Did you know that just two of America’s 45 Presidents were
born west of the Great Plains? Their names are Richard Nixon, born in 1913 in Yorba
Linda, California; and Barack Obama, born in 1961 in Hawaii.
This trivia is less surprising if you remember that every
President, except Obama, was born in 1946 or earlier. In the summer of 1946, when Bill Clinton,
Bush Jr., and Trump were born; Southern California still hummed on 50 hertz
power instead of 60, television was a scientific experiment, transcontinental
phone calls were expensive, and air travel in propeller aircraft was reserved
for adventurous members of the 1%. The mean center of US population was at the
Illinois-Indiana border; today it sits 350 miles southwest in Hartville,
Missouri. As a foregone conclusion, a septuagenarian cut from this long-bygone era will be elected this November. The 2024 race will certainly represent "passing the torch" to a new generation.
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