Andrew Sullivan has a great essay about Obama in the latest issue of The Atlantic. You should read it.
Central to his argument is that Obama represents the first true move away from the “War of the Baby Boomers” that has been fought in this country for the past 30-odd years:
Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us. So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future. But it is only when you take several large steps back into the long past that the full logic of an Obama presidency stares directly—and uncomfortably—at you.
At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce.
That’s pretty much why I’m supporting him. I’m tired of the Boomers defining the national culture and the national debate. It’s time for them to go gently into retirement, and for the next generation to step up.
In a related story — I’m pissed as hell that the Clinton campaign has decided to play the “gender card” — Apparently, when other candidates criticize her positions, point out her evasion of questions, and draw distinctions between her record and theirs, that’s part of the “all-boy’s club”, and 6 men “ganging up on her.” That’s BULLSHIT.
I’m disgusted that she’d use that has her fallback position when she was weakened by the debate, but sadly, I’m not surprised.