Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 24, 1995 TAG: 9504240031
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID M. SHRIBMAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The men who fought World War II reshaped the country and the world. They drove the dictators from Europe, built a ferociously successful economy at home, constructed the interstate-highway system, created a mass consumer society, sent men to the moon, dismantled legal racial segregation and dominated the U.S. political system with more determination and stamina than any generation in history.
They may not be done yet.
The other day, as the nation soberly marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Franklin Roosevelt - the man who brought the nation into the war, and prosecuted it with fervor and imagination - a son of the battlefields of World War II announced his candidacy for the White House for the last time.
Bob Dole of Kansas - member of the 10th Mountain Division, war hero, survivor of the Italian campaign and then of 39 months in the hospital - is the favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination. In nearly every interview, Dole, 71, says he thinks there may be one more mission for his generation.
Indeed, for all the talk of the baby boom and of Generation X, the generation that still matters at the end of the 20th century is the World War II generation.
They were the greatest achievers in U.S. history, casting a shadow on all who followed. They are even at the heart of contemporary budget decisions in Washington; it is, after all, their Social Security payments that are the biggest stumbling block to balancing the budget.
``They experienced great success,'' says Anthony Esler, a College of William and Mary historian who studies generations in history. ``Their immediate predecessors wallowed in the Great Depression. They came home from the war, got a big boom and developed a can-do image that reflected their own view of themselves.''
That can-do image is at the heart of Dole's appeal. In a Topeka auditorium named for Alf Landon, whom Roosevelt defeated in 1936, Dole spoke of revisiting the battle sites of northern Italy.
``Standing there gazing across those peaceful fields, I thought of why it is critical to have a president who knows what made America great, who knows what has been sacrificed to keep us free, and who would do all in his power to lead America back to her place in the sun,'' he said, adding:
``My friends, I have the experience. I've been tested, tested in many ways. I am not afraid to lead, and I know the way.''
Dole has fought the good fight in the good war. President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich seem diminished by their membership in the baby-boom generation, but Dole is enlarged by his membership in his generation.
Dole, moreover, has touched history, and been touched by it, in a way that his principal rival, Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, can't approach. That doesn't mean the Kansan is going to win either the nomination or the White House - he's been denied national office three times - but it does mean he has something that no other leading politician possesses today.
He is also associated with a generation of enormous accomplishment. The World War II generation won the first 14 Nobel Prizes that Americans earned in economics, and two-thirds of all Nobels in science. It eradicated polio and brought electronic communication to every corner of the globe, in ever-fresh and transforming ways. Its adult years coincided with the United States' peak in global power and with the sharpest improvements in public health at home.
``Dole is from a generation with a sense of service, sacrifice and a shining moment of America's leadership in the world,'' says Peter Hart, a public-opinion pollster and a Democrat. ``That value ethic is that generation's fingerprints.''
Clinton pointedly, but unconvincingly, called himself a ``child of World War II'' when he stood last June at Pointe du Hoc in Normandy to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Allied landing at D-Day. His poignant words there, however, conveyed an awe at what the World War II generation accomplished. ``When they were young,'' the president said, looking at the ``boys of Pointe du Hoc'' - the bald, the stooped, the aged - ``these men saved the world.''
The World War II generation has had its failures. It pushed the U.S. effort in Vietnam too far and, as former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara testifies in his remarkable memoir, didn't recognize its errors early enough or seek to rectify them swiftly enough. Nearly all social commentators now believe that the GI Generation built up the federal government into a structure that is too big, too grand, too arrogant and too inefficient. Its women were the best-educated in history to that point (producing a gifted cadre of teachers) but were never given the opportunity to compete on an equal footing with men.
If Dole wins the GOP nomination, the 1996 general election would be the 14th consecutive election in which members of the GI Generation, born between 1901 and 1924, were on a national ticket. They held the White House for 32 years, 40 if you count the two terms of Dwight Eisenhower, who was born in 1890 but who, as supreme allied commander, is inextricably linked with World War II. No other generation held the executive mansion for more than 24 years.
Yet the generation's very successes stunted those who followed them. The great prosperity spawned by Dole's generation made it difficult for Americans to accept normal ups and downs in the economy and changes in standards of living. Tidal laws of ebb and flow seemed suspended - and when the tide finally receded, with the Oil Shock of the early 1970s, an entire nation was caught off guard.
This prosperity, combined with the postwar GI Bill, created a vast new educated consumer class that, ironically, caused new divisions in U.S. society. The kind of universal effort of which World War II was both symbol and apex became almost impossible for the following generation to achieve. The GI Generation celebrated unity, and that unity freed the baby boom to celebrate individualism.
``The generation that came of age in the 1960s got divided in a way the earlier one didn't,'' says Seymour Martin Lipset, a sociologist at George Mason University. ``The GI Generation was optimistic and unified. They set out to make the society work. Now we have a severe split among baby boomers about whether we should dismantle the social democratic welfare state or retain it.''
The GI Generation's success has also meant a kind of historical inferiority complex: Those who followed would never be tested as they were, and so never would match their accomplishments, either. Later generations have spent their lives looking over their shoulder, feeling disappointed.
``They created a situation where everyone expected upward mobility, at least if they got some education, but that guarantee isn't there anymore,'' says David Riesman, the Harvard sociologist. ``What we have now is a population that is deeply cynical, partly because those who followed the World War II generation couldn't keep up.''
Each generation, wrote the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, is ``a complete way of life that imprints itself indelibly on the individual.''
The achievement of the World War II generation was that it was able to imprint itself on much more, on the whole country. The imprint has lasted more than a half-century, and might even reach into the election that will choose the leader who will be president in the first years of the 21st century. Having led America into a new world, the GI Generation may also lead it into a new millennium.
David M. Shribman is Washington bureau chief for The Boston Globe.
- N.Y. Times News Service
by CNB