Peggy Noonan appears to have made her peace with Obama and even goes so far as to muse:
But let's be frank. Something new is happening in America. It is the imminent arrival of a new liberal moment. History happens, it makes its turns, you hold on for dear life. Life moves.
A fitting end for a harem-scarem, rock-'em-sock-'em shakeup of a year -- one of tumbling inevitabilities, torn coalitions, striking new personalities.
Eras end, and begin. "God is in charge of history."
This, if I may wax self-referential for a moment, is the meta-question: will Tuesday indeed mark the beginning of a new liberal era? I posed this question in a slightly different way back on October 22, 2007 in a piece I did for the print version:
For example, the British election of 1945 confirmed a desire among voters for social reform so profound that it swept aside a great national hero. Similarly - except in the other direction ideologically - American voters made a statement in 1980 when they voted Ronald Reagan into the White House by a landslide proportion, signalling that one era was over and another one dawning.
Will 2008 be such a year? The question is on the minds and tongues of many in Washington. Liberals hope that the answer is yes, while conservatives fear that it is (and conservatives seem more uniformly pessimistic than liberals seem optimistic).
But how might we know that 2008 is such a year? Let me offer what I think is the most important undercurrent question of next year's election: have Americans tired of conservatism, or have they merely tired of corrupt and incompetent conservatism?...
...The rubber will hit the road next summer and autumn. Then the Republicans will tell voters that the Democratic nominee has proposed trillions of dollars' worth of new programmes and will inevitably raise taxes to pay for them. The Democrat will need to stand her or his ground and, while obviously not being cavalier about taxes, present a vision of a different kind of society. There are signs that 51% of the voters may be ready to embrace it.
First of all -- not bad for a year ago, if I do say so myself! More importantly: yes, it does seem that we are reaching the end of the era of conservative dominance in American politics that arrived with Ronald Reagan in 1980.
But unlike Noonan, I don't necessarily think that the end of a conservative era perforce means the beginning of a liberal one. There's something in between -- a transitional period during which the public seems willing to give liberal Democratic governance a second chance, after the well-documented failures of the 1970s, but is not quite yet ready to embrace that possibility with both arms.
Even if Obama wins pretty handily, I still smell a difference between 1980 and 2008. In 1980, a strong majority of voters really did embrace Reagan and conservatism. Today I think the embrace isn't quite as strong. Obama and Democratic congressional majorities, if elected, will have to earn the trust and confidence of voters in the middle over time. As I spent last week telling audiences on our speaking tour, I think it's two or four years too early to declare this a new liberal era.
Meanwhile, my 2007 piece also suggests what I think is one of the crucial errors of the McCain campaign. He should have distanced himself from Bush not on policy, but on the issue of competence. He should have blasted the mishandling of the war and the economy and Katrina and drilled home a message that went something like, "You, average voter, still trust our positions. You still want lower taxes and an aggressive foreign policy. You just want everything done competently. I understand that, and that's how I'll govern." If, today, the talking heads were framing the race as a choice between liberalism and a more disciplined and competent conservatism, I think McCain would have a better chance of winning.
