The most important issue in this Democratic election did not happen in this election. It isn’t Hillary’s “tears” in New Hampshire or Bill’s role as a surrogate “attack-dog.” It isn’t the unique dimension of the frontrunner candidates’ race and gender. Instead, it is a war that began 40 years ago and persists to this day.
At least, according to Andrew Sullivan.
In possibly the most persuasive case for Barack Obama’s candidacy, Sullivan’s brilliant piece “Goodbye to All That” — published in the December edition of The Atlantic — documents why Obama’s victory is the only way forward. It is because Obama, and Obama alone, is able to end the legacy of impairment that began since the Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War, in a sense, was not one war, but two. One was the actual war in Vietnam, and the second was a more relentless, if quiet, left-right war at home. The Vietnam War ended, but the second war continued, exacerbated by Reagan’s Southern triumph and intensified during the peak Boomer period of the 1990s and 2000s. This “confluence of events,” Sullivan argues, represents the “family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation.”
A Baby Boomer family quarrel isn’t necessarily bad. After all, America’s politics is a function of disagreement. The founding fathers envisioned its best form in dysfunction. And America thrives because while she celebrates a marketplace of conflicting ideas, she always manages to eventually agree.
But what has occurred during the last decade is a complete radicalization of this disagreement. It has descended into an incredibly destructive war. One refuses to listen, let alone contemplate, an opponent’s ideas. Characters are assassinated. Dissenters are demonized. Integrities are questioned. Statements are mischaracterized. The product is polarization and division.
Why can only Obama transcend this partisanship? Because, if the palpable enthusiasm and record turnouts in the Democratic election is any indicator, we might be witnessing a fundamental paradigm shift: A coalition is retaliating against the status quo and forsaking divisions in favor of a national healing. And Obama, by circumstance and by choice, is at the heart of this paradigm shift at the right place at the right time.
Circumstance because his personal history, an intersection of race, class, religion and generations, as well as being post-Boomer and post-1960s, uniquely places him at an axis that is not burdened by the past but beholden to the future. But more importantly, choice because it’s Obama’s willingness to stand up and inspire not the basest, as many politicians persist in, but the best in us. It is his message of “hope,” and our trust in that message, to embrace a new beginning.
So, when Obama says that we need hope, it is not a validation of “blind faith.” Hope is not a suggestion that by merely acting nicely or politely all problems will resolve themselves, or “something you do when something is out of your control.” Hope is a reassurance that if one believes, one can solve any challenge. Hope is something you strive for when you believe in the possible impossibility.
Obama’s candidacy, Sullivan also remarks, is less about him than about “the moment he is meeting.” By this extension, Obama’s candidacy is about us. It is about whether we want to live in a culture that glorifies the demonization of another or one that celebrates thoughtful disagreement and a marketplace of ideas. It is whether, despite our disagreements, we’re ultimately capable of reason and respect, cooperating together to elevate this nation to greater heights. It is whether we’d prefer to hope rather than fear.
Ultimately, this election is our chance to change the direction of our nation. It is a referendum on whether we choose to “fight the same old fights,” as Obama notes, or move forward. It is a chance to make bitter partisanship a footnote of history. It is our chance to end the war that began 40 years ago.
So let’s make this moment come true. Let’s make the future not about our past but our future. But there is only one moment to do so. It is now.
ZACH HAN encourages you to vote on Super Tuesday. He wishes you his best regards from zklhan@ucdavis.edu.
