HOME | BIO | MUSIC | JOURNEYS BY DJ | STUDIO BLOG | POLITICAL BLOG | BOOKING INFO | CONTACT

Matt wonders: is Obama a new Reagan, or is he a new Carter? Ezra counters by suggesting he might be a Bill Clinton. Guys... Stephen Skowronek has already covered this ground, and the answer is clear: Obama fits the mold of Ronald Reagan.

Just as in 1980, we are now at the end of a very long cycle in political time. Back then it was the end of the New Deal coalition, with Carter's '76 win one last go round for the coalition that Roosevelt built. Like Hoover before him, it was a disaster for the party (Skowronek calls this a "disjunction"), with events overwhelming the president's ability to set and follow anything even remotely resembling a coherent agenda. Carter simultaneously tried to hold the liberal coalition together and chart a new course, producing an administration was never able to craft a believable narrative. Reagan then came in and realigned everything, producing a new coalition that lasted nearly 30 years.

On the right, to this day everyone still wants to be Reagan, a sure sign that they believe themselves to be part of a single unbroken tradition. Clinton's time in office was a classic case of "preemption" (see Skowronek again) - an administration that tried in vain to swim against the prevailing ideological currents, ultimately exhausting both itself and the nation. Clinton's "I'm a new Democrat" was pitch perfect preemption, a partially successful effort to redefine an ideology that many saw as no longer relevant. But preemptions are by definition incomplete, so like Nixon's failed bid to remake Republicanism, Clinton's quest to remake his party was left for someone else to finish. But before that could happen, Bush was elected to once again re-articulate conservatism - that's what that "restoring honor and dignity" nonsense was really about - placing him in a position that like Carter's before him was difficult at best. Rove wanted a realignment, but what he got was a disjunction, the moment when the dominant coalition begins to fragment and dissolve.

That leaves us at a moment of enormous import. In the cycles of political time, we now have two options. Elect McCain to a single term for one last conservative fling, or elect Obama and create a new political order that will last a generation or more.

Like Carter before him, McCain's efforts to re-articulate and reinvigorate his party's ideological coalition are doomed to fail. Evidence? McCain's problems pleasing the Republican base fit Skowronek's cycles so well it is almost absurd. Like Carter, McCain comes from a state that once was unquestionably loyal to his party but that recently has begun to move away (see: Gov. Janet Napolitano (D), the defeats of J. D. Hayworth (R) and Jim Kolbe (R), and the scandal ridden retirement of Rick Renzi (R)). Like Carter, McCain is a "maverick" on some of the issues that matter most to his party's base, setting up what would almost certainly be disastrous legislative clashes should he win this coming fall. And like Carter, McCain will see bipartisanship as a sign of his reasonableness; his base will see it as evidence of betrayal.

As with all potential presidents at the end of the life of a governing coalition, McCain is trapped in an inescapable paradox: On the one hand, he remains loyal to the memory and myth of Reagan, swearing that he will govern as his movement's patron saint once did. On the other, the ideas and rhetoric of Reagan are simply exhausted and out of historical place, forcing McCain to try in vain to adapt them to a world in which they no longer fit. But it won't work. It never does, because it cannot. Get far enough away from the source of a tradition and it becomes incoherent, a dilemma that no amount of hard work or desire can overcome.

On the other side of things is Obama, an almost classic definition of a president promising a Skowronekian reconstruction. Our problem, Obama says, is that the rhetoric of our politics no longer matches our national needs. We have new problems and new issues, changes that create a fundamental shift that both sides of the debate refuse to acknowledge. Obama promises a fundamental rewrite of our politics, returning to our roots to reunite the country around our shared ideals. Promising to break with both sides, he frees himself to create his own political meaning, seizing control of the national narrative in a way that only a tiny handful of presidents ever can. It's Jefferson in 1800, Jackson in 1828, Lincoln in 1860, FDR in 1932, and Reagan in 1980. By reaching back into our past beyond today's petty debates, we can simultaneously recapture our greatness and chart a new course. It's the promise of every reconstruction, when the right man with the right message for the right moment meet and become one.

Our greatest presidents always follow our worst. An exhausted political coalition always gives way to a new and more vibrant one. In the end, entropy always gets you. It's all in there, guys. Go read the book.

UPDATE: Ross Douthat joined the conversation with this observation:

in Grand New Party we explicitly compare Bush to Nixon in this regard - a President who assembled a coalition that might have provided the foundation for a lasting conservative majority, but whose blunders undid all his political successes and left his party seemingly worse off than when he found it. Which might mean, in turn, that if circumstances (and their predilection for infighting, and the fact that the resurgent liberalism hasn't quite honed its message to a Reaganesque point) conspire against the Democrats, the GOP will just need someone who can play Reagan to Dubya's Nixon in 2012 or 2016 - re-assembling and expanding his coalition, learning from his mistakes, and building a new conservative majority while the ashes of the old one are still warm.

There are a variety of reasons to think that it won't be this easy (starting, of course, with the fact that nothing about Reagan's victory in '80 was inevitable or easy, either), but one worth highlighting here is the problem of institutional inertia. Conservatism in the late '60s and '70s was essentially making things up as it went along, which made it flexible enough to adapt pretty readily to changing circumstances; conservatism in the early '00s, on the other hand, has all the features of a movement that's been too long in power, with entrenched institutions and rigid orthodoxies all over the place. In other words, today's Right resembles the liberalism of the Seventies much more than it does the conservatism of that era. Which means that even in the Obamafied Democratic Party makes a mess of things and the GOP reaps the benefits in 2012, it will be awfully hard for Republicans - like Carter-era Democrats before them - to overcome these structural obstacles and achieve more than a temporary revival.

"Institutional inertia" is yet another topic covered in Skowronek's theory, but in his words it is a "thickening of political time." But whatever you call it, Ross captures its dynamic perfectly. Over time, an ideology inevitably institutionalizes, first losing its vibrancy and flexibility and eventually becoming brittle and stale. That is exactly, precisely what has happened to conservatism since the 1970s. Where once it was a vibrant ideology that seemed to have a solution for every problem, now it is rigid doctrine that requires its adherents to think and speak in specific ways. To be a conservative today you must pass a series of tests, checking the appropriate boxes on an exam that hasn't changed for more than a generation.

And that's where Ross' "Bush could be Nixon" theory simply breaks down. Bush's coalition wasn't new, it was old. Rove's strategy wasn't about building a new coalition but reviving a very old one. Find the hidden evangelicals and get them to the polls. Push those old hot buttons - gay marriage, abortion, family values - and rile up the base once more. It wasn't Nixon's forgotten silent majority, not even close. It was Reagan's restoration, a new version of the same playbook that Republicans had been running on for decades. Nixon executed it imperfectly (preempting but not ending liberalism's reign), leaving it to Reagan to establish a new political order. Just as restorations cannot happen without preemptions, so too are preemptions impossible without restorations.

But what about Bush's "compassionate conservatism," you ask? Isn't that a sign that he was building something new? No, it is not. Not at all. Even by 2000 Reagan's coalition was beginning to fade, and in those circumstances a clever branding strategy functions something like a new coat of paint. When ideas are old they become hard to sell, so a re-branding is necessary to get people to take a fourth or fifth look. But as Skowronek points out, that re-branding always raises a key dilemma: to be simultaneously new and yet also faithful to what is old is an almost impossible task, eventually forcing the president into an uncomfortable choice. Does he abandon tradition or does he set aside his own rhetoric? And either way, the president is doomed. Abandon tradition and you lose your base. Abandon your rhetoric and you will eventually lose the nation. Do the first and you may make way for another failed re-articulation; do the second and you may help create the conditions that create an entirely new coalitions

As a conservative, I can understand how Ross would prefer to see Bush as a Nixon rather than a Carter, but wow... that's one hell of a choice, isn't it?