Well, I'm back

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-11-2018, 05:18 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(02-09-2018, 08:08 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Buchanan was with the southerners, who wanted to preserve slavery.  Hoover did not see the government as having a role to play in regulating the economy.  I count both as clinging to older sets of values, in not seeing anything wrong in letting dire problems continue to exist, in not perceiving a need for basic transformation.  In that, they were similar to today's abusers of women or climate change deniers.  Some conservatives cling to older privileges.  Some conservatives do not act to solve problems.

And of course, there is the division of wealth and power.  What is theirs they want to keep.  The progressives, too, will have a similar motive.  For some, the moral motives are just a side ploy that attracts people to join their cause. Others truly care.

Along your line of values lock.  Are you familiar with Stephen Skowronek's political time model? He holds that there have been several reconstructive presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, Reagan) who have set a new dominant political ideology. We are currently living under the Reagan dispensation. Until this dispensation passes, obvious policies like a $3 trillion stimulus passed by a 60 seat Democratic majority in 2009 do not get done. Had Democrats done this then Obama would be reconstructive. 

But they didn't so Obama ended up as pre-emptive, Skowronek's name for presidents (e.g. Clinton, Nixon, Eisenhower) from the opposition party to the governing dispensation who try to "preempt" the discourse, redirecting the interpretation of the reigning dispensation in terms more favorable to their party.  Thing Clinton's declaration that "the era of big government is over" with his expansion of CHIP and increase in the Earned Income credit, and think of Eisenhower's decision to not challenge the New Deal, but instead to create a Republican-controlled "military-industrial complex" to offset the Democratic-controlled "social welfare state".

Presidents from the same party as the reconstructive president (e.g. Bush I& II for Reagan, and Truman, Kennedy and Johnson for FDR) are called articulative presidents.  These are the largest category and are not of interest here.

Most interesting are the disjunctive presidents.  These come for the same party as the reconstructive party, at a time when their dispensation in under attack. They have the unhappy job of dealing with the consequences of the failure of their party's ideology to deal with the problems of the time. Examples include JQ Adams, Pierce & Buchanan, Hoover and Carter. Note these guys were president just before or during a social moment.

Right now Trump is third Republican interlude since the Reagan dispensation began.  This makes him like Carter for FDR,  Harding for Lincoln, Buchanan for Jackson, and JQ Adams for Jefferson. Three of these are disjunctive, but Harding is not. The Harding connection is interesting because Trump most closely resembles the current time by other cycle measures I use.

So my prediction, based on historical analogy is 75% probably Trump ends up as disjunctive (and so is not reelected) and 25% probability he ends up as articulative and so wins reelection.

I am less familiar with Stephen Skowronek's system than S&H's.  I can see Skowronek.  I always saw Reagan as defining an unravelling.  There is room for similar presidents who define a unraveling (or high) movement.  You might end up with two Skowronek movements, one progressive, one conservative, per full S&H cycle.  A Skowronek period of a dominant value set starts with someone who defines the new way of seeing things, has presidents who follow that path while the opposition resists and redirects, and ends with the values not fitting as well, looking bad by the standard of the following values.

I am more tempted to translate between systems than say one is good and one is bad.  They are just emphasizing different things.