WASHINGTON — Time's passage to 2019 brings hopes, fears and shards of memory. This bleak midwinter is more fearful than most, given the government shutdown and two more years of Donald Trump's ("poor me") world of pain.

What do you say about a president with no courage or compassion — a crass president who can't act presidential to save his skin? Spoiled and grasping, Trump stands out as the worst kind of baby boomer. Did we need three presidents from that post-war generation? We've had two too many in this century alone.

Let's take a cue from presumptive House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her elegant hard line. She put "Mr. President" in his place before a bank of cameras in the Oval Office. Her line, "Trump shutdown," sure caught his attention and shut him down (for a second). Checkmate.

At 78, Pelosi is the Democratic ray of light and hope for 2019. She grew up as the beloved daughter of a beloved Baltimore mayor. Republicans pin San Francisco liberalism all over her, but she has old-school skills and politics encoded in her. Nobody counts votes better.

Then you wonder why someone as schooled, as deft, as she did not become president? Pelosi may have been a more consistent candidate than Hillary Clinton. She did, after all, pass Obamacare in the House, as speaker in 2010. In life and politics, she is what she is, somehow, more than Clinton was what she was.

The thing is her "Silent" generation never took its leadership turn as president. A few tried: Senators Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., reached for the prize. Now they are gone.

Ironically, the '30s generation knew the greatest president since Lincoln. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's bracing voice was heard over the radio by countless children in the Depression. Born in 1933, my father was one.

Families huddled over the famous fireside chats. The president gave the nation comfort and hope in hard times. Can you even imagine that?

Simply out, there were fewer American children of the Depression, so those born from the late '20s to the early '40s got overlooked, lost between the generations before and after.

The culturally dominant World War II generation of George H.W. Bush and the populous, rebellious baby boomers of Bill Clinton's day got all the attention, glory — and votes.

The Silent generation — now in their late '70s up to early '90s — pioneered social revolutions that crested later.

For starters, they were the brightest boys and girls ever on public school charts. Many came from striving immigrant families in the Midwest and the East. The late literary giant Philip Roth fits this sketch perfectly. (And he never received the Nobel Prize.)

The Silent Generation gave us great unelected leaders such as Gloria Steinem, Harvey Milk and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The slain civil rights leader would be 90 this month.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the oldest Supreme Court Justice, and the oldest senator, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., both wear 85 well. They are the oldest members of two of the three branches of government, an extraordinary secret nobody knows.

Pearl Harbor is an indelible common memory. Here's a page from my father, E. Richard Stiehm's, memoir of his Madison, Wisconsin, boyhood:

"Richard, age eight, was reading the comic strips on the dining room floor on a Sunday morning, when his mother came from the kitchen with a very worried expression, saying the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor, and we are going to war. That added to her woes, as her husband the doctor had died six weeks before and she was burdened with four children, including a baby girl."

Memoirs are the way out — or rather, the way into the historical record. To have their stories told and achievements seen, the Silent generation must pick up their pens and let memory speak. One such memoir is journalist Marvin Kalb's fascinating "Peter the Great." Another is political author and advisor Stephen Hess's diverting "Bit Player."

Bit players, unite: They deserve much more on history's stage.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the creators.com website.