Now that a contentious Congress finally has agreed to raise the federal debt ceiling and avoid a bond default that might have plunged the U.S. and global economies into chaos, we can turn our attention to some other momentous news: President Barack Obama turns 50 on Thursday.
It looked for a while as if the latest baby boomer president (Bill Clinton and his successor George W. Bush, both born in 1946, preceded him) might have to postpone festivities because of a possible fiscal meltdown. But the clinching of a last-second deal has now freed Obama to return to Chicago today for a celebratory gala and concert that will feature jazz musician Herbie Hancock and singer Jennifer Hudson. (There's also a $35,800-a-plate political fundraising dinner before the party.)
Whether or not you support his policies or like him personally, Obama's 50th birthday has a special significance for those of us who, like him, were born in the second half of the baby boom, between 1954 and 1964. As I wrote a while back in this post, those of us who are members of the so-called Gen Jones subgroup grew up in a very different social, economic and political milieu from our older brothers and sisters. By the time we were born and coming of age, the burgeoning prosperity of the 1950s and the optimistic idealism of the 1960s that shaped our older siblings' world view had faded. We came of age in the 1970s and early 1980s, a period of shocks, unease and disillusioning revelations -- from stagflation and gasoline shortages to Watergate -- that tended to make many of us more cynical, pessimistic and wary.
In this
blog post,
Washington Post writer Manuel Roig-Franzia labels Obama and other Gen Jonesers in politics as "Tweeners" and notes that we're a demographic group "fraught with generation-straddling, career-tweaking, life-altering conundrums." Roig-Franzia says that when Washington power players reach their fifties, they often find themselves in an uneasy, precarious situation. Do they press ahead and try to rise to a committee chairmanship or a leadership position? Or do they concentrate not on self-aggrandizement, but rather in actually accomplishing something they can leave behind -- even if it means making compromises, taking a bullet for the team and perhaps never getting full credit for having helped make the world a better place? While we've grown to view elected politicians as some sort of different species, the life dilemma they face may not really be so different from what many of us fiftysomethings are experiencing.
To me, the most frustrating and confusing aspect of being part of Generation Jones has been that America tends to discount us and our experience. We were too young for Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement, but we played a pivotal role in other events that have changed this country and the world. We were the first demographic group to have to cope in large numbers with the pain and dislocation of parents' divorces, and we had to survive the HIV-AIDS epidemic that erupted just as we reached adulthood. It was a Joneser,
Tim Berners-Lee (born in 1955), who invented the World Wide Web, which changed our culture in far more ways than I could begin to detail in this space.
President Obama in many ways exemplifies the experiences, struggles, strengths and shortcomings of me and my fellow Jonesers. He had a confusing youth, in which, like many Jonsers, he grew up amid a marital breakup,
dabbled in drugs and roamed far in search of something meaningful to do with his life. He wore the same unfortunate seventies fashions that we did, and like many of us probably has the bass beat of
Parliament-Funkadelic's "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)" etched into his frontal lobes, though I'm hoping that he could dance to it more adeptly than my high school basketball teammates Larry and Rich did. As an adult, he had to figure out how to plot his own course, learning from the older boomers without blindly following them -- just like we did.
As president, he's coped with some of the same issues that many of us face in our own lives -- trying to keep up with his job responsibilities and still find time to spend with two daughters who are growing up too fast. Like many of us, he's a zealous, regular exerciser who has been reluctant to give up his favorite sport, basketball. He's getting gray a little faster than he would like. (Here's another
Washington Post piece on presidents' tendency to become silver-haired in a hurry.) As
this article from the
Telegraph, a British paper, details, he's struggling a bit to keep his cholesterol levels under control, and to pass on that slice of banana cream pie that inevitably offers comfort each night.
But Obama also has to confront some of the same issues that we Jonesers will face in the near future, if we're not facing them already. We've only got a limited time before Gen X and Y start wanting to take the reins in both government and business. Like many of us, Obama eventually will have to figure out what his second act will be after he leaves the White House. Though he's obviously hoping to be able to defer that epiphany until 2016, sooner or later, he's going to have to deal with that change, just as we must. Fortunately, he's got the first boomer president, Bill Clinton, to look to as a possible template for how to use stature to tackle issues as a social entrepreneur.
This recent
SecondAct slideshow showcases Obama and other giants of entertainment, politics and sports who turn 50 in 2011.
How did you celebrate your 50th birthday? Tell us in the comments section below.
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