WASHINGTON, July 27 (UPI) -- The age difference between the two likely major-party U.S. presidential nominees, 25 years, promises to be the biggest ever, analysts say.
When Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the presumptive Democratic nominee, celebrates his next birthday Aug. 4, he will be 47. The Aug. 29 birthday of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the likely Republican nominee, will be his 72nd, eclipsing the former age-difference mark of 23 years set in the 1996 presidential election, Gannett News Service reported Sunday.
The candidates that year represented a battle between the Baby Boomer generation (former President Bill Clinton) and the World War II generation (former Sen. Bob Dole). Generational experts see McCain and Obama as bookends of a voter revolt -- led by the so-called "millennials" age 26 and under -- against the Baby Boomers' culture-war politics over abortion, marriage and other social issues.
The McCain-Obama match "is in some ways a reflection of the country's lack of interest in continuing the Boomer political debate that has gone on between the two Boomer presidents (Clinton and current President George Bush)," Morley Winograd, an adviser to former Vice President Al Gore, told Gannett.
