Leaders For A New Age

It's hard to imagine another Fischer among today's young politicos. Many of these leaders—Obama, the Miliband brothers, Cameron, Heil, Dati and Thorning-Schmidt among them—rapidly climbed the political ladder, but have little experience outside that relatively cloistered world. Obama was a community organizer for just three years before becoming a state senator, David Miliband went from Oxford and MIT to a think tank and then became a top Labour Party policy wonk, and so on. "They all have similar backgrounds," says Olaf Cramme, the acting director of the Policy Network, a group in Britain that has worked with young European progressives. "They all have had first-class educations, but no experience other than public policy or related jobs."

So while they may have different ideas about policy than their elders, they don't define themselves against the establishment—they are the establishment. Their relative lack of experience outside the world of politics means they tend to believe in the ability of politics to transform the world, emphasizing "optimism" in a way that might embarrass more-grizzled political veterans. "Hope" has become one of the central themes of Obama's campaign, and in one of his standard stump speeches he says he gets ribbed about it from time to time because "people tend to get cynical." But, as skeptics might point out, hope is not a foreign policy and it won't reform Social Security. And idealism, decoupled from experience, appears brash at best, foolhardy at worst. Heil, the German SPD general secretary, was elected to Parliament in 1998 at the tender age of 26. He has no experience at all outside of party politics. And when he tried to push the Social Democrats to the right—on issues like unemployment pay—the move backfired, alienating the party's base. Dati has never held elected office at all; she was a junior prosecutor until she began working under Sarkozy in the Interior Ministry in 2002. "There is a danger, a risk certainly, to be seen as a technocratic person capable of working in politics but out of touch with the problems of the real world," says Cramme.

It doesn't help matters that many ascendant leaders look even younger than they are. The British press has mocked David Miliband for appearing like an overeager sixth former in House of Commons debates. Thorning-Schmidt's model-esque beauty and passion for fashion hurt her campaign: the press branded her "Gucci Helle," and her opponent, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, then 54, effectively painted her as a political lightweight who lacked the common touch. The same criticism has dogged Dati, with judges upset about her judicial reforms lashing out at the designer dresses and high heels of this "Barbie-doll minister." One of Obama's greatest challenges in taking on Clinton is the perceived "experience gap" between the two candidates—a gap that is only widened in the public mind by Obama's baby face and big ears. In a somewhat different way, even Russia's Medvedev is considered too tender to lead on his own. The conventional wisdom is that Putin endorsed him largely as a way of maintaining his own power.

But ready or not, this generation's moment has arrived—and much sooner than anyone would have predicted. If elections were held today in Britain, opinion polls suggest Cameron would be the next prime minister. If Labour decides to dump the beleaguered Gordon Brown, the elder Miliband brother is rumored as a likely replacement. In 50 days, Medvedev is poised to become president of one of the world's most powerful countries. As for Obama, his once improbable run for the White House looks increasingly possible. If he makes it to the Oval Office, it won't be the end of the boomers' political dominance, but it just might be the beginning of the end. Ultimately, these new politicians may have a greater impact than those aging '68ers finally approaching their swan songs. They have made their entrances at a younger age, and so we will likely have them on the world stage for a very, very long time to come.

With Stryker Mcguire in London and Owen Matthews in Moscow

© 2008