Hey Old White Guy, Get out of the Way

Hegel famously remarked that the owl of Minerva flies at dusk. As the presidential campaign nears its end, we finally see clearly what it is about. Not race. Not gender. But youth.

We be one tired country. And what the debates brought home was that a tired old man cannot revitalize us.

In his youth, John McCain was special. Watch the footage from his hospital in Vietnam in 1967, and visualize the torment that awaited him, knowing what he endured. Visualize also, the many passes he has subsequently received for "erratic behavior" (for infidelity, emotional coldness, a sharp temper), from his first wife and others, as a result of what he endured.

It is October 2008, though, and McCain is now old and what we have learned is that the only thing for which there may be no pass is age.

Earlier this summer, Jesse Jackson (67 years old) told the world that he wanted to cut off Barack Obama's nuts for "talking down to black people" about personal responsibility

Rapper Nas (35 years old) replied as follows: "I think Jesse Jackson, he's the biggest player hater. His time is up. All you old n---as, time is up. We heard your voice, we saw your marching, we heard your sermons. We don't wanna hear that sh-- no more. It's a new day. It's a new voice. I'm here now. We don't need Jesse; I'm here. I got this. We got Barack, we got David Banners and Young Jeezys. We're the voice now. It's no more Jesse. Sorry. Goodbye. You ain't helping nobody in the 'hood. That's the bottom line. Goodbye, Jesse. Bye!"

And that says it all. Young people are the voice now. As Colin Powell forcefully stated last weekend, generational change inexorably sweeps away all in its path. Sixteen years ago, we had a president - George H.W. Bush - who fought in World War II. We shortly may elect a president who can barely remember the Vietnam War.

And thank God for that, because Barack Obama is paired against a candidate whose defining experience was the five years he spent in a POW camp in Vietnam. Do you think someone can walk away from that prison? It's like the freaking Hotel California. John McCain carries that prison with him everywhere, and he will carry it into the White House.

What the past six weeks have made clear is that the United States - and the entire world - is sweeping Barack Obama up in their arms because they yearn - desperately - for a fresh start. The generation in power - the Baby Boomers - is not the Greatest Generation that fought World War II. It is a small-minded, unreflective, selfish generation - epitomized by our Commander in Chief - that has failed this nation.

The Neoconservative fixation on Vietnam, on the projection of American power overseas (try counting our bases in other countries - there are too many), on a paranoid grasp for military influence - all of this reflects nothing so much as the reality of true power slipping away in a multilateral world.

This worldview means nothing to younger Americans. Vietnam holds no lessons for them. What they know is 9/11. What they have seen in its aftermath is a nation that almost immediately used lies and subterfuge, torture and terror, to squander the good will and aching love of people around the world for Americans who had suffered grievously at the hands of Al-Qaeda. We had the world in the palm of our hands. Imagine the good that might have come from that influence.

We might have chosen love. Instead, we chose hate. We might have chosen principled action on behalf of reconstructed, unified alliances of nations. Instead we chose scandalous, scurrilous, cynical unilateralism. Within six months, we had turned most of the world against us.

Young Americans witnessed this. The Iraq war is the foundation of their political awakening. They still trust. They just don't trust the old white guys. The Bushes and Cheneys and Rumsfelds and McCains.

The enthusiasm of young people for Obama is beyond calculation. Estimates indicate that three-quarters of first time voters may cast their ballot for Barack. Race doesn't matter here. Young Americans have grown up in a post-racial world. They know that there is no black or white. Barack is half-black and half-white. Tiger Woods, Tony Gonzalez, Derek Jeter, Alicia Keys, and countless other well-known American defy racial categorization.

Nas doesn't just speak for young blacks in the hood. He speaks for all young Americans.

So race does not drive this election. Barack is our first 21st-century candidate. In a post-racial world, other barriers that are cognitive rather than real will also tumble down, including the barriers between nations. McCain will be a soldier-president. Obama will be a diplomat-president. McCain will falsely take us into wars on behalf of fabricated national interests and use fear and terror to justify military action. Obama will build alliances that will sustain us and marginalize those who truly wish to harm us.

Will the election of Barack Obama infuriate the ignorant rabble on the right, the "good people growing in small towns" who listen to Rush Limbaugh? Perhaps. But as the recent reports from Wasilla from the Daily Show show us, there is nothing special about small-town life. It can be tawdry, impoverished, and depressing. Relatively few people will live in small towns in America in the future. They are not relevant to the realities of America in the 21st century America. Young people, who flee small towns at their first opportunity, understand this.

For these reasons, John McCain cannot win. It is a law of nature. His tide is going out. He has nothing new to offer the United States but flotsam and jetsam. There is some evidence from the way he has managed his campaign that he understands this, that he truly does not want to be president, and that by some divine irony, his contribution is actually to usher in a new generation of leaders with a perspective on the world radically different from his own.

To reprise Nas, " We don't wanna hear that sh-- no more. It's a new day. It's a new voice."