~misplaced comment~

George W. Bush is for the Left like a bull market in the stock market. Everyone thinks he is a genius. Then reality sets back in and a lot of people where just lucky. Bush's ineptitude, immorality and hardright ideology has not changed the fundamental nature of America.

The one area that is fundamentally changing is healthcare. However, it is not because of ideology but because of a change in the economy and the provision of healthcare. Since WWII most Americans were covered on a fee for service basis by health insurance paid for by their employers. Now, both employers have scaled back or have ceased paying for health insurance and Americans are no longer tied on an employer any more.

This transistion combined with the high cost of healthcare has provides an opportunity to revamp healthcare. As the use of "socialism" to denounce perfectly reasonable ideas for healthcare would indicate lots of Americans aren't ready for a general great leftward move. This isn't a problem with Boomers it is one of the Left Bloggers being out of touch with America.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Andrew:

Kudos for the follow-up.

This is how Perlstein continues beyond the excerpt in your post:

People of a certain age are terrified that the electorate is going to associate them with the excesses of the '60s, but most voters are too young to remember that stuff. The Republicans keep trying to paint the Democrats as the party of the hippies and punks who burn the flag.

I have to question the stark generational division Perlstein's premise is based on. Which of the current crop of Democratic candidates, for example, would not blanch at being tied to flag burners and hippies, whether they were in elementary school back in the 60s or toking (but not inhaling of course) on some college campus? Is there any Democratic candidate who at this point in the election cycle would embrace being tied to 60s radicalism? Isn't the reality that, to the extent each candidate would embrace the spirit of the 60s, it would be done with appropriate caveats about changing times and changing circumstances, etc.

I remain entirely unconvinced that this type of a generational divide separates Democrats who came of age in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s. It all just feels so cerebrally convenient to draw these generational distinctions.

I'd still like to see some tangible bases to back this stuff up. For example, are there any legislative initiatives at the state or federal levels that are the product of post-boomer Democrats who have overcome the collective defensive postures of their older Democratic colleagues?

Bruce Levine

Pick an age bracket. 

Actually, Andrew, and Perlstein, did.

Isn't everyone in the DLC roughly around the same age? 

"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani

Why is it that Edwards has kicked the careful, campaign advisor approach to the curb?

I think there is, indeed, an age cohort effect, ion terms of the formative experiences of a cohort in childhood and early adulthood ... but the cohort of Democrats in the halls of power that were affected by the Republican majority in 1994, following the Democratic Congressional money scandals and the Clinton's making NAFTA a greater priority than health care ... that's not even all the Boomers in the current Democratic field, let alone Boomers in general.

Age or region? I'm a boomer and the DLC doesn't represent me and I would not cast a vote for one of them. Paul Wellstone was boomer too!

I think you're missing Andrew's point: for people boomers who had been elected to office by 1980, the Reagan revolution turned out to be the defining moment of their careers. Those of them who were subsequently able to win elections, at least for a decade or so, overwhelmingly did so by distancing themselves from the perceived errors of 1970's liberalism. This certainly seems true to me, and it doesn't imply anything either about boomers more generally (ie those not running for office around 1980), or about those boomers who ran for office much later (Wellstone).

That having been said, I think it is worth considering whether the conservative blindside was a consequence of excessive liberalism (as the DLC position has always been) as opposed to just bad luck. Had the Iranian revolution started two years later, Carter would have been reelected easily, and Reagan would have represented the second major failure of a true conservative as a Presidential candidate. The Iranian revolution, hostage crisis, and oil price spike created the conditions in which Reagan could win, and they had nothing to do with liberalism.

Emma, about the mass media:

The late-night talk shows were important to me and my friends, starting with Steve Allen and Jack Paar. One of my friends did a great Shelley Berman imitation.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, if I had to name my generation (born in '43), I think I would call us the Sputnik Generation. When the Russians launched Sputnik, it scared the powers that be to persuade many of us to make the rounds of various science programs. I will say that for a few years Sputnik did stimulate a real enthusiasm for education. Then the powers that be lost the drift when they needed us for cannon fodder in Vietnam.

The local orchestra had a famous program of commissioning musical compositions, which had a strong influence on me. Changing fashions in contemporary music and the accompanying culture war eventually led to the demise of that program.

So looking back, what I see are fitfull efforts to change things getting lost in the shuffle. From my perspective, I see an America that occasionally gets excited about some crusade or other, but then loses interest a few years later.

I am not sure that everyone I knew would see it that way, however. A couple of my friends (one of them being the admirer of Shelley Berman) followed an indirect path into film-making. That probably would not have occurred to them in a earlier generation. So the rise of mass media did have a lasting effect on them.

I was a little too young to really appreciate the impact of Sputnik although I do remember our family going out some nights and trying to spot it in the sky. 

The first major event that caught my still young attention was the Cuban Missle crisis and its "we're all gonna die." media frenzy which was mild by today's measure.  That and JFK's assassination occurred before just before my teen years and may have been why I became interested in history and things political. 

The manufacturing area of western South Carolina is still suffering from the collapse of the textile industry. When the BMW plant was built some years ago, it was supposed to turn everything around, but then the Saturn plant was lost. There are plans to create a new automotive research center, but it will be decades before that goes into effect, even if it is successful.

Aside from the problems with industrialization, the area is being held back by its failure to fully utilize the complete diversity of its population

Except for Raleigh-Durham, which is technological, the success stories sometimes have to do with the so-called financialization of our economy. Charlotte is a banking center, for example. I am currently working for a health-care sales company, which was acquired by an S&P 500 company. We don't actually produce anything, but who does anymore? Coming from a now-defunct textile company, it seems to me that it is all smoke and mirrors now.

"mild by today's measure"

That is an interesting perspective."

Well, there were only three networks and they did sign off for part of the day.  I think they also tried to be more serious and responsible than today's media.

"But I am not sure if boomers feel exactly the same sense of having been led down a yellow brick road."

Oh, yes.  At least this boomer does.  And since you allude to "The Wizard of Oz", have you ever wondered if credentialing in education gained wider acceptance because of how Scarecrow acquired his brains?  In fact, isn't  the whole premise of the show's end that equates symbols of achievement with actual achievement is a horrible message?  That the symbols are conferred by others rather than individually achieved is an even worse message.  For me, the ending has always ruined an otherwise pleasant movie.

"I'm not sure when there first became a general sense that the schools had failed."

My own untested hypothesis is that schools began failing when they got bigger and more ambitious -- maybe Sputnik had a bigger impact on me than I realized. 

My first two years of education were in a small, multi-grade classroom in a community school.  The school was closed and consolidated with several others into a bigger, uglier one (it doubled as the local bomb shelter) with individual grades.  I have wondered lately if it was a mistake to abandon the multi-grade model for primary schools. 

My classroom had one teacher for grades 1-4.  Since you could listen in (hard not to) on lessons for the other classes, both brighter and slower students could work at more their own pace.   Think about slower students having four years to learn the basics with the same teacher.  The next classroom was grades 5-7, and another was grades 8-9.   There were definite advantages.

"I have an impression that boomers think that you can actually learn something true and important about life by consulting with ones friends. I do not have any such belief."

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by that but as to life I recently concluded that it is simply an indefinite period of time between birth and death.  That's all it is.  Just time.  Don't waste it.  Don't kill it.  And make people who want to take it from you pay dearly.  I wish I weren't so old when I finally figured it out.

"Roone Arlidge"

That is very interesting. Following the train of thought that I was on before, I think the implication is that the sense of a false self created by the media has been an increasing problem ever since that time.

I don't see the Iran hostage crisis as a formative event for the boomers, as such, though, is it? The RFK and King assassinations and the Tet offensive are what we usually think of as cultural watershed events. By the time of the Iran hostage crisis, I would think that the boomers would have moved on to the next phase of their lives. This is all supposition, however.

What do you think?

Catcher in the Rye, by the way, was published in 1951, and The Organization Man was published in 1956. Milton Babbitt's article about serial music, "Who cares if you listen?" was published in 1958 (that was not his title, but it was a descriptive title, just the same). This was before my time for reading things like that. Whenever I did read then, I was getting caught up.

I did read Catch 22 soon after it came out in 1961. According to our usual generational timelines, those readings would seem to be classified as Silent Generation or Beat Generation.

I think these are all required reading for anyone who wants to understand what was going on between Korea and the JFK assassination.

I have an impression (please correct me if I am wrong) that boomers tend to feel that their generatin was uniquely betrayed. Vietnam has a lot to do with that, but I suspect that some of that sense results from their having been lied to about what things were really like in the 50s and early 60s.

Re: Hillary doesn't represent a generation, she represents nepotists the world over.

You could say thesame thing about Ted Kennedy, or for that matter about John Quincy Adams. It shouldn't be a sin to be related (or married) to someone who was politically successful.