Obama's new breed of baby boomer

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama turned 6 during the Summer of Love.

He was 8 and living in Indonesia at the time of Woodstock.

He didn't have a chance to avoid the Vietnam draft, since it ended when he was 11.

There is no doubt that the '60s found its way into the consciousness of Obama, like everybody else who was alive at the time, but it probably seemed like a slide show of passing images, from King to LBJ to Dylan to Fonda to Angela Davis, wrapping up somewhere in the early '70s, around the time of Patty Hearst.

Obama was in the '60s, but not of the '60s -- the first serious presidential candidate since Bob Dole who can say that. Thus, Obama's candidacy is a landmark for a different reason than has been widely noted.

So far, this has been portrayed mainly as the first-black versus first-woman campaign, as the two Democratic contenders with the most support in the polls could become historic firsts. Less noticed was the line buried in Obama's announcement speech two weekends ago, declaring, "Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what's needed to be done. Today we are called once more -- and it's time for our generation to answer that call."

A little wordy, perhaps, as this generation's JFK seems still to be searching for his Sorensen . But the 45-year-old Illinois senator would indeed bring a fresh generational perspective to the White House. And the difference might be greater than most people imagine.

Obama, who was born in 1961, is technically a baby boomer, one of the last of the breed. But his cultural guideposts are markedly different from the two older baby boomers to have occupied the office, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Clinton and Bush form perfect bookends: one who drew heavily from the political upheaval and social change of the '60s, and one who defined himself by his distaste for the era.

Obama, who is 15 years younger than both Bush and Clinton, had the '60s in the rearview mirror during his formative years. He grew up in the aftermath of the huge cultural storm, not the middle. He saw a country engaged in the far less dramatic, but perhaps equally significant, endeavor of assimilating social changes.

As a person of mixed race, the son of a white mother from Kansas and a Kenyan immigrant, Obama has had his famously unique perspective on his era -- putting him more personally at the vanguard of change than most whites his age.

But even for those not personally touched by upheaval, the changes in society become a part of the political definition of the times; and Obama, for all his uniqueness, has shared with everyone his age a certain set of touchstones, and a certain view of society.

Just what these touchstones comprise in political values and impulses is still undefined, partly because so few politicians born after the first years of the baby boom have been on the national stage. Political dialogue has so often contrasted the quiet commitment of the World War II generation with the self-referential baby boomers that a voter could easily assume that no other perspective exists besides Greatest Generation stoicism and Me Generation bravado.

Obama has an opportunity to change all that. And much of what's striking about his campaign -- such as its emphasis on finding common values among a diverse population -- can be better read in generational, rather than racial, terms. His formative years -- the '70s and '80s -- were times when people strongly identified with their own group, from professional women to military families and churchgoing whites. The years since then have seen a slow blurring of the lines, even as identity politics continues to have a powerful influence.

For some people, the most appealing aspect of Obama's candidacy is the prospect of furthering the assimilation of Americans, at a time when far more extreme divisions are roiling the world.

It's probably a little grand (and naive) to believe that an Obama presidency by itself would erase divisions around the world. But as the first of his age to aspire to the White House, he's waging a campaign fueled by promise, even if it's hard to say just what, if anything, will be delivered.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, for all her own uniqueness, carries the marks of familiar battles -- equal-rights protests, feminism, the profound World War II/Vietnam era generation gap.

Obama is really something new.

Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.