Bye bye boomers

The formal ratification of the outcome of the primary elections at the party’s national conventions marks more than just the beginning of a new era in American politics. It signals the demise of Boomer generation attitudes and beliefs as the dominant motif in American life.

After 16 years of Baby Boomer presidents, first Bill Clinton and then George W. Bush, primary voters in both parties rejected quintessential Boomer ideologues (Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee) in favor of candidates who were explicitly opposed to Boomer-style politics. Although Barack Obama is chronologically a very young Boomer, he signaled, in a March 2007 Selma, Alabama speech, his desire to break with the divisive politics of an earlier, “Moses” generation. Instead he embraced the beliefs of this century’s “Joshua” generation, Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003. For his part, John McCain is a member of the older Silent Generation, born between 1925 and 1945 and has constantly exhibited that generation’s style, positioning himself as a political maverick who attempts to bridge ideological gaps to achieve larger goals.

But the big break is with the Boomer generation. Unlike Boomers, Millennials have been raised to play nice with each other and find win-win solutions to any problem. Boomer (and Generation X) parents sat toddler Millennials in front of the television set to watch “Barney” and absorb each episode’s lesson of self-esteem and mutual respect (even as they bolted from the room, sick from the sweetness of it all). With the show’s “my friend is your friend and your friend is my friend” lyrics hard wired into their psyche, Millennials have a strong desire to share everything they do with everyone else.

The arrival of social network technologies enabled Millennials to create the most intense, group-oriented decision-making process of any generation in American history. This generation’s need to make sure the outcome of both minor decisions, like where to hang out, and major decisions, such as whether go to war, reflects both a penchant for consensus and team work which will become the future benchmarks for American political life.

In contrast Senator Clinton made a definitive—if sometimes a bit too strenuous—case for a Boomer style of leadership in her primary campaign, emphasizing the value of her experience and wisdom. Governors Huckabee and Romney’s approach, for their part, stridently insisted upon the need to preserve the superior set of traditional values .

Now it’s time to encourage the Boomers to take their well-deserved retirement, and offer the opportunity for newer, Gen X leaders and their values. This may be difficult for many Xers, who will need to overcome their own lack of understanding of, and in some cases outright disdain for, the youngest generation. Humorists Steven Colbert and John Stewart, both quintessential Gen Xers, recently demonstrated their risk-taking mindset by mocking Millennial attitudes as demonstrated by Senator Obama’s rock star reception in Berlin. The failure of their Millennial audience to laugh at the joke, or buy into Senator McCain’s attempt to suggest it somehow made Obama less qualified to be President, demonstrates the challenge the Millennial zeitgeist will pose for those seeking to become the nation’s leaders.

The change from Boomer to Millennial style is already becoming evident in other areas of American life as well. At the 1968 Olympics, as the Boomer inspired, idealist era began, African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the gold and bronze medalists in the men's 200-meter race, raised a black-gloved fist in a protest for black power as the Star Spangled Banner was played to celebrate their victories. Forty years later, Jason Lezak, captured the values of the new Millennial era as he explained how he was able to swim the fastest 400-meter freestyle leg in history to bring gold to his teammates. “It’s the Olympics and I’m here for the USA . . . .I got a supercharge and took it from there. It was unreal.” Lezak was joined at the award ceremony by his Millennial teammate, Cullen Jones, only the second African-American to ever win a gold medal in swimming. In sharp contrast to Smith and Carlos forty years earlier, Jones happily celebrated the victory of his team and country.

Ultimately the 2008 election will turn on which candidate can bring these new attitudes and beliefs to bear on the number one issue facing the country—the economy. Unlike Boomers, whose focus was on economic growth to support their workaholic personalities, Millennials are more concerned about economic inequality and believe government has a key role to play in bringing about a greater degree of economic fairness. Almost 70 percent of Millennials express a preference for “a bigger government that provides more services,” compared to only 43 percent of older generations who agreed with that statement.

Connecting the current sorry state of the American economy and its dependence on foreign oil with the other favorite concern of Millennials, global warming, is an even better way to win this generation’s support on economic issues. Whoever is elected this year will need to reshape America’s economy in line with Millennial expectations of inclusiveness and fairness as dramatically as FDR’s New Deal created a new economic framework for the Millennial’s generational forbearers, the GI Generation.

The Broadway musical, “Bye Bye Birdie,” captured the end of the conventional era of the ‘50s, as the onslaught of Rock n’ Roll pitted child against parent and ushered in an age that celebrated rebellion in all its forms. The confrontations between Boomer “Meathead” (Michael Stivic) on “All in the Family,” with his tradition bound father-in-law, Archie Bunker, captured his generation's desire to overturn the establishment using the power of ideas to persuade the recalcitrant of the error of their ways.

Now it’s time to realize new values are ascending. Millennials generally get along great with their parents and celebrate the wholesome values of “High School Musical,” where boys and girls of all types come together to defeat those that seek to win only for their own personal ambition. Those nominated in the next two weeks at their party’s convention should heed this lesson. To gain the presidency, the winning ticket will have to appeal to the Millennial sense of pride and teamwork in meeting the challenges the country faces.

A Generational Guide for Watching the Conventions

The key to waging a successful presidential campaign by either Barack Obama or John McCain will be their ability to use their respective conventions to overcome generational tensions. What happens in Denver and the Twin Cities could give the nominees freedom to embrace the generational changes that will shape American politics for decades to come.

If the candidates pay proper attention to generational politics, each convention will begin with a nod to their party’s Boomers and then pivot away from the past to address, on the final night, new voters whose support they will need to win in November.

The candidates must take the lead in managing their party’s convention so that the ticket and its platform reflect the desire of the electorate to move beyond the cultural wars of the 1960s. Each party’s understanding of this generationally driven challenge will be evident in how it handles the iconic, Boomer figures demanding center stage at their conventions.

Obama, in an acknowledgement of the generational strains in his party, has agreed to Hillary Rodham Clinton's request to not only address the convention in prime time on Tuesday night, but to have her name placed in nomination the following night. In return, he has gained the agreement of former president Bill Clinton to, in effect, lead the Boomers in the Democratic Party to embrace and endorse Senator Obama's nomination on Wednesday night.

As tough as that challenge has been for Obama, the problem is more acute for John McCain. President Bush's job performance ratings are among the lowest of any president. But he remains popular with Boomer ideologues in the GOP, who are continually looking for signs that McCain has stayed from party orthodoxy. Any attempt to deny a sitting president the spotlight at their national convention, as Democrats did in keeping Lyndon Johnson from addressing their 1968 convention, will be met with cries of “I told you not to trust him” from Republican true believers.

It appears that McCain’s advisers have decided to throw cultural war red meat to the delegates with appearances by Bush and Vice President Cheney on Monday, in hopes that the electorate won’t pay too much attention until later in the week.

If history is any guide, the place where both candidates will be willing to make concessions to their party’s ideological base will be the party’s platform. Since this policy statement is debated early in the convention, with little penalty for abandoning a plank or two later in the campaign, platforms are the easiest way to throw a bone to ideological purists. The Generation X and Boomer Democratic blogosphere has previously attacked Obama for failing to adhere to hard left positions on post 9-11 issues and offshore oil drilling.

Similarly, a number of conservatives have condemned McCain's former positions on climate change, immigration, and campaign finance reform.

The choice each candidate must make is whether to use the platform debate to give the cultural warriors in their party a final opportunity to replay the political drama of the nation’s Boomer past or to use the platform debate as a “Sister Souljah” generational moment and decisively break with that kind of divisive politics.

In the end, however, there will be no better place for the two candidates to demonstrate their break with the politics of past generations than in their acceptance speeches.

The McCain campaign has signaled its intention to use their candidate’s story of personal sacrifice on behalf of the nation throughout the convention. This effort will likely culminate in an acceptance speech attempting to simultaneously distinguish his life’s experience from those of the Woodstock generation (“I was tied up at the time”) and arouse the passions of his party’s Boomer base.

The challenge, however, is how to do that that without awakening a set of related thoughts among Millennials about just how old and potentially out of touch with their generation he is. Millennials weren’t around for Woodstock, don’t care about it, and prefer that everyone “play nice” together. Passion displayed as anger turns them off. To capture a new and winning coalition in this campaign, McCain would be better off using his acceptance speech to underline his national security credentials based on a lifetime of service, both of which appeal greatly to Millennials.

Obama’s decision to deliver his acceptance speech before a large outdoor audience on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech comes with its own set of risks. Echoes of that remarkable speech are sure to arouse the passions of the liberal half of the Boomer generation. But, it will also remind viewers of the turmoil of the 60s that drove a majority of the nation to embrace the Republicans’ appeal for “law and order.”

Obama’s rhetoric will need to inspire a new generation to take the next steps toward achievement of King’s dream, without creating a backlash among the rest of the electorate that wasn’t enamored with the racial overtones of the Democratic primary campaign.

To succeed in November, both candidates will have to speak explicitly to the future and demonstrate that their campaign represents the hopes of a new generation. The country is waiting for a new leader with a new approach to guide it out of the Boomer briar patch in which it has been stuck since 1968. After the conventions, we will have a clearer idea who can best lead the country into a new era of American politics.

Democratic Convention Faces Historic Choice

As the results from North Carolina and Indiana began to come in on election night, and before the final results were known, two accomplished Democratic campaign operatives and astute political observers, Paul Begala and Donna Brazile, got into a heated argument on CNN about just what the Democratic Party’s general election coalition should be if the party is to compete effectively against John McCain. Begala, who is both a strong supporter of Senator Clinton and a fair-minded media commentator, argued that the Democratic Party could not afford another Democratic nominee, like Michael Dukakis, whose constituency consisted of “eggheads and African Americans.” Using that phrase to contrast Hillary’s support from “Hispanics and working class whites” Begala argued that Obama’s lack of support among more traditional Democratic constituencies would cost the Democratic Party victory in November. With more passion than she has dared to display on other primary nights, Brazile argued that no Democratic presidential nominee could hope to win without the support of African Americans and any attempt to exclude them, and by extension, her, from the Party would be the end of the Democratic Party as we know it. Both Begala and Brazile were right, and, at the same time, both were incredibly myopic about the changes in American politics that are about to occur in this year of a Millennial makeover or realignment.

Clearly, demography continues to be destiny for the Democratic Party. What’s different now is an entirely new demographic development that these two otherwise perceptive observers seemed to have completely missed. Despite some gains in Indiana and North Carolina among working class voters by Obama, the split pitting Barack Obama's support from African-Americans, and upscale, highly educated city dwellers and suburbanites against Hillary Clinton's base of white Baby Boomer women, residents of small towns and rural areas, and working class voters remained as deep as ever on Tuesday.

However, "African-Americans and eggheads" are not the sum total of Barack Obama’s coalition. Much of his electoral strength throughout the 2008 campaign has come from his more than two-to-one advantage among Millennial voters, those 26 and under. In Indiana, his margin in college towns—even in very Catholic South Bend, home of Notre Dame—helped offset some of his losses in the more rural areas of the state. Overall, in Indiana Obama carried young voters by a 62%-38% margin, while in North Carolina his edge among Millennials was an even more convincing 74% to 25%. Obama's strength within this generation extended across racial lines and included white Millennials, from whom he received solid majorities in both states. It is Obama’s ability to add this important, new, large portion of the electorate to the “eggheads and African Americans,” of which Begala was so dismissive, that has made Obama the presumptive Democratic nominee.

While it is not critical that Begala and Brazile acknowledge this new element of the Democratic Party’s coalition in the heat of a primary night debate, it is essential that the superdelegates who, at some point between June 4 and the August Democratic National Convention in August, will determine the party's 2008 presidential nominee understand the importance of this emerging new generation. The decision made by the superdelegates, only three of whom are Millennials, must embrace this new generation, recognize its enthusiastic support for the Democratic party, and acknowledge its importance to the party's future. The superdelegates must realize that the decision they are about to make will determine the fate of the Democratic Party, not just in 2008, but for decades to come.

America is on the verge of another of the electoral makeovers, or realignments, which have reshaped U.S. politics about every forty years throughout history, and the divisions within the Democratic party must be healed if it is to take advantage of this critical opportunity. All realignments are produced by the political coming-of-age of a new, large dynamic generation of voters and the communication technology it uses so well. The last realignment came from the rise of the ideological and sharply divided, television obsessed Baby Boomer generation in 1968. The result was an era of partisan gridlock, a constant debate about divisive social issues, and electoral domination by the Republican Party. The realignment before that, in 1932, resulted from the emergence of the cohesive, radio addicted, G.I. Generation and produced nearly four decades of governmental activism and Democratic election victories.

The realignment that's just ahead will stem from the rise of the Millennial Generation, Americans born 1982-2003, more than a third of whom will be eligible to vote in 2008. Millennials are the largest, most ethnically diverse, and least gender bound generation in U.S. history. Millennials currently identify as Democrats by a margin of nearly 2:1 and are the first generation in many decades to contain more self-perceived liberals than conservatives. Their opinions, on issues ranging from health care and the environment to economic inequality and the Iraq war, are compatible with positions normally associated with the Democratic Party.

But, even with all of these advantages, the Democrats could still lose both this year's election and the long-term loyalty of this new generation. Transitions between one political era and another, such as the one the country is now experiencing, are usually characterized by intergenerational conflict. In some previous transitions those conflicts have had dire consequences for the political parties and American society. The inability of the Democratic Party to accommodate sharp generational and sectional differences in the mid-19th century ultimately led to civil war. Less violently, the cultural wars of the Boomer generation, which dramatically spilled into the streets of Chicago in 1968, led to the political gridlock the country has experienced during the four decades that followed. At other times, however, the parties and society have been able to successfully integrate a new generation's perspective, leading to periods of growth and civic renewal. Halting the ravages of the Depression and victories in World War II and the Cold War are examples of such successful transitions.

This year it will be the task of the superdelegates to find an acceptable solution to the generational conflict embroiling the Democrats. That won't be easy, especially since many of those in that position of power are members of the older, “idealist” Baby Boom generation. Historically, the members of idealist generations have been unable and unwilling to compromise their strongly held beliefs. They will have to do so this year if the Democratic Party is to avoid disaster. At the same time, members of the rising Millennial Generation, like “civic” generations before them, will have to open up their "group” to those who disagree with them and find the kind of “win-win” solutions that they were taught to value. If both sides can find a way to reach across this generational divide and nominate a ticket that unites the party by focusing on the goals and welfare of the larger group, the Democratic Party will be able to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the arrival of the new generation. Failure to find that unifying presidential ticket will almost certainly result in the loss of the emerging generation, leaving the Democrats to wander in the political wilderness for at least another forty years.