The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties

by Christopher Caldwell

Certain events cut a razor-sharp border between the experience of Baby Boomers and that of the generations before and after. Consider the difference between the pre–Baby Boom birth year of 1943, which included Vietnam War hero (later protester) and 2004 presidential candidate (later secretary of state) John Kerry; and the first Baby Boom cohort of 1946, which included onetime Texas governor George W. Bush, who defeated Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. (It is probably not a coincidence that 1946 is the only year in American history to have seen the birth of three presidents, all three, in fact, born in the summer months of that year.) In 1966, when 22-year-old Kerry got out of Yale, the war in Vietnam was still at an early stage. It was not yet unthinkable that the wealthy and privileged should serve in the military, and Kerry enlisted in the Navy. By the time the three future presidents finished college just two years later, the war had heated up, the Summer of Love had intervened, and better-off Americans were desperately seeking ways to avoid active service. None of the three went to Vietnam, though Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard.