The Old Guard -V- The Avant-Garde

Last night at 7.30 PM local time, after a seventeen hour journey across the Atlantic through four airports, I eventually arrived at my final destination - Albuquerque, New Mexico. There I was greeted by a very affable middle-aged man called Brad who last year had set up and headed the grassroots campaign for Obama in New Mexico before Obama was a household name.

A former history academic and lifelong political hack who had once turned his hand to a Silicon Valley technology start-up which went belly-up after the dotcom crash, Brad embodied the get-up-and-go of the baby boom generation. In the car from the airport, he recounted his war stories of previous campaigns. Names like Mondale, Clinton and Gore came to the fore as well as his own takes on the Florida recount, the Kerry-Edwards defeat and the most recent protacted battle with the Clintons. Needless to say he was a man of great experience.

When we arrived at the Obama campaign HQ in Albuquerque, the profile of people was somewhat of a contrast to Brad. To start with, the place was swarming with students. My first reaction was that these were interns or summer volunteers. I was later to find out that the regional director is a hot shot 21-year old Stanford student who is taking a year out to devote his time to the Obama campaign. He is joined by a team of like-minded contemporaries, all college students or recent graduates with little or no previous experience who seem quite preoccupied with "busting the ass" of the neighbouring district. Meanwhile, poor Brad had applied to be a staffer but despite his previous experience and zeal, he was turned down.

I don't know why this surprised me. After all, Obama's popularity is grounded in the student movement. He has drawn massive crowds of youths wherever he has gone and from the get-go he was able to maximise his PR and fundraising on the internet, something which obviously favours younger voters. I think the reason it jarred with me is because it made me realise how far I was from Ireland where it is near-on impossible to get young people politically active and even when they are, they are grossly outnumbered by their elders.

Both systems have their pros and cons. The thing that would worry me about the Obama campaign is that if this is a widespread trend, it does not bode well in the long term. Youthful, energetic and arrogant campaigns have gone before which failed to connect with the core vote. One thing that the Republicans are good at is convincing the electorate that they are "like them". The Lisbon Treaty referendum was an example of how a removed and arrogant campaign can have disastrous effects.