I’ve been following the nacsent presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton with increasing feelings of misgiving. Here we have this historical moment: an African-American! a woman! running for president and they are just not thinking outside the box. You’d think that two representatives of a couple of the most historically disenfranchised segments of the population would be more, well, remarkable. Their little quarrels of late are just silly nonsense – it’s the larger conversations they AREN’T having that I find so discouraging.

Chuck and I were discussing it this morning, and I came up with a name for it: U.S.A. 2.0 – the new and improved America (you’d never know I’ve been reading a l,ot about Web 2.0 recently, would you?). U.S.A. 2.0 is an America that keeps its nose out of other sovereign nations’ beeswax, that makes every attempt to provide health insurance and prescription drug coverage for the elderly and young in this country, that takes the lead in truly important areas like global warming and stem cell research. And how about a conversation about the culture of fear that has become so much worse post 9/11 and the birth of Homeland Security and terror alert status colors. How about a new national challenge, on the scale of JFK’s in 1962, to put a man on the moon by the end of that decade, to end global warming by 2020? Impossible? Maybe. But we won’t know if we never try. Our current crop of politicians all play to the lowest common denominator, and it appears that common denominator is pretty darned low. I say its time for some new ideas, some challenging ideas, ideas that make us think, that make us question our self-satisfaction. I say it’s time for U.S.A. 2.0!