Is Rubio Right About New Generation Gap?

BY WILLIAM F. GAVIN  |  APR 17

Senator Marco Rubio’s announcement of his decision to seek his party’s nomination for president was greeted by generally good reviews, and for good reason. He delivers a speech well, he is attractive, he is conservative, and he appears to have that magic quality, charisma.

His personal story, as the son of Cuban immigrants, is inspiring. Despite the obvious difficulties ahead of him in a crowded field, he will no doubt be a formidable candidate in the primaries.

But I wonder if his insistence on the generation gap as the theme of his campaign is a wise one.

“This election is not just about what laws we will pass. It is a generational choice about what kind of country we will be. Just yesterday, a leader from yesterday began a campaign by promising to take us back to yesterday. But yesterday is over and we are never going back.”

I disagree with Senator Rubio when he implies Hilary Clinton is a candidate of yesterday. Since she hasn’t had a new idea since 1992, she is a candidate of the day before yesterday. That aside, I can see where Senator Rubio finds the New Generation Gap, if I may call it that, an attractive theme to his campaign. After all it worked for John F. Kennedy in 1960, when, as he ran against then-Vice President Richard Nixon, seemed to be running against President Eisenhower, a doddering old geezer of (gasp!) seventy.

Today, of course, Viagra would try to enlist Ike as its spokesman. (“If you have a golf game longer than four hours, see your doctor.”) But that generation gap was unique. Eisenhower was the living embodiment of the military and political leaders who won World War II.  The experience of Eisenhower’s generation encompassed a depression, a world war, and then a remarkable, some might say near- miraculous, success of the post war economy.

It was easy to see that the Great Generation had done its job, and it was time for a new generation to take over. Kennedy had “vig-ah,” he had a full head of hair, a great tan, and he played touch football, his second favorite pastime. Golly, what possible other qualities could the American people have demanded from a new president?

The media, in its love affair with JFK, rarely asked. The problem with Senator Rubio’s “generation gap” strategy is that, (a), whatever faults Mrs. Clinton may have, a perception that she should quickly retire to the local Senior Care Facility is not one of them, and, (b) she is a woman, and I really can’t see a bumper sticker saying “Don’t Vote for That Old Hag” catching on with women voters.

As far as Senator Rubio’s Republican rivals are concerned, not one of them looks or sounds as if he is ready for senior home health care. No, what worked for JFK can’t work for Senator Rubio, and I think that as he goes into the primaries he will quickly discover his theme is a one-trick-pony: once you declare you are the representative of the younger generation, that’s it. Then you have to talk about what you plan to do.

And don’t think that his critics, in the party and among Democrats, won’t be saying that he is divisive and hates old people. Unfair? Of course, but what does he expect?

But the biggest objection I have to the generation gap theme is that it is not conservative. The Left, from the French Revolution onward, divides the world between those who have and those who have not. Some variation of “Be my brother or I’ll kill you” is the idea hidden behind every leftist slogan.

Today it is “The one percent vs. the ninety-nine per cent”. Tomorrow the words will be different but the goal will be the same: leftist political, social, and economic dominance in order to form the perfect society through government action, according to the Left’s current visions.

When conservatives are scolded by President Obama for being on the “wrong side of history,” it is only latest manifestation of the Hegel/Marx fantasy that history has a direction that is knowable to the select few.

Conservatives do not believe history has “a side.” We do not divide the world between the young and the old or the rich and the poor. We do not divide at all. We add, over time, to the repository of conservative wisdom those ideas, political institutions, and economic structures that have proven to be beneficial to our civilization, always testing them by the lessons of experience.

Let the Left try to divide. Conservatives will add, preserve, and prevail. It is my hope that Senator Rubio will think through all the implications of his generational strategy.

He should remember the words of William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It is not even past.” To true conservatives, the past is always alive and its lessons have been passed on to us by previous generations. A conservative should not even think of a political strategy that is generational. I know this is not what the senator meant to imply, but if he thinks his opponents are going to concede to him the mantle of generational leader (whatever that means) he should think again.

Editor’s Note: William F. Gavin was a speech writer for President Richard Nixon and long-time aide to former House Republican Leader Bob Michel. Among his books is his latest, Speechwright, published by Michigan State University Press.