We've seen this imagery somewhere before.
The elder, occasionally cantankerous, statesman pitted against a young, charismatic candidate.
That dynamic is front and center in the bid by former Tucson City Councilman Rodney Glassman to unseat incumbent U.S. Sen. John McCain.
Glassman reminds voters at every turn he's the "next generation," noting he and his wife are having a baby daughter who will be in Arizona schools over the course of the six-year term.
"It's time to turn the page from the fellow who's been there for nearly three decades and who hasn't been bringing new ideas to our state," the 32-year-old is fond of saying, in his efforts to make the 74-year-old McCain look downright geriatric.
Not to mention stingy.
Glassman cites project after project languishing in towns, from road to water programs, that McCain hasn't fought for, given his famous aversion to pork.
And obstructionist. "It's time to have someone who's willing to work with everyone," Glassman said.
Although he didn't finish his first council term - he said the dire straits of the economy forced his hand - he points to his efforts there as proof of his consensus-building. He was successful in efforts to require new homes to be plumbed for solar water heaters and gray water, and was able to open schoolyards to double as neighborhood parks after school.
Glassman tends to talk in sweeping generalities on big issues - a trait that infuriated his primary challengers who wanted him to answer questions with specificity. And it's why McCain says he won't debate Glassman again. "We had a debate, and his comments were nothing but clichés," the incumbent said.
Glassman, for example, in a recent editorial-board meeting agreed the national debt is a significant issue.
Asked how he would address it, he said the country has to prioritize - just like families. Then he said the country needs to invest locally. "It's not about not spending; it's about spending strategically," he said, although he ended his comments with acknowledging a need to reduce spending.
But when pressed on what he'd cut, he responded: "It's a matter of reconnoitering … and reducing spending, meaning we need to be spending locally in a way that's going to stimulate the economy and generate revenue. We need to be strategic."
He said the Government Accountability Office would be a great resource to help eliminate redundancies in departments but didn't have any specifics on where those service duplications exist.
McCain, meanwhile, has been touring the state, trying to patch up a tattered relationship with groups like tea parties, who looked with suspicion on his earlier bipartisan efforts on everything from immigration to campaign-finance reforms.
He's not sounding bipartisan anymore, reviving a months-old line at a recent tea-party rally that he disagrees when the president calls Republicans the "party of no." "We're the party of hell, no," he said.
Ever since his primary win, he's been telling crowds this election will be "seismic." At a unity rally in Tucson after the August election, he pledged: "We will cut the spending. We will repeal and replace Obamacare, and we will bring our troops home from Afghanistan with honor."
Health-care reform didn't work, he said. The stimulus didn't either. "All we did was lay a trillion-dollar debt on future generations of Americans," he said. "That's gotta stop."
Asked about his legacy in a recent debate, McCain gave a rambling answer. He said he hopes he will be remembered as having a reputation for honesty, integrity, straight talk and making a significant contribution on national-security issues.
One could almost hear a guffaw from primary opponent J.D. Hayworth at the "straight talk" reference. The charge from the primary that McCain's a political shape shifter has continued with Glassman, who started his campaign with a daily example of McCain flip-flops.
McCain has tried to explain away the about-faces as natural evolution in a changing world. Once the leader in a push for a more humanitarian approach to immigration, he now talks exclusively of border security, pointing to high-profile violence driven by Mexican cartels. Once an opponent of the Bush tax cuts as a giveaway to the wealthy, he now supports them, saying the economy is too fragile to flirt with higher taxes. His support for the bank bailouts? A mistake, but mostly because of the way they were implemented, he now says.
The aggressive, daily campaign he mounted against Hayworth has largely scaled back to auto pilot in the general, with polls showing he continues to hold a strong lead. He has nevertheless characterized the election as a choice. He has tried to paint Glassman as a liberal, saying a vote for Glassman will be a vote for another stimulus package, to continue health-care reform and to encourage more earmarks. "He's clearly out of step with Arizona and the people of the state," McCain said recently.
Libertarian David Nolan agrees with Glassman on very little except that McCain has overstayed his welcome.
An advocate of far smaller government - he pledges to take a meat ax to spending - and abolishing the personal income tax, Nolan criticizes McCain for supporting troops overseas and the bank bailout. "Republicans talk about cutting spending, but they never actually do it," he said, adding he would raise the retirement age to help stabilize Social Security.
"Our federal government is putting the taxpayers of America on the hook for an unsustainable burden of debt," Nolan said.
Green Party candidate Jerry Joslyn - and, yes, the Green Party has given him the nod in a year in which many candidates with the party label had platforms that were decidedly not Green-leaning - said ending dependence on oil is important from the environmental and the national-security perspectives.
He is also pushing a flat tax. In exchange for eliminating the income, payroll, capital-gains and inheritance taxes, taxpayers would get a $20,000 standard deduction and pay a flat 28 percent on all income above that. That would eliminate deductions that allow the wealthy to skip out on their fair share of the tax burden, he said.
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Rodney Glassman
Running for: U.S. Senate
Party: Democrat
Age: 32
Occupation: Former Tucson city councilman
Education: Juris doctorate and doctorate in arid land resource sciences, University of Arizona
Public offices held: Tucson City Council, Ward 2, 2008-2010
Civic involvement: Board member of the Catalina Council Boy Scouts of America, founder of the Glassman Foundation, sponsor of the University of Arizona Band Day.
Top endorsements: Arizona Education Association, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Arizona AFL-CIO
Top priority: Putting Arizona first by working for jobs, education and federal immigration reform.
Website: www.rodneyglassman.com
John McCain
Running for: U.S. Senate
Party: Republican
Age: 74
Occupation: U.S. senator
Education: United States Naval Academy, 1958; National War College, 1974
Public offices held: Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona in 1982. After serving two terms, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986.
Civic involvement: None listed
Top endorsements: Arizona Chamber of Commerce, Arizona Fraternal Order of Police, Citizens Against Government Waste
Top priority: Get our economy moving again to create jobs and stabilize our housing market.
Website: www.johnmccain.com
David Nolan
Running for: U.S. Senate
Party: Libertarian
Age: 66
Occupation: Retired marketing and communication consultant
Education: Bachelor of science in political science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Public offices held: None
Civic involvement: Founding member of the national Libertarian Party in 1971; member at large of the Libertarian National Committee that sets policy and strategy for the party; member of MENSA
Top endorsements: Liberty Candidates; Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Barry Hess; and Thomas Woods, author of "Meltdown" and "Nullification"
Top priority: To reduce the size, cost, power and intrusiveness of the federal government.
Website: www.nolan2010.org
Jerry Joslyn
Running for: U.S. Senate
Party: Green
Age: 60
Occupation: Investor
Education: Some college courses at Arizona State University with a focus on business and economics
Public offices held: None
Civic involvement : None
Top endorsements: Green Party
Top priority: We need to make structural changes to the economy to get us growing again.
Website: www.joslynforsenate.com
Contact reporter Rhonda Bodfield at 573-4243 or rbodfield@azstarnet.com