As one who has given a Baccalaureate address before, I know that speaking to graduating seniors (in my case to high school graduates) is a daunting task. First, such occasions are veritable recipes for banality; the temptation to trite advice-giving and strained moralizing is hard to overcome. So I am always interested when among the thousands of such speeches each spring at our nation’s high schools and colleges, someone has managed to make news.
I came across a couple of reports on the commencement speech of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels to the graduating class at Butler University in May. The thrust of Daniel’s message? Be better than your parents’ generation! Daniels has few kind words for his own Post-World War II generation known as the Baby Boomers. Yet beyond the provocation, there is serious social commentary. Here are a few lines:
“Along with most of your faculty and parents, I belong to the most discussed, debated and analyzed generation of all time, the so-called Baby Boomers. By the accepted definition, the youngest of us is now forty-five, so the record is pretty much on the books, and the time for verdicts can begin.
“Which leads me to congratulate you in advance. As a generation, you are off to an excellent start. You have taken the first savvy step on the road to distinction, which is to follow a weak act. I wish I could claim otherwise, but we Baby Boomers are likely to be remembered by history for our numbers, and little else, at least little else that is admirable.”