Girls, I’m saving copies of today’s newspaper for each of you, knowing that whatever the outcome of the presidential election it will be historic. They will go into the box with the papers from your birthdays and other important events to be passed to you when you’re old enough to want them.
Though several more elections will pass before you can vote yourselves, I trust you’ll someday be interested in these mementos of either the first African-American elected to the presidency or the first woman elected to the vice presidency. And who knows? It’s always possible that our country may be entering a new era of peace and prosperity and someday you can show the headlines to your friends and say “I remember 2008 …”
In some ways, though, I’m glad you’re not old enough to have paid serious attention to the campaigns that ended Monday. Though inspiring words were sometimes voiced and grand visions occasionally advanced, much of the rhetoric has been vapid and shallow. The politics have been mean spirited and the media coverage sadly juvenile.
Even as Election Day approached voters likely knew more about the female candidates’ clothes than their positions on major issues, and certainly more about the male candidates’ distant acquaintances and “youthful indiscretions” than their concrete plans for the future. In a polarized environment both campaigns ran for the middle and for the ever-elusive “low information voters” who couldn’t be bothered to make up their minds until the last minute. It was not an inspiring process.
My hope is that by the time you are of voting age we will have moved on. Moved on from the partisan rancor — and outright meanness — that has marked our politics for the past several decades. Moved on from the politics of division, an approach that relies as much on suppressing votes as turning them out, and toward an era in which candidates are judged by their platforms and positions, rather than by their opponent’s efforts to define them through innuendo and third-party slanders.
Moreover, I hope we will have moved on into an era of new possibilities, where the tired old epithets of “communist” and “socialist” have finally withered as they’ve long deserved, and where progressive ideas and ideals are more than simply things we remember from history lessons or admire longingly overseas.
Pendulums swing. Ours has been so far to the right for so long that many have despaired its return to a vibrant center. Perhaps the return swing picked up some new momentum Tuesday.
I hope the time has indeed arrived and that you will come of age in a world different from that in which you were born. One in which the United States is respected as a world leader. One in which the basic needs of all Americans are met before the whims of the wealthy and powerful are indulged. One that is led by elected officials you can trust to consider the nation’s interest before their own. And one in which anyone can run for office and have a fair shot at winning based on their ideas and accomplishments, not one where political power is reserved for those with personal fortunes, the right connections, or the greatest skill at appealing to voters’ fear and ignorance.
I’ll look forward to hearing what you think about this, looking back from the days you cast your first votes.
It’s entirely possible that by the time you open the box to flip through this yellowed souvenir, newspapers will have themselves become a curiosity. But I trust politics and elections will not. There are signs that 2008 may be the start of a political renaissance, with voters turning out in record numbers to move the country in a new, positive direction. Here’s hoping we’ve started a trend that continues with your generation and moves toward a future filled with all the hard work and opportunities that are your birthrights as Americans.
I already know you to be smart, caring and thoughtful individuals. There are almost unlimited numbers of other people like you out there, waiting to make a difference. I trust you’ll always remember that the most important steps in that direction are to educate yourselves on the issues of the day, become informed on the candidates’ positions, get involved as volunteers, and to exercise your right to vote just as you watched your mom and I do once again Tuesday.
