I’m going to be a cynic for a moment. I find Barack Obama’s insistence on speaking for a generation just a little disingenuous. I’m not so sure his generational rhetoric isn’t designed to rev up Baby Boomers, rather than X-ers.

I mean, think about it. Last I checked no one in my generation trusts any politician, much less one talking about “hope.” It’s almost a rule (and it should be). Obama’s mantra of hope seem oddly reminiscent of “peace” and “love,” doesn’t it?

In his campaign’s commencement speech in Springfield Saturday, Obama blamed the “cynics, and the lobbyists, and the special interests” for turning “our government into a game only they can afford to play.” Meanwhile real challenges go unmet and real problems ignored. Why? For Obama it is “not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans.” But rather, “the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics.”

Obama’s call for leadership and hope to counter the nation’s cynicism is brilliant in its irony because it asks the new generation to abandon its defining belief. The cynicism of Generation X cannot be dismissed as simply misplaced frustration. It’s born of a belief that idealism can be just as dangerous as nihilism. We’ve seen the previous generation’s “peace” and “love” turn into “divorce” and “child support” and we no longer believe, as our parents did, that love is enough.

Sound policy requires a little more than good leaders and good intentions.

But Obama’s faith in leadership betrays an age old liberal faith: if we just had the right person in charge, if we just had someone to follow, if we just believe hard enough, then things will work out. But the next generation sees that good men and women sent to Washington become buffoons and cheats. It’s the power of D.C. that creates corruption and not the other way around.

So while Obama claims to represent the next generation of political leaders, he speaks in the language of the previous one. The nostalgia becomes apparent when he addresses policy issues, where he brushes with broad strokes leftover from the 60s.

Says Obama, “Let’s be the generation that ends poverty.” I’m not sure ending poverty is a goal Generation X would buy into. Perhaps alleviating it? Or fighting it? But not ENDing it, come on.

“Let’s be the generation that finally tackles our health care crisis.” Notice the word finally. He’s not speaking to a new generation taking its first steps, but rather one that has been at it for some time.

“And let’s allow our unions and their organizers to lift up this country’s middle-class again.” While unions are generally more popular than the President, a Gallup poll in 2005 showed only 38% of the country wanted unions to have “more influence.” Unions are not the next generation.

Obama’s tone on Saturday was not so much inspirational as preachy. His calls for the next generation to step up and heed the call for sacrifice belittled the precarious political position in which the previous generation has put us.

When Social Security goes bankrupts, we’ll have to pay for it. When there are as many people claiming government entitlements as there are paying for them, it will be our generation bearing the cross. Obama shouldn’t be too surprised if his calls for sacrifice fall mostly on unwilling ears.

The other theme Obama has been pushing is “audacity.” But the only audaciousness in Obama seems to be in trying to pass off an old approach to politics as something new.

Is his contradictory rhetoric an accident? Is his old-school appeal to the next generation evidence of his inexperience? Perhaps. But is it too cynical to suggest a brilliance in the strategy.

Every fool knows the previous generation will be in the political driver seat for years to come. Not only do they simply outnumber the rest of us, but voting turnout increases with age.

In a generational election, the Boomers win every time.

Obama is smart enough to know this. His careful lip service to their values is likely an attempt to inject them with the naïveté of their youth, hoping it will be enough to carry him to victory. Whether it will work, remains to be seen.

You’ll call me a cynic for making such a suggestion. But I’m proud to wear the badge. What’s more, deep down, you think I could be right.