Sociologists are generally not very enthusiastic about “great man” theories of history, and for good reasons. We prefer to explain social change by looking to the movement of the underlying “social forces” rather than the abilities or charisma of individual political leaders.
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But every once in a while a combination of political opportunities arise to create new possibilities centering on a particular individual. The last such moment in American politics was in the late 1970s, when a conservative public mood and a rising coalition of social conservatives and anti-government business interests united behind Ronald Reagan to break the post-Great Society political stalemate of that era.
Barack Obama’s campaign for president has the potential to lead a similar breakthrough. While we cannot know at this time what the outcome of the fall election will be, signs of a broad electoral mobilization around the Obama candidacy, alongside forecasting models all pointing to a very large national Democratic swing, suggest the possibilities of an important new turn in American electoral politics.
Obama’s candidacy, and likely ascension to the presidency has, in my view, three potentially critical implications.
It is the first clear expression of an emerging progressive majority in American politics, centering on minorities, women, and educated middle-class social issue liberals. This “McGovern” coalition has now grown in size, partisan loyalty, and geographic concentration to govern, with Obama as its titular leader.
Second, a reasonably successful Obama presidency will likely make an important, if as yet unknowable, contribution to undermining the American racial state. Obama embodies in his own biography the emerging demographic reality of the United States. But beyond that, his post-racial political rhetoric and policy initiatives push underlying racial tensions in new, if unpredictable, directions, which at a minimum will shift the terrain.
Finally, if he wins Obama will assume the presidency with broad public support for many of his central initiatives which will end the worst excesses of the Bush Administration. The most important of these would include ending the war in Iraq, fixing the administrative incompetence and cronyism of the Bush years, reimpose higher tax-rates on the rich, and end America’s isolation from the world (in terms of both foreign and environmental policy).