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.

Clintons Front and Center Again

Barack Obama unveils a new national security team today with old faces, not least of which is the ghostly presence of Bill Clinton hovering in the background.

After weeks of negotiation, the former First Lady will be named Secretary of State, but where Obama vetting leaves off, the Senate confirmation process will take up untangling the former President's private foreign policy empire.

Sen. Dick Lugar, ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee indicated yesterday that "there will be questions raised, and probably legitimate questions” about Bill Clinton's "cosmic ties."

The New York Times reports Clinton will disclose names of more than 200,000 donors to his foundation, refuse contributions from foreign governments to the Clinton Global Initiative, his annual charitable conference, stop holding its meetings overseas, let his speaking schedule be reviewed by the State Department and White House counsel and submit new sources of income to an ethical review.

“It’s a big step,” Senator Lugar says of the agreement, but there will almost certainly be Republican efforts to dig deeper for potential conflicts of interest.

During the primary campaign, there was widespread resentment about continuing the Clinton/Bush dynasties in Washington but, now that W's Neo-Cons are being sent off to the national security nursing home, here are the Clintons front and center again in the era of Change.

Hillary Clinton, Senate Majority Leader?

Obama passed on her as vice president but can still put Hillary Clinton on the team by backing her for Senate Majority Leader.

In that role, Harry Reid has been ineffectual in rallying Democrats to curtail Bush's excesses or even effectively articulate an opposition view. Now, with a Senate reshuffling that includes the stepping-down of Robert Byrd and the throwing-out of Joe Lieberman, "change" could be served by bringing Clinton to the forefront.

With a clear electoral mandate and wide margin in Congress, before reaching out to Republicans as he has promised to do, the President-Elect can solidify his own ranks by recruiting the faction of his own party he narrowly defeated to win the nomination.

By naming Rahm Emanuel chief of staff, Obama has shown he was no qualms about relying on former Clinton loyalists. Choosing the former First Lady as a legislative partner would be a logical next step.

During the primaries, there were insistent rumors that Reid himself was offering his position to Sen. Clinton as an inducement to concede the nomination. He denied them, but the idea now won't come as a shock.

Clinton's ascension would be a powerful metaphor for cracking the glass-ceiling with women in the leadership positions of both houses of Congress, and her passion on domestic issues would nicely compliment Joe Biden's strength on foreign policy as surrogates for the new Administration's views.

The efforts of both Clintons during the campaign and the logic of a Hillary run in 2012 as a natural heir to a successful Obama Administration are strong arguments against any worries about possible subversion.

In his reaching out for bipartisan consensus, the President-Elect could start with unifying his own party.

The Conservative Case for Obama

As polls show pushy Palinism hurting McCain's chances, the struggle for the Republican future is reflected by two traditional conservatives, Peggy Noonan and George Will.

In the Wall Street Journal today, Noonan, who wrote speeches for Reagan and Bush I, makes "the case for Obama" this way:

"He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief. He climbed steep stairs, born off the continent with no father to guide, a dreamy, abandoning mother, mixed race, no connections. He rose with guts and gifts. He is steady, calm, and, in terms of the execution of his political ascent, still the primary and almost only area in which his executive abilities can be discerned, he shows good judgment in terms of whom to hire and consult, what steps to take and moves to make. We witnessed from him this year something unique in American politics: He took down a political machine without raising his voice.

"A great moment: When the press was hitting hard on the pregnancy of Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter, he did not respond with a politically shrewd 'I have no comment,' or 'We shouldn't judge.' Instead he said, 'My mother had me when she was 18," which shamed the press and others into silence. He showed grace when he didn't have to."

In the Washington Post, Pultizer-Prize columnist George Will, under a heading of "Call Him John the Careless," makes the conservative case against McCain:

"From the invasion of Iraq to the selection of Sarah Palin, carelessness has characterized recent episodes of faux conservatism. Tuesday's probable repudiation of the Republican Party will punish characteristics displayed in the campaign's closing days...

"Palin may be an inveterate simplifier; McCain has a history of reducing controversies to cartoons. A Republican financial expert recalls attending a dinner with McCain for the purpose of discussing with him domestic and international financial complexities that clearly did not fascinate the senator. As the dinner ended, McCain's question for his briefer was: 'So, who is the villain?'"

No liberal could make the case for Obama and against McCain any better than that.

McCain's Promise to Undo Bush

Those who ran the country into the ground for eight years sent John McCain out last night to ask voters for a do-over.

In a speech wherein the only Bush mentioned was Laura, the candidate Republicans rejected eight years ago rallied them to his cause of repairing the damage.

"I fight," he said, "to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us.

"We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger."

McCain might have extended his indictment of the Bush years to a much longer laundry list of lies, deceit, incompetence and criminal misjudgment, but he was in the awkward position of talking over the heads of the people who had authorized all that to ask for the votes of Americans who had suffered from it.

"We're going to recover the people's trust by standing up again to the values Americans admire," McCain promised in identifying himself as a "change" candidate.

"The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics."

In his contortions, McCain tried to look forward as he kept reverting to past Republican nostrums of lower taxes, less government and individual initiative.

Tonight's McCain was not the McCain of 2000, who refused to genuflect to the Religious Right and opposed tax cuts for the richest Americans. He is now papering over all those past differences with his history of devotion and service to his country.

But he was speaking for a party he was tempted to leave in disgust at the Bush-Cheney nightmare, and it would be at their own peril if voters forgot all that, as McCain apparently has, and let him bring back the usual suspects for another four years of misusing power.

Obama's Defining Moment

Tomorrow night's debate in Philadelphia could be the turning point. If he is the masterful politician he seems to be, Barack Obama will seize the moment to rise above the squabbling and bickering to define himself for American voters.

Just as he broadened the Jeremiah Wright brouhaha into a statement about race in America in that same hall, Obama can use his "small town" misstep to address directly the doubts that exist and are being exacerbated about him and re-frame the issue of his trustworthiness.

In response, he can acknowledge understandable skepticism on the part of Americans who were told eight years ago that George W. Bush was a compassionate conservative who would not embark on nation-building, only to get a president with no empathy for their needs, a radical agenda to enrich the richest and a reckless foreign policy that would destroy another nation and squander our blood, treasure and reputation in the world trying to put it back together again.

Voters, Obama can point out, thought they were making a safe choice in selecting a familiar name and reassuring promises from a comforting source. Now they are being asked to give their trust to a dark-skinned man with an odd name and exotic roots who, they are being told, is "elitist" and "out of touch" with them.

But which is the greater gamble at this low point of Americans' confidence in their future? More of the same or trusting someone whose judgement has thus far turned out to be sound and whose promise of change is not encumbered with a history of business-as-usual in Washington?

Playing it safe, Obama can truthfully tell Americans, is the biggest gamble of all.

McCain, Obama: The Generation Chasm

After years of Bush's would-be and as-if leadership, American voters are choosing authenticity, albeit with a 24-year age gap and a world of difference in personal history and mindset.

Of all the accusations that could, and likely will, be made against John McCain and Barack Obama, the least plausible will involve calculation and deceit.

Last night's victory speeches laid out the broad outlines of their confrontation.

Turning Obama's central theme against him, McCain said, "My hope for our country resides in my faith in the American character, the character which proudly defends the right to think and do for ourselves, but perceives self-interest in accord with a kinship of ideals, which, when called upon, Americans will defend with their very lives.

"To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope. It is a platitude."

Against McCain's message of traditional values, Obama offered a new approach: "This is what change looks like when it happens from the bottom up. And in this election, your voices will be heard.

"Because at a time when so many people are struggling to keep up with soaring costs in a sluggish economy, we know that the status quo in Washington just won't do. Not this time. Not this year. We can't keep playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expect a different result--because it's a game that ordinary Americans are losing."

This contest of new vs. old promises to feature civility and positive attitude from both candidates, although there will certainly be Rovian low blows from third-party fringes on both sides.

In stepping up to face each other, both candidates in passing repudiated those on their own side who opposed them.

Obama framed the Democratic outcome as a decision "about whether we choose to play the game, or whether we choose to end it...change that polls well, or change we can believe in. It's the past versus the future. And when I'm the Democratic nominee for President, that will be the choice in November."

On his part, McCain gave an oblique "kiss my grits" to the Religious Right by talking about faith in his supporters, the "American character" and "our country" without the obligatory bow to a Higher Power.

With Obama acknowledging McCain as "an American hero," the '08 contest is definitely looking up.

Bush's Belated Change About "Change"

The man who set the theme for this year's election is off to the Middle East today on a quest to salvage something there, after conceding the US faces “economic challenges” at home, a euphemism for the threat of recession reflected in rising oil prices, the home mortgage crisis and a weakening job market.

After jawboning the Israelis and Palestinians to make nice, President Bush will be reunited with Tony Blair, who is there on a similar mission for the "Quartet"-- the US, UN, European Union and Russia--to reminisce about the glory days when they were going to topple Saddam Hussein and bring democracy to the region.

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley still insists that the promotion of freedom as a "counterpoint" to terrorism remains "the essence" of the Bush strategy. "I don't think he's pulled back," Hadley says.

But most observers disagree. According to the Christian Science Monitor, "The trip will showcase a president shifting his focus from the big idea of a free and democratic Middle East to more traditional US foreign-policy goals: an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, the containment of a threatening state--in this case Iran--and the assurance of US energy security at a time of $100-a-barrel oil."

The belated dialing down of Neo-Con ambitions, if not the rhetoric, to remake an intractable part of the world is welcome and should inspire the next President to define change in more traditional American terms.