The Silent Generation's loss

Eight years ago, after George W. Bush became the second Baby Boomer president, I wrote in this newspaper that my generation, the Silent Generation or Depression Babies, as we are variously known, had blown our last chance to elect a president of our own and had thus become the only generation to achieve that sad distinction.  

Then, along came John McCain (born 1936) to prove me wrong. I had written off McCain’s chances of being the last president of his generation when I declared with certainty in December of 2000 he and other aged Republicans would not be “in the mood or the shape to run the next time the job is likely to open up for a Republican in 2008.†McCain, I reported with alarm, “will be 72 by then.†(You could look it up.)  

I also regretted that there were few presidential Democrats of the Silent Generation left standing, “unless you count presidential has-beens or never- weres like Joseph Biden, 58, or Jesse Jackson, 59.†I did not consider credible the future quests for the presidency by the likes of Silent Generation pols Chris Dodd, Joe Lieberman, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson or Ron Paul, so I wasn’t completely wrong.

Nevertheless, eight years ahead of time, I determined that the Silent Generation, those fine Americans born between 1925 and 1942, had become a generation of just two presidential losers, “the forgotten, but not gone Walter Mondale in 1980 and Michael Dukakis in 1988.†And now there are three.

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The previous generation, the GI (born 1901 to 1924), provided seven consecutive presidents between 1960 and 1992: John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.  

Then, after the Silent Generation’s Mondale and Dukakis were eliminated by the GI or Greatest Generation’s Reagan in 1984 and the first Bush four years later, the Baby Boomers, born between 1943 and 1960, took over with Bill Clinton in 1992, followed by the second Bush in 2000.

But on Nov. 4, 2008, the Boomers’ rather modest streak of two consecutive presidents abruptly ended with the election of the first member of Generation X. Barack Obama happened to be born in 1961, a year too late to be a Boomer.  

This Generation X is so new, populated by kids born between 1961 and 1978, some of its members aren’t even old enough to be president yet, but they’re coming on strong. Sarah Palin was born in 1964 and the 37-year-old Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal, who’s been getting a lot of favorable mention, is the first potential presidential candidate born in the ’70s.

So while the Boomers begin to age and wonder if their presidential years are dwindling or even over, I can’t help wondering where the Silents went wrong, other than having had the bad luck to be represented in presidential races by Mondale, Dukakis and McCain.  

Our most promising candidate, Robert Kennedy, was assassinated while campaigning for a presidency he may well have won in 1968.  But what qualities kept other members of the Silent Generation from seeking, let alone winning, the presidency?   

A few years ago, in a history of the Depression years, historian William Manchester counted the ways. The Silents, he wrote, were “withdrawn, cautious, unimaginative, indifferent, unadventurous, uninvolved and silent.† These are not usually qualities sought in a president.

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But, as I concluded in 2000, our generation did have its moments, as we gave the world not only the aforementioned Robert Kennedy, but also Martin Luther King, William F. Buckley, Yogi Berra, Johnny Carson, Willie Mays, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Lennon and McCartney and Sophia Loren. Not to mention, which I didn’t then, our two and only vice presidents, Joe Biden and (gulp) Dick Cheney.

And as we write a political farewell to the Silent Generation and maybe even the Boomers, it must be noted that the GI Generation still isn’t going quietly, according to Ellen Goodman of The Boston Globe. A few days ago, the torch was passed, rather gingerly,  from 91-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd, the longtime chairman of the Appropriations Committee, to his 84-year-old successor, Sen. Daniel Inouye, who wryly expressed the hope that “I am sufficiently prepared to succeed my mentor.†    

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.

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