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God willing, Donald Trump will be our last baby boomer president. But as a post-midterm nation turns its eyes to 2028, it seems like all the hot presidential prospects—Ossoff, AOC, Talarico, Buttigieg—are millennials. Will we Gen Xers ever get our own president? —Loser
Trump the last boomer president? Clearly you’re forgetting about the unstoppable electoral juggernaut that is Kamala Harris. (This time for sure!)
But seriously, Loser, I’ve got bad news: While it’s true most voters don’t want yet another doddering octogenarian in the White House, the youngest boomers are still in their early 60s. It’s not hard to imagine a Mark Kelly or Mitch Landrieu sneaking in there before the Woodstock generation’s historic run finally ends.
And what a run it’s been! I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but boomers have been hogging the presidency for the last 34 years*. (How out of character for them.) Combine that with millennials’ native fluency in social media and vertical video—political tools that Gen Xers struggle with—and you can see a world where the latchkey generation might get skipped completely.
If so, we can take comfort in the fact that we won’t be the first cohort this has happened to. The Greatest Generation (aka the WWII generation) monopolized the Oval Office continuously from 1961 to 1993. When that stranglehold was finally broken, the presidency went straight to the boomers, completely skipping the intervening Silent Generation (those born between 1928 and 1945). Before that, the age cohort born between 1890 and 1908 (a bracket that overlaps, albeit imperfectly, with what we now call the Lost Generation) also failed to produce any presidents.
So we’re in good company. But notice how it’s every other generation that gets skipped? It’s like there are the big, important generations—Greatest Generation, baby boomers, millennials—interspersed with little crappy generations no one cares about. Even their names denote absence: Lost Generation. Silent Generation. Generation X.
In other words, I’ve got bad news for the next off-generation, Gen Z. Sure, you’re getting attention now—like we did at your age—because you’re young and irresistibly firm-fleshed. But mark my words, by 40 you’ll be invisible. Remember the late 2010s, when millennials and boomers went to war (online, anyway) and “ok boomer” was a thing? Gen X never came up—everyone had forgotten about us, just like our parents used to do when they left us in the car with the windows rolled up and a cigarette burning in the ashtray. Plus ça change...
*Joe Biden isn’t quite a boomer, but he codes that way. He certainly wasn’t repping Gen X.
Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.
