Growing Pains At 40

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But what is the right formula? Not everyone is threatened by a nuclear waste dump in his backyard. The Baby Boomers remain exceedingly leery of conventional politicians. Though Eugene McCarthy's "children's crusade" helped speed Lyndon Johnson's departure from the White House in 1969, the slow wind down of the Viet Nam War and the depressing revelations of Watergate, not to mention images of assassinated heroes burned into their brainpans by TV, turned off many Baby Boomers to politics just as they were reaching voting age. Voter participation among Baby Boomers remained well below the national average into the 1980s and only caught up in the presidential election in 1984.

Like the rest of the population, the Baby Boomers, particularly the younger ones, voted heavily for Ronald Reagan. It may seem peculiar that the Now generation went for a 73-year-old conservative. But Reagan said what they wanted to hear: boundless opportunity is theirs for the taking. To a generation pinched by high inflation and low wages in the '70s, the President's feel-good message was reassuring. Walter Mondale, on the other hand, came across to many Baby Boomers as the very sort of old-style, special- interest-pandering politician they distrusted.

The G.O.P. looked at the 1984 results and prayed for a substantial realignment that would make young people lifelong Republicans. The Democrats were heartened that 30- to 40-year-olds were slightly less likely than other age groups to vote Republican. But the fact is that while 38% of 30- to 40- year-olds told the TIME Yankelovich poll that they are Democrats and 24% said they are Republicans, 38% called themselves independents. "The Baby Boomer vote is never going to be in either party's hip pocket," says Republican Political Consultant Lee Atwater. Their political views tend to be a mix: they are conservative on economic matters and distrustful of Big Government. Yet they are liberal on social issues like women's rights and abortion, and wary of the moral preachments of the New Right. Nor has the generation that marched for civil rights entirely lost its zeal for racial equality. Though Boomers & oppose strict quotas in hiring, they favor affirmative action to overcome racial discrimination.

Some of the most politically active Baby Boomers are true-believer conservatives. "When I went to college, all my professors were insipid liberals," says John Buckley, 29, who went from being a rock critic for the Soho News in Manhattan to conservative Congressman Jack Kemp's press secretary. "The only way to inject any energy was to rebel from the right." Says Peggy Noonan, 35, who voted for George McGovern in 1972 but now writes speeches for President Reagan: "We are idealists without illusions." Of course, many more Baby Boomers--indeed, the large and silent majority--show little or no sign of social activism or ideological commitment and remain cynical about the promises of politicians.