December 22, 2005
Gap Kids Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 10:00 AM EST The 1996 presidential election, in which Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole, was widely portrayed as the final triumph of the baby boomers over the World War II generation (now generally known as the Greatest Generation). It seems safe to say that no World War II vet will make another serious run for President, and while a Ronald Reagan-type comeback is always possible, the odds are good that all our future Presidents will have been born after World War II. Which raises a question: What happened to the generation in between? There’s a 21-year gap between Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush (born 1924) and Bill Clinton and George W. Bush (born 1946) in which no Presidents were born. How come? All sorts of theories suggest themselves. A childhood spent in depression and war may have left a generation preoccupied with the basics of survival and security. People born in the 1930s reached adulthood in the 1950s and early 1960s, when conformism ruled, whereas baby boomers were encouraged to take charge, get involved, and change the world. Or maybe World War II and the social convulsions of the 1960s and 1970s created cohesion in the Greatest and baby boomer generations, whose concerns therefore dominated the media and the political agenda in later years. This left the amorphous bunch born in between too callow at first and then too square. Perhaps, but my guess is that it’s just a statistical quirk. If you arrange all the presidential birth dates in order, there have been three other gaps of more than 10 years (1809 to 1822, 1843 to 1856, and 1890 to 1908), so 21 years is not out of line. Moreover, assuming that nothing happens to the current incumbent, three of the last four Presidents will have served two terms. This reduces the sample size compared with periods like the 1830s to 1860s or the 1960s to 1970s, when there was a new President every few years. So I’m guessing it’s just a random fluctuation—though if the Generation Without a Name had been farsighted enough to hire a press agent and come up with a snappy moniker, there’s no telling what they could have accomplished. PRESIDENTIAL BIRTH DATES ARRANGED IN ORDER 1732
1735
1743
1751
1758
1767 (2)
1773
1782
1784
1790
1791
1795
1800
1804
1808
1809
1822 (2)
1829
1831
1833
1837
1843
1856
1857
1858
1865
1872
1874
1882
1884
1890
1908
1911
1913 (2)
1917
1924 (2)
1946 (2)
PRESIDENTIAL BIRTH DATES GROUPED BY DECADE
1730s -- 2
1740s -- 1
1750s -- 2
1760s -- 2
1770s -- 1
1780s -- 2
1790s -- 3
1800s -- 4
1810s -- 0
1820s -- 3
1830s -- 3
1840s -- 1
1850s -- 3
1860s -- 1
1870s -- 2
1880s -- 2
1890s -- 1
1900s -- 1
1910s -- 4
1920s -- 2
1930s -- 0
1940s -- 2
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