In the December edition of the Atlantic Monthly conservative leaning Andrew Sullivan writes a telling and insightful piece on Senator Obama. Sullivan elaborates on what so many students already know, that Obama is the candidate for real change in our country. But Sullivan delves deeper and tells an intricate story of race, the Vietnam War and the Baby Boom generation in America. Intertwined throughout is a resonating message of why Obama would be an ideal General Election candidate: his message appeals to people all across the ideological spectrum.
Sullivan said of this appeal, “It isn’t about his policies as such; it is about his person. They are prepared to set their own ideological preferences to one side in favor of what Obama offers America in a critical moment in our dealings with the rest of the world. The war today matters enormously. The war of the last generation? Not so much. If you are an American who yearns to finally get beyond the symbolic battles of the Boomer generation and face today’s actual problems, Obama may be your man.”
The article describes in great detail just why Obama stands out amongst a field of other candidates, both Democrats and Republicans alike:
"But if you sense, as I do, that greater danger lies ahead, and that our divisions and recent history have combined to make the American polity and constitutional order increasingly vulnerable, then the calculus of risk changes. Sometimes, when the world is changing rapidly, the greater risk is caution. Close-up in this election campaign, Obama is unlikely. From a distance, he is necessary. At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable. We may in fact have finally found that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about. Its name is Obama."
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