The Anti-Boomer Case for Obama
In case you missed it, Andrew Sullivan’s cover story for the latest Atlantic is now available online. The header and title sums it up pretty well.
Is Iraq Vietnam? Who really won in 2000? Which side are you on in the culture wars? These questions have divided the Baby Boomers and distorted our politics. One candidate could transcend them.
Goodbye to All That
Alternatively referred to as “An Inconvenient Truce”.
Andrew makes an interesting, and I don’t think wrong, case that what Barack Obama really represents is a shift away from the Boomer politics that have defined American political discourse for the last four decades and continues to be the battleground on which almost every hotbutton issue is played out upon. That we’re all stuck in the collective unconscious of the Boomers, and have all been continually sucked into that psychological milieu, rehashing the same tired arguments and tired polarizations that have held us hostage for the last forty years and that have thoroughly coopted the national discourse and arrested the national political conversation. It’s a case that Obama himself makes quite often, and Sully’s point is that Barack represents the first real opportunity America’s had to begin putting that to bed. What’s more, Sully and Obama are the first people to really begin framing the current state of American politics in this way, which strikes me as pretty compelling and inspired.
As a conservative pretty friendly to Obama’s candidacy (I think I’d vote for him in the general against any of the Republicans currently running, save Dr. Paul), I’d say the article is worth a look.