In a television commercial from Robert Kennedy's 1968 campaign for the presidency, the ever-youthful New York senator answered the questions of a crowd of schoolchildren and asked them to join his historic effort. In the closing moments of the ad, he said to the young people of the country, "You have the greatest stake in the future, and the least ties to the past."
Four years later, a campaign poster from the 1972 presidential race featured Senator George McGovern's smiling face with the words, "I stake my hopes in 1972 in large part on the energy, the wisdom and the conscience of young Americans." McGovern was defeated by incumbent President Richard Nixon in a 49-state landslide, and the nation was given two decades of Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush.
Every four years, pundits, prognosticators and politicians place their hopes in the hands of young people. And from McGovern in 1972 to Gary Hart in 1984 to Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) four years ago, candidates have rocked the vote with hope and desperation only to see their mighty armies come up short on Election Day. And yet every four years we hope again that this newest generation will be the one to deliver - not just in politics, but on the pressing challenges of our society.
Now, it has fallen to us.
Naturally, after so many years of disappointment, the pundits are beginning to suspect that the recent excitement and strength our generation has shown at the polls are fickle and fleeting; that, like the young generations before us, ours, too, will ultimately fade away.
They argue that we do not have the fortitude of the Greatest Generation, who fought to protect freedom at home and abroad when the world threatened to disintegrate. They say that we do not have the passion of the baby boomers, who distinguished themselves by refusing to take the word of authority for granted, and by challenging those who demanded that they fight a war they did not believe should be waged.
But today, the Greatest Generation is disappearing. Those who served their country valiantly in World War II have largely faded from the forefront of the national scene, taking their leave from this earth with a characteristic quiet dignity.
Our parents, who once swore to never trust anyone over 30, are now too busy running the world to change it. Tie-dye and beads have given way to suits and power ties as the former activists, hippies, yippies and beatniks have assumed their place in traditional society, favoring incremental change over strident revolution.
And now we are the greatest generation available.
Two of the most powerful coalitions in the fight for good have left the battlefield, and we are all that is left. We are the next great hope in an ever-shortening list that is coming perilously close to the end.
On the face of it, we are unlikely heroes. A generation of Facebook.com and YouTube.com, of Britney and bong smoke, our values are untested and our strength is unproven. We have not been drafted to fight in any wars or defied the leaders of our country; we have neither battled to protect the status quo nor campaigned to break it down.
But there is a quiet revolution in this nation; there are the low murmurs of rebellion and the soft fomentation of action and dissent.
We are tired in America and around the world. These are difficult times in which we live. But no obstacle is a bigger barrier to our success than the hypocrisy, the apathy and the passivity that allows us to sit back and wait for someone else to fix it so we don't have to. With a falling economy, rising healt-care costs and energy policies that continue to stagnate, it would be easy for us to concede defeat, to acknowledge that these problems are too big, that these times are too hard, and that we ourselves are too divided to find common solutions.
It would be easy for us to forget these problems or to push them off to the next generation, as has happened so many times before. We have let many moments slip away in America. The great defining instants have largely been ignored by those of us who have, as Kennedy put it, the greatest stake in the future.
As today's graduating seniors leave Tufts, such grand themes and fierce pleas may be too idealistic for minds preoccupied with first jobs and new taxes and the other, more grounded concerns that come with joining the "real" world. Maybe the pundits are right, and our generation will settle into a state of disillusioned indifference.
But the possibility remains, like a spark that won't be extinguished, that we can make good on the promises of past generations - that we can be the generation that met the challenges of today and set a new course for tomorrow. We can take up the challenge laid down by Kennedy in 1968 and McGovern in 1972. This is a moment of great consequence, for the time is right, and we stand at the crossroads of history.
Certainly, it will not be easy. Our time is short, and there is much work to be done. But when ordinary people band together to accomplish extraordinary things, that is the measure of a generation. We will be remembered as a force for good in this world not because events forced our hand, but because we chose to act. Our actions will not be dictated by events; instead, the course of history will be dictated by our actions.
We have no record of achievements, and we can offer no assurances of success. But we are here at this moment - and that may be the most important thing. We are the greatest generation available, and maybe, this time, we will do something truly great.
Let's go change the world.
