Over the coming year, we are going to hear all kinds of claims about who will be the best presidential candidate to bring hope back to our country, to bring the change we need, and so on. We will read every tea leave we can find about the coming election; fundraising numbers, poll results, impressions of campaign logos, the number of times campaign videos have been viewed, and the number of people signed up to support different candidates on different social networks.
We will argue fine points of potential public policy. What sort of health care reform will be best for our country? How can we change our energy use to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and stop increasing the amount of carbon dioxide we are spewing into the atmosphere? How can we best deal with Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Darfur, trade gaps and so on? How can we best make sure that people can use the Internet to say what needs to be said, and what sort of voting procedures and machinery will make sure that our elections are fair, and properly counted.
Yet I’m looking for a little bit more. I am looking for our generation’s version of JFK, a person who will urge us to take action beyond adding comments to a thread on DailyKos and troll rating our antagonists.
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