by Michael Liss
Eight years ago, in May of 2018, motivated by a series of discussions with my then-graduating son, I wrote a piece for 3 Quarks Daily titled “The Graduate Schools His Father.”
Then, chaos descended upon the land. Trump, Biden, Trump. Wars, pestilence, theological disputes, DOGE, gigantic icebergs of cash floating away from the mother ship. Economic upheavals, mass firings/ritual sacrifices of entire Departments, even the slaying of the first-born East Wing (it’s being replaced, you might have heard).
Also, Deals, many Deals. So many, you will lose count of them (that’s by design, by the way). Just this past week, the President has concluded his summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. A veritable master class—it may be the greatest set of Deals in the history of Deal-making—a diplomatic coup eclipsing the Congress of Vienna.
Eight years is a long time for a fire-alarm to go off, especially when it is the 24/7 model with the flashing kaleidoscopic lights. Yet, especially if you are a parent, the time goes by in an instant, and suddenly they are adults.
I decided to revisit what I had written in May of 2018 and what he had said. How much did the world change in eight years, and how did the country react to it? I armed myself with numbers from a recent CNN-SSRS poll that contained current results along with historical data.
To start with, in what world were we living, in May of 2018? Trump had been in office for 14 months, had (mostly) filled his Cabinet with competent people and was (mostly) focused on taxes and trade deals. Paul Ryan was Speaker of the House. Justice Kennedy, a moderate conservative institutionalist, was still on the Court, as was Ruth Bader Ginsberg. It’s not a centrist paradise, but the pulling up, root and branch, of so many ideas, programs, policies, precedents, institutions, careers, and even buildings, hadn’t yet occurred, nor had January 6th, nor Trump’s Impeachment trials.
What did the voters think? The SRRS survey done in May of 2018 gave Trump a 42% approval rating, with 53% disapproving. His “under-the-hood” numbers were interesting, perhaps reflecting his mixed performance and the fragmented reaction of the public to him. On the economy, Trump’s then-signature selling point, he was doing pretty well, 52%-42%. On Immigration, he was not, with an approval rating of 40%-55%. On Foreign Affairs, 42%-51%. These were mediocre numbers that could have cost (and did cost, a few months later) in the Midterms, but they weren’t existentially fatal to a Presidency or to his chances of getting reelected.
A lukewarm evaluation in the aggregate. What surprised me (and it was a reflection of my own insular thinking) was just how much age could impact perspective,
My last three Presidents before Trump represented a country that had moved away from electing Greatest Generation candidates toward selecting younger ones. Bill Clinton was 46 when elected, George W. Bush 54, Barack Obama 47. Dubya and Bill were early Boomers, Obama a late one. In office, the three men projected youth and vigor—and they didn’t look like someone’s grandpa showing up at a Little League game complaining about the umpire.
Donald Trump was 70 when first elected, Joe Biden 78. Anyone who tells you that 70 (or 78) is the new 46, 47, or even 54 is deluding themselves. Capacity is not the same, outlook is not the same, and the ability to be both aware of and empathetic to a younger generation’s needs, hopes, and aspirations are not the same.
That’s the world my son’s cohort saw in May of 2018: Boomer dominated, being run by an old man, and with a limited world view that centered on taking care of higher-priority needs (“Boomer Needs”) when younger people had lives to build.
Here was their basic argument: first, if we Boomers were going to retain power, we should lead, instead of just bickering. Talk less, pick big-ticket issues, and take a swing at them, because what we couldn’t or wouldn’t get done, his generation would have to resolve. This was especially true with multigenerational challenges like the deficit, Social Security and Medicare, and Climate Change. It also applied to America’s place in the world: do we care enough about democratic and humanitarian values to intercede when they may be threatened? When should we express military power? How much of the common defense should we be providing to our allies? Is Isolationism wise? Long-range thinking.
Second, pay attention to the economy, it drives everything. His cohort needed good jobs, in which they could take pride, earn decent livings, have prospects for building careers. As he put it then, the private sector would need to do that: “the role of government should be less mandate and direct payment, and more convene and incentivize.”
Those were his initial comments—nothing about social issues, so I had gone back to him. Didn’t he want Boomers to resolve some of those divisive social issues? Got a blunt response: guns, gays, abortion, the role of religion, would ultimately have to be decided by his generation by applying their values, and not those of my generation.
It’s been eight years since those conversations, and it still surprises me how easily a crystal ball can go awry—to paraphrase Monty Python, “no one expected the Spanish Inquisition.” This is a story about Trump and Biden—in the eight-year period between this essay and the first one, we lived through almost the exact same amount of time under each. It’s about how two old men demonstrated two very different types of late-stage Boomer leadership, and how, between them, they devalued civic life and a way of thinking that had been both more communitarian and more productive.
Let’s get something out of the way. Trump was elected in 2016 not just because a series of improbable things occurred, but also because he skillfully exploited real issues that moved a critical group of voters to try something new. These folks asked a simple question that was very much like the one my son’s cohort was asking: “what will the future be like for me?” Enough of them decided that the status quo wasn’t working for them. They wanted a disruptor, and, shock of shocks, Trump became President.
And then, after four years of disruption, and COVID-19, they grew disillusioned, and, through a series of even more improbable occurrences, washed-up Old Joe Biden got called out of retirement and elevated to his life-long dream job.
Biden was a problematic choice—cloaking his candidacy in old-fashioned values, but not fully answering the needs of those who had sought disruption in the first place. Trump had won in 2016 by drawing an Electoral College inside straight—just enough votes in just enough states. Biden basically replicated Trump’s accomplishment—his appeal to nostalgia, coupled with Trump’s excesses was, again, just enough.
Biden misunderstood the moment (a lot of people misunderstood the moment). The country was searching for something calmer, but, once calm was achieved, it wanted real progress. Could Joe deliver? As we learned, while there were still things he could do, the skills on which he had built his career had not only rusted, but also moved toward obsolescence.
You couldn’t really blame him. He started as a wunderkind—elected to the Senate in 1972 at the age of 29, he initially served with many people two generations older. More than 70% of the House and Senate were veterans. One, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, was a veteran of World War I. At age 14, he had apparently forged his father’s signature to enlist in the Navy.
Congresses dominated by Greatest Generation members got things done, and the newly minted Senator Biden found his peers were practical men who built things, knew how to overcome obstacles, and, in part through common service, knew how to work together when they wanted to. Biden might have admired many of his Greatest Generation colleagues, but he could never really be one of them. He became a career pol and perennial (failed) Presidential candidate. As Obama’s Veep, he pressed the flesh, he backslapped and brokered deals with Mitch McConnell and an increasingly fractious GOP House contingent. When Obama’s term ended, Joe (finally) went home.
My conversation with my son was in 2018, with Trump in the White House and Biden in post-Obama book-writing-speech-making retirement. The back-office process that made Biden the 2020 Democratic nominee had not yet begun—Democrats were looking at a younger, more vital field. When those aspirants failed to catch fire, the party elders (literally, as well as figuratively) took Biden by the hand and led him to the front of the line. It was a focus on defeating Trump, not a longer-term strategy. Joe won with a promise of a return to the status quo. The problem was that the status quo no longer fully existed—the left-behind voters would remain outsiders, and the big-ticket issues that bedeviled my son’s Millennial cohort saw little being accomplished on their behalf. They were always an afterthought. Blame it on toxic, unrelenting partisanship if you want, but it’s also a failure of vision and leadership. This might have mattered less if Biden had walked off the stage, casting his Presidency as a one-term stabilizing transition to a new generation of Democrats with new ideas. He didn’t. I don’t need to replay the embarrassing hand-off to Harris other than to say, again, if I were a 20- or 30-something, I would have been asking, “what about my wants and needs, what about my future?”
But still, Trump. How could Trump (and Trump’s policies) be the answer after his first four years? How could he be the answer in 2024 after January 6th?
Dick Cheney once said something to the effect that environmentalism was a “private virtue.” Some of that applies here. Yes, traditional American values, “Founders’ Values,” matter to a lot of people. A free society matters to a lot of people. The Rule of Law matters to a lot of people. Of course, what those things actually mean is up for argument—I read from the same political “Bible” as do the folks at Project 2025, but don’t draw the same inferences. In any event, to my way of thinking, basic principles should occupy the highest rung, but that’s to my way of thinking.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, in a transactional world where one may reasonably act in one’s self-interest (even if it’s not in the public’s self-interest), political values are not universal values. Maybe they are private virtues, something I can afford to have, but many others cannot.
If I were 20-something, out of school, looking for a rung to start building a meaningful career, or 30-something, with a young family, either newly part of senior management or needing to make a sidestep because my way is blocked or my job made obsolescent, would I still feel the same way?
Let me ask the question differently. Where’s the Boomers’ vision besides working for their own comfort? Yes, I’ve heard that there’s a huge intergenerational wealth transfer coming, but what about the present, when futures are being built? Especially now, when AI is transforming the very idea of who is employable at what job and what rate of pay? With jobs go household budgets, and affordability. This concept, mocked by certain politicians and media figures, feels not mockable, but very real to the average person.
The non-Boomer public knows it. Let’s go back to the SSRS survey for a moment. Trump’s overall approval rating has dropped to 35%-65%. In the 18-34 cohort, it’s an unfathomable 23%-77%. His rating on the economy is 30%-70% overall (19%-81% in the 18-34 cohort). On immigration, it’s 41%-59% (29%-71% in the 18-34 cohort). On foreign affairs, it’s 31%-69% (18%-82% in the 18-34 cohort). On “helping the middle class,” it’s 33%-67% (23%-77% in the 18-34 cohort). On taxes, it’s 37%-62% (24%-75% in the 18-34 cohort). On inflation, it’s 30%-70% (17%-83% in the 18-34 cohort). On the price of gas, it’s 21%-79% (13%-87% in the 18-34 cohort).
Had enough? Last two:
1. Does the economic system unfairly favor the powerful interests or is it generally fair? 75% unfair, 24% fair. Among 18-34-year-olds, 81% unfair 19% fair.
2. Do you think Trump’s policies have improved economic conditions, worsened them, or had no effect? Improved 22%, Worsened 65%, No Effect 12%. Among those 18-34, a ghastly Improved 15%, Worsened 73%, No Effect 12%.
And one more datapoint: In every single question, the 65+ cohort approves of Trump’s performance at roughly twice the rate of the 18-29 cohort.
We can blame Trump for this, but what this survey also tells us is that there has been a generational failure. We Boomers (and it is still “we” regardless of who is President) need to do a lot better for the generations that follow us. We can’t let today’s group of graduates slip into underemployment and the lassitude that is a consequence of being undervalued. The early-career cohort of eight years ago is no longer lowest on the totem pole. Many have become senior professionals in their own right. They need room to rise more, as do people in their 40’s and 50’s. The role of the Boomers needs to adapt to facilitate that. We can excel at mentoring younger people, providing expertise, and institutional knowledge without clinging to every bit of power. And we can go big—if we Boomers really want to take on challenges, try a big one in which we have a direct interest, like shoring up Social Security. There is no reason we should ever accept being so much more satisfied than our children and grandchildren simply because the system we created gets us more.
We’ve had it good, and now is the time to pay it forward. No honest person can credibly say that social and economic circumstances are easier now than they were eight years ago, or even that the folks in power then took the needs of people under 45 seriously. It ought to be our pledge that the future for them will be better than the past.
The Greatest Generation built lives that were platforms for their children. We took the advantages given to us without calculating the cost to others. That bill is coming due.
Happened on our watch, Boomers. Continues to happen on our watch. Time to start thinking about tomorrow
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