The Obama Era

There is a curious quiet descending over American politics. The gun has gone off for the 2016 race, most contenders have announced, yet it’s drawing a big yawn from most people.

The reason for that is simple. We have entered the Obama Era.

The crisis of 2008 has passed. The economy is growing. A new course has been set, of social liberalism and economic conservatism, something that seemed impossible to imagine a decade ago. Our foreign policy has been transformed, and our children, our troops, our heroes are no longer the “tip of the spear.”

Oil prices are down, and fossil fuels are gradually being displaced by solar and wind power in the electrical grid, which is also acquiring intelligence and storage, becoming what Al Gore once called the “Electranet.”

Change has happened. Most of the change is irrevocable. The roles of the parties have reversed. It is now the Democratic Party that sets the course, and the job of the Republican Party to lean against it.

This is an immense political achievement. It has only happened a half-dozen times in our national life. Thomas Jefferson created the two-party system. Andrew Jackson created the Democratic Party. Abraham Lincoln created the Republican Party and William McKinley ushered in the Progressive Era. Franklin Roosevelt created modern liberalism, and Richard Nixon modern conservatism. Some may replace the name McKinley with “Theodore Roosevelt”, and Nixon with “Ronald Reagan”, but these are minor quibbles.

The fact is that hope has become change. The nation has been transformed. We live in the era of Obama-ism.

Now, imagine if Reagan had been elected in 1968, and Nixon ran as his replacement eight years later.  That is where we are now. Reagan was charisma, Nixon the hard work that lay behind it. From what today’s journalists consider their historical perspective, Hillary Clinton doesn’t belong in the picture. She and I are of the same Baby Boom generation, and our time on the stage has passed. She is a leftover, having begun her own political career at the dawn of the Nixon era, an intern on the House Judiciary Committee that heard his impeachment.

Fortunately we have a context in which to place the coming transition. It has nothing to do with Reagan or Nixon. It lies in the Progressive Era.

Mrs. Clinton is William Howard Taft. Her election will validate what came before her, just as Taft validated Roosevelt. She will win not be because she is Bill Clinton’s wife, but because she is Barack Obama’s choice.

If Hillary hews to the Obama course, her life will validate that course. If she reverts to the course of her husband, who leaned against the Nixon Thesis, she will be a disappointment and become vulnerable.

At that point, with a recession in our midst and uncertainty all around, there will come a cry for nostalgia, and a sort of Republican Carter, a President divorced from his own time, possibly a governor from the northeast or Far West, will arise. His fall will then demonstrate, once and for all, just how much the nation has changed. The result, however it works out, will bring forth a new generation of leaders in the Democratic Party and in the media.

Because of Barack Obama’s success, his clearing of the field within his party, the Democrats’ leadership cupboard is as empty as the GOP’s was in 1980. Clinton’s cabinet will look a lot like Reagan’s did – a bunch of old men and women who prefer Fleetwood Mac to T. Pain, much as Reagan’s cabinet was more Sinatra swing than rock and/or roll. It is always contention, and loss, that brings new leadership to the fore. You don’t get it in incumbency, you get it in opposition, and Democrats could actually use some time in opposition to stock up young leadership, like an NFL team stocking up on high draft picks.

These are the kinds of things political “analysts” will write about over the next several years, but they will write about it from inside the maelstrom of history, while I am looking at it from above and beyond because that is what I do. Journalists will focus on today or this week, they will ignore the broad sweep of history even while it washes over them. And their ranks will churn. By 2024 we will have a new generation of journalists asking the questions, people who grew up, professionally, within the Obama Era, who understand its rhythms, who look to hear the same call they themselves heard in the depths of the Bush Years, who will miss that excitement as my generation misses the 1960s.

That’s the way it is. We live longer than people did in Lincoln’s time. A generation lasts longer. It overstays its welcome. My generation is overstaying its welcome. That is why we will elect Mrs. Clinton. That is why journalists of my age won’t understand so much of the next decade. Fortunately, by the end of it, we will have finally retired. The existence of a new era will be apparent to all.

At that point, and only at that point, this President will take his proper place in history. Only then can he be judged. I pray he is around to enjoy it.