Notes on the Fourth Turning and Obama

2008 was the year of the social moment because it was the year when everyone recognized that the nation was in a historic crisis. 2008 was the year when the Crisis began to make changes to our lifestyle. If anything, 2008 was the year of the perfect storm. Many major banks folded in 2008 before the crash of September. Gas prices rose to record levels. And housing was still accelerating downhill. Try to imagine, for a moment, a 2008 scenario without the major crash of 2008. The economy had already been in recession for 9 months when the panic of September 2008 occurred, and the recession was already generating social turmoil well before the crash. It is likely that Obama still would've been elected, IMO. To me, it seemed to be heading that way even before the crash. Obama's historic movement was organized well before the crash. By the time of the crash, the Obama movement was already the largest grass-roots effort in American history. To me, the crash of 2008 is no catalyst because based upon pre-crash trends, I highly doubt that things would be much different today if the crash hadn't happened. IMO, the crash of 2008 was merely an event that helped to accelerate events in the direction they were already heading, instead of being a point of initial change. 
. . .In November 1932, the Great Depression had been a reality for slightly over three years. Herbert Hoover took office intending to soften the harsh edges of Coolidge prosperity and apply scientific economics to make that prosperity even better. (The idea of him as some sort of mossback conservative is Democratic propaganda. He was nothing of the sort.) In the face of the Depression, Hoover did not shrink from government action, but he regarded the downturn as a normal recession and intended to return things to what they had been. By the end of his term, it was clear that the economy was broken, and that the old America could not be restored. A new one, based on a mix of capitalist and socialist elements, and leaning more towards labor in the labor-capital conflict, would have to be built. Actually it's arguable that this Crisis had two Regeneracies, one in 1932 when FDR was elected, and the other in December 1941. The Depression turned capitalist America into mixed-economy America, and World War II turned isolationist America into superpower America.
So where are we now? The economy has tanked, which helped elect Obama. We are in Crisis. But it's clear that in many ways, Obama is trying to do what the American colonies, President Lincoln, and President Hoover tried to do: restore the status quo ante. For all his talk of "change," the actual changes he means to make from the America of President Clinton (and Clinton not Bush should be regarded as the baseline) are minimal. National health care is significant, but of course Clinton tried to do that, too. Obama is simply carrying forward the liberal agenda of the previous saeculum. He wants to wind down the war in Iraq and return to sane diplomacy, but he still is trying to preserve superpower America. He wants to enact national health care, and turn away from the extremes of the Bush administration, but he still intends to preserve the same basic economic plan that worked in the last High and Awakening.

He will not succeed in doing that, because it can't be done. But neither he nor the nation has become convinced of this yet. We wait for the other shoe to drop..