The Baby Boom Is Great at Politics

Describing the Baby Boom’s politics is like the Indian parable of six blind men trying to describe an elephant, except more so. It’s an elephant (and a donkey) trying to describe six blind men. The Baby Boom is politically fractured. You could consult polling data on the subject. But a generation that’s expert at lying to ourselves has no trouble pulling George Gallup’s leg. We were supposed to be very liberal back in the 1960s. But the first thing that happened after the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 was a landslide victory by Richard Nixon.

Today Baby Boomers who are younger or female tend to vote for the Silly Party. Baby Boomers who are older or male tend to vote for the Stupid Party. Then there are the independents, proud of not knowing which is which. The Baby Boomer presidents that we’ve had so far—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama—are spread as far across the political map as you can get without going to Pyongyang.

Given all the liberties we’ve taken, the Baby Boom ought to be libertarian. We should be adhering to the “Clinton Rules.” That is to say, the rules the Clintons exemplified: Mind your own business, and keep your hands to yourself. Hillary, mind your own business. Bill, keep your hands to yourself.

But the libertarian creed of individual dignity, individual liberty and individual responsibility comes with that responsibility kicker. And there’s the Atlas Shrugged doorstop, which got some Baby Boomers all excited and the rest of us wondering who hid the Strunk and White.

What we actually are is antinomians. It’s a theological doctrine. The Baby Boom wasn’t much given to studying theology (except to avoid the draft). But we seem to have figured out this one. Antinomianism is the belief that faith (the Baby Boom has a lot of faith—in itself) and grace (the Baby Boom has been graced with a lot of good things) allows men (and, let us hasten to add, women) to be (according to Webster’s Third International) “freed not only from the Old Testament law of Moses and all forms of legalism but also from all law including the generally accepted standards of morality prevailing in any given culture.” That’s us in a nutshell.

This makes it all the more surprising that Baby Boom politicians have created a welter of legal and regulatory intrusions on private life. There’s NSA. And my kids have to wear hockey helmets to play puff billiards.

But we’re a contradictory generation. And it’s fun to make rules—for other people. Besides, most politicians are Baby Boomers these days. It’s a politician’s job to pass laws. The Baby Boom’s politics may be confusing, but this doesn’t mean we aren’t good at them. We’ve mastered the political skill set with our generation’s enormous powers of BS, using BS in the technical political science sense, meaning “political science.”

Some say the Baby Boom has made American politics polarized. No, 1861—that was polarized. MoveOn.Org? Tea Party? We have game on. We’ve got tremendous depth of bench. The point spread is zero. We came to play. The Baby Boom is great at politics. Other generations are just jealous.