President-X
by Jon on Feb.08, 2008, under Babble, Politics
It has recently occured to me that Barack Obama, being born August 4, 1961, would make history in another way apart from the obvious — he would also be the first president from Generation X.
To me this has a lot of important implications, and I can’t quite wrap my head around all of them them right now. But Sharon Cobb says some things which I think are related.
Certainly our generation’s reputation for cynicism is not unfounded. If Obama can play his part in helping to finally heal these deep wounds in our nation’s psyche that go back forty-plus years, that will be an extraordinary thing. This, I think, is why his message of hope rings true — because we understand how powerful this could be.
But I say this while still bearing in mind Gravel’s words of caution, understanding how dangerous the fall could be. But then, courage is precisely doing that which is dangerous but necessary. Perhaps having the courage to hope is the part our generation must be willing to do for ourselves — and if we can pull that off, the rest is easy.
February 8th, 2008 on 1:38 pm
Erm, I’m a marketer, so I have to disagree with your categorization of Obama as an Xer. People his age are sandwiched between the Boomers and the Xers and generally have their choice as to which they choose to associate with. I’d say Obama is more Boomer than Xer. He was a few days shy of 20 when MTV debuted; in my mind that makes him more like my mom (he’s nine years younger than her) than me (he’s eleven years older than me). Just sayin.’
February 8th, 2008 on 4:23 pm
Well I’m just going by the wikipedia definition which pegged it as starting 1960. You and I of course are closer to the other end of it. Which sort of speaks to the whole definitionless-ness of generation X, half of it has more in common with the boomers and half has more in common with the gen-Yers, and our collective identity is precisely that we don’t have much of a collective identity. Except of course for the cynicism :)