A New Generation of Politics.
I just returned from the rally in Phoenix. I showed up at 9:30, half an hour before the gates were to open, to a huge crowd already waiting in line which forced me to go to the back of the line which I couldn’t see from where I was. Volunteers were walking up and down the lines passing out new supporter cards as well as registering people to vote and sign petitions for local propositions. For the next 30 minutes I watched the line behind me get longer and longer until it faded out into the distance and I could not see the end.
The gates opened and I made my way up near the front as close as I could. As I waited with the crowd I realized that almost all of the students that were there have only known what it is like to have Bush or a Clinton in the White House.
I am nearly 37 but the earliest memory I have of politics is the threat of World War III that was hung over our heads in the 80’s when the Reagan/Bush team spoke of star wars. I remember having nuclear drills in third grade where we had to hide under our desks. In 3rd grade I was 9 years old. Nearly 28 years later we have the son of the 80’s Bush speaking of World War III again.
I came home today from the rally to my son who is 7. Two years younger than I was when I was doing nuclear bomb desk drills in 1980. I thought are we just mice on the wheel? Spinning endlessly in the same direction with no end? Fighting the same war. Talking the same tough talk. My bomb is bigger than your bomb. The same people with the same haircuts, in the same suits, saying the same thing, over and over and over again.
And I realized that that’s one of the reasons that I love Barack. These students cheering and screaming for him have only known a politics of two families since they came out of the womb. They have seen nothing else. Barack represents an entire new generation of politics. Diversity courses through his veins, he is the very embodiment of it. He is not an old branch on a dying tree like the rest of the people running. He wants to rip the tree from the ground and plant a new one. A tree that represents the diversity of this country, a tree whose roots are deep and not rotting, whose branches are strong and not withered. The strength of this country is our diversity and we are only getting more diverse every day.
We want a politics of the future, not one of the 90’s or the 80’s. It’s nearly 2010. We already partied like it’s 1999. That party is over. It’s time to move forward. It’s time for a new generation of politics. A politics where the most diverse country in the world, can embrace the diversity of the rest of the world. A politics where we are “a nation among a community of nations”, not the only nation.
It is time for the old politics to go.
Obama is the embodiment of the future of what politics can be while at the same time embodying what our founding fathers believed politics should be.
We want a new generation of politics.
