According to a new ScoopDaily/Zogby poll, a 46% plurality of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 feel Barack Obama’s approach to governing has been too passive — a figure that exceeded national percentages by roughly 7 points.

This consensus — however slight — may correspond to findings in a seperate ScoopDaily/Zogby poll, indicating that 30.9% (to a mere 13.5 %) of the same demographic “strongly approved” of a provision that would make healthcare coverage mandatory for all individuals, and require government to provide coverage to any individual unable to do so.

Few would disagree that the President’s presence on Capitol Hill has, in large part, determined the nature of reform. For better or worse, he’s taken the reins in coordinating — or attempting to coordinate — Democratic and Republican objectives, albeit with questionable success. Yet in the face of ideological inflexibility and inter-party politics, many young Americans are beginning to worry whether Obama should be more aggressive in his demands, and if the possibility of reform is worth forfeiting his dream for Washington bipartisanship.

Millennial feedback from both polls, however, came at odds with national sentiment. While a majority of 18-24 year olds seemed to favor the aforemetioned provision, a whopping 41.3% of Americans “strongly disapproved” of its inclusion in the current healthcare bill; just 23.8% “strongly approved.” Similarly, just 38.6% of Americans as a whole said Obama’s approach to governance was too “passive”, compared to the 51% who felt it was not.

With 13.2 million Millennials left uninsured as a result of economic downturn and employment loopholes, this generational gap is perfectly understandable. Though it’s unlikely that Obama will lose his Millennial constituents to a Presidential challenger, the political climate surrounding his agenda — one that’s becoming increasingly unfavorable — may endanger his progressive momentum.

Which isn’t to say that majority of Americans are opposed to his objectives — just that the Millennial demographic expected to bolster them may be losing their vigor.

Another ScoopDaily/Zogby poll conducted in 2009, for instance, found that roughly 1/3 of the same demographic believed that Obama was “abandoning many of the progressive causes he championed during his campaign.”

This sense of generational disillusionment may appear unthreatening in contrast to the Teabagging hoopla. But its consequences could very well compromise Obama’s chances of re-election — and more importantly, the success of healthcare reform — in a Capital desperate for national direction.

But what lessons do Millennials draw from this unequivocal Democratic victory? In 2012 – or even this year’s mid-term elections – which aspect of reform are they likely to recall: its ends or its means?

Here’s a list of Millennial perceptions.

WINNER: BARACK OBAMA

A well-played Executive order matched red meat with Team Obama’s inspirational rhetoric. It legitimized his cry for change – one that invigorated Millennials in particular – and stuck it to roughly 1/3 of 18-24 year olds who, according to a 2009 ScoopDaily/Zogby poll, believed the President was “abandoning many of the progressive causes he championed during his campaign.” Amidst rumors of death panels and a 21st century socialist “takeover”, his remarkable accomplishment thwarted the best-laid plans of Republican stalwarts and angry teabaggers, while also preserving his bipartisan swagger.

The idea of healthcare “overhaul” wasn’t necessarily initiated by leaders from both sides of the aisle. But with representatives (and constituents) deadlocked – according to a recent ScoopDaily/Zogby poll, 46.6% of Americans approved of healthcare, versus the 50.4% who disapproved – the President reconciled liberal and conservative objectives at the 12th hour, and killed any question of federally-funded abortion. The shrewd political move accommodated the 45.7 million Americans without health insurance – 27.6% of whom were between the ages of 18 and 29 – and 54.9% of Millennials who “approved” of government-provided healthcare coverage.

As Democrats – and uninsured Americans everywhere – enjoy their “moment” in history, the passage of healthcare reform promises to cure (or at least temporarily treat) young America’s spell of political disillusionment.

LOSER: WASHINGTON

Millennials nursed no unrealistic expectations for Washington bipartisanship. They understood, even in their own political idealism, that the President had never promised them a rose garden, and that Republicans – when cornered by a liberal majority – wouldn’t necessarily see eye-to-eye with their Democratic counterparts. And why should they? Though critics of Congress’ healthcare initiative seemed at odds with Millennial progressivism, young Americans could, at the very least, respect the ideological argument behind many representatives’ conservatism.

Yet even given both parties’ irreconcilable interests, Republican representatives disappointed Millennials with their quality of dissent. Rather than elevating Congress’ intellectual plane of discussion, conservatives deepened political schisms through deceptive rhetoric – death panels, anyone? – and mudslinging reminiscent of the McCarthy era. Add that to their shady relationship with the teabagging Right, and you’ve pretty much foiled any possibility of big-tent Republicanism – and of Millennial support in 2012. Nobody, after all, likes a sore loser – much less one that’s pushing for a return to old Washington politics.

That backroom brokering resulted in a progressive outcome is miraculous in itself. Yet the means by which it was achieved won’t soon be forgotten by young Americans. Even as they praise their President’s idealism and political savvy, Millennials will be quick to recall which Washington representatives rejected bipartisan outreach and failed to tread a middle-ground.

And why shouldn’t it?

From the unconstitutional expulsion of the Cherokees to the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, our country’s political narrative has long been scarred by the same legislative and institutional discrimination that haunt its citizens today.

Yet 147 years since Lincoln freed the slaves, and a little over a year since we inaugurated our first black President, many Americans of all ages, races, and political persuasions are questioning whether Black History Month — an 84 year tradition founded by US historian Carter G. Woodson — has outlived its commemorative relevance.

For baby-boomers who lived  and picketed in the tumultuous 60s, the implications of eliminating the 28-day observance are unthinkable. Given their unprecedented generational activism in the area of Civil Rights — a cause for which they marched, bled, and even perished — many rightfully wish to dignify efforts that, after three centuries of intolerance,  actualized democratic ideals in print and practice.

But the proposal, younger citizens insist, hardly undercuts their predecessors’ achievements: it reaps the fruits of their labor. Most of all, it evaluates — in a much broader sense — the idea of post-racial society that surmounts cultural definitions to empower one thing in particular: a seamless American collective.

The question, though, is whether or not citizens are prepared to embrace a progressive society where minority achievements are implicitly celebrated as national accomplishments, rather than being confined and trivialized within the course of a month.

“You’re going to relegate my history to a month?” African-American actor Morgan Freeman infamously exclaimed in a 2005 interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes.” “I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history.”

The 72-year old’s comments — made three years before Obama’s election in 2008 –  reignited fierce debate within the African-American community over the value of the Black History Month as a political gesture, an educational imperative, and an opportunity to fortify democratic principles of equality and inclusion in 21st century America.

Yet Freeman — in spite of his professional eminence — isn’t necessarily representative of a number of African-Americans who’ve called attention to an enduring sense political disenfranchisement within poorer and more isolated minority communities.  Recognizing their prerogative to provide students with comprehensive historical curricula, many find modern texts relating to the African-American diaspora frighteningly inadequate for future generations.

Here, it is said, commemoration is of critical importance.

“We have a mission to research, promote, preserve and disseminate information about the contributions of African-Americans in history and their diaspora,” said Sylvia Cyrus-Albritton, director of Carter G. Woodson’s Association for the Study of African-American Life and History.”When that mission is complete, maybe celebrations like Black History Month can take a different slant. American history books — and the way it is taught — still [do] not include the full contribution of African-Americans or other minorities for that matter.”

But perhaps the greatest reinforcement of Albritton’s argument comes from the substance of contemporary political rhetoric. From Harry Reid describing  Obama’s nonexistent “Negro dialect” to Tom Tancredo mourning the absence of  prejudiced “Literacy Tests”, too many representatives have shown a characteristic disregard for Millennial progressivism and post-racialist vision for American society. The connotations of their arguments? Unmistakable.

Even celebrity icon John Mayer, gushing on his “white supremacist” predilections,  failed to contextualize his comments, drawing fire from exasperated African-American friends and colleagues.

These verbal slip-ups — whether innocent or intentional — unleash pre-existing racial prejudices in guise of political discourse and wry “Playboy humor.” But for all of their destructive glory, the three men’s comments have also stimulated extraordinary social and political dialogue among Millenials dying to shed their forefathers’ legacy of oppression.

“America’s promise, past, present, and future, will always be tied to, and measured by, the socioeconomic status of African-Americans,” wrote Dr. Matthew C. Whitaker in the Arizona Republic. “No matter how much we grow, and no matter how unified we become, we will always be a post-slave and Jim Crow society.”

Still, when push comes to shove, we may never really know the key to a post-racialist America.

Even as people like Whitaker — an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Arizona State University — argue that a Black History Month, if “treated seriously and executed effectively”, could “stimulate more concern for inclusive and probing educational curricula, inter-cultural communication, and democracy itself”, citizens seem incapable of reaching a consensus.

“Stop talking about it,” said Freeman, when asked by Mike Wallace about how to eliminate racism in America. “I’m going to stop calling you a white man. And I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman. You wouldn’t say, ‘Well, I know this white guy named Mike Wallace.’ You know what I’m sayin?”

For Christmas, he got a pair of PETN-laden underwear. For New Years? A Haitian Katrina. Top that with New England’s post-Kennedy throwdown, and you’ve got yourself a minor political disaster.

It’s no wonder that Team Obama — now violently thrown back in the swim of things — may very well break out the brass knuckles by channeling the same tough-talking alter ego Americans didn’t know they wanted. Yet in forfeiting middle-ground territory – and his campaign’s promise to kick partisanship cold turkey– will the Administration also lose young constituents to generational disillusionment?

Maybe. But if exigent circumstances do force the President’s hand – ending his reign as a political sui generis – it’s Millennials themselves who should take the blame.

Disillusionment implies, at least connotatively, that someone other than young Americans is responsible for the postponement – or reversal – of political progress. Yet this transference of blame is only appropriate if the public has, through well-placed activism and civic engagement, exhausted its own faculties for social and political change. Even if government bears the brunt of their own calling, they cannot – and should not – shoulder its mandate alone. In the end, the American people share culpability for national failures, however significant.

November 4th, 2008 marked the divide between Millennial vision and action. Hopes were high as Democratic schadenfreude, radiating out of the rubble, set a basic context for post-Bush progressivism. That generational vigor did not endure beyond Obama’s historical inauguration speaks not only to the weakness of our political resolve, but our unrecognized responsibilities as keystone citizens.

Today, Millennials say they want an aisle-crossing, post-partisan Presidency. They demand universal healthcare, marriage equality, and recite myriad bleedingheartisms as leftist mantra. Yet they often do so with an air of apathetic resignation that excuses – and excludes – them from national discourse.

It’s less surprising, then, that many justifications for their own political disengagement seem half-baked. Because what we have here is not a case of “millennial disillusionment.” For all our fury and cynicism, 18-29 year olds are too young and have ultimately seen too little to embrace generational defeatism, especially when 90% of us are more capable of reciting Lady Gaga lyrics than naming all nine members of the SCOTUS.

What we do have, though, is an absolution of democratic obligation – of active and vigorous American citizenship – in the 21st century. We have a population ignorant of its own civic potential, and most regrettably, its capacity to move mountains and permanently contextualize itself in the national struggle for reform. Most importantly, we have a generation that has handed off its own hopes and expectations to politicians who, when thrown to the Congressional lion’s den, find it impossible to legislate progressivism in a hyper-partisan environment.

For every teabagger, we should have one hundred Millennials on the parapet. If we want healthcare reform, we should make sure our message is unmistakable. And to each member of the conservative intelligentsia, we should show we are fully capable of countering their “grassroots” activism with our own growing movement, and that we can do so without playing colonial dress-up.

If Barack Obama isn’t the answer, we’ll have to find our own — not wait for next election to come around. But if he is, our generational power and dynamism should come to the fore in his time of political trouble.

In the end, this Presidency will be as historical as we want it to be. Forsaking this sense of accountability – for whatever reason – will prove more consequential to the White House’s success than any opposition movement they’ll ever encounter.

At which point, who could blame Barry for playing dirty?

Maybe it’s the retro-skunk hairdo. Or maybe I just have a soft spot for cigar-puffing Rottweiler puppets. I don’t know.

At any rate, when fondly reminiscing about an era before predatory i-bankers, Jersey fist-pumping, and the growing possibility of being blown up by an Underwear bomber, I’m more likely to recall Coco’s whip-smart witticisms and Triumph’s trashtalk over any jokes delivered by  Leno.

Two decades later, both talk show legends wander the annals of anachronism. Young Millennials – once cosseted by the 90s bubble – are more fluent in market toxicity than Sir-Mix-A-Lot. And the lose-lose scuffle between Coco and Jay Leno has NBC struggling to reconcile a generational schism that may swallow them – and their quarreling stars – whole.

As the Aughties sunset, exiling both Kings of Prime Time television, a next generation of torch-bearers prepares to ascend the throne.

Enter Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart – television’s “Golden Boys” of tomorrow.

In a cyclical business that advanced CBS’ “Survivor Era” and the ensuing “Rise of Fox”, the two political satirists have staked their claim as the beaming faces of America’s next tele-cultural milestone.

While the median age of Daily Show and Colbert Report viewers is approximately 41.4 and 38.3 respectively, both hosts attract the youngest viewers of late night talk shows. The median age for The Late Show with David Letterman, for instance, is 54, with Tonight Show watchers hovering around 55. Big 3 news viewers – worse for wear – have already peaked at 60.

Energized by a loyal following of Gen-Yers – many disillusioned by mainstream news outlets and Capitol rhetoric – the dynamic duo may define the next phase of television entertainment in the Age of Obama.

An impossibility? Many think otherwise.

Regardless of their faux-news roots, both Stewart and Colbert have become sources of authority for Americans who feel the “fair and balanced” folks at Fox and MSNBC have failed to promote political accountability among public officials. It isn’t, after all, that Milennials confuse entertainment with reality – just that they’ve realized the two mens’ positions as social jesters gives them full license to air the ugliest of political truths without consequence.

So they do. Amidst wacky one-liners and scripted exchanges, they’ve woven threads of truth that’ve supplied the most biting political commentary on everything from birtherism to Barack Obama’s Presidency. Through thick and thin, we’ve learned we can rely on them to defend the interests of the American collective both as Washington outsiders and modern day vigilantes who sting back when bitten.

Just ask Jim Cramer.

Yet their rising prominence is also a product of political circumstance. Pegging generational disenchantment with unfulfilled Presidential and Congressional promises, the programs capture changing social attitudes towards old Washington politics and the untapped rage of young, marginalized Millennials.

According to a study conducted by Jody Baumgartner and Jonathan S. Morris of East Carolina University, young Daily Show watchers were more likely to develop a negative perspective on politics and politicians than those who watched regular news sources like the CBS Evening News. According to the Baumgartner and Morris’ article – printed in a 2006 issue of American Politics Research – they also expressed distrust in both the American electoral system and the mainstream media, leading them to conclude that “ultimately, negative perceptions of candidates could have participation implications by keeping more youth from the polls.”

Governmental distrust may be the greatest motivator for disenfranchised birthers and anti-establishmentarians to participate in the electoral process. But if public sentiment ever breaches the razor-thin line between hate and disillusionment, can the same be said for Millennials?

Time will only tell.