The NSC's Sesame Street Generation

Washington Post ^ | March 12, 2006 | Dafna Linzer

[qam1]

They headed off to college as the Berlin Wall was coming down, were inspired by globalization and came of age with international terrorism. Freed from a constant nuclear standoff as a dominant fact of international life, members of Generation X no longer fear war or upheaval in the global status quo.

Understand them -- and where they came from -- and suddenly President Bush's Middle East forays, grand democratic experiments and go-it-alone strategies take on a different look.

That's because nearly a dozen thirtysomething aides, breastfed on "Sesame Street" and babysat by "The Brady Bunch," are now shaping those strategies in unexpected ways as senior advisers at the National Security Council, the White House's powerful inner chamber of foreign policy aides with routine access to Bush. This small group of conservative Gen Xers -- members of an age cohort once all but written off as stand-for-nothing underachievers -- is the first set of American policymakers truly at home in a unipolar world.

Their adulthood has never included a fellow superpower or the need to reach accommodation with an enemy -- a Cold War concept none of the NSC's Gen-X crowd can get their heads around. Instead, their history begins with Sept. 11, 2001. It is the measuring stick they use when discussing their generation's challenge and the sole lens through which they envision the future. "We all built careers in the post-Cold War world," said Meghan O'Sullivan, who at 36 is the deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan. "You have to think about what are the defining features of the age we live in. For me, that's American primacy, globalization, terrorism and WMD, which is why we do what we do. This wasn't applicable during the Cold War."

[qam1]

Interesting article, worth a read despite the source

Xer Ping

Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.

Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.

[Skooz]

Meghan O'Sullivan, who at 36 is the deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Darn. I'm ten years older and sit in a cubicle all day.

*minor chord* "I'm a loooooser......"

[oldbill]

This is rather scary - almost as bad as the pizza-munching campus kibutzers of the Clinton White House.

We need someone with real life experiences in these jobs, not political junkies. Notice the lack of military experience for an agency that will determine our involvement in international disputes?

[Jay777]

Hey, some of us Gen X'rs have military experience. Don't write us off so easily old timer.

[KarlInOhio]

Darn. I'm ten years older and sit in a cubicle all day.

*minor chord* "I'm a loooooser......"

By the time he was my age, Alexander the Great had become king, conquered the known world and was dead for six years.

[LibertarianInExile]

To my reading, O'Sullivan comes across as an airhead. Of course she worked for Moynihan. But as a general rejoinder to your 'scary' comment--these are bureaucrat advisors on the NSC, not people actually doing anything at some government office. They are foreign policy wonks, not people who do squat, and the President generally keeps his own counsel on that sort of thing, fortunately.

I think the article was slanted as if these people were fooling with national policy like kids in a playpen. Cheap shot at Bush. But what would you expect from a reporter that Daily Kos and Arianna Huffington laud for her 'accuracy?' And if you want to damn a whole generation for f'in around without 'real world experience' for being too young, start with Linzer herself--she's only 36. Does that make her writing less pungent?