Los Angeles Times

The Repository (Canton, Ohio)

President Leads First Wave of Baby Boomers Into 60

Tuesday, July 4, 2006
By Johanna Neuman Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- Lately, President Bush has taken to calling himself “the ol’ president.”

He jokes with audiences about how his eligibility for early Social Security payments, at age 62, “just happens to come in 2008.”

Describing his age as “a personal crisis,” he muses aloud about how “I used to think 60 was old .... Now I think it’s young, don’t you?”

Every day this year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 7,918 people will turn 60. On Thursday, it’s Bush’s turn and Sylvester Stallone’s -- and they’re joined throughout 2006 by such celebrities as Suzanne Somers, Sally Field, Diane Keaton, Tommy Lee Jones, Cher, Steven Spielberg, Susan Sarandon, Donald Trump and Dolly Parton. Among political names, Bush’s wife, Laura, and his White House predecessor, Bill Clinton, also enter their seventh decade this year.

They are the first of the 78 million American baby boomers, a generation born from 1946 to 1964, so large in number that demographers liken their ascension through the age line to a watermelon being swallowed by a python.

Bush’s birthday will be celebrated Tuesday -- two days early -- as 150 friends and family members join him at the White House for festivities and fireworks. For his presidency, the Big 6-0 signals another milestone likely to draw the attention of friends and foes alike.

Already, the comic strip “Doonesbury” has raised the president’s age, with Bush asking political guru Karl Rove why the White House is not getting more of a bounce out of the flag-burning amendment and Rove explaining that the only graphic display of flag-burning is grainy footage of protesters now as old as 60.

The Republican National Committee is using the occasion as a fundraiser -- inviting supporters to sign an online birthday e-card and “consider celebrating President Bush’s 60th birthday with a gift our entire party can share ... $60 or whatever you can afford.”

And performance artist Sheryl Oring, with funding from the Creative Capital Foundation and the Booklyn Artists Alliance, traveled to eight localities whose first letters spell out the word “birthday” to solicit birthday-wishes postcards to the president.

Starting in Brooklyn on Memorial Day and ending in Yosemite on July 2, Oring said she attracted a variety of opinions -- from an 8-year-old who thought the president should spend more time outdoors to a German immigrant who suggested that Bush ride in limousines with clear glass so people can see him.

Back at the White House, Bush himself has resisted all interviews on the topic, and aides offered minimal details about Tuesday’s celebration. Last year, the White House pastry chef baked a chocolate cake topped with a three-dimensional chocolate mountain bike. There’s been no word on this year’s theme.

Recently, Bush has struck an unexpected note of introspection -- suggesting that the controversy over prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was a setback in the war in Iraq and acknowledging European concerns about the approximately 450 detainees the United States is holding at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But those who have watched his second-term woes doubt that the utterances herald a new, post-60 Bush.

“I think that has more to do with the low polls,” said Bert A. Rockman, a Purdue University political scientist who co-authored “The George W. Bush Presidency: Appraisals and Prospects.”

Noting that “60 may be the new 40, at least in Beverly Hills,” Rockman added: “Bush didn’t all of a sudden become more reflective.”