http://www.standard.net/topics/opinion/2010/03/22/its-deja-vu-all-over-again
By Neal Humphrey
Mar 22 2010
The political climate of 2010 sure feels like 1970. With credit to
the tautological Yogi Berra, it's like deja vu all over again.
Forty years ago Americans were polarized by struggles over a foreign
war (and the military draft), civil rights, government spending, and
tax increases. In the 1960s the White House was occupied by a
spectacularly unpopular president, Lyndon Johnson. The body count in
Vietnam was 10 times higher than Iraq and Afghanistan. The Civil
Rights Act was still a dream that a future Republican administration
would bring to pass. A losing Great Society war on poverty was
expanding expensive government entitlements. And Congress had passed
a 10 percent surcharge on income taxes.
In the 1968 elections any Democrat nominee would be tainted by
association with the previous administration and was sure to be
defeated by any Republican with a pulse. So the GOP nominated Richard
Nixon, a candidate who was rumored to have a pulse. The best the
Democrats could do that year was to nominate my distant cousin,
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, who was easily defeated.
Hubert Humphrey came out of a fractious national convention in
Chicago where a new generation of voters felt unheard and
disenfranchised. Two years later the first wave of baby boomers
crashed full force on the political scene. By the time the 1972
Democrat National Convention gathered in Miami, hundreds of long-time
party faithful had been displaced by young, energized and idealistic
grass root delegates. Some even shaved beards and trimmed long hair
(me included), going "clean for Gene" to work for the professorial
politician-poet, Sen. Eugene McCarthy. But the convention nominated
George McGovern, who ran his 1972 campaign even worse than John
McCain in 2008. The result was Nixon easily delivering the worst
election shellacking in Democrat party history.
Today the parallels to a generation ago are imperfect, but there're
enough points of contact to make the political climate feel familiar.
Our foreign wars are in the Middle East, not Southeast Asia.
The present civil rights debate involves undocumented immigrants and
persons who live alternate sexual lifestyles.
Government spending has exploded at a historic rate even without
whatever happens with health care reform.
A taxpayer doesn't need a calculator to figure out we are all going
to be sending more of our money to Washington.
And anyone who thinks our present political polarization is historic
just doesn't know history.
Yup. It's 40 years ago all over again.
The big difference in 2010 is that it's not Democrats feeling most of
the direct grass roots heat. It's Republicans. Democrats have bought,
but not paid for, the election apocalypse that will begin to crash on
them this coming November. Americans from the grass roots will use
the Republican party as the agent of their righteous wrath.
Today there will be Republican and Democrat party caucuses across the
state. The usual insider rank and file party workers are likely to
see all kinds of new faces, especially at Republican gatherings. Like
the Democrats of a generation ago, Republican regulars may be
displaced by a wave of discontented citizens.
The hope for the Democrat party lies in their own disastrous
experience a generation ago. President Obama's polling is remarkably
similar to Lyndon Johnson's. The primary difference is that it took
Barack Obama a lot less time than Johnson to both lose support and
engender disapproval. All Barack Obama has to do at this point to
make sure he's political toast is reinstate the military draft.
But Republicans have the same problem as Democrats had in 1972. The
potential Republican nominees for President are as unattractive and
un-electable as Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. While President
Obama hasn't accomplished much in his first year, he has demonstrated
an amazing degree of tenacity in pressing his agenda forward against
appalling resistance. When he brings that same energy to bear on
re-election he's likely to save himself from the indignity of a
one-term presidency.
In fact, if I were in Obama's shoes, I'd use a few million of the
dollars left over from the 2008 campaign to help his critics start a
third-party movement. Maybe not, conservatives are perfectly capable
of that self-destructive mistake all by themselves.
We can only hope that the upcoming transitions will be, to quote the
spirit Ariel's song in Shakespeare's "Tempest," "... a sea-change
into something rich and strange." And not the same ol' deja vu.
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