turning.com/">The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe panoramically portray a twenty year four times over generational cycle that has dominantly and predictably influenced current events from the colonization of North America to the present. To understand the 2008 presidential contest as a difference of platforms or parties is to largely miss the point. The race between Obama, Clinton and McCain is about three different generations, with all their inherent strengths and weaknesses being fought out in an arena which is too often contemptible of complexity but which this critical juncture in our national and world history demands.

1.  McCain is part of the “silent” generation who have not yet elected a United States president from their age group. Born between 1929 and 1945 they were the children of the great depression and WWII, a time of crisis when individual aspirations were subordinate to larger world wide struggles. George Bush Sr and Jimmy Carter, born in 1924 and 1923 respectively, are of the previous generation, as was JFK, young “heroes” of WWII and the Cold War, who came of age during national crisis. McCain, born in 1936, was 31 when shot down in a bombing run over North Vietnam, his family history shaped by prior generations of Navy admirals and Naval Academy life but whose own war had none of the supposed clarity of the previous global struggles and whose own heroism was largely defined by time served as a POW. There is much about McCain’s war record that demands further scrutiny, something he prevents by being almost alone in his Senate fight to forcibly keep secret Vietnam era POW and MIA records, but beyond his personal idiosyncrasies and foibles is a man who has devoted his political life to the art of compromise.

This strategy is born in the bone to this “silent” generation whose young lives were studiously and often punishingly subservient to the critical events they could only witness and admire. Perhaps this background offers some rationale for the almost inexplicable twists and turns of McCain from his humiliation at the hands of George Bush and Karl Rove in the 2000 Republican presidential primary by a smear campaign against McCain’s own family that morphed into the famously lame public hug of Bush by McCain in the 2004 election; his long fight against big government and big spending seemingly forgotten in his present support of the trillion dollar war against Iraq and the bail out of Wall Street billionaires by public funding. American voters may like McCain as does the press, particularly his professed image as a “straight talker,” but they’ve never put their faith in electing such a president (Mike Dukakis, Walter Mondale, and John Kerry).

2.  Hillary Clinton forms the third leg of what history will surely describe as an infamous generational stool that includes her husband Bill and George Bush Jr. Born between 1946 and 1963, the year of the Kennedy assassination; they are the war children of the national “high” that followed the previous twenty year crisis. Few limits were placed upon them as children and despite the glaring differences between Bill Clinton raised in an Arkansas working poor dysfunctional family to Andover bred George Bush who enjoyed an equally dysfunctional yet thoroughly entitled upbringing, their (and my) generation are marked by a decided belief in their ability to run things better than their parents. This has required an ongoing attendance by those same predecessor “silents” to keep the effects of their policies and behaviors “cleaned up” (Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell).

Their hubris is complemented by a predilection for big picture ideas and generalities, a penchant for self indulgence and addiction in private but an increasingly conventional moral posture in public, and the fomenting of non-stop culture wars bred from an unreflective tendency toward polarization and fundamentalism (Rush Limbaugh, John Hagee). Think on these qualities and observe how they apply to Hillary Clinton. You will find an overlay that fits her persona, her public life both real and contrived, and her candidacy which appeals to her generation and in lesser measure to those older but little to those younger who have been following in the wake of boomer leadership and are now faced with a dysfunctional government and an imploding economy.

3.  Born in 1961 Barack Obama could be among the oldest of the baby boomers but if his personal identification and political approach are analyzed he in his cusp year of birth is easily seen as among the oldest of the next generation, children of the societal "awakening" that took place between 1963 and 1984, the “nomads” of generation X who were often ignored or left to their own devices as children, who are more concerned with getting things done (Eric Schmidt & Sergey Brin of Google) than with the arguing or endless talk of their parents (Jerry Springer, Don Imus, Joe Biden). Their pragmatism can as easily embody compromise as hard position but always with the goal of achieving the task (Michael Jordan “just do it”) more than making the point.

They aged more quickly than their boomer counterparts, seemingly more mature at forty (Naomi Klein, Jeremy Scahill) than some boomers at sixty, and have developed through adversity a maturity for practice over precept. You can read Obama’s frustration through his disciplined demeanor as he is baited by absurdly polarizing boomer questions by Tim Russert or attends to the false Muslim allegations and race baiting of the Clinton team embodied by the acidicly divisive boomer James Carville, desperate for some edge over their highly skilled and increasingly popular opponent. If elected Obama will be the first of a new generation moving into their twenty year cycle of national leadership, the hand off from a President who like the alcoholic studies his generation championed, has careened from catastrophe to catastrophe leaving behind an animal house policy aftermath that seemed humorous only thirty short years ago.

Speaking to my fellow “boomers” who Strauss & Howe also term a “prophet” generation: are we ready to give up the pretense of eternal youth and its accompanying indulgence and become elders who will participate as much as pontificate? Can we actively support the next generation of managerial leaders who take the field littered by the effects of our generation’s governmental and economic leadership? Can we hunker down with those born after 1984 (the year of the second Reagan inaugural that marked the end of the awakening of the ‘60s and ‘70s and the beginning of a cultural and political unraveling), the young millennial “heroes” who will come of age during the surely coming crisis, who will put self behind service and will need all the support and wisdom their “elders” can muster?

vpdonhynes.blogspot.com/2008/04/next-generation-cyclical-movements-of.html

We gave rise to the rebirth of organic farming, holistic medicine, the Beatles for chrissakes! Surely we can steward this epochal fourth turning with wisdom and grace. We needn’t bow to the cynicism that has been deliberately sown over the last twenty years but neither should we turn a blind eye to the depravity and difficulty that those who follow us into their time of leadership surely face. We can carry the burden of our past as well as the promise of a future, acting with sobriety and speaking with hope to our children and grand children. In that place of balance and growing wisdom we may support those who must now take the helm of our nation’s governance, with all the graciousness and understanding we can muster.