Much attention has been paid to Barack Obama becoming the first African-American major-party presidential candidate, and rightly so. But the Obama campaign is historic in another way, too: should he win the White House, Senator Obama, at age 46, would be the country’s first Gen-X president. Granted, the cusps between one generation and the next are highly subjective. William Strauss and Neil Howe, who in their remarkable study Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584-2069 take great pains determining these generational cusps, locate the boundary between Boom and “X” on January 1, 1961—with Obama on the near side of the line. Terms used to describe Obama’s campaign—“post-racial,” “post-Boomer,” “transcendent,” “inclusive”—suggest something new, a turning of the page. George W. Bush and his predecessor, Bill Clinton, both born in 1946, are Baby Boomers. So is Hillary Rodham Clinton. Obama is a different breed of cat, and not just because of his skin color.
The 71-year-old John McCain, on the other hand, is a member of what Strauss and Howe call the Silent Generation (1925-1942). This means that Election Day will pit a member of the post-Boom Generation—Obama—against a member of the pre-Boom Generation—McCain. After sixteen years of Boom occupancy, the Oval Office will either advance to Generation X or revert to the Silents.
Looked at through this prism, McCain is facing tough odds—not because of his age per se (Reagan was almost as old when he assumed office), but because of the fact that his coevals have already been eclipsed by the next generation.
William McKinley was the first president of the 20thcentury and also the first of his so-called Progressive Generation (I’m using Strauss and Howe’s generational names and cusps) to become Chief Executive; Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson were of the same generation. Warren G. Harding, nine years younger than Wilson and 22 years younger than McKinley, ushered in the Missionary Generation, which included the subsequent presidents Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, representing the Lost Generation, were followed by G.I. Generation presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush père.
The pattern is obvious: once a generation takes over, it either stays in power or passes the baton to the next generation. Only twice has the preceding generation re-assumed the presidency after a new generation has won the White House. The first time, 64-year-old Zachary Taylor took over from 53-year-old James K. Polk (which probably wouldn’t have happened had the wildly successful Polk sought a second term), and promptly died. The second time, 65-year-old James Buchanan took the reins from 52-year-old Franklin Pierce, and spent four years doing absolutely nothing to ease the escalating tensions between North and South.
This is not to say that McCain can’t win. Or, for that matter, that the Baby Boomers are finished in the White House. Hillary will be younger in 2016 than McCain is right now, and Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, Condoleezza Rice, and Al Gore are also Boomers. But it doesn’t bode well for McCain when, the last time we went back a generation to elect a president, there was Civil War after the guy left.
