Twilight of the Baby Boom

To their credit, the Clintons have also long resisted what they call "false choices" in politics (e.g., you're either pro-labor or pro-business) in favor of a more practical "Third Way." Even the much-maligned tactic of "triangulation" was an effort to rise above the partisan clatter. But the Clintons simply cannot transcend those old fights. They cut their teeth on them on the way up and too often embodied them when they took power, even when it wasn't their fault. The reason they are still so loved and hated has little to do with what they did substantively, which was mostly moderate, and lots to do with visceral feelings touched off by the voters' own life experiences.

If Hillary loses, she can rightfully blame not just Obama, her husband, her campaign and herself, but a backlash against the entitlement and excess of her generation. For all the glowing press, it's a generation that has done a good job raising its kids, and not much else.

I've often wondered why some big-time politicians are Velcro while others, like Ronald Reagan, wear coats of Teflon. One explanation may lie in the struggles of the 1960s. Those who grew up then, from the Clintons and Al Gore to Newt Gingrich and Bush, are almost all Velcro. Everything sticks to them. Anyone who pre-dates or post-dates those polarizing cultural arguments has a decent shot at acquiring some Teflon.

Obama's Teflon comes not just from his race, which forces his critics to risk charges of racism when they attack him, but from his un-'60s (as opposed to anti-'60s) profile. His "Joshua Generation," as he calls it in a civil-rights and Biblical context, is descended from the founding activists and still committed to their goals, but not trapped in the tumult of their times. That generates energy for the march forward into the twilight of the boom.

© 2008