Generation Jones leaders should put their cards on the table this year

We are seeing a major shift in political power. Having ruled much of the world for more than a decade, the baby boomers --usually seen as the age cohort born between 1946 and 1961 -- are now on their way out. The boomers are being replaced by what the social commentator Jonathan Pontell calls Generation Jones*, a sub cohort born between 1954 and 1965.* They form a bridge between the baby boomers and Generation X, born between 1961 and 1981.

Evidence of the new shift piled up during 2008. In the United States, Barack Obama (born 1961) trounced John McCain, who was born in 1936 and, therefore, is not a baby boomer. Earlier in the year, however, Obama saw off Hilary Clinton, born in 1947 and the queen of the boomers, to become the Democratic party’s standard-bearer. On January 20 2009, Obama replaced a baby boomer, George W. Bush, who himself followed Bill Clinton, another baby boomer, in 2001. Obama’s inauguration marked the end of 16 years of boomer rule.

In the race for London mayor, Conservative Boris Johnson (born 1964) ousted Labour incumbent Ken Livingstone (born 1945 and arguably a baby boomer, if only just).

In my home country, New Zealand, National’s John Key (born 1961) defeated three term Labour prime minister, Helen Clark (born 1950).

These three joined other Generation Jonesers at the top, like France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy (born 1955), Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel (born 1954), Australia’s prime minister Kevin Rudd (born 1957) and Sweden's prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt (born 1965). According to Jonathan Pontell, two-thirds of EU and NATO leaders now come from this cohort. Several key figures in Obama’s administration are also Jonesers.

There’s more. In this year’s UK general election, due in 2010, prime minister Gordon Brown (born 1951) will almost certainly lose to Conservative leader David Cameron (born 1966).

The change in ruling generations could have a profound of the substance and the style of politics. Baby boomer politics were all about enhancing personal freedom and self-fulfilment. Their legacy is 1960s and 1970s feminism, gay rights, the fight against apartheid, a new push for indigenous peoples’ rights, a new look at nationalism in Asia (well, Vietnam). Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and their contemporaries also carried on and sealed in the pursuit of greater freedom in the economic sphere. So turbo-capitalism is part of the boomer legacy too.

The theory is that Generation Jones still wants to change the world, but they are less ideological and more pragmatic. Last April, Pontell explained:

". . . We are practical idealists, forged in the fires of social upheaval while too young to play a part . . .

". . . Our practical idealism was created by witnessing the often unrealistic idealism of the 1960s. And we weren't engaged in that era's ideological battles; we were children playing with toys while Boomers argued over issues. Our non-ideological pragmatism allows us to resolve intra-Boomer skirmishes and to bridge that volatile Boomer-GenXer divide. We can lead."

I was born in 1962, which makes me one of Generation Jones, and Pontell’s argument rings a lot of bells with me.

Last year, however, the new generation leaders were ‘pragmatic’ enough but kept the ‘idealistic’ part of the formula under wraps.

On the moderate “left”, for example, “practical idealism” looks more like old-fashioned political caution. This has been a theme of several commentaries on Barack Obama’s first year in office. Drew Westen, the author of The Political Brain and a self-described “leftist”, has bitterly lamented the lack of fire in Obama’s belly and his reluctance to take risks, “to take anybody on.” Given Obama’s record and the fact that Generation Jones is meant to be about a pragmatic pursuit of ideals, I don’t think any of that is especially surprising.

Westen has also slated the president for having “no vision, no message” and of simply not wanting to enunciate a progressive vision of where his country should be heading in the 21st century.

In my experience, when those on the “left” accuse one of their own of lacking a progressive vision, they usually mean that s/he doesn’t subscribe to their vision. Westen has a point though. Obama’s core political beliefs have always been a hard to pin down and his political message is more opaque now than it was during the campaign. Politics Daily’s Walter Shapiro has called the forces driving the Obama presidency “elusive”. He points to a “never show your cards vagueness” on key issues in health care reform, on top of a reluctance to challenge Wall Street and the bonus culture and concludes that Barack Obama remains, “more than any president in memory, an enigmatic figure who defies easy categorization.”

Analyses of Australia’s Kevin Rudd (in office since December 2007) tend to use phrases like “work in progress”, “voters still don’t really know him” and “lacks a narrative”.

Jonesers from the moderate “right” have been open to similar sorts of criticisms. John Key has remained popular in his first year and more in office, partly because he has eschewed economic radicalism and stuck to middle of the political road. But Key is now under some pressure to explain how he will reposition New Zealand’s economy for the difficult challenges ahead. [click here, and here].

As for David Cameron, he is not in power and that so it is unfair to judge him by the above standards. But I’ve yet to hear a convincing definition of “Cameronism”. The Tory leader’s core beliefs remain a mystery. Such a comment may seem predictable from the likes of me, but a recent issue of The Spectator contained some scathing (and well-argued) articles claiming that Cameron has no “big idea”.

And, can anybody tell me what Mayor Boris is trying to achieve?

Pontell may be correct about Generation Jones and the opportunities that lie before it. President Obama is not fighting the old culture wars dating from the 1960s. Rudd has tried to fashion a fresh approach to social democratic politics. John Key has jettisoned the type of neoliberal ideology that caused his predecessors to self-destruct during the 1990s. In his quest to detoxify the Tory brand, David Cameron does not define himself in Thatcher-era frames. All of this is defensible, from an electoral point of view.

But I’m still not sure about the values and drivers of the leaders from Generation Jones - what their “practical idealism” is really all about. Perhaps there will be some clearer answers in 2010.

* I have previously written just about the Baby Boomers and Generation X, while mentioning a sub-cohort from 1955-65, but am happy to stand corrected and consider the theory about a distinctive “Generation Jones”.

Deputy mayor quits: what's at stake for Boris Johnson

So, Boris Johnson is a deputy mayor down. Ray Lewis has quit under a cloud and this morning’s papers are full of phrases like “hammer blow” and “gift to his opponents”. Jo keeps reminding me that she predicted long ago that Johnson’s lack of managerial competence would be his undoing.

There’s another reason the mayor should be worried: just three months into his term, Johnson is not embodying his carefully crafted political narrative. In marketing speak, his brand may get contaminated, all over again.

During the mayoral campaign, Boris Johnson told people a classic “time for a change” story. He offered a new face, a new style, a new focus on London’s issues and, above all, an end to staff and administrative scandals at City Hall.

That worked because during the campaign, he struck a chord with voters. And Johnson embodied his narrative by being younger, newer and more approachable than Ken Livingstone. At the same time, he was serious, measured and upbeat about London and its future.

When a Ray Lewis happens and the mayor is forced on to the backfoot, with the sort of media he faces this morning, Johnson does not live his story.

In his 1995 book Leading Minds, Howard Gardner stressed how leaders need to embody their narratives in order to be authentic and credible and bring their stories alive.

Even the most brilliant and successful political narratives implode. Interestingly, it's because the politicians telling the stories cease to embody them. When that happens, those politicians are soon on their way out. Churchill’s “fight them on the beaches” story eventually morphed into the infamous 1945 campaign speech that compared the Labour party to the Gestapo. Margaret Thatcher promised the anxious middle classes that she would “make Britain again”. The grocer’s daughter worked all hours. The story ended with the poll tax rots and government splits over the ERM. Tony Blair was the young leader of a “new Britain”; he dressed and acted accordingly. He ended up taking it into Iraq, telling a story that was false.

Johnson’s defenders will say it’s still early days yet. So it is. But London voters gave Boris Johnson the benefit of the doubt. Whilst they are very different, the last UK politician to be given that was Gordon Brown when he became prime minister. And Brown’s popularity collapsed when he stopped embodying his narrative. The visionary prime minister, the strong leader who offered a new, spin-free style of government played politics with the timing of a general election. Then he looked at the marginal seat polls, dithered and finally ditched the idea. We still do not know what Brown is trying to achieve as PM. The conscience of New Labour scrapped the 10p income tax rate – playing politics again – and left more than 5 million low-income households worse off. Then, in an effort to quell a political firestorm, the one-time iron chancellor put his own fiscal rules at risk with a £2.7bn compensation scheme.

It’s a grim, powerful lesson. If Boris Johnson does not regain control over his story and his brand, he may end up suffering the same fate as Brown.

Boris's victory and the power of political storytelling

If you want to see how political narratives really work, look no further than Boris Johnson’s successful bid to become Mayor of London.

It gives me no pleasure to say this –- and I was appalled at the number of Lib Dems who voted for him as their first or second choice -- the Tory candidate’s campaign came straight from the copybook of political storytelling.

In The Secret Language Of Leadership (2007), Stephen Denning argues that telling the story is the way to make a personal and emotional connection with an audience. It needs more than rational argument. Denning argues that a speaker (or leader, or politician) must: (1) get peoples’ attention, (2) stimulate the desire for change and (3) reinforce it with rational argument. You must offer solutions that are plausible and involve a happy ending.

Boris Johnson’s campaign was successful in crafting such a narrative. First, Johnson got the public’s attention because he is a very well-known tv celebrity and comedian, an established print journalist and columnist. In this age of celebrity, he was able to seem interesting, novel and above party politics, despite having been a Conservative MP since 2001. And for London politics, he was a new and interesting face.

Second, Johnson stimulated a desire for change. That was easy because after eight years in office, the Labour incumbent Ken Livingstone had made himself unpopular. Yesterday, the polling firm Ipsos-MORI published their ‘inbox’ for the new mayor. Based on 41,000 interviews for the London boroughs' and seven years of tracking data in the London survey, it shows that Londoners are satisfied with their city as a place to live. But they are concerned about the cost of living, housing, overall crime levels and in particular violent crime, traffic congestion and congestion charging. When asked which issues would decide their votes, respondents gave crime and policing, transport overall and healthcare as their top three. 

The Ipsos-MORI survey also showed that Livingstone had polarised the public over congestion charging and that people disliked his style and attitude. They thought that he had grown out of touch. 

Apart from healthcare, these became the top subjects of Johnson’s mega-message: Ken Livingstone must go.

Third, Johnson followed up his powerful “time for a change” theme with rational arguments. Nobody would ever call Boris a policy wonk but he had enough solutions on the big issues that were plausible to his target voters. Doubling the number of police on the buses, especially in outer London. Action on gang crime. Phase out bendy buses. Reform the congestion charge. Build more affordable homes. Stand up for Londoners on healthcare.  No, I wasn’t taken in and it will be fascinating to watch him try to keep all his promises.  My point is, policies do matter but it’s how you frame them that counts!

OK, Johnson sometimes floundered under questioning but the mood for change had built up. The media narrative was written – Ken out, Boris in.  The Tory campaign rammed it home by selling their man as the only change for the better. (I’ve seen that one used to great effect in Australian election campaigns. Just fancy that!)

Johnson embodied his narrative by being younger, newer and more approachable than Livingstone.  He is also a big personality but with a very different style and background to the outgoing mayor.  But he became serious and measured to the point of being dull, so it became harder to pin the “Boris the clown” tag on him.  As a tv celebrity, he could be engaging and compelling and this enabled him to discuss the issues in a way that struck a chord with disenchanted voters’ emotions.  Like most Londoners, he was upbeat about the city and its future.  Boris – for people usually refer to him by his Christian name only - seemed to offer voters a safe, unrisky change. A happy ending.

Let me be clear: I am sure that the ending won’t be happy, especially for some of those who live in the less leafy parts of London. 

I was pleased to vote for Brian Paddick for my first preference.  I appreciate that he was always going to struggle against the huge financial and media juggernauts behind the Labour and Tory candidates.  Also, it seems that Lib Dem supporters didn’t understand the voting system, but more on that later. 

We can’t let ourselves off the hook though.  The Tory story worked and we need to understand why.  Once again, our campaign had a meaty list of good policies.  But I don’t think that we told people a good story about why they should vote Lib Dem, for the Mayor or the GLA.

They responded accordingly.