Many of those who became adults in the late ‘60s see in Bill Clinton a mirror of their lives--both the good and the bad--because he’s... : One of Them

To most Americans, Bill Clinton may be just another struggling national leader.

But to many who entered adulthood in the political and social tumult of the late 1960s, the 42nd President of the United States is more than that. He is the epitome of the strengths and the weaknesses of their generation.

No matter whether they support him or oppose him, many of the men and women who graduated from college about the same time as Clinton--he got his diploma from Georgetown University in 1968--see their own lives mirrored in the triumphs and travails of the 47-year-old President and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

To admirers in his generation, Clinton’s Administration represents a refreshing watershed in American life--a new beginning under the leadership of a young, Kennedy-esque President who embraces all the good intentions of their era. In their eyes, he is a better leader because he seems genuinely to believe in values they hold dear, including civil rights and equality of the sexes.

“All those things we preached about when we were young and idealistic--he’s doing them now,” said Diane Steenman, a 1968 graduate of UC Berkeley who lives in Dublin, Ohio, one of dozens of Clinton contemporaries interviewed for this story.

At the same time, many see his performance thus far as a reflection of other characteristics of their generation: a tendency toward naivete, a frequent disregard for the lessons of history and an unshakable belief in the notion that keen minds can overcome any problem.

In the words of author Jesse Kornbluth, who graduated from Harvard in 1968, the Clintons seem to reflect “both the best and the worst of my generation.”

“They have a real connection to their youthful idealism. They care about people beyond their nuclear family. And because of their Southern heritage they know black people as individuals.

“The problem is, while they have been exercising their considerable intellectual prowess, others have learned more about the mundane art of management. So the Clintons find themselves in that place where good ideas don’t matter and intentions are liabilities,” he said.

Because Clinton and his contemporaries came of age at a time of extraordinary campus unrest inspired by the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the slayings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy and a host of social changes, they have always viewed themselves as different.

That has given them a stronger-than-usual identification with members of their own generation.

“We think of ourselves as special people, those of us who were in the classes of 1967, 1968, 1969 and 1970,” said Gene Bishop, a Philadelphia physician and another 1968 graduate.

So strong is the sense of identity that many members of this group feel as though they know the First Couple personally. Typically, one 1968 graduate said: “I know I’d like this guy and I suspect he’d like me.”

Indeed, this generational kinship has proved stronger than political ideology in some cases. Charles H. Zimmerman, also Georgetown ’68 and now a prominent member of the Kentucky Republican Party, admits he voted for the Democratic nominee because “we have more in common than what divides us.”

For those coming of age in the late 1960s, it seemed--in the words of Bob Dylan--”like a flying saucer had landed.” Every institution was under siege, every political truth was being challenged, every social norm was suddenly suspect.

Beginning with the Free Speech movement at Berkeley in 1964, students all across the nation were demanding the right to speak out against the Vietnam War, racism, police brutality, old sexual mores and even the educational system.

Resistance to the war touched virtually every campus during that period, as many young men rejected the notion of being drafted into a conflict they viewed as futile or immoral. Their struggle erupted on the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention and culminated in 1970 with the slaying of four students by National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio.

Meanwhile, the cry for civil rights in the South fueled the Black Power movement in the North. There was the freedom march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., the slayings of King and Malcolm X, the rise of the Black Panthers and the rioting in Watts; Newark, N.J.; Detroit and other urban ghettos.

Just as startling was the cultural revolution that accompanied this political upheaval. The drug culture, the sexual revolution, the quest for inner peace--these phenomena were at the heart of the music, the language and the literature of the times. It brought America the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin; “The Graduate,” “Hair” and, of course, the paramount tribal gathering of the hippie generation: the Woodstock Music & Arts Faire, in Upstate New York in August, 1969.

Even for the vast majority of students who stood on the sidelines, who never joined Students for a Democratic Society or tripped on LSD, their lifestyles were shaped by this counterculture. They may have smoked some marijuana, attended an anti-war rally, visited a commune, tutored an inner-city child, engaged in sex at an earlier age than their parents or worn long hair and tie-dyed clothes.

If few were truly radical or revolutionary, the overwhelming majority--including the Clintons--clearly adopted attitudes toward society, especially government, that were far different from those of their Depression- and World War II-era parents. And those attitudes and values have left a lasting stamp on them in adulthood.

Historian Arthur Zilversmit, a 1960s expert at Lake Forest College in Illinois, says the people who attended college in those chaotic years shared two characteristics: They were both anti-institutional and anti-historical.

They not only resented what they saw as the tyranny of the institutions created by their elders, he said, but they believed their unique circumstances had emancipated them from strictures of the past.

“The only thing that mattered to them was good intentions,” he said. “Purity of heart was everything.”

Thus, it is not surprising that what many Clinton contemporaries seem to admire most about him are his good intentions. Even when he stumbles, they tend to give him credit for having his heart in the right place.

At the same time, they think Clinton’s good intentions often have been at the core of his political difficulties--that his intense desire to bring about change sometimes has blinded him to political realities.

“The frustration is that having the right instincts is not enough to bring immediate results,” said Andrew Tobias, a financial journalist, author and another Clinton contemporary.

For many of Clinton’s generation, his campaign call for change is reminiscent of their youthful efforts to reform the government and other institutions they considered unjust and otherwise imperfect. And while most of his peers became part of the Establishment, as Clinton did, they still tend to view the world through the prism of their youthful idealism.

Said Zimmerman: “We believed that all things were possible--all problems were soluble. The lesson Bill Clinton still has not learned is that you cannot accomplish everything at once.”

For Joanna Lennon, a 1968 graduate who runs the East Bay Conservation Corps in Berkeley, the people of her generation appear to be demanding two contradictory things from Clinton: “We want him to take moral stances, but we also want him to balance out what he does with what is realistic. It’s a Catch-22.”

In many ways, that same conflict exists within the people of this generation themselves--a struggle between the values of their youth and the insight that comes from becoming a part of the institutions they once challenged.

Deborah Weisgall, a writer in Lincoln, Mass., who graduated from Harvard in 1968, faults Clinton as a candidate for using 1960s slogans to minimize the obstacles he was certain to face in Washington.

“He talked about sweeping changes,” she said. “It was ‘60s rhetoric. He made us want to believe. I didn’t trust his rhetoric. I found it scary.”

On the other hand, David Harris, who was 1969 class president at Stanford and served a prison term for draft resisting, sides with those who think Clinton should pay less attention to the obstacles: “My biggest complaint about Clinton is that he hasn’t taken any big losses. He seems always to be shooting for the half-assed victory.”

The issue of gays in the military is mentioned most often as an example of Clinton’s tendency to underestimate political realities.

“I believe he stumbled on that issue because, with our generation, tolerance was our greatest virtue,” Zimmerman said. “It caused him to underestimate the reaction of the older generation and institutions to that problem. He showed that, because he was of our generation, he didn’t understand.”

Conversely, Clinton’s decision to withdraw the nomination of C. Lani Guinier as the Justice Department’s civil rights chief is widely viewed by his contemporaries as a failure to stand on principle. Because of her controversial views on voting rights for minorities, she was forced to withdraw even before the Senate Judiciary Committee conducted hearings.

“It was political expediency,” said Celeste DeBlasis, a 1968 Pomona College graduate and author of historical novels. “I’ll be very disappointed if Clinton turns out to be politically expedient, just like all the others.”

While they seem to be in a minority, some members of Clinton’s generation are reluctant to judge him after six months in office. Judith Hartstone, a writer and book seller on Bainbridge Island, Wash., and a 1969 graduate of UC Berkeley, blames her generation for passing judgment on him too soon.

“We’re like people with a remote TV clicker,” she said. “We are not willing to let anything develop. That’s a sign of our generation. I feel like I want to say: ‘Take your hand off the clicker!’ ”

Clinton’s contemporaries said they were not surprised during the campaign when the Democratic nominee was called on to defend his opposition to the Vietnam War. All those interviewed from that era identified the war as the most searing political event in their lives.

“No matter what side you were on, you were profoundly affected by the Vietnam War; it changed your life,” said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, a University of California graduate who was studying for a master’s degree at the University of Chicago in 1968.

Because Clinton was critical of U.S. foreign policy in those days, Goldberg said she expects him to be a different kind of international leader. “Having questioned those policies, it opens you up to having a broader view of foreign policy and our role in the world,” she said.

But even more than the war, graduates of the late 1960s claim their personal lives were permanently altered by the women’s movement and the sexual revolution. As a result, they can identify with Clinton’s confessed marital difficulties and the substantial role his wife plays at the White House.

“Being a business person myself, I’m glad to see him have a partner who he treats as an equal,” said Steenman, an executive of a work-force management company. “Her place isn’t to be quiet, but to think and question. It’s a tremendous gain for us.”

Another 1960s motif that Clinton’s peers see running through his presidency is the desire to include people of all races and ethnic groups.

“The man’s major contribution has been that he wanted a Cabinet that reflected America with blacks and whites, Baptists and Jews, people from cities and small towns,” Zimmerman said. “That’s a tremendous achievement.”

As much as Clinton reflects the values of those who graduated from college in the late 1960s, some see important differences in him.

Frequently, they cite his intense involvement in student government, which was not always popular in the late 1960s. While many of his generation were condemning Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, they note, Clinton was aspiring to serve in the White House.

Clinton’s openness to compromise reminds Harris of the Southerners he encountered in student government at Stanford, whom he recalled “were always looking for a grand compromise” between opponents and supporters of the Vietnam War.

True to their generation, Clinton’s peers think his sharp intellect will help him to overcome his early missteps as President.

“The thing we all admire about Clinton is that he is so bright,” said Thomas B. Martin, a 1968 graduate of Denison University in Granville, Ohio, where he now directs the school’s fund-raising campaigns. “I’m delighted that a Rhodes scholar is President. There is no substitute for brains.”

Still, the suspicion is growing among Clinton’s peers that he and they may have put too much stock in the value of brainpower, at least as it is measured in academia.

“He shares the notion that if you read hard and study hard you’ll do better,” said Conn Nugent, a 1968 Harvard graduate and director of environmental programs for the Nathan Cummings Foundation in New York. “It’s not necessarily true, but we certainly do believe it.”

As Clinton struggles to succeed as President, his contemporaries see in him another trait of their generation that they think may be even more useful than his intellect: persistence.

“Clinton will demonstrate a staying power that reflects those times,” Harris said. “If my generation lacked persistence, we might still be at war in Southeast Asia.”