Upset by political gridlock? Blame the baby boomers
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — At some moment this year a U. S. baby boomer will die and, if census forecasts are right, the generation born between 1946 and 1964 will no longer be the nation’s largest.
Won’t matter. Years after their millennial descendants overtake them in numbers, aging boomers probably will be setting America’s course and, many contend, building a legacy as the generation too divided to move government forward.
Sorry, Beatles: We can’t work it out.
In poll research and punditry, boomers who chose politics are taking heat for being in charge during an era of incivility and Washington gridlock. In Congress, where the last World War II veteran retired in January, nearly two- thirds of lawmakers hail from the postwar population boom and came of age in the unrest of the 1960s and ’70s.
A recent report out of the Brookings Institution notes: “The primary political output of the divided boomers has been frustrating gridlock and historically low evaluations of congressional performance.”
What happened to the peace symbols and smiley faces? Today, demographers and survey takers are drafting a not-so-communal narrative of a generation that they say has been split on key issues for decades, leading now to policy standoffs that may continue for several years.
“Any generation that’s in charge will always get the blame, or the credit, for the state of affairs,” said boomer Matt Thornhill, founder of a for- profit market research initiative called Generations Matter.
“But the evidence is stacked up high against the boomers, at least when it comes to the world of divisive politics.”
Experts tie the divisions to seminal political and cultural clashes during the boomers’ early adulthood, when people tend to form a lifelong set of beliefs.
To name a few: the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War protests, the 1970 shootings at Kent State University, Watergate, changes in gender roles and, for younger boomers, the Reagan Revolution.
Past characterizations of the boomers — painted with a broad and overly psychedelic brush, researchers say — tended to pit them against older Americans, not so much against each other.
“Remember, baby boomers were on both sides of the guns at Kent State,” where four students died when National Guardsmen opened fire during a protest, said generation tracker Mike Hais. He co-wrote the report for Brookings with University of Southern California communications professor Morley Winograd.
“Idealist generations” and the dysfunction they can wreak occur in cycles, said Hais, 72.
To thinkers such as him and Winograd, all of U.S. history has pitched and bobbed on generational waves that direct the nation’s destiny.
A cottage industry of generational tracking counts no fewer than 19 distinct age groups dating back to the 16th century. Each has its own name and every four or five become as deeply divided as analysts say boomers are today. The “transcendental” generation, for example, rose to political dominance before the Civil War, debating slavery.
Still, scholars quibble on exactly which birth years a generation begins and ends.
The Pew Research Center in January reported that boomers soon will become the second largest among America’s living generations, their crown passed to millennials. The Gen Xers — those late-30- and 40-somethings in between — just lacked the numbers, though their presence in Washington is growing.
Pew identified millennials as ages 18 to 34, numbering about 75 million, and boomers from 51 to 69, numbering just a hair more and including President Barack Obama, 53.