At any rate, calling both Kennedy-Johnson and Bush II "Disasters" is meant only within the context of their respective, hitherto politically dominant, ideologies - Kennedy-Johnson was a Disaster for New Deal liberalism and Bush II was a Disaster for Fusionist conservatism. Both came to power in incredibly tight, highly contested elections (here I'm treating Kennedy-Johnson as a single figure, as well as Nixon-Ford) and proceeded to govern as if they had an overwhelming mandate. Both represented the apogee of their respective ideological paradigms, and both discredited that paradigm through overreach.
The next President of their Parties, under this theory - Carter and, theoretically, Trump - are condemned to try to straddle a growing divide between a discredited system and a realigning electorate. Carter tried and failed to solve this problem by using liberal rhetoric over a conservative policy package; Trump will probably sound extremely conservative while governing pretty much like a (non-racially-egalitarian) New Dealer. This is also a strategy doomed to failure.
We're really long past due for the political re-emergence of a decentralizing, anti-hierarchical, anarchist-influenced Left that shirks the Statist ideology of the New Deal, and a centralizing, interventionist, paternalistic Right that includes the New Deal as part of a heritage worth conserving. The old interventionist Left/anti-interventionist Right paradigm has very nearly exhausted itself intellectually and historically. We came close to this in the early seventies, in the dispute between the New Left (which had as a main representative Gene McCarthy, who went on to become a libertarian) and the Nixonite Hard Hats, but it only lasted a few years.
The next President of their Parties, under this theory - Carter and, theoretically, Trump - are condemned to try to straddle a growing divide between a discredited system and a realigning electorate. Carter tried and failed to solve this problem by using liberal rhetoric over a conservative policy package; Trump will probably sound extremely conservative while governing pretty much like a (non-racially-egalitarian) New Dealer. This is also a strategy doomed to failure.
We're really long past due for the political re-emergence of a decentralizing, anti-hierarchical, anarchist-influenced Left that shirks the Statist ideology of the New Deal, and a centralizing, interventionist, paternalistic Right that includes the New Deal as part of a heritage worth conserving. The old interventionist Left/anti-interventionist Right paradigm has very nearly exhausted itself intellectually and historically. We came close to this in the early seventies, in the dispute between the New Left (which had as a main representative Gene McCarthy, who went on to become a libertarian) and the Nixonite Hard Hats, but it only lasted a few years.