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America is a Better Place When Millennials Get Kicked in the Teeth — Troy Senik
Ron Fournier, playing a familiar dirge at National Journal:
Barack Obama inspired a generation of young Americans to shed their apathy and cynicism to vote in record numbers and transform Washington, where government service would become a noble calling. Or at least that was the 2008 spin.
The reality is pathetically different.
A comprehensive analysis of 18- to 29-year-old Americans—the “millennial generation”—paints the Obama presidency as a squandered opportunity to convert enthusiasm for community service into political commitment.
According to Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, millennials’ lack of trust in American institutions continues to drop, even below historically low numbers recorded a year ago.
Calling it a “squandered opportunity” probably gives Obama too much credit. That interpretation contains an implicit assumption that the president could actually satisfy the idealist fervor that he stirred in young voters. I have my doubts.
The very nature of Obama’s 2008 campaign made the subsequent disillusionment virtually inevitable. Position yourself as everything to everyone and you’re destined to disappoint once you actually have to start making decisions. I place less blame on a candidate willing to engage in that con than on an electorate willing to fall for it. The millennial affinity for Obama had more to do with social posturing than substantive concerns, which made them the easiest of marks.
I’m not overly sanguine about these numbers, which could reflect millennials overcorrecting into nihilism (even the military, for instance, commands trust from less than 50 percent of the cohort in the Harvard numbers). That said, their disillusionment may be the beginning of wisdom. It’s healthy to think of the President of the United States as simply the head of the executive branch rather than some sort of secular priest. It’s healthy to assume that the government’s default position towards the citizenry is antagonistic rather than cooperative. It’s healthy to regard state power as a necessary evil rather than an undiluted good.
Does this presage a millennial turn towards limited government? I don’t know — and I wouldn’t bet that way. But it does at least demonstrate that this fragile, cocooned generation knows it got played. I suppose that’s a tragedy if you think cynicism is the worst thing that can happen to a voter. For those of us who think doe-eyed idealism is the greater liability, however, it seems like the predicate for making millennials more cautious — which is to say better — voters.
Published in General
“Does this presage a millennial turn towards limited government?”
No. The Millenials are cynical because Obama wasn’t liberal enough. He didn’t bring them Socialism and the latest iPhone. He’s not paying their rent or their tuition. They want their unicorns, and they want them now. And they’re still going to vote for whomever promises it to them.
19 % of voters in 2008 were under 30, 18% in 2004. Record numbers but barely an increase. This narrative that millennials made Barrack Obama is false. Obama promised hope and change to everyone and everyone bought it. Cynicism in the electorate has increased across the board not just among millennials.
Millennial Obama voters are belatedly learning what their professors refused to teach them: Intentions are irrelevant, trade-offs are unavoidable, and Utopia isn’t possible. A single book on basic conservatism would have warned them, but experience is often the only effective teacher.
While understandably disillusioned, I hope these voters don’t wallow in cynicism. We conservatives need to guide the cynics from their “to hell with the whole system” nihilism toward a healthy skepticism of government power. Our constitutional system is wonderful and it must be restored. Political leaders can create small improvements, but they are our employees, not our messiahs.
It’s up to us to lead them away from the hopeless idiocy of Occupy and into the cause of Freedom. After a brief period of gloating, of course.
I strongly suspect that they’ll still be sitting around in ten years wondering why they never got their pony.
“Does this presage a millennial turn towards limited government?” No. And the next left winger (Hillary) will use Obama’s failure as reason to vote for her. “I’ll Do It Right!” will be the campaign slogan. Remember, with Liberals, always more cow-bell.
I really hope that our combat vets make a big move in the next few years. If there is a group that can project Americanism (self reliance, individualism, can-do spirit), it would be those who served in combat.
This can only work well if they turn their crisis into opportunity. Millennials have grown up in a world of affluence, and have been taught by public schools and professors that only big government can create or sustain such affluence — or that making sweeping changes in the systems that create such affluence will maintain and improve such.
It’s important now to explain where affluence comes, how liberty creates more opportunity for affluence, and how government can only hinder it. We have to successfully create the contrast and successfully portray it as well.
My sons are millenials. All are productive, happy adults (two are engineers, one is finishing an engineering degree). None voted for Obama. All were homeschooled. Maybe that was it.
Seawriter
I needed at least 3 or 4 kicks in the teeth before I understood the necessity for limited government.
I’d love to strip away the romanticism about government first. I don’t like the fantasy that government is the vehicle for some kind of magical quest, and that serving the public is the same as rescuing the helpless maiden.
Government was hired to drain swamps. Nothing more.
I’m a little dismayed at the outright contempt of some here regarding the younguns. Every generation starts out liberal and ignorant about the way things really work and most move right (to varying degrees and on different issues) when they get “mugged by reality”. This generation is getting burned earlier than most thanks to Barry the Magnificent’s becoming the poster boy for Epic Failure. Most Millenials won’t become reliable Republicans but this experience has probably convinced a good number of them against the idea of being reliable Democrats. Loyal party affiliation is becoming more and more a thing of the past – which means they can’t be taken for granted by anyone. It would be a mistake to hand them a copy of the party platform and say “it’s all or nothing, kiddos.”
How about we stop griping about them and start offering an alternative to consider on at least a candidate by candidate basis? They are the future, after all.
Thanks for this post, Troy. You captured sentiments I’ve felt and gave them an eloquent voice.
When we speculate about why millennials voted for Obama we have to keep in mind that they’re choosing between two candidates. The alternative is McCain or don’t vote. I’m sure McCain was a significant reason why many voted for Obama.
I also wonder how much of this cynicism among young people can be explained by seeing them as deadbeats. I think the guys discussed this on GLoP. Young people don’t want to be tied down with responsibilities and commitments.
I’m going with no to answer the question. Experience does not make one wiser, only examined experience can do that.
Let us please stop calling the belief that people operate best when they are free “cynicism”.
Meh. I was conservative as a youngster and stayed conservative. It may have been my way of rebelling and being a nonconformist. (I grew up in Ann Arbor, MI, during the 1960s and 1970s. I saw proof, close-up and personal liberals and progressives were not half as clever or smart as they kept telling me they were.)
Seawriter
Not entirely irrelevant. They still matter among friends or in a court of law. But they count for very little.
I graduated from high school in 1980 – My “formative years” were dominated by Jimmy Carter, Gas Lines, double-digit inflation and interest rates, Russian expansionism and Iranian hostages.
I have never and will never vote for a Democrat.
Hopefully these last couple crappy years will have the same impact on today’s youth.
PJ O’Rourke says that his Grandmother would never use the word “Democrat” in front of children. She’d say “bastards” instead. I dream of a world like that.
Cynicism isn’t a problem. Poorly applied cynicism is.
Troy, aren’t you a millennial? Be careful with those pearly whites. The womenfolk’ll miss ’em if anything happens to ’em.
It is indeed healthy; I doubt, though, that many young people are reaching such conclusions. The cynicism adopted by millennials is more a function of popular culture than something principled or philosophical. Often, it exists as a peculiar mixture of cynicism and idealism.
Take, for example, this recent discussion (paraphrased) about government with a classmate:
Her: “But people have to be nice to each other! If murder weren’t illegal, I’d kill so many people!”
Me: “So, only the law prevents you from killing others? Not a sense of morality? You’re a lump of clay to which government provides form and meaning? How terrible.”
She combines Hobbesian pessimism with a belief that government can guide society toward a good (the ever-popular, amorphous “[being] nice”).
And, of course, power can never be abused, right?
Will this be a modern Les Miserables where Troy sells his teeth and hair to make money?
Unfortunately it sometimes takes getting kicked in the teeth personally to make them realize it could happen to them. As with individuals, every generation has to relearn the lessons of the past by sometimes making the mistakes themselves.
I certainly hope they are also figuring out that their professors and course materials in college were mostly junk as well. Now that they get to carry around the history of the country as written by Noam Chomsky , with introduction by Ward Churchill.
Yeah, and 98% of the true believers with their Obama/Biden bumper stickers firmly attached to their posteriors are old white guys. This is my observation anyway — not a scientific poll.
Some of them, I’m sure. I’m unconvinced, however, that there’s a coherent millennial political philosophy apart from a comfort with gay marriage, marijuana legalization, and, to a lesser extent, environmental “consciousness.” They seem to have a taste for the social pretensions of boutique liberalism , but I don’t see much evidence that they’re in love with statism. They all basically remind me of Silicon Valley types.
This is the nub of it. Cynicism is a perversion of skepticism, which is the optimal default setting of a free citizen towards those who would govern him.
By the most capacious definition (though not by Fournier’s). I managed to slip into my 30s (take that, team of medical experts!).
Gary’s right that we shouldn’t pile on to them gratuitously. My continued frustration with the generation (which I mentioned on our podcast with Charles Murray) is their tendency to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Thus, “Obama didn’t bring about the New Jerusalem, so all politics is fruitless.”
Why, why, would you bait EJ like that? Haven’t I been made to suffer enough?
More relevant than that. To a generation that grew up without consequences for mistakes because parents always bailed us out, always pounded fists on the principal’s desk, or sued the school when the tried to enforce discipline, intentions are everything. Even more important than results.
No.
Since my first vote was for Jimmy Carter, I cannot throw stones. And yet despite that inauspicious start, I came back to my natural home the very next election. I wish Ricochet was around back then…