Hanging out at Roberto's again

It was way too cold to go on a walk, so I took Khalil's to Roberto's to grab some dinner and hang out. As usual, we talked about video games. After we got done eating we read through some of President Obama's inauguration speech. As we took turns reading I explained the subtext to Khalil. This speech has about a hundred unwritten lines to read between every two on the page, and I don't know as much history as I'd like, so this was no easy task. How the heck do you explain to a ten-year-old, in an unbiased way, what Democrats and Republicans are? How do you explain the financial crisis? I guess I'll be getting more practice.