I just read a NY Times article that put me in a depressive state. I think I was in denial about the reality of this, but Paul Ryan, he with the piercing blue eyes, thee hair cut just right, and the Madison Avenue look of an up and coming young politician, is the first Gen-Xer to appear on a Presidential ticket. I had to process the fact that he was going to represent my generation.

He wouldn't have been my first choice to represent my generation and of the friends I still have from high school he definitely doesn't have the same views they do, but he fits that Yuppie mold that was big in the 80s. You can imagine Ryan as a kid wanting to grow up and be Alex Keaton. Public service was just an avenue to have access to power, and if he happened to help people along the way, then OK. Alex Keaton would be proud to see how little Ryan turned out.

Then I had to take a step back for a moment because this talk of a Generation X politician felt familiar. I did a search and Paul Ryan is definitely a Generation X baby, born in 1970. Something was still nagging at me so I researched some more and I found what the problem was; the NY Times may have gotten their story wrong.

Sarah Palin was born the same year I was, 1964. So if she was born in 1964, like me, then that makes her the first Generation X nominee. Palin also wouldn't have been my choice for representing my generation, but like Ryan she has all the bad qualities of Gen-X. She, like Ryan, reminds me of a Yuppie. Public service is an afterthought; making money is the real goal. Just look what Palin has done after her loss in the 2008 election. She and her family have become the political equivalent of the Kardashians. While she doesn't go clubbing like the Kardashians, she does a lot of paid stump speeches and appearances, family members are reaping the reality TV rewards and the family is fodder for tabloid news. I don't know if Palin was a fan of Family Ties, but yes I bet Alex Keaton would want to marry Sarah Palin.

I should have stopped there but I did a bit more digging and hit the pesky issue that has plagued a lot of my friends from high school. Generation X has had a disputed demarcation as to when generation begins. Douglas Coupland, who wrote the book Generation X (thus the name of my generation) deemed that Gen-X started in 1965, however he also talks about key events that can be markers of generations. He noted that the Kennedy assassination was one of those markers that defined the end of innocence of the Baby Boomer generation. That occurred in 1963, so anyone born after that would be Generation X. Another bit of history to support the 1963 end date for baby Boomers is when you look in the book for the start of Generation Y, now known as the Millennial Generation. Coupland has them starting in 1980, but Reagan was shot in 1981, the same year he took office. That would fit into the world event that would define the borders of the generations. So instead of 1980, 1981 would be the start of the Millennial generation. That would allow for 1963 being the end of the Baby Boomers. Douglas Coupland got some ideas for his book from another book called Class by Paul Fussell, published in 1983. He ended the baby Boom generation in 1960.

That brings up another person who could be the first Generation X nominee; Barack Obama. Born in 1961, that would make him the first Generation X President, if you go with the 1960 start date.

I think a lot of my high school friends, like myself, think of ourselves as Generation X. We don't see ourselves as Baby Boomers. We grew up with punk rock, ska, New Romantics, saw Star Wars in a theater, the surge of video games in the home and other things that were distinctly of the Gen-X era. When Reagan was elected, we were in our late teens and knew we were in for a world of hurt. When Palpatine was made Emperor and Padme said her line about how democracy dies to thunderous applause, that what my friends felt like when Reagan got into office.

That's the strange bit of hurt I really felt when I was thinking about the first Generation X candidate on the top ticket. In recent politics, the first from a generation seldom is a Sidney Poitier perfect representation of the generation. They tend to be the one that got their by odd and slippery ways. People think fondly of Bill Clinton, the first Baby Boomer President. He was born in 1946, the official start of the Baby Boomers. When he came on the Arsenio Hall Show with sunglasses playing the saxophone, he signaled that the Baby Boomers were here. He seemed to be the perfect first representation of his generation.

But there was another.

Like I said, in the last two generation cycles the first in high politics of the generation isn't perfect. Clinton was the first President of the Baby Boomers but he wasn't the first one on the ticket. Dan Quayle was born in 1947, so he is a year younger than Clinton. Yes, Dan Quayle was the first Baby Boomer to reach the heights of public office by becoming VP to the first George Bush. It was part of the strategy, having the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers working side by side.

So it depends on where you want to put the date that will determine the first Generation X candidate on the national ticket. While Paul Ryan is in the sweet spot and there is no depute he's a Gen-Xer, I think the 1960 date puts Obama in the Baby Boom generation. I know I'm biased (only because of the date, not because of the politics) I would have to say Sarah Palin was the first Gen-Xer on a national ticket, holding up the trend of the mediocre person being the first to represent the generation.