Is the US just tired of Bush, or have conservatives had it?
The next presidential election may mark the end of an era if voters associate all Republicans with the present leadersMichael Tomasky in Washington
Monday October 22, 2007
The Guardian
Like criminal trials or major football matches or fights within marriages, presidential election contests in America are about both stated and unstated matters. The stated matters are the ones the candidates talk about and run on: the mess in Iraq, the terrorist threat, the healthcare crisis and so on.
The unstated questions are the ones candidates are loth to discuss themselves but that aren't too far from the surface and are deeply felt by the partisans on both sides. These have to do with the "mood" of the broader public at election time and with what an electoral outcome "says" about large historical shifts. 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?
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2196491,00.html