From Another Perspective.....Guest Post from TAO

I have read an article on Shaw’s blog at Progressive Eruptions and it triggered some thoughts to come back to me that I had lost over the last few months. We get so wrapped up in the moment that we lose sight of the bigger picture from time to time and I realize that I lost sight of how I saw the election of Barack Obama earlier on.

I know most people still see this election as a fluke; that somehow Americans became infatuated with false hopes from a messiah or it was just a guilt trip over race; that would be fine if we just viewed the voting as only a political act. Most elections are just political events and that is what they will remain.

But every now and then you have an election that is transformational; it represents more than just a political vote, much more.

Think back to 1960 when Kennedy beat Nixon. Kennedy, much like Obama, was a political newcomer who ran in against some pretty established Democratic political warhorses in the primary (Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Adlai Stevenson, and Stuart Symington) and he came out the winner and let’s not forget that he was a Catholic.

Which back in those days was about as foreign of a concept as electing a half black man to the Presidency is today.

Then JFK runs against Richard Nixon, who at the time was Vice President to a very highly respected and popular President and wins. Nixon, in those days was just about as popular with the Republican base as John McCain was to conservatives today. There is no way to compare Eisenhower to George Bush; other than they both served two terms.

Kennedy represented change, he represented about as much to that generation as Obama represented in this election to a whole new generation. Did Kennedy live up to the expectations that his supporters had for him? No, not at all because he actually didn’t accomplish all that much during his short time as President. But we just might have to realize that he represented the ‘first wave’ of the social change that racked this country during the 1960’s and represented a societal transformation.

Transformations, which usually are defined by historians, but realistically, they should be obvious to us, much like recessions and economic experts; historians should only confirm what we already know. Was Kennedy a transformation? Obviously, having been a child during the 60’s it was a totally different society and I would argue that Reagan represented a transformation, but it was less social and more economic; his transformation involved our views of the military, international intervention, and the beginning of the concept of government deficits don’t matter.

Kennedy changed a whole generation and their concept of themselves, society, and government. Reagan did the same. I venture that Obama represents now what those two did then. Of course, back then I am sure that quite a few scoffed at the idea of JFK amounting to anything long term, even within the Democratic Party and lets not forget that George H. W. Bush called Reagan’s economic plans, “Voodoo Economics.”

So, what does that mean? Very simply, it means that besides the Republicans some of the old time Democrats, such as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, are going to have trouble adapting.

The Republicans picked Barry Goldwater as their 1964 candidate, a real conservative in the very true sense of the word and Lyndon Johnson basically ended any future that the conservative wing of the Republican party may have had of recapturing control of the party until Ronald Reagan in 1980. If history repeats its self then that translates into the re emergence of conservatism in….2028!

Sometimes elections are a lot more than just elections. Sometimes they represent a fundamental change in society that slowly but surely manifests its self on a much broader scale as time goes on.

It might be best to see Obama in this light and deal with that as a potential reality then it is to just consider him a one term fluke.