‘The Crisis of 2020’ was predicted back in 1991
They called it the Crisis of 2020 — an unspecified calamity that “could rival the gravest trials our ancestors have known” and serve as “the next great hinge of history.” It could be an environmental catastrophe, a nuclear threat or “some catastrophic failure in the world economy.”
That was 1991.
The scholars responsible were William Strauss and Neil Howe, whose book “Generations” introduced a provocative theory that U.S. history unfolds in boom-tobust cycles of roughly 80 years. Their conclusions about the way each generation develops its own characteristics and leadership qualities influenced a wide range of political leaders, from liberals such as Bill Clinton and Al Gore to pro-Trump conservatives such as Newt Gingrich and Steve Bannon.
Seems as if they were on to something. So now what?
Strauss died in 2007, so he isn’t able to observe how eerily correct “The Crisis of 2020” was or offer any insight into how America might come out on the other end of the coronavirus pandemic.
But Howe, who now hosts a podcast and analyzes demographic trends for an investment advisory firm, is still in the insight business. And what he sees ahead — a generational realignment in U.S. politics hastened by the failure of the baby boomer generation to lead the nation out of its quagmire — does not bode well for President Donald Trump or the Republicans.
For most of the past 75 years, the Republican attitude about government has been rooted in a deep skepticism of authority that says, in essence: Success doesn’t take a village; it takes a determined individual whose government isn’t standing in the way. But that belief, Howe said, “is uniquely ill-suited to the current crisis.”
Nearly 30 years ago, when he first predicted an event such as the coronavirus, Howe said the year 2020 was not a mark-your-calendar prognostication of doomsday but a round number that fit the cyclical nature of their theory: It is roughly 80 years after the last great crises of World War II and the Great Depression.
More insightful than the date itself was the assertion that historical patterns pointed toward the arrival of a generation-defining crisis that would force millennials into the fire early in their adulthood. (Strauss and
Howe were the first to apply that term to those born in the early 1980s because they would come of age about the year 2000.)
More than just a novelty, their theory helps explain why some of the most prominent voices calling for political reform from left, center and right have been young — Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez, 30; former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg, 38; Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, 40.
And as baby boomers age out of public service, the theory says, fixing the problems created by the pandemic will fall to this younger, civically oriented generation. Howe, who at 68 is a member of the cohort he is critical of, said in an interview that it was no coincidence that the boomer president and many people in his generation — especially the more conservative ones — have generally taken a more lax attitude toward the coronavirus than younger people.
Polls have found that younger Americans overwhelmingly favor a cautious approach to getting back to normal — and are more worried about the virus. This includes many young Republicans, ages 18 to 49, who were far more likely than Republicans 50 and older to say the worst of the outbreak is yet to come, according to a Pew Research Center poll last month.
“This is really the problem with Gen X and baby boomers,” Howe said. “They’ve championed this kind of individualism. They’ve championed thinking less about the community.”
Conservatives might argue they are best equipped to confront a moment that feels at times as if the apocalypse is at hand. Cable news, talk radio and rightwing websites have long been full of ads for products intended to sustain people through catastrophe: investments in precious metals, home generators and supplies to can your own food.
Howe’s critique of today’s conservatives is shared by a growing number of younger Republicans. Rachel Bovard, the senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute, said many in her generation wanted to see an interventionist government in areas of policy such as trade and finance.
“I think that’s gone unquestioned for so long, and it’s become this national theology: Private enterprise is good. Full stop,” Bovard, 36, said. “I prize my liberty, whether it’s liberty from a tyrannical government or a tyrannical corporation.”
One upside to the crises at the heart of these theories is the innovation they tend to produce — an economic and social program such as the New Deal, or a public health discovery such as the vaccine for polio. But so far the Trump administration has been incapable or unwilling to think big about the problems at hand, critics say.
This skepticism that bold solutions will come from the Trump administration is shared even by Bannon, a fairly reliable defender of the president’s since he was pushed out of his role as White House chief strategist in August 2017. Bannon said the administration never took seriously the possibility that a catastrophe such as the coronavirus could strike, which has led to a failure of imagination in dealing with the problem.
Bannon said that instead of coming up with new programs to deal with the millions of people who may never get their old jobs back, the White House and its conservative allies were falling back on the kind of stimulus policies they purport to loathe.
Where were all the conservative businessmen who have insisted that the government get out of their way, Bannon asked? “I saw them all, once again, run to the government for bailouts,” he said.
If the pandemic doesn’t break the boomer generation’s grip on American government, some see hope that it will end the brand of conservatism that has thrived during their time in power.
“Where’s my copy of ‘Atlas Shrugged?’ ” Bannon asked, referring to the Ayn Rand novel that conservatives often cite for its heroic portrayal of individualism and self-determination. “It’s in the shredder.”