Our generation has come of age in an unsettled political moment. As a result, this large, politically interested, socially aware generation has not settled into a predictable role in American politics. This is not yet President Barack Obama’s generation, nor does it belong to Republicans.
There is an opportunity here for whichever party grasps it. The ability to speak the language and address the concerns of this rising political generation could swing elections and policy for the next 40 years.
But neither party is treating the task of winning this generation with the urgency it deserves.
First, a party or politician should speak honestly about the looming debt crisis. Obama, to his credit, at least mentions it. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., among other Republicans, warns of it constantly.
But both parties tend either to trivialize or portray a doomsday scenario, when what we really need is a clear-eyed, uplifting vision for reducing debt and reinvigorating the economy.
Second, the party or politician hoping to win Millennial loyalty must put forth a vision of work and life that makes sense to us. This must involve coming to grips with the painful truth that there won’t be a perfect job for everyone who graduates from our universities, and that they can’t prepare us for this.
It also means freeing young people to create jobs through entrepreneurship, rather than giving them incentives through heavily subsidized loans to get a college degree that is often worth less than they pay for it.
Finally, parties and politicians must reach us on a deeper level than the aesthetic. Aesthetics will always be a part of campaigning. Identification with a party often depends on more than position papers and policy. For our generation, style still matters. Nothing disqualifies a political brand with us faster than the nagging sense that someone is trying too hard to be cool.
While this generation is increasingly concerned with substance, all the Republicans and Democrats have provided are stylized reenactments of more consequential past battles. The real arguments that this generation needs to hear are sobering, and few of them will resemble our familiar political debates.
Obama has won the votes of Millennials but has still not won our loyalty. He has captured the aesthetic sense of a generation but hasn’t given us deeper reasons to buy into his vision for the country, one that seems tailored to the hopes and fears of older generations.
James Poulos, in an essay for Ricochet magazine, writes that it was striking how thoroughly Obama’s address ignored the problems and opportunities facing under-30 voters.
“Young Americans already face a future defined by an inescapable reckoning,” he writes. “They … look at our grand entitlements as phantoms … They already know … that we … have too many [college graduates] for the market to absorb.”
We do know these things. The political party that learns to speak honestly about these sobering truths, while still presenting an ultimately optimistic vision of American life, could well end up, as Obama said in his State of the Union address, “winning the future.”
Reach Will at wmunsil@asu.edu
