Today, I want to look fondly back at a moment before the bruising ugliness of this general election; indeed, a moment before even the tensions between Obama and Hillary got ratcheted up beyond reason. A moment shortly before Super Tuesday, when I came home from my work day at UNICEF to find my 5-year-old daughter Allie holding court on politics over fish sticks and spaghetti. "Daddy," she said with a serious look, "I'm going to cancel being an animal doctor and run for president."
"That's awesome news, sweetheart," I said, giving her a high five. "Why do you want to be president?"
"Because I want to end the war."
These were giddy times. Allie had started asking questions when she was still four, in the fall of 2007, about Hillary Clinton, whom she liked. When we had seen a Hillary rally as we drove up Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Allie had some questions. "How many other girls are running for president?" she wanted to know.
"Um... none. Hillary's the only one."
Her succinct response: "That's dumb!"
"Who were the girl presidents before?" she asked. That's when her mother and I had to let her in on one of America's ugly secrets. It won't be the first time. "Honey, there's never been a girl president." She looked dismayed and a little confused. Seeing it through a child's eyes, the lack of ovaries in the oval office became even more of a bald-faced outrage. What the hell is wrong with us?
Allie became a full-fledged four-year-old Hillary fanatic that day. Later, though, she was pretty upset when she heard that Hillary had voted for the war in Iraq. "Why would Hillary want a war like that?" was her simple, urgent question. All of which got me thinking: a child's perspective on politics can often be the ultimate litmus test. Allie is a great bullcrap detector. She was equally astonished to learn that there were people in this country who would never vote for a "brown" person ("We are peach," she explains, "and Barack is brown.") simply because of their, well, brownness.
Allie's keen eye for justice - extremely common in 5-year-olds - and her interest in politics - maybe a little less so - inspired me to start a website and a line of political T-shirts for kids - www.ifkidscouldvote.com. I've found that Allie's not the only kid out there who's been bitten by the political bug this year. Which is why I never thought it necessary to go negative on Hillary or harp on Obama's flaws. Because if nothing else, this steel-cage death match the Democrats staged actually sent a message to my daughter and lots of kids: Anyone can dream of growing up to be president. That message used to be a civics class bromide before being retired as obvious bunk after Watergate and the Civil Rights Movement's corrective to the history books. It still isn't true (although Sarah Palin, in a cruel twist of irony, may come the closest to realizing that old saw's promise), and it may seem hokey if you don't have kids. But as someone who played with a rattle on a blanket in front of the coverage of the JFK assassination, and whose AV department in grade school wheeled a TV cart in every day to watch the Ervin Committee hearings on the Watergate break-in; indeed, as someone who has kept the war news away from my kid because Vietnam was my nightly dinner companion as a child; well, the present turn in politics has ushered some softening touches of hope into my hardened old lefty heart.
So on Super Tuesday, still unsure whether to vote for Hillary or Obama, I blogged about Allie's love for Hillary and about my own quandary, and was pleasantly surprised by the flood of responses. The dialogue helped me decide, and I cast my primary vote for Obama. But when I got home from the polling place I had to sell it to my kid.
"Honey, I voted for Barack, not Hillary," I confessed that night.
"Why Daddy?"
"Because he's young and smart and..." I said. Allie interrupted me. "And he wants to end the war. And he never voted for the war. And we hate the war." I felt like I was suddenly thrust into the last verse of "Cat's In The Cradle": my girl was just like me.
Pete Cenedella is the founder of IF KIDS COULD VOTE, a site devoted to political humor and the finest in kids' progressive political T-shirts, including the Barack the Builder and My Mama Loves Obama tees. At least 10 percent of profits are donated to child-friendly political causes: www.ifkidscouldvote.com