One of the odder signs of the time in this political season, and this presidential election, and I saw it over the weekend in a mildly positive piece on Obama from the op-ed column from the editor of the National Review — is a favorable description of Barack Obama into the lineage of George McGovern.  Maybe there are past examples of this from previous cycles, but I kind of doubt it.  As Jonah Goldberg puts it in assessing Obama as a slight but definite favorite against John McCain, “Imagine if Goldwater were nominated, and then won the election.”  Which is essentially a sign of his (clearly stated, mind you) political bias and perspective that he sees American electoral politics of “the other side” in terms of how his side worked out, and is a little weary that the nation is currently dropping Republicans out to sea.

But someone else phrased it as “Goldwater is to Reagan as McGovern is to Obama.”  This is a curious calculation, as Goldwater to Reagan is 16 years and McGovern to Obama is 36 years.  I will note two things here: McGovern to Clinton is 16 years, and between 28 and 36 years is the mythical years that lie between a “Political Realignment”.  The 36 year interval, actually, also lies between William Jennings Bryan and Franklin Roosevelt — interesting, no?

“What are you talking about?” you ask.  Well, I’ll just have you think about it for a second.  Bryan is a curious figure in American political history, as he is simultaneously figured as a man whose electoral fortunes lied on a fading American pst and a harbinger of his party’s future which readily became a line of political attack such that Roosevelt Hoover attacked Roosevelt’s then tepid government programs as “Warmed over Bryanism” — or something along those lines.

Arbitrarily, I might add, that there was 36 years lying between Goldwater and the second Bush.  Does this mean anything?  No.

Today you can run over to the bizarre blog “hillaryis44.com” and see the lunatic fringe of partisan Hillary Clinton supporters setting out to prove that Obama is the next McGovern by pledging to either vote for McCain or write in Hillary Clinton’s name on the ballot, I suppose desiring to keep up the negative legacy of McGovern in perpetuity.

Some commentary of note regarding the problem of Clinton — who, as I pointed out, lies at the 16 year interval between McGovern and Obama:

There was perhaps one more reason why the Clinton campaign slid from presumptive inevitability, before the votes were cast, to a pitched battle and, eventually, a loss. It may have been the case that neither those in the press that conferred presumptive frontrunner status nor the Clinton campaign itself took into account that the decided frustration with politics, government and incumbency transferred in some small but nontrivial way onto Clinton herself.

Americans are very, very tired of the current administration, but for many Americans the rise of Bush has also tarnished the Clinton years in a perhaps unexpected way. It demonstrated that the successes of the Clinton presidency were transitory — in some cases, astonishingly transitory. Even during the Clinton years, Democrats aside from Bill Clinton himself did dismally, as a party. The House and Senate were captured not just by Republicans, but by unapologetically hard-right conservatives intent on gutting the very notion of cooperative government. Once Bush came into office as well — an event many Democrats blamed in some part on fatigue with the Clinton presidency — Clinton-era gains were rolled back one after another. Environmental protections, deficit reduction, a vibrant economy, relative peace; there seemed to be nothing of those years that could not be almost immediately dismantled, and which was immediately dismantled, and with vigor.

It is difficult to parse how any of this could be the fault of Bill Clinton, but from a strictly emotional standpoint, it was draining for Democrats to watch. Democrats defended Clinton from a parade of largely manufactured scandals in the nineties, only to see true corruption go unpunished, and even be celebrated, in the Bush years. Democrats watched the media latch onto any petty triviality, no matter how small or how obviously planted, during the Clinton years; in the Bush years, even blatantly illegal acts were covered with barely half the same vigor. It was deeply frustrating; it was absurd; it was maddening.

So from a purely emotional standpoint having little to do with Hillary Clinton, it is not clear that casual Democratic voters — not hyperpartisans, but the day-to-day citizens that make up ninety-nine percent of the party — saw a return to the Clinton years as the unambiguously good thing that it was portrayed as. Yes, we could return to those years — but what would come of it? The same stupid, conservative-fueled scandal journalism? The same modest, largely centrist policies, which would be dashed again the very next presidency?

It is not something that is the fault of Hillary Clinton, but nonetheless it may have dulled the expected enthusiasm for her campaign, and provided a very narrow but much needed opening for someone to run as a “true” outsider, untainted by either the Clinton or Bush years. Barack Obama was a candidate nearly tailor-made for such an opening.

The other sentence of note from this dailykos piece is the one pointing to the remarkable tepidity of both Clinton and Obama in desiring to fade into the background in the Senate, which to me was as good a reason to be weary of both candidates as any other reason.

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