Stumper
McCain, Obama and
the Millennial
Generation
By Andrew Romano
As I read Michael
Crowley's excellent
profile of McCain
assistant, speechwriter
and all-around alter ego
Mark Salter in the New
Republic this morning, I
was struck by one
section in particular.
Frustrated by constant
criticism of his boss's
oratorical abilities,
Salter, Crowley reports,
is retreating to his
summer cottage in Maine
to craft the senator's
convention speech—a
"task fellow McCainiacs
acknowledge will be
critical." His plan? To
contrast McCain's
moments of
self-sacrifice, "as when
he refused early release
from captivity in
Vietnam or challenged
his own party over
campaign finance
reform"—Crowley's words,
not Salter's—with the
"selfishness" of
"self-interested"
political partisans like
Obama, who risk "nothing
of substance in their
lives" as they flit
through a "narcissistic
world of Facebook and
YouTube and Scarlett
Johansson."
Facebook? YouTube?
Scarlett? It's almost as
if, according to
Crowley, Salter sees
Obama as—heart be
still—a millennial.
I happen to agree. Back
in February, I wrote a
long feature for the
dead-tree edition of
NEWSWEEK called "He's
One of Us Now" that
was basically a reported
essay on why Obama is "
the first millennial to
run for president."
Given that Obama was
born in 1961 and the
millennial (or
Generation Y) birth
years started around
1979 and ended around
1995, a handful of
readers disagreed with
my analysis. He's a
"late boomer" said one.
He belongs to
"Generation Jones" said
another. Gen X has
plenty of proponents,
too. But my point in the
piece wasn't to alter
the space-time continuum
by suggesting that Obama
is a millennial;
obviously he's too old
for that. Instead it
was, as I wrote then, to
show "how fully and
seamlessly he embodies
the attitudes,
aspirations and
shortcomings of the
generation that's
rallied around him."
(Necessary caveat:
Summing up an entire
generation with a few
broad brush strokes is
always hazardous,
especially in politics.
But that doesn't mean it
can't be revealing.) In
other words, I wanted to
argue that Obama, the
political phenomenon,
belongs to Generation
Y—even if he belongs to
another generation by
birth. The question then
was whether that would
be a good thing.
Apparently, it still is.
Salter, of course, would
say no, and it's not
hard to see why. Weaned
on a sugary self-esteem
diet, my peers and I are
generally viewed as a
vain generation with an
insatiable appetite for
self-expression—and
plenty of places (Facebook,
MySpace, blogs, AIM,
reality TV, etc.) to
express ourselves. That
look-at-me posture seems
alien to older
Americans, which is why
members of McCain's
entourage privately
refer to the
prone-to-preening Obama
as "The One." The more
pervasive product of our
meritocratic
upbringings, however, is
an instinct for
goal-oriented,
self-improving,
resume-building
professionalism that
shapes every aspect of
our lives. "They're not
trying to buck the
system," reported David
Brooks in his
influential 2001 essay "The
Organization Kid."
"They're trying to climb
it, and they are
streamlined for ascent."
That neatly summarizes
Obama's rise. As Ryan
Lizza
writes in this
week's New Yorker,
"perhaps the greatest
misconception about
Barack Obama is that he
is some sort of
anti-establishment
revolutionary. Rather,
every stage of his
political career has
been marked by an
eagerness to accommodate
himself to existing
institutions rather than
tear them down or
replace them." Lizza
continues:
When he was a
community organizer,
he channeled his
work through
Chicago’s churches,
because they were
the main bases of
power on the South
Side. He was an
agnostic when he
started, and the
work led him to
become a practicing
Christian. At
Harvard, he won the
presidency of the
Law Review by
appealing to the
conservatives on the
selection panel. In
Springfield, rather
than challenge the
Old Guard Democratic
leaders, Obama built
a mutually
beneficial
relationship with
them. “You have the
power to make a
United States
senator,” he told
Emil Jones in 2003.
In his downtime, he
played poker with
lobbyists and
Republican
lawmakers. In
Washington, he has
been a cautious
senator and, when he
arrived, made a
point of not
defining himself as
an opponent of the
Iraq war... He has
always played
politics by the
rules as they exist,
not as he would like
them to exist.
It makes sense, of
course, that Salter
would characterize this
sort of maneuvering as
"selfish" and risk-free
and seek to contrast it
with McCain's moments of
maverick defiance and
"sacrifice." That's
politics.
But it's also pretty
one-sided take on
Generation Y—and Obama.
*According to Morley
Winograd and Michael D.
Hais, authors of
Millennial Makeover:
MySpace, YouTube, and
the Future of American
Politics,
millennials may not be
"confrontational or
combative, the way
Boomers (whose
generational mantra was
'Don't trust anyone over
30') have been." But
they do belong to what
social scientist William
Strauss calls a "civic
generation," drawn
instead to issues of
"community, politics and
deeds, whereas the
boomers focused on
issues of self, culture
and morals." Reacting
against the excesses of
their parents—especially
efforts to advance moral
causes through partisan
politics—they prefer to
address problems
non-ideologically, by
reforming institutions
from within. They're
team players, say
Winograd and Hais,
conditioned through
constant social
interaction (often
online) to "find
consensus, 'win-win'
solutions to any
problem." They distrust
traditional channels of
information and prefer
to learn from peers
(again, often online).
They are diverse. And
after George W. Bush,
they believe, as Obama
youth-vote director Hans
Riemer told me earlier
this year, "that it
matters who's running
the government—and that
government is a powerful
way to make this country
a better place."* All of
this is consistent with
Obama's "post-partisan"
character—and his
frequent calls to stop
"re-litigating sex,
drugs, rock and roll
[and] Vietnam." Paired
with his political
instincts, in fact, it's
probably what would make
him an effective
president. There's
actually value in the
millennial worldview.
Ultimately, I don't
really believe that
Salter is setting out to
declare generational
warfare on millennials.
He probably doesn't know
(or care) what a
millennial is. But
that's part of the
problem with McCain's
current line of attack.
Last week, the campaign
released an ad called "The
Summer of Love" that
opened with stock
late-Sixties footage of
goateed protesters,
flamboyant queens and
nearly naked longhairs
making out in a muddy
field. The message:
while McCain, a POW at
the time, stands for
service and
selflessness, his rival
for the White House
represents "hope,"
"change," narcissism and
"beautiful words [that]
cannot make our lives
better"—just like those
dirty hippies. Compared
to McCain, it seems,
every generation born
after World War II is
the same to Salter and
Co.: petty, selfish,
narcissistic. Scarlett
Johansson? Janis Joplin?
What's the difference?
Yes, McCain is a war
hero and an honorable
public servant. But
emphasizing those
qualities in broad
generational terms—i.e.,
"traditional" values vs.
whatever came
next—doesn't make for
particularly good
politics. It's the "when
I was your age" dilemma.
Besides reminding
America that the senator
belongs to a bygone era,
such a strategy
implicitly belittles
anyone younger than the
candidate himself. And
as McCain knows all too
well, that category
happens to include the
vast majority of voters.
*Adapted from "He's One
of Us Now."
UPDATE, July 18: An
interesting "rebuttal"
of sorts from David
Brooks:
The next few years will
be an age of government
activism. You may think,
therefore, that this
situation is ripe for
Democratic dominance...
Yet, historically,
periods of great
governmental change have
often been periods of
conservative rule. It’s
as if voters understand
that they need big
changes, but they want
those changes planned
and enacted by leaders
who will restrain the
pace of change and
prevent radical
excess... John McCain’s
challenge is to recreate
this model. He will
never get as many cheers
in Germany as Barack
Obama, but for a century
his family has embodied
American heroism. He
will never seem as young
and forward-leaning as
his opponent, but he did
have his values formed
in an age that people
now look back to with
respect... If McCain is
going to win this
election, it will be
because he can
communicate an essential
truth — that people in a
great and successful
nation do not want
change for its own sake.
But they do realize that
it’s only through
careful reform that they
can preserve what they
and their ancestors have
so laboriously built.
