Does the Current Political Leadership Truly Represent All Americans, of All Generations?
While the routine winter cold chills the noses of New Yorkers and brandishes its touristic charm, the local, political atmosphere of the city and nation undergo their regularly scheduled ups and downs. This fall, Americans are experiencing varying degrees of readiness to settle on the policies of their representatives. From Gen Z to Baby Boomers, from the little league political advocates to seasoned (and possibly retired) hard-hitting constituents, Americans are more concerned with older politicians misrepresenting them because of their lessened idealism.
To put it frankly: the older political generation does not represent the up-and-coming voters. As the 2024 presidential election nears, a growing number of media outlets such as ABC, the Guardian and AP have covered the topic of age in politics from various angles. Next November, two of the oldest presidential candidates to date could compete against each other again, and questions surrounding their ability — both physical and mental — to represent Americans have dominated headlines. And this is now reviving a longstanding debate on the intersection of age and politics.
“When you ask me about [President Biden] all I picture is that one video of him on the bike,” says Cole Weingard, 15, standing by his friends in the brisk wind-chill of Lower Manhattan. “I can’t tell you something he’s done that’s worth me remembering, specifically.”
Weingard is on the younger end of Gen Z. He thinks ideological differences between the older and younger generations are inevitable. “Old people get to a point–they don’t care to figure out why our generation likes what we do,” he said. “I probably won’t care about anything I care about now in 20 years.”
His opinion is verifiable; an NPR report from September details that 48% of Americans aged 18 to 34 think the current political and electoral system holds back their vision for the future. The same report showed extremely low approval ratings (18% at most for Donald Trump and Joe Biden each) from the same demographic. Yet these politicians rerun and still get votes from other generations.
The American democratic system is supposed to build a coalition representing the country fairly. Still, age has caused the legislative body to lose sight of their original philosophies that got them in office.
“The other generations used to be hippies and progressive like us,” says Sarena Shah, 20, sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park, hands chilled while the sun starts to set. “When the generation is new and young they say they’re going to do all this stuff. I think going through life and seeing some of the horrors and trauma, grief can definitely make you more bitter and closed off to the world.”
Shah believes the cycle of cynicism increasing with age will break with Gen Z, inspiring a new politically proactive generation of legislators. “With our world– technology, global warming and the way it is– we need to make such intense changes,” she says. “I feel like in our generation it’ll be a lot easier to keep our views and grow on them. With social media it’s easier to do what you believe in, so I have hope.”
She is not wrong: currently, the most prominent social issues (according to the UN Foundation) include the sustainability and climate movements, along with providing aid for the pandemic and humanitarian disasters and creating a truly inclusive world. All have been spearheaded by Gen Z in the past decade.
Icons like Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg have been leaders for global inclusivity and ecology, while the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 was largely composed of Gen Zers who had the social prerogative and mobility to protest at the height of the pandemic. “There must be somebody, at least one person in politics, who can come forward that’s younger than a lot of the candidates right now, and could still make a great president,” says Shah.
Millennials, in contrast, have struggled to gain equal political representation to their generation size. While Baby Boomers continue to get elected, 55 Millennials currently hold office in Congress. Millennials are behind Boomers and Gen X in terms of owning property, working in higher-education careers, and in income by more than double than the older generations were at their age.
Illena Ropan, 31, believes that her generation is misunderstood. “As Millennials, we get put in this box that we move as a monolith,” she said. “We’ve been pitted against Gen Z to be innovative while we juggle our adult lives and our hopes for the future.”
Ropan speaks generally. This doesn’t necessarily mean that ideological polarization always trends one way with age. The Atlantic reports that Gen Z, as the youngest politically mobile generation, is possibly leaning more to the right than expected. And not all Boomers and Gen X are as cynical as we assume.
The millennial experience voting is instead less idealistic because of circumstances unique to their age group. The economy and current events from the past couple of decades called to action left-leaning Millennials, but voting in the past several years is trending right.
Ropan believes ideology and age are tied together, but ironically lacks the hope of the younger generation. “I had a time capsule from the end of high school,” she says. “In it I said I wanted to help come up with community programs for Latino families in the suburbs. If I was as ambitious as I was then, maybe I could try it.”
In contrast, Margaret Hudson, 66, has not followed this trend as linearly as the data suggests. “My husband and my kids would’ve had it easier if the votes passed for more conservative taxation: the schools, our income,” she says. “That was in a time you would read about in history books nowadays. If I kept on believing living life means living for only myself, my son and his kids would’ve been real menaces.”
Sitting in the Atlanta airport, Hudson believes at their current age the older generation has a dynamism not yet unlocked by the younger generations. “I don’t know where my kids stand politically,” she comments about her Millennial sons. “But I do know that they’re probably going to go through something similar as I did, but won’t turn around like me. Because they know more about the economy than me, and less about people. I think that’s why these politicians don’t seem to think like the majority people– they’re thinking like politicians, like strategists!”
It is fair to say our current political leaders lack the generational connection to the majority American community. Although people in similar stages of life are more likely to agree on an ideal world, age groups are thrown into overarching ideals that they do not fit into.
“My personal hope is that your younger generation can take those seats in the house,” says Hudson. “It doesn’t matter how radical you seem: new voices are better than our retold opinions.”
