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The young urban professionals are coming into their own. They are part of the famous baby-boom generation that is destined to be a cultural force at every stage of its life. The boomers gave the '60s much of its character, and now are doing the same thing in the '80s. In the meantime, of course, they have changed. Says Gordon Rayfield, 34, a New Yorker who is a foreign-affairs analyst for a multinational firm: "In the '60s, we felt like this wasn't our country. It was taken over by bad people. Now we realize that it's our country too." In the '80s, the yuppies are starting to take over. They will become the ruling elite of America, a prospect that now gives them spirit, that makes many of them optimistic and hard driving. Reagan took the yuppie vote from Mondale by 67% to 32%.
The breed can be smug and shallow. The younger yuppies tend to look at education and the future in terms of the dollar: the "trade school" approach to learning. The idea of winning buzzes always in their minds. It is at them that Michelob Light aims its ad with the slogan: "Who said you can't have it all?" The yuppies are Ueberroth's natural constituency.
There are fascinating generational differences at work in the new American mood. One of them, says Pollster Daniel Yankelovich, involves the attitude toward work. In the older generation of Americans, says Yankelovich, "you weren't supposed to enjoy your job. Your reward was supposed to come later. In the '60s, work was pitted against leisure, work was the trap your parents were in." Yuppies expect their work to be rewarding, challenging, creative. "There is no moral virtue today attributed to self-denial," says Yankelovich. "Mondale was the personification of the social ethic of self- denial. He is the 1950s. For many of these young people, he came across as a nagging parent: 'You have to get a job, you have to pay taxes.' But Reagan's message is, 'The world's your oyster. Go out and get what you want.' "
The ethics and attitudes of the yuppies are central to the new American mood. Clearly there is some relationship between doing well personally and feeling good about one's country. But that is not all there is to it: plenty of wealthy Americans were deeply depressed about their country during the Viet Nam War or the Iranian hostage crisis. At the same time, Americans just scraping by have sometimes felt truculently "good about America" at moments when the upper middle class was despairing. Today many Americans are in deep economic distress, and it is difficult for them to join in the feeling that the U.S. has suddenly become a coast-to-coast celebration.
But as every army officer knows, morale is crucial. The U.S. learned that the hard way in Viet Nam, where collapsing spirits at home subverted confidence in the field. Civilizations can flourish or perish according to their cultural morale. What the yuppies, in concert with a man like Ueberroth, have to offer is a new energy wedded to the belief that problems are solvable.
Many in the West, especially among the intellectual elites, had begun to absorb a deep conviction, laminated in the soul, that the problems of the world were intractable, that the future lying ahead was an ever darkening road. Worldwide famines and dire overpopulation loomed, people murdering for bowls of rice. Global pollution. The death of the rivers and oceans. The earth itself became the raft of the Medusa.