crisis team.

 a moment of clarity.

for your consideration...

words.

"...Though just 17 years apart, Baker and McConnell represent entirely different generations of American leaders. Baker, born in 1925, was at the tail end of the G.I. generation that survived the Depression, won the Second World War, triumphed in the Cold War and built the United States’ economic might. McConnell, born in 1942, was just ahead of — and for practical purposes part of — the baby boom generation that wrecked our politics over the past 20 years.

 ...Boomers inherited a system based on compromise and sacrifice — and they gave us the current standoff. They received a United States victorious in the Cold War and atop the world economy — and they gave us the Iraq war and the Great Recession. They are the parents of the first generation in U.S. history — the millennials — to have a lower standard of living than previous generations. And, in retirement, they will probably break Social Security and Medicare.

“Boomers are the scorched-earth, values-driven generation,” said Neil Howe, who with William Strauss chronicled the recurring patterns of generations in the United States. “They invented the culture wars and they’re taking it with them as they grow older, which is this complete polarization and gridlock. It’s very hard to compromise over values.”

...Gen X — my generation — is ill-equipped to fix the boomers’ mess. Alienated and individualistic, we don’t have faith in institutions or in our ability to change them; like Obama, we react to events. Happily, the millennials may have a better shot at fixing things when they get older. Unhappily, history suggests it will require a crisis..."

THE WASHINGTON POST: As leaders, boomers are a bust