http://washingtonindependent.com/view/on-his-birthdayOn His Birthday, Obama Asks for Faith in Possibilities of Youth
By Sridhar Pappu 08/04/2008 05:15PM
LANSING, Mich.—Today Sen. Barack Obama stepped out to an adoring crowd chanting his name -- as he had so many times before during the course of the primary and general campaign. But this time he walked out to greet his fans as a 47-year-old.
After the expected group sing-along of “Happy Birthday,” Obama responded by telling the 1,500 assembled that “there’s no place I would rather be on my birthday than Lansing, Mich.”
Um, yeah. Leaving the veracity of this statement aside, the sight of Obama, standing before 1,500, was a reminder of how much the concept of youth and experience have played into the tenor of this campaign. In many ways, the candidates are physical manifestations of what qualities age and youth bring to a position of power. Here is Sen. John McCain, the venerated war hero, and symbol of steadiness, with a record of accomplishment behind him. Then there’s Obama, whose youth and blazing energy symbolize a repudiation against everything Americans loathe about their elected officials: complacency, sluggishness, sloth.
Near the end of his life, the greatest of all great American architects, Frank Lloyd Wright told Mike Wallace in a CBS TV interview, “To me young has no meaning, it is something you can do nothing about. Nothing at all. But youth is a quality, and if you have it you never lose it.”
snip//
Granted one should be careful to put Obama in the same sentence as the men who charted the course of the revolution and began the American experiment. However, McCullough’s words are a reminder that we were born a nation led by men whose youth gave them a certain audacity to move out into that dangerous and total unknown. It is a distant, but similar, unknown Obama is asking of his constituents and fellow citizens all these years later. It is a faith in the infinite possibilities of youth.
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