As an historical anecdote, I always thought President Franklin Roosevelt failed the final test of leadership. Though well aware his health was failing, for some reason he did not prepare Harry Truman to succeed him. Truman was not a friend or trusted insider of Roosevelt’s, but a purely political appointee designed to shore up Roosevelt’s 1944 reelection. One afternoon Truman was summoned to the White House. He assumed he was there to meet the president. Instead, he learned that Roosevelt was dead.
That's not quite the case. Truman was foisted on Roosevelt, because everyone kind of knew that FDR wasn't going to make it through the next term, very few people wanted Henry Wallace to be president, and out of all of the potential replacements Truman had the fewest haters.
I wonder how much of this is due to the effect of novel rising life expectancy. I know my grandfather believed and repeatedly told my father that he thought he was going to die in his 40s (although he lived into his 70s). All of my great-grandparents left all of my grandparents orphans as children, which is statistically unusual but not that surprising given the Great Depression. The boomers are really the first generation to self-consciously expect to live into their 70s and even to live in reasonably good health through their 70s. Their successors were, effectively, themselves at a later age. They groomed themselves to succeed themselves and indeed succeeded at shepherding their successions from their middle aged selves to their elderly selves. Under normal historical conditions people expect to be dead or disabled by what we would now call middle age, and death was more commonly unpredictable, with health not seen to be something to be managed but something outside of direct human control.
This is also one of the effects of civilization, perhaps over-civilization, and peace. Politics and success in business are, traditionally, full contact sports. History did not create too many safe spaces for old men, women, and children, but modern conditions smooth out the hidden steps down and slick surfaces, tame the violent hotheads, and wipe out dangerous diseases that otherwise give the young and vigorous an advantage over the elderly.
You're welcome. A lot of our social problems are novel. The coalition aspect is also worth considering. In the past, you could expect much more of your birth cohort to be dead by the time you reached middle age. So you would need to build more social bonds with youth to make up for that. If you watch "American Graffiti" or listen to the Doors song "Five to One," they are both powerful illustrations of the boomer power of mass and cultural cohesion. Under normal historical conditions, attrition would have blunted that mass power. Instead it's like they took over that American Graffiti town with their hooliganism and just never gave up power even more than half a century later.
In the corporations it's like they look over the table to find their buddies from high school and they're still there. Normally like half their buddies or more would be dead or retired. Medieval history by contrast is a rolling series of succession crises in part because people were just dying all the time for all kinds of reasons.
On an escalator? Real leaders grab the brass ring. They climb mountains. If the elites are going to ride the escalator - it the down escalator. The world that nurtured and incubated the mature leaders of today disappeared long ago. Technologically - it's been wiped out. The global scaling of capital and trade has wiped out the entrepreneurial incubator. Nixon and Thatcher fathers were grocers. Eisenhower was a farm boy. Reagan's dad was a shoe salesman. LBJ's father was a...? Barber/farmer/legislator? It was small town America, and it was capitalism with a very small "c". Real men didn't work for wages. Instead, they had a payroll to meet. And the pioneer spirit of the frontier was still blowing it the wind, albeit it was by then only a breeze.
Mitch Daniel's grandfather was a Syrian immigrant who ran a gas station and a pool hall and on the sly, a numbers game. He never did learn to read and write English. I get Renn's point, but I find the article a little weak on historical consciousness. What American generation ever had a succession plan?
Succession formation was a huge part of the old WASP elite. An element of nepotism to be sure, but definitely a huge, explicity consideration. This was the whole point of things like St. Grottlesex.
Also, the origin stories of people with very high level accomplishments are generally edited to omit the incredibly help and leg up they got from other people and institutions. Very few people simply "grabbed the brass ring" on their own.
Well, demographics shades your tale. In 1950 almost fifty percent of American workers were either self-employed or worked for someone running a shop or enterprise that had less than twenty employees. The suburbs were not so much expansions of cities they were imitations of small towns which was still the locus of the American mind. The only thing the WASP elite ever ran was the University. We were not all WASPS back then. But there were lots of us who were, but we were little wasps, small fry, and we lived in small towns. Look at the backgrounds of US presidents of the twentieth century. Of course, we all get a lot of help from our families. But not from our elite families. Face it Renn, you are a city mouse. You are disrespecting where the real mice come from.
It's been a long, long while since the country was majority rural or when anything like a majority of working people worked for themselves. The Boomer's parents often worked in factories and spearheaded the rise in unions
The elites my friend. The elites were never at the forefront of unions. They hated unions because they were contrary to everything they believed about themselves. They were not working people, as you so delicately call them. They were men and owners. They wrote paychecks, they didn't cash them.
Yes, name names, but name names back in 1926. There is an enormous concentration of productive owner capital now compared to one hundred years ago. Productive capital was widely distributed to the owners of farms, tools, shops, stores, etc. and etc. The elites were little guys, small fry. We were a nation of elites who had a perspective on real work. They were the working elites, the middlin' sort. There were no global enterprises back then. But there were 600,000 men working in the coal mines. Those miners aspired to be farmers, landowners, not revolutionaries. They could imagine being a grocer.
you said, "the elites are always the owner of capital." I did not disagree. I remember when the elite owners of productive capital were oh so numerous compared to today. We were a better and very different nation - and it really wasn't that long ago. Better when capital worked under the owner's control on a human scale. Back when capital had a face and a pocketbook.
It is ironic that the generation famous for saying "don't trust anyone over 30" has become the one that won't step aside at 80! It seems that the youth-worship was only for when they were the youth...
I do think that the Boomers were probably failed by their elders in that the Greatest Generation taught them hard work but not the deeper joys of stewardship, i.e. the discipline of planting a tree you will never eat from. They were instructed in all the virtues of effort and organisation but not the pleasure of being succeeded and knowing it will grow beyond you. Historically to watch a protégé surpass you was effectively the point of leadership; for the Boomers, they feel it as a threat to their identity. Though perhaps the Boomers didn't lack that teaching, but just set it aside. The 60s was all about a rejection of loyalty, deferred gratification, and self-effacing in favour of liberating oneself.
As is so often the case the economic shifts might have been a significant factor in all this. The Boomers parents operated in system where you trained your successor because that was your retirement (ergo, the better the protégé the better the pension!). The Boomers made a system where the value you extracted while you were there was all value you'd ever see, which actively disincentives investing in the future. There is probably a bit of "founder syndrome" that bleeds through from this where Boomers see themselves as founding the modern world and so they need to be rewarded commensurately.
From my perspective the real heart of the issue is that they refuse to grapple with aging itself. I've seen many surveys that find a majority of Boomers in their late 60s and 70s describing themselves as middle-age (something so delusional it borders on mental illness). Mentorship and succession are, to a degree, memento mori practices wherein you train someone to replace you because you've accepted that you'll need replacing. If you genuinely believe you're middle-aged at 75, there's no urgency to prepare anyone.
Great article Aaron. I find myself not just thinking about the nature of boomers, but also about the nature of organizations in this era. There is something about the mass scale that is particular to this era that seems to have grown over previous generations and reached a peak in its current form here. In a sense the peak of the human made organizations. Now we are seeing the same at play with technology driven growth in AI that is creating a similar disruption, but this time fueled by humans and technology working together in a new way that is creating leadership where the humans appear to be falling behind while the technology reaches new heights. Struggling to put this into words, but it is my sense.
Seems like a lot of this is more just about ego. Institutions are built upon something broadly shared that many people buy into, not a single dynamic personality. So a transition is easier, because ostensibly more people buy into it. And institutions fall apart when those shared ideals or values are no longer broad-based. Vanity projects always come and go, despite their creators' intentions.
At a certain level, I wonder how much of the Boomer tendency to just keep on going is due less to hubris and more workaholism. It's pretty plausible that someone like Wintour would absolutely dread the prospect of retirement and not having anything to do, so instead of finding a hobby she just keeps on doing what she's always done.
Now, this sort of thing isn't unique to the Boomer generation, but what makes things different is that especially among the elites, the Boomers, thanks to technological advances, are not only considerably longer-lived than previous generations, but are also capable of working for much longer as well. Had Wintour been born a century earlier, she would likely have retired sometime in her sixties.
As an historical anecdote, I always thought President Franklin Roosevelt failed the final test of leadership. Though well aware his health was failing, for some reason he did not prepare Harry Truman to succeed him. Truman was not a friend or trusted insider of Roosevelt’s, but a purely political appointee designed to shore up Roosevelt’s 1944 reelection. One afternoon Truman was summoned to the White House. He assumed he was there to meet the president. Instead, he learned that Roosevelt was dead.
That's not quite the case. Truman was foisted on Roosevelt, because everyone kind of knew that FDR wasn't going to make it through the next term, very few people wanted Henry Wallace to be president, and out of all of the potential replacements Truman had the fewest haters.
In that case, it seems that FDR should have been mentoring Truman at an accelerated pace.
Agreed; I'm just pointing out that he had reasons for not doing so, even if those reasons were petty and vain.
He also did a Biden and ran for re-election despite knowing he was not fit for it, thinking he was the only guy who could lead.
I wonder how much of this is due to the effect of novel rising life expectancy. I know my grandfather believed and repeatedly told my father that he thought he was going to die in his 40s (although he lived into his 70s). All of my great-grandparents left all of my grandparents orphans as children, which is statistically unusual but not that surprising given the Great Depression. The boomers are really the first generation to self-consciously expect to live into their 70s and even to live in reasonably good health through their 70s. Their successors were, effectively, themselves at a later age. They groomed themselves to succeed themselves and indeed succeeded at shepherding their successions from their middle aged selves to their elderly selves. Under normal historical conditions people expect to be dead or disabled by what we would now call middle age, and death was more commonly unpredictable, with health not seen to be something to be managed but something outside of direct human control.
This is also one of the effects of civilization, perhaps over-civilization, and peace. Politics and success in business are, traditionally, full contact sports. History did not create too many safe spaces for old men, women, and children, but modern conditions smooth out the hidden steps down and slick surfaces, tame the violent hotheads, and wipe out dangerous diseases that otherwise give the young and vigorous an advantage over the elderly.
This is very insightful; thanks much.
You're welcome. A lot of our social problems are novel. The coalition aspect is also worth considering. In the past, you could expect much more of your birth cohort to be dead by the time you reached middle age. So you would need to build more social bonds with youth to make up for that. If you watch "American Graffiti" or listen to the Doors song "Five to One," they are both powerful illustrations of the boomer power of mass and cultural cohesion. Under normal historical conditions, attrition would have blunted that mass power. Instead it's like they took over that American Graffiti town with their hooliganism and just never gave up power even more than half a century later.
In the corporations it's like they look over the table to find their buddies from high school and they're still there. Normally like half their buddies or more would be dead or retired. Medieval history by contrast is a rolling series of succession crises in part because people were just dying all the time for all kinds of reasons.
On an escalator? Real leaders grab the brass ring. They climb mountains. If the elites are going to ride the escalator - it the down escalator. The world that nurtured and incubated the mature leaders of today disappeared long ago. Technologically - it's been wiped out. The global scaling of capital and trade has wiped out the entrepreneurial incubator. Nixon and Thatcher fathers were grocers. Eisenhower was a farm boy. Reagan's dad was a shoe salesman. LBJ's father was a...? Barber/farmer/legislator? It was small town America, and it was capitalism with a very small "c". Real men didn't work for wages. Instead, they had a payroll to meet. And the pioneer spirit of the frontier was still blowing it the wind, albeit it was by then only a breeze.
Mitch Daniel's grandfather was a Syrian immigrant who ran a gas station and a pool hall and on the sly, a numbers game. He never did learn to read and write English. I get Renn's point, but I find the article a little weak on historical consciousness. What American generation ever had a succession plan?
Succession formation was a huge part of the old WASP elite. An element of nepotism to be sure, but definitely a huge, explicity consideration. This was the whole point of things like St. Grottlesex.
Also, the origin stories of people with very high level accomplishments are generally edited to omit the incredibly help and leg up they got from other people and institutions. Very few people simply "grabbed the brass ring" on their own.
Well, demographics shades your tale. In 1950 almost fifty percent of American workers were either self-employed or worked for someone running a shop or enterprise that had less than twenty employees. The suburbs were not so much expansions of cities they were imitations of small towns which was still the locus of the American mind. The only thing the WASP elite ever ran was the University. We were not all WASPS back then. But there were lots of us who were, but we were little wasps, small fry, and we lived in small towns. Look at the backgrounds of US presidents of the twentieth century. Of course, we all get a lot of help from our families. But not from our elite families. Face it Renn, you are a city mouse. You are disrespecting where the real mice come from.
It's been a long, long while since the country was majority rural or when anything like a majority of working people worked for themselves. The Boomer's parents often worked in factories and spearheaded the rise in unions
The elites my friend. The elites were never at the forefront of unions. They hated unions because they were contrary to everything they believed about themselves. They were not working people, as you so delicately call them. They were men and owners. They wrote paychecks, they didn't cash them.
Sure, but the elites are always the owner of capital. True today as well. Need I name names?
Yes, name names, but name names back in 1926. There is an enormous concentration of productive owner capital now compared to one hundred years ago. Productive capital was widely distributed to the owners of farms, tools, shops, stores, etc. and etc. The elites were little guys, small fry. We were a nation of elites who had a perspective on real work. They were the working elites, the middlin' sort. There were no global enterprises back then. But there were 600,000 men working in the coal mines. Those miners aspired to be farmers, landowners, not revolutionaries. They could imagine being a grocer.
Huh? I mentioned that there are rich oligarchs today.
you said, "the elites are always the owner of capital." I did not disagree. I remember when the elite owners of productive capital were oh so numerous compared to today. We were a better and very different nation - and it really wasn't that long ago. Better when capital worked under the owner's control on a human scale. Back when capital had a face and a pocketbook.
My wife's grandparents owned a coal mine in Southern Iowa. Worked it themselves. Family business.
It is ironic that the generation famous for saying "don't trust anyone over 30" has become the one that won't step aside at 80! It seems that the youth-worship was only for when they were the youth...
I do think that the Boomers were probably failed by their elders in that the Greatest Generation taught them hard work but not the deeper joys of stewardship, i.e. the discipline of planting a tree you will never eat from. They were instructed in all the virtues of effort and organisation but not the pleasure of being succeeded and knowing it will grow beyond you. Historically to watch a protégé surpass you was effectively the point of leadership; for the Boomers, they feel it as a threat to their identity. Though perhaps the Boomers didn't lack that teaching, but just set it aside. The 60s was all about a rejection of loyalty, deferred gratification, and self-effacing in favour of liberating oneself.
As is so often the case the economic shifts might have been a significant factor in all this. The Boomers parents operated in system where you trained your successor because that was your retirement (ergo, the better the protégé the better the pension!). The Boomers made a system where the value you extracted while you were there was all value you'd ever see, which actively disincentives investing in the future. There is probably a bit of "founder syndrome" that bleeds through from this where Boomers see themselves as founding the modern world and so they need to be rewarded commensurately.
From my perspective the real heart of the issue is that they refuse to grapple with aging itself. I've seen many surveys that find a majority of Boomers in their late 60s and 70s describing themselves as middle-age (something so delusional it borders on mental illness). Mentorship and succession are, to a degree, memento mori practices wherein you train someone to replace you because you've accepted that you'll need replacing. If you genuinely believe you're middle-aged at 75, there's no urgency to prepare anyone.
```
What the cutting locust left,
the swarming locust has eaten.
What the swarming locust left,
the hopping locust has eaten,
and what the hopping locust left,
the destroying locust has eaten.
Joel 1:4
```
Great article Aaron. I find myself not just thinking about the nature of boomers, but also about the nature of organizations in this era. There is something about the mass scale that is particular to this era that seems to have grown over previous generations and reached a peak in its current form here. In a sense the peak of the human made organizations. Now we are seeing the same at play with technology driven growth in AI that is creating a similar disruption, but this time fueled by humans and technology working together in a new way that is creating leadership where the humans appear to be falling behind while the technology reaches new heights. Struggling to put this into words, but it is my sense.
Seems like a lot of this is more just about ego. Institutions are built upon something broadly shared that many people buy into, not a single dynamic personality. So a transition is easier, because ostensibly more people buy into it. And institutions fall apart when those shared ideals or values are no longer broad-based. Vanity projects always come and go, despite their creators' intentions.
At a certain level, I wonder how much of the Boomer tendency to just keep on going is due less to hubris and more workaholism. It's pretty plausible that someone like Wintour would absolutely dread the prospect of retirement and not having anything to do, so instead of finding a hobby she just keeps on doing what she's always done.
Now, this sort of thing isn't unique to the Boomer generation, but what makes things different is that especially among the elites, the Boomers, thanks to technological advances, are not only considerably longer-lived than previous generations, but are also capable of working for much longer as well. Had Wintour been born a century earlier, she would likely have retired sometime in her sixties.