Editorial: New presidency may signal generational shift
The Fond du Lac (Wis.) Reporter wrote the following editorial in honor of Inauguration Day:
Forty-eight years ago on his inauguration day, President John F. Kennedy proclaimed to a shivering audience: “Let the word go forth, from this time and place, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace …”
Look around your community, your state and your nation on this historic day as our country — the longest-lasting republic in the history of mankind — witnesses, along with our fellow citizens of the world, the inauguration of the first African-American president.
Who cannot see that the torch is being passed once again to a new generation of Americans, apparently destined to endure one of the most challenging eras in American history?
Barack Obama was born in 1961, the year John F. Kennedy was inaugurated the 35th president of the United States. Today, Obama becomes the nation’s 44th, reciting, “the same solemn oath our forbears prescribed” nearly 225 years ago.
Daunting challenges
The new president and his countrymen stand face to face with some of the most daunting foreign and domestic challenges since the Great Depression and perhaps since the Revolutionary War.
The intensity of the challenges are well known and deeply felt. Their ramifications are plain to see in the faces and to hear in the voices of our fellow citizens here in Fond du Lac and neighboring communities. Those same feelings are evident in people in virtually every township, village and city across the land.
We are indeed a people bound together in a struggle to preserve a way of life, an American dream — however we may describe it.
It is our distinct hope that President Obama brings a new and more effective leadership style to the presidency — one that is more inclusive and collaborative than a style defined only by political dealing, right- and left-wing ideologies and adversarial relationships.
‘Man for the times’
Based on his background, his demeanor during the campaign and in the two months hence, and his ability to work with people of different political parties and wide-ranging philosophies, Obama has shown that he may be the man for the times.
He exudes a political presence that is not defined by his age, his generation or possibly even the Democratic Party itself.
Steven Cohen, professor of public administration at Columbia University, said in a recent Associated Press news analysis that Obama represents a “huge generational change, and a new kind of politics. He’s trying to be a problem-solver by not getting wrapped up in the right-left ideology underlying them.”
Another social commentator describes the untested, inexperienced president as a “classic practical idealist.”
That would be a welcome change from the politics most of us have known all our lives.
We need to make changes in the way we get things done in our communities (and in our nation) in the years to come. As others have so aptly stated, we don’t have Republican and Democratic problems or liberal and conservative issues. We have problems that derive from and affect us all. We need American solutions.
No matter the level of government and society — whether it’s Fond du Lac or New York City or Washington, D.C. — we must find a way to work together more effectively and less selfishly.
We must move away from decisions that separate us and embrace courses of action that unite us in the quest for the common good.
‘A generational shift’
The young people among us appear to be colorblind when it comes to race. They aren’t separated in ranks and files by race, color, religion or sexual orientation. They’re comfortable with those aspects of their lives. They represent a generational shift that reflects an evolving nation and a sense of cooperation.
In essence, without even realizing it, they are transcending the bigotry, prejudice, discrimination, fear and hatred that have haunted the idealistic efforts of the boomer generation since the 1960s.
We are hopeful that the administration of Barack Obama signals a generational shift in the nation’s politics. Perhaps that is the change we so desperately need, not only at the national level but at the most basic units of government and life in Fond du Lac.
None of this will be easy. It will not take place in a matter of months or even years.
The responsibility for charting our nation’s course now falls to President Obama, but the burden is not his alone to bear. It is abundantly clear at this turning point in American history that we are all in this together.
The alternative is unthinkable.
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