Word: boomerism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...nation's first baby-boomer President, Clinton will bring to the Oval Office a fresh mental map of generational impressions. Gone are the Andrews Sisters, Kilroy and the Berlin blockade. In their place come Father Knows Best, Elvis, 1960s folk music (Chelsea Clinton was named after the Joni Mitchell song Chelsea Morning), Vietnam protests, the 1972 George McGovern crusade and Watergate. Despite the politically exaggerated privation of his childhood, Clinton came of age at a moment of exceptional national privilege, when a studious young leader from Hot Springs, Arkansas, could aspire to an elite educational odyssey that carried him from...
...last breathless days of the Clinton campaign were unavoidably reminiscent of Kennedy. In Louisville, Kentucky, the scene seemed out of Beatlemania. Women screamed when Clinton reached for their hands as loudspeakers blared out the Fab Four singing, "When I saw her standing there." Cheryl Russell, editor of The Boomer Report, a monthly newsletter on consumer trends, captures a new dimension in the national psyche when she confides, "Every woman I know is having sex dreams about Bill Clinton. We're finally getting a President our own age who we can imagine having sex with. I don't recall anyone having...
...their activism, the Clintons are apt to play a surprisingly modest role as national tastemakers. They are far more likely to reflect baby-boomer trends than to shape them. Sure, there are fearless forecasts from marketing gurus. "Elvis memorabilia is going to go up to a whole new level," predicts Brad Edmondson, the editor in chief of American Demographics. "Remember Ronald Reagan and jelly beans. Jimmy Carter and peanuts." He may be right; too bad Graceland (privately owned) is not traded on the stock exchange...
...jeans and khakis, not even bothering to follow his generation in its mid-life enthusiasm for the Gap and Banana Republic. The President-elect's constant battles with his weight might influence fashion were not Levi's already hitting it big with Dockers, which are cut with a baby boomer's sagging physique in mind. "Bill Clinton is half hip and half hick," explains Steve Rabinowitz, one of the traveling staff members on the campaign plane. "You want to write about the hip part, but sometimes the hick part gets...
...nesting were not already a certified baby-boomer trend, President Clinton might get the credit for popularizing it. "This will be a very family- oriented Administration," predicts Derek Shearer, a longtime Clinton friend and economic adviser. "You'll see a lot of couples with kids at the White House." Equally visible will be the lights burning long after midnight in the White House family quarters; Clinton's idea of a good time is staying up late playing hearts with friends or discussing Hawaii's health-care system. A valid test for the limits of presidential leadership by example will...