Under the headline "A generation comes of age" in January 1993, I wrote how happy I was that Bill Clinton, a fellow Baby Boomer, was finally in charge with his election as president."Now we call the shots," I wrote. "Now the baby boomers are in control."
Clinton was 46 at the time. Much of his cabinet was in its 40s or late 30s. I was 39, in charge of the local newspaper.
In the 16 years hence, another Baby Boomer -- George Bush -- was elected as president. We've gone through and are going through another cycle of war and another cycle of economic turmoil. Clinton, 62, is retired from office. I'm 55 and retired.
I wrote at the time: "The baby boomers now stand at the plate. If we whiff, it'll be our fault." There's a lot of debate today that we did strike out, that the Baby Boomer legacy on politics and society is more bane than boon. I don't see it that way, but, as with everything, history is the ultimate judge.
I write this because we have the power to create another generational shift of who's in charge, who's in control. And my hope for the person to lead the way is Barack Obama.
Technically, he's a Baby Boomer, born Aug. 4, 1961. Demographers define 1946 to 1964 as the Baby Boom era. But Obama disdains the Boomer label. He is a Baby Boomer not-wannabe. In fact, he is part of the so-called Generation Jones, that portion of Baby Boomers who don't relate at all to the Baby Boomers that came of age during the 1960s and '70s.
As Clinton did in his day, Obama has the potential in 2009 and beyond of offering substantive change in the way government sees itself and in its mission to its citizens and to the rest of the world.
Certainly, I don't cast my vote according to who was born when. I favored the older John McCain over the younger George Bush. But what I see here is a necessary shift, the passing of the torch.
I stumbled across a couple of authors -- Morley Winograd and Michael Hais -- who explained it best in a Washingtonpost.com piece from early this year. They described a speech that Obama gave in Selma, Ala., in which he delineated the Boomer generation from the one that followed, the Millennials. The Boomers, Obama told the crowd, were the "Moses generation" that led the children of Israel out of slavery; the Millennials were the "Joshua generation" that established the kingdom of Israel.
"The first was a generation of idealists and dreamers," wrote Winograd and Hais, "the second a generation of doers and builders."
History, they said, shows an 80-year cycle in which a civic generation like the Millennials emerges to recreate the country after the upheaval caused by the generation of idealists.
I'm ready to cede control to Obama and his legion of Millennials. As I look at my own Millennials -- my daughter Elizabeth and son David -- I'm assured I'll be in good hands.
1 comment:
I think you are wrong. There is not a Jones Generation, but a Jones cohort, if you like, in the Boomer Generation. You destroy all meaning of generational politics if generations are reduced to a ten or eleven year span.
If you look at the leaders of generations, they are nearly always from the earlier generation. Look at who was steering the Boomers in the 60s, on both the political Right and the Left. Well, today, as the Millenniums come of age, it's not surprising that Boomers are leading them forward. Not on the grassroots level so much, but in the leadership positions.
So let's not be taken in by the media hype screaming this is different. When you look into the news, what is new is often very much like the past. And the Jones Generation is like the Vietnam Generation, which was not a generation but a cohort running maybe for 10 years, if that.
Generations is a demographic concept applied to politics, but generations do not reproduce themselves in 10 year spans. It is closer to 20 years, although for a variety of reasons, that is being expanded.
As someone once said, "When meanings go south, you're screwed." A wise man.
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