"America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts. It rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire, New Jersey's Bruce Springsteen." -Incumbent Presidential Candidate Ronald Reagan during a campaign stop in 1984.
When I watch this political ad from a bygone day I am reminded at just how slow America is to change. It also illustrates just how long we have been working on many of the same economic and social justice issues that still confront this nation.
The campaign commercial is from the 1984 Walter Mondale/Geraldine Ferraro run against the Ronald Reagan/Pappy Bush re-election bid. Weird that it was almost 30 years ago and perhaps weirder still, the themes echoed in this spot aren't that much different than those brought forth by the Democrats in 2008. We're still fighting the same battles, the same view of how our country should look that we fought 25 years ago. At the time, many thought that surely the country would opt for teaching their children rather than building Star Wars weapons of mass-destruction. Actually when talking about the Star Wars missile defense system we should really be talking about weapons of non-destruction since they never seemed to work. Then the votes were counted and Reagan was reelected by the one of the largest landslides in history.
Sometimes I think we are fooled by how easy it seems to be to listen in on the candidates, the pundits who cover them, and the myriad of conversations from laypersons about America's problems. Just because people are constantly shouting at each other doesn't mean anyone is taking the time to listen to each anyone's rhethoric. And this includes their own, for if they were, many ought be embarassed by their own message.