The nomination of Sarah Palin to round out the GOP ticket is truly a remarkable development - not because she's a woman, or from Alaska, or whatever else you might think of her. The pick of Palin, age 44, means that neither major American political party is running a Baby Boomer for either President or Vice President this year (Obama, born in 1961, is borderline in terms of birth-year but solidly GenX in historical experience; Biden, age 66, is solidly Silent, as is the elderly Senator McCain).

Think about that. Boomers are a solid plurality of the voting age population, and have been the decisive influence in the American electorate since the late 1960s. For the past 16 years, they have dominated the executive and legislative branches. Their values have defined political discourse and political tactics in the modern age. And yet here, in what should be the prime years of their leadership arc, they will go unrepresented in the Presidency for the next four years, regardless of which party wins or whether the Vice President is called upon to ascend to the Oval Office.

Sarah Palin, the neophyte governor of Alaska, is an interesting case study in early GenX leadership. While the hoary 1990s-era media stereotype of GenX focused on the ironic, alt-rock hipster - a very urban perspective -the reality of the 53-million strong GenX cohort in America is actually far more diverse. For one thing, we tend to be considerably more conservative politically than either Boomers or Millennials. We came of age during the Reagan era, when liberalism was in deep eclipse and the failures of the Democratic era were in greater evidence than its successes. Self-identification of young people with the GOP peaked in the early 90s, when GenXers were in their 20s, and party ID has remained relatively stable as we approach middle age.

Many GenX conservatives style themselves more as libertarians than hard-line right wingers, befitting the streak of self-reliance and independence that characterizes GenX across the political spectrum. Palin, from the rugged northlands of Alaska, combines this with a strident fundamentalist religiosity that some GenXers have embraced as an antidote to the feel-good spiritualism of our Boomer elders. Her approach to governance tends toward the pragmatic and transactional, as far as we can tell from the limited record. She is happy to embrace slogans of reform and fiscal discipline, and just as happy to cut deals in the interests of her state and city when the opportunities present themselves. Her prime-time debut as a major political figure last night also indicates that she relishes the GenX style of blunt, often abrasive communication and biting sarcasm.

Palin's hardcore, unvarnished GenX traits pose an interesting contrast to the more polished Obama, who packages his basically pragmatic, let's-solve-the-problem approach in more Boomer-friendly idealistic rhetoric. He offers an antidote to the rigidly-ideological and authoritarian excesses of recent Boomer leadership without calling undue attention to his own X-ish attributes, and makes a virtue of the diversity and adversity of his upbringing, which in fact fits a fairly recognizable generational experience for many fellow Xers.

This contrast has some interesting implications. Obama characteristically finesses his differences with the Boomer majority, while Palin goes for the full-on, in-your-face GenX experience. However, I wonder if it has occurred to McCain and his handlers that Boomers (and Millennials for that matter) have never shown much affection for the GenX attitude and approach. Boomer women in particular have issues with their self-styled "post-feminist" GenX counterparts, whom I have heard many older women claim, take the sacrifices of their elders for granted and threaten hard-won progress by embracing self-limiting and oppressive ideology in exchange for social and economic advancement.

The impact of all this remains to be seen. Boomers may not have a place on the stage in this year's Presidential election, but they remain the key voting bloc. How they decide between the various Xers and Silents offered up for their consideration will determine which style of leadership will predominate in post-Boomer America, at least for the next few years.