The Leading Edge - No Country for (Angry) Old Men or Women - Are you listening Hillary and John McCain?
| posted by Mark GoulstonHillary Clinton waged a negative campaign and it sounds like
John McCain is getting bankrolled to do the same thing. Barack Obama can be occasionally pulled down
to that level, but clearly he doesn't like to engage in dirty or negative
politics.
Is the guy chicken? Is he afraid to engage in a knock down
drag out battle? Or is something else
going on?
I choose to believe the latter. I choose to believe that Obama knows that
people who throw stones do live in glass houses and when people wage negative
campaigns it is more often motivated by a desire to draw potential voters away
from the scent of their own misdeeds and send them on a wild goose chase into
the foibles and human shortcomings of their opponents.
If you haven't noticed, Americans and especially "baby
boomers" don't age gracefully or graciously.
They have trouble realizing it is no longer their turn and that it is
time to pass the baton to the next generation(s), wish them well, help them if
they ask for it, and then stay out of their way.
Instead, they marry younger women, have (too much) plastic
surgery, live vicarious through their children (using them to get the extra
scoop of ice cream that they feel they didn't get and were entitled to) and in
many other ways "Rage against the dawn" instead of going "gently into that good
night."
Obama represents the next generations' hopefulness about
focusing on what is possible and what can be built together through cooperation
and synergy now that the world is flat and we are more global than ever in the
history of the world. He represents the
desire to turn away from the "zero sum" mentality of older generations, and
turf wars between Democrats and Republicans more concerned with staying in
office than in truly serving the people who elected them.
I am a baby boomer, and don't particularly like aging and
don't particularly like letting go of power and influence. Fortunately I like even less desperately and
bitterly holding on to something that rightfully belongs to the next generation
and the future.
Are you listening Hillary Clinton and John McCain…and
Congress?