A few weeks ago, an editor from the Washington Post got in touch and reminded me, sadly, that three American Presidents would turn 80 this summer and, not coincidentally, that I would too. The piece appeared on June 14, Trump’s birthday and here it is with a few slight changes…and a question for Sanity Clause readers at the end:
The winter holidays of 1945-46 must have been a jolly time for the Greatest Generation. Many of them had just come home from the war and were reunited with honeys who had been waiting, hoping, delaying. A song from the era went, “Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me … till I come marching home.” It was apple-picking time. Spiked eggnog and pheromones were in the air. Fecundity was inevitable.
Three American presidents were conceived around that time. They were born the following summer: Donald Trump on June 14 (technically late spring but well past Memorial Day), George W. Bush on July 6, Bill Clinton on Aug. 19. (I, barely a footnote, came along on Sept. 7.) We were the advance guard of the baby boom.
It was a relatively quiet summer, except for all those new babies. Winston Churchill had already announced the next struggle — “an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent” — but that seemed a blip on the horizon. Colonies were becoming countries. The United States recognized the Philippines’ independence. Jewish terrorists bombed the British headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem; Gandhi marched in India. The maps hanging in American schoolrooms — with vast pink swatches denoting British colonies and green for the French — were about to become obsolete. The sun was setting on those empires.
But the most important thing about the summer of 1946 was peace. It was, in fact, the beginning of the Great American Binge. What followed was amazing: Over the next 20 years, our parents’ generation succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, with even relative failures among them landing in the suburbs, in tract houses that they owned (that the government helped pay for). There was never a time like it, TV and frozen TV dinners and Little League. I was among the first to test the polio vaccine. It worked! And it presaged the end of the plague era, one of the great triumphs of our time.
The generation — we — who grew up in unprecedented prosperity and safety would become notorious in our own minds. We certainly talked, wrote and sang a lot about ourselves. Clinton, Bush and Trump would be our presidents (Barack Obama, too, technically, but not really; Joe Biden was a few years too old to count, officially). And, because of our demographic heft, there would be an arrogance to us. Marketers would target us; they still do. All those pharmaceutical ads clotting the news programs are about us.
Above all, there was a freedom born from the absence of threat. The children of affluence would rebel, and then rebel against rebelling, and grow prosperous. They would be liberated by low prices and the birth control pill; they would excel at entertaining themselves — and the rest of the world. “Your generation taught us a lot about food,” said my mother, who never got over the Great Depression and was eternally amazed by the array at the supermarket. (Trump’s father built one of the first supermarkets within New York City’s limits.)
Along the way, we would shepherd some of the greatest human rights advances in history — toward greater equality for Black people, for women, for gays. We would become aware of the environment. Blue skies adorned formerly smoky cities; the river in Cleveland no longer caught fire. A new medical or technological marvel seemed to change our lives every week. We pretty much stopped smoking cigarettes; some of us started smoking marijuana. Seat belts were fastened.
But what more can be said about them — us — now that we approach the last, inescapable hurdles?
The three presidents who first opened their eyes during the summer of 1946, who graduated college in the hectic spring of 1968, are extremely different men. They have little in common. Bush is old money, reinventing itself in Texas; Trump is new money, living in Queens — where I was born — and pining for Manhattan. Clinton never knew his father; his stepfather was an auto salesman in the naughty town of Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Their moms were formidable keepers of the hearth (and, in Clinton’s case, bettor on the ponies). Their fathers were more problematic. They were harder to match.
George H.W. Bush was a war hero and, by all accounts, a lovely man — difficult to rebel against, though W. tried hard, at a time and in a class where a smidgen of rebellion was deemed necessary. Fred Trump had apparently been arrested at a Klan rally — in Queens — as a young man and had been investigated for profiteering in the housing market during World War II. But he escaped punishment in both cases, a lesson his son clearly learned about the slippery limits of the law. Clinton’s stepfather beat his mother; Clinton once broke down the bedroom door to protect her when he was a teenager. And yet he took the man’s last name. Absent a steady dad, he grew up flagrantly eager to please.
All three men indulged in the indulgences of the era. Clinton and Trump, famously so, with women, though both were, more or less, teetotalers. (Clinton, I believe, really didn’t inhale.) Bush reformed himself, finding religion after a period of excess, his subsequent discretion impressive. And all three avoided service in their generation’s war, Vietnam — a war of choice that could have been undertaken only by a prosperous nation. (I avoided service as well.) The lack of service, sacrifice and discipline may be the thing Trump, Bush and Clinton have most in common.
And what now? We boomers are pretty much done politically. I suspect the next turn will be a “kinder, gentler” Trumpism. The country hasn’t yet assimilated our immigrants — or caught up to the human rights advances that defined our generation.
We exit, less mature than we should have been, less responsible than our parents were. In some ways, we’re a flashy act to follow; in others, a historic disappointment, leaving our children a world less secure than the one our parents enjoyed as the New Year dawned in 1946.
So, I’m thinking: What will a kinder, gentler Trumpism look like? That will be the subject of a future essay. Is it even possible? Trumpism without Trump might have been a real triumph—no Iran war, no ICE raids. no thugs at FBI, Defense or DHS, no Bobby Kennedy, no vengeance, no gleeful evil….Where would we be now?
One possible answer: Keep an eye on J.D. Vance. He’s let it be known that he was (a) absolutely, positively and completely against the Iran war and (b) that he wanted the entire Epstein Files released, even the nipple stuff. And, once again, watch his debate against Tim Walz. He will want to run as THAT guy in 2028
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This is a really well-written piece. Congratulations to Mr. Klein for writing it and for his refreshing perspective on the events of our strange times.
For me, there are far more differences within any generation than between any two generations of the same general era.
Clinton was a wholly self-made man, brilliant, exceptionally well-informed, and able to explain complicated topics in a way that everyone could understand. He also had wit. Yes, he had personal weaknesses, but they did not affect his work until his political adversaries exploited them against him ruthlessly for their own political gain. Ken Starr will live in infamy as a prurient, wicked, overzealous prosecutor, bent on inflicting public disgrace upon our country's President.
Since then, woke progressives have drawn from the same playbook to harm their own preferred targets.
George W. Bush was likely a decent, good-natured, and hearty man, but he allowed his disdain (hatred?) of Hussein to overwhelm his better judgment. I did not vote for him, but I rallied to him right after September 11, 2001. His immediate response to that event was inspired and radiated dignified strength. I never understood his Administration's subsequent rush to bring a war against Hussein, who at the time was a sitting-duck tyrant and demonstrably had no connection to Al Queda, nor any ability or intent to harm the US. That much I understood back then, as did many others.
That war undermined G.W. Bush's Presidency and diminished Mr. Bush personally. Since then, he has shown a strong character and made good sense when he has spoken from time to time. Putin never would have marched on Ukraine, nor Netanyahu against all of Israel's neighbors, if our country had a President like G.W. Bush to prevent them by acts, not words or threats. (PS: Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, who is a moderate, Jewish economist, recently wrote that the US and Israel have emerged as "rogue states." The most fanatical, irrational enemies of Israel never did so much harm to that country as has Mr. Netanyahu. If Israel had used targeted, proportional tactics against Hamas and others who attacked it, the world would have supported it. Instead, Mr. Netanyahu came along and succeeded at transforming Israel into a pariah state directly after it suffered the worst atrocity in its history. It takes a special kind of talent to be such a ruinously poor, immoral leader.)
Donald Trump is refreshingly candid, but hopelessly ignorant and fading fast during his dotage. Above all, he is a glutton for power and riches, who apparently cannot be sated. But he seems to grasp when he has gone too far and has an admirable ability to reverse course without batting an eye, as he appears to have done with ICE, the slush fund for his cronies, and now the utterly misguided war against Iran. If that is TACO politics, it is better than staying the course when the course is ruinous.
I, for one, do not want a nicer version of Trump's politics, nor wish to have JD Vance serve as President, no matter how impressive he might have seemed on past occasion.
Instead, I would prefer an American version of Peter Magyar, who recently defeated the autocrat Victor Orban in Hungary: emphatically and openly, Prime Minister Magyar is not woke, and he is resolved to restore rule of law, the balance of powers, an independent judiciary, and the essential civil liberties. He also favors free trade, free markets, and closer integration of Hungary with a reformed EU that chooses which immigrants to admit according to their ability to contribute to its various economies. I want someone with that mindset to serve as our chief executive, and I want a bipartisan congress or a blocked one that, if nothing else, re-asserts Congress's preeminent role in our constitutional republic.
I do not want any one man, President or otherwise, declaring and starting wars or threatening them in every direction without public support, sufficient cause, or Congress's informed consent and approval. That is a core part of Congress's duties, not a Presidential prerogative. May Mike Johnson, John Thune, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries likewise be remembered as stammering cowards who lacked mettle or good sense during a time of constitutional crisis.
Nor do I want what the Democrats seem to be offering: some offer poll-tested fluff, and others dangerous populist nonsense, such as unreasonably hindering the development of AI, scapegoating "the rich" and taxing them punitively while continuing to subvert our schools and universities with a pernicious, idiotic ideology. In the bargain, they exude an infuriating Puritanical disdain for those who oppose their nonsense.
Lastly, our modern Democrats have a remarkable talent for sounding the wrong notes at the worst time, such as proposing (passing?) a law in New York State that obliges laws and regulations to be re-written to replace the terms "father" and "mother" with "gestating people" and "non-gestating people." Those kinds of laws are noxious and augur horrible policies and choices. Nor could those proposing them possibly be more tone-deaf to most people pretty much everywhere in the world. What is wrong with them?
If I must choose between Democrats or Trumpists, I will vote only to check them both.
I still believe that most Americans yearn to have opportunities to succeed by their work and talents. Alas, our system of gerrymandering and campaign contributions has yielded us mediocre crackpots of the worst variety. What kind of country offers these kinds of politicians to its people as their only meaningful choices?
Maybe Progressive puritans and ruthless Republican operatives like Ken Starr have chased away all talented people from seeking or holding public office. If Al Franken can be run out of the Senate for a mirthful joke taken in a photo, then Lord help us recruit the best and brightest to apply their talents to public offices.
Even so, America and the world will continue on. Let's hope our various "leaders" do not ruin us all.
Both parties face the challenge of how to properly corral the dynamics of resentment and fear. The Democrats have their obsessions about climate (legit, to be sure), Gaza and equity, the Republicans continue to hate everyone except their core tribe. Everyone is nervous about AI and social media and the war between the sexes and this growing miasma of pessimism. Myself, I blame the decline of magazines.
For the Democrats, the key is to slowly let go of their obsession with identity, becoming the kind of broad based coalition they were in the '70s when Democrats could credibly represent people in Oklahoma, Mississippi, Nebraska, the Dakotas and the hills of Pennsylvania. The easy thing is to convince people that Trump doesn't care about them; the harder challenge is to convince them that the other party does. I think the party has made some encouraging steps toward moderating in places like Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and, yes, Virginia - the question remains whether the Big Blue mayors that the media is so determined to turn into rock stars will undermine the brand to such an extent that the Slotkins and Spanburgers of the country cannot get lift off.
The Republicans face a much bigger challenge: they have embraced so much corruption, cruelty and lawlessness -not to mention economic insanity- that they are going to have to have their butts handed to them in numerous election cycles before they begin to rebuild a party that can embrace the likes of Adam Kinzinger and the Bulwark crowd. In this, as in so many things, their great salvation will likely be some other dumb idea generated by the leftist intelligentsia that will be embraced by the elite and rejected by the masses. The problem for the Republicans is they have all the preachers, the problem for the Democrats is they have most of the academics.
As for our generation, the story is still not over. We can still play a role in explaining to the younger generation that they need to be more tolerant, by voting enthusiastically against this emerging generation of abrasive voices (looking at you, Jamaal Bowman), finding and electing leaders who are, well, sane. Like Barney Frank, I hope we can stay in the mix and speaking truth until we, too, are informed "the gentlemens' time has expired."