Salon: Obama election may signal new "Republic" for US

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/11/07/fourth_republic/index.html




Interesting analysis. He compares Obama to Washington, Lincoln and FDR, all of whom signaled the beginning of major new eras in the country's history. What's troubling is that each of these presidents also presided over a period of enormous pain and difficulty.

Oh my, long on a lot of stuff that remains to be seen. Let's worry about the short term. We have a lot on our plates.

wait until January. I think if I were Obama right now, I would put something in the way of an ultimatum to Bush that things may go better for him if he resigns today.

This article has something of watching-the-wizard-of-oz-to-dark-side-of-the-moon to it: all these grand movements of the political stars happening every 36 years. (He says "it's not astrology" but if it isn't why the emphasis on such symmetry?). And I'm no expert on early American history, but his description of Jefferson as a Hamiltonian President and Jackson as a Jeffersonian backlash (against Jefferson, apparently) is like something out of Alice in Wonderland, all to squeeze everything into neat 36-year cycles. How does Woodrow Wilson represent some kind of small-government backlash against the excesses of Lincoln's nation-improving impulses? Teddy Roosevelt? "He set aside more land for national parks than all his predecessors combined." (To quote the great Wikipedia.) How is that consistent with being a small-government reactionary? Lind just glosses over all that because it doesn't fit his astrological conception of U.S. history. Even his description of Nixon as the beginning of a backlash against "big government" doesn't really wash. Nixon was many things, but I've never heard of him described as a believer in a restrained, unobtrusive federal government. (To the contrary, perhaps.)

Anyway, Washington, Lincoln and FDR are remembered precisely because they presided over times of great difficulty. Let's hope that Obama is someday remembered in a less dramatic light (but with equal affection).

craziness of the Reagan-to-W era.

have to admit, seeing Georgieboy refereed to as "Jeffersonian" seemed, well, just a tad off. Maybe more than a tad.

The main point of the article had some sort of validity, i think the terms used such as "small-government" were narrowly conceived to push the reader into a Hamilton/Jefferson duking it out through history mindset. But the cycle-history, Fourth Republic notion is still kind of interesting - noting of course the idea we should set our watches to expect the next hero in the Washington/Lincoln/Roosevelt/Obama (nice ring, eh?) line in 2080 is a little silly.

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LOL

"suck an aids filled cock, please"

WTF?

Maybe you should go back to Fr** Repu*lic or something huh?

On Edit: I deleted, because I think I lost it for a moment, my better nature thankfully then got the better of me.

Keep up that tone and hostility and you won't last long here.

so you definitely don't have his power.

edited because original comment that caused this one has been deleted.

go away as soon as President Obama is sworn in. It'll take years, maybe decades to heal and recover from the mauling our national psyche and constitutional government have endured.

get worse before it gets better, but we will recover from it. He thinks our country is strong enough to withstand the hit. With Obama at the helm I feel very confident.

It's encouraging that he's not freaking out right now.

Ronald Reagan, unlike Jimmy Carter, told Americans that it was "government" not "they" who lived too well, to convince them that "they" could have whatever they wanted without pain. It took Bill Clinton to pay off Reagan's national debt!

"No pain, no gain!"

First party system: 1787-1824, "Republicans" (Democrats, today) vs. Federalists
Second party system: 1824-1852 Democrats vs. Whigs; the era of the various compromises on slavery
Third party system: 1852-1892 Democrats vs. Republicans; slavery could no longer be compromised away
Fourth party system: 1892-1932 Democrats vs. Republicans; the heyday of Progressive Republicanism
Fifth party system: 1932-1968 Democrats vs. Republicans; our party took the Progressive mantle
Sixth party system: 1968-(2008?) Democrats vs. Republicans; the "silent majority" conservative vs. third-way era

That this could be the start of another party system is shown by all the talk of the GOP splitting up; even if it doesn't in name, there will have to be a realignment as the old coalitions no longer mean as much to people.