While the Right blogosphere is hailing and the Left blogosphere is snarking at Senator McCain's pick of Alaska Gov. Palin (See the round up at Instapundit), every observer I have seen so far has missed a real point.
The Republicans have no Baby Boomers on their Presidential ticket.
This also remarkable because neither major American political party picked Presidential front runners who are Baby Boom Southern White Males after 15 years of such men being President.
McCain, at 72, is a pre-boomer Arizonan of the "Traditionalist" generation -- those born between 1920 and 1945. They are the ones whose whole life was defined by the Cold War. They fought in the Cold War hell holes of Korea, Vietnam and dozens of other lesser known engagements. They saw John F. Kennedy assasinated and put a man on the moon. They are the generation with the highest current voting turn out percentages and they were the ones who were known as "Reagan Democrats."
McCain would be the Third American President from the "Traditionalist" demographic cohort, after Pres. James E. "Jimmy" Carter and Pres. George H. W. Bush.
Gov. Palin, at 44, is an Alaskan from the post Baby Boom "Generation X" demographic -- those born between 1965 and 1980. They are the generation of the personal computer, of AIDS, of Gay Rights, of collapsing labor unions, and of the Challenger Disaster. Their demographic was the "birth dearth" that resulted from both wide spread hormonal birth control ("The Pill") and "Roe v Wade."
Gov. Palin is the first of the Generation X demographic cohort to be selected for Federal Executive Office. She will not be the last.
What this says about America is for others to analyze.
I simply note the obvious reality of a "Post-Baby Boom" Republican Presidential ticket that the Main Stream Media and other bloggers seem to have missed.
Update: Poster Bart Hall pointed out that I missed Pres. Carter's birth date.
I would not describe the Right blogosphere reaction that way. It seems far from unanimous.
Ponnuru (h/t Sullivan)
David Bernstein at Volokh Conspiracy
John Cole
Okay, Trent, if you define 41 as from that generation, you must include Carter, also born in '24.
I, however, prefer the Strauss & Howe framework whereby 1924/'25 differentiates the GI generation from the Silent, of which McCain would be the first member to attain the presidency.
OTOH, such boundaries are not sharp, and Carter most certainly thought like a Silent Generation type -- process, justice, negotiation, pluralism, and transnationalism. McCain, not so much, especially on that last point. As a side note, most of his Naval Acadamy '46 classmates ostracized him at least five years before his presidential run (a very dear friend of mine was Annapolis '46).
Palin is most certainly Gen X, and as a Boomer myself ('49), the sooner we let that generation of self-absorbed, dysfunctional narcissists pass off astern ... the better. Bush 43 was tolerable, but still a Boomer, and America is clearly sick of the Boomers.
That's part of what makes Palin such a good choice.
That's CARTER's USNA classmates, not McCain's.
Sorry for the sloppiness.
Local Alaskan tv report nails Palin lying about firing scandal. What was McCain thinking?
link
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Oh, come on. The guy fired shot a cow moose (out of season), was driving a squad car while drunk, and hit his 11-year-old son with a Taser.
The concern amongst the aides who pushed for the firing was not revenge on behalf of the governor's sister, but the appearance of protecting a rogue cop because there was a connection to the governor.
This stuff isn't a secret, and McCain obviously decided it was a non-starter for the opposition.
Yep, people are going to side with the guy who tasered his kid every time.
>>Okay, Trent, if you define 41 as from that generation,
>>you must include Carter, also born in '24.
You are right, I missed that!
Teaches me for doing a post quickly.
Updated!
As a member of that war-years pre-boomer, pre-tv, formative years generational cohort (1944) I would point out two additional distinctions: We are simultaneously (and regrettably) the best educated generation (SAT scores peaked in 62) and the smallest in numbers (due to the war) of any generational cohort in history. As a result, we have had far less impact on the national scene than our educational attainments would otherwise warrant--and considering many of the dysfunctional impacts the far larger boomer generation had which immediately followed us, more's the pity.
PS: Many confuse us with boomers, and lump us in together. And some truth to that for those of us at tail end of our own cohort. My point is that cohorts or periods in history are not easily divided into decades. I would posit that the "sixties" every-one remembers is really the sixties that starts in 66/67 and ends in mid-70s, while 60-66 closer in spirit to 50's and was a transition between the two "eras." That period which began when JFK was elected was perhaps best characterized by a President of LSU's student body at the time (Bentley Alexander) who later said: "The early part of the sixties was characterized by tremendous good feeling and general happiness all around; the liberals thought everything was going to change for the better, and the conservatives were sure everything was going to stay the same."
I should add to my previous post that it is not to say that the early sixties did not see early social unrest/disturbances, etc., asoc. with the civil rights movement, but they were relatively isolated and had yet to be combined with the yet-to-come anti-Vietnam war movement and the tidal wave of general social unrest to follow.
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I think it is facile to reduce things to these supposed generations. The quality of the individual is what matters. Governor Palin is a reformer with results and an inpiring politician who doesn't fit any mold, generational or otherwise.
I'm still trying to figure out how John Cole is part of the "right blogosphere."
bq.Gov. Palin, at 44, is an Alaskan from the post Baby Boom "Generation X" demographic -- those born between 1965 and 1980. They are the generation of the personal computer, of AIDS, of Gay Rights, of collapsing labor unions, and of the Challenger Disaster. Their demographic was the "birth dearth" that resulted from both wide spread hormonal birth control ("The Pill") and "Roe v Wade."
If she's 44, she was born in 1964 or 63. She's a late boomer but a boomer nonetheless.
Gov. Palin presents an interesting combination of traits.
Moral clarity lived out in her own life and publicly, combined with an ability to work bipartisanly.
Young, female, independent and without any whiff of the strident bitter 'victim' stance that turns me off of Hillary big time. A family woman who did NOT highlight her family more than was appropriate yesterday.
Racially tolerant: her husband is a Yup'ik Eskimo, she is caucasian. Supported same sex benefits.
Energetic, physically fit, a clear and effective speaker who looks quite comfortable at the podium without notes.
I watched the video of her Dayton speech twice. Cindy McCain is comfortable with Palin.
I like her. I like her combination of moral clarity with lack of pretense or pomposity, her moral core with no trace of bigotry or superficial judement of people, her husband's clear support of her (and his body language that says he's quite comfortable with his own identity and achievements).
Which are all evidence that she is not a Boomer in attitude or character. Good for her!
It would be funny if everyone started referring to Palin as :
"Geraldinho"
(...i.e. the little Geraldine. You have to be familiar with both 1984 politics as well as Brazilian football to get it).
It won't be helpful electorally, but I must concede that it would be funny....
Of course, "Geraldinho" could also apply to anyone who is a mentee or mimic of Geraldo Rivera, in which case, the pronunciation would be "Heraldinho".
The choice of Gov. Palin adds some interesting factors:
She is for family values and homeschooling, yet she only spends 3 days with her newborn baby and she does not breastfeed.
She supported Ted Stevens and the "bridge to nowhere", and now she doesn't.
She supports ethics reform, yet she fires the commissioner who would not let her fire her her ex-brother-in-law.
She is a woman, yet she is staunchly against women's rights to choose.
In my view, Palin lacks any type of moral core or moral clarity. She only in favour of ethics reform as long as her unethical behavior is not investigated.
"She is for family values and homeschooling, yet she only spends 3 days with her newborn baby and she does not breastfeed.
She supported Ted Stevens and the "bridge to nowhere", and now she doesn't.
She supports ethics reform, yet she fires the commissioner who would not let her fire her her ex-brother-in-law.
She is a woman, yet she is staunchly against women's rights to choose."
All four of your memorized points have been debunked, and none will hold water.
1) How do you know about her breastfeeding habits?
2) She opposed Ted Stevens
3) The ex-brother-in-law threatened to kill Palin's father, and tased his stepson. He deserved to be fired.
4) See if you get a majority of women voters to buy into that line.
I support abortion, actually, as it greatly reduces the number of left-wing voters, 18 years after the abortion. 70-75% of aborted babies would be Democrat voters. This irony is lost on leftists.
John Cole started his blogging career as a fairly conservative Republican, voting for Bush twice and supporting the Iraq War. Bush lost him, starting with Terri Schiavo and moving on to torture. (He's a vet; found it a disgrace.)
He re-registered Dem, but I think he'd say that was so the Republicans could spend time in the wilderness and come back as a cleansed conservative movement.
He's got some partners in defection whom I don't read so often.
BTW, I see some serious problems with Gov. Palin, but I don't think whether or not she breastfeeds should be an issue.
The Republicans have no Baby Boomers on their Presidential ticket. And good riddance, may this trend grow and prosper.
Palin has publicly mentioned putting down her Blackberries (plural) and taking up her breast pump.
Ridiculous talking point - but if you insist on bringing it up John you demonstrate your laziness in checking facts.
If she's 44, she was born in 1964 or 63. She's a late boomer but a boomer nonetheless.
If I'm not mistaken that would make Palin, along with Obama, the first Presidential-ticket candidates too young to remember the JFK assassination. That alone makes them both too young to be true Boomers.
As a boomer (b. 1953), I'm happy with a Traditionalist and a Gen-Xer on the Republican ticket. The last two were Boomers and nobody with a lick of sense would suggest either were particularly good.
Let's face it fellow Boomers; as a generation we pretty much suck.