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A few nights ago I was watching the News Hour on the Public Broadcasting Network and heard anchor Jim Lehrer say, "I've covered a lot of presidential elections. This is the single most important one."

Four years ago, John Kerry advisor Mary Breslauer said of the 2004 election, "This will be the most important presidential election in our life time..."

Four years before that, Al Gore's lawyer David Bois said of the 2000 election, "This is a very important question in probably the most important presidential election we've had maybe in history, certainly in the last 125 years."

I recall that George McGovern and Richard Nixon agreed the 1972 election was "the choice of a lifetime."

In the second 1960 debate John Kennedy said, "I think in many ways this election is more important than any since 1932, or certainly almost any in this century." Nixon said it was "perhaps, as Senator Kennedy has already indicated, the most important election in our history..."

There's an inclination for humans to elevate the importance of things they are directly involved in. Someone -- Kipling, I think -- wrote a story about a town that voted itself the center of the universe. In all likelihood, the people in that town considered each of its elections to be the most important.

I'm reminded of all those lists that came out in 1999, lists of the 100 best movies of the 20th century, the best books, the most important inventions, the best works of journalism, the best or most important this, that, and the other thing.

There was something notable about those lists (aside from the fact that they were all composed when the 20th century still had a year to run), particularly when they were compiled by participants instead of scholars (for instance, by singers instead of music historians). The more distant in time from 1999 a benchmark was, the more difficulty it had making the list. Scholars tended to put together better lists, because writers or inventors didn't know the history of their callings as well.

For instance, in a list of the best works of journalism put together by a group of reporters and sponsored by New York University, the book "In Cold Blood" was number 22. The book is a "nonfiction novel" about a Kansas murder case. Its author Truman Capote gathered information in such depth that he was able to write the book in novel form, with people's thoughts and gestures and so on.

The book "Picture" by Lillian Ross, on the other hand, was only 85 on the list even though it was better written and INVENTED the form of the nonfiction novel. Capote's book was published in 1965, fifteen years after "Picture," so "In Cold Blood" was better known to the journalists composing the list.

In June 2000 the American Film Institute compiled a list of the hundred funniest movies. Most of them were movies made after 1950.

The Associated Press released a list (on February 23, 1999, when the century had 22 MONTHS still to run) of the century's top news stories. I am at a loss to understand how the Lewinsky scandal could have made it higher on the list (or even made the list at all) than did the U.S. surgeon general's 1964 report on the smoking/cancer link, the Manhattan project, the first man in space, the U.S. rejection of the Versailles treaty, the Marshall Plan, the publication of "Silent Spring," the first jet airplane, the U.S. invading Vietnam, the GI Bill of Rights, nonviolent revolution in India, the quantum theory of energy, the Gorbachev era, and any other listing below it.

Perhaps perspective is just not an attribute of humans. Even scholars have their failings. Many historians consider the 1964 election the most important in U.S. history. But if Lincoln had lost, it probably would have changed little. Inaugurations were held in March then, so Lincoln would still have been president for four months after the election and Appomattox was April 9, 1865. Whatever hope Lincoln's defeat gave the south, Murfreesboro, Fort Fisher, Sherman's march would all still have happened.

On the other hand, the fate of the nation was very much hanging on the outcome of the 1932 election.

But more to the point, we have to ask if all these recent elections like 2000 and 2004 really were the most important in our history, why did half the voters stay home?