A Boomer in Chief? No Thanks.

For my boomer peers, believing that the center of the universe looks back at us from the mirror every morning, it was a green light to let our gut feelings and personal biases -- often mistaken for moral principles -- dictate our civic behavior. We used it to justify a new brand of politics that values personal identity over communal interests, all the while insisting that they're one and the same.

In the liberal stronghold of Massachusetts, exotic concepts of discrimination with made-up names such as "lookism" (discrimination against the unattractive) and "heteronorming" (social insistence on heterosexual behavior) got their start from "the personal is political" and its comforting premise that if you believe strongly enough in your own oppression, it must be real. The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion was seized upon with messianic zeal by both left- and right-wing boomers eager to impose their moral code. Communal symbols such as Old Glory have been exploited during the boomer era by both warmongers who wrap themselves in it and antiwar zealots who turn it into a dungaree jacket iron-on.

All this was keenly observed by none other than the college-age Obama. "Politics was no longer simply a pocketbook issue but a moral issue as well," he recalls of the late 1970s in his book "The Audacity of Hope." "Politics was decidedly personal, insinuating itself into every interaction."

Over the years, the elevation of self at the expense of consensus, compromise and community has given us a string of unwanted gifts: the squandered second term of Bill Clinton; the voter-repelling posturing and sighing of Al Gore; and the Jesus-made-me-do-it follies of the Bush years.

In my home state, where boomer elites carry John F. Kennedy's exhortation that "the torch has been passed to a new generation" tattooed over their hearts, the flame is fueled by narcissistic political behavior. Kennedy urged us to place community over self-interest, but featherbedding, pension-fattening and resistance to reform are staples of Massachusetts political culture.

Boomer pols of both parties paid homage to environmentalism, smart growth and careful stewardship of the public dollar. Then they collaborated on Boston's scandalous Big Dig highway project, an obscenely expensive monument to boomer overreach and misplaced priorities that soaked taxpayers for billions without solving the city's traffic woes. At one point, more than a third of the project's cost was for "mitigation" payments to clever boomer developers, pols and environmental groups who alertly threatened lawsuits if they didn't get their slice. Boomer builders' bragging about what they liked to call "the greatest public works project in the history of the world" abated only after a woman was crushed in her car by a tunnel collapse in 2006.

In Massachusetts, the runaway hubris of boomer political elites is a nightmarish sight in the rearview mirror of thousands of working-class citizens who have fled in search of good jobs, affordable housing and superior public education. A state that was once a mecca for the young has led the nation in population loss twice in this decade. And the outlook is little brighter in red states such as Kansas, where conservative boomer leaders seem just as unable to find pragmatic real-world answers.

It's a cliche that the boomer voters who call the shots in elections are always on the lookout for something fresh and trendy. Central-casting boomers Obama and Romney imagine themselves meeting that need, as does the YouTube primper John Edwards. Yet it's balding, grumpy 63-year-old Rudy Giuliani who leads the GOP pack. It's 72-year-old Ron Paul who's setting Internet fundraising records. And 71-year-old John McCain is showing some life in the polls on the strength of an ad campaign that draws explicit comparison with the self-indulgent Woodstock generation. And atop the Democratic field, there's early-wave boomer Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose flag-pin-wearing moderation, however calculated, apparently seems more mature to voters than Obama's pandering to the left.

After 16 years of a Me Generation White House, could it be that voters, desperate for leadership that's less personal and more presidential, are likely to turn to what they see as more reliable retro models, shipping the flashy boomer merchandise back to the store? After all, when a country traumatized by terrorism and war is confronted with superficial candidates who tout their pristine lapels and casualty-free households as selling points, the torch clearly has been passed. And it turns out it's a lava lamp.

kelleratlarge@wbztv.com

Jon Keller is political analyst for WBZ-TV in Boston and the author of "The Bluest State: How Democrats Created the Massachusetts Blueprint for American Political Disaster."