Boom! Episode 1: 1968 - Born to be wild
The Intelligence from The Economist
The Economist
4.5 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 7 July 2024
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why are two old, unpopular men the main candidates for the world’s most demanding job? It’s the question John Prideaux, The Economist’s US editor, gets asked the most. And the answer lies in the peculiar politics of the baby boomers.
The generation born in the 1940s grew up in a land of endless growth and possibility, ruled by a confident, moderate elite. But just as they were embarking on adult life, all that started to come apart. The economy faltered, and the post-war consensus came under pressure from two sides: from the radical right, who hated government moves on civil rights – and from the ‘New Left’, as boomers rebelled against their parents' generation and its war in Vietnam.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Economist. Here's a dirty secret about covering American politics. |
| 0:23.0 | Most days, it's the best job in the world, which is why I've been doing it for years. |
| 0:30.0 | But the thing is, and I know I'm not alone in this, |
| 0:32.0 | I've been kind of dreading this election. |
| 0:34.0 | There's so much at stake. |
| 0:38.0 | The most important election in a generation, |
| 0:40.0 | as we newsfolk like to say. |
| 0:42.0 | But this time, really feels true and yet |
| 0:46.1 | it also feels like we've seen it all before. For months when people find out what I do for a living I've been asked the same thing. |
| 0:57.0 | How did two very old and unpopular men wind up running for the world's most demanding job again. |
| 1:03.2 | Why have they been so hesitant to let go of power |
| 1:06.5 | and give someone younger a term? |
| 1:09.9 | And after Joe Biden's disastrous performance in the first debate of this campaign, |
| 1:14.3 | those questions seem more urgent than ever. |
| 1:17.7 | If he steps aside now, leaving it so late will have plunged the presidential election |
| 1:21.6 | into chaos. If Biden stays, Americans will choose |
| 1:25.8 | between one president who will be 86 by the time he leaves office and another who will be |
| 1:30.3 | 82. Why has this generation had such a who will be 82? |
| 1:33.2 | Why has this generation had such a grip on power? |
| 1:37.6 | This podcast is my attempt at an answer. |
| 1:41.2 | What I keep coming back to is this, it's objectively weird that every president since Bill |
| 1:46.1 | Clinton in 1992, with the one big exception of Barack Obama, has been a white man born in |
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