Widen the Focus

Two Americas is Just the Start

First term Senator John Edwards campaigned on a theme of "two Americas"
-- one for the rich, and one for everyone else. To a certain extent, he's right. But America is more like a multitude of different things to different people. The simplicity involved in facile dichotomies is tempting but often dead wrong. Just as we are not universally 'red' or 'blue'; we are a country of enormous diversity and complexity. Anyone who has spent much time in more homogeneous realms such as France or Japan usually breathes a huge sigh of relief when they hit our shores.

These internal differences encompass both the good and the bad. In Newark and Jersey City, New Jersey, the AIDS infection rates are
nearing three percent. Unless health officials take action now, we could see the kind of AIDS pandemic in the inner city that we now see in southern Africa and Thailand.

Meanwhile, retirement homes in Florida and Arizona host people who stay active well into their hundreds.

In San Francisco an elderly Chinese woman carries two huge bags of rice on a pole across her back. In Los Angeles, where nobody walks unless they have to, people will drive two blocks to pick up a latte from the coffee shop.

Can one candidate or ticket appeal to all of the Americas? Almost
certainly not. Kerry and Edwards' task, then, is to envision a path that does the best for the future of America -- and hope that vision can cross the borders of class and culture that shape our lives.