Changing Change: 2008 and 1968

Those years are like bookends to our times, when one period of American life ended and another began.

After Democrats held the White House for 28 out of 36 years, the ground shifted in 1968 and, for 28 of the following 40, Republicans took control.

In 1968, Richard Nixon promised to "Bring Us Together" just as, four decades later, Barack Obama offers "Change."

Back then, Democrats were losing their grip on power after a disastrous war and years of domestic upheaval that were stirring fears about social stability in the face of new ideas about gender, race and conventional morality.

Now the Bush years have discredited the backlash of neo-con politics that brought another miserable military misadventure and the rollback of many hard-won individual rights in the name of keeping us safe from terror.

Once again, American politics are at a turning point and, even in the midst of economic misery, Barack Obama embodies hope for something better than what we have had for a long time.

His freshness and confidence are polar opposites of the qualities with which Nixon ushered in his era of reviving ancient grudges and reacting to the world with paranoia.

Party politics and ideologies aside, in the face of unprecedented challenges, Americans are once again ready for something new and better, and it's possible for even the old and jaded to believe that this time we are going to get it.

Back to the Political Future

There are undeniable echoes of the 1960s in how the elections of 2008 are shaping up.

Both parties are in crises that could define them for decades to come and, although the parallels are inexact, the issues are similar: What kind of America are we living in and what do we want it to be?

For Democrats in 1968, the question was not unlike what Republicans are facing now--how to recover from presiding over a disastrous war and domestic discord and, until a bullet stopped him, Robert Kennedy was the Barack Obama then and Hubert Humphrey the Hillary Clinton, promising change vs. philosophical continuity.

Republicans had to face their directional question four years earlier when Barry Goldwater ran. Traditional conservatives feared he might wreck their party in 1964, as many of them feel about Mike Huckabee now. They tried to rally around Gov. William Scranton just as Robert Bork is now backing Mitt Romney with other National Review icons to come.

In that struggle, Dwight Eisenhower clearly favored Scranton but could not bring himself to do it publicly. Today we have the elder George Bush sending a signal by hosting Romney's speech about religion.

Lyndon Johnson left his party in shambles as George W. Bush will in 2009. If we're lucky, we won't have to live through a Richard Nixon and a Jimmy Carter before the country recovers from its ideological headaches.

For the aging, everything that happens is a reminder of something that happened before, so younger eyes may
see better alternatives now. Let's hope so.