Papa or the whiz kid brother?

BocaGuy: I'm ready to take the leap forward this year. I have had enough of the past seven years.




It's time to get out of the political boneyard where old hacks sit grinding their gums over the burning questions of 1968.

Garrison Keillor
salon.com
Febuary 27, 2008

Sen. McCain is 71 and most likely he will be the last Old Guy presidential candidate for all of you boomers. Goodbye, Great White Father in Washington. It happens as you age: Other people get younger. The pilots flying you to New York are teenagers. Your banker, your therapist, even your urologist is young. Still, you go along thinking of the Leader of the Free World as your old civics teacher, genial, omniscient, wielding his pointer, patiently answering dumb questions, and then one day one of your classmates has the pointer in hand and he is not one of the smart ones. It's a big whoosh in your life: Mr. Teacher has left the building and Larry has taken over.

It's a long throw from Mr. McCain's 71 to Sen. Obama's 46 and that may be the big invisible issue in the fall: Do we feel better with Papa at the helm or the whiz kid brother? It's a visceral choice you make without thinking too hard about tax policy or judicial appointments. For people like me who think the war in Iraq is a horrible wrong turn, it's an easy choice, but the election won't be decided by people like me -- it'll be decided by people who could go either way and who make up their minds at the last minute.

Papa appeals to us because we're sentimental and we assume he's learned a few things. (One could argue that you learn more of the right things in the Illinois Legislature than in the Elks Club that is the U.S. Senate, but never mind.) The beauty of the kid brother candidate is the plain hope that we can put a chunk of the past behind us and not keep reliving it over and over. Our 51-49 national impasse. The culture wars. Our mutual misapprehensions. Old debates that we're sick of and that go nowhere. Let's get out of this political boneyard where old hacks sit grinding their gums over the burning questions of 1968. We're done with the Current Occupant who is dead wrong and proud of it. Time to leave the ranch and head for the 21st century. ... ( more )

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