Barone's Hypocrisy

» RCP: Leaving Boomer Conflicts Behind (Michael Barone)

Try containing your laughter ...

For the past 15 years, our politics has been a civil war between two halves of the baby boom generation (generally taken to include those born between 1946 and 1964). We have had two presidents who were born in 1946 and graduated from high school in the class of 1964, which had the highest test scores in history.

Both those presidents happened to have personal characteristics that people on the opposite sides of the culture war absolutely loathe. We first saw the acrimony of the boomer civil war in the 1992 vice presidential debate between Dan Quayle (born 1947) and Al Gore (born 1948). We see it in the hate-filled reactions to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. And we are tired of it. Most voters would like to move on to something new.

Sorry Michael. I was too busy trying to see through the thinly-veiled contempt of Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future.

I believe Ed Kilgore (typically) put it best in reviewing his 2006 Almanac...

What really stands out in Barone's essay is an indifference to actual issues and objective reality, especially as they might bear on the Republican Party's future. He devotes a whole section to an argument that Democrats are deeply split between those who accept "American exceptionalism" in foreign policy, as exemplified by Bush, and those who don't. But actual and potential fault lines in the GOP are glaringly ignored.

Never mentioned are differences among Republicans, not only over Iraq, but between economic and social conservatives, starve-the-beasters and deficit hawks, pro- and anti-immigration advocates, and K Street and Main Street factions. Nor is there any acknowledgement that Bush's provocative second-term agenda (most of which was well under way when the Almanac went to press) is creating a serious backlash across broad segments of the voting population.

Throughout the book are signs of Barone's undisguised political preferences. There are annoying references to Republicans being aligned with the forces of entrepreneurship and civic vigor, and Democrats being dependent on interest- and constituency-group blocs dependent on government power.