Kids These Days… | 17 October 2008

Ramesh Ponnuru, seeing parents in his neighborhood encouraging their kids to be Obamatons, rightly says he doesn’t get people who delight in politicizing their children. Completely agree. For some reason, though, my two boys — ages nine and four — are crazy for Barack Obama, and have been for a long time. They’re put out with their mom and dad for not being for Obama. It has nothing to do with policy, of course; they just think he’s the coolest thing. It’s actually kind of cute, and as young as they are, I’d rather encourage them to be excited about the political process rather than engage them in tit-for-tat over who’s the better candidate. (Though Matthew did ask me once what the difference between Democrats and Republicans was, and I told him, kind of flippantly, that Democrats believe that the government should give you whatever you want; “I’m a Democrat, then,” he said).