch, these are the main parties, sort of stuff, than any underpinning theory beyond the obvious "checks and balances" stuff -- at least as far as I can remember). This is possibly because of some lack of interest for how the sausage is made on my part, or possibly a reflection of the IR department's having been carved out of poly sci some twenty years or so ago by beloved Chancellor-for-Life John Silber which through the magic of academic specialization leaves a lot of that stuff opaque to my studies. I think generational attitudes is pretty shaky ground to be pontificating on, so I don't want to make too many broad claims, but I do remember reading some of the MY pieces praktike's thinking of about an inclination towards expediency and feeling like maybe that did sort of fit. I believe our generation is supposedly more "conservative" than previous ones, so possibly that's a reflection of that. One impression that I think I get is that a lot of people my age really seem to want things to go back to "normal" -- which I guess means the Clinton 90's. Friends who don't follow politics or international affairs or whatever in particular always seem to want me to explain how we're going to solve all Bush's screw-ups, like it can all be put back in the bottle again just by virtue of Bush not being in office any more, so in that sense it's a very executive-oriented attitude. But maybe that's less of a generational thing than a most-of-my-friends-are-Democrats thing. I guess we've got another four years to get used to it now. One possible explanation in terms of cultural environment influencing young people's attitudes on this, as much as I hate to suggest it, might be that one of the big defining political events of our young adult lives was the whole Lewinsky mess. I can say, 16-year old that I was, I did not have an especially high respect for the integrity or statesmanship of the bulk of the US Congress or the news media at that particular time. But I don't think you should overstate the case there, since there's definitely (hopefully) more at work than just that one episode.