Boomers moving to Service Nation; are candidates following?
September 24th, 2008
If you’ve been distracted lately by lipstick, bridges to nowhere and the ongoing financial meltdown on Wall Street, you might have missed one of this election season’s most significant events. On the seventh anniversary of 9/11, Barack Obama and John McCain participated in a presidential forum on national service. The forum was part of a Service Nation summit convened in New York City to commemorate the day of national tragedy. It was a solemn, thoughtful reflection on how America has changed since 9/11.
The forum focused on ways that Americans can serve their communities and their country at a time of critical need, and the candidates had a chance to air their ideas on promoting civic engagement.
Much of the conversation revolved around national service by young people. But civic engagement and service to the community also is a very hot topic among older Americans, especially baby boomers.
The older boomers now closing in on 60 came of age during the social and political upheaval of the 1960s and early 1970s. Since then, they’ve been hard at work raising families, building careers and sending kids to college; now, many anticipate using newfound free time to get back involved. Mobilizing even a portion of the boomer generation could yield enormous results, simply because the group is so large. The boomer generation is the largest in American history, accounting for roughly 78 million Americans. Whenever this group moves in a particular direction, the impact is huge.
Read more in my column this week at RetirementRevised.com.
Watch video of Obama and McCain at the summit here.
