The Cultral Divide: Is Clinton ‘Young’ Anymore? : Youth: Only politicians and opera singers are ‘young’ when they are in their mid-40s. Just name one official who likes the rappers Kris Kross.

On a golden day last fall, longer ago than now seems possible, I was in Lincoln, Neb., for Sen. Bob Kerrey’s declaration that he would seek the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Remember Kerrey was, for a couple of months, not just any old candidate--he was seen as the chief rival to Bill Clinton for the role as this year’s man of a new generation, one whose cultural mindset had not been formed by World War II but by the 1960s. You could tell this was how his handlers wanted him viewed because of the music blasting from the giant speakers on the podium--John Cougar Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen.

But even on the day of Kerrey’s announcement it was plain that the strategy wasn’t going to work. One look at the forced grin on the new candidate’s face as the music played was sufficient to reveal that he didn’t like it. In fact, Nebraska rumor has it that he is a jazz fan.

It was obvious why there was no reason he should like it: Kerrey is 49. Even if Kerrey did like Mellencamp and Springsteen, he would still not be candidate of today’s generation. He would be the candidate of yesterday’s.

The role once earmarked for Kerrey has now, we know, been adopted triumphantly by Clinton, aged 45. Now by any standards--except those that apply to politics or opera singers--45 is not “young;” it is middle-aged. In fact, in New York last week, the Democratic Convention seemed larded with symbolism that reminded one of a time a generation ago--Aretha Franklin sand the national anthem, the Clinton campaign’s cute adoption of Elvis Presley continued (he was billed in the official convention guide as “Entertainment Coordinator”).

The sad truth is that, even by the standards of their now-crumbling generation--which, for the record, is mine too--the folk his own age around Clinton look decidedly unhip. They look as if they didn’t inhale; they are emphatically not the kind of people that Abbie Hoffman’s mother warned him against. I could not figure out what was so peculiar about one fortysomething Clinton adviser I spoke to last week until I noticed, with horror, that he was wearing his tie in a Windsor knot.

The real point is not that Clinton’s generation would have been better represented by people who said, “Yeah, I inhaled. In fact, I used to drop a tab of acid once in a while, too.” It is that we kid ourselves if we think that the Clinton campaign represents everything that is on the cutting edge or even up to date about the culture. Cultural and political development did not come to a dead stop with the McGovern campaign and the Eagles.

Behind the political gang that now seeks to come into its inheritance has grown up a whole generation that, at least this year, is buying Nirvana albums, not Aretha’s; whose drug of choice is ecstasy, not dope, and which--I suspect--is a whole lot less hung up about sex than those of us who (as we amusingly think) blazed the trail of sexual freedom.

I can think of little that most politicians have done to reach out to these new Americans. Not only has there never been a politician who admitted to liking Jane’s Addition; there has never been one--with the possible exception of Gov. Bill Weld of Massachusetts, or so my Boston friends tell me) who admits to liking Talking Heads.

Yet these new Americans are an interesting crowd--from the technonerds at Caltech splicing genes this way and that, to the computer programmers in the Pacific Northwest (I bet no Democratic candidate this year spoke to Bill Gates, the thirtysomething chairman of Microsoft), to the Asian-Americans so comfortably at home in the global village. And--witness the efforts of Rock the Vote, which deserves every public service prize going this year--it is simply not true that this genuinely new generation is not interested in politics.

Clinton himself is far from being the worst culprit in missing the significance of the new generation. In what may, when the history books are written, have been the turning point of his campaign, he appeared on MTV, the voice of today’s Americans, just as Dan Rather’s is that of yesterday’s. Perhaps he may have a few people around him who know what’s going on. The real significance of George Stephanopoulos, his 31-year old communications director, may not be his political skills, impressive though they are, as the fact that he is such a snappy dresser. Look, by contrast, at Hillary, and weep.

Still, there is a long way to go. I look forward to the day when a candidate for office does not have to explain what she did with a joint, but why she has a red dot on the side of her nose, and brightly says, “Oh, yes, that’s where I used to hang the safety-pin.” At the rate we’re going, it won’t be until 2020.