Why our children don’t want to be politicians

I had concluded at an early age that the last thing I would want to be in Pakistan is a politician or head of state.

A friend who was invited to the White House this Halloween told me an interesting story that spoke volumes about role models, expectations and the lessons we teach our children. My friend, who moonlights as a comedian, dressed up as a cowboy to entertain a happy group of children who got to celebrate Halloween with the Obamas.

This is not unusual — the administration throws similar Halloween parties every year. What I did find striking about the story was his description of the children’s reactions as they strained to see their president up close for the first time.

“The kids were going crazy,” he said. “They were jumping up and down, anxious to get a glimpse of President Obama.”

The cutest aside came from a young boy who tugged at his mother’s hand and asked: “When will I get to see the United States man?”

This earnest question summed up the children’s attitude towards their leader: he was a superhero.

The kids were too young to care about whether the president was a Democrat or a Republican, or that he was about to take a beating in the upcoming mid-term elections. All they cared about was that this person who had just entered was the ‘president’. To them, the word ‘president’ held endlessly positive connotations. The president was intelligent. He was powerful. He had fought hard to get to where he was and he deserved it.

Most importantly, the children ascribed to the president the abstract quality of ‘goodness’, and in that brief moment when they shook his hand, they were awed by him, and aspired to be him.

What a wonderful thing it is, I mused, to exist in a world where children have such a positive image of their leader. Even if these children grow up to disagree with the policies President Obama proposes, they will at least respect the office that allowed him to make the changes he saw fit.

I was saddened only when I remembered that our children have no such role models to look up to. When I was growing up, having drawn on the discussions my elders were having around me, I had concluded that the last thing I would want to be in Pakistan is a politician or head of state. In fact, whenever I had heard the word ‘politician’ my mind involuntarily conjured up images of a malevolent, evil force that took the form of whichever villain was featured in the storybooks I was reading at the time.

It came as no surprise to me, of course, that when Prime Minister Gilani visited a girls’ school early this year the students there told him that wanted to be doctors, teachers and engineers — but never politicians.

Our children will never innocently call our president ‘Pakistan man.’ How sad for us, I thought. How sad.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 20^th, 2010.