The Democratic contest is the first time a younger generation has tried to displace the 1960s dinosaurs, writes JOHN WATERS.
EVERYONE AGREES the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is the most interesting political contest for years, perhaps the most stirring political drama of our times. Less clear is the precise nature of the drama, what is at stake and why it has become so absorbing.
There is a subtext to this contest which, for reasons intrinsic to its nature, remains unstated. Clinton and Obama are both archetypes, whose antagonism is all the more intriguing because they seem ideologically indistinguishable.
Superficially, one might decide that nothing separates them except their individualised desires for power. But there is much more going on.
Hillary Clinton represents the last throw of the 1960s generation, which finally came to power in the US in the person of her husband, 16 years ago. This generation's tenure in politics has been distinguished (and I use the word narrowly) by two characteristics: the use of adolescent idealism to gain election, and the refusal to accept the burden of responsibility imposed by office.
Apart from Tony Blair, this, the Peter Pan generation, has done little with power except disgrace itself, ducking and diving in an attempt to avoid difficult decisions, behaving in government as though it were still in opposition, hiding a menacing megalomania behind a fixed smile and a peace sign. Because the Peter Pans have never admitted to age or duty, they have survived by treading water, hoping that things would stay calm and allow them to bluff their way through. In general they have been lucky, and none more so than Bill Clinton, who squeezed two terms as US president out of little more than a wink, a poker face and a sharp suit.
Summoning up the dark patriarchal spectres of the past and invoking the spirit of its unproven fallen heroes, the 1960s generation intimated that it represented a new dispensation, a new passion, a new broom. But time has passed and it has delivered little of its implied promise, refusing to admit to the limitations of its diagnosis, hogging the levers of power and refusing to let go.
In this respect, Hillary Clinton's graceless refusal to concede is a perfect dramatisation of her generation's denial of reality. Despite having demanded and won the right to rule, this generation insisted on perceiving everything in terms of the flaws of previous generations, remaining blind to the beams in its own eyes for as long as its agenda of pseudo-egalitarianism and superficial freedom seemed to offer a hope of a further clinging to power.
The Peter Pans have never accepted that anyone could be more idealistic than themselves, refusing to yield to the next generation, thus delivering a near fatal blow to the natural process of societal evolution. Simultaneously hogging the thrones of power and the platforms of protest, they continue to present themselves as speaking for the underdog, confusing the young by usurping their natural right to protest.
Clinton and her generation in power have refused to move along, despite offering nothing but a form of reactionism that would have been rejected long ago were it not shared by most of the media people covering politics in the West. This is why these obvious subtexts of the Obama-Clinton contest have been left unexplored.
Obama represents the younger generation, for the first time, seeking to displace the 1960s dinosaurs. Born in 1961, he is just about young enough to have escaped the worst of the 1960s nonsense, and old enough to have intuited how to camouflage himself in a culture almost entirely in the control of the Peter Pans.
This is why, on the face of it, he appears ideologically indistinguishable from his opponent, seeming at once to offer a more intense and yet, ironically, paler version of the Clinton ethos.
Younger people see him for what he is - something new - and yet he has all the credentials required to appeal to that particular, nostalgic concept of idealism which the 1960s generation imagined to be the only kind: a hint of JFK, a deep resonance of MLK - Martin Luther King - and a moral authority to speak for victims in society that the Clintons would kill for.
He has been sneered at for talking about change without defining what he means. There is a reason for his reticence. Because the language of idealism is monopolised by the 1960s lot, there are no words by which he can convey the nature of the new deal. His best chance in this contest has been to outdo the Clintons at their own game.
But this Democratic family squabble is just a sideshow to the real event, which is the contest between Obama, as the voice of a new generation, and John McCain as the representative of tradition. This contest will represent a return to the normal interchange of human society after four decades. With the 1960s generation and its pseudo-values out of the way, there is no knowing what might emerge as the important issues of the next six months.
For the first time in a long time, a US presidential election may be about more than who will lead the free world - it may become a referendum on the nature of freedom itself.