When I heard that President Donald Trump would be holding a campaign rally at the SNHU Arena in Manchester, I thought back to when I was looking out from the podium there a decade ago.

Our very different audiences amount to a kind of split-screen America. That’s not a political statement, rather a generational one, and it comes with some advice for both parties on how to win over the generation that is our future.

We’ve seen enough Trump rallies to know what the crowd at SNHU Arena will be like: primarily white, mid-life, convinced that their future is behind them. Because they are hard-working Americans who love their country, and because I am an optimist, I’m betting a spark of idealism still flickers inside them, even if precariously.

When I spoke in that arena it was as commencement speaker for Southern New Hampshire University, an extraordinarily successful school that has been a pioneer in online learning, with a large international contingent and many students who were first in their family to go to college. The students I addressed represented a jubilant celebration of diversity. With their entire lives ahead of them they had not accumulated resentments – only hopes, dreams and faith that the sky was the limit in terms of what they could achieve.

They were excited about their first jobs, confident in their ability to compete and idealistic enough to also want opportunities to serve their community. They weren’t looking to blame anyone else for their circumstances, or for their political leaders to promise them anything but a chance. The notion that getting what they want means taking something away from someone else – whether it’s President Trump taking children from families at our southern border or Sen. Bernie Sanders taking wealth from the richest Americans – would never have occurred to them. Left and right were less relevant to them than future and past.

If the presidential debates are any measure, the deeper implications of those generational differences are lost on both parties and so far being ignored in the national conversation about 2020. Our politicians would be well served to aim some of their energies at that generational idealism wherever they can find it. The rising generation is eager to hear about:

■Solvable problems – like ending childhood hunger, which we have driven to the lowest level in decades and which we have both the food and food programs necessary to defeat.

■National and community service that empowers young people to make a difference, whether through Teach For America, City Year, Food Corps or numerous other nonprofit efforts.

■The benefits that diversity brings and how it will help rather than hinder us to compete in an increasingly diverse and interconnected world.

■Gun safety proposals that respect Americans’ right to bear arms while keeping assault rifles out of the hands of the deranged.

The common theme: policy proposals from immigration reform to climate change that are not designed to score political points on Fox News or MSNBC but that find common ground and advance the national interest.

John Kennedy, who represented one of the most dramatic generational shifts in American political history, said his agenda “holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.”

A promise of sacrifice is not in the playbook of either political party these days. That’s ironic because it was the bedrock for much that both parties say they admire: the “Greatest Generation” that triumphed in World War II, the achievement of being first to land a man on the moon, the rate at which our parents and grandparents saved and invested so that more of us could enjoy higher education than ever before.

I know some young people ready for such a promise today. You may not see them at political rallies, but you’ll find them at commencements and anywhere the focus is on the future more than the past.

(Bill Shore has been coming to New Hampshire since organizing the presidential campaigns of Gary Hart and Bob Kerrey. In 2008, he earned an honorary degree from Southern New Hampshire University. He is now executive chair of the anti-hunger organization Share Our Strength.)