Translatantic lessons from Mr. Obama

What the super exciting and always interesting election for the Presidency of the United states and the always boring and pathetic n-th election (for another short-lived legislature) in Italy have in common is the following fact: the age distance between the two contenders for the presidency on both sides of the Atlantic is at least 20 years (wow!).
John Mccain, (71), I heard on BBC today, could be the oldest president ever elected. His contender (fingers crossed) Barack Obama, being 46, if elected, would not be that far from Kennedy's record (43 when he was elected). In Italy, Mr Berlusconi is 71, while is contender, Mr. Veltroni is 52. This generational gaps are a timid signal that political campaigns may in the future become more polarized.

I read here that Obama's investment on the votes of the <=25 has been intense. This is good news since it seems to me a major break with the past. The conventional wisdom is that betting on young people's vote is a political disaster. This is a wisdom that assumes young people do not participate, do not vote, do not care... Of course this is a flawed conjecture, I would say a typical example of self-fulfilling prophecy: young people do not vote because they have never found somebody willingto represent them politically. Why would young people invest their time in politics if nobody is listening to them?Actually, that young people are not involved in politics is also dismissed by anecdotal evidence: just look at how strong has been their support to the no-global movement. The way politicians have neglected the youths in the past has produced a terrible side effect: a generation of frustrated voters animated (correctly) by anti-politics rhetoric.

Somebody may see this development as a sort of recurring cycle. The resurgent interest in politics from the young people we see today may in fact come as a response to the terrible political mistake of the Iraq war (just as the 68's movement was with the Vietnam war). If you accept this parallel (and the paradigm that history comes in circle then), somebody has to bear the responsibility to improve on it (remember Kundera?). It seems like Obama, the man of Change, is the man. He is making a coreageous bet, something that may be politically costly, but to which he must be given enormous credit. Reconciling young people with politics is a valueless legacy for every society, and I am sure the US will benefit from it (especially so if Obama gets elected, fingers crossed!!).
I see that somebody in my country (Mr. Veltroni), is trying to learn from Obama's lesson. Unfortunately, he seems to be timedely doing it, but still...