Obama Era May Mark End of Baby Boomer Dominance of U.S. Politics and Culture

Although Not Exactly a Generation Xer, Obama Is Likely to Usher In an Era of Pragmatism and Bridge-Building After 16 Years of Government Dominated by Uncompromising Baby Boomers Permanently Locked in Bitter, Nasty Political and Cultural Divisions



One week from Tuesday, as many as two million people will jam the National Mall and the west side of Capitol Hill to witness the historic swearing-in of Barack Obama as the nation's 44th president. Not only will Obama be the first African-American to ascend to the nation's highest office, but he will also be the first president to come of age in the Generation X era of the 1980s. Although Obama, born in 1961, isn't technically a Gen-Xer himself, his ascendancy nonetheless effectively ends 16 years of Baby Boomer occupation of the Oval Office by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The Baby Boomers -- a generation bitterly polarized along sharp political and cultural lines for 40 years -- may never again see one of their own in the White House. (Photo courtesy Presidential Inaugural Committee)


(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, January 12, 2008)

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SPECIAL REPORT
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By JOCELYN NOVECK
The Associated Press

When George W. Bush lifts off in his helicopter on Inauguration Day a week from Tuesday, leaving Washington to make way for Barack Obama, he may not be the only thing disappearing into the horizon.

To a number of social analysts, historians, bloggers and ordinary Americans, January 20 will symbolize the passing of an entire generation: the Baby Boomer years.

Generational change. A passing of the torch. The terms have been thrown around with frequency as the moment nears for Obama to take the oath of office. And yet the reference is not to Obama's relatively young age -- at 47, he's only tied for fifth place on the youngest presidents list with Grover Cleveland.

Rather, it's a sense that a cultural era is ending, one dominated by the Baby Boomers, many of whom came of age in the 1960s and 1970s and experienced the bitter divisions caused by the Vietnam War and the protests against it, the civil rights struggle, social change, sexual freedoms, the Watergate scandal and more.

Those experiences, the theory goes, led the Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, to become deeply motivated by rigid ideology and mired in decades-old conflicts ever since; a generation that simply doesn't know the meaning of the word "compromise" -- and is likely to remain polarized for the rest of their lives.

And Obama?

He's an example of a new pragmatism: idealistic but realistic, post-partisan, unthreatened by dissent, eager and able to come up with new ways to solve problems.

NOT EXACTLY A GEN-XER, OBAMA MORE IN LINE WITH 'GENERATION JONES'

"Obama is one of those people who was raised post-Vietnam and really came of age in the '80s," says Steven Cohen, professor of public administration at Columbia University. "It's a huge generational change, and a new kind of politics. He's trying to be a problem-solver by not getting wrapped up in the right-left ideology underlying them."

Obama, it must be said, is technically a Boomer; he was born in 1961. But he long has sought to draw a generational contrast between himself and the politicians who came before him and identifies more with Generation X.

"I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage," he wrote of the 2000 and 2004 elections in his book, The Audacity of Hope.

It's been a while since historians spoke of generational change in Washington. Fully 16 years have passed since Bill Clinton, the first Baby Boomer president, took office. Before that, presidents from John F. Kennedy to George H.W. Bush — seven straight — were part of the World War II-era "G.I. Generation," or what retired NBC News Anchor Tom Brokaw has termed the "Greatest Generation."

If Obama isn't a Boomer in spirit, then what is he? Not exactly a member of Generation X, though obviously that generation and the next, Generation Y (also known as the Millennials -- who outnumber the 76-million-strong Boomers by four million) embraced him fully and fueled his historic rise to the presidency.

"Gen-Xers are known to be more cynical, less optimistic," says social commentator Jonathan Pontell. "Xers don't write books with the word 'hope' in the title." Some call late Boomers like Obama "Cuspers" — as in, on the cusp of a new generation. One book has called it the "13th Generation," as in the 13th generation of Americans born since colonial times.

And Pontell, also a political consultant in Los Angeles, has gained some fame coining a new category: Generation Jones, as in the slang word 'jonesing,' or craving, and as in a generation that's lost in the shuffle.

Jonesers are idealistic, Pontell says, but not ideologically rigid like the Boomers. "Boomers were flower children out changing the world. We Jonesers were wide-eyed, but not tie-dyed."

And Obama, he says, is "a walking, living prime example of Generation Jones. He's a classic practical idealist. It's not the naive idealism of the '60s."

OBAMA'S CABINET HAS SEVERAL 'JONESERS' -- AND AT LEAST ONE TRUE GEN-XER

Wide-eyed or tie-dyed, Obama will be sworn in by an early "Joneser" himself — Chief Justice John Roberts, who turns 54 at the end of January. And while the average age of the new Congress is 58.2 — an early Boomer group — the new president is bringing some "Jonesers" with him.

Obama's chosen treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, is only two weeks younger than the new president. His pick for education secretary, Arne Duncan, is 44, as is Susan Rice, his United Nations ambassador -- who, it must be said, is not related to outgoing Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

(His apparent pick for surgeon general, 39-year-old neurosurgeon and CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, is a true Gen-Xer.)

Of course, Obama's also bringing in veteran Boomers — most notably Hillary Rodham Clinton, 61, his former campaign rival, as secretary of state. And his vice president, Joe Biden, 66, and defense secretary, Bush holdover Robert Gates, 65, are members of the so-called "Silent Generation" born just before and during World War II and who came of age in the 1950s.

OBAMA A 'GENERATIONAL BRIDGE,' SAYS EXEC

But those are the kind of choices — inclusive of other perspectives, embracing rivals — that lead many to call Obama the first post-Boomer president.

"It may be technically correct to call him a Boomer," says Douglas Warshaw, a New York media executive who, at age 49, is part of whatever cohort Obama is in. "And it's in the Zeitgeist to call him a Gen-Xer. But I think he's more like a generational bridge."

He adds that Obama got where he was by "brilliantly leveraging the communication behaviors of post-Boomers," with a campaign waged across the Web, on cell phones and on social networking sites.

One analyst of popular culture believes Obama definitely symbolizes a new generation — just not one connected to the year he was born.

"I think it's hilarious that everyone wants to categorize people by their birth year, especially now, a time when our parents are on Facebook," says Montana Miller of Bowling Green State University. Obama, she says, represents a generational shift in ways less tangible than age.

"You can see it from his approach to knowledge. Never before have we had a president who's troubled about giving up his Blackberry," Miller says. (Indeed, Obama is still in a struggle with the Secret Service over whether he can keep the device.) "He's constantly exposed to multiple perspectives, to what people out there feel and think."

ANOTHER MARK OF GENERATIONAL SHIFT: COMFORT WITH OBAMA'S MIXED HERITAGE

Obama's biracial heritage also plays into the generational shift, Miller says. "It's so emblematic of how the world is changing," she says. "So many people are now some sort of complicated ethnic mix. Today's youth are completely comfortable with that."

It's not lost on the minds of many that Obama accepted the Democratic nomination on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s immortal 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech -- and that he'll be sworn in on the day after the national holiday celebrating King's birthday. The slain civil rights hero would have turned 80 on Thursday.

Will Obama speak of generational change when he stands on the podium to issue his inaugural address? Given some of his rhetoric on the campaign trail, it's reasonable to think he will — just as, some six months before he was born, JFK pronounced on Inauguration Day 1961 that "the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace."

Interestingly, Kennedy is often claimed by Boomers to be one of their own, even though he was nothing of the kind; born in 1917, he'd be 91 now. In the same way, many Gen-Xers and even Millennials like to claim Obama as one of their own, too.

"As humans we all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves, part of a page in a history book," Pontell says. And at least for now, he adds, "Obama's a rock star, and people are dying to call him one of their own."

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Volume IV, Number 3
Special Report Copyright 2009, The Associated Press.
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