Government of the old, by the old, for the old
Silents to the left of me, Boomers to the right
What does Grandma Morrison’s encyclopedia set have in common with nine elections’ worth of presidential candidates?
John F. Kennedy was the president in their formative years.
Now, don’t knock the 1963 World Book Encyclopedia. A woman who didn’t graduate high school kept that set for decades, and if one of her grandchildren ever wins big on “Jeopardy!”, those encyclopedias will have played a big part in it.
To illustrate the other point, when JFK was assassinated:
Joe Biden was a junior in college. John Kerry was a sophomore in college.
Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump were all seniors in high school.
Al Gore, Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton were all juniors in high school.
(Barack Obama was 2 years old, but he was alive at the time.)
Ten of 18 major-party presidential candidate slots from 1992 to 2024 went to six people born in a 21-month period. Throw in Biden and Kerry and it is the equivalent of having 13 of 18 presidential election slots from 2032 to 2064 reserved for those who were in high school or college at the start of the Iraq War. As of Tuesday, it’s official: Here we go again.
From generational revolution to gerontocracy
For decades, the United States has been ruled with the iron fist of the Baby Boomers. The Boomers shouldn’t be painted with too broad a brush — and I happen to be related to some — but let’s look at this numerically.
William Strauss and Neil Howe’s 1991 book Generations: A History of America’s Future claimed to see repeated cycles of personalities and tendencies throughout American history. They set the standard for generational measurements, but were a bit off on their Boomer years (1943-60) compared with the span defined by Pew Research and the U.S. Census Bureau (1946-64). Until Biden, it appeared the pre-Boomer Silent Generation had missed its presidential window.
Strauss and Howe suffered, or perhaps were validated by, an accident of timing. In the two years after their book was published, three major developments happened: The Soviet Union collapsed, the “generation without a name” got one (X, coined by Douglas Coupland, who designated it as such because he couldn’t find one for his book either), and the first Boomer was elected president, at least one cycle ahead of schedule.
Bill Clinton, a Boomer, is our third-youngest president at time of first inauguration. Trump, a Boomer, was the oldest until Biden surpassed him by an eight-year margin (and beat Ronald Reagan’s age at his second inauguration by five years). Biden’s birth date is closer to the start of the Civil War than Election Day 2024.
In Iowa, Terry Branstad, a Boomer who was a high school junior when JFK was assassinated, is the state’s youngest governor ever elected, in 1982 — and the state’s oldest governor ever elected, in 2014.
Boomers made up a majority of the 2021-22 Iowa Legislature and 2021-22 U.S. Congress. Only now has the balance begun to tip; the median birth year in the current U.S. House is 1965 but 1957 in the Senate. Comparatively, based on census estimates, the median-age American on July 1, 2022, was born in August 1983. Of course, a whole lot of the below-median-age cohort is ineligible for office. There are more Silents in the U.S. Senate (including Chuck Grassley) than Millennials.
Social insecurity
In mid-2023, Trump’s super PAC ran ads against Ron DeSantis (someone whose high school photos are so recent they’re in color) hitting him over and over again on votes he cast a decade ago to “cut Social Security” and “raise the retirement age.” For a short time, similar accusations were lobbed at Nikki Haley.
DeSantis’ votes revolve around Paul Ryan’s plan in the early 2010s, which explicitly ruled out any changes in Social Security benefits for anyone born before 1959. This idea, which included the component of gradually changing Medicare into an individual subsidy, went nowhere. Its most lasting impact was a commercial intended to depict Ryan pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair off a cliff.
In 2005, Social Security was forecast to run out of money in 2041, three and a half decades into the future. Bush lost political capital pushing a partial privatization plan.
In 2012, Social Security was forecast to run out of money in 2033, two decades into the future. A bipartisan commission’s report that recommended raising taxes and reducing entitlement spending promptly went splat.
In 2023, Social Security was forecast to run out of money in 2033, one decade into the future. Recently, Trump put the words “entitlement” and “cutting” in the same sentence and the Biden campaign pounced. The backtracking was immediate.
How did a Republican Party that once had its leadership looking into changing Social Security become opposed to doing anything? One factor is that especially in the past 15 years, the Grand Old Party gained an emphasis on OLD. It’s the Party of Boomers, and old people vote.
But the Democratic Party is the Party of Older Than Boomers, where three very recent leadership figures aside from Biden — former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former party whip Steny Hoyer, and second-place 2016 and 2020 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders — are all Silents. There’s a hint of change, as Vice President Kamala Harris is, ever so barely, a Gen-Xer, and so is current House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Although the Boomers continue to cast a great shadow, there is a light out there. There is someone who will be 35 years and five weeks old on Jan. 20, 2025, and 75 years and five weeks old on Jan. 20, 2065 — younger than Biden was in 2021.
There is someone who is familiar with millions hanging on to every word, analyzing every cryptic statement, packing stadiums to see what comes next.
I, Taylor Alison Swift, do solemnly swear...
My other work can be found on my website, Iowa Highway Ends, and its blog.
I am proud to be part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. If you’re interested in commentary by some of Iowa’s best writers, please follow your choice of Collaborative members:
This column will be passed on to every boomer I know. I agree that it is time for all of us to look for the exit ramp. We have done good things over the years, but we have also managed to leave a huge mess for our children and grandchildren to clean up. I believe it is time for us to sit down and be quiet.
Shared this one with everyone I know!