A Progressive Revival?

If Barack Obama wins the Presidency tonight, he will have a fundamental governing choice-to govern "smart left" or "dumb left."
If he moves to the "smart left" next year, he can rewrite the American Social Contract, i.e. he can reinvigorate and reestablish the moral obligations that government has to its citizens on the economy, energy, health care, education, and national defense-all areas that have been blatantly abused or ignored under the Bush Administration.
If he moves to the "dumb left" next year, however, with capitulation to interest groups and special interests, coupled with rookie stupidity and ridiculous blunders in the area of foreign policy, he will resurrect the image of Democrats as poor on defense issues and as slaves of pressure groups with no new workable ideas.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. once enunciated a theory of historical cycles, and that theory is still valuable today. In it, he postulated that major political philosophical shifts occur roughly every 30 years in American History. We moved in this country from the Progressive era at the dawn of the 20th Century to the laissez-faire 1920s to the New Deal to the Reagan Revolution. The modern conservative political era can be said to have started in 1978 when U.S. Congressman William Steiger won approval for a legislative proposal that cut capital gains taxes from 50 percent to 25 percent. If Schlesinger's cyclical theory holds true, we are due for a shift to a progressive political period, because 2008 is exactly 30 years later.
If he is the winner, Barack Obama will have to demonstrate the temperment and nimble dexterity he has exhibited in his campaign if he is to govern effectively from the "smart left". If he fails to do so, the country will once again embrace the center-right politics of the Reagan-Bush I years. If he does govern from the "smart left" by enacting a few positive, big ideas next year, he will have a real opportunity to take America to a new place of policy and solution-oriented governance based on new philosophical paradigms of a progressive nature.
A progressive revival? Perhaps.