Whither the Pendulum

I've argued before that we're in the middle of a paradigm shift, that the pendulum is swinging leftward, or whatever historiographical cliché you prefer. But ever since Jon Meachem wrote that the U.S. was inherently a center-right nation, I've been wondering if it were really true.

Don't get me wrong. Liberal/progressive bloggers immediately pushed back against this notion. And the Meachem article is hardly convincing:

The two Arthur Schlesingers, father and son, believed American history was
cyclical, with periods, as they saw it, of liberal action followed by
conservative reaction. There is much to commend this construct, though history
and politics, like so much else in life, do not lend themselves to easy
categorization.

History and politics do not lend themselves to easy categorization, you say? And yet you're perfectly comfortable categorizing the U.S. as just right of center?

Nonetheless, it got me thinking: Is the U.S. really entering a liberal era?

The Basic Argument

Main Idea: Conservatives screwed up: The economy is in shambles due to Republican-led deregulation and we're involved in two wars thanks to gung-ho neoconservatives. The Republican coalition is fracturing, while leftists are adopting a more united front.

The Demographic Argument

Main Idea: The McGovern coalition--students; minorities; and upper-middle-class, college-educated professionals (doctors and lawyers, as opposed to mid-level managers)--failed to elect a Democrat in 1972. But this section of the American populace has grown since '72, and this coalition can now be a winning one. Furthermore, elements of the coalition are now even more likely to vote Democratic due to the decreased salience of issues that favored Republicans, e.g. crime and high taxes.

Pause

Main Idea: But then Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss is re-elected in a runoff in Georgia, and a recent poll shows that "a plurality of voters (49 to 42 percent) are more concerned that the Democratic Congress will be too much of a rubber stamp than they are that Congress will prevent Obama from enacting the changes he thinks are needed." Said poll also concludes that "a large portion of the public is waiting to decide whether Obama is doing a good job." And how likely is it that Obama will save the economy, restore the Big Three to profitability, withdraw from a stable Iraq, secure Afghanistan, end global warming, and so on?

So?

The Schlesinger view is the correct one. Liberals are put in power due to the public's disgust with conservative excesses, liberals go too far, then the public puts conservatives in power, conservatives go too far, etc. Meachem may be right that the U.S. is more conservative than Europe, but it's also more liberal than Saudi Arabia. But who cares? That's not the point we're arguing. 'Liberal' and 'conservative' are relative terms; the context in which they are used is always relevant. And what we're discussing is not how the U.S. of today compares to the Europe of today but how the U.S. of today compares to the U.S. of years past.

The answer to that question is a difficult one. The U.S. could be entering a new liberal era, but I think that depends on the success of Obama's first term. If Obama makes significant headway against today's problems, or if he's able to paint failures as the fault of Republicans, it is probable that 2008 will be remembered as the liberals' 1980. The bottom line is that the (in-)significance of 2008 will probably not be known until at least 2012.