I remember reading articles like this Sam Tanenhaus piece early in the 1996 election cycle, talking about how Richard Lugar was giving people born in the 1930s a chance to elect a president from their own decade. Alas, it was not meant to be, either for Lugar or for the ’30s, although Pat Buchanan finished second in the Republican primaries that year and was born in 1938 (though I don’t remember him ever being the subject of these articles).

John McCain would probably prefer that people didn’t spend a lot of time talking about how he was born in the 1930s and came of age in the 1950s. But if people are going to talk about it, he could do worse than the points Tanenhaus makes about people of McCain’s generation. Especially if people see McCain as James Dean rather than Organization Man, although the Arizona senator probably is a little bit of both.