Moving On
Why Ted Kennedy's death resonates more with baby boomers than other generations.
With the death of Ted Kennedy, let the word go forth: the summer of '09 has become the bookend to 1969. In a biblically appropriate 40 years, the baby-boom generation has gone from making history to being it.
I hear that the mainstream-media mania over the passing of the Last Great Kennedy isn't generating commensurate traffic on the Internet. Since I cover politics every day, I'm not surprised. To young America, the Kennedys are heroes of their parents', if not their grandparents', generation. The millennials have their own fixed star, and his name is President Barack Obama.
In 2008, don't forget, Obama won the votes of 18- to 29-year-olds by an astonishing margin of 66 to 32 percent, the largest split in any age group since exit polling began in the early 1970s. Boomers were statistically ambivalent, splitting 49-49. The generation that came was coming of age in the summer of 1969 is now drifting out on an ice floe of history, listening as it goes to loud echoes of long ago. In the summer of 1969, a half million of them gathered at Woodstock; this year the oldest of the boomers became eligible for Social Security. Director Ang Lee is out with a new movie called Taking Woodstock. He's advertising it with a tongue-in-check tag line—"based on a true story"—as if no one alive would either remember or believe it.
Forty years ago a generation that had been reared on the space race (and fear of the Soviets' winning it) were riveted to their televisions as Walter Cronkite described the first landing on the moon. As if on cue, "Uncle Walter" passed away in July. And 40 years ago this summer, Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick—a scandal/tragedy that galvanized the nation. It was treated like the abdication of the King of England. Forty years on, there is grief in some quarters at the death of this last of a political dynasty, but either puzzlement or shrugs in most of the country.
In America, history is not "bunk," as the cold and cunning Henry Ford claimed, but it doesn't define or control us, either. And that is a good thing. We are about remaking the world, and our country, anew with each generation. We are unique among nations in believing that this is possible—indeed, necessary. The Kennedys in their own youth were utterly ruthless and unsentimental about sweeping away the ossified leadership of elders. America is not, and never has been, a nation run by seniors, Ronald Reagan excepted.
I knew Ted Kennedy, heard him sing "My Wild Irish Rose" and laugh that bursting, boisterous laugh. He applauded the ambition of youth, in his own family and in people of every ethnicity, race, religion, and region. He never spent much time looking back, or poring over the obits.
Kids don't, and if the boomers know what's good for them, they won't, either.
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Howard Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and Columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. He is the author of "Living Politics," a column that began on MSNBC.COM and Newsweek.com and that now also appears in the print magazine. An award-winning reporter and writer, Fineman also is an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "TODAY." The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has appeared as well in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His 2008 national best-selling book, "The Thirteen American Arguments," was released in paperback by Random House in the spring of 2009.
One of the nation's leading political reporters, Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate from (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush in 1985 to (then senator) Barack Obama early and often in the 2008 campaign cycle. His current work focuses on the Obama Administration and its top officials, as well as on Congress and politics throughout the country. Although based in Washington, Fineman travels widely in the U.S. and has covered politics and other events in 49 of the 50 states.
Fineman's work has produced many milestones and awards. A cover story in November 2001 featured President George W. Bush's first extensive interview after 9/11. Another cover, "Bush and God," was part of a series of articles that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His reporting has helped Newsweek win many honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Other awards include a "Page One" from the Headliners Club of New York, a "Silver Gavel" from the American Bar Association and a "Deadline Club" from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). In 2006 he received the Alumni Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year covers, other projects have included: race and politics, the impact of digital technology on society, the influence of Hollywood on politics, the rise of the religious right and of conservative talk radio. He has interviewed business leaders such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Case and Robert Rubin and entertainment figures such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Jay Leno.
Although now under exclusive television contract to NBC, Fineman over the years has appeared on major public affairs shows, such as Nightline, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose and the NewsHour. He was a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review on PBS (1983-95) and on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98). He worked with Ted Koppel on Nightline specials, and has been a guest on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his career at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper's Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993, senior editor in 1995 and senior Washington correspondent and columnist in 2008.
Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year as a visiting student at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pultizer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and has traveled to more than 40 countries, among them China, Vietnam, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey and the West Bank Palestinian Territories.
Fineman is married to Amy L. Nathan, a senior counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. They live in Washington with their two children, Meredith and Nicholas.
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