Baby boomers care less about ideology

Yes, Michael Gerson is right in pointing to something predicted more than 20 years ago by those who studied the baby-boomer generation: “a surplus of ideology and a shortage of wonkery.” [“An ideology surplus, an idea deficit,” Opinion, Jan. 23.]

In their book “Generations: The History of America’s Future,” William Strauss and Neil Howe predicted that the boomers would care much more about having the correct ideology than about getting things done.

This they said would mean that when boomers dominate the government we would have very partisan politics with little willingness to compromise.

In this, the boomers are the opposite of the GI generation, which cared much less about ideology and much more about doing things that they saw needed to be done. As a member of the Silent Generation whose children are Gen Xers, I wish Gerson were wrong but he is not.

— Frederick Jessett, Sammamish