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Never in U.S. history have we had two older or less popular candidates running for president of the United States than we do today. We repeatedly hear the question, “How can these two candidates be the best our country has to offer?”. Joe Biden is 81 years old, and Donald Trump is 78. I don’t think it is ageist to note that neither Trump nor Biden would be eligible to serve on the majority of public boards because they are both too old. Yet, they are the choice of their respective parties to serve as president of the United States, the leader of the free world, and the most important and possibly most physically demanding job on the planet.
How did we get here, and who is to blame? Believe it or not, that is not a hard question to answer. We are all to blame. We got here because we repeatedly choose showmanship over statesmanship, prefer insults over intellect, reward duplicity over depth, and applaud nonsense over nobility.
Instead of educating ourselves about the issues, the majority of us choose a team. We allow ourselves to be convinced that anyone who is not on our team is determined to destroy our country. We select the candidates not based on their competency but on their perceived ability to fight for our team without compromise and with extreme prejudice.
To make matters worse, the media learned a few years ago that bad news sells better than good news and that fear sells more than positivity. Don’t expect that to change anytime soon because the business of “news” has never been more profitable. Social media companies that produce nothing are among the most valuable companies in the world, and make no mistake, they learned a while back that online bickering keeps people on their sites longer than anything else.
While the country appears to be more politically divided than ever, I still believe the majority of Americans are actually pretty similar when you break things down to the issues. Most people lean towards pro-business economic policies and are fairly tolerant of social issues. They would like everyone to have a fighting chance to succeed but are against policies that undermine innovation and hard work. Most people believe everyone should be free to live however they choose, provided they don’t hurt other people. Of course, there are disagreements on how to best achieve these goals, but our system was designed to promote healthy debate and political compromise.
Most of us say we want leaders who are smart, honest, and charismatic, but do we? I know for a fact that there are plenty of people who fit that description and would be far better political leaders than the ones we have today. But why would they enter politics today? What is their incentive to subject themselves and their families to the most heinous attacks conceivable? Our current environment does not reward honesty, intelligence, or genuine appeal; it rewards the exact opposite qualities, and that is on us. We created this environment with our gullibility and combative nature, but the good news is we have the ability to change it.
My hope is that the current political leadership represents the last gasp of a dying generation. The promise of a better future for America rests in the hands of America’s youth. The young people in America are almost always right. It was America’s youth that brought about civil rights in the ’60s. They forced us out of the Vietnam War in the ’70s. They demanded we divest from companies doing business in South Africa during the apartheid era in the ’80s, and they have been driving the world toward sustainable energy since the ’90s. I gave up believing a while back that people are willing to change politically, but I do believe the next generation is revolted with the mess we have made of this country and will demand something better. If we want leaders that represent the best of us, not the worst, then I am betting on America’s youth to make it happen.
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