It should be noted that all modern presidents face a slew of issues, and none of them have felt in control of events but have instead felt controlled by them. JFK in one week faced the Soviets, civil rights, the Berlin Wall, the southern Democratic mandarins of the U.S. Senate. He had to face Cuba, only 90 miles away, importing Russian missiles. But the difference now, 45 years later, is that there are a million little Cubas, a new Cuba every week.It's this part that really makes me feel like this is a Bush apologist piece. While I wasn't around for the Cuban Missile Crisis, and all I know of it is what I've gathered from school and some small reading, I don't see what threat today is comparable to the Cuban situation and is forever ongoing. Sure, the threat of terrorism is out there, but back then it was the Soviets with nuclear weapons. It's really the baseline threat level, and I think that's what needs to be compared. I suppose if the government received information about an immenent attack (that turned out to be true and all) and took action to prevent it through a really stressful week, that would compare.
Each Republic, then, has three important pillars - a monetary basis, a system of power arrangements to negotiate the working of that monetary basis in social and economic power, and a lens which ties the government to the fiscal discipline needed for maintaining the relationship between the two. When the monetary basis becomes unworkable, there is a economic crisis which, while perhaps no larger than others, is intractable to the old order, as political arrangements are unable to cope with the tension between what must be done and what can be done. The crisis is only resolved after there is over-reaching attempt which destroys the previous currency basis. Only when some means to take on the debt left behind by the older order, and the cost of repairing it, is assigned, does the process truly end, an a new Republic is born, and grows to maturity.The modern (and dying) Production Economy which started with Roosevelt and the Commerce Clause (and it's effects) is old and busted, and will be replaced by next years model, where the consumer is king, in a Consumption Economy. The only question is what it will look like.
If that's true, then the United States may be approaching the end of the third great cycle of its political history. This thought is especially (if morbidly) fascinating to me, because it would mean all three of these cycles have been of almost precisely the same length. Consider:posted by rzklkng at 11:14 AM on October 28, 2005
From the ratification of the Constitution (1789) to the outbreak of the Civil War (1861): 72 years. From the outbreak of the Civil War (1861) to Roosevelt's First Hundred Days (1933): 72 years. From the Hundred Days (1933) to the next presidential inauguration (2005): 72 years.
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yes....
posted by HuronBob at 9:30 AM on October 28, 2005