Torch Pass Trilogy

A New Generation of Leaders, One Hopes

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans — born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

—John Kennedy 1961

I have decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.

—Joe Biden, 2024

And so it goes. Kennedy’s was the first great speech I ever heard. Ted Sorensen really knew his man’s rhythm and romance. It was a brief speech: 1366 words. It took him 14 minutes and 1 second to deliver it that freezing noon. It sent me—it sent the best minds of my generation—hurtling into the public square. I wanted to join the Peace Corps; I wish I had. But, as with so many of my generation’s grand plans, that dream curdled into anger over the war in Vietnam, Kennedy’s war.

The generational torch was, eventually, passed to Bill Clinton, who was and is a great speaker about practical things—a great explainer—but never a convincing visionary. He was followed by George W. Bush, who brought us together after 9/11 but also gave us Iraq; Barack Obama, who gave us universal health care; and…Trump. The record is decidedly mixed.

Joe Biden is several years too old to be an official Baby Boomer, but the torch he passed last night was ours. We accomplished a lot of very good things, but we allowed a national sense of attrition to seep in. We were not “tempered by war,” most of us; we were tempted by greed. We set out to overturn too much of “our ancient heritage” and created a rubble of solipsism. We gave the world moral and creative giants like John Lewis and Bob Dylan, and tech geniuses like Steve Jobs, and the gift of gender equity, but also that apotheosis of egomaniacal indiscipline…Trump. We conducted our business during an affluent time; we were not crushed by a Great Depression or World War; we were ignorant of our existential ignorance.

Given the magnitude of the transition, the Democrats handled the torch-passing well. There’s been a lot of quibbling about it. The question of whether Biden’s diminution was covered up will linger. The question of whether the party settled too quickly on Kamala Harris will be resolved in the fullness of time. Joe Biden stayed a bit too long, but aren’t all of us Boomers guilty of that? His car keys were taken, but they’re coming for the keys to our Toyotas and Mercedes, too.

Experience, as Biden said last night, has its advantages. I feel I know more than I ever did, and I remain desperately hungry—more famished than ever—for knowledge. I appreciate great thinkers and their thoughts more deeply than I used to; my love of beautiful prose and poetry is undiminished. But I don’t have the legs I once did; ten years ago, I was still going to Afghanistan, still embedded downrange. In those days—and the decades before them—I would have had to go to Gaza, to see it for myself, to talk to people on both sides before I wrote about it. That lack of first-hand knowledge has made me cautious. So I’ve found this Sane place on the periphery of the debate; I still have some insights and anecdotes to offer, as I hope Joe Biden will as he steps back from the front line.

I’m enjoying the Kamala-BRAT-coconut euphoria, but I don’t expect it will last very long. She did some foolish things when she ran for President in 2020, following the left-wing social media sillies down ratholes, as Politico reported:

They include her support for the Green New Deal, a ban on fracking, the decriminalization of illegal entry by migrants, “starting from scratch” on Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, restoring felon voting rights, adopting mandatory buybacks for some guns, eliminating private health insurance and more.

These are the views, of course, of a Democrat who joined a rush to the left during a presidential primary that looks incredibly ill-advised in retrospect to many in the party — including Harris, we suspect. Some of her former aides admit she was struggling to find footing in a party that, at the time, appeared to be moving sharply left.

The immigration stuff will be difficult to overcome, especially the decriminalization of illegal entry and “starting from scratch” on ICE, which is only a small step away from the fools who wanted to defund it. But she’d best shed it quickly: “Turns out, I was wrong about that, but the President and I have gotten it right—we’ve shut down the border.” That is more than permissible in presidential politics; indeed, a healthy humility sets a contrast with Trump that could be very useful.

There are economic arguments she can make to counteract Trump’s phony tariff mania and Vance’s sappy paean to old refrigerators. As Megan McArrdle wrote today:

In 1966, Sears sold customers a 21-cubic-foot capacity, self-defrosting, side-by-side refrigerator for as little as $545. Today, the store’s cheapest equivalent model is more than $1,000. The bigger difference is that, in 1966, the U.S. median family income was $7,500, while in 2022 it was $97,750. If the price of fridges had held constant as a percentage of family income, that new one would cost more than $7,000.

My hope, as a card-carrying centrist, is that she’ll tell the Democratic Party’s dilettante left some things it doesn’t want to hear. I hope she’ll challenge the brutish teachers unions on school choice. But that she’ll also double-down on other things like mandatory gun buybacks. She should be able to say, “The gun that nearly killed Donald Trump should not be legal. We’ll even pay you to give it back.”

But I really don’t know. The torch has been passed to a new generation, and I’m not part of it. So I’ll sit here in the catbird seat of comfortable pre-senescence and keep a weather eye on what she says and what she does. I assume she’ll disappoint me at times, but I hope she lifts me, too—for those of us who still remember the clarion cadences of January 20, 1961, the desire to feel that distant echo of inspiration still abides.