Sixties fatigue

Bush to hippies: we were right, you were wrong.

by Seth Gitell

PHILADELPHIA -- Will the interminable debate surrounding the Baby Boomers never end?

Pointed references to the 1960s generation filled the promotional movie about George W. Bush and his acceptance speech at the final night of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. In the movie about Bush, footage rolled of Summer of Love hippies and 1960s radicals while Bush intoned: "Now we're parents and business leaders." Guess Bush isn't going after that old Gen-X vote they used to talk about.

Later in his speech, Bush made references to the positive legacies of the '60s -- advancements in women's rights, civil rights, and the environment (although he was careful not to use that phrase.) But the meat of Bush's generational discussion consisted of a critique of the 1960s. "Our generation has a chance to show we have some essential values [and] to grow up," Bush said.

It amounts to nothing more than '60s revisionism. But what's lost on Bush and his advisers, is that for many voters, talk about the 1960s is talk about ancient history. I happen to be a student of that period with a particular interest in the Vietnam War. But you know what? I could care less about these battles. And if someone like me isn't interested, then it's probably safe to say these comments will just make people with no interest in the '60s, well, tune in and drop out. Forget about turning on.

As much as I enjoy reading David Horowitz -- author of Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey (Free Press) -- popping off about the culture wars in his writing for Salon, these cultural touchstones make for lousy politics. Horowitz is said to be one of the intellectual influences who has moved the Bush campaign. If that's true, it's quite a contrast with the sight of Horowitz -- a Communist-turned-New Leftnik-turned-rightr-winger -- riding up and down the escalator at the First Union-Comcast Center with his family as he looked for his seat. Horowitz and company may have made it into the building, but they were nowhere near the inner circle.

Maybe that's where Bush should have left his need to sound off on the Culture Wars. It's obvious that the Bush campaign is trying to reach out to a block of voters fed up with Clintonism. There was the speech by WWF champion, the Rock, Wednesday night, and a new country and western tune, "We the People" unveiled Thursday. Team Bush is well aware of the success of Tom Brokaw's book about World War II vets, The Greatest Generation (Random House), and Steven Spielberg's film, Saving Private Ryan. They sense a public looking for a return to duty and honor.

But coming from Bush, these comments only underscore the sense that he is a boy still in awe of his father's persona. The movie about Bush's life -- as well as his comments about George Herbert Walker Bush -- suggest this is a campaign that's more about pleasing Daddy than getting revenge.

For years, a constant complaint of the right -- one that resonated in many quarters -- was that the liberals had made it a fetish to celebrate the 1960s. This seemed true to me when I scored a freelance assignment to cover the commemoration in 1989 of the 20th anniversary of the student take-over of University Hall at Harvard. A steady stream of aging boomers rose to recall the glories of those past days.

The Republican boomers are just as bad. Only they feel the need to gloat that they were right. In its own way, aspects of Bush's campaign are filled with the zeal of the 1960s. Consider his erstwhile adviser, Marvin Olasky, the founder of compassionate conservatism. Olasky began his political life as an official member of the Communist Party. By the mid-'70s he had shifted gears and converted from Orthodox Judaism to an evangelical brand of Christianity. Today, Olasky has adopted children across racial lines and is imploring everyone to volunteer in a religious organization of their choice to help the poor.

Anyone who watched the movie about Bush -- peppered with allusions to his faith based initiatives -- or saw his speech can see the influence of Olasky's thinking. This makes me nervous. Not just because of the role of religion in a potential Bush administration. I'm concerned about the crusading spirit of the whole Bush adventure. The last time America had a young president with a strong political father, the country suffered a string of foreign policy setbacks. The president was John F. Kennedy, who presided over the Berlin crisis, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and the Cuban missile crisis. Notice Bush's placement of Kennedy in the movie about himself.

When Gore speaks less than two weeks from now, he probably won't be much better. It could well be that both political parties aim their discourse at the Baby Boomers because they're the last Americans who care or know anything about politics. Even so, more mental masturbation about what went on 30 years ago -- from either side of the aisle-- isn't going to help the country move ahead.