In a Changing Corner of Pa., a Glimpse of Obama's Age Problem

McCain has exploited this gap with his ads, which frame Obama as a mere pop idol in a way meant to incite resentment against celebrity youth culture. But McCain will need those attacks to resonate not just among older voters but also among the middle-aged, given how much he lags among the youngest voters, the "millennial generation" that is taking shape as even more Democratic-leaning than young voters before them. And notably, Obama is holding his own among baby boomers, despite casting himself as the one who can move politics beyond their culture clashes.

Here again, there are clues among the Lancaster Elks, who occupy a handsome 19th-century brick edifice downtown, with stained glass, elegant wall carvings and stuffed elk busts decorating the bar where hot dinners are served three times a week. The current branch leader is Tim Patches, 52, a baby boomer who leans Republican but is still undecided about this election and generally possesses a worldview far different from Rutherford's.

Patches, a real estate broker, takes a kindly view of today's young people, saying he has been encouraged by his success in getting some new members in their 20s and 30s after a long dry spell. At first, he worried they were joining for the perks: four duckpin bowling lanes with automated pin-spotters, cheap beer. But they have gotten involved in the club's service efforts, which, along with his son's decision to join the Marines last year, has made him think "this younger generation is very volunteer-oriented, very patriotic."

He is sanguine about the new immigrants in town. "I like change. I know a lot of people fear it, but how do you move on in an organization or business without it?" he said. He is only slightly more grudging about gay rights. "When it comes to constitutional law, it doesn't matter how I morally think," he said. "If we're all protected, whether I like it or not is irrelevant."

Patches traces his looser view to his upbringing in the 1960s and '70s, when he watched on TV as the country lurched through the Vietnam War and the urban riots, an era that he said knocked loose assumptions and scrambled partisan definitions.

"Then you had the computer, all the tech advances," he said. "When I grew up, you were a Republican or Democrat and neither shall be the other. Now . . . not everything needs to be liberal or conservative. You've got an opportunity to actually sit back and think."

Not that he tolerates everything. Flag burning, for instance, still upsets him. But he thought it was silly when Obama came under fire for not wearing a flag pin on his lapel. "I mean, come on. If you're going to nitpick everyone who wants to be president, you're going to run out of everyone, and then you'll have to come to me," he said.

"And that would be a problem. Because I'd want duckpin bowling at the White House."