The Coming U-Turn In American History

By TERRY PARSSINEN

Published: Oct 9, 2007

The election of 2008 is likely to be one of those political U-turns that occur once in a generation.

American history since the early 20th century has been marked by long swings of dominance by one party that span several presidential administrations. These are underpinned by a strong ideology and an alliance of groups with complementary interests. The dominance ends abruptly when an administration fails to solve a significant national problem and the underlying vision is discredited.

Conservative Republicans held sway from the 1890s through 1932. Successive administrations catered to business interests, allowed extreme income inequality to flourish, and fashioned a partnership with the temperance movement that led to Prohibition (1920-1932).

The Great Depression, beginning in 1929, combined with the corrupt and ineffective Prohibition Bureau, created severe problems that befuddled Herbert Hoover's administration. Popular disenchantment with the Republicans led to the first great U-turn of the 20th century.

The landslide election of 1932 ushered in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a succession of liberal, mostly Democratic administrations that stressed social security for all citizens and dramatically reduced income inequality. The liberal alliance came apart in the 1960s, as members of FDR's party feuded with one another over black power, women's liberation, and the disastrous war in Vietnam. Richard Nixon's election in 1968 seemed to bring an end to Democratic ascendancy, but the Watergate scandal tainted Republicans and allowed Jimmy Carter to become president in 1976.

Carter's administration was unable to deal with the OPEC oil embargo and the Iranian hostage crisis. In addition, young staffers in the Carter White House were publicly caught using drugs, reminding ordinary Americans of what they had so disliked about the youth culture of the 1960s. The era of liberal dominance was over.

Ronald Reagan's successful "Morning in America" election of 1980, the second great U-Turn, was based on a vibrant conservative ideology, and featured an alliance between business interests and the social reformers of the Christian Right that held sway for the next 26 years. (Even Bill Clinton was essentially conservative - he failed to enact universal health care but succeeded in dismantling welfare.) George W. Bush's administration has been marked by a series of failures: the war in Iraq, unprecedented corruption, income inequality unseen since the 1920s, and divisions within the alliance over such issues as immigration and stem cell research.

The great mass of middle-of-the-road voters deserted the Republicans, and the election of 2006 reflected this disenchantment. If history is a reliable guide, the election of 2008 is likely to bring about the demise of Reaganite conservatism and the beginnings of a generation-long dominance by liberal Democrats.

Terry Parssinen is a history professor at the University of Tampa.