Also, I just don’t buy the “Obama is a pragmatist” argument. Clinton, W, Gingrich and Gore were all much more pramatic than Zero. Clinton’s signature acheivement as President was welfare reform. W’s was the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Neither of those are remotely in line with their party’s generic ideological position. The core of Gingrich’s Contract with America- tax cuts, wefare reform, line-item veto, etc, passed under the veto-power of a Democratic President. This was possible because both Gingrich and Clinton recognized the limits of ideology. Again, Nixon provides a good counter-example, because he was an authentic pragmatist. If Nixon believed that the United States needed a univeral health care system (which he did), a cap-and-trade law, and a vast expansion of federal government authority, would he push all of those into one budget? When he wanted to restore American influence abroad (a major problem that he faced), did he begin by traveling around the world denouncing his people and his predecessors? He approached the problem pragmatically, he utilized his speeches to restore American confidence while working behind the scenes to restore old relationships and establish new ones. He only risked America’s reputation to further American interests, and only then when the agreement was met. Is that what Obama is doing? Or is he behaving, in the manner of his ideological predecessors Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush?

Sorry, I was intending to respond in greater detail, but I’ve run out of time! I’ll put up a post in a few days on the boomer Presidentsm I’d like to hear what you think!

The sociologists arguing for the existence of GJ are certainly not arguing that Jonesers are generally left of center. Actually, the opposite is well-established. GJ is by far the most GOP-voting of the 5 current U.S. generations; polling data from the last several elections show this unequivocally. Discussions of GJ’s political leanings typically focus on how strikingly Republican Jonesers are.

Boomers and Jonesers had dramatically different formative experiences. Think, for example, of how different their coming-of-age decades were: Boomers came of age in the 60s, an extremely idealistic era, while Jonesers came of age in the 70s, an extremely cynical era–the opposite of the 60s. The big differences between these cohorts is reflected in mountains of data. For example, look at them politically…Boomers are typically the most Dem-voting gen, while Jonesers are the most-GOP voting gen. How could it possibly make sense to lump together the two opposite-voting gens together as if they are one gen, purely because they happened to be born during a period of high birth rates?

Of course Obama is pragmatic. Just because he can also be ideological doesn’t change the fact that he has so far shown himself to be far more pragmatic than Boomer leaders like Clinton, George W, Gingrich, Gore et al. And including him in GJ isn’t a matter of “spin”, it’s a simple matter of his birth year–1961–falling within the 1954-1965 GJ birth years…birth years which were established for GJ way before Obama ever entered the national scene.

My reason for lumping these groups together in a long generation is that the societal expectations of children born from 1943-1965 are basically identical- perpetual growth, involved parents, great opportunity, disposable income, homeownership, etc. T

Of course, the most preposterous aspect of the argument is that Barack Obama is a “non-ideological pragmatist.” What, exactly, is Obama’s budget plan if not ideological? Is cap-and-trade not ideological? Is the assumption that increasing tax rates on the rich and direct government welfare to the poor will result in high rates of economic growth supportable at all in non-ideological terms? Is there any historical example that Obama can point to that indicates that this works? That is not pragmatism, it is pure ideology. Obama the pragamtist would have pursued tax cuts and incrementalism. Obama the ideologue would “not waste a crisis.” Is there any doubt as to which the real man is pursuing.

Labeling Obama as a representative of “Generation Jones” is nothing more than spin. It is an effort to portray a group of people as something they are not (supporters of 60’s new left radicalism) and to portrey President of that cohort as something he is not (a pragmatist).

PS- Thanks for visiting- I’m not trying to attack you personally, but the scholars who are pushing this idea.

You know, you don’t have to be a sociologist to realize that Obama, well…he’s really not a Boomer, and he’s not really an Xer. It’s kind of obvious that he is in-between those two generations.

It is important to distinguish between the post-WWII demographic boom in births vs. the cultural generations born during that era. Generations are a function of the common formative experiences of its members, not the fertility rates of its parents. Many experts now believe it breaks down this way:

DEMOGRAPHIC boom in babies: 1946-1964
Baby Boom GENERATION: 1942-1953
Generation Jones: 1954-1965
Generation X: 1966-1979

Here is a recent op-ed about Obama as the first GenJones President in USA TODAY:
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20090127/column27_st.art.htm

And here is a recent interview with the guy who coined the term “Generation Jones”:

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