McCain, Obama and the Millennial Generation

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 channelled 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 . The message: w

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 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.