Are Obama’s Problems Generational?
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on March 23rd, 2009 4:50 am by HL
Are Obama’s Problems Generational?
One of the major themes of Barack Obama’s political philosophy has been that it’s time for America to move beyond the Baby Boom Generation’s petty partisanship. In The Audacity of Hope, he wrote that when he observed politics in his younger days, “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.” Once he became a presidential candidate, Obama picked up on the theme. “I think there is no doubt that we represent the kind of change that Senator Clinton can’t deliver on, and part of it is generational,” he said. In a key article boosting Obama in December of 2007, Andrew Sullivan in the Atlantic argued that Obama “could take America — finally — past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom Generation that has long engulfed all of us.” So Obama, even though some would technically still consider him a late baby boomer (or part of the transitional “Generation Jones” — born in 1961) became the president of a new generation, boosted by strong support among an even younger generation. In the White House, he has surrounded himself with his generational cohort, including Rahm Emanuel (two years older) and Tim Geithner (same age as the president).
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:57 am
I’ve been following this issue of Obama’s generational identity closely, and what’s most striking to me is how a consensus seems to be more or less emerging among experts, although I don’t know how well-known that it is by most people generally. Relatively few prominent voices have said Obama is a Boomer, and even fewer that he’s an Xer. The most used description has been the vague “post-Boomer”. And more specifically, if there is something like a consensus forming, it is that Obama is part of Generation Jones, born 1954-1965, between the Boomers and Generation X. Google Generation Jones, and you’ll see it’s gotten a ton of media attention, and many top commentators from many top publications and networks (Washington Post, Time magazine, NBC, Newsweek, ABC, etc.) are now using this term to describe Obama.
You know, you don’t have to be a sociologist to realize that Obama, well…he’s really not a Boomer, and he’s not really an Xer. It’s kind of obvious that he is in-between those two generations.
It is important to distinguish between the post-WWII demographic boom in births vs. the cultural generations born during that era. Generations are a function of the common formative experiences of its members, not the fertility rates of its parents. Many experts now believe it breaks down this way:
DEMOGRAPHIC boom in babies: 1946-1964
Baby Boom GENERATION: 1942-1953
Generation Jones: 1954-1965
Generation X: 1966-1979
Here is a recent op-ed about Obama as the first GenJones President in USA TODAY:
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20090127/column27_st.art.htm
And here is a recent interview with the guy who coined the term “Generation Jones”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBk1GZ747F8