Obama’s new boss: Generation Now

He will not remember life before President Barack Obama. The Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millenials. Who are these new kids? The media will not be able to reduce them to a single country, name or a description. They are connected across borders in ways no previous generation has been. Maybe learning to heal the earth will be their link. At this turning point in history, can Barack Obama be their glue?

For the first time in history, a global generation will come of age with a common memory of an uncommon leader: People often use the word humanity when they talk about the new president maybe because they sense we’ve lost some of our own. The international exuberance about him could be a desperate need to feel that the future holds something positive. Whatever the reasons, around a billion people will recall seeing or hearing this man come to power, marking the first collective memory of this magnitude.

I met my husband a few months after 9/11, a date that established the "pre- and post-" dynamic is myriad ways. Caught up in the rapid upswing of common sense and goodwill in Washington this week, forgive me for kicking cynicism to the curb for a moment. This is sunrise in the post-Obama victory world.

Inheriting the earth
The 83 million Millennials, people born after 1980 who came of age around the year 2000, make up the first generation in 60 years that is unsure if they will inherit the superpower legacy of financial and military global dominance. I hope this new broader generation will see that it is this expectation, this sense of exceptionalism, that puts the U.S. - and the world - in peril.

Generational change was the rallying cry of the Obama campaign. It was a mix of political wizardry and the right tone for the time. Voters under 30 chose Obama by a margin of 2 to 1, including 70 percent of 13 million first-time voters. He spoke Tuesday of his hope that people will summon the spirit of service, a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. "And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all."

The timing of this transition of power could shift the tone of U.S. leadership from regard for the few to concern for the most for decades to come. The failure of the Republican brand of free market is so apparent that our toddler and his contemporaries could feasibly reach voting age after 16 years of Democratic administrations. Reagan was no hero then, and even less of one now.

One upside to global warming and economic crisis is that they help kids comprehend that what they do matters to the rest of the world. Kids are already doing things in their everyday lives to help people a world away, to make "farms flourish and let clean waters flowÉ", as Obama said when he pledged to work alongside poor nations.

Obama is a response to the call for wisdom and action by Millenials, Generation Xers, their kids and their kids’ global cohorts. It is not what he can do for them but what he can help them do for themselves. These bloody years since 9/11 have led to more than million deaths and a virus-like hatred of the "other", a scarring combination for a generation coming of age anywhere. But kids aren’t easily daunted, and optimism and unity are two of humanity’s most potent agents for change.