(FORTUNE Magazine) – With the election of Bill Clinton, 46, and Al Gore, 44, one can almost feel the great Schlesingerian wheel of generational change in American politics begin to turn. You remember the historian's thesis, or have been reminded of it recently by Clinton supporters like Robert Reich, 46: About every 30 years, the theory goes, a new generation rises to the top, borne aloft by the electorate's concern that the nation is stagnating, its ascent fueled by promises to overcome the selfish privatism of the preceding decade and get the / country moving again. Witness Teddy Roosevelt in 1901, F.D.R. in 1932, J.F.K. in 1960, and now, after a voter turnout unseen in 20 years, the youngish man from Arkansas. For the 78 million Americans born from 1946 through 1964, the baby-boomers, the Clinton victory raises an interesting, or at least self-interested, question: How many more will be raised up in their arenas of life by the turn of the wheel? Will we see a sudden accession of people in their 30s and 40s to positions of authority, private as well as public? Not to put too fine a point on it for readers in the corporate world, will U.S. companies, like the country, finally decide that they need to reach down in the ranks for more boomer energy and innovativeness, lifting up and installing the supposed possessors of same in top management jobs? Troubled corporations just might, the experts say, but don't look for a wave of boomers to hit the topmost CEO spots anytime soon. Eugene Jennings, professor emeritus of business management at Michigan State University, has been tracking the comings and goings of CEOs at 360 of the largest U.S. companies since 1949 at the latest. He notes that 44% of the top dogs at these outfits were born in 1929 or earlier, making them eligible for retirement at age 65 in 1994. Jennings expects the CEO job to turn over at 33% of the companies by mid-decade; by comparison, only 28% of companies underwent such change across the whole of the Eighties, and a mere 19% in the Seventies. Who will fill the raft of slots opening up? ''The new crop will nearly all be in their 50s,'' says Jennings. ''We are seasoning our potential chiefs more.'' Where Jennings does see considerable opportunity for novel-idea-bearing boomers is in jobs right below the CEO, such as chief operating officer. ''We'll have a sizable number of younger people filling the chief op position,'' he predicts. ''I'll bet my reputation as father of mobility studies on it.'' Not a bad bet to have made, as Jennings did, five days before the General Motors board surprised just about everyone else by naming Louis R. Hughes, 43, as head of the company's international operations, and G. Richard Wagoner Jr., 39, as its chief financial officer. GM's directors apparently want what the electorate wanted: leaders itching to shake up the status quo and build a new future. Baby-boomers in a position to do so must now prove that they can work such change. Leadership opportunities for other boomers will depend on how these, the paragons and pioneers, fare. All eyes will be on Clinton. If he's to carve himself a place in history as big as the boomer sprawl across the nation's demography, and along the way establish a model of boomer leadership, he will have to take a page -- or, more likely, a couple of chapters -- from another student of the presidency, James MacGregor Burns. Famously, Burns distinguishes two types of leader, the transactional and the transforming. To oversimplify: The transactional type mostly makes bargains, with an aim little higher than to keep the system going, or to get it to work a little better. The transforming leader divines the true aspirations of his constituency, elevates the folks by enunciating new, loftier goals that he then rallies them around, and in the process is himself raised to ''higher levels of motivation and morality,'' according to Burns. Business school professors translate the distinction into one between administrators, or ''mere managers,'' and true leaders. In the face of many skeptics, Clinton must show himself to be a transformer, not cutting deals with interest groups or every too-long-out-of-power Democrat, but instead framing 21st-century ambitions that the entire society, and most especially his fellow boomers, can get behind. A few possibilities, including some from the dream-big-dreams category:

-- To provide a job to everyone who can work. Including those now on welfare. Not by mandating employment, but by wrestling down the cost of medical and other benefits -- and hence of hiring -- then making heroes out of people and companies who create jobs. Bonus question: Why not aim for a 30-hour workweek, if that means more positions to spread around?

-- To install learning as a central value of the society. Not just for schoolkids or workers in retraining, but also for late-stage boomer careerists looking for other possibilities, and their parents exploring the new potential in long life. Is there any other way to be competitive in a post-industrial global economy?

-- To protect our children and grandchildren from ineluctable economic ruin. How else to persuade older people to give up some of their benefits, other than by pointing out to them, in the most graphic terms, who will get the eventual bill. A la: ''Your granddaughter Megan, 1, will end up paying 60% of her lifetime income to the federal government if we don't get the deficit under control.'' Ross Perot understood this point and was beginning to look like a leader with it.

-- To preserve our environment. Preferably through local action and dazzling, highly profitable, development of new technologies. If you think the cost too high, just ask your local 12-year-old -- heck, your local 6-year-old. He or she already cares more than we do. With the right kind of leadership, that could change. Bring us together, Bill, and elevate us.