A Millennial State of the Union

President Obama's focus on the economy is exactly what Millennials (Americans born between 1982-2003) want to hear. Their generation is experiencing Depression levels of unemployment, higher than any other generation. They deeply believe that the path to a better job leads through a better education. That’s why any Millennial jobs program must begin with the steps outlined in the President’s speech—a revitalization of community colleges, increased Pell Grants and a $10,000 tax credit for four years of college. Those who have graduated from college with unprecedented debt will particularly welcome the President's call to limit the amount they have to repay in any given year based on their income with complete forgiveness after twenty years or only half that time if the engage in public service. And the President's call for a small business hiring tax credit should help give Millennials a chance to earn some money as they enter the toughest job market any generation has faced in twenty-five years. Equally important are his administration’s K-12 education reforms that have attracted bi-partisan support from the parents of Millennials all across the country.

Now the Congress needs to step up to the plate and deliver on Obama's proposals. If Republicans continue to follow their "just say no" approach, they risk losing an entire generation of voters. But Democrats must prove they can govern, and deal with Millennial concerns when they do, if they hope to generate enough enthusiasm from young voters in 2010 to provide Democrats the type of victory Barack Obama enjoyed in 2008. Like First Lady Michelle Obama did during the State of the Union speech, they should put Millennials in the best seats in the House and keep their future uppermost in their minds as they fashion a new economy for these young Americans. It’s time to answer President Obama’s call to do “what’s best for the next generation.”

Use It or Lose It

In spite of incorrect explanations like those of New York Times political columnist Matt Bai that the election of Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate resulted from the actions of a fickle electorate dominated by political independents, the loss by Democrats of a long-held Senate seat is really a clear example of the old adage, "If you don't use it, you lose it." That is the lesson that Democrats should draw from last week's special election. The admittedly shocking event in Massachusetts notwithstanding, during the past decade the Democratic Party has assembled a new, and potentially majority, voter coalition. If the Democrats have the awareness and courage to use that coalition in New England and elsewhere across the United States they could dominate American politics and policy making for decades to come.

According to Bai, the American electorate, represented most recently by Massachusetts voters, seems to suffer from political ADD, flitting between "the latest offer" or "the newest best deal" in a society that is constantly "hitting the reset button." But, the victory of Scott Brown was not a matter of a fickle electorate alternating between the two parties in search of something new and different, or even a change in voting preference by Massachusetts independents. Rather, the outcome of last week's special election in Massachusetts stemmed primarily from reduced voter turnout among the state's Democrats. Bai and the Washington punditry might have known this had they even briefly reviewed the survey and election data that is freely and easily available on the Internet.

A posting by Charles Franklin on Pollster.com demonstrated the likelihood that reduced turnout among Massachusetts Democrats led to the victory of Republican Scott Brown and the defeat of Democrat Martha Coakley. Franklin indicates that Brown matched or exceeded John McCain's 2008 vote total in every jurisdiction while Coakley fell below Barack Obama's vote everywhere in the state. Overall, Brown's 1.17 million votes were 106% greater than McCain's 1.1 million in 2008. By contrast, Coakley's 1.06 million votes were only 56% of Obama's nearly 1.9 million votes in 2008. Franklin summarizes what happened this way: "... this doesn't mean that Brown got exactly McCain's voters since lots of individual switching could add up to these totals. But in the aggregate, Massachusetts looks exactly like it did in 2008 on the Republican side. On the Democratic side, a whole lot fewer voters."

Franklin is properly cautious about over-interpreting the aggregate election data. But a post-election poll (pdf) conducted by Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health confirms Franklin's aggregate level conclusions. The Post survey makes clear that the Massachusetts outcome was not the result of a wholesale flow of voters between the parties. The large majority of voters preferred the Senate candidate of the party for which they had voted in the 2008 presidential election. Virtually all Coakley voters (96%) chose Barack Obama and nearly seven in ten Brown supporters (68%) voted for John McCain in 2008.

But, the most unique and interesting aspect of the Post survey is that it interviewed a subsample of Senate race non-voters. While the non-voters fell between the Brown and Coakley voters in their attitudes, they were consistently much closer to the latter than the former on all items. Most tellingly, a large majority of non-voters who had voted in the 2008 presidential election (70%) voted for Barack Obama. Their attitudes toward the president have not declined significantly since his election. A large majority of non-voters (69%) approves of the job Barack Obama is doing as president. A majority (54%) also said they were either enthusiastic or satisfied with the policies of the Obama administration. By contrast, a majority of non-voters (56%) were dissatisfied or angry with the policies offered by congressional Republicans.

A clear majority of non-voters prefer a government that does more to solve problems rather than believing government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals (58% vs. 37%). This preference for activist government is reflected in the attitudes of non-voters about the proposed health care reforms developed by Congress and the Obama administration: a plurality of them supported rather than opposed that legislation (49% vs. 39%). Solid majorities of non-voters believed that the health care reform proposals would either leave themselves and their families, Massachusetts, and the country as a whole either better off or, at least, in the same condition as they are now. Only about one in five non-voters felt that the proposed health care reform program would hurt any of those groups.

The Post survey did not release demographic information and there were no media-sponsored exit polls last week in Massachusetts. Consequently, there is no foolproof empirical way to determine the exact demographic and political composition of those who voted in the special Senate election. But, a survey of likely voters (pdf) taken by Public Policy Polling (PPP) in the last weekend before the election provides a reasonable surrogate.

Of all pre-election surveys, the PPP poll most closely forecast the election outcome. It clearly indicated that the Massachusetts electorate last week contained significantly fewer young voters, minorities, Democratic identifiers and self-perceived liberals than it did in November 2008. All of these were groups that underpinned the president's 62% majority in Massachusetts.

In 2008, according to CNN's exit poll, 17% of the electorate was 18-29 years old and an additional 26% were 30-44. In the 2010 special election those numbers dropped to 8% and 20% respectively. In 2008, more than one in five Massachusetts voters (21%) were minority; last week only 13% were. In the 2008 presidential election, Democrats comprised a plurality of voters (43%). In 2010, just 39% of the electorate identified as Democrats. Finally, in 2008 about one in three voters (32%) was a self-perceived liberal; in 2010 less than a quarter (23%) were.

In reporting on its poll, PPP realized the difficulty that these numbers presented to Democratic candidate Martha Coakley: "Brown has a small advantage right now but special elections are volatile and Martha Coakley is still in this. She just needs to get more Democrats out to the polls." She didn't, and Scott Brown is now a Senator-elect.

What happened in Massachusetts has clear implications for Democrats across the United States. Martha Coakley and her out-of-touch strategists lost touch with what Barack Obama and his creative campaign did to rally a new winning coalition in 2008 and, as a result, lost an election in a state Democrats believed they could not possibly lose. Coakley lost not because the groups in that coalition turned against Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, but because turnout among those groups fell precipitously. If you don't use it, you lose it.

Happy New Year, Democrats

As the first year of the Obama administration draws to a close, Democrats would do well to celebrate their successes this year and look to the future, rather than dwell on the funk that seems to embrace many of its supporters these days.

While the numbers have fluctuated within normal statistical margins, throughout 2009 Pew research has indicated that the Democrats have held around a 1.5:1 party identification lead over the Republicans. During the course of the year between 48% and 53% of Americans identified with or leaned to the Democrats while between 35% and 40% identified with or leaned to the GOP. This Democratic advantage is significantly higher than it was in the Clinton years of the 1990s, when the Democrats' lead averaged about five percentage points. It is particularly large compared with 1994, the year the Democrats lost their congressional majority to the Gingrich revolution, when the two parties were tied in party ID at 44% each.

In fact, the competitive position of the Democratic Party now approaches what it was in the mid-1960s, when it was the unquestioned dominant force in U.S. politics. In a 1964 Gallup survey, conducted just prior to Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory over Barry Goldwater, the Democrats' party identification lead over the GOP was 49% to 24%.

Underpinning this rebound in the Democratic Party's competitive position is a major generational and ethnic transformation of America. It is a very different looking America now than it was in 1964, but the Democratic Party is once again far better positioned to benefit in the future from the opportunities presented by our changing nation.

--In 1964, about ninety percent of Americans were white as were more than eight in ten (82%) of those who identified as Democrats. Today the "minority" contribution to America's population has nearly tripled and non-Caucasians comprise about four in ten Democratic identifiers. By mid-century the United States will become a "majority-minority" country, however, as in the mid-1960s, more than 95% of Republicans are white.

--In 1964, only a minority of women worked outside the home and almost all women married by the time they were 25. Now women, many of whom are unmarried or minority, comprise more than six in ten Democratic identifiers. Virtually all of the women who do call themselves Republican are white and most are married.

--In 1964, nearly half of the electorate had only a high school education. An additional third had gone no further than grade school. Just one in five were college graduates. Now, a majority of Americans have at least some college exposure and nearly three in ten are college graduates. While, as in 1964, about 30% of Republican identifiers are college graduates, the percentage of college graduates among Democrats has doubled from 14% to 28%.

--the 1964 electorate was dominated by the GI Generation (born 1901-1924), the generation of the New Deal and World War II, and the Lost Generation (born 1883-1900), that primarily came of age around World War I and in the 1920s. About half of the 1964 Democrats were members of the GI Generation, who identified with that party by a 2:1 margin. Half of 1964 Republican identifiers were from the Lost Generation which by then was a generation of senior citizens. Today, with a completely different generational configuration than in 1964, the GOP still skews relatively old and the Democrats young. Like the GI Generation before them, Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, overwhelmingly identify as Democrats over Republicans (58% vs. 19% in a November 2009 Pew survey).

In 2008, only 40% of Millennials were eligible to vote and they comprised about 17% of the American electorate. When Barack Obama runs for reelection in 2012, about 60% of Millennials will be of voting age and one in four voters will be a Millennial. By 2020, when virtually all of them will be able to vote, more than a third of the electorate (36%) will come from the Millennial Generation. As the largest (95 million) and most ethnically diverse generation in U.S. history (40% of Millennials are non-white) the Democratic Party should benefit from their loyalty at least as much over the next three or four decades as did the attachment of the GI Generation to the Democrats in the middle-third of the 20th Century.

The United States is a changed and continually changing nation. Taken together, these changes have made America a more diverse and more open nation. This should let the Democratic Party face the future with confidence and courage. But, the Democratic Party's opportunities cannot be taken for granted. The first step in taking advantage of these opportunities for Democrats would be to start building a future for America built on this reality and letting go of the timidity and tentativeness that seems to have been their governing motif in 2009.

A Generation's Loyalty is at Stake

As Congress returns from its holiday vacation, it and President Barack Obama need to address a number of challenges facing the country from health care reform to jobs and what strategy to pursue in Afghanistan. How the Democratic leadership deals with these issues may well determine the future loyalty of an entire generation of new voters, and with it the future of the Democratic Party.

A recent study by two economists, Paola Giuliano and Antonio Spilembergo, entitled “Growing Up in a Recession,” suggests that experiencing an economic recession during the impressionable ages of 18-25 can have lifelong effects on a person’s attitude toward government and its role in the economy.The Democratic Party’s most enthusiastic and loyal new constituency, Millennials (born 1982- 2003), have had their young lives thoroughly disrupted by the current economic downturn. With their level of unemployment exceeding 25%, what is for other generations a Great Recession is for Millennials their very own Great Depression. Such an experience is likely, according to the new study, to increase Millennial support for policies that favor government redistribution of income and other liberal economic ideas.

However, Giuliano and Spilembergo also demonstrate that this same experience often makes young people less trusting of government institutions. Conservative columnist, Ross Douthat suggested recently that the difference between the Democratic New Deal loyalties of the GI Generation that came of age during the Great Depression and the greater Republican orientation of Generation X that experienced Jimmy Carter’s stagflation economy in the 1970s is the degree to which government dealt effectively with the economic crisis of their youth. “When liberal interventions seem to be effective, a downturn can help midwife an enduring Democratic majority. But if they don’t seem to be working — or worse, if they seem to be working for insiders and favored constituencies, rather than for the common man — then suspicion of state power can trump disillusionment with free markets.”

This raises the stakes for what Congress does in the next six months to new heights. Millennials, more than one-third of whom lack health insurance, will be watching closely to see if their needs are addressed in the final version of health care reform, something Millennials support to a far greater extent than any other generation. Of course, failure to pass meaningful reform may well deal a death knell to the emerging Democratic majority that the Obama campaign created last year.

But Millennials care even more about jobs and the health of the economy. A recent poll by Harvard's Institute of Politics found that the economy is unquestionably young people's leading concern, with 48 percent of respondents saying it was their top national priority. (That was more than twice the number of those who rated health care their top priority, 21 percent,with the war garnering mention by 10 percent of respondents.)With record unemployment among members of this generation, any jobs package the Congress puts forward must specifically meet the concerns and needs of Millennials. In particular, Congress must deal with the high cost of education,something Millennials still see as the ticket to future economic success; the lack of job opportunities even at the intern level for those just entering the work force; and the lack of access to fundamental job skills training that community colleges can provide to those ready to go to work soon.
While the Democratic leadership often believes that s today’s youth thinks about issues of war and peace in the same reflexive way that young Baby Boomers did four decades ago, Millennials are more likely to want to understand the mission and strategy for success in Afghanistan before making up their mind on whether or not to support a deepening American involvement in that conflict. With Millennials providing the overwhelming majority of front line troops, however Congress chooses to pay for that campaign, it must ensure that those who do go to fight are better equipped than the military force George W. Bush initially sent to Iraq.

The effectiveness of any legislation Congress adopts over the next six months will not be known for years but the way Congressional Democrats approach their policy decisions will be clear enough to Millennials. The stakes are large and will have long-reaching impact. If the decisions are made by cutting deals with special interest groups, none of which represent this generation and its financial concerns, or by compromising Millennial principles of equity and social justice, members of the generation are likely to sit out the 2010 midterm elections and wait for their favorite messenger, Barack Obama, to return to the ballot in 2012 before making their future preferences known. If that happens, the results in the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey last month will only be a prelude for a much bigger Democratic disaster next November. ) If, instead, Democratic leaders take off their generational blinders and recognize that the base of their party is now made up of an overlapping core of Millennials, minorities, and women and respond accordingly, they will help to solidify the Democratic loyalties of America’s largest generation for decades to come.

What MTV and the GOP have in Common

MTV premièred in August 1981, seven months after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as America's 40th president. It revolutionized TV and the music industry as much as Reagan changed the country's politics.

And now, just as the election of Barack Obama to the presidency signaled the end of that political era and the beginning of another, MTV is belatedly shifting gears as well.

The network, long known for cynical and vapid content, has suddenly understood the importance of being earnest. Booze and bikinis are out. Do-good singers and hard-working art students are in.

MTV acknowledged that its programming had become out of step with the progressive, service-oriented values of today's youth, the Millennial Generation. "It was very clear we were at one of those transformational moments, when this new generation of Millennials [born between 1982 and 2003] were demanding a new MTV," a channel executive explained.

After losing ground for years, MTV finally got it. But many other corporations and institutions – the Republican Party comes to mind – still don't. As a result, they risk alienating the approximately 95 million young Americans who will be defining the nation's politics and culture for decades to come.

MTV's mistake was to assume that the members of particular demographic groups, in this instance young people in their mid-teens through their mid-20s, behave the same and hold the same attitudes at all times. If only MTV's executives had gone to the movies more often, they might have recognized these generational changes much sooner.

For baby boomers (born 1946-1964), a generation of idealists driven by strong personal values, no coming-of-age-movie captured their rebellious and moralistic spirit better than "The Graduate." The protagonist, Benjamin Braddock, is a depressed loner who rejects his parents' "plastic" values. In his dalliance with Mrs. Robinson, Benjamin seeks emotional attachment and deeper meaning, whereas she is in the "relationship" only for physical release.

The movie ends as Benjamin rescues his true love, Elaine (Mrs. Robinson's daughter) from an "arranged" marriage by blocking the door from the church with a cross. Benjamin and Elaine ride away on a bus, embracing a new idealistic lifestyle while forever turning their backs on the shallow and meaningless existence of their parents.

But the tone of coming-of-age movies shifted dramatically when Generation X (born 1965-1981) became teenagers and 20-somethings in the 1980s. This generation was best represented in "Risky Business."

Tom Cruise portrays Joel Goodsen, an alienated young man who, like many real-life Gen-Xers, is a latchkey kid abandoned by his vacationing parents at their suburban home.

Unlike Benjamin Braddock, Joel does not use his alienation from the grown-up world as a reason to pursue deeper values. Instead, he uses his time alone to perform an iconic dance in his underwear while lip-synching to "Old Time Rock and Roll." He wrecks the family car, hires a hooker, and, in true Gen-X entrepreneurial fashion, provides a "for hire" outlet to satisfy his friends' sexual desires, using the family home as his place of business.

Contrast those stories with the emblematic Millennial movie "The Devil Wears Prada."

Millennials are the American generation least bound by gender role expectations, so it isn't surprising that the protagonist is a young woman with an androgynous name, Andy (Sachs). Because Millennials are also the most tolerant American generation, it's not surprising that Andy's best friends are an African-American woman, a gay man, and her sensitive boyfriend who aspires to be a chef. In true Millennial fashion, Andy constantly relies on her friends and parents, whom she adores, for love, advice, and support.

Andy is temporarily attracted by the glitter of the world of high fashion. However, like others of this generation who are driven by a desire to solve society's problems, she realizes her true calling is far different.

She breaks with her boss, Miranda Priestly, at the fashion magazine where she works, so that she can take a job writing for a liberal newspaper. But, as a polite and conventional Millennial, the break is not harsh. In fact, her old boss, the devil herself, provides the crucial reference for Andy's new job.

Everyone in politics and pop culture should learn the lesson MTV belatedly has. To really understand the preferences of young people, take a look at their generation and not simply their age. That will tell you everything you need to know.

obama's honeymoon likely to last awhile

Buoyed by his strong personal appeal, history suggests President Barack Obama is in for a long and enjoyable honeymoon. Civic eras, like the one that began with the President's election last November, start when a generation such as today’s young Millennials (born 1982-2003) enters the electorate with an overwhelming preference for one party’s presidential candidate and his policy agenda. This solid endorsement by an emerging generation causes the President’s popularity to go up or remain stable at a high level, not down, in a civic era as the newly elected candidate takes steps to implement his campaign pledges.
For example, Franklin Roosevelt, who kicked off America's last previous civic era in 1932, never really did see an end to his honeymoon in terms of decreasing popularity, at least not until well into his second term. FDR's Democrats even gained seats in both the House and Senate in 1934, the only time in U.S. history that the party of a newly elected president has ever gained seats in the mid-term elections that followed his winning the presidency. And, Roosevelt won reelection to a second term in 1936 by an even larger margin than he did in 1932.
President Obama's approval score at this point in his presidency is higher than for any president since Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy, two presidents who served toward the end of the last civic era in American history, a period that ended with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968. In civic eras, Americans have much more positive attitudes toward political institutions and leaders than in politically divided and gridlocked idealist eras such as the Baby Boomer-dominated one we just left. In civic eras, the public wants and expects governmental action. By contrast, in idealist eras, like the one the country just left, Presidential approval ratings tend to fall fairly quickly in a President's term, signaling the end of the honeymoon. This happens as soon as the President begins to take action that is bound to offend at least one half of the divided electorate.
But, led by the Millennial Generation, today’s electorate is anything but divided. Millennials voted for Barack Obama over John McCain by a 66% to 32% margin. Seven in ten Millennials currently approve of his performance as President and more than 80% have favorable attitudes toward him as an individual.
Polling conducted throughout the first 100-days of the Obama administration indicates that as the Republican Party has almost unanimously resisted the President's initiatives, voter attitudes toward the GOP have become ever more unfavorable. Currently less than 10% of Millennials hold favorable attitudes toward the GOP and Congressional Republicans. For the moment at least, Republicans have ceased to be a viable alternative to the President among all voters but a relative handful of conservatives.
This puts the onus squarely on the President's fellow Democrats in Congress. As long as they support Obama’s blueprint for change, he should continue to accomplish big things, which will only have the effect of reinforcing, not decreasing, his popularity. While many inside the beltway may not recognize that we have entered a new era in American politics, both the President and the public do. Barack Obama should have the popularity to prove it for some time to come.

Shuttting Detroit Down

Once upon a time, not so long ago, in a city at the heart of the American continent, General Motors produced cars, like Pontiac’s “Little GTO,” celebrated in Beach Boys songs that captured the thrill of driving Detroit’s latest creations. Today, as GM struggles to appease the government’s auditors just to stay alive, Kris Kristofferson, with a little help from Mickey Rourke, curses the financial wizards from Wall Street that are “Shutting Detroit Down” while “livin’ it up in that New York town.”


Never has the inherent tension between the investor class and the country’s manufacturing sector been more pronounced or the stakes in this particular poker game higher for the future of America. Chrysler may have been forced into bankruptcy first, but it’s GM's downfall that represents the true mid-American earthquake.

Back in the late 1950s, General Motors so dominated the American automobile market that its corporate goals were focused on achieving a 60% market share. The hubris of its executives led them to decide to pick up more and more costs for medical insurance, pensions and retiree benefits, beginning GM’s slide down a slippery slope of poor financial performance

This posed a huge but not initially recognized risk to GM. By taking on these obligations that didn't show up as a cost or balance-sheet liability until the government changed its accounting rules in 1992 and required companies to show the cost of “other post-employment benefits” (OPEB) on their books, General Motors lit a ticking time bomb that has now exploded in its face. In 1972, as GM came the closest it would ever come to achieving its sixty-percent market share goal, GM was paying the entire health insurance bill for its employees, survivors and retirees, and had agreed to "30 and out" early retirement that granted workers full pensions after 30 years on the job, regardless of age. Its world then began to come apart.

In 1973, OPEC’s embargo tripled the price of oil. GM failed to respond quickly enough to the consumer’s sudden demand for fuel-efficient cars. At the same time, the Japanese with their then superior, lean manufacturing techniques stepped into the vacuum, gaining a foothold in the North American car market that they have continued to expand. Ironically, thirty years later the very same inability to shift product offerings during a spike in oil prices precipitated GM’s current difficulties.

GM’s reluctance to go green is often cited by its new government owners as the reason it’s in so much trouble now, but the crux of GM’s problems really go back to those heady days of market domination and financial profligacy.

In the 1960s GM’s annual operating margin (profits divided by revenues) averaged 8.7%. The turmoil of the seventies and the pressure from Japanese competition drove those average margins down to 5.5%. Margins fell by about half to an average of 3% in the 1980s, and about half again to 1.3% in the 1990s (not counting the $20 billion hit GM took when the new accounting rules for OPEB took effect.) Finally, in this decade the slide has actually taken the company into an average of negative margins. Now only the government’s suggested radical restructuring seems to offer a way to stop the bleeding.

It is estimated that the cost of OPEB, essentially GM’s retiree pension and health care programs, have cost the company about $7 billion each year since 1993 and are probably around $10 billion per year now. The bargain auto company management made back in the 60s with labor to provide generous off the balance sheet benefits has now become an albatross that threatens the manufacturing jobs for the Big Three’s own current workers and suppliers across the Midwest. It’s the kind of problem only government can solve.

But the Obama Administration’s early efforts to do so have been far from promising. First it selected Steve Rattner as its “car czar”, a politically well-connected private equity investor and turnaround artist from “that New York town,” someone with no significant automobile industry experience. In addition, the government's demands that GM dismantle more brands and shut down more dealerships suggests the process may get a lot uglier by the May 31 decision deadline.

Luckily the United Auto Workers remain on watch to try to ensure that whatever concessions are demanded of GM’s current and retired employees reflect an equitable shared sacrifice with the company’s bondholders and investors. The kind of GM that emerges from these negotiations will have a huge impact on these workers and on the many industrial towns that depend on the car business for their basic existence.

Ultimately, the decision on how best to “rescue” GM may turn out to be the most difficult call President Obama will make in his first year in office. He will be pulled by pressures from the green gentry left to force GM’s future products to conform to a pre-determined environmental agenda. He also will face predictable Republican calls to let the market work its will, even if it means the end of the company.

President Obama will need the wisdom of Solomon to recognize that today’s workers no more deserve to be punished for the mistakes of prior management than CIA agents do for carrying out the orders of their equally arrogant Republican counselors during George W. Bush's administration. To paraphrase the President’s words, it’s “time to move on” and offer GM the support it needs to “Catch a Wave” and start producing more “Good Vibrations” for America’s hard pressed, but still very critical manufacturing sector.

Doing What Comes Naturally During a Makeover

While Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter's announcement that he was switching from the Republicans to the Democrats may have gratified the latter and upset the former, no one should have been surprised by it. Historically, party switching is common, indeed inevitable at times of party realignment.
Spurred by the rise of a new large dynamic generation and the emergence of a new communication technology, realignments occur about every four decades in U.S. politics. The most recent one began with the election of Barack Obama last November. These large political makeovers normally enthrone a new dominant national party. Beneath the surface, realignments are characterized by major shifts in the voting coalitions that support the two parties. Demographic groups and regions move to and fro between the parties.
These demographic shifts, and the attendant ideological solidification of the two parties, leave some politicians, like Senator Specter, who no longer represent their party's mainstream thinking, as outliers and essentially marooned. Faced with the prospect of almost certain defeat by a reduced and much more conservative base in next year's Pennsylvania GOP senate primary, the politically moderate Specter made the only rational choice he could and left the Republican Party.
The last previous realignment, which began with election of Richard Nixon in 1968, saw the movement of numerous Democrats, primarily Southerners, to the Republicans. Starting with Strom Thurmond and continuing through Richard Shelby, these conservative Democrats, along with many of their constituents, saw the GOP as a more comfortable political home. But, the movement between the parties wasn't only Southern, nor was it only in one direction. Conservative Colorado Democratic Senator, Ben Nighthorse Campbell became a Republican and liberal Republicans like New York's John Lindsay and Don Riegle of Michigan went the other way.
If history is any guide, Arlen Specter's move from the Republican to the Democratic Party will not be the last during the next several years. Other moderate Republicans, most likely from New England, the Northeast, and the upper Midwest, will almost certainly join him. At some point, it is also probable that a smaller number of conservative Democrats, who feel uncomfortable or politically threatened by President Obama's expansion of the federal government, will find the GOP more compatible with their beliefs and fortunes. Just as the baseball offseason is a time for trading players, a political realignment leads to changes in the rosters of the two parties. Let the switching begin.

Everybody's Wrong But us

Conservative columnist, Michael Gerson, in the Washington Post, and then Karl Rove in the Wall Street journal cited a recent Pew Research Center poll, to claim that the "polarization" between Democrats and Republicans in their approval of President Barack Obama's performance is greater than for any other president in surveys stretching back to the early days of the Nixon administration But their interpretation of the poll's results are dead wrong.

In the Pew survey a nearly unanimous 88-percent of Democratic identifiers, as opposed to a scant 27-percent of Republicans, approved of the president's performance, a gap of 61-percentage points. Independents (57% approve) fall precisely between the Democrats and Republicans. Overall, in that survey, 59-percent of all Americans approved of the job the president was doing, a number that rose slightly (to 61%) in the most recent Pew survey, conducted in the wake of Obama's European trip.

The reason for this polarized electorate however is not the actions of President Obama but the events of last year which has brought America into a new civic era, a turning point that has occurred roughly every eighty years throughout American history. Each time the country enters a civic era there is a rise in partisan identifications, a more coherent ideological divide between the two parties, and an increase in straight ticket voting. Even Gerson noted that polarization might be a good thing when it is a "decisive" and "ambitious" president like Franklin D. Roosevelt who is doing the polarizing to achieve overriding national goals. Despite his attempts to blame Obama for our current level of partisan divide, the truth is that such a division is inevitable in a civic era.
The polarization between Democrats and Republicans in the Pew and every other survey has much less to do with President Obama's personal and political style than it does with the inability of his own Republican Party to adapt to this new era. From the earliest Pew survey conducted in 1989, the first year of George H.W. Bush's administration, through 2005, there was near parity in the distribution of party identifiers within the electorate; no more than three or four percentage points ever separated the Democrats from the Republicans. By contrast, since 2006 the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats has risen significantly while the number saying they are Republican has fallen. In the most recent Pew study, conducted early this month, the Democrats held a clear 52% to 35% lead over the Republicans in party ID, a 13-percentage point shift toward the Democratic Party since 2004. And, only 21-percent of American voters are "pure" Republicans, a group that consists only of those willing to call themselves Republicans and does not include independents that say they lean toward the GOP. This is the smallest number of "pure" partisans for either party in any survey ever conducted by Pew.
Quite simply, the GOP has become an ever-declining corps of conservative true believers. A recent Frank N. Magid Associates survey indicates that while Democratic identifiers are almost evenly divided between liberals or progressives (45%) and moderates (42%), among Republicans, conservatives outnumber moderates by more than 2:1 (61% vs. 26%).
As a result, Republicans see things very differently than almost everyone else. The latest Daily Kos weekly tracking poll, for example, indicates that more than two-thirds of Americans (67%) have a favorable opinion of President Obama. In that poll at least sixty percent of both women and men and all age and ethnic groups have a positive impression of the president. Only among Republicans (23%) and, in the geographic center of the GOP, the South, (41%), is only a minority favorable toward Obama.
Given the distance of the Republican Party from the current American political mainstream, and the increased sense of party loyalty felt by many Americans, it shouldn't be surprising that most of the public is reticent to see President Obama compromise with Republicans on important public policy questions as Gerson suggests. In a March CBS/New York Times poll, a clear majority (56%) wanted President Obama to pursue the policies he promised in the campaign rather than working in a bipartisan way with Republicans (39%). An even larger majority (79%) wanted Congressional Republicans to work in a bipartisan way with the President rather than sticking to Republican policies.
By refusing to do so, it is the Republicans and not Barack Obama who are now polarizing American politics and, as a result, it is they who are polarized from most of their fellow citizens as well.
If Republicans truly want to see bipartisan policy making they will have to retreat from their position as a corporal's guard on the right wing of American politics and join the rest of the country in seeking real solutions to the major issues facing the United States at the dawn of the 21st Century.

Positive Partisanship for a New Era

Bipartisanship. Other than "stimulus" or "bailout," perhaps no word has been written or spoken more often by politicians and pundits alike in Washington since the inauguration of Barack Obama. Commentators have generally characterized President Obama's attempts to engage Republicans as almost completely unsuccessful, while Republicans have derided his efforts as charming but ineffective, especially in light of the more partisan approach of his party’s Congressional leadership. Liberals such as Thomas Frank dismissed bipartisanship as a "silly Beltway obsession," calling it "the most cynical stance possible."

For his part, the President told columnist E.J. Dionne that the almost complete rejection of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act by congressional Republicans reflected a combination of genuine "core differences between Democrats and Republicans" and an opportunistic attempt to "enforce conformity" and "reinvigorate their base." Obama then outlined the limits of his good will in a phrase sure to be repeated as the debate continues: "You know, I'm an eternal optimist. That doesn't mean I'm a sap."

While some of this is just typical Washington politics, there is more to the argument over bipartisanship than mere gamesmanship. American politics has moved to a new era, one in which basic public attitudes toward government and the norms by which political activity is conducted and judged have been altered sharply and profoundly. Spurred as always by the emergence of a large and dynamic new generation, this makeover or realignment has changed almost everything about American politics, including the very meaning and practice of "bipartisanship."

The most striking evidence of just how much things have changed was the extraordinary exchange between the President, congressional leaders from both houses and parties, and leaders from the private sector, both business and labor, at the White House Summit on "Fiscal Sustainability." The entire event was deliberately choreographed by President Obama to be demonstrably bipartisan and televised for the public to see. The dialogue between the President and Members of Congress suggested some principles of an approach to governing that can best be described as "positive partisanship." It is the way in which bipartisanship will be exercised in the new civic era that began with the election and inauguration of Barack Obama. The President himself summarized how this new approach should work, responding to U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who asked him to take the lead in telling Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats to be inclusive in their approach to developing legislation: "I do agree that the majority has an obligation to try and be as inclusive as they can, but the minority has to be constructive in return. The minority has to come up with their own ideas and not just want to blow things up." Exactly.

In the 40-year long "idealist" era that just ended, bipartisanship reflected the circumstances of a nation dominated by the unflinchingly ideological and profoundly fractured Baby Boomer Generation. Within the electorate, and especially among Boomers, there were approximately an equal number of Republicans and Democrats and, at times, more independents than either. Voters were almost always sharply divided along the demographic lines of gender and ethnicity. In 14 of the 20 Congresses during the era, different parties controlled the presidency and at least one house of Congress, something favored by the American public in attitude surveys throughout the period. As a result, major alterations in public policy were rare and institutional gridlock was the rule rather than the exception.

Historically, in previous idealist eras, "bipartisanship" meant seeking the lowest common denominator to bridge the differences between ideological extremes. During most of the idealist era between the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 and Abraham Lincoln in 1860, attempts to find a literal mathematical midpoint between the slave states and free states were the rule. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 divided the territory acquired in the Louisiana Purchase into free states north of latitude 36° 30' and slave states south of that line. Later, new states entered the Union in pairs, one slave and one free state at a time. A Whig politician, Henry Clay, gained the nickname "the Great Compromiser" for his efforts to achieve those middle ground solutions.

In the idealist era that has just ended, political leaders, especially Democrats, were often forced to return to the bipartisan model of that earlier era. Bill Clinton, certainly the more successful of the two Democrats elected to the presidency between 1968 and 2004, often pursued an approach of "triangulation" between the ideological liberals of his own party and the conservatives of the opposition Republicans. "Centrist" Democratic groups (the very term obviously implying middle ground positioning) sought a "Third Way" between the ideological and partisan ends of the political spectrum. Party liberals often excoriated Clinton and the "centrist" Democrats for their ideological impurity. But the efforts to seek midpoint bipartisan policies made sense in a politically divided idealist era, especially one in which the opposition party held the presidency most of the time and divided government was the norm.

But in 2008, America moved to a new political era and everything changed, including the meaning of bipartisanship, as the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression pushed the country into another civic era. In this environment, the American public, which had preferred divided government during the previous idealist era, now endorses unified government. A CNN survey conducted immediately after the 2008 general election indicated that a clear majority (59%) favored the idea of the Democrats controlling both elective branches of the federal government. Only 38 percent said that one-party rule was a bad idea. The public used a clearly civic era rationale to explain its changed attitude, telling Wall Street Journal pollsters that when the same party controls both the presidency and Congress, "it will end gridlock in Washington and things will get done." A recent CBS/New York Times survey confirmed the desire for decisive action across the institutional lines of a newly unified government. A clear majority (56%) wants President Obama to pursue the policies he promised in the campaign rather than working in a bipartisan way with Republicans (39%). By contrast, an even larger majority (79%) wants congressional Republicans to work in a bipartisan way with the President rather than sticking to Republican policies.

Faced with the need to deal with the deep national crisis that triggered the birth of the civic era, the majority of Americans no longer have the time or tolerance for the partisan and ideological rancor that fractured the political process and produced gridlock in the previous idealist era. If nothing else, the public expects calm, courteous, and polite discussion that focuses more on possible solutions and less on defining differences and distinctions. That tone was exemplified by the President as he conducted the Q&A with the Summit participants -- listening carefully to what they had to say, agreeing or disagreeing with some comments but always in a civil, and in some cases self-deprecating, way that made it impossible for the participants to engage in their usual hot-button rhetoric.

Beyond demanding a new tone in political discourse, the public is also expressing its desire for decisive action with the majority party, currently the Democrats, having primary responsibility for governing. At the Summit, the President underlined some of the philosophical differences between the parties when discussing the question of individual tax rates or levels of overall revenue. But he made clear by his control of the session what he had told some Republicans earlier: "We won." He acknowledged both that the electorate had asked Democrats to take the lead in developing and implementing policies to deal with the major issues facing the nation and that he wanted the Republicans to play a role in finding the answers so long as they participated in a "constructive" fashion.

This offer to engage puts the GOP in a quandary. It can choose to retain its ideological purity and hope to avoid blame if Democratic decisions turn out to be ineffective or harmful, but in doing so it is denying itself any role policymaking during Obama’s presidency. Furthermore, such posturing is already creating an image in the public’s mind of Republicans being too political and obstructionist.

Alternatively, the GOP can resurrect the "Ev and Charlie Show" from the days of Lyndon Johnson when those two Republican congressional leaders participated in the policymaking process as a junior partner. If the Republicans choose this approach, they may leave themselves open to charges, similar to those leveled by Newt Gingrich at Republican congressional leaders when he first arrived in Congress, that they are a pale "me too" reflection of the Democrats, without any guiding principles of their own. But the approach does produce results. In the 1960s, Everett Dirksen and Charles Halleck collaborated with LBJ to provide the crucial votes on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The decisive support of Republican Senators Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter for the recently enacted economic recovery act may be an unofficial and limited reflection of this approach early in the new civic era.

Overall, however, the GOP seems inclined to avoid collaborating with Democrats in order to stay true to its idealist era ideology. While that may well promote party unity and discipline, from the perspective of enhancing the Republican brand, it seems to be a major error.

In a recent Daily Kos survey, clear majorities had favorable opinions of the President (67%) and the Democratic Party (53%). Favorable attitudes toward congressional Democrats (44%), Speaker Nancy Pelosi (39%), and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (34%) were not nearly as high. But, the favorable ratings received by the Democrats were substantially above those given to the Republican Party (27%), congressional Republicans (17%), John Boehner (13%), and Mitch McConnell (19%). Moreover, since the first of the year, favorable ratings of the Democratic leaders and the Democratic Party have remained stable or even increased, while those of the Republicans have declined.

In 2008, the American people chose the Democratic Party to take the lead in confronting and resolving the grave problems facing the nation. They are expecting a decisive, civic-oriented response from President Obama. The Republican Party is left with the options of either joining the struggle or being left behind. Ultimately, both parties behavior will be shaped and judged by a new definition of what it means to exercise positive partisanship in a new era.

Republicans need to learn how to deal with New Era

Last week's NBC-Wall Street Journal poll demonstrating both the personal appeal to the American people of President Barack Obama and of his policy approach also has very good news for the Democratic Party. That survey and others suggest that the Democratic Party has strength that is deeper, antedates, and will likely extend beyond the Obama presidency. The NBC survey indicates that about half of the public (49%) has a favorable opinion of the Democrats, while only about half that number is positive about the Republicans (26%). The most recent Daily Kos tracking survey paints an even rosier picture for the Democrats. In that poll, while 58-percent are positive about the Democratic Party, only 32-percent feel that way about the Republicans, numbers that have improved for the Democrats and declined for the Republicans since the first of the year.
Positive feelings toward the Democratic Party and negative impressions of the GOP are deeper than these overall attitudes suggest. For example, the Republicans are given the primary blame for the partisan rancor that has characterized Washington politics in recent years. A majority (56%) attribute "all" or a "major part" of the blame for that to the Bush administration and 41-percent blame congressional Republicans. By contrast, only a quarter (24%) say partisanship is the fault of congressional Democrats and a scant 11-percent attributes it to President Obama. As a result, a clear majority (56%) believes that GOP opposition to Obama administration policies comes from an effort to gain political advantage rather than principle (30%). All of this goes a long way toward explaining why, by a greater than 2:1 margin on the biggest issue of the day, Americans believe that the Democrats rather than the Republicans will do a better job of ending the recession (48% vs. 20%).
To an extent attitudes like these may change with the emergence and departure of specific issues and politicians. But, surveys indicate that the American public has formed what is likely to be a long-term attachment to the Democratic Party. The Pew Research Center's tracking of party identification gave the GOP a narrow national lead over the Democrats in party ID in 1995, the year after the Republicans captured control of both houses of Congress for the first time in about four decades (46% vs. 43%). The Democratic Party's comeback in began in earnest in 2006 as it recaptured Congress and moved to a nine-percentage point party identification advantage over the Republicans (47% vs. 38%). Currently, the Democrats have a 53% to 37% edge.
What is behind the clear emergence of the Democratic Party as America's majority political party is the coming-of-age of a new generation of young Americans, the Millennial Generation (born 1982-2003). Like their GI Generation ("Greatest Generation") great grandparents before them, the Millennials are a "civic" generation, committed to liberal interventionism in the economy, activist multilateralism in foreign affairs, tolerant non-meddling on social issues, and to the Democratic Party.
Millennials identify as Democrats by a greater than 2:1 margin and are the first American generation in at least four to contain a greater number of self-perceived liberals rather than conservatives. Survey data collected by both Pew and media research and consultation firm, Frank N. Magid Associates, indicates that these identifications predated the 2008 presidential campaign or even the emergence of Barack Obama as a well-known national political figure. But Millennials did flex their political muscles in a big way in 2008, voting overwhelmingly for both Barack Obama over John McCain (68% vs. 32%) and Democratic over GOP congressional candidates (63% vs. 34%). Millennials accounted for 80-percent of Obama's national popular vote lead, turning a narrow victory into a mandate.
There is nothing to suggest that the firm attachment of the Millennial Generation to Barack Obama and the Democratic Party is in any way diminishing. The Kos survey indicates that an astounding and virtually unanimous 86-percent of Millennials now hold favorable opinions of President Obama. While Obama may personalize the political beliefs and Democratic identifications of the Millennial Generation, he is also likely to help extend them as surely as FDR aided in extending those of the GI Generation in the 1930s and 1940s. More than two-thirds of Millennials (68%) have favorable impressions of the Democratic Party and a majority is positive about congressional Democrats (53%). Meanwhile, Millennials have almost nothing good to say about the GOP: just 19-percent like the Republican Party and virtually none (9%) are positive about congressional Republicans. Voting behavior research since the 1950s indicates that once attitudes and identifications like these are formed, they tend to be set for life and rarely change. Clearly the road ahead for the Republican Party is hard and rocky.
But, as the GOP brand continues to erode, the Republicans are treating the country to a spat between its titular head, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele, and the man some consider the party's de facto leader, radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh. After Steele criticized him for being an "entertainer" with an "incendiary" and "ugly" show, Limbaugh distanced himself from the Republican National Committee, if not from the Republican Party, saying to Steele that, "You are not the head of the Republican Party. Tens of millions of conservatives and Republicans have nothing to do with the Republican National Committee."
On the day after the 1994 GOP midterm election sweep, this writer could not resist the masochistic urge of turning his car radio dial to Limbaugh's show and hearing Limbaugh's audience of "dittoheads" extol him for his leadership of the Republican victory. On that day, Limbaugh was more than happy to accept the plaudits of his listeners and proud to wear the mantle of Republican leadership. He did not separate himself from any part of the GOP. The fact that he has done so now provides clear evidence that American politics has, indeed, entered a new era.

Mike Hais is a Fellow at NDN and the New Policy Institute and, with Morley Winograd, is the co-author of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, You Tube, and the Future of American Politics (Rutgers University Press, 2008), named one of the 10 favorite books by the New York Times in 2008.

new rules for a new era

One week after the inauguration of President Barack Obama, it is clear that his election and ascension to the presidency have moved America from one political era to another. Realignments like these occur about every four decades with the coming of age of a new, large, dynamic generation of young Americans whose political participation is enabled by a new communication technology. The most recent makeover stemmed from the emergence of the "civic" Millennial Generation (born between 1982 to 2003) and their use of social networks. Civic generations, like the Millennials and the GI Generation before it, are group-oriented, cooperative, and pragmatic. Their behavior stands in stark contrast to the individualistic and ideological Baby Boomers, who dominated American politics for the previous 40 years.

Makeovers or realignments change almost everything about U.S. politics -- election results, public policy, and presidential behavior. Apparently not everyone has noticed this change.

Perhaps the sharpest criticism of the Obama transition came from an unexpected quarter -- "progressive activists" and some of their congressional allies. These disappointed critics thought Obama’s cabinet and corps of advisors contained too many Clinton era pragmatists and too few minorities in high positions. Author and New York Times Magazine writer Matt Bai captured the obsolete nature of their complaint perfectly:

"That sound you hear is the last wheezing gasp of boomer-age politics, the cataloging of individuals according to their areas of oppression the endless process of tallying cultural differences rather than aggregating common objectives. It is a political philosophy that probably made sense 30 years ago but that seems sort of baffling at the dawn of the Obama era."

Bai compared those who criticized Obama to liberals of the early 1960s, such as Norman Mailer, who expected John F. Kennedy, as America's first Catholic president, to act like a political "outsider." But even though he is America's first African-American president, Barack Obama is no more an outsider than was JFK. Just like Kennedy, Obama's transition decisions were thoroughly consistent with the civic era we have now entered. And Obama’s behavior during the transition provides clear indicators of how the President will govern and the nation will respond in this civic Millennial era.

Here are just a few of the things to expect:

* Limited or no use of ideological labels. Unlike his predecessor who consistently described himself as a "compassionate conservative" or Democrats who spent much of the past four decades seeking a label for themselves that would replace the discredited "liberal," Barack Obama never labels himself ideologically or even uses terms such as conservative, moderate, or liberal. As the President said in his Inaugural Address, "On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics."

* Avoiding moral absolutes as the primary standard by which to structure and evaluate policy. In his farewell address to the nation, George W. Bush said, "America must maintain our moral clarity. I have often spoken to you about good and evil . . .. Good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise." In fairness, Bush was referring to global terrorism in his remarks, but the moralistic tone that characterizes idealist eras typified the approach of his Administration in almost all policy areas, especially social issues. President Obama signaled a far different and more pragmatic tone in his inaugural address "What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works."

* Working across partisan and institutional lines to get things done in the common interest. Obama’s successful campaign put an end to Karl Rove’s "play to the base" strategy that Democrats also attempted at great cost in many of their recent presidential campaigns. Unlike candidates in the idealist era that just ended, Obama ran a truly national campaign and competed in formerly rock-ribbed Republican states. He was rewarded with victories in nine 2004 red states. The same approach continued during the transition with Obama actively courting die-hard Republican Senators like Oklahoma's Tom Coburn over the release of the second half of the TARP funds and the thought leadership of the conservative movement over dinner at George Will’s house the Thursday night before the inaugural. The end result was bipartisan support for Obama's first legislative initiative with six Republicans, some very conservative, voting with Obama, offsetting the eight Democrats, some very liberal, who voted against the President-elect. It was an outcome reminiscent of the bipartisan votes of the 1950s and something that will continue to occur in this civic era.

* The end of identity politics. Even as Obama appointed the most demographically diverse Cabinet and set of personal advisors of any American President, the Obama team avoided the identity politics trap into which Boomer President Clinton had often fallen. Any mention of ethnicity or lifestyle differences was made from the perspective of unity and what all Americans have in common. As Obama said in his inaugural address: "We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness . . . We are shaped by every language and culture drawn from every end of this Earth…we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself."

* A new emphasis on personal and societal responsibility, service, and sacrifice. The ideas that individuals have the responsibility to behave properly to serve their community and nation and to sacrifice for the common good are all key civic era values. President Obama emphasized these values at many points during the transition, personally demonstrating his commitment to making Martin Luther King, Jr., Day a National Day of Service when he and his wife, Michelle, participated in DC area community renovation activities on the day before his inauguration. He returned to these themes throughout his inaugural address: "What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility--a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship."

Last November marked the electoral realignment of the United States from an idealist to a civic era. It changed voting patterns and party coalitions for at least the next four decades. But that was only the beginning of the change that has come to America. With the inauguration of Barack Obama as the first president of the new civic era, the rules that guide the behavior of our leaders and eventually all Americans have changed as completely and substantially as have our politics. The nation is fortunate to have as its new leader a President prepared to teach by example how to live by these new rules for a new era.

Mr. President: Bring us Together

The election of Barack Obama signaled the beginning of a "civic" realignment, produced by the political emergence of America's most recent civic generation, Millennials (born 1982-2003). Civic generations, like the Millennials, react against the efforts of divided idealist generations, like the Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) to advance their own moral causes. Civic generations instead are unified and focused on reenergizing social, political, and governmental institutions and using those institutions to confront and solve pressing national issues left unattended and unresolved during the previous idealist era. The goal of a transition during such realignments has to be to lessen the ideological splits that have divided America during the preceding idealist era and take steps to unify the country so that the new Administration can more effectively deal with the major issues it faces.

Reducing ideological divisions and unifying Americans to achieve important common goals has been a focus of Barack Obama since even before he announced his presidency. It is one of the key reasons his campaign had strong appeal to the emerging civic Millennial Generation, which he carried by a margin of more than 2:1. When CBS’s Steve Croft asked the then-candidate in a pre-election interview what qualified him, a junior senator with limited governmental experience, to be president of the United States, Obama led off his reply by citing his desire and ability to bridge differences and bring people together.

Through Your Actions

One way a civic era president-elect can demonstrate the importance he places on the need for national unity is to name members of the opposition party to his cabinet. The actions of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only two other Presidents to preside over transitions to civic eras, demonstrate how this game should be played.

For all the media commentary on Lincoln's first cabinet, deemed a "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin, it should be noted that it contained no one from the discredited Democratic Party, even though it did have representatives that spanned the breadth of opinion within the relatively new GOP. However, Lincoln did add a Democrat, Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, to his cabinet less than a year after taking office. Stanton, a strongly pro-Union Northern Democrat, had opposed Lincoln's election and had served as Attorney General in the final months of the Buchanan administration. However, Lincoln’s selection of pro-Union Democrat, Andrew Johnson, as his vice-presidential running mate in his 1864 re-election campaign demonstrates that it’s sometimes possible to take even a good idea too far. FDR appointed two Republicans to his initial cabinet–industrialist William H. Woodin, who as Treasury Secretary helped FDR implement his economic and fiscal program at the outset of the New Deal, and Harold L. Ickes, who served as Interior Secretary throughout the entirety of the Roosevelt administration. Both Woodin and Ickes were progressives who had supported FDR in the 1932 election. While neither was a member of the Republican Old Guard, together they demonstrated Roosevelt's willingness to reach beyond his own party to enlist what today would be called "moderate Republicans" in a unified effort to overcome major national problems.

Reflecting America's changing demographics and social mores, Barack Obama has chosen the most diverse cabinet and set of top advisors of any president in U.S. history. Two members of Obama's larger number of appointees -- Robert Gates and Ray Lahood -- are not Democrats, the same number for which FDR found room. This represents a greater number of members of the a different or opposing party than were present in the Cabinets of any of Obama’s idealist era predecessors.

President-elect Obama’s attempt to include a wide range of political opinion and backgrounds in his Cabinet and White House team has generated criticism from the most ideological members of his party, just as FDR and Lincoln faced such criticism from the extreme partisans of their day. Obama's appointment of many "centrist" cabinet-level officers who previously served in Congress, the Clinton Administration, or as governors suggests to his critics that he is abandoning his pledge to bring about significant change in economic, foreign, and social policy. But as political scientist Ross Baker points out, "In uncertain times, Americans find it much more comforting that the people who are going to be advising the president are steeped in experience. A Cabinet of outsiders would have been very disquieting." And civic realignments like the present one have come at the most uncertain and stressful times in America's history.

Through Your Words

Lincoln and FDR are also renowned for their ability to use their words to rally Americans to a common cause. Both did so at the very outset of their terms. Both of these great civic presidents’ first inaugural addresses addressed the fears of a nation in crisis with rhetoric that has continued to ring through the ages.

Lincoln, in another last-ditch effort to forestall secession, told the South that neither he nor the Republican Party would make any attempt to undo slavery in states where it already existed. But he also reminded the South that, while only its actions could ultimately provoke civil war, his "solemn oath to preserve, protect, and defend" the Constitution would require him to prosecute that war if it came.

Lincoln concluded his address with an appeal to the secessionists to rejoin the Union:

We are not enemies, but friends…Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Roosevelt used his inaugural speech to rally the country to the task ahead by telling it, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." He reminded his listeners that at previous dark moments in our national history vigorous leadership joined with a supportive public to win ultimate victory in the nation's trials. Perhaps most important, FDR gave clear recognition that the United States and its people had moved from what we have called an "idealist" era of unrestrained individualism to a "civic" era of unity and common purpose:

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective.

Even before President-elect Obama had a chance to utter similarly comforting and inspiring rhetoric, his inaugural plans came under fire for inviting Pastor Rick Warren, a fundamentalist minister and activist in the passage of California's Proposition 8 outlawing gay marriage, to give the invocation at his inauguration. But the selection of Warren should not have been surprising to careful observers. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Obama signaled his desire to find common ground on divisive social issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and gun control.

By bookending his inaugural with a benediction from Joseph Lowrey, a minister who favors legalizing gay marriage among other liberal causes, Obama has signaled his determination to put an end to the debates over social issues from an idealist era that is ending and enlist all those willing to join his cause to rebuild America’s civic institutions.

For in the end, it is the American people that Barack Obama must rally to his side. It is they who will ultimately decide the effectiveness of his transition as a springboard to a civic era Administration. So far their judgment is overwhelmingly positive. A late December 2008 CNN national survey describes "a love affair between Barack Obama and the American people." That survey indicated that more than eight in 10 Americans (82%) approved of the way Obama was handling his transition, a figure that was up by three percentage points since the beginning of the month. Obama's approval is well above that of either Bill Clinton (67%) or George W. Bush (65%) at that point in their transitions.

More specifically, the poll suggests that the public approves of Obama's Cabinet nominees, with 56 percent saying his appointments have been outstanding or above average. That number is 18 percentage points higher than that given to Bush's appointments and 26 points above that of Clinton's nominees. To quote CNN polling director Keating Holland: "Barack Obama is having a better honeymoon with the American public than any incoming president in the past three decades. He's putting up better numbers, usually by double digits, than Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, or either George Bush on every item traditionally measured in transition polls."

Of course, the final judgment of the Obama presidency by the American people and history will be based on his performance in office starting on January 20. Still, these polling results clearly suggest that Barack Obama has internalized and put into operation the historical transition lessons provided by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the presidents who led America's two previous civic realignments. If his inaugural address comes close to matching their first inaugural speeches, President-elect Obama will begin one of the most important administrations in the nation’s history with an enormous reservoir of political and public support that will serve him well in the crucial early days of his Administration.

National Service Day: Have You Signed Up?

The selection of former Secretary of State Colin Powell to announce the Obama Administration's national service initiative, "Renew America Together" is much more than a smart political move. It’s a perfect down payment on the promises Obama made to his most ardent supporters, the Millennial Generation (born 1982-2003).

The support of young voters was decisive in Obama's narrow nomination victory over Hillary Clinton and their 2:1 margin for him over John McCain accounted for 80 percent of his nearly nine million national popular vote lead last November. By giving Powell this important and visible role, Obama simultaneously burnishes his bipartisan credentials and demonstrates his understanding that the United States has moved to a new era dominated by the outlook of a new generation determined to make America a stronger and more unified country.

Millennials are of an archetype labeled "civic" by the seminal generational theorists William Strauss and Neil Howe. Like all other civic generations throughout American history, Millennials are defined by their strong desire to advance the welfare of the entire group and, by extension, all of society. The willingness of Millennials to help make things better was reflected in their enthusiastic reaction to Obama’s call during the campaign for a program aimed at young people that would help them pay for college in exchange for two years of public service, either in the military or one of the federal civilian service organizations. While the financial concerns of a generation heavily burdened by educational debt may have partially accounted for the loud applause this idea always generated, there is far more to it than self-interest.

A 2004 Harvard University Institute of Politics survey indicated that 85 percent of college-age Millennials considers public service an effective way to solve problems facing the country. A virtually unanimous 94 percent say that volunteer activity is effective in dealing with challenges in their local community.

Millennials have already clearly demonstrated their strong willingness to put these attitudes into action by participating in service programs in large numbers. In 2004, 80 percent of high school students, all of whom were Millennials, participated in community service activities. This contrasts with only 27 percent of high school students, all whom were members of the much more individualistic Generation X, that did so in 1984. Stemming from the virtually total public service participation of Millennials, by 2006 more than a quarter of those who volunteered for one of the federal government's National Service organizations (26 percent) were 16-24 year olds. That was twice the contribution of young people in 1989, when all of those in the 16-24 year old cohort were Gen-Xers.

But this won't be the first time that a civic generation has rallied to the service of America. And, it won't be the first time that a grateful country has rewarded this service. After the GI Generation great-grandparents of today's Millennials helped to defeat the Axis in World War II, the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, better known as the GI Bill of Rights, sent millions of returning veterans to college. This was not only a just reward for a job well done; it was also excellent public policy. By exponentially increasing the number of American college graduates and the size of the country's middle class, it paved the way for the long period of post-war growth that made the last half of the 20th century the American Century. If history is any guide, the Millennial Generation will follow in the footsteps of the GI Generation and through its dedication to public service will leave America an even stronger country than the one they inherited.

Obama transition hits historical home run

Almost before the echoes of Barack Obama's Grant Park victory speech had died away pundits and the blogosphere began to keep score about the effectiveness of his transition. In a way, a presidential transition is like a political spring training that gives the incoming manager and his team a chance to prepare and set the tone for what amounts to a four-year long regular season. Every transition presents opportunities for an incoming administration to put together a game plan to deliver hardball policy ideas to give the new team an early lead in the beginning of the regular season. One danger the new team faces during the transitional preseason is being suckered by the other side into playing for keeps before opening day. With President Elect Obama’s Cabinet and White House policy team now in place, and the maneuvering over various economic bailout options mostly behind us, it’s time for some preseason analysis of the management decisions the Obama team has made.

This upcoming season is a particularly important one to get ready for because the new president is taking office during a political realignment. Realignments are rare events in U.S. politics, occurring only about once every four decades; the 2008 realignment is only the sixth in American electoral history. During and after a realignment, the old political truths–and the standards for judging presidential transitions–that appeared axiomatic during the preceding era no longer apply and the President-elect has to manage the process with an acute sensitivity to what the times demand.

As we indicated in our book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, You Tube and the Future of American Politics, all political realignments are produced by the coming of age of a large, dynamic generation and the emergence of a new communication technology that effectively mobilizes the rising generation. All realignments give American politics an extreme makeover. However, because they are caused by different types of generations, either "idealist" or "civic," not all realignments are the same. Consequently, the standards for judging the success or failure of a presidential transition vary from one type of realignment to another.

Idealist generations, like the Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964), whose coming-of-age produced a realignment centered on Richard Nixon’s “law and order” campaign of 1968, try to impose their own personal morality on the country through the political process. Political debate in eras dominated by idealist generations often tends to focus on social or moral issues, not economic or foreign policy concerns. Because idealist generations are highly divided, ideological, and uncompromising, during these types of realignments, the most successful transitions are those that advance the ideological goals of the new President and his winning team.

The current realignment however, is a "civic" realignment, produced by the political emergence of America's newest civic generation, Millennials (born 1982-2003). Civic generations react against the efforts of divided idealist generations to advance their own moral causes. They expect their team to unify the country, focus on reenergizing political and governmental institutions and using those institutions to confront and solve pressing national issues left unattended and unresolved during the previous idealist era. The transition efforts of President-elect Obama should be measured against this set of expectations, not those of an idealist era like the one just ended.

Honest Abe's and FDR's Transition Lessons for Barack Obama

Previous civic realignments occurred in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln and in 1932, when the Millennials' civic generation great grandparents, the GI Generation, put Franklin Roosevelt in the White House. It's no coincidence that these civic presidents, along with George Washington, top all lists of our greatest presidents. All three led the United States in resolving deep crises by inspiring and guiding new civic generations and creating, revitalizing, and expanding the country's civic institutions. It is this high historical standard that will set the bar for history’s evaluation of Obama’s presidency, making his preparation for the new season all the more challenging.

An incoming president during a civic realignment must avoid exacerbating the national crisis that he will soon inherit but also avoid being tied to the failed policies of the outgoing administration. So far, President-elect Obama has been able to maneuver through this political thicket as deftly as Lincoln and FDR did after their own realigning elections.

Southern states began seceding from the Union within days of Lincoln's election. Lincoln attempted to reassure the South that he would do nothing to tamper with slavery in states where it already existed, but he could not keep secessionist states in the Union without acceding to their demands to permit slavery in new territories. That would have required him to reject his own principles and those of his Republican Party, something he was unable and unwilling to do.

The outgoing Democratic President, James Buchanan, argued that secession was unconstitutional, but also that he had no power to prevent it. Consequently, he did virtually nothing when the seceding states took control of federal institutions throughout the South and blockaded Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. Lincoln waited until South Carolina actually fired on Fort Sumter before he announced his intention to use military force to relieve the federal garrison there. Not being precipitous or overly anxious made it easier for Lincoln to prepare for, rally, and lead the country in the war that followed.

The transition between the administrations of Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt was far more strained. In contrast to Buchanan, Hoover made a number of post-election attempts to persuade or, in the view of pro-FDR historians, entrap Roosevelt into endorsing Hoover's monetary and fiscal policies. Hoover presented to FDR an offer to share power in the public interest, but what he really wanted Roosevelt to do was commit to killing the New Deal before it even started. In letters to conservative Republican senators Hoover said that if the president-elect agreed to what Hoover wanted "he will have ratified the whole major program of the Republican administration; that is it means the abandonment of 90 percent of the so-called new deal." More specifically, Hoover wanted his successor to renounce, among other things, aid to homeowners unable to pay their mortgages, public works projects, and plans for the Tennessee Valley Authority. FDR studiously avoided making any policy commitments or even responding to the outgoing president's efforts to contact him, going so far as to claim that a secretary had misplaced a letter to him from Hoover. FDR's ability to preserve his political independence and policy flexibility made the historically high-scoring first hundred days of his presidency possible.

Obama is a good student of history

Both the Bush administration and the Obama team seem to be well aware of the rocky Hoover-Roosevelt transition during which an already bad economy worsened. Both Obama and Bush wanted to avoid open conflict and strained to be, or at least appear, cooperative on issues such as the auto company bailout and the use of TARP funds to stabilize the nation’s financial system. This approach fits the promise of Barack Obama to avoid excessive partisan confrontation. It fits the desire of the Bush administration to shape a historical record as positive as possible.

It is also clear, however, that Obama is attempting to follow in FDR’s footsteps by seeking to avoid collaborative policy making or commitments to continue any Bush administration policies. For example, Obama’s economic team has resisted overtures from the Bush administration to coordinate more fully on a financial sector rescue package or endorse the release of the second tranche of TARP funds. Instead the Obama team has kept its focus on the next political season by pushing Congress to quickly pass an Obama-designed stimulus program even before January 20, 2009.

From the beginning of the transition, Obama and his team have repeated the mantra that the United States has "only one president at a time,” a nice way to say, “wait until spring training is over and the regular season starts before we start playing for real." Based upon the professionalism and historical sensitivity he has demonstrated during the transition, his team should be not only a pennant contender, but also one capable of winning the World Series of a civic realignment.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are fellows of NDN and the New Policy Institute and co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics (Rutgers University Press: 2008), named one of the 10 favorite books by the New York Times in 2008.

Millennials can also Fix the Housing Market

Many of the nation’s youth (and a few of their elders) are expecting a magical turnaround of America’s economic fortunes as soon as their candidate for President, Barack Obama, is sworn in on January 20th 2009. But the Millennial Generation, born between 1982 and 2003, may be more the source of the country’s economic salvation as any initiative the new President might propose.
Millennials are the largest generation in American history, more than 91 million strong. They are coming of age just in time to join the workforce, enter the housing market, stabilize home prices, and buy the nation's expanding inventory of durable goods to furnish their new homes. Despite being burdened with student loan debt and graduating just when the job market is shrinking, this group of optimistic, civic-minded young Americans is ready to demonstrate that it is not only capable of electing a President, but also helping to resolve the country's housing crisis.
The “helicopter parents” of Millennials constantly hovered over their children as they grew up in order to protect them from anything that might harm their self-esteem. As a result, many older American’s, especially the 27 to 43 year old members of Generation X, think the Millennial’s “can do” attitude will crumble once they are confronted by the “realities of the real world.”
But this ignores the cyclical nature of generational change. The GI Generation --- the Millennial’s civic generation’s great-grandparents who came of age in the 1930s and 1940s- were raised in much the same way and acquired many of the same values cherished by Millennials. These members of what have come to be called “the Greatest Generation” were able to draw upon a deep reservoir of confidence and determination to lead America’s recovery from the Depression and later win the struggle against both fascism and communism.
To give Millennial’s the same opportunity to rescue America, the new Obama administration should give the emerging generation the same attention in its policy initiatives that it gave expended on getting their votes. Certainly the opportunity is there, particularly in rescuing the now devastated housing market,
One unintended collateral benefit of the rapid drop in housing prices across the nation is to put many suburban homes within reach of first time home buyers, something that has not occurred for at least a decade. Even in pricey California, for example, the ratio between income and cost of housing has begun to drop dramatically, notes a recent paper by Chapman University graduate students Gil Yabes and Jason Goforth, with the ratio between income and mortgages dropping by one half or more in Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties, close to pre-bubble levels.
That’s a big opportunity, one that President-elect Obama’s “Home Ownership Initiative” should seize on. The Millennials could well be the demographic that could buy these more affordable homes and staunch the rise of foreclosures threatening the U.S. economy.
It’s not that these young people don’t want to own homes. A 2004 study of students enrolled in a four-year university, a community college and an historically black college found that about the same 40-percent plurality in each group preferred to live in a “suburban community, single family home,” upon graduation. The second choice of these Millennials was to live in a “rural area, with large lots and open space.” Only about a quarter wanted to live in an “urban setting with mixed housing styles.” Luckily for them, five years later, their preferred housing stock has just become imminently more affordable.
Now the Democratic Congress and President Obama should enact a significant tax credit incentive for first time home buyers, many of whom would be Millennials. By rapidly expanding the universe of potential home buyers, this program would help stabilize housing prices in the critical lower cost housing market. At the same time it would help stem foreclosures among existing home buyers, whose loss of home equity has made abandoning mortgages more rational economically than keeping up payments.
In 1934, during an earlier time of far greater economic pain, the Federal Housing Agency (FHA) was created to provide financing for a new type of mortgage requiring a lower down payment with the loan to be paid off over 25 or 30 years. The federal agency’s financing authority was greatly extended through Title II of the Housing Act of 1949, which provided federally guaranteed mortgage insurance and helped a flood of returning GI's own a home. Now it is time for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to be given the authority to finance a new mortgage structure for homebuyers under thirty.
By lowering down payment requirements for this select group of home buyers to 10% and stretching the terms of mortgages to the number of years these young people are likely to be active in the workforce, forty, monthly payments on starter homes could be brought in line with the Millennial’s ability to pay. Initially, this combination of tax credits and new types of mortgage financing would slow the decline in home prices that triggered the problems in the country's financial markets. In the longer run, it will make sure that the benefits of widespread homeownership will expand to a new generation of Americans.
One young Millennial to whom we talked recently was concerned that the hours her retail employer wanted her to work were being cut as holiday shopping continued to sour. She expressed concern that there was still “more than a month before Obama gets sworn in and everything turns around again.”
While her statement exhibits the kind of economic naiveté that frustrates some older Americans, it does provide an important lesson – political as well as economic - for the incoming administration. The Millennial Generation, whose votes were key in nominating and then resoundingly electing President Obama, want to see things improve rapidly. After all, they lack either the experience or the equity that Baby Boomers have acquired over the years.
Once in office, President Obama should embrace the impatience of America's youth as one way to insure that his economic policies are enacted quickly. By making an explicit appeal to America's largest generation’s desire for homeownership, he would not only take a big step toward ensuring the popularity of his economic program, but its effectiveness as well.
Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are fellows of NDN and the New Policy Institute and co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics (Rutgers University Press: 2008), named one of the New York Times 10 favorite books of 2008.