There is an eery quality to the presidential campaign, as if we’d heard this all before. I missed the debate tonight, but watching The Countdown I am struck by the focus on issues of another era, issues from the 1960s. In particular, we have watched Barack Obama have to answer for his associations with people connected to the 1960s, to a preacher who frames his arguments in black nationalist rhetoric and has an association to the leader of the Nation of Islam; to a member of Weather Underground, a ’60s group that resorted to bombings to move the revolution forward; his resemblance to Democratic losers like George McGovern, Al Gore and John Kerry. We’ve had flag pins and cocaine use and all manner of cultural touchstones of the past dragged back into the present — a line of argument that harkens back to the attacks made against Kerry and Bill Clinton.
I find it a bit ironic — wrong word, I know — that Obama, someone who came of political age during the Carter and Reagan presidencies, is now being made to carry water for the generation that came before him. Personally, I’m tired of this debate, tired of rehashing the 1960s each time we have a national issue to resolve. I’m tired of fighting over who is responsible for losing Vietnam (Vietnam was unwinnable, like Iraq is unwinnable, and the American foreign policy elite are ultimately responsible for that war). I’m tired of cultural conservatives blaming hippies for all they see as wrong. Get over it.
It has been 40 years since the Summer of Love gave way to the turmoil of 1968, 1869 and 1970. Can’t we just agree to focus on the issues of the 21st Century?
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Hank Kalet 