The prime of Hillary Clinton
THE OBITUARIES for the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton have been put on hold as she struggles to find either a stunning moment or a single galvanizing event that will save what for months was seen by insiders as the campaign that could not fail.
Conventional wisdom now questions such things as her strategy to run as the incumbent, her failure to have a post-Super Tuesday game plan, and even her decision to have her husband play a major public role in her effort.
As always, conventional wisdom will provide us with facts, but fail to illuminate the most obvious of truths.
Clinton is now second for two different, yet interrelated reasons.
First, she convinced herself she could be both the candidate who could talk to voters about "her 35 years of experience making successful change in Washington," and then suddenly switch gears and present herself as the candidate who voters would believe was capable and committed to implementing serious, fundamental change in Washington.
In politics, mixed messages are more often than not, failed messages.
Second, Clinton finds herself behind because she was unable to acknowledge that through a combination of his youth, soaring rhetoric, and personal charisma, Barack Obama could paint her as a relic from a thousand failed political yesterdays.
The fact is when Clinton started her campaign, she looked into her mirror and saw what the hubris of boomers have always allowed us to see. We are, despite our aging, still in our prime.
This is not to say we boomers don't realize we are older, fatter, grayer, balder, and slower. It's just that we are not old yet. Our best days still lie ahead.
Step back 40 years, when we of Clinton's age really were all young.
The future was ours. The culture was ours. We were the outsiders, the first to hit the barricades of epic social change.
We listened to Dylan. Later, we named our kids after him.
Bill and Hillary Clinton listened to Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Joni Mitchell. Later, they named their child Chelsea after the song Joni wrote and Judy sang.
And, politics aside, Hillary Clinton was an agent of successful societal change.
One needs only remember that in 1970 when Clinton and her Wellesley peers were fighting to get into medical and law schools, the percentage of women accepted to those programs represented only 2 percent and 3 percent of all enrollees. Now, the percentage of female attendees in medical and law schools are 52 percent and 56 percent, respectively.
Change has also come to America's boardrooms, its state houses, and even to Congress.
Clinton was part of that first generation to push its way in, to demand equal respect and opportunity, hence her endless echoing cry on the campaign trail that she's been "fighting for real change for 35 years."
And therein lies the rub.
In the late '60s, Clinton shouted along with the rest of us not to "trust anyone over 30." She never shouted, "Let's rally around the person with 35 years of experience."
Clinton never conceived that by repeating that mantra over and over, she would be seen by many voters, especially those under 45, as the candidate of the past.
In 1969, I saw the haunting film "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie." At the end of the movie, Miss Brodie, who throughout the film touted that she was still "in her prime," discovers that she has unknowingly slid past her prime.
For boomers everywhere, Clinton's potential defeat may be the first time many of us understand that simply saying 60 is the new 50 doesn't make it so. It may also be the first time many of us acknowledge that while we are not nearly ready to retire yet, our prime may have unobtrusively slid past us also.
In 1969, Paul Simon wrote the line "how terribly strange to be 70" in his song "Old Friends." Nearing 60 myself, 70 just doesn't seem that strange to me anymore, or that old.
I assume that Simon and the Clintons agree with me.
I know for a fact that John McCain does.
Michael Goldman is a senior consultant with the Government Insight Group, who teaches in the Political Science Department at Tufts University. 