newswire: 7/8/2020
- In a recent column, author Peggy Noonan wrote a glowing tribute to the life and work of Bob Dylan. Six decades into his career, Dylan remains a major cultural figure and just released his first album of original music since 2012. (The Wall Street Journal)
- NH: Peggy Noonan, the well-known conservative columnist for the WSJ, attracted plenty of attention a couple of weeks ago with her column declaring that President Trump is politically dead and that it's time for America to move on to Joe Biden. (Sample: "Trump hasn’t been equal to the crises. He never makes anything better. And everyone kind of knows.")
- Noonan, a first-wave Boomer born in 1950, is not alone. Surveys now show that Trump's most alarming decline in support is among seniors--the high-turnout age bracket that played such an important role in electing him in 2016. This decline was certainly accelerated by widespread senior disapproval of Trump's response to the pandemic (by 6-to-1, seniors want to contain COVID-19 before addressing the economy), but many polls suggest that it started back in the summer and fall of 2019.
- Could this be the year, at long last, that the Silent Generation is finally chosen to occupy the White House... and avert a historically unprecedented shut-out in runs for the presidency? (See "Last Chance for Silent Generation to Lead.") Perhaps. In their many candidacies, the Silent (like Rodney Dangerfield) have always complained about "getting no respect." Back in the late 1970s and 1980s (remember Mike Dukakis?), they just couldn't match the can-do swagger of the older G.I. Generation, which regularly swept past them in runs for the presidency. Thereafter, since the early 1990s (remember Paul Tsongas?), they couldn't match the crusading moralism of the younger Boomers.
- But maybe this time voters will go with the low-key "Mr. Rogers" generation. Even among Democrats, Joe Biden rarely sparks voter enthusiasm. He's like the kindly uncle who carefully reads the room for consensus. He may commit a silly gaffe, but he never alarms you with an unvetted suggestion. The main question is, will he grow into his leadership role? Conservatives worry that he will get rolled by the left. Progressives worry that he will get mired in process, procedures, and flowcharts.
- So what does any of this have to do with Bob Dylan? Well, Dylan (born in 1941, one year before Biden) is also a late-wave Silent. He represents, to be sure, a different side of his generation--not so much the play-by-the-rules Eagle Scouts but more the "rough and rowdy" Pied Pipers (including Paul Simon, Abbie Hoffman, Joan Baez, Ken Kesey, and so many others) who lured the next generation to "shake your windows and rattle your walls." ("Rough and Rowdy Ways" is the title of Dylan's new album.)
- Yet Bob Dylan never allowed the sixties to reshape and redefine him. Unlike the Boomers who came after him and idolized him, Dylan himself always steered clear of ideology and black-and-white dogmatism. Much like other members of his generation, he insisted on appreciating the complexities, ironies, and paradoxes of real life. And in his recent album Dylan immerses himself Whitman-like in historical Americana: Figures like Buster Keaton, Bugsy Siegel, Nat King Cole, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Ulysses Grant, and George Patton all appear in his songs. His goal is not to judge, but to taste, savor, and appreciate.
- But this was always Dylan's object. One of my own favorite stanzas from Dylan (in "My Back Pages"):
A self-ordained professor's tongue too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty is just equality in school
"Equality, " I spoke the word as if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now
- Better than younger generations, the Silent can reconnect America with its roots. The Silent were "classic" even before Boomers reinvented the word. They may be offering nothing but comfort food to a dejected country that seems to have lost its way. But what they're offering may be just what the country needs right now.
