It was the summer of 1946. The world was at peace, with World War II having ended the previous year, May 1945 in Europe and August 1945 in The Pacific theatre. Who could have predicted three future American presidents would be born within mere weeks of each other? They were Donald Trump on June 14 (technically late spring), George W. Bush on July 6, and Bill Clinton on August 19. The year 1946 is generally considered the first of what would become known as The Baby Boom generation, which would last until 1964. Three future Boomer presidents would each go on to be elected twice to the highest office in the land.
Below is a brief summary of a longer piece on how Joe Klein, writing in The Washington Post on June 11th, described the era:
“There was never a time like it, TV and frozen TV dinners and Little League…
The generation — we — who grew up in unprecedented prosperity and safety would become notorious in our own minds. We certainly talked, wrote and sang a lot about ourselves. Clinton, Bush and Trump would be our presidents. And, because of our demographic heft, there would be an arrogance to us. Marketers would target us; they still do. All those pharmaceutical ads clotting the news programs are about us.
Above all, there was a freedom born from the absence of threat. The children of affluence would rebel, and then rebel against rebelling, and grow prosperous. They would be liberated by low prices and the birth control pill; they would excel at entertaining themselves — and the rest of the world. ‘Your generation taught us a lot about food,’ said my mother, who never got over the Great Depression and was eternally amazed by the array at the supermarket. Donald Trump’s father built one of the first supermarkets within New York City’s limits…
The three presidents who first opened their eyes during the summer of 1946, who graduated college in the hectic spring of 1968, are extremely different men. They have little in common. Bush is old money, reinventing itself in Texas; Trump is new money, living in Queens — where I was born — and pining for Manhattan. Clinton never knew his father; his stepfather was an auto salesman in the naughty town of Hot Springs, AR.”
