Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Da Bears. Da Barack. Da Boomers.

As a Chicago ex-pat living in San Francisco for these last 23 years, I have managed to steadfastly "stay the course" with my Chicago sports loyalties. This has not been easy, living among the wine-sipping 49er "Team of the Decade " fans in the eighties, defending the 1987 Mike Ditka "gum wad assault" in Candlestick Park, and suffering through the Chicago Cub collapse against the San Francisco Giants in the 1989 National League Championship Series. Sure I can cling to the memory of the 1985 Bears (regarded by knowledgeable football fans as the greatest team in the history of the NFL - if not the greatest team of any sport in the history of mankind) and of course there was the "Golden Age of Sports" - characterized by the Michael Jordan #23 leading Chicago Bulls to a pair of three-peats in the nineties (kicked off with a stirring victory against our California neighbors to the south - the Magic Johnson Los Angeles Lakers).

On Monday night, the 2006 Chicago Bears continued their inexorable march to the Superbowl in Miami, and Barack Obama, chose to make his presidential candidacy all but official with this stunning video taped introduction to the ESPN game:



With this video, Barack boldly placed the first big-time political bet of the 2008 political season, locking down the 21 Illinois electoral votes, and completely abandoning the 21 electoral votes in Wisconsin and Missouri. A gutsy early move, prompting DWSUWF to revisit our 2008 Presidential Candidate Stack Ranking:

DWSUWF 2008 Presidential Candidate
Stack Ranking V 2.1

  1. Chuck Hagel (R)
  2. Joe Biden (D)
  3. Rudolf Giuliani (R)
  4. Barack Obama (D)
  5. John McCain (R)
  6. Bill Richardson (D)
  7. Duncan Hunter (R)
  8. Hillary Clinton (D)
  9. Condi Rice (R)
  10. Wesley Clark (D)
"Bear-ack" Obama leaps 6 spots up the DWSUWF stack ranking, leapfrogging Clinton and Richardson into the #2 Democratic spot. With this move, he has now firmly established his bona fides as a presidential contender. But with his new stature, we can no longer overlook the single biggest obstacle he must overcome as a presidential candidate. Lets get real. There is a lot of stereotyping, prejudice, and outright bigotry in America. This is an unfortunate, but simple political fact of life. Americans tend to vote for their own. And in case nobody but DWSUWF has noticed...

Barack is not a Boomer.

I was born in 1953, squarely in the center of the Baby Boom bubble. Barack was born in 1961, and missed the cut.
The "Greatest Generation" had a - um- "Great" presidential run: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush (41). Even Nixon, the one unambiguous black spot in the "Greatest" presidential record can claim the opening of China as a moment of truly historical import. What do we boomers have? Bill Clinton and George W Bush. Give me a break. The first impeached president since Andrew Johnson, and arguably the "worst president in history". That's it? That is supposed to represent the boomer generation? After these two clowns we are going to skip the Boomers and move on to Generation X? I don't think so. Let us not forget that the impact of the Baby Boom generation cannot be overstated. "Baby boomers presently make up the lion's share of the political, cultural, industrial and academic leadership class in the United States... To date, baby boomers also have the highest median household incomes in the United States." Some have claimed that the Boomer generation tends to be narcissistic. I prefer to think of us simply as "The Only Generation that Matters."

The fact is, it is only half-time in our generational political football game, and we are just not going to be satisified with "two and out" in the Oval Office. Won't happen.

Someday, Barack will make a great President, but not in 2008. He is just going to have to wait his turn.

UPDATE: 12/14/06
I can only assume that George Will, a well known Chicago Cub fan, has (unlike your faithful blogger) let his Chicago sports fanaticism overwhelm his otherwise razor sharp critical faculties and advises Barack accordingly in his column "Run Now, Obama".

Divided and Balanced.™ Now that is fair.

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