The first political powerhouse from the generation following the Boomers

For those who don't know, I use Strauss and Howe's mapping of inflection points in trends to determine the end of the Baby Boomer generation; this puts people born in 1961 or after into the generation that follows. (As with anything else, though, part of culture is self-identification.)

The reason why Obama seems so fresh is that he is.  He grew up, made choices and took risks in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous era, where there hasn't been a dominant culture that hands out roadmaps to buy into.  Even the technological infrastructure of our lives--  energy, the environment, communication -- has been in such profound flux it's a profound challenge these days to think long term and act rapidly.

You can only do that if you have very firm principles AND avoid having judgmental attitudes about how things must be accomplished.

Salon News  writes about Obama's message and decries it as elusive.  He is a man of the times: a fine example of a non-Boomer leader. 

Comments

[Sky]

Can you give us a reference for Strauss & Howe? I used http://scholar.google.com/ (which most people are unaware of) and didn't find anything about inflection points. Hope to be able to read something about their inflection points.

[Jessica Margolin]

It's in Generations, by Strauss and Howe, page 53. http://tinyurl.com/49pxn3 For example, where it looks at "falling SAT scores," and then "Rising SAT scores" between the falling and rising is an inflection point.