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Maybe It’s 1952
by Alex Thurston  Let me be contrarian for a moment. I know this a “change election,” even a “realigning election” if you believe some of the more grandiose rhetoric coming from some bloggers. We hear comparisons to 1932 and 1980 frequently, and less frequently comparisons to 1960, 1968, and 1976 - all of which have merit. But I’d like to suggest a somewhat anticlimactic but no less important comparison: maybe this is 1952. An deeply unpopular incumbent, mired in a deeply unpopular war, who barely won re-election four years prior, finds he has squandered much of the popularity from his party’s last great leader, who is given credit for rescuing the nation from economic problems as well as winning a global struggle. The incumbent president has mismanaged a new global struggle even as the old one appeared to be settled. Decades of rule for the party in power end with the party divided as the other side, recovering from decades in the wilderness, comes forward with a new message and new leadership. The president’s would-be successor finds himself irrelevant, speaking to the nation in a kind of political language they don’t respond to anymore. His opponent is a charismatic moderate with a high national profile and an attack-dog running mate. There are strong parallels between Truman, who stood on FDR’s shoulders but then watched twenty years of Democratic rule collapse, and Bush, who stands on Reagan’s shoulders and is watching (what I would call) nearly thirty years of conservative rule fall apart. One could also say that there are parallels between Truman’s role as the first Cold War president, after a Democratic president presided over victory in World War II, and Bush’s role as the first “War on Terror” president, after a Republican president presided over “victory” in the Cold War. The parallels between Obama and Eisenhower are not as strong, though I think both promised a kind of return to the center - and to peace - for Americans who felt the country had shifted to far to one side. What intrigues me most are parallels between McCain and Adlai Stevenson. Both emerged from a weak primary field in their parties to be the designated successor of the president. Both were “footsoldiers in the revolution” - McCain of Reagan’s, Stevenson of FDR’s. And both promised to continue those revolutions at a time when they no longer felt relevant to a majority of Americans. Both McCain and Stevenson were called out of touch. I make these comparisons partly just to show that we can compare this year to any year and conceivably find convincing parallels. But I also think this comparison has real merit, particularly because 1952 was the last completely open election in the US before 2008 - ie, one in which neither candidate was an incumbent president or vice president. Does that mean I think Obama will govern like Eisenhower, instead of the FDR that many progressives are starting to hope for? Maybe. Circumstances could pressure Obama into more progressive stances on various issues, but perhaps he’ll see a moderate, centrist position as the wise course. There was a big swing from one ideology to another in 1932, and in 1980, in other words at the beginning of two political “revolutions,” but there was not in 1952, when the last revolution ended. That’s something for us to keep in mind when we set expectations for the next four or eight years. Alex Thurston is currently a student in the Master's Program of Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He graduated from Northwestern University in 2005 with a BA in Religion and spent the winter of 05-06 working at various jobs around Chicago, including at the notorious 1000 Liquors. In 2006-2007, he lived in Senegal as part of the Fulbright exchange program and studied Muslim youth movements in the capital city, Dakar. His interests (other than politics and religion) include hip hop and literature. He can be reached at alex[at]theseminal.com.
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Tags: Alex Thurston McCain Eisenhower Adlai Stevenson 1952 Reagan
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