Poll after poll give Senator Barack Obama a lead over Senator John McCain in the race for US president. If Senator Obama is elected, he will be the first US president in my lifetime that is younger than I. Sen. Obama was born in 1961 and I was born in 1957.
So what have I experienced that Sen. Obama has not? My earliest memories are from when I was 5 years old, in 1962. Using the same yardstick for Sen. Obama, his earliest memories would date from 1966.
Poll after poll give Senator Barack Obama a lead over Senator John McCain in the race for US president. If Senator Obama is elected, he will be the first US president in my lifetime that is younger than I. Sen. Obama was born in 1961 and I was born in 1957.
So what have I experienced that Sen. Obama has not? My earliest memories are from when I was 5 years old, in 1962. Using the same yardstick for Sen. Obama, his earliest memories would date from 1966.
I can actually remember when JFK was president. My family and I drove from Iowa to Washington, DC in 1962. We saw the monuments. When going up the elevator in the Washington Monument, I remember seeing African Americans for the first time in my life.
I remember trying to go to the dentist on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. The office was closed due to the assassination of JFK. Saturday cartoons were interrupted by the news of the murder of Lee Harvey Osward and more images of Washington, DC.
I remember hearing about the war in Viet Nam EVERY NIGHT on the CBS Evening News. Walter Cronkite's broadcast showed the casuality figures using a rectangle divided into quarters - each quarter used a flag to identify from which country/military the casualties came. US, South Viet Name. North Viet Nam. And Viet Cong.
At some point I understood that someone from my hometown had been killed in S.E. Asia. Probably about 1966 . . . when Sen. Obama's memories probably begin.
I can remember Nixon/Agnew bumper stickers in the 1968 campaign. I can remember the assassinations of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, and RFK. I remember Dan Rather reporting from the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago. He had a bandage on his forehead.
I remember hearing the news that the Apollo astronauts had landed safely on the moon.
I remember the Oil Embargo and Energy Crisis in 1973. We heard that the earth only had so much oil and that we'd have to conserve. And that we ought to conserve so that we would not be at the mercy of oil-rich Arabs. (Sound familiar?)
I remember the day that Agnew resigned and the day Nixon resigned.
I remember the first time I visited a foreign country - Canada in the early 70's. And visiting a Third World country - Mexico in 1974. I learned a lot about the US during those visits.
I remember when Iowa Governor Robert Ray visted S.E. Asia and was so moved by the plight of refugees he invited and worked hard to bring them to Central Iowa.
And I learned even more while living overseas as an exchange student when I was 18. I was able to see the US without the filters of the US media. The US stood for open government and freedoms not enjoyed in the Soviet Bloc - including the freedom of not having the government spy on its own citizens. I even visted "Communist" Hungary and carried a copy of a forbidden book, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" to share with someone who could not get hold of a copy of such subversive ideas.
So as I consider whether it makes a difference that Sen. Obama is several years my junior, I also have to take into consideration that the Obama family did not exist in a vacuum. Young Barack lived in other cultures. Without a doubt he felt discriminated against due to the color of his skin. Young Barack learned how to work hard and to get along with people.
Moreover, there are probably very few idiots who graduated from Harvard Law and worked as a community organizer and elected to serve as a state representative and US senator.
So Senator Obama's relative youth does not negatively affect my opinion of him as . . .
Old Guys Consider a Younger Candidate
Posted at http://old-guys-rock.blogspot.com/