Obama Shaping the '08 Debate Early With Moses/Joshua Analogy

So there I was last Sunday afternoon, March 4, looking fervently for something interesting in the "News" section of Sirius Radio (NOTE to SIRIUS: I'm still crestfallen from CSPAN having been pulled out of your line-up!) and I stop at CNN. I hear what sounds like a Baptist preacher delivering a powerful sermon, and evoking a very respectable call-and-response chorus of "amens" from the congregation and pulpit.

The gist of the message was that of comparing the leadership challenges of those of the generation of Moses versus those who came afterward with Joshua.

Spellbound, I was several minutes in to listening to this charismatic speaker when it dawns on me:

1) This is CNN. And just when has CNN broadcast church sermons?...
2) The speaker had a pedigreed lilt that had just a flavor of uppercrest Chicago in it.

Moments later the "aha!" moment arrived and it dawned on me that I was listening to U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama. What intrigued me most was the not-so-subtle tie-in he was making to the biblical generational challenge with that of our present time "cold war" and "post cold war" generational divide.

I had read about the senator's alluding to this topic in a New York Times op-ed piece some weeks ago. Being a baby boomer myself, I find it refreshing that the topic has surfaced onto the national discussion.

I think we boomers need to think about what type of leaders we need to be today. Maybe we are destined to lead the masses in to the promised land, and maybe not. If following biblical history is our destiny, then, like Moses, we won't be headed to the promised land (e.g. the time upon us that requires leaders to contextualize the flattened socio-geopolitical-economic world we find ourselves in). But whomever the Joshua will be, will certainly be someone who will have to know how to bring the valued resources of the Moses generation in to the problem-solving mix. In short: it is going to take an intergenerational minded leader to take up where the wreckage of Iraq will leave off.

Whether Democratic frontrunners Senator Obama, Senator Hillary Clinton--or their Republican counterparts--have in their wherewithal to do such a thing remains to be seen. But I, for one, am glad to see the beginning of what could be a very substantive, issues-focused, presidential race in 2008.