Article Contributed on: 3/25/2008 8:36:08 PM
A friend who lives near Penn State was visiting recently for her kids' spring break ski trip. She reports that Penn State is Barack Obama-land. The week before, my soccer daughter was also visiting with some of her college teammates. Her college is also Obama-land. My nephew, who goes to the University of Texas at Austin (70,000 students) says it's Obama-land. So I have to wonder, based on this unscientific poll, are there any colleges or universities that aren't Obama-land at this point?
How to explain this mania of devotion? Mr. Obama certainly presents himself in a manner distinct from Hilary Clinton, regardless of whether he could ever deliver on his laundry list of hopeful promises. He in fact talks like a coach: "We can do it, we need to work together, I can bring you together, the future is full of hope". And so forth.
Which is why I'm declaring that the era of the Soccer Mom is over, and (cue music from "Hair") The Age of the Soccer Player is here. What does this mean? First, I'm using soccer as a metaphor. I'm talking about the mass of young people who reached voting age since the last presidential election, of both genders, who started playing competitive team sports when they were 5, or even younger, whose young lives were defined by participation in athletic competition.
The mania for competitive club and rec youth sports was just gaining momentum back in the late '80's. For the first time in US history, millions of kids grew up playing multiple team sports, including soccer, basketball, softball, baseball, hockey, lacrosse and football. These kids learned to work with coaches and teammates. They learned teamwork. But most important, they learned how to lose and move on. They learned how to regroup, look ahead, put mistakes and losses behind them, move forward, have hope and work together to a common goal. This a fundamentally different life experience from previous non-sports-playing generations, particularly for women. The Soccer Mom generation grew up when few people took women's sports seriously, with no organized effort to encourage girls to play. Today we have the first very sizable, and politically significant, group of young women voters, who have been playing on teams from early childhood. That experience infuses their view of life, and now it's infusing their political expectations.
To these young adults, Hilary Clinton is a 1970's relic. Her message is a downer - life is grim and miserable, everyone is suffering in dire financial straits, everyone is entitled to a government handout. That she is feeding the Internet/late night satire machine -- the 3 a.m. phone call ad and that imagined helicopter-landing-in-sniper-fire thing -- certainly makes her look clueless. For team players, a leader who is clueless and defeatist is an object of scorn. I dare say, there are plenty of experienced soccer moms who feel the same way. Over the years, we've learned to recognize bad coaching, and the detrimental effects on team play.
The Age of the Soccer Player is here to stay. The population of kids who grow up playing on teams is enormous and getting bigger. You can now add competitive cheerleading, dance teams, ultimate frisbee and even rugby to the list, as well as the looser team concepts of swimming, track, bike racing, ski racing, marching band and drumline. These team veterans are turning into young voters who are accustomed to teamwork and leadership based on a hopeful view of their future prospects. They don't want to be patronized or dictated to. They expect constructive criticism that has a positive goal of improved performance. They do not wallow in the past or harp on past grievances, such as whether the ref threw the game or the other team played dirty or the other team's parents had horrible attitudes or their own teammates couldn't connect shots. Playing a competitive team sport requires looking ahead and learning from mistakes. Looking backward is not part of the game plan.
So, given that college campuses are full of these young team players, it's easy to understand the appeal of Mr. Obama. Whether his appeal translates into a win this year is another matter, but one thing is clear. As these young people graduate from college and new young voters take their places, the face of politics will have to change to meet this new set of expectations. Whining, griping, name-calling and looking backward looks like so much poor sportsmanship. Team players will not tolerate that attitude, not in teammates and not in a leader.