A VOICE DEFIANT

Dear Spike:

Growing up, you're going to have to endure a lot of this.

Some people talk to their kids about school, or sports, or television. And I suppose we'll have those discussions, too. But we're also going to talk about philosophy. And foreign affairs. And politics.

Lots of politics.

You'll find no lack of contempt for that subject in this world. But I've long believed that politics is more than a necessary evil. It is the conscience of a world ever in flux. It is a measure of where we are as a global society: Of what evil we will allow and of what evil we will stand against.

You don't need to agree with my lofty assessment of the subject. I'll be content if you simply conclude — as the Greek writer Plutarch did, shortly before togas went out of fashion — that politics "is not a public chore to be gotten over with." In other words: It takes work. And discussion. And reason.

Thus, our dinner menu will include a regular course of the science of government, policy and political philosophy.

Yes, I realize that your friends will simply be dying to join us for supper.

Everything has a political element. We were at the park this morning when I noticed that there was a good deal more fathers than mothers standing on the periphery of the playground, watching their children slide and swing and spin and climb. This at 10 a.m. on a weekday.

In Utah.

Unusual? Yes. But shocking? Not really. Times are changing. Even here, where "the traditional family" is not just a Norman Rockwell fantasy, there are plenty of families like ours, where mom's paycheck is bigger than dad's (and justly so, I might add.)

That's politics.

It's still a bit unclear to me whether today will be remembered as a significant day in America's political history, though I sense it was (and not because of what I saw on the playground this morning.)

This evening, as your mother rocked you to sleep, I washed the dishes and listened to Sen. Hillary Clinton speak at the Democratic National Convention, throwing her support — in no uncertain terms — behind the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama.

There is still some question as to whether Clinton's supporters will follow her lead. In this nation, which so zealously celebrates the equality of all of its citizens, never had a woman come so close to being her party's nominee for president. So it was that, among many voters — older women, in particular — there was no small amount of disappointment and resentment when Obama squeaked by with the nomination, (a historic event in its own right, of course.)

I was not disappointed. Quite to the contrary.

Someday, I suppose, I'll have to explain to you (a child who, I fear, has come into a world that has unjustly provided her with far too few female political role models) why I didn't support the first woman to have a legitimate shot at The Oval Office.

It's because I'm a feminist.

And Clinton, for all of her grit and determination and intelligence and savvy, would not ever have been seen as a viable contender for the presidency — fact is, she would not have even been a U.S. senator — had she not first been the wife of a rather popular former president.

There would be an asterisk in the history books.

It is said that Bill Clinton saw his wife's candidacy as a referendum on his own presidency. And if he got his way, (and so often he did) the story of the first woman president would be the story of a woman whose husband helped her get the job.

Instead, tonight, a new story emerged. Or maybe it has been emerging for some time and your father is simply too dense to notice. In any case, this evening Sen. Clinton delivered what can only be described as an impassioned plea for her supporters to carry Obama to The White House.

In doing so, she spoke in a voice defiant of her husband, who has been infamously bitter about Obama's victory. She put her party — and from her perspective, her country — before herself. And before her husband.

The story of our nation is a story of women who had to stand behind their husbands before they were allowed stand alone. In that regard, perhaps the asterisk next to Sen. Clinton's name would have been no more than a recognition of that rather lamentable truth.

But there are times when there can be no question that someone is standing alone, regardless of whom she once stood behind.

I think tonight may have been one of those times.

In a world that has unjustly provided you with far too few female political role models, you could do far worse than Hilary Clinton. And tonight, at least, you could do no better.

You're free to disagree, of course. That's politics too.

And around our dinner table, it will be considered bad manners if you don't.

Love,
dad