|
|
Presidential Material?
This year, I became eligible to run for the office of President of The United States of America. Now, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever run for president at age 35, but the law says that any 35-year-old natural born citizen of the United States with a clean legal record can run for President. Which means I qualify, at least technically.
I got to thinking about that tonight. Until this year, the office of President has always been reserved for an older person, an authority figure. While I myself have no aspirations to public office, for the first time, it is now possible that I will have firsthand knowledge of the life and times of a President.
Let's look at the life of a hypothetical 35-year-old Presidential candidate. He doesn't remember when John F. Kennedy was killed — it happened before he was born. He may have vague recollections of the first moonwalk, but it's doubtful. He does remember when John Lennon was killed, and he remembers where he was when he first heard that the Challenger space shuttle had exploded. "Moonwalk" conjures images of Michael Jackson to a 35-year-old.
Our Presidential hopeful probably learned the Preamble to the Constitution by hearing it sung on Schoolhouse Rock on Saturday mornings. He learned about the Korean war through watching M*A*S*H and about the Vietnam war from his father, or perhaps an uncle.
Smallpox and polio have never been concerns to our candidate; he was vaccinated against both at birth. Instead, he may have sat in a clinic, holding his breath and praying for a negative result to his AIDS test. He probably has a friend whose test wasn't negative.
Our candidate grew up hearing "just say no" — but he probably said yes. He is more likely to have smoked marijuana in his youth than he is to smoke cigarettes as an adult.
Gloria Steinem and Jane Roe are historical footnotes in his life. Our Presidential nominee has grown up in a world where women have always been — at least theoretically — equal to men. Female soldiers, sailors and fighter pilots are not a novelty to him. He may have served in Desert Storm, alongside women. Whatever his personal feelings on the subject, abortion has always been a legal option for women.
Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Malcolm X are likewise historical figures. He may have some experience with discrimination, but the words "Negro" and "colored" don't mean anything to him on a visceral level; they inspire no emotional reaction. Intellectually, he understands the civil rights movement, but he has no memory of a time when there were two separately designated drinking fountains outside the local drugstore.
Thirty-five years is but a tiny fraction of our nation's history, and the candidate who is eligible for the first time this year knows that history mainly from books, not from experience. He has benefited enormously from the sacrifices made by the generations before him. In this way, he is really no different from anyone else who has run for President. Each President who has gone before him has helped to shape that history, as he will shape the history that future generations will learn.
And I. I too will shape the history of the future, whether or not I ever run for President. I don't think I really realized that until tonight. Thirty-five is just an arbitrary number, selected by our nation's founders as an age of presumably sufficient maturity to handle the responsibility of leader of the country. I wonder. It's an awfully big responsibility. And it's just a little frightening to me that someday soon, that responsibility may rest in the hands of a President who thinks of the phrase "up your nose with a rubber hose" with fond nostalgia.
Juli McCarthy is a freelance writer living in the wilds of suburban Illinois.
When she is not writing, she spends her time crafting, chasing neighbors out
of the pool, and thinking of creative ways to overthrow the school board.
Note: Featured
author in August/September 2000
E-mail: coffeejitters@aol.com
Writing interests: Popular Media, Books, Family Issues, Human Rights,
Handcrafts
I.D. Theory articles:
"Presidential Material?" |
"An American Precedent"
Links: A Slice of Life on
Wry (homepage) | Intrepid Media |
Jewelry Crafts Magazine - How to Start A Guild