Column by Robert Kahne

I truly believe that this nation stands on the precipice of change. What I mean by that is we, as a nation, have the opportunity during this election to move beyond the 20th century and into the future. The manner in which Barack Obama has gone about running for president and the movement he has built behind his candidacy signals to me that if we elect him, a fundamental shift will occur in the way the office of the president is run in this country. I think this shift will be positive — toward a more inclusive and progressive presidency.

However, he must first be elected. In my most humble opinion, John McCain represents the past. He has been in Washington for almost 30 years, and he has voted with the current administration 90 percent of the time, according to Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. His running mate is the ideological soul-mate of George W. Bush.

She opposes any form of abortion, including cases of incest and rape. She is fiscally irresponsible (she secured $27 million for a town of 6,700 — Wasilla, Alaska — where she was mayor, according to the Washington Post), and she is dangerously uninformed (in a recent interview with Charlie Gibson, she didn’t even know what the Bush Doctrine was). This ticket seems to represent everything that the past eight years have been.

That being said, I believe deep down that there is a discernable difference between John McCain and George W. Bush. John McCain votes about 90 percent with George W. Bush, so I figure that McCain will be about 10 percent better than Bush (however, I am not a statistics major, so this figure could be wrong). This 10 percent means that McCain will probably repair our country’s image a little bit, will improve on Bush’s dismal economic record a little bit, may clean up the environment a little bit and may make a little bit of progress in Iraq.

However, Obama represents a fundamental shift in the way we do things here in America. After eight years of George W. Bush, I think this is the big change we need — not the incremental change that McCain will deliver.

I hope that my generation steps up and says “enough!” to Bush’s failed policies and votes in huge numbers for Obama and the rest of the Democratic slate this year. We are the future. We, more than any other bloc of voters, realize the necessity of change right now. We are the generation who will have to live on this planet the longest, and we know that staying on Bush’s track is not what we want.

Although I recognize that McCain represents a step away from Bush, I cannot understand how Obama doesn’t represent a bigger step away from Bush. If Obama is not elected in November, America will have missed a golden opportunity to step into the future.

Though one man will never fully encompass the change for which this generation fights, it will be deeply disappointing to see an opportunity like this wasted in order to elect an old man and a dangerous woman.