One Boomer for Obama

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.

Getting past the Boom years in the White House

In 1992 in this space I wrote of how proud I was that one of us -- a Baby Boomer -- had been elected president of the United States. With the election of Bill Clinton, it was about time, I had said, that we were finally in charge.

And we were still in charge -- for better or worse (worse mostly, I'm afraid) -- with the subsequent election of another Baby Boomer, George Bush.

With the completion of the Democratic and Republican national conventions and with two months left before the election, it appears that the Baby Boomer years in the White House are coming to an end, despite the fact that the Democratic presidential nominee and the Republican vice presidential nominee were both born within the Baby Boom span of years. I sense that because both Barack Obama and Sarah Pailin are playing to a different generational crowd -- the Millennial.

First we have to accept the definition of Baby Boomers. Demographers and the U.S. Census Bureau define that generation as those Americans born in the 18 year span between 1946 and 1964.

Bill Clinton was born in August 1946 and was 47 years old when he became president. He spent eight years in the White House. George Bush, born July 1946, was 55 when he assumed the presidency and also served two terms.

Here's the demographic rundown of the Democratic and Republican candidates for president and vice president:
Barack Obama, Democrat for president, was born in August 1961. He is technically a Baby Boomer;
Joe Biden, Democrat for vice president, was born in November 1942 is considered a senior citizen;
John McCain, Republican for president, was born in August 1936 and is also a senior;
Sarah Pailin, Republican for vice president, was born in February 1964 and is also a Baby Boomer.

But there is a sharp cultural division between older Baby Boomers and the younger Boomers such as Obama and Pailin. Older Boomers are preparing to or are thinking about or have already retired, and they are dealing with a host of issues -- such as the empty nest -- that younger Boomers do not. Older Baby Boomers' attitudes about culture and politics were shaped by the 1960s and '70s and the Vietnam War, the draft, the Cold War and, regrettably, disco.

Younger Boomers are concentrating very much on careers and raising their families, just as the Obamas and Pailins are doing. Their cultural and political outlook is colored by the '80s and Ronald Reagan, the end of the Soviet Union, the rise of terrorists and, frankly, the political and societal sins of older Baby Boomers.

Obama, for one, has sought to distance himself from his generational tag as I discussed in a posting for Examiner.com. In his book "The Audacity of Hope" he blames much of today's ills on a generation of Baby Boomer politicians who carried "old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage."

It was interesting that Obama went up in the age ladder to pick his vice president and McCain went down to pick his, as if the young Obama needed the experience of Biden, and an older McCain needed the youth of Pailin.

Both camps trumpet a common campaign theme -- change. Government is broken, they say, and the old guard, the old ways and old politics have gotten us into a messy war and poor economy. And by old, they mean the politics of the last 16 years, the last 16 years of two Baby Boomer presidents.

My belief is that the Obama-Biden and McCain-Pailin campaigns will put their emphasis on the Millennials -- that collection of Gen Y voters born 1982-2000 who just by their sheer numbers have a tremendous amount of political clout.

No doubt -- senior citizens and Baby Boomers will have their affect on this election. But watch the younger voters. This time around I think they'll have a greater say in whatever change happens on Nov. 4.