Sunday 19 July 2020

The Revenge of the Silent Generation

Clinton, Bush and Trump were all born in 1946. All three appeared somewhat immature, or irresponsible, in a manner which impacted their functioning in office. Clinton's sexual misconduct harmed National Security. Bush rose and sank without a trace leaving a horribly mismanaged War as well an unprecedented financial crisis. But it is Trump who has best exemplified the insensate narcissism and tropism towards chaos of the 'Me generation'. It remains to be seen whether Biden, who was born in 1942, will become the first  'Silent Generation' President. (Carter and Bush Snr. were born 4 years before the starting point for that cohort)

What is significant is that, if Biden screws up his Veep pick and loses, people born in 1946 will have ruled America for a total of 24 years. Simply having 3 Presidents born in the same year is unusual. But if all three are two term Presidents, whereas the other two pairs of Presidents born in the same year (Ford & Nixon) served a total of 8 years, then we are entitled to speculate as to what makes the Summer of 1946 so special for boy babies who wanted to lead the Free World.

The obvious answer is that 'the system' stopped working properly in the late Sixties and stagflationary Seventies. The Greatest Generation could hold things together more by luck than cunning- e.g. Reagan and Bush unexpectedly winning the Cold War when just a couple of years earlier people spoke of Japan as somehow overtaking America.

It seems the American Voter wanted change of a type the Silent Generation could not conceive or articulate. Obama, officially a boomer like Clinton, Dubya and Trump, certainly sounded like he would deliver something radical. But it turned out he had an old head on young shoulders. His rhetoric stopped soaring. On the crucial issue (crucial at least for him personally) of BLM he is thoroughly 'Silent Generation'. Biden, who grew younger in the intensely infantilizing role of Veep, may yet be the Silent Generation's solution to the Millenials' problem with boomers.





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