Uh…less than half the country… ;)

With regard to Lauer/Ingraham I am sure Lauer could pick only left-liberals to come on his show. And then half of the country would tune him out. Networks like MSNBC are great for preaching to the choir, but why would the unpersuaded ever want to watch them? The real strength of a political channel is one of two things, preferably both (1) Strict factual content with an unbiased selection policy (2) Policy analysis that actually persuades (or softens the position of) the unpersuaded.

“nasty media in 2008″? Most of the media has been acting like Obama’s press department for more than a year now.

If we’re looking at past is prologue, then I look forward to a situation just like when FDR came to office. That Republican party was in shambles too, blamed for the Great Depression, and sinking further and further into mediocrity whilst the Democrats gave us some of the best government services we have today. I tell you, the only reason there was a Republican president between FDR and Johnson was because Eisenhower was the victorious general of World War II. I look forward to a similar situation for the next forty plus years. The Republicans today don’t have their act together and keep shooting themselves in the foot.

My only worry is that the Democrats currently in office are, by and large, a bunch of weak easily-cowed appeasers who don’t seem to get it—their freaking in charge! They keep letting Republicans guide the talking points instead of simply dismissing them. This of course is a symptom of a news media that is tied very closely to Republican operatives. For example, the other day Matt Lauer had Laura Inghram on the Today Show to talk about Sotomayor. Seriously Matt? Laura? You mean you couldn’t find ANYONE better than a Fox News liberal-hater to talk about Sotomayor? And what did Laura Inghram do with that precious valuable time at 7:15 in the morning? Rant off her talking points. Matt did not have any “liberal” commentator to counter Inghram’s hateful speech. This is the media today. This is how it has been since News Corp scared the daylights out of General Electric, Viacom and Disney. Now those corporate titans follow Murdoch’s lead into salacious hateful fearmongering. It worked well in 2002 to swell anger at Iraq among Americans. And knowing that Americans really do have a short attention span, they continue this. It is now a normal part of our culture. We come to expect such hateful, untrue rants, unchallenged.

This new phenomenon is the wild card in predicting the future. George Bush should never have won in either 2000 or 2004 but the media worked in his favor. I am actually pleasantly surprised that enough Americans were not fooled by this nasty media in 2008. But I think that our short attention spans might make us forget how easily these masters of the craft can bamboozle us as a whole.

I’m really looking more long-term at societal trends. Nixon gave us Carter and then Carter gave us Reagan. Bush gave us Obama. After Obama’s very likely eight years, things will inevitably turn a different direction. That is the nature of American politics.

If it makes the liberals feel any better, I would like to point out that the huge increase in the size of government appears very difficult to turn around. Reagan wanted to get rid of the DOE and couldn’t — once a new bureaucracy gets entrenched it’s pretty much impossible to destroy. So your new health care and cap-and-trade bureaucracies will be very difficult to overcome no matter what direction politics take — unless we can get somebody like Ron Paul in charge, and then all bets are off.

I agree. I was more trying to temper my over enthusiasm for the demise of the GOP. I also think that Obama has found a way for the Democrats to appeal to both the liberal base (me) and those who are a bit more traditional on family issues (my wife) but who are not caught up in the culture wars of the 80s and 90s (see Mark D. above).

The political scientist in me thinks that the GOP will pop back eventually. But that will painful process for them. The Democrats took three decades.

I was just expecting you to go into abortion. Your direction gave me a bit of a giggle first thing in the morning. I think your intitial, though not developed, point in #8 about government/colectivist idealist being a threat to the family was an interesting one (which I would have respectfully disagreed with). Instead your went in a more sticky direction.

Thank heavens for PP.

Heh, so you go by an old saying attributed to Churchill but not necessarily by Churchill…Interestingly, that phrase does not begin with Churchill but with a French dude named Francois Guizot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Guizot

Guizot is famous as the originator of the quote “Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head”[1]. This quote has been reworked many times, especially in reference to socialism and liberalism. It has been borrowed by or attributed to many notable figures who lived after Guizot, including Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Benjamin Disraeli, Georges Clemenceau, Otto von Bismarck, Aristide Briand, Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George, Wendell Willkie, William J. Casey, and others.

In any case, Obama is not Carter. Nor is he Reagan. Nor is he Johnson. Nor JFK. Nor Roosevelt. He is Obama, and will add his own style, color, and character to the history of this great nation. That all said, one can only hope to be as good of a man as Jimmy Carter was. As much as Carter could not grasp the politics of his time, he was, and always will be one of the best Americans. He also succeeded where Republicans and Democrats before him and after him (with one exception) failed in the Middle East. He got two antagonists to declare peace. Only Bill Clinton was equally successful. Every other president of the United States has failed to get peace between Israel and one or more of its neighbors. Only Carter and Clinton have succeeded at that. May all future presidents be as successful as Carter was. ;)

There’s an old saying, variously attributed to Winston Churchill or other conservative luminaries:

“A man who is not a liberal when he is thirty has no heart. A man who is still a liberal when he is fifty has no brain.”

The liberalism of the youth of America, in other words, is simply a phase they will eventually outgrow.

Every generation needs a Carter so they can learn by their own experience, if they are capable of doing so. Obama is this generation’s Carter. Every indication is that he will drive the lesson home — good and hard.

Oh, and:

“That’s nice and all for virgins, but it is completely useless for those already engaged in sex.”

You mean you can’t stop having sex once you start? Who knew?