Obama's Sliding Pendulum

Politics tends to swing back and forth from the left to the right in American history. In the 1920s, the swing was to the right with a limited government and commerce that operated freely. With the Great Depression, federal invervention in the economy was necessary and the pendulum swung to the left with growing federal power from 1932 until the end of the Johnson presidency in 1969. With Nixon's election in '68 and the subsequent trouncing of McGovern in '72, few politicians proclaimed themselves to be liberal all the way to this present day. It has been a period of a rightward swing of the pendulum.

Obamas election is a swing of the pendulum to the left, yet it is more than just a swing of the pendulum. For, while the pendulum swings back and forth, the trajectory of American history is toward greater and more expansive federal power. The pendulum swings, but the frame upon which the pendulum hangs slides toward the left. This die was cast when Lincoln proclaimed that the states, once in the union, could not leave. And he enforced his conviction with a war. Since the Civil War, the power of the federal government has grown steadily, though there have been long periods in which the growth was curbed.

With the troubled economy and the collapse of finance and industry, greater federal intervention in the free markets is inevitable. Obama is ideoligically committed to this and historically positioned to accomplish it.