[Alberta's Child]

You raise an interesting point, but I don't think you overestimate the influence of those people in government during the most turbulent part of that era.

As far as I can tell, most major figures in government in the 1960s and early 1970s was born before that "Silent Generation." I'd include John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and every U.S. Supreme Court justice of note (Earl Warren, Felix Frankfurter, Harry Blackmun, William Brennan, and William "Zero" Douglas) among them.

The first House Speaker from the "Silent Generation" was Jim Wright of Texas, and he didn't assume that role until 1987.

Among U.S. Senators, we didn't see anyone from that generation in majority leadership roles until we had dingbats like George Mitchell and Trent Lott in the late 1980s and the 1990s.

[Alberta's Child]

Sorry about that ... I meant to say I think you DO overestimate the influence of the "Silent Generation" in the politics of that era.

[Vermont Lt]

No, but we all know that the true power in DC is the money and through the staffs.

Certainly the senior management in major US firms during that era was made up of prime time Silents who would have been n their late forties and early fifties right after Vietnam Nam.