WASHINGTON -- What is it in the air this spring that is so
familiar? There is a war abroad, and the bien pensants are
agitating feverishly for a pullout. There is a Republican in the
White House, reviled by the bien pensants and under heavy
siege. Former aides to the president are going over to the other
side, as an energetic Democratic majority on Capitol Hill ferrets
out scandals even where there is only faux pas.
Demonstrations against the war are under way, and there is talk of
impeachment from the agitated idealists on the left.
To those of us familiar with the 1960s generation, this is the
late 1960s and early 1970s all over again. In fact, many of the
same dramatis personae who howled against the war and the embattled
White House in the late 1960s are leading the pack again today.
They are forty years older, wider in the midsection and grayer if
not glabrous -- but they are as indignant as they were back in the
good old days when they were wearing bell-bottomed pants,
abstaining from deodorant, and dreaming of the perfect commune --
perhaps one with a genuine Indian mystic seated in his
underpants.
Ah, yes, the Yippies' Jerry Rubin is no longer with them. He
perished after jaywalking across Wilshire Boulevard after becoming
an "entrepreneur." And the Yippies' other co-founder, Abbie
Hoffman, also has had his obituary filed. After years on the lam
for a drug trafficking charge (entrepreneurship fetched him too),
he committed suicide in 1989. Yet other young idealists from the
Summer of Love and the campus demonstrations are among the leading
personages of the "Spring of 2007." The Clintons, Dr. Howard Dean,
al-Gore, and Jean-Francois Kerry, all played their roles in the
late 1960s agitations, and here they are today.
It is surprising to me that so little today is made of the fact
that the dominant figures in the Democratic Party are members of
the 1960s generation. No generation in the 20th century was
celebrated as extravagantly as the 1960s generation. The Clintons,
Dean, Gore, and Kerry were prime specimens of the left-wing of that
generation. On this there is very little dispute. Just the other
day the Washington Post ran a long piece chronicling
Hillary Clinton's work as intellectual acolyte of the radical
left-wing agitator Saul Alinsky. Yet oddly the aforementioned
Democrats' roots in the 1960s generation of pot and protest are
never mentioned. Nor, for that matter, are the Bush White House's
origins in the 1960s conservative youth movement mentioned. George
W. Bush was no college activist in the 1960s, but Karl Rove was. I
remember him. Moreover, most of the conservative ideas of the Bush
Administration were taking shape in the 1960s.
So perhaps it is not surprising that the squabbles of the
"Spring of 2007" are very reminiscent of the squabbles of the late
1960s. The cast of characters is similar. And the 2008 election is
shaping up to be of historic import: one final battle between the
young left of the late 1960s and the decade's young right. It will
be a battle to lay claim to the identity of an entire generation.
Why is this so rarely remarked on? Only two national commentators
whom I know of have mentioned it. The Washington Post's
veteran columnist, David Broder, adumbrated the clash in commenting
on the Bush-Kerry match up of 2004, and Rush Limbaugh noted the
intragenerational rivalry a week or so ago. Given that the 1960s
was such a momentous generation and that the senior positions in
media and academe are populated by 1960s youth, one would expect
more comment on the impending intragenerational faceoff.
Yet these aging 1960s youth in media and academe might dimly
perceive that their side of the generation was a bust. The
intellectual positions they proclaimed are now passe. Socialism and
"alienation" are museum pieces from a bygone era. The Clintons and
their cogenerationists have quietly abjured the values of their
glorious past. They have moved to the right while we 1960s
conservatives remain steadfast to our roots and see free markets
and traditional conceptions of society observed widely. The Clinton
presidential legacy is one of disgrace, and within the Democratic
ranks today's "youth rebellion" is rebelling against the Clintons.
Barack Obama and his supporters believe their time is at hand. As I
say, there is something familiar in the air this spring.
topics:
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Socialism
