The Return of Ideals

In the U.S.A.’s election pre campaign all of the candidates are making a call towards change and to the return of hope. The word ‘change’ is a talisman. A new approach to politics is needed and it appeals to a common undertaking of the nations to seek out the best in themselves.

The American candidates are making calls for the ability to generate hope. Just as in the early sixties, the era of J.F. Kennedy. This how it is being referred to in the democratic camp. And this marks the tendency toward what will surely be American politics in the post Bush era, in the Democratic as well as in the Republican camp. It is that call to the new generations to be inspired by the ‘American Dream’.

While politics in Spain are entangled in endless arguments, many times looking backward and not exactly to bring out the best in ourselves, but rather the worst. In the electoral campaign –well it has been some time since we’ve had a campaign– there is a zealous urge to seek out again the least exportable from our recent history. In Spain a gloomy way to be political predominates, with ultra Spanish conservative tragic airs.

A short while ago the only surviving child of President J.F. Kennedy published a letter in The New York Times in which she appeals for change and endorsed the candidacy of B. Obama. The author puts out a call for hope in an era ——the Kennedy presidency— which is remembered with nostalgia and which has left a footprint in [several] generations of Americans, including the ones who were born much later after the death of the president. It’s another way to be political.

Such a call in current Spain would be unthinkable. What is the difference? Here we also have a recent referent and it is the transition, an era in which Spain can truly feel proud of itself. The transition remains like a reference in the collective subconscious. Nevertheless some political leaders keep persisting in bringing out the worst in ourselves. One of them will surely return to the ghost of the civil war, and if not, to those times [themselves]. Sometimes it seems that the candidates in Spain have lost hope and are entangled in interminable arguments over neighborhood courtyards: definitely rancid politics, very far from what will be the tendency in the more civilized countries around us.