Wages of Boomer Neglect Is Generational Warfare : Twenty-somethings: Ask Wyche Fowler Jr. if the young, now learning the game of politics, can be ignored. Don’t tease the children; they bite.

By resisting investment in education, health and welfare of the youngest and most powerless elements of our citizenry, Americans are toying with generational war.

The boomers’ propaganda against the youngsters consists of colorful, disparaging terminology that implies worthlessness. Generation X. Baby Bummers. Twenty-nothings. Everywhere, the shaking heads of displeased elders. Pollsters say young people don’t vote. Publishers say they don’t buy books. Journalists say they don’t read newspapers. Everywhere, there’s open-mouthed astonishment that Woodstock intellectuals could produce offspring so dumb, so apolitical and so hopeless.

The disappointment of the 1980s has led to the neglect of the ‘90s. Parents have sought emancipation from the suffocating responsibility of parenthood by flocking to divorce court, leaving their children “home alone” and telling the afternoon talk-show host about how their therapist has freed them to live lives beyond parenthood.

Soon, I fear, this boomer neglect will turn to outright heartlessness. In March, the Oakland-based organization Children Now issued a report claiming that in the San Joaquin Valley, one in three children live in poverty and that among Latino and African-American children, the percentages are even higher.

The day after the report, valley talk-radio airwaves were saturated with discomfort, denial and disregard. One middle-aged caller defensively challenged the numbers. Another claimed the report was simply an emotional lobbying ploy for social spending. Still another sought to shift blame and responsibility for the numbers away from the taxpayers by invoking stale Dan Quayle rhetoric about the lack of “family values.” Apparently, the unsettling image of children in poverty has lost much of its political shock value. Middle-aged Americans are more likely to fret over the possibility of higher taxes today than over the well-being of succeeding generations tomorrow.

Nowhere is the battle more heated than in the shelling of public-school funding. Frustrated by an educational product that cannot make change at a McJob without a computerized cash register, middle-aged taxpayers are revolting. At the local level, the rebellion has taken the form of boomer voters soundly defeating bond measures for school construction. At the state level, the revolt shows up in Texas, as an overwhelming electoral defeat for the so-called “Robin Hood” plan to comply with a court order and distribute more equitably state funding between the rich and poor school districts. And finally, at the federal level, there are lingering conservative speeches calling for the abolition of the federal Department of Education.

Meanwhile in Washington, after 20 years of nurturing their utopian visions, baby boomers are crowding and hoarding the corridors of power. Less than a year after President Bill Clinton’s saxophone stunts wooed my generation to the ballot box, there have been carefully placed stories in eastern media markets about the prevalence of young people in the administration. While the President certainly deserves some credit for tapping a pool of talent overlooked by his predecessor, we cannot ignore the undeniable fact that, to date, the average appointee to the Clinton Administration is 45 years old.

As twenty-somethings--so numerous and so troubled--slowly begin to realize that boomer Democrats are no more eager to share power than were World War II-era Republicans, groups of youngsters seem increasingly unwilling to stay on the sidelines of political battles that will ultimately determine their destiny. A panicked generation that prided itself on its political ambivalence a decade ago is now forcing itself to learn the hard lessons of practical politics. And learn them quickly.

On the front lines, there are the aggressive upstarts at Lead or Leave, a Washington-based political advocacy group for the young and the restless. Not putting much stock in the stifling adage that one’s respect for one’s elders should lead lemmings over a cliff, Lead or Leave has given new meaning to in-your-face politics. Whether through its home-district stalking of representatives who refuse to take the organization’s pledge to cut the federal deficit--”Our generation’s Vietnam,” says co-founder Jon Cowan--in half by 1996 or by demonstrating outside the Washington headquarters of the Assn. for the Advancement of Retired Persons (AARP), Lead or Leave is learning the ropes of pressure politics, big-money fund raising and lobbying.

Startled gray-haired politicians, having long ago relinquished their backbone to AARP, are unsure of how to handle this fresh assault from the young flank. Their first instinct--to ignore it--was a colossal mistake. In last year’s U.S. Senate race in Georgia, former Democratic Sen. Wyche Fowler Jr. was asked by a Lead or Leave operative at a closed university gathering what he intended to do to address the concerns of young people. “Look,” a fed-up Fowler said, “students don’t vote. Do you expect me to come in here and kiss your ass?” (The insult would have remained off the record, except that the questioner called Newsweek.) Fowler lost the election and was later heckled by young people carrying signs that read: “Hey, Wyche! Surprise! We do vote! So kiss our ass!”

The lesson: Please don’t tease the children; they bite.