Generation Characteristics of Presidents

[adambo2020]

Strauss and Howe firmly established Generational Theory with their extensive research and published works beginning with Generations. While writing Generations, Strauss and Howe discovered a pattern in the way different types of generations follow one another in time. They identified a sequence of four generational archetypes—which they call Prophet, Nomad, Hero, and Artist—that have recurred in that order throughout American history. The generations in each archetype have similar age locations in history, and thus share some basic attitudes towards family, risk, culture and values, and civic engagement, among other things. As each archetype ages, its persona undergoes profound and characteristic changes. Yet each also has an underlying identity that endures over the centuries.
Based on their research, the current living generations are as follows:
GENERATION   AGE
G.I.                  92–115
Silent          74–91
Boomer          56–73
Gen-X          35–55
Millennial          12–34
Homeland          0–11

Barack Obama was the first GenX president, born in the first year of the generation, 1961. DJT, GWB, and WJC are all members of the Boomer generation. DJT will likely be the last president to represent the Boomers.
The president will likely be from GenX, but could possibly be a Millennial, although I highly doubt it, since the Millennial Generation has not yet produced any heroic types since they've not been called to rise to any challenges. They remain stuck looking at themselves in their phones - the generation for whom more resources have been devoted than any in the history of man is just wasting away waiting for orders. As this season of Survivor demonstrates, they lack effective leadership and are in need of a pragmatic, tough leader (GenX type) if they ever hope to live up to the GI generation's "Greatest" title.
What does this mean for the future Presidents? Will an effective GenX leader be able to rally Millennials into action so that they can fulfill their destiny and save the world?

[White Trash]

Generations aren't real.

[pbrower2a]

Barack Obama is definitely X. He has more in common with Dwight Eisenhower in style despite a very different curriculum vitae than with FDR (from a Boomer-like generation) or JFK. He is decisive enough, but he is also cautious (in the sense of "I've been burned"); he puts much store in precedent and formality; he knows his limits of knowledge and thus trusts expertise.  Clinton, Dubya, and apparently Trump are more of the sort who won't let anything, even objective truth, get in the way of their grandiose plans.

Obama is the sort of President (the Civil War was an anomaly to Howe and Strauss, and I won't get into that due to the necessary explanation) who usually appears after a Crisis and not before -- like Washington, Adams, arguably Cleveland, and Truman and Eisenhower. People may have expected an FDR but instead got an Eisenhower.

Obama's sort of generation is not saintly. The generation before the GI's, the Lost Generation worldwide, had the bulk of major Axis war criminals (all but three of those sentenced to death in the aftermath of the main Nuremberg Trials as well as Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and judicial butcher Freisler), traitors to the Allied cause (Laval, Quisling)  and the functionaries of Stalin in the Soviet Union (like Vishinsky and Beria)  and outside (Bierut, Rakosi, Ulbricht). Arguably the most dangerous man in American history (a KKK Grand Dragon whose life course had much in common with Hitler to a time), and a raft of gangsters like Capone and Buchalter were of the Lost Generation born in the latter part of the 19th century.

To be sure there are some very creative people from such a generation (O'Keefe, Miro, Chagall, Rivera, Prokofiev, Gershwin, Ellington, Hemingway, Chaplin, Hitchcock) -- but such is true of just about any generation. Great generals and admirals, too (Eisenhower, Bradley, Montgomery, Nimitz, de Gaulle, Zhukov, Rommel...ahem). Just don't expect any great formulations of moral leadership. They are just too pragmatic for that at the best.   

An Obama-like or Eisenhower-like leader is unable to resolve a Great Crisis as a top leader -- perhaps delay it. But once Obama becomes irrelevant in a Crisis Era, the fecal material can hit the fan.

[justfollowingtheelections]

So if Obama was born a few months earlier he would have been a Boomer but now he's a Gen Xer?  Give me a break.  This is so effin stupid.