I was making salmon croquettes a few weeks back, when I had leftover green peas in cream sauce. (Bear with me on this, this is not a cooking op-ed, but a political one.) A quick glance at the amount left in the pot, I grabbed the right size container to hold the extra sauce. Experience taught me what size container to use.
Kentucky’s recent May primary had younger candidates running against older candidates. All of their mailers, social media and talking points promoted “new blood” or “experience matters.”
Age is again a rallying cry for this November election. But we need both — new ideas with the experience able to make those innovations happen.
In this presidential race, who is better at leading our country forward?
Biden has a team of younger people that he listens to, that he respects, and he bases his decisions by incorporating their views with his experience in order to accomplish the legislation. Trump stokes fears of race while proclaiming the good ole days of Christian Nationalism, as he surrounds himself only with “yes” people.
The quandary for the average voter is who to decide on, “Bland Biden” or “Bizarro Trump.” And now added in the dilemma is “THE DEBATE.”
For the news media and all those social media tirades, the current Biden situation is a gift, a 24/7 headline, with ‘continuing coverage’ sprouting from every political and not-so political pundit. Local and national reporters are grabbing any elected official for an interview, newscasts are interspersed with “the man on the street” segments and the graphs are never ending.
The Trump frenzy of lies is now a “Yeah, yeah, sure, but have you heard the latest about Biden.”
My son-in-law made the observation that people want, and are even obsessed with the chaos of “reality television shows,” even though they really know the programs are written to have fake turmoil in order to be exciting.
And Trump, the quintessential showman, got elected president because people voted him “on the island” of his reality TV show about running for president. Trump then altered that script to “Let’s be POTUS”, and kept that all throughout his presidency. Now Trump is campaigning on his sequel: “Let’s return to POTUS”.
“Make American Great Again” is his game show segment for turning back our societal clock to 1950’s when only white Christian “hetero” males had rights. Women and Blacks had no say in their lives; LGTBQ+ did not openly ‘exist.’
In the old black and white television shows of “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best”, the real world was ignored but one that we longed for then and is the image our local, state and federal Republican legislators pine for today.
No matter how Trump and the GOP wants us to be transported into that movie, “Pleasantville,” those times were never good for the majority of Americans.
Experience absolutely does matter, and new ideas are most definitely essential. Both are needed in order to thrive, be it in government, in the kitchen, or any other room in the house.
Kentucky native Honi Marleen Goldman is a community activist and organizer, who has spearheaded numerous grassroots movements on women’s rights and often writes editorials on social issues.
